Welcome and Host Introductions

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. Today, I'm one of four co hosts. I'm John Delind, and it's great to have you. It's February 1st, 2021, and we are super excited to be joined in an illustrious panel to be reviewing a new book that has come out by Fiona and Terrell Givens. And the book is called All Things New Rethinking Sin, Salvation, and Everything In Between. For those who don't know who Terrell and Fiona Givens are, I had them on Mormon Stories podcast years ago before they came out with a book called the God who Weeps. Terrell had written a lot of books on Mormon history, Mormon theology, Mormon doctrine. Terrell is a real scholar. Fiona is also a real scholar. They are a power couple now within progressive liberal Mormonism. They both are at byu. Terrell Givens for sure works in some capacity at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute. And Fiona teaches at BYU and probably works also in affiliation with the Neal A. Maxwell Institute. If I had to summarize who Terrell and Fiona Givens are, they are sort of the power couple for what I call new Mormon apologetics. And that's basically just trying to help people either stay in the Mormon Church who have faith crises or who have for whom orthodox approaches to Mormonism are no longer working. And they're also ministers to Mormons in faith crisis. And for many, many years they have traveled around the globe attending these special firesides for Mormons in faith crisis, trying to help stem the tide of Mormons leaving the Mormon Church. And I've had them on Mormon Stories podcast twice. I feel like I owe it to you guys to explain why I have not had them on Mormon Stories podcast in many years. I. I need to address this. Over the past several years, people have said to me, john, Mormon Stories podcast changed. You used to have, you know, progressive Mormons and liberal Mormons used to have people like Richard Bushman and Terrell and Fiona Givens on, and you no longer have them. I just want to make clear two things. Number one is I still try on Mormon Stories podcast to have progressive and liberal Mormons on. Just recently I had an epic series with Jim Bennett and I've had Carl Youngblood. I had Jenna Spangler on. Like, I try really hard to have progressive liberal Mormons on Mormon Stories podcast. The problem with Richard Bushman and or Terrell and Fiona Givens is not with me. The problem is with them. Just a few years ago, after my excommunication, I invited Terrell and Fiona Givens on, and I'll quote Fiona Givens. When she declined, Fiona wrote, thank you for the kind invitation to be guests on your show. I think our primary concern is the possible, perhaps probable, misperception that we may be setting ourselves up as faith crisis gurus, which we certainly are not. We respond to requests to speak from bishops and stake presidents and hope something we have to say might help someone in the community. And then she goes on to ask us to interview other people. So I just want to make it clear that I would love to have Terrell and Fiona Givens on Mormon Stories podcast anytime. I've invited them multiple times since my excommunication. They've declined every time. And the excuse they've given is that they don't want anyone to perceive them as being gurus for people in faith crisis. I don't understand that reasoning. I invite any of you who know them or want to reach out to them to ask them why. That's their reasoning for not coming on. And, and I hope that they'll change their mind and reconsider and come on Mormon Stories podcast. I promise to treat them with love and kindness and respect. The good news is that if I had to choose between Terrell and Fiona and this incredible panel, I probably, if forced, would choose this incredible panel because I love this panel. None of these people, I'm very happy to say, are first time guests on Mormon Stories Podcast. In fact, we've had all of them on recently on Mormon Stories podcast. But I am delighted to invite all of them back on Mormon Stories podcast. And I'm going to begin today by having each of them introduce themselves to our guests. And I'm going to start this time with Brittany. Brittany, welcome back. Brittany Hartley, welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast. Welcome back.

Brittany Hartley [00:04:23] Thanks, John. Happy to. Happy to be here. My name is Brittany Hartley. I'm the author of the book Mormon Philosophy Simplified, and I run a Mormon spectrum group here in Boise, Idaho. And let's see, just love having conversations like this. I'm a doctorate student in open and relational theology and really moving into the space of kind of secular humanism chaplain work.

John Dehlin [00:04:53] All right, well, we adore you, Brittany. Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'm excited to check it out. I hope we can get you back to talk about that book.

Brittany Hartley [00:05:02] Of course.

John Dehlin [00:05:04] All right, next on our illustrious panel is the Jana Spangler. Jana is not only an amazing human, she's also almost a neighbor of mine. But Janae, welcome back to Mormon Stories and tell our listeners who don't Know you who you are.

Jana Spangler [00:05:22] Thanks, John. Really happy to be here. So I am primarily these days a life coach and I work. I specialize with people who are in faith crisis who are going through some sort of spiritual awakening, faith transition. I work with them. I work with mixed faith marriages with family members of people who are going through this. Anyone who says this is causing heartburn in their life. I work for Symmetry Solutions and we're a great group. We have therapists and coaches who work and specialize in this area, among other things. I'm also a graduate of the Living School, which is run by the center for Action and Contemplation. The director of that is Father Richard Rohr. Some of you are aware of him. And I studied basically contemplative Christianity and how that can influence the good that we do in the world. I also am kind of on the circuit of podcasts and speaking engagements. I do firesides. I've spoken at Sunstone and at North Star and Affirmation and in a lot of different spaces. Just talking about faith crisis and how, you know, how that affects all of us and in our different intersections. So that's me.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] And is it okay if I mention that you are an active attending Latter Day Saint?

Jana Spangler [00:06:58] Yes, please. All right, all that.

John Dehlin [00:07:04] All right. Well it's so great to have you, Jana. Thanks for joining us. All right, last but in no way least we have Anthony Miller. Anthony, welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast and please introduce yourself if you don't mind.

Anthony Miller [00:07:18] Thank you, John. Thanks for having me. So I'm a financial planner and entrepreneur. Also spent several years teaching finance at our local private liberal arts school here in Billings, Montana. I'm just about reaching five years from the initiation of a very acute existential faith crisis that was triggered when I was looking for resources after our then 22 year old son came out to us as gay. I found tremendous help and resources online and in person groups through Mormon Spectrum through Faith Transition workshops that you put on. One I went to with Gina Colvin and Thomas McConkey, also attending with online Facebook groups. What is now Waters of Mormon was very influential and important to me for a period of time in my journey. Sunstone has been super important to me. And so the second year I went to Sunstone, I went back and helped moderate and then since then I've co presented with people like Jana and other friends in multiple sessions. Most years in Sunstone. This year I participated in one session. Last year, well, it's 2019. So in August, in 2019 I shared my Mormon Stories interview On Mormon stories. It episodes 1159-1165 were my story and have been grateful to be able to continue to come on and talk about different things. Like we'll talk about today, I'm currently working on a book. I have a good friend who is a very good coach and writer who's helping me with that, and I hope that to get that out this year and in May, I'll be doing a TED talk about thriving and building community after Mormon faith crisis. So that's a little bit about me.

John Dehlin [00:09:38] All right, excellent. Well, welcome, Anthony. We're so glad to have you. All right, I would like to begin today by first talking about from whence this book comes. I have on my desk another book that's come out by Patrick Mason recently. Both Patrick Mason's new book and this book are both pub published by an organization called Faith Matters, the Faith Matters Foundation, I believe. And. And the books are published by the publisher, Faith Matters Publishing, which I think is led by the Turnbull brothers. And I've never met these gentlemen. So I'm wondering if, if any of you could kind of tell us who the Turnbulls are and, and what Faith Matters Publishing is so that then we can understand the context and the framework for, for these new books that are coming out. And I'll add that Patrick Mason has agreed to come on Mormon Stories and talk about his new book. But who, who. Jana, would you be the right person to talk about Faith Matters in the Turnbulls and then anyone else can jump in?

Background on Faith Matters Foundation

Jana Spangler [00:10:48] I really wouldn't. My only touchstone with the Faith Matters foundation is that I was invited on the podcast. I really enjoyed, had a great interview with Tim and Aubrey Chavez and it was, it was a really great experience. But I. My experience with all of that and with the Turnbulls is really, really limited and with the Turnbulls non existent. So.

John Dehlin [00:11:11] Okay. All right. Britt or Anthony, can either of you help us out a little more?

Brittany Hartley [00:11:16] Maybe a little bit. So David Turnbull lives here in Boise, Idaho. He doesn't live very far from me. I wouldn't say that him and I are close friends or anything, but I know the area that he lives in were friends with similar people and I know that he is a financial backer for the Faith Matters foundation, which allows Fiona and Terrell to travel and be able to speak and help Mormons, you know, with these firesides and things that they do. So, so like when they traveled up here to Boise, you know, they have their own finances to be able to do that because the Turnbulls just so appreciate the work that they do in Mormonism. And so that's as far as I can take that question.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] Okay, Anthony, anything you want to end? I've got the website here. While you're thinking. Faith Matters foundation aims to create a community in which an expansive viewer of the restored gospel can be considered and discussed. That's kind of a description on the website. Some of the advisors and contributors include Tom Kristofferson, who we've had on Mormon Stories Podcast, Fiona Givens, Steve Young, Darius Gray, Melissa Inouye, Terrell Givens, Patrick Mason, Philip Barlow, Thomas Thomas McConkey, Jacob Hess, Charles Randall, Paul Jay Griffith, and Rosalind Welch. At least half of those people we've had on Mormon Stories podcast it. To me, it's sort of like the home of. It seems like it's kind of the home of. Of a new type of Mormon apologetics. Really thoughtful, scholarly people who want to focus more on love and progressive ideology and theology than on battling truth claims and history and certainly disparaging critics. So, Anthony, anything you want to add to that?

Anthony Miller [00:13:11] No, other than they have a YouTube channel and I've subscribed to it, so usually when an episode comes out, I'll take the opportunity to watch it just because I'm curious. I've really appreciated the work that Thomas McConkey does, and so I'm sure not to miss any episode in which he participates.

John Dehlin [00:13:33] All right, well, shout out to the Turnbulls and all the Faith Matters foundation for the work they're doing. It's certainly a step up from a lot of the apologetics that we've all experienced over the past 50 or 60 years. So anything that's an improvement is good.

Jana Spangler [00:13:53] Can I say one thing?

John Dehlin [00:13:54] Please.

Jana Spangler [00:13:56] So I. I know several of the people who are on the advisory there, and one of the things I would just like to point out is how different so many of those people are the ones that I know. So it's hard to paint all of, like, that. That whole foundation with a. With one brush, because the people that I personally know are so completely different from one another. Their approaches are completely different from one another. And I would suspect there's a lot of disagreement amount among them of the way all of them are doing things. So I just like to point that out because so often we kind of make a monolith of the. The orthodox Mormons, the post Mormons, the, you know, new apologists or whatever. And I just like to point that out.

John Dehlin [00:14:44] I love it. That's good. And that's. That's honestly true. We're all different. We have different points of view. And there is no one fair Mormon and there is no one Maxwell Institute. And that's a great reminder, Janet. Thank you. Okay, so if. If we were to describe. If we were to describe what this book is trying to do, I kind of want to start there. Kind of like, why this book? Why do we. If. If you guys were to imagine the Turnbulls sitting around with, with Fiona and Terrell and maybe Patrick and others, just kind of like, we've. The church needs our help. How can we be of assistance? What do you guys guess, you know, might have been the types of circumstances that would lead to and. Or the rationale that. That might have led to. To the creation of this book. I know that that's speculating, but I think you all have a sense for what I'm asking, so let's have you start. Yeah.

Overview of the Givens' Book and Its Place in Their Work

Brittany Hartley [00:15:51] Yeah. So to me, this book is just a natural extension of the God who Weeps, the Christ who heals. And so what I think is happening here is that if you read the God who Weeps and you recontextualize God and you really put love at the forefront of God and you recontextualize Christ as healing woundedness, and you recontextualize doubt in their book Crucible, Crucible of Doubt to a place where it's just a lot healthier. It's a place where you grow, trying to take some of the stigma out of doubt. If you go through that journey with Terrell and Fiona, this book is a natural extension of, okay, what comes next? What does this mean now for sin? What does this mean now for my concept of Zion? What does this mean now for my concept of heaven? And so for me, you know, someone who is well versed in theology could have read all those books and kind of extrapolated this book. This is probably where they would go to think about this or that. But to have it actually in book form to say, okay, we've kind of set the foundation of God in Christ and I think they're going to do a third one on the Holy Ghost also, and doubt and faith. Now we're moving into, okay, then what do we do about sin, salvation, heaven, all these other concepts that are floating around, how do we apply that and kind of reframe and relook at those things? So I just see this as a natural extension of the work that they've already done and applying that to more practical kind of areas that we end up dealing with.

John Dehlin [00:17:40] Excellent. I love it. Britt, Jana, do you want to add anything.

Jana Spangler [00:17:44] Yeah, I'd love to. So I kind of imagine because. And this is not necessarily speculation, because it's in the introduction to the book that, you know, they have been in touch with people. People do reach out to them, I'm sure, because of the crucible of doubt and other work that they've done. People reach out who are in pain and who are in a faith crisis and who are trying to figure this whole thing out. You know, it's. It's my experience that a lot of the people who go through faith crisis don't really want to leave the church, and they're trying to find a way to stay in. And I think that Terrell and Fiona, because of their scholarship, because of Fiona's experience being a convert, coming up in Catholicism and having maybe a broader view of Christianity, can have a view of some of the quirks of. Of Mormonism and also the beauty of the Restoration as it compares to the broader Christian ideals, so. And ideas. So I think they are trying to point out some of the unhealthy assumptions we have, the unhealthy ways that we take in the message of the Gospel that can be really destructive. And I think they're very clear in this book about some of the things that we've inherited that. That are not healthy and that I think they're trying to say that the Restoration has some magical things that we're overlooking or that we're not fully understanding or that there might be a new way to see. And so I think they're trying to do that. They're trying to say, look, there's a different way to look at this. And let's compare that to the broader Christian landscape to see what is good, what's bad, and what was the meaning in that initial restoration that Joseph Smith was trying to do that can be a better look. What did we bring? What did. What does Mormonism bring to the world? That's. That's kind of unique and special?

John Dehlin [00:19:51] I love it. Thanks, Jenna. Anthony.

The Givens' Engagement with Progressive Christianity

Anthony Miller [00:19:56] So in reading the book, it's clear that the Givens know what's happening in the progressive Christian world. You know, they refer to Rob Bell, they refer to Richard Rohr and others. And. And the best. I'd start out by saying, I don't know. I can't say that they've gone through a faith transition. That would be the. Probably the wrong word to apply to the Givens and, And other people in this general space. But David Osler, in his book Bridges, does explain that there are some people that experience A faith transition or an evolution of faith without a dark night of the soul and without an existential faith crisis kind of experience. And, and what I would say is, you know, if they've read Rob Bell's book Love Wins, and they look in where Rob Bell talks about universalism and he talks about the meaning that Christianity primarily attributes to heaven and hell, absolutely has no basis on what actually is, was in the original Greek texts or other people like Richard Rohr or other progressive Christians, when they really get into the scholarship of the Bible and they look at the Greek and they look at what, what did sin really mean, what, what the, the words that we've translated to mean hell, what did that really mean, what did the kingdom of God mean, and so forth. You have all these people in the balance of what we would call progressive Christianity like Rob Bell and Richard Warren, others that have reinvented a model where, where adherents or people that want to hold on to the things or the symbols in Christianity that are meaningful to them, but they recognize that theologies like atonement theology or theologies of what heaven and hell are or what sin is, or retributive, you know, penal substitution and justice and so forth, how problematic those things are. People outside of Mormonism have been working in this area. So I would suggest, and this would be speculative, but I think there's pretty strong evidence in the book that as the Givens have studied and biblical scholarship, they've recognized that there are several things in Mormonism that are unhealthy and, and what Patrick Mason would call the things that are in the overloaded truth cart that aren't sustainable in Mormonism in the centuries to come. And they would recognize that traditional atonement theology is probably one of the most harmful parts of orthodox Mormonism and probably the least sustainable, particularly as people study more biblical scholarship and come to the realization that the meaning that we in Mormon, orthodox Mormonism attribute to these words, justice, worthiness, sin, repentance, atonement, absolutely misrepresent, and are even proof texting of what actually is in biblical texts. At the same time, the givens in the book acknowledge the messiness of scriptures that, you know, some of the stories and scriptures are foundation myths or stories as opposed to literally historical. But at the same time, the, the way that I would compare it is in, in progressive Christianity, the Marcus Borg, John Shelby Spong, Rob Bell, Richard Rohr types, they, they will lead you to the doorway from literalism or fundamentalist literalism into non literalism. They'll, they'll walk you through the threshold, through the doorway, and into the metaphorical. And then they will be your guide, or they'll sit with you and share at least their view of how the metaphorical can still have meaning to them. And. And my perception with this book is. And we'll get it. We'll see more, I think, as we go through it is. It seems like that what the givens are doing is leading the reader to approaching what that door is. And maybe they indirectly point or hint that there's a threshold over there to a door to more metaphor, but they don't actually lead the reader through the threshold on into the side of non literalism, because I think they do find value in certain doctrines or theologies that are based on literalism that they want to hold and. And carry forward. That's. Anyway, that's kind of my take. And so my take is what the givens are doing is the things that are be being done throughout Christian and religious thought where fundamentalist, literalist belief is unsustainable and it's rotting in the truth cart.

John Dehlin [00:25:35] Do you guys. Thank you. Thank you, Anthony. Do you guys get the sense that, that. And you've kind of touched on this, but do you get the sense that, you know, other than us, people like us, they're more plugged into people in faith crisis than probably most people in the church? They. They realize that the historical stuff is a problem, the CBS letter kind of stuff, but that. That's not it. And the LGBT stuff isn't the only thing. And, and even, you know, women's issues aren't the only thing. I think you kind of alluded to this as well. Do you guys get a sense that there are people who are struggling with the church and. Or leaving it for none of those other reasons, but instead over issues like, you know, perceptions about sin, about worthiness, about judgment, about the atonement, about Christ? Like, for somebody that has no idea what this book is about and that isn't really up to speed on these issues, they would say, now wait a minute, the teachings about Jesus, those are like the golden things. Those are like, what the church has it right? Like Jesus and the atonement, like, thumbs up. Do you guys want to kind of maybe explain your perceptions of why, actually, for many people, the church's teachings about Jesus and sin and the atonement can actually be stumbling blocks to their participation in the church? Jan, I see you nodding your head.

Problems with Traditional Atonement Theology

Jana Spangler [00:27:13] Yeah, this is a really, really good question. And I'm just spitballing here because it's not something I've particularly thought of in these terms, but I. I think that there are very few people, for instance, that come into my office who are in the midst of a faith crisis who are saying, you know, I'm just really bugged by this atonement thing. I don't see that. I see it's all the stuff you mentioned, the LGBT issues, the women's issues, the historical issues. It's. It's all of this other stuff. What I do think is that this stuff is underlying a lot of the unhealthy that has led us into the problems that were. That are cropping up in the LGBT issues, in the. The way we see the gospel, the way we practice the gospel. And what it does is it. It probably on a more subconscious level is driving a lot of the cognitive dissonance that, that we have. And what I see is actually as people are really unpacking things, the ones who take time to really unpack things beyond just the church lied to me or whatever feeling that is super. I'm validating that. Like I validate people's feelings around that. As people unpack. Some of these things are underlying and we're not even seeing how they are affecting our perception of ourselves, our self worth and the way that we interact with other people, the dynamics we have in our families. I think they're actually really important and really instructive. But it is not the thing that is at the forefront of our mind that we're talking about when we're talking about the pain of faith crisis.

John Dehlin [00:28:56] I love that I felt for a long time, and I think the first time I kind of realized this. I read this book once called the Backslider by Levi Peterson. I think that's his name. It's been a while, but he basically. What's more powerful than how we view God and how we think God views us? What else is going to affect more how we view ourselves, how we view our loved ones, how we parent, how we're a partner or a spouse, how we treat ward members, how we lead in the church, how the church leads us? If we view God as a strict, stern Old Testament retributive, you know, counting pluses and minuses, I'm going to punish you if you do bad tough love. You know, if we view God that way, how is that not going to bleed into everything that we do from top to bottom? Then again, if we view God as kind and generous and loving and, and unconditionally loving and peaceful, how is that not going to bleed into every aspect of our lives. So, Jenna, that's a great point you're making. Anthony, do you want to add anything to that? And then Britt as well?

Anthony Miller [00:30:11] Yeah, I think. I think most people wouldn't recognize it, but traditional. My view is that traditional atonement theology, you know, and the. Check the box, mercy and justice kind of theology that the Givens are pushing back on here, it. In most cases, it's really the underlying theology that affects all the rest of the problems. You know, problems with patriarchy get. Are. Are a result or a byproduct born out of this kind of model of God and our relationship with God. Of traditional atonement theology, if you look in progressive Christianity, where they fix problems in progressive Christian circles, where they fix problems with patriarchy and problems with fundamentalist literalism and problems with the way that LGBTQ people are treated and racism, and all of those problems fundamentally start to change when the message becomes more of the Rob Bell, Marcus Borg view of God and atonement and so forth, that is more universalist in nature. And so, you know, the question that I would have for the Gibbons.

John Dehlin [00:31:46] Wait, Anthony, tell us what. Tell us a little bit more. And of course, Shanna and Brit, you guys may be able to jump in here. What is Rob Bell preaching? What is Richard Rohr preaching? What is kind of an alternative or a competitive approach to God and Jesus and atonement or religion that potentially the givenses are drawing inspiration from? Because there's gonna be a lot of our listeners that don't know what you mean when you say Richard Rohr or Rob Bell because they're. They're more reading the CES letter or, you know, free falling.

Anthony Miller [00:32:24] Yeah. So Rob Orthodox. Rob Bell's recent book is called Everything is Spiritual. And your listeners and watchers could. Could look on YouTube for a talk. He's given two different presentations that have been recorded on Everything is Spiritual. But the more recent one is kind of interesting. And then his more recent book is Everything is Spiritual. And the basic idea leans to some form of either pantheism or pan antheism, where this idea that God is an omnipresent force that manifests itself in and through all of us, and because it's omnipresent, we're a part of it. This idea ties into stuff that you read with Eckhart Tolle, Richard Rohr, Jan, I could talk about, but he has a book called the Universal Christ where. Where the essence of God that's omnipresent, loves things into existence, and, you know, it's more, again, it's more of a universalist type of view of community and relationships and salvation and the workings of, of God and Marcus Borg and the others in progressive Christianity, it's a very similar theme. And so when we get into this book where the Gibbons talk about heaven being about relationships, that fits into some of the themes that we see in progressive Christianity. So that's why I'm suggesting that if you want to fix, if you want to keep, if you want to keep the helpful parts of Mormonism and get rid of the unhelp helpful or unhealthy parts, it's quite likely the very first thing to start with is this area of biblical scholarship and coming to the recognition that the kind of almost creeds that we have with regard to a traditional atonement theology are, are the foundation of fundamentalist literalism that have blossomed or contributed to all these byproducts that are harms in our faith that have hurt people, that are contributors to faith crisis and, and existential faith existence type of crisis and then experiences in terms of abuse and patriarchy and discrimination and so forth, those things can begin to be addressed if we start with, I don't know if it's the givens approach, but the givens and the other approaches because that seems to be what's healthiest in, in progressive Christianity, fixing the problems.

John Dehlin [00:35:22] Jenna, do you, and then Britt, Jen, I know you, you, you've studied under Richard Rohr. So I want to give you a chance to talk about that. And then Britt, I want to bring you in after.

Jana Spangler [00:35:30] Jenna yeah, so I could talk about Richard Rohr for a very long time with all that he's bringing to the plate because it's, it's really been so influential for my own journey. But you know, the thing that drew me to Richard Rohr is that he is someone who is a Catholic priest who does not feel the need to be apologetic. He's willing to go to the point of saying religion is the best thing in the world and it's the worst thing in the world. And he is, he's willing to talk about what is the worst thing in the world and what he sees about why, how we've gotten in this mess and at the same time bringing back some of the miraculous, wonderful things that are there in the teachings of Jesus. He's a Christian and he includes everything. He includes Buddhism, he includes psychology and Jungian influences and he's influenced by a lot of things. And in some ways one of the tie ins that I see that Terrell and Fiona mention in this book is that the roots of Mormonism were to take everything that, that everything belongs. If it's true, it's, it's Mormon. If, if it comes, I don't care where it comes from. If it's true, it's, it's part of us. I feel like culturally we've lost a lot of that, probably most of that in the way that we interact today. But I think they see a magic in that and that's, that's something that Richard Rohrer is doing and just recognizing, just being aware, being, recognizing how our humanity impacts how we see the divine. And let's just kind of try to be real about that. So he, he does have this, this much more universalist idea where you know, Christ is in and of, and the Christ energy is in everything and Christ doesn't really care what you call that. It doesn't have to be Christ. That if you are of another faith and you're feeling that, that's the same thing. So it is a very universalist. If we all could just take off of our ego driven eyes and see what the nature of us all really is. We're all divine. We're all part of the divine dance of the divine.

John Dehlin [00:38:15] And I would kind of ask you to confirm that maybe you see the influence of, for you, Janet, Richard Rohr, or for you, Anthony Miller, Rob Bell in this book. But the truth is they mentioned Richard Rohr and Rob Bell in this book. So clearly this book is an attempt to try and bring Mormonism into the, the emerging world of kind of progressive Christianity. Brit, do you want to, do you want to add anything to what's been said so far?

Brittany Hartley [00:38:44] I have a follow up to Jana and Anthony, so I just want to reiterate kind of what Jana said is that I don't have anyone messaging me. Gosh, I'm having a faith crisis because I'm really struggling with the question of the omnipotence of God. But they do come in and say, my child just died. I prayed that they would get better and they didn't. And so, you know, that happens all the time where yes, you can be dealing with these on the surface, but the root issue is you have some theological belief, you have some understanding of theology that is really causing you some pain, that is really causing you to be angry with God. And so as scholars, I think that, you know, Terrell and Fiona, the best comfort they can give, the best help that they can give is to get back into the theology and say, you know what? We've Missed something that can be helpful to you here. We've missed some beauty here and to separate kind of the culture from the most beautiful aspects of Christian and Mormon theology, which are quite beautiful and which can lead to somewhat to someone living a really beautiful human life. My response, my, my follow up with Anthony is that the, the reason that Terrell and Fiona are not just progressive Christians, right? They're not just Rob Bell. The reason that the Mormonism comes into play, even though they're ending up in really similar space spaces, is that you have the addition of Mormon scripture to give some authority to the things that Christianity has to do without that scripture. So an example would be, you know, Christianity is trying to move into this space where God is compassionate, but we actually have a scripture that says that God wept. Like we have that scripture, that authority in our canon that Christianity doesn't. Another one, we're trying to move into the space where God is co creative. That's a very popular idea in Christianity right now, that God is co creative, that whatever God is, is in partnership with us is in relation to us. Now Christianity is moving in that space, but we actually have scripture in Abraham that talks about God's creation as co creative, that when they created, they watched to see how the elements would respond. So the reason that there's this Mormon twist to this progressive Christianity space that they're playing in is because you actually have some scripture and authority through Joseph and through the Doctrine and Covenants and other places that allow you to do so, whereas Christianity has to do that without those scriptures. And so they find that as exceptional to Mormonism. And that's what really draws them to keep coming back to Mormonism again and again. And my critique of that is, and we'll talk about this more as we get into the book, is that it is a pro when you're talking about pros and cons, that we have some more scripture to move and to progress of spaces. And Terrell and Fiona are the ones who are really trying to champion these scriptures and saying, hey, let's move in these more beautiful directions. The problem is as soon as you do that, you have to bring in everything else too, which is polygamy and miracle of forgiveness and all the other stuff that, you know, we talk about on Mormon stories. When you bring in those scriptures, you bring in the mess of Mormonism too. And you have to think about is that the most helpful way to get from A to B. And that's an interesting question to talk about.

John Dehlin [00:42:43] That's great. Well, let's. Let's dive into the book. This has been a great intro and maybe some context. Let's talk about chapter one. And just to kick off chapter one, it seems to me like, you know, a couple things that really jumped out for me for chapter one is, you know, Fiona. I feel like Fiona. I listened to the book and Fiona narrates it, and she's a great narrator, and so I thought of this coming from her. But the point is made in chapter one that theology matters. There's kind of this acknowledgment that religion has made some mistakes, that, you know, that we as Mormons have been taught about the emergence of Christ's church, but then an apostasy and then a corruption of Christianity and then, you know, this. This long, dark kind of, you know, dark ages of apostasy. But then there's kind of this restored church. And she does refer to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints as the restored Church. And they end up highlighting kind of two main distinctive doctrines that Brittany, you just kind of touched on. They say in the book, the two big things that really need to be highlighted here are the premortality of humans. That's a really important thing to them. And then the second is the parenthood of God. That kind of, as you said, Brit, as the book, the God who Weeps kind of suggests, these are not king and queen. You know, they're not the monarchs and we're the serfs. We are a big family. They're this, you know, loving mommy and daddy that's not above us, but right here with us as our parents, loving us unconditionally and nurturing us on. And we are their children, but as children, we're heirs to inherit all that they have and who knows, maybe more. And that, you know, we chose this and that we're all just co partners in this family of. Of growth and that theology matters. And of course, the idea that there's a mother and a father, not just a father, but. But they really seem to almost triple down on the anthrop. Anthropomorphic nature of. Of God and the divinity. So let's just jump into that. I want to hear any really crucial big reactions or our thoughts. You guys have to. Chapter one. Brit, how do you feel about going first? Any.

Deep Dive into Chapter One of the Book

Anthony Miller [00:45:24] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:45:24] Any big things that jump out at you for chapter one?

Brittany Hartley [00:45:27] So the one that stands out to me is on page 21, and they talk about impartial. I'm just going to quote it real quick. In particular, we have an outline of the great story the original plan that provides us a more ample context as well as additional compass points to orient ourselves and make sense of the journey. And that is such an important sentence for me to understand why even though they are incredibly scholarly and well versed in both Christianity and, and other religions, why they keep coming back to Mormonism as an essential part of restoration. And it's because they really cling to this idea of this is a great story that is going to help us to orient ourselves the right way that will lead us into a place of love and Zion and compassion and connection and all these places. And so I have two kind of reactions whenever I'm reading this book or whenever I'm reading Taryl and Fiona in general. Fiona actually wrote the foreword to my book. And I really do appreciate the work that they do in Mormonism. I think if you're going to be a Mormon, they really draw out the best fruits of Mormonism that they have to offer. The place where I say, say I can go with you here, but no further is where they say this great story is the story. Because there are other stories that have a premortal existence or at least gets you into a place where you get the fruits of that. There are other stories where you get into the female and male parts of God where you don't have to have a spirit specific mother and father. Hinduism comes to mind, for example, where there are always female deities. And so here's, here's where I kind of split place, you know, split in my criticism. I love what they're doing for Mormonism. I love that they bring out this great story that is quite beautiful, that leads to a beautiful relational way of living. My only concern is that is this the best story? And in, in my case, when I'm thinking about raising my daughters of my daughters are of color in the church, is this the best way to go from point A to point B? Is this story. Because this story is also going to include all of the messy parts of human history, all of the internalization of patriarchy, all of that. Is this really the best story story to get us to this highly relational, beautiful place to be. And that's where I will part ways. Even though I do think that the story that they tell through Christianity and Mormonism is, is quite beautiful and, and really leads to a beautiful way of being in the world.

John Dehlin [00:48:27] Yeah, it's definitely a step up from kind of Bruce Armaconkey or Boyd K. Packer kind of Mormonism or Joseph Fielding Smith. There's a comment from Daniel in response to what you just said, Brit. Daniel writes, yeah, it's problematic, isn't it? I was always troubled by the Lord's willingness to kill on such a grand scale. It seems too arbitrary to be coming from a thoughtful, loving savior. We'll get into that comment later. Brian also writes the Weeping God is in some tension with Jesus of Third Nephi, who kills off a large part of the population prior to his visit. In the flesh. I would say the Book of Mormon via this episode gives us the most inescapable view of the Mormon God, namely that he is the enforcer of justice. The world kills the prophets and the saints. Their blood cries from the ground. God makes sure the evildoers get their comeuppance. There's, there's so much to cover there and I don't want to jump off on that topic just yet. But, but, but Brit, you know, you do ask a really important question, which is, is this really the best way to get us to where we want to go? Anthony, what do you want to add about chapter one?

Anthony Miller [00:49:40] So, a couple things. First, actually in the intro you always, if you're deconstructing Mormonism, you always find something new to deconstruct. And in the intro they, they talk about the Child of God. I am a child of God song, right? And the verse that says help me to understand his words before it grows too late. And I'm like, oh my gosh.

John Dehlin [00:50:07] Right.

Anthony Miller [00:50:07] That is so performative and fear based. Right?

John Dehlin [00:50:10] Yeah.

Anthony Miller [00:50:10] That beautiful primary song even has that in it. So, so that's to me. So my thought, my thoughts here are. And, and I'm interested in, in the other's take here on it as I study church history and study Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith seemed to never feel anchored by, by theology. He, he had an evolution of his view of the nature of God, you know, over time. He would preach certain things and then later preach different things. The Givens recognize this and they don't call him Joseph Smith an eclectic, eclectic aggregator, but they do call him a synthesis.

John Dehlin [00:51:05] Inspired synthesis.

Anthony Miller [00:51:06] Inspired synthesis. And so, so they see Justice Smith as this person who didn't feel constrained by or anchored to not be able to change ideas or theologies or what he taught, including contradicting himself. And, and he and the Givens acknowledge this in the book, like the, the doctrine. They don't specifically acknowledge that the doctrine of the premortal life came from Thomas Dick, but, but they would explain, I think Terrell, in his book on the Pearl of Great Price, I think he acknowledges there that Joseph Smith got that idea from Thomas Dick. What they don't say here, but they surely, surely would both know that, that the doctrine of Heavenly Mother was originated with Joseph Smith expressing that idea to try to convince a teenage girl to be one of his plural wives. And, and he told this girl that she would meet or see her deceased mother, she was an orphan again in heaven, and that she would meet her Heavenly Mother too. And there wasn't ever really a revelation about Heavenly Mother. Heavenly Mother is all in Mormonism, origins in plural marriage. And for a period of time it was co opted, the idea was co opted by Brigham Young and, and some of his contemporaries that Heavenly Mother was one of many. How the Givens reconcile this, I'm not quite sure. But in any event, similar to Joseph Smith not feeling constrained or anchored by prior theology or particular literalist, fundamentalist interpretations that no longer work for him, it almost seems like the Givens see that as a model for them, that they can not be anchored by things that don't work for them anymore. And then they can follow what they feel the spirit or their relationship or their perception of interaction with God leads them to. And we'll share a clip a little bit later in the episode that, that verifies that. So, so when I look at chapter one, you know, they, they talk about John maybe being the best chronicler of, of Jesus's words, but at the same time they have to have studied the biblical scholarship to know that the Gospel of John wasn't written by the Apostle John. It wasn't written until sometime between 90 and maybe 110 CE. And it's probably the least historical of the Gospels. It's probably the most theological and non historical. And so there are some things that they know that it's problematic to present things from a literalist standpoint, like the anthropomorphic mother in heaven or like John being a literal chronicler and his words ending up in the Gospel of John. But they maybe just don't feel confined by that because they like the model of Joseph Smith as an inspired synthesist and they maybe think, well, why not? We'll just do the same thing and that's what works for us. And the video clip that we'll share in this episode might be confirming that that's their point of view.

John Dehlin [00:54:49] All right, thanks, Anthony. Jenna, any thoughts on, on chapter one that jump out for you?

Jana Spangler [00:54:57] Yeah, for sure. So it was interesting for me reading it because they're bringing in these differences from, you know, the, the historical Christian thought and especially the Protestantism that Joseph Smith was brought up in and was in the, you know, that was the soup that he was raised in. And, and all the way from the Reformation all the way back to Augustine and some of the early church fathers for the Catholic Church. But so I got a little bit lost in this because they're making these logical explanations why this premortality and why the parenthood of God is so important for us to have a healthy view of the Gospel and of Jesus Christ. And like, it was all really, really great right up until they just made a whole bunch of leaps. And perhaps they made these leaps because they didn't feel the need to justify it because their audience is lds, so their audience doesn't have to be convinced that God is our anthropomorphic father and mother, that we had a premortal life. But it was jarring for me because I'm following their logic. And then they get to something like the, the we have to have premortality in order to have eternal progression. And I just kept saying, why? Why do we need that? I don't know that that follows. I don't know that this would be convincing to anyone outside of Mormonism that this is, this is an essential part of Christianity. They may be able to go and say, yeah, this was part of early Christianity or not through, through the scholarship, but I don't know that it was convincing to say this is really an essential part of being a healthy form of, you know, enlightened, true, best form of Christianity. So one of the things about the anthropomorphic God, they made a leap for me was, well, you can't have a God of passions without having a body. And I was questioning, well, if you can have a God of love in the rest of Christianity, yeah, they, I, I affirm they have kind of put aside the God of passions. But why couldn't you have a trinity, disembodied God that is, has love and passions? Like, I couldn't make the leap in some of the logic, but like I said, that was probably not their focus. That wasn't their audience. They probably didn't feel the need to back that up. But it was jarring to me coming from. Because I, I have studied with the greater Christian world to try to follow the logic of that. But as Brittany says, I can see them feeling like this is the great story. I hear that. And this is actually where, you know, to something Anthony said earlier, that they're trying to lead us to something metaphorical. I do see them doing that. But when it comes to certain things, like this and these two things. They're going very literal, and they're going very literal with the. The. What's the word I'm looking for for the rev. The modern revelation, for the scripture, the. The Mormon scripture. The way that we see it, this is something they're not willing to go off of as being really quite literal. So I think to do that, then they have to pick and choose. They have to pick and choose to make it the good story. And I haven't seen them be as willing to also confront and accept all of the bad that comes with it and say, what do we actually do with that? I mean, that's probably unfair. I'm sure they have in some ways, but they are. I agree with Brittany. They're bringing in the best fruits of Mormonism. The way that they did it here, I feel like it. It can come across as really quite arbitrary. They're trying to make a logical argument that becomes quite arbitrary to fit that great story. That feels good.

John Dehlin [00:59:11] Yeah. And. And there's so many kind of meta themes that I really want to jump into.

Anthony Miller [00:59:18] And I.

John Dehlin [00:59:19] And I'm like, I'm debating between just jumping into the themes and making sure we cover the book, but I'm going to show a little restraint and not jump into them yet, but. Or maybe we will. But just to add a few things to what you guys have already shared about chapter one, you know, I always hated the idea of one true church, and I'm not sure using the term the restored church is much of an improvement for me. There's still, for me, an elitist kind of ring to this idea of the restored church. It means that we're the church and it means that all the others are messed up. And then we got restored. Restored. And that's still. That still bothers me. It smacks as elitist to me. The second thing is that, and this isn't me just looking for criticisms. These are just things that really jumped. I want Mormonism to be improved. I want to like the givens. I want Mormonism to be a kinder, healthier place. So I want improvements. So I don't want you guys to think that this is just me trying to find problems. These are things that really stuck out to me as problematic. The second is that is that, you know, they like to talk about Heavenly Mother and they really want to talk about parents. And I was even really excited that when they use a pronoun for God, they use the pronoun they and not he, which I think is cool. Like, that's really cool. Unfortunately for me, I'm old enough to remember when I'm at byu, and there are professors like Cecilia Konjar Farr and Gail Houston that are excited to talk about Heavenly Mother and that are even talking about ways to worship Heavenly Mother or even pray to Heavenly Mother. They get kicked out of byu, they get excommunicated, they get run out of the church. And so it's really hard for me to want to just join arm in arm with Fiona and celebrate Heavenly Mother and the worship of the feminine divine when our church has not yet atoned. And I'll use that word because we talk about it later in the book, the church hasn't yet atoned for literally excommunicating and running out women from the church who dared talk about worshiping Heavenly Mother as women, by the way, in sacred, respectful ways. And so, like, it's hard for me to go there until we've resolved that. You know, have we apologized to Gayle Houston, to Cecilia Kontcharfar, to Margaret Toscano? I guess we let Maxine Hanks back in the church. That's a step. But it's just hard for me to go there as long as the church has not really made that right. Another one is. Can I respond to that, please, Brit? Yeah, please.

Fiona Givens, Patriarchy, and Women in the Church

Brittany Hartley [01:02:20] I think, you know, when. So Fiona's come up and talked to my group before, and, you know, as I'm trying to understand her worldview, I think an important thing to understand is that they very much start in a place where the. The worldview, the correct worldview, the way that God most manifests themselves in the world, is through Christianity. And so if you start there, like we're starting with Christianity. And especially for Fiona, who was raised Catholic and has kind of like a Catholic faith crisis and finds Mormonism, there is something that we have to concede about Joseph, which is that regardless of how he did it, he did solve some of the problems. Problems of Christianity that Christianity will not get around to solve for another hundred years and that they're doing now. And so you have to kind of see that if you start in a place of Christianity where you see this as the correct worldview and not in an exclusive way, in a way that Jenna talks about, where, you know, if you want to call it the Buddha nature instead of the body of Christ, you know, we can go there, but that's still Christianity. If you start there, you can see why Joseph, as someone who didn't know about, you know, maybe Augustine or things like that, he was. His brain was working to solve the problems of Christianity, and he was working on ways to fix it. And, and there's something in there that's very enticing that before Christianity was fixing, fixing some of these problems, Joseph was trying to fix them. He was going through the Bible and saying, hey, I don't really like it that the, that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. That just doesn't make sense to me. I'm going to say that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. That's something that Joseph's doing before Christianity starts to deal with some of these issues in modern times. And so you have to concede that kind of, to Joseph and why that would be special. And, and as far as the, the divine parentage and how we still have an atone for it, I think what they would say, I think what Fiona would say is that it's always been that way, right? We've always been trying to push down the divine feminine, always trying to push down feminine aspects of God when it comes in contact with power. That's something that always happens. And so for them, I just feel like, like that wouldn't be an issue because. Because power always does that to the divine feminine. It's done that throughout Christian history. So that would just be a part of, just a part of the process. And so I can just. Once you start with Christianity, you can see how they're putting this together. And, you know, my personal pushback comes from, well, then, like what Janice said, well, then, why. Why is that the best worldview? You know, why does it have to be all couched in. In. In Christianity? And they have their personal reasons for answering it that way, where I would kind of go into a more humanist space with some of those questions.

John Dehlin [01:05:28] Well, thank you for that, Brit. And, and I just want to do a shout out to Amy McPheelibus. There's a new podcast on, on the planet called Breaking Down Patriarchy, and it's by someone who comes out of the Mormon tradition, a woman who has a master's or getting a master's at Stanford University. And she's going text by text, going through kind of the great texts around patriarchy. And often it's discussed in a religious context. And the truth is, we have been beating down the feminine divine since before language was actually created. And it's a really interesting history, and it's a really important history. So do check out my interview with Amy on Mormon stories podcast. Amy McPhee, all the best. And check out Breaking Down Patriarchy as well. Did you want to jump in and Say something in response to Brit, Jenna.

Jana Spangler [01:06:27] I do. I mean, I just want to validate something that Britt is saying. In my own experience at the Living School where I had Richard Rohr, who's, who's giving a history lesson of Christian thought from the beginning to the end, and all of the major people along the way, the Augustans, the origins, all the people that are mentioned in the book, and, and Luther and the Reformation and everything. And when he gets down to 19th century American Protestantism and all the problems with it, I know I'm in the, I'm in the height of a lot of, like, real deconstruction at the time when I'm there. And I am. I kept noting things like, holy crap, Joseph Smith fixed that. And I, and I started putting him in the margins of my notes. And I was like, emotionally, I was ticked. I was ticked because I wanted to hate Joseph Smith. I wanted to think that he was a complete Charlton, and I wanted to think all of these things. And seeing that what Britt is talking about is a thing like that, there was something really beautiful about a lot of the story that was restored. And so I also want to say that when it comes to the restored church, I do have a problem with that. I want to validate that, John, because I, I have problems with that as well. But there is also something really ambitious about saying, I'm going to restore what is true. And like Brittany was saying, you know, Joseph Smith is noting things that his soul is a no to. Like, that just does not make any sense in what I'm hearing about Christianity. I don't, I don't like that. What, what is a better inspiration? And he's, he's finding those things. I mean, that sounds a lot like faith crisis right now. I mean, there are a lot of people in our faith looking at that, going, well, I don't know what the truth is, but I, I'm a no to that. I'm a no to the way that's showing up in our church. So there's something really audacious and actually really beautiful about saying, well, I, we can do better. I can do better. Let's restore some stuff. And meanwhile, let's, let's invite all the truth everywhere. I'm not thinking it's all going to come through me. That's, that's like a modern construct that we have this, this cultural story we told ourselves, that all of it comes through the prophet. No, that's not where Joseph was. He was like, let's find the truth. Let's Scoop it up wherever you find it. From any other faith. From any other. I mean, that's, that's the perennial tradition. Let's see what everyone is doing well, and let's, let's gather it. And so in that way, I kind of like that you can be, let's be the repository for that. Let's be the restored church. Let's continue to collect. And in that sense, I actually really like it. I like restoration. We always need restoration because humans are always coming along, bringing their egos to things, bringing their rules to things, and screwing up a beautiful idea.

Joseph Smith's Theological Innovations

John Dehlin [01:09:33] So we have a cool question from a listener that I think fits well. Amanda asks, can Jenna or Britt give some more examples of some of the problems in Christianity that Joseph Smith fixed? Thanks, Amanda, for typing that question.

Jana Spangler [01:09:49] So I've got one. I'll just give one that really hit me over the head. It's that and it's spoken to in the book. So this also applies to the book is that there was this real feeling in the Reformation that we are a pile of manure as, as humanity. Luther said this. We are a pile of manure, but Christ can save us. You know, there was this Calvinist thing where we're not worthy, we're awful, we can, we're depraved, we're terrible, and we're all human and Christ is all divine and we can never meet. One of the things that I just am blown over that Joseph Smith brought is the nature of both humans and Christ to something that is the same. That Jesus is all human and all divine. And guess what? So are we. So are we. We are of the same nature. It is no longer a groveling kind of relationship. It is one where we have access to the divine. We can actually relate to Jesus. We can relate to divinity. And, you know, there are some problems with the way we've done that too. But the, that concept is really inspiring to me. I love it. I love that about Mormonism, Britt.

John Dehlin [01:11:11] Thank you, Jana. Britt, do you want to add.

Brittany Hartley [01:11:12] And then Anthony, what Jana said was the biggest one in the sense that the separation between God and man had become so far apart by the time of Joseph's time that by putting it back together and saying that we are of the same metaphysical substance as God is quite empowering. Right? You're not just dust and, you know, dirt compared to God. That we are created from the same meta. We are the same on the same metaphysical trajectory as God. Another one is creation. A lot of Christians today have a problem with Creation ex nilio, especially in regard to modern science and what, how we understand energy and not being created and destroyed, but being organized and what we have a ton of scripture on that. We have a lot of co creative organizing kind of language that Christianity wish that they had. You know, I know progressive Christians who are have holy envy for our scriptures that talk about God's co creative nature and organizing rather than creating. Because whenever God is creating out of nothing, it makes the problem of evil harder. And so the, the brilliance of Joseph is, is that by placing God as a part of the universe instead of the creator of the universe, you're actually solving the problem of evil. Because God is going to help you play the game of life, but was not the creator of the rules of that game. You know, there's the God is a part of the universe, another one is time. Joseph places God in time, whereas traditional Christianity will place God outside of time. And so yeah, just by placing God a little bit closer where he, he is, there's a feminine aspect of God, he's weeping. We have a falling forward in our Adam and Eve story where it's about progression. Instead of that we fell away from God and got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. This is a progression story. And that God is with us co creating in each moment the most beautiful outcome in each moment with us with conscious creatures. That would be kind of the brilliance of Joseph and something that Christianity is doing. But they don't have all of the scriptures that we have to do it with. And that would be the brilliance of Joseph solving some of those problems that Christian theology theologians are having to solve in other ways.

Jana Spangler [01:13:44] Yeah, and I'll just add also that, that salvation is a relational kind of prospect. That it's not just an individual salvation project that we're here to do, that it's actually relational. We're, we're in this together. We're in this with our ancestors, we're in this with the people we love. We're in this with, with everybody. And we all need to go together.

John Dehlin [01:14:06] So the ceilings, the, the you know, ceilings as couples, ceilings of family to family above and below that we're all this great family all getting back to heaven together. And that's where so the, the DNC132 and a lot of the temple stuff, even the dynastic stuff kind of comes from that, right?

Jana Spangler [01:14:27] It is. And the literal way we've done it is hugely problematic. Hugely problematic. So I also want to. Want to, to say that this is, but the idea of us, this is not just about me. This is not just about me being good enough to get there. This is that there is a deeply relational aspect and, and we want to gather a Zion people in the body of Christ together. And we actually want. We've been really crappy at this in, in practice, but I love the impulse.

John Dehlin [01:15:00] Anthony, do you want to add any innovations? Joseph Smith innovations?

Anthony Miller [01:15:04] Yeah. And like Jana mentioned, or it was Britt mentioned that, or both of them did that the balance of Christianity is resolving those things now, many of them, but like Brett said, they don't have our scripture to help participate in that. But what Joseph did was about 100 years earlier than the balance of Christianity on some of these things. I would say one thing that was pretty significant. Joseph's grandfather was a very influential person in the universalist movement. And what Joseph really struggled with was how to reconcile the Protestant atonement theologies of his day and universalism. And when his brother Alvin died, he struggled with that too. It's apparent. So what you have in the Doctrine Covenants is instead of Alvin going to hell, Alvin goes to the terrestrial kingdom or telestral, one of the two. And then later on Joseph has a vision and Alvin's in the celestial kingdom. So like in Joseph's revelatory theology, in the Doctrine Covenants, Alvin doesn't go to hell, he goes to a kingdom and then he traverses kingdoms and ends up in the celestial kingdom. And Joseph sees this progression in between kingdoms that the Gibbons talk about that a lot of conservatives don't like. But, but like I was talking about earlier that with Rob Bell and some of these other Marcus Borg and some of these other progressive Christians that have enmeshed in a sense of universalism into Christian thought and done put in the work to understand what the words in the Greek tech New Testament texts actually meant. And they didn't mean what traditional Christianity attributes to hell or even Mormons attribute to what hell is. Those are false constructs or at least they're proof texted. Joseph basically gave us some measure of universalism and progression between kingdoms and his model that it took a long time for the rest of Christianity to deal with.

John Dehlin [01:17:40] One of our listeners makes an interesting point that I think you referenced earlier. Anthony Travis writes, joseph Smith plagiarized so many things, it's hard to know if he had original thoughts. And for those who don't know what Travis might be talking about, there are, you know, theologians like Swedenborg who talked about, you know, three levels of heaven decades before Joseph did. You guys can probably come up with other, other elements of doctrine. You know, I think anybody who's really studied Joseph Smith sort of comes to the conclusion that he was aware of Adam Clark's commentary. He was aware of the mound builder myths, he was aware of experimentations in economy, in health, in marriage. And he's much more of like the sponge of bringing together all the 19th century elements that he's exposed to along with the Old Testament, along with the New Testament than we could ever say he really comes up with anything novel. In fact, I think you could argue that almost every doctrine or innovation that Joseph comes up with, he gets from somebody else. And you can actually probably find the source now that's responded and you touched on this, Anthony. That's led Terrell Givens to make what I say is kind of an apologetic explanation, which is that Joseph is kind of an inspired syncretist, that yes, he's getting everything from these, these sources that are accessible to him, but his inspiration is in knowing what to include and what not, what to pull from where and how to pull it together. That's kind of, you know, how, how a Terrell Givens might explain what Travis calls plagiarism and what many of other called plagiarism as well. And you guys,

Brittany Hartley [01:19:32] they actually mention Adam Clark in the book as, as one of the biblical commentary people that Joseph relied on. And so it's not, you know, it's not a secret in this book, but I still think that we can call that Jesus. You know, if I write a paper, if I write a paper in some theological class and, and I'm putting together a new idea. Idea, does it come out of nothing? Like, no, like I'm putting together books that I'm reading. And that's very human process, but it could still be. It could still be. We can still call that genius. He's still putting together the things around in his environment and, and putting it together in a system that's solving the problems of Christianity. I mean, we don't have to make him stupid in order to not believe in Mormon. You know, we can still call that genius.

John Dehlin [01:20:21] Totally. That's fair. There's a really good Internet video called Everything is Remix. And it basically just shows that. Pick any music, pick the Beatles, pick any movie like Star Wars. You can almost take any, any song by any artist you like or any movie or any favorite scene from any movie. And it's almost guaranteed you'll be able to find scenes almost identical to the scene in that movie that it's drawn from. George Lucas, Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Myth. You know, other movies that predated it. The Beatles were influenced by, you know, the soul music or R and B or Elvis or whatever came before it. Check out Everything is Remixed. There's a really good argument to say that there's really no new idea and that any creative work is by definition going to be a melding of past ideas, maybe in a different creative way. I think that's a good statement to make. Brit, Jana, do you want to add to that?

Jana Spangler [01:21:27] Yeah, I mean, I would just say, can we just acknowledge the expectation that all of us came up with that Joseph Smith came at this from just God pouring into his brain if he did not look at anything else? I mean, there's this great expectation that we have that that's what makes Mormonism miraculous, is that Joseph Smith came up with this from nothing. And so I just want to note that that's a really common feeling among people who start to question things. It's a really common feeling among the orthodox. So this is the way it happened. And I think that's just. That's because that is the way that's. The story has been so simplified for us that that is what enters our consciousness. And so we're blown away when we think that we find all these other influences that were around Joseph where, like Brittany said, who comes up with anything

John Dehlin [01:22:25] new, you know, And I really want to get to that. It's kind of like, whose fault is it that we are where we are? Did you have a quick comment, Anthony, before I move to a different topic?

Anthony Miller [01:22:36] Yeah, I would just. I would just say, as someone who's not a believer and chose to resign my membership, I can acknowledge that Joseph Smith solved a lot of problems, but created a whole lot of other problems. And we're dealing with a lot of mess today and a lot of really significant problems that were born out of the things that he did. So in any event, I just want to say it's messy.

John Dehlin [01:23:03] Okay, Beautiful. Really quickly, I really want to get to what I think is potentially the most useful part of this book, which is to kind of, like, take. It's an attempt to take away guilt and shame and anxiety and depression and feelings of unworthiness. Like, that's what I see as maybe the most important contribution of this book. Before we jump to that, I want to talk about chapter two really quickly, and I want to introduce it by. By saying I got a little bit tripped up by their emphasis on the nature of God and anthropomorphic God, partly because, again, some would say John Dehlin is stuck in 1993, or he's stuck in the late 80s, early 90s. Because I can remember a time where Gordon B. Hinckley was interviewed, I think it was for Time magazine. And he was asked about the King Follet discourse. And he was asked about this teaching that God was, you know, once a man and that man can become a God. And I think this is in response to the God Makers movie and Ed Decker, which was basically Protestant Christianity, making fun of Mormons for believing that. That humans could become gods or that God was once a man. And in that Time magazine article where Gordon M.E. hinkley was asked about that, his response was, quote, I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I haven't heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don't know. I don't know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it, but I don't know a lot about it and I don't think others know a lot about it. That came as like a huge, just earthquake to me because growing up In Bruce R. McConkey, Joseph Fielding Smith style, correlated CES seminary, Mormonism, we knew that God was once a man and that, that. That we were to become gods. And that was the whole point of everything. So when Gordon B. Hinckley is like publicly going, I don't know about that exactly, Some people talk. I don't think we emphasize it. Like, that was a huge problem for me. So to now have Terrell and Fiona, like, going, that's the best thing about Mormonism, that God was once a human and that we could become gods. It just, it's hard for me to go with them there because I'm still again, stuck in the late 80s or early 90s with Gordon B. Hinckley sort of like, waffling on that point, but I'm just going to throw that out. But then Terrell and Fiona go into that and say that God and Mother and Father God are human, or gods that were once human or they're human, like, and they weep and they feel for us and they love us and they're our parents and we can become like them. And they're saying, that's just one of the most amazing things. Anything you guys want to talk about that before we jump into kind of what I think is the core part around repentance and guilt and shame and sin and all that sort of thing. And this is just an introduction to either, you know, Chapter. Chapter two or chapter three, because I don't think we're going to be able to cover every chapter in depth in today's discussion. So who wants to jump in and respond to what I said or, or any of those chapters?

The Nature of God and Eternal Progression

Jana Spangler [01:26:44] So I'll just mention that if it was in there, I missed it. But I do not think that they referred to we can become gods. What they did emphasize is eternal progression. And I think that.

John Dehlin [01:26:55] What's the difference? What's the difference, Jenna?

Jana Spangler [01:26:58] I mean, who knows if we ever. I know people who think we will never. Mormons who think we will never actually be in the same place as God, we will always be behind God. We may or may not be creating worlds. I mean, people. I think the Hinckley thing actually kind of did throw this into the, the mind of a lot of, of people at the time that, oh, maybe we're going too far. I, I remember a stream of thought during those times. I don't know if it was the exact years where we're like, oh, we're going too far with some of this. And, and I don't know if they were afraid we were. People were getting so into some of these older things in journal discourses that we were going to have to. Blood atonement or who knows, you know, who knows what's behind all of this? It's all conjecture, but, but just the point that I, I don't think they go that far to get really in detail here about it. But they do say that we've got heavenly parents. They do say that we've got the anthropomorphic mother and father and that that's beautiful for all the reasons that they say. The only thing that.

John Dehlin [01:27:59] But, Jenna, isn't that. Is that kind of implied that if there are parents, we grow up to be like them? I mean, isn't that.

Jana Spangler [01:28:06] I think so. I'm just saying they didn't say it in the book. They just didn't go there with it.

John Dehlin [01:28:10] Okay.

Jana Spangler [01:28:11] And, and, and that's probably by design. I don't know. I, I don't know. I don't want to get into anybody else's thought process. But, but I think that some of those things and how it actually works, the church is trying to step back from. And, But I also validate that that is absolutely where our seminary teachers went. And I will also say that today, now, having kids in seminary, seminary teachers go to a lot of things that aren't necessarily mainstream. I've had conversations with some of them saying, I'd appreciate you Sticking to actually what the doctrine is, if you're gonna, you know, do this. But anyway, the other. The. The one thing that I will mention that I think was a big thing for me, if we're telling the good story, if. If that's the point of this book, they bring up all of the creeds and all of the ways that they've fallen short and, you know, the things that we can agree with as LDS people, what we don't. To kind of set up what parts of the restoration have been brought back that are amazing. One of the big things for me was in the Apostles Creed, and people can look up what that is. But if you're. If you're not lds and if you're out there in the Catholic and Methodist worlds, you know what the Apostles Creed is. But it's just kind of like, this is what it means to be a Christian. This is what we believe. And it's kind of a list. And. And at one point in the list, it's saying that we. We believe that Christ. We affirm that he was born of a virgin and that he was crucified and died.

Anthony Miller [01:29:50] And.

Jana Spangler [01:29:51] And this is known among some theologians as the great comma, because we go straight from Christ's birth to his death. And it's one of the missed opportunities that I would like to see Terrell and Fiona and others talk about is that we're so wrapped up as Christians in. In all of the miracles and proving divinity and, you know, a resurrection and what this means, atonement, sin, all of this kind of stuff, that we forget Jesus's life, which is actually where we get to see the example of what the nature of God is. And. And that's the example of what we're going to be doing in our lives. We get so wrapped up in the hereafter. We get so wrapped up in everything else that I think we miss such a huge, huge part of Christianity and what it means to be Christian. We just skip right over it.

John Dehlin [01:30:50] All right, thanks, Jenna. Anthony, you want to go next? And then Brit, I wonder.

Anthony Miller [01:30:58] I wonder if I'm going to take what Brit wanted to do.

John Dehlin [01:31:02] You want to let Brit go first?

Anthony Miller [01:31:03] Yeah. Why don't you go first?

John Dehlin [01:31:04] Okay, Brit.

Critiques of Progressive Mormon Theology

Brittany Hartley [01:31:05] All right. So I just wanted to talk about. I'll just. I'll just start with this quote. So it says, we are trying to model and inspire fresh ways of thinking through the religious vocabulary, vocabulary that pervades our wounded world and particularly our church that is still emerging from the wilderness. Language bears within itself the power to Hurt or heal, to obfuscate or to clarify, to instill with despair or to expand with hope. And so that is true, like language has that power. And working with language can open different things for you. My doctorate professor right now is teaching a class on the Apostles Creed, and I think he has 800 people signed up for this class where, you know, they're going through the Apostles Creed and they're. They're nuancing it, they're working with it. They're. They're. They're putting this language into a new light kind of thing. And so the thing that I just keep coming back to is that because I work in the space of progressive, progressive Christianity, there are very few progressive Christians who weren't at one time orthodox Christians. There are even fewer nuanced liberal Mormons who were not before orthodox Mormons. And so my fear for what Fiona and Terrell are trying to do is that even though it is good work to do in the world, even though it's. It is so positive to think about these words in new ways that are much healthier for our church culture, my concern is that it's such a small group of, you know, these kinds of people in Mormonism, and that will stay in Mormonism. And the children are leaving Mormonism regardless. They're not going to go through this, this historical treatise that, that the Givens are setting forth in order to get to this beautiful place that I just wonder the futility and the, the longevity of these kinds of works, because nobody's going to convert from traditional Islam to nuanced Mormonism. It just doesn't happen. Progressive camps. And there's a Terrell and Fiona Givens in every religion that is trying to rework the language into something positive. And so if there's one in every religion, there's camps, and they're refugee camps. Right. Progressive Mormonism is a refugee camp from the pains that you've experienced, you know, in orthodox Mormonism. And so it's good. We need those refugee camps. But as membership in Mormonism decreases, as people in general are leaving churches, I just wonder if that's truly the best space to put all this spiritual work, because there's so many that are just not going to get it because it's just so complicated and messy to get there. And that's my concern about kind of the longevity of these works.

John Dehlin [01:34:11] Yeah, I had that same exact thought. I thought, who's going to convert to this type of Mormonism? Nobody. Orthodox Mormons don't want this. They're taught to listen to the prophets. It's the prophets, seers and revelators. That's the whole reason we have prophets, seers and revelators. And I should just say they don't call themselves theologians, but they tell us what the theology is. And if you're going to talk about God and heaven and the afterlife, you quote a general authority. That's how we do theology. The only people that this is going to be useful for, you know, are people struggling out of orthodox Mormonism and contemplating leaving. And so then they're competing with not only the brethren and all the conservative Mormons that are around them, saying, what are you trying to say about God and Jesus? That's not what Bruce Armaconka ever said. But they're also competing with Richard Rohr, Rob Bell, I mean, freaking Jerry Osteen, Is that his name? What's the guy in Houston, Joel Osteen? Like, like who. Who is this book for and who's it going to reach? I agree it's a very small, very small group. But, but every, every sheep matters. Right? If you're going to go after the, leave the 99 to go after the 1. Maybe that's what they're doing here, is leaving the 99 to go after the 1.

Jana Spangler [01:35:29] But isn't it also though why they're talking about this is the best story and why we have it? I mean, I think that's why they are anchoring in these very doctrinal, orthodox things that are only found in our scriptures. I think there still is a story there. And I don't think you have to have a wrathful God to still bring people into the religion.

John Dehlin [01:35:52] Right. Okay. Anthony, did Brit. Did Brit steal your thunder or do you want to add anything or.

Anthony Miller [01:36:00] Yeah, so I wanted to add something. I don't want to read too much, but you know, for some people that are watching this, when I said that I believe that traditional atonement theology is probably the very most harmful thing in Mormonism. In this chapter, the givens give some explanations as to why. And I just wanted to draw out a couple of the things beginning on page 52, they. They quote that in the 19th century that the link between religious trauma and clinical mental illness was becoming well established. Researchers found religious anxiety be to be the leading cause of insanity. This is in the 19th century. In the 19th century, the most popular preachers relied on terror, guilt and shame. They. They would guilt husband and wives to testify against each other and children, you know, with these ideas of, of worse than sad heaven, but basically sad heaven that children would be swept away from hell and they wouldn't be in heaven with you. There were forms of militant Protestantism in the U.S. i don't know, maybe like does not kind of things that were very extremely orthodox and fear based. And then they say, which is a little bit surprising to me, they say we may not be taking our own lives out of fear of damnation today or shriek or shrieking in the church aisles, but various forms of damage across the spiritual and emotional spectrum raise the question of what role for good or ill, religious language and paradigms exert. And they also talk about some of the things that happened today. They, they say in a 2017 survey, 48, 000 college student of, of 48, 000 college students, approximately 64 said they felt very lonely. Only 19% said that they never felt lonely. 62%, 69% said they were very sad, 62% they had overwhelming anxiety and 53% said that they were very hopeless. Nearly 12% had seriously considered suicide. So they're, they're tying in significant trauma that people experience in the 19th century and, and that our youth today are experiencing. And, and they're tying the correlation because it's demonstrable that these ideas of traditional atonement theology and a vengeful God and justice and you're never good enough and you're naturally fallen and naturally separated from God. And it's a problem. It is such a huge problem. And, and that's why I'm grateful that they put this together. And that's why I would say that traditional atonement theology is probably the very most harmful thing in, in the current cultural and doctrinal theology in the church today.

John Dehlin [01:39:26] That was definitely my favorite part of the book. And to, to make it sound like, well, you know, maybe there aren't suicides, but you know, there are suicides. Like there are people, there are Mormons dying by suicide from masturbation, guilt from, you know, cheating on their spouse. There are lgbt, trans youth, gender non binary youth within Mormonism that are dying by suicide, not to mention just visits to the ER room, massive anxiety, scrupulosity, significant depression. We have an epidemic of, I would say, guilt and shame within Mormonism. And I think that's a very real thing. And so that was one of my favorite parts of the book when Terrell and Fiona highlight this existence of religious trauma and fear and mental illness and addiction and suicide. And this sort of like really strikes at the heart for me of maybe two or three of the really big challenges for me with this book is because I'll just, I'll, I'm going to just summarize some of those final chapters. And we've already kind of alluded to it, but what, what I perceive they're trying to do in this book is they're basically trying to say, look, you all think you went to seminary and institute. You all think you understand what, you know, the CES version of Mormonism, which is that basically we're all fallen, that we all sin, that, you know, if we sin because we sin, we should feel bad because we sin, we're not going to be able to make it back to heaven. And so God needed some way to satisfy the demands of justice. And God needed somewhere to put all the punishment for all the sin that we've all committed. And so he plucked his perfect righteous son out and he's going to channel all the pain of all the sins everyone's ever committed into Jesus. Jesus is going to have to suffer for all the sins to satisfy the demands of justice. You should feel really bad about all the pain that you caused Jesus to suffer. And, and now what you need to do is feel guilty for every time you masturbate or every time you touch a girl or a boy where you shouldn't, for every bad thought that you have. You should feel bad because committing sexual sin is next to murder. And even thinking a nasty thought is almost like you did it. And God and Jesus are up there taking score. And if you don't do the right things and obey the commandments in just the right way and satisfy the commandments, you're going to go to the bad place, and that's a problem. And, and so let's do a million worthiness interviews. Let's, let's interview you every six months. And if you want to go to the temple and if you're worthy, some priesthood leader is going to decide if you're worthy or not. And if he decides you're not, you're not going to take the sacrament and you're not going to get a temple recommended. You're not going to be able to get married in the temple and you're going to feel all this shame and guilt. Your parents are going to know and your family members are going to know and your bishop's going to know and your home teachers and everyone's going to know and you're going to get brought home early from your mission and you're going to be a bad person. And so instead you need to obey and you need to follow the commandments and Pay your tithing and do everything the church says and obey your leaders with exactness and earn, earn and prove your worth so that if you wear your knuckles to the bone so that you can do everything that your church leaders have taught you, just maybe when you die, you'll be worthy enough to enter in to the highest degree of heaven, to be with your family, to be with Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, and maybe become a God. But it's going to be close that if you don't work really hard, there's a good chance you won't make it. So be scared, be very, very scared and work super hard and maybe you'll, you'll make it to the top. I'm kind of summarizing that kind of scary, retributive, nasty, fearful, vengeful God kind of justice is in the balance kind of Mormonism. And I'm just going to basically say that, you know, Terrell and Fiona Givens are saying that's not, that's not healthy, that's not constructive. And, and before we jump to what they say is a better view, for me, the huge screaming problem is that they seem to want to tie that version of Christianity to like Catholics and Protestants and John Calvin. But the question that I want to ask our panel, and I appreciate you allowing me to have this rant, where in the freak did we as Mormons get this idea? It's not from Calvin, it's not from Protestant reformers, it's not from the Catholic Church. Panelists, where did we all get this idea about a mean, nasty God? And where does all this guilt and shame come from? And if you don't answer, I will. So who wants to, who wants to answer that question to avoid the wrath of John? Who wants to. Who wants to.

Origins of a Vengeful God and Third Nephi Nine

Anthony Miller [01:45:07] 3rd 3rd Nephi 9 is for the love of God, someone talk 3rd Nephi chapter 9.

John Dehlin [01:45:13] All right, what do you mean? What do you mean, Anthony?

Anthony Miller [01:45:14] Third Nephi Chapter nine Is, is the Jesus, is Jesus almost in a glee, seemingly almost in a gleeful way, talking about all these cities that would have had men, women, children, older people that the Jesus of the, of the Book of Mormon burned, buried and drowned? That, that it's the retributive. It's the retributive penal Jesus of Mormonism. That's where we got it. It's the Jesus of that if you don't, of the dnc, that if you don't do all these things, you're going to suffer even as I suffered. I mean, we got it from restoration scripture, right?

John Dehlin [01:46:07] So it Starts there, but it doesn't end there.

Brittany Hartley [01:46:09] But disagree. I'm going to disagree with that. Now. There is. So, you know, I did a chapter on my Book of Atonement theory in Mormonism and you know, so there, when you go through the Book of Mormon and through all of it, there's actually quite a few atonement theories and one of them is, you know, kind of penal substitution. But if you, if you really center with, with Joseph and his theology, and you especially use even Orson and Parley Pratt who are trying to systematize some of what Joseph's doing, there is no really room for that in Mormonism in the, in, in the puzzle, in, in the big picture picture. Because if you don't have a fall, if you have a falling forward, you don't need an atonement to save you from Satan. You just don't need it. You don't need it in that story. It doesn't fit there. So even though there are different atonement theories and, you know, there's been studies done and I mentioned, I mentioned it in my book where you can go through general conference and see what kind of atonement theories are out there. And we, we are just kind of all over the place. And one of the reasons is because Joseph was talking about so many other things and atonement has already been something kind of in Christianity that he just didn't talk about it all the time. I mean, we didn't talk about the atonement and in General conference for like a hundred years before we really kind of started to talk about it. But, but my pushback to Anthony is that even though it's there because we're just kind of all over the place and talking about the atonement, and we do take in a lot of the language from Christianity, I, I still will claim that the original kind of overarching story, where it's a falling forward by definition, has to place the atonement in a better place. And that if you hold to that, you still have Mormonism, I think, being healthier in its original kind of thoughts about atonement than where traditional Christianity was. And so I don't go to a place where I say, oh, we just get this from Mormonism. I would say that we tinkered with it. We, we solved some of the problems, but it wasn't fully developed in Joseph's life because he didn't talk about it a lot. But we do have some action because we do the fall so differently. It does give us access to a better Atonement, which is frustrating because we do get in, get some negative messages from traditional Christianity that just seeps into the culture that really isn't Mormon doctrine. And a God that controls everything, that, that comes more from Christianity than early Mormon doctrine. The idea that we're fallen, we have to be saved in this kind of atonement justice thing, I would say that's more from Christianity than early Mormon doctrine. And so I would just push back on that a little bit.

John Dehlin [01:49:17] But Brit.

Anthony Miller [01:49:18] But I would say he was, he didn't, he wasn't anchored by theology. So I'd absolutely agree that it was all over the place. But, you know, the seminary, the seminary mastery scriptures that you have to memorize include some of these things. You know, the natural man is an enemy to God and, you know, some of these. So, so, but I'd agree with you. I'd agree with you.

Brittany Hartley [01:49:44] You have more room, you have other avenues to go.

Anthony Miller [01:49:47] There are. Yeah.

Brittany Hartley [01:49:48] Whereas in traditional Christianity, if you're in a traditional Christian church, and this is how you've always understood atonement, these are the scriptures we actually have. Have other avenues. So, yes, we do have an avenue of this kind of scary kind of God. And, and this atonement that's really penal substitution, that just comes from this idea that if you sin, you're owned by Satan. But, but I would just say that there's things that Joseph revealed or there's things that Joseph, whatever wrote that, that just doesn't make room for that. There's other avenues of thought that you can go down with Mormonism.

Anthony Miller [01:50:28] Well, even today, like, you can, you can listen to a President Nelson talk about God's love being conditional, and then you can listen to another talk by Elder Uchtdorf that is the opposite. So if, if an individual is operating within their confirmation bias of that, that's their belief structure, then they don't even hear the Elder Uchtdorf alternative to the President Nelson, God's love is conditional.

Brittany Hartley [01:50:55] And sure, I would just say though, that if you're just talking about the comparison between how Mormons do atonement and how traditional fundamental Christianity does atonement, there are some avenues unique to Mormonism, especially with how we do the fall, that are helpful for that conversation, that are helpful avenues for us to get there that some of Christianity doesn't have. If, if you really believe in a fall, you have to do atonement different than we do it. You know what I mean? If you, if you condemn Eve, it's really, really hard to get to some beautiful places that we get to with Eve, because even though it's not always taught, there are some avenues that really magnify Eve in a beautiful way that we can go down that they just don't have. And so you have to. You have to at least acknowledge that we have some other avenues that. That are healthier that Christianity doesn't have.

Jana Spangler [01:51:55] Yeah. Can I say something that kind of brings both of these together? Because I think you're both right. Like, can we just acknowledge Mormonism is a mess. Like, from start to finish, it is such a freaking mess. It's such a ball of beauty and craziness and unhealth. And some of that is just this. I don't know, the Joseph Smith that I kind of picture is this huge ball of contradictions all over the place. And yet we were raised with this. It's so easy. God came to Joseph. And Joseph obviously, in that moment knew the nature of God because he saw two personages and he. We. We tell such a simple story about what is this mystical experience, assuming it happened, but this mystical experience with the divine that I don't know any other, you know, story of anyone who's had a spiritual experience that can talk about it in those ways. Like, we have made it so simplistic. And Joseph Smith was a mess. He was all over the place, I think the Book of Mormon, I don't personally believe in a translation that went from, you know, plates to an exact, you know, list of what. What was on the plates. So I see so much Joseph in 19th century in the Book of Mormon, and it reflects, frankly, his earlier theology. And there are some ways he started to go back and change things. I mean, they mention it in the book dnc. They mention a particular part of the Doctrine and Covenants. So they're like this developed over the two years, and this is how what was changed. Like, none of us were taught this. None of us were taught this in seminary. The whole thing is a mess. And then we have a lay clergy, lay theology. No one is. Is really looking at these things for consistencies. And so every person, every leader that comes along is looking through a glass darkly. They're looking through their own view of things, their own way of making sense of things. And so it's. It's just. It's an absolute mess. And you can see how the. The Calvinist stuff came through and stuck with people who were being converted into Mormonism very early on. And if you are convinced of that and you don't understand what the crap Joseph Smith is saying, because he's like, woo, woo out there, you know. Then Joseph said several times that people were not getting what he was trying to tell them. And if he tried to tell him everything, he knew that, you know, everyone would, would run away from him. So I don't know. I think that there's a lot of what Britt is saying in it. It does, There is a kinder theology, there is a way through to, in, in the origins of Mormonism that takes us to a better place. And he and all the rest of the people have also made a right mess of all of it, which is why we need continued restoration, which is something they also talk about in the book. We have to continue to restore it because we're a mess and that's why they have to bring it to it. So I do think these Calvinist notions really resonate. We, we in our American culture, I don't think we recognize how freaking American we are. Our American culture loves this Calvinist stuff. So it's everywhere. It's all throughout Christianity, which is why we have the Rob Ellison, Richard Royce trying to make something better of it.

Religious Narratives and the Messy History of Mormonism

Brittany Hartley [01:55:34] Can I say one more thing before you go on a rant, John? So my only pushback to this idea that we were, of all the avenues we could have gone down, we were given some of these more damaging narratives, you know, from, from prophets and leaders is my pushback to always, that is that power always plays on something in human nature. Right. And so we can't always just blame power and blame kind of seminary and, and the leadership and what the prophets and apostles are talking about because it resonates with people. That's why it became popular. Right. And so there's something about the mess that is scary for humans because we just don't like making, we're really bad at decisions. Like we, we just want to limit it to as few decisions, as safe a worldview as possible. And so when we say something like, you know, we had all these beautiful maybe things early on, but it became this awful thing. Well, I, I just think we as the congregation have to claim some responsibility for that. We weren't ready or, you know, human developed enough to sit in the messiness that was early Mormonism. And we wanted, we asked for simple stories that we could just, this is what happened and this is what I got to do to get to heaven. And, and it's going to play on my tribalism where I'm going to get to heaven and you're not and I'm special. Right? This idea of like, you know, we're the Covenant people, so we're special. These are all elements of human nature that, that. That it's playing on and that we have to take responsibility. That even though the leadership has a huge part in the damage done, I think we also asked for it in the way that. That we accepted it, in the way that we participate. We participated with that because we wanted a simpler story, because it was easier, because that's how humans are. And I just always want to balance power with the congregation as the one holding the power. If we all said no to something, the power structure would have no authority there. And so I just think that's important to mention when you're talking about narratives and why it went to a simple narrative, why it went to correlation. I think part of it was because it was just so messy that we weren't ready to sit with that and handle that.

Jana Spangler [01:58:20] I think that's largely true, and I think it's a yes and yes. And so many of us, I'll speak for myself, we were brought up without even knowing that there was anything bigger or larger. Like, I just was only given the simple story. And so I don't know. Yes, I agree there's something in human nature that likes that, and I think that is a huge influence and why it evolved that way. And we did all swallow it and not all of us. Once it gets down a few generations, we don't necessarily have a choice or know that there's a difference.

John Dehlin [01:58:56] I mean, I love this dialogue and, and I love the role each of you are playing in the conversation. I. And I think it's good to have compassion. And Brett, I agree with you. I believe that religion more reflects the. I think people create religion more than religion is kind of foisted upon us. I believe that we create prophets, that we. My, my fundamental notion of how religion gets started is that we suffer with who am I? Why am I here? How should I behave? How do I find meaning? How do I find community? And an astute person out there realizes that, whoa, these people are all having a need and they're wanting something. Maybe I can help fill that need for them. And so I really do agree with you, Britt, that on a very core, fundamental level, we, you know, you know, the people of Oz weren't fooled by the wizard. The people of Oz created the wizard. And like, like, like the wizard literally says in wicked, you know, they said wonderful. You know, they called me wonderful. And so I said wonderful, if you insist. In other words, the people wanted a leader. They wanted to Be told what to do. And so the leaders step up and provide that. I think there is a lot of wisdom in that. I'm also going to say that if you just go down the line, let's just say starting with chapter eight, you know, which is obedience. You know, what are we all taught about obedience within Mormonism? If you guys don't answer it, I will. Obedience is what everybody.

Anthony Miller [02:00:42] The first law of Heaven.

John Dehlin [02:00:45] Law of what's that?

Brittany Hartley [02:00:47] Following the prophet.

John Dehlin [02:00:48] Yeah, like follow the prophet.

Anthony Miller [02:00:51] You know, obedience means loyalty.

John Dehlin [02:00:55] Obedience is love. Obedience is the first law of heaven. When I was in the mtc, it was obey with exactness. And we're told the story of the sons of Helaman or whatever, and they obeyed with exactness. So we're taught to obey. We're taught not to steady the ark. We're taught the story about the guy and, you know, the givens even talk about this. The guy tried to steady the ark and what happened to him? God killed him. I learned that lesson in seminary. So don't steady the ark. Who steadies the ark? Those Sunstone people, those dire dialogue people, those alternative forums. They steady the ark, follow the brethren. So we're taught to obey with exactness. We're given the, you know, the, the givens. In chapter nine, they attack this idea of worthiness. They say that we're all inherently worthy, we're all inherently whole. Where did we get the idea of our worthiness was ever in question? How about with the 10,000 worthiness interviews that we all sit in and our children sit in from the time that we're like five years old onward, Punishment and justice again. We're going to get to God punishing the wicked. You know, we'll get read to the Book of Mormon about that. But that's all over Mormon scriptures, the New Testament, the Old Testament, and stories that we get in seminary. You know, repentance, the idea of, you know, just, just this whole idea of the different types of atonement. They want to challenge our idea of atonement. But where do we get the idea that. That Jesus suffered for every sin? There's. There was a really good comment made by one of our listeners. Amanda writes, we were taught that our sins were a direct source of pain on Christ. In Gethsemane, I remember being taught that there were tangible drops of blood shed by Christ, that I were directly responsible for my sins, caused Jesus pain. And that's true, that, that there's a real, as Amanda says, there's a real guilt factor there, that, that we didn't just ask for. We were told that these prophets and apostles speak to God. And they told us that we're causing Jesus sadness and pain. And so the guilt and the shame that we all felt, we did. We came by it honestly because we were taught this. And so. And of course, the judgment. And are we going to be in the first morning, the morning of the resurrection, or the afternoon of the resurre or the evening? Are we going to be in the celestial. The terrestrial. Terrestrial. The telescope? Are we going to go to outer darkness? Where are we going to be? All of that comes from the leaders. And so this was one of the problems I had, is that Terrell and Fiona, they're okay criticizing the Catholic Church or Calvin or Protestants. What they don't do is they don't say, Boyd K. Packer, Bruce R. McConkie, you know, Bednar, whoever it is, you want to lay it at the feet. Bruce Armaconki, like Joseph Fielding Smith, Joseph F. Smith, they don't acknowledge the pain and the suffering of over, you know, almost two centuries of Mormon youth and adults. They don't really take that courageous step to say, we have gotten these perceptions, these damaging, toxic perceptions from the people that we called prophets, seers and revelators. We trusted them. We put our love and trust and faith in them. And they made us. They taught us these beliefs, and we absorbed them. And it's caused real pain and damage. And I think we all get it. They're. You know, Terrell doesn't want to lose his book contract with Deseret Book. Terrell and Fiona are employed by the church at byu. They, more most importantly, they want to have influence. They want to have, you know, they want to be able to change things from within. And we all know the third rail of Mormonism is you can't ever criticize the leadership. You can't ever, you know, point at them and make accusations. If you do, you're toast. You get excommunicated. You get kicked out. So we all get why they don't take that courageous step and actually name the people who have caused so much pain. But it's this big, gaping problem with the book because they're not willing to address what I think many of us would say is the elephant in the room. What do you guys think are. So Brit, then Jenna, then Anthony.

Panel Reactions to the Book's Strengths and Weaknesses

Brittany Hartley [02:05:25] Jenna, you go first.

John Dehlin [02:05:26] Okay. Jenna, then Britt, then Anthony.

Jana Spangler [02:05:28] Okay, so I'm gonna push back a little bit. I. I don't wholly disagree with you, and I just want to bring up one construct for understanding this, which is that I think it's important to note that not every person is horribly harmed by Bruce R. McConkie Mormonism. There are a large number of people for whom that works and it actually brings them to be very kind, loving, wonderful people and that live fulfilling lives and have a close relationship with God. In, in our circles, I think we forget that sometimes because we, most of us have been harmed in the ways that Terrell and Fiona are bringing up. They're aware of the people that are harmed by this. They know there's a better story to this. So I just want to say that what typically happens with religion is, and this is we're part where we're an example of this. But we are not the only one where you have a founder who has some different good ideas. People are kind of enlivened by that. They have some sort of charisma, they have some sort of thing that brings people to, to them. But the, the movements that last are the ones where the people follow and they organize it and they make it simple and they make it work for everybody and everyone relaxes into oh, this is great, and I now know the way and I have the answers. And so culturally we, like so many others, have developed into that. And I will just say that the people who become leaders in this church are the ones for whom it works. We, when you know, this is a self replicating leadership model, the leaders choose the next leaders and the ones who look like they're thriving are the ones that we put virtue on as if they have something better. And so these guys can be a pillar and a shining example and lead everybody else. Meanwhile, we are not listening to all the people for whom this is not working, for whom our definitions are hurting. And we don't even notice the carnage that is going on on all sides of us. And it's one of the biggest flaws of the system. And so, you know, we get into all these discussions of top down revelation versus bottom up and I you've got to listen in any situation, in any group, any cultural construct, you've got to be listening to the people for whom the system is not working. If you really want to understand the evils of your system, we don't have a good feedback loop for that. So it's highly problematic. So I just want to push back and say some of these things are actually not inherently damaging, they're widely damaging. But I don't know that we can call on people to say, you need the courage to call them out for being inherently Damaging. But maybe what they can do is acknowledge these problems and elevate the voices of people for whom it is not working.

John Dehlin [02:08:44] Thank you, Jana. Thank you.

Brittany Hartley [02:08:46] My pushback is going to be a little bit different, so I'm going to. Yes, and to John, too. So, yes, I do believe that the Givens walk a tightrope that they are smart enough to be well aware of. Right. That to do the work they want to do, they want to still feel like they're safe to Mormons. Right. And I'm sure that is a very real balance act that they have to do in order to be effective in the community that they. They want to reach. And I also think, and I, I get a sense from Carol and Fiona, both on a personal level and on a theological level, that they don't think the leadership is as important as the general membership thinks that the leadership is important because when you look at this book, they're not talking about, the Pope said this sometimes, but not as much. They're talking, talking about, you know, Christian fathers. A lot of these guys were, were in the wilderness. A lot of these guys were church intellectuals or people on the outside who are getting at the true gospel. And the authority that rises up on the side is just something that humans do. And it's just kind of a necessary part of the process. And they're going to be there. And, but, but it's not the heart of it. It's, you know, so many of their voices were not the prophet of their age. They were outsiders of their age. And so I know personally that, you know, if, you know something like, you know, the, the prophets, when the prophet and apostles, when they have their meeting and they all sit down that they're like, given their snacks in order of seniority and they leave the room in order of seniority. And Fiona is just the first one to just call that out and just say, you guys are just being so dumb. Like, that is so ridiculous. And, and so I don't think that they're oblivious to the harm that the leaders do. I just see them as looking at that as, you know, this is just what, in the course of human history, authority structures rise up. It's part. It. It's part of the process, but they're just a part of the body of Christ and they're not all of it. And, and when they mess things up, you know, it's, it's just a part of how humans organize communities. And there's certain, there's certain advantages to having a prophet. For example, when you look at problems with Islam. There's no profit in Islam to say this is how we're going to interpret this scripture and not going to do this anymore. And, and that can be a real problem in, in a whole other direction. And so I just don't see that they look at leadership in the same way that the membership looks at leadership. I think they see them as more of a necessary evil, which is why they don't combat these problems through the leadership. They're going to combat it through the theology, with the people, with the language, with the, the actual true gospel at the root level and then have the change come in through the leadership that way. And so I, I don't think necessarily they're cowards to not call out the leadership directly.

John Dehlin [02:12:06] And I, I don't, I don't like to call people names and I don't even think that. I just want to be clear. I don't really, I wasn't trying to say that they're cowards. So I hope that that wasn't what came across. But I think the difference between theologians and academics and philosophers and mental health professionals is that we're less sitting at our computers typing, studying Julian of Norwich and Wycliffe and Calvin and thinking about elegant ways to quote, you know, Wordsworth or you know, EE Cummings so that we can write some elegant prose. You know, we're sitting hour after hour after hour, somebody wants to take their life. Somebody's marriage is being destroyed. Some husband is in terror because his wife is about to take the kids away because he's lost his faith. Some 16 year old youth is self harming in really disturbing ways because of the guilt and the shame that they're racked with. Some parents are grieving over their trans youth that is no longer living on the earth. It's not this philosophical, eloquent, liberal arts kind of prose. It's like this lived reality where what Bruce Amakanki or Boyd K. Packer or pick your general authority, what they teach, what ripples down through CES and into the minds of vulnerable 8 year olds and 12 year olds and 16 year olds and returned missionaries like can wreak carnage in people's lives. And I'm not saying that the givenses are oblivious. I think they're actually courageously trying to be a sophisticated part of the solution. So I am not saying they're cowards. I think they're being creative, courageous innovators to work with a very difficult system. And I want to give them credit for trying to make positive change on the inside. I Do want to give them credit for that? All I'm saying is that what the book doesn't address is that, is that, is that the model of how we've been taught to look at our leaders believe that they speak with God because they told us they do, and then to obey them and to believe them because they force us to, or they tell us to believe them and they punish us if we don't believe them. Those teachings have names. They have real people behind them, and they have real severe consequences. And that is a major elephant in the room. That is like the pipeline. It's like the plumbing of the pain, the plumbing of the depression, and sometimes the death by suicide. It's the patriarchy that's delivering that pain through the Mormon Church hierarchy. And it's completely avoided in this entire book. And I just, they don't, they don't really ever call that out. And to me, it's a glaring omission. But I get why they do it, but I'm not trying to call them cowards.

The Urgency of Reform and the Role of the Brethren

Brittany Hartley [02:15:34] Yeah, I understand what you're saying, and I just want to take a second and honor your sense of urgency because that, your, the sense of urgency that you have is because there's very few people who get as many suicide messages and broken marriage messages, and I don't have a reason to wake up in the morning messages than you do, John. And I just really want to appreciate that you're take. There are very few people who can empathize with how heavy that burden is day after day. And the sense of urgency that would, that, that would give you, that theologians don't carry every day. And I just, I want to do nothing more than just thank you and honor you for your sense of urgency because there's very few people who can truly empathize with that burden.

Jana Spangler [02:16:26] And I wanted to say that there are so many ways to do activism, to bring about change. And you know, for some people, we do it on the ground with one. On one with people in the pain that are, that is being caused by all the things that you're saying, John. There are people who need to lead bigger movements. There are people who need to bring a bigger voice like you or Kate Kelly or some of the other people. There are people who need to teach. There are people who need to be the theologians and the philosophers. We need those. We, we don't have a lot of the theology going on really in, in the, on, on the street, Mormonism. So, you know, I, I hesitate to say that everyone should be doing it every which way? Because I think we're all bringing what we need to. And I can honor that this is not that that's not what they were necessarily trying to address in this book. And it's maybe why Fiona is saying, look, I don't want to be the guru of Faith Craft Crisis because she's not in the trenches with that stuff. She's perhaps staying in her lane with the, the scholarly stuff. I can't speak to why they won't come on Mormon stories, and I wish they would as well. But I honor that they have their own reasons and, and that they're doing their work and that that wasn't the book they were out to write. So I don't know. I think we all are doing our work in the best way that we can.

John Dehlin [02:18:01] Love it. I love that. I love that, Brit. I love that. Jenna. Anthony, let's get you in. What thoughts as you're hearing us talk?

Anthony Miller [02:18:09] Yeah, I mean, this brings, brings me back to our conversation from 2019, that everyone has a role to play. And, and I'm sure that the Givens realize that if they push the line too hard publicly, they'll lose their voice or, or their, the degree of their influence that they have now. And, and I would say I, I don't think Elder Holland went and, and effectively chastised or called to repentance. The Maxwell Institute, it wasn't last year. I think it was the year before, specifically for the Gibbons. But some of the Brethren are concerned about some of these kinds of things. And so I think the Brethren are feeling stretched by some of the scholarship that's coming out of the Maxwell Institute that they don't believe that is faithful enough. So the, the next thing that I wanted to say is I absolutely do agree with Jana that from a developmental standpoint, as well as depending on the person, these constructs that are traditional atonement theology work, work for some people. But I would ask, I, I just want to run through really quickly, think in your mind if, if the, if the, if the orthodoxy with regard to atonement theology attributed these meanings as I just run through quickly the reattributed meanings that the Givens give to these terms, would it have been healthier, you know, that that wonderful loving couple, you know, where the husband was the patriarch and lived an amazing life and impacted the lives of hundreds and thousands of people would hit what his life have been different? Or could he have done more and could his wife had done more if these meanings to these words were the ones that were part of the core curriculum and the messages coming from the brethren. So just running through these quickly. Salvation is a flowering of divine potential. It's not a correction of an innate fault. It doesn't mean to be rescued, redeemed, or otherwise restored from a position of deficit. The process is not recuperative. It's additive, not restorative. Heaven is a relationship. Obedience means something different too. It's not this if I do what God says, that he's bound, and it's this transactional relationship. There's a different meaning attributed to obedience. Sin is an experience of weakness, not guilt. The given spend a lot of time talking about that. Sin has nothing to do with guilt. And guilt isn't, you know, is part of this definition. Sin is about brokenness and healing from trauma. It means missing the actual word in the Greek means missing the mark. And they attribute a state of woundedness to sin. In terms of justice. They quote Paul in the New Testament indicating that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Absolutely the opposite of conditional love. Repentance is a lifelong venture of accepting Christ's willingness to help us in our heart and to become more like his image. It's a positive engagement with a learning process, not recurrent periods of being in a penalty box. It's a remolding of desires. To forgive is to let go or lay something aside. Atonement is a compassion has to do with a compassionate God. And it's about being made whole. The actual Greek words in Matthew 5:48 that we all memorized about be therefore perfect was about being whole. And atonement is about being made whole. It means to heal, we heal and we are made whole through the atonement as we serve others. That is, the actualization of the atonement is serving others. Grace means that the relationship with others and divinity is not transactional. They talk about worthiness as well. So they reinterpret all of these different. When you read it, it makes you feel like you're reading Rob Bell or Richard Rohr or something. They retribute all these different meanings to replace traditional atonement theology. And I would just say for the people that traditional atonement theology worked. How much better would have it worked if this was the message?

John Dehlin [02:23:19] Yeah, I love that. And I. And I. I'm. And I. That was going to be the next thing that I wanted to talk about is what are the great things about their message? And I have my own that God is not sovereign, we are not his subjects, we're not here to obey, we're all one big loving family. God doesn't want submission. God doesn't want obedience. It's not about worthiness. It's about our woundedness and about our healing. We need to shift from punishment to transformation. We need to not be perfect, but we need to work to be complete. We're co participants with God in Zion building. We are in a constantly loving embrace by the Savior. God is never assessing our worthiness. We are unconditionally loved and we are inherently worthy. Those are some of the things that I pulled out that are absolute improvements. Like, if you were to ask me how excited would I be if CES basically replaced traditional Mormon atonement theology with Terrell and Fiona Givens atonement theology, I would say a plus 1000%. Everyone is going to be better if Mormonism adopts Terrell and Fiona Givens atonement theology. And I have to say on that front, it gets a John Dehlin double thumbs up to Terrell and Fiona Givens. Brit and Jana, are there any other huge thumbs up that you guys want to offer in terms of the amazing improvements that Fiona and Terrell are making on, on Mormon theology? We'll have. Britt, you want to go first, and then Jenna.

The Non-Literality Problem and Book of Mormon Historicity

Brittany Hartley [02:25:22] Just. Thank you, Anthony, for that list. That was just really helpful for our conversation. I. I don't have necessarily anything to add to, to the list that Anthony gave. That was just a. It gives you a good picture of the full reframing that they're trying to do. What I would say is he asked a question of what about what does this theology do to people who are resonating with traditional Christianity, traditional atonement? And that is such an interesting question. And so the thing that comes up for me is that there's a reason that sacrifice, animal, human sacrifice, is found in every religion, in early religion. And there's something playing with humanity there that there's some guilt and shame that we want to transplant to something else so that we can just feel better and get it off. Right. There's something about human nature that, that sacrifice. We all know people who say, you know, God forgave me of all my sins, and they really, truly, that day, became a better person, wanted to be a better person, that if you took that away, they may not necessarily have become that better person if they didn't believe that Christ really wiped away everything that they had done. And so I just want to honor that. That is, that is something in human nature that it's the reason, reason why Christianity is spreading because there's Something that it's doing for people. It's. It's a tool that's doing something for people. And so my answer, to answer Anthony's question is, you know, us humans, we're tool builders, and religion is a tool to help us get things that humans need. So even though some people are getting that human need by someone being sacrificed, I think that there are better tools with which to structure society, with which to structure religion that don't require animal, human, or Jesus sacrifice in order to make it work. And so I don't think it's a matter of. Traditional Christianity and traditional atonement not being a tool. I think it is a tool for many people. I just think as we progress as a human species, is there a better tool? Is there a better way to do this that we can shift into? Because we've always used tools. That doesn't mean that we can't make better cars. That doesn't mean that we can't make better everything. That's what humans do. And so I'm. I want to move into the space while also recognizing that traditional atonement does help some people to release the guilt and shame that enables them to fully invest in being a good human.

John Dehlin [02:28:21] Thank you, Britt. Thank you, Jana.

Jana Spangler [02:28:24] Yeah, I think you guys gave an awesome list, John and Anthony, and I don't know that I have anything to add to that. You were pretty thorough. I noticed a lot of the same things, and I just agree that this is a step in the right direction. You know, there are still things that I would do differently and define differently, and that's because I'm a different person and I have a different spiritual path. And the. The orthodox Mormons have one path that resonates for them, and I have a path that resonates for me. And all of you have paths that resonate for you. And so I don't know that I can inherently say what is the better story for everybody. I just am really passionate about the idea that everyone has their own spiritual path that they. That they have to take. So I don't know. I love what they're doing. I think it is a step in the right direction.

John Dehlin [02:29:28] And

Jana Spangler [02:29:30] I'm grateful. I'm grateful for a lot of what is in this book.

John Dehlin [02:29:37] Amen. There's a final question or two. I want to give us all kind of a chance to give some closing thoughts, but there's one clip, Anthony, that you had me reserve that does tie back into chapter three. But I think it's fascinating enough to where I'd Feel sad if we didn't play it as a part of this program. Is it okay if we play it and then, Anthony, you talk about, do you want to set up the clip and then I'll play it and then we can discuss it?

Anthony Miller [02:30:06] Yeah, so. So one of the hardest times, the things that I had with the book, is what I referred to earlier, that it seems like they're leading the reader to, towards the threshold of the door to non, literalism, kind of pointing a little bit that way, but not leading them through. So I'm like, why don't, why don't you just tell people about what's on the other side of the door, even if you're not going to lead them through? But the second thing is, is I read through this and we've referred to, alluded to this.

John Dehlin [02:30:46] Anthony, if it's okay, what do you mean by non literalism? For those who are kind of, let's just say someone's new in their faith crisis, they don't even know. They've never heard of Fowler. They don't know who Richard Rohr is. When you say non, literalism, what do you mean?

Anthony Miller [02:31:00] So non literalism. Would an example.

John Dehlin [02:31:03] Give examples? Yeah, yeah.

Anthony Miller [02:31:04] So an example of non literalism would be that the story of Job is a metaphor for Israel. And when the author, whoever authored the book of Job, they weren't telling a story about a literal historical job, they were telling a story about their perception of Israel's relationship with God. And it was a metaphor, or what is more tender is for people that deconstruct that maybe Adam and Eve were metaphorical. They were a story. There wasn't a literal historical fall. And as a result, they have a hard time holding the idea that there would be a need for a little historical atonement. And then when they address these issues where we're reattributing meaning to what atonement is, and maybe the atonement wasn't that what I did last week caused an extra drop of blood to Jesus and Gethsemane kind of thing. A lot of people lose a significant amount of meaning when all of that crumbles on them, particularly when they study biblical scholarship. And, and many who do come to the conclusion that the Nativity story and the traditional stories born out of the Nativity story that are in Luke and Matthew are metaphorical, not literal. And, and so if you read Richard Rohrer and Rob Bell, Marcus Borg and others, what they'll do with that is they'll say, okay, if Matthew chapter two wasn't literally historical, but it was a metaphor. It was a story that was imputed upon a person who actually existed. But the story was embellished with proof texting from the Old Testament to provide a model that there could still be meaning in the model. So, so that would be crossing the door into non literalism to say it doesn't have to be literally historical to have some sort of beauty or meaning. The story of Job can have some redeeming qualities without having to be a literal historical story. And the story of Jesus and the, and what's in the Gospels doesn't. While there might be elements that are literally historical, they don't really have to be literally historical. And the Nativity and the Resurrection don't have to be literally historical to have meaning. They can have symbolic, non literal meaning.

John Dehlin [02:33:48] And the, and the rabbit hole can go all the way down. It can even get to the point where you say the Book of Mor, you know, scripture isn't, isn't, you know, Book of Mormon, Bible, whatever. None of it's none of its ancient history in any meaningful way. It's just a bunch of myths to help you live a good life. Some people sometimes arrive at that conclusion. They'll say the Book of Mormon is certainly because of the DNA, because of the anachronisms, because of all the archeological problems of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is myth, it's story. But there's still good things that you can learn from it. And it could even go to the point of saying the Church of Jesus Christ isn't of Latter Day Saints, isn't the one and only true church. It's just where I, you know, it's my tribe, it's where I practice spirituality, it's my spiritual language. But there's many paths up Mount Fuji. And then you reinterpret what God might mean or what the Savior might mean. Maybe Jesus wasn't a literal historical figure for you. Maybe Jesus was just an idea. And it can even be prophets. You say maybe a prophet doesn't really speak to God, but they're good men that are trying and they help us live good lives. So the literal versus symbolic, metaphorical thing can kind of span one's entire set of beliefs or theology. And literally there can be Mormons sitting in the pews that don't believe in an anthropomorphic God, don't believe in a historical Jesus, don't believe that the Bible or the Book of Mormon are in any way ancient. But this is just a good way to raise your kids and the truth is, probably every ward has at least 5 to 10 of these people in their wards today. So having said all that, that sets up the clip. The clip, yeah.

Anthony Miller [02:35:31] So the, the, so the, so the challenge is you read this and you're, but you're like Terrell and Fiona. You know that the Apostle John didn't write the Book of Revelation. You know that Mother in Heaven theology was born out of plural marriage. Joseph trying to convince an orphan teenage girl to be one of his plural wives. Like, you know this kind of stuff. You know that, like Britt points out correctly, I believe that there are different atonement theologies in the Book of Mormon. There certainly are retributive justice, penal type of atonement theologies in the Book of Mormon. How, how are you? It doesn't, doesn't feel like you're being forthright because some things you're acknowledging are not helpful to take in a fundamentalist, literalist standpoint. And then there are other things that you really like that you're presenting as if they are literalists. Like, how are you dealing with all this? And that was my big struggle. And in prep for this evening, I listened to multiple podcast interviews with Terrell and Fiona. And the clip that we're going to watch answers the question with regard to where Terrell and Fiona are, I think with regard to how they view literalism, fundamentalist literalism, and how they navigate these ambiguities and scriptures where they're picking out some things that they take literal and other things, they're just totally acknowledging that their origin myths kind of thing.

John Dehlin [02:37:15] Yeah. And I think the, the, one of the problems of their argument, they're trying to argue for an all loving God, a Jesus that has his arms wrapped around you 24 by 7, unconditional love, a God that's like a father and mother figure. How do you square that with the Old Testament God or the Book of Mormon God, where literally men, women and children and even animals are wiped off the face of the earth, killed, slaughtered, destroyed by a vengeful God. How do you square those two? I think, I think that's the question that we're going to now hear them try to answer. Is that right, Anthony?

Anthony Miller [02:37:54] That's accurate.

John Dehlin [02:37:55] Okay, so here's the clip.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [02:38:00] Restoration texts themselves. Now that, I mean, somebody is going to come back and say, well, you

Video Clip 1 [02:38:06] know, there is that wrathful, vengeful God

Video Clip 1 [02:38:09] in the Book of Mormon.

Video Clip 1 [02:38:10] If you've read it. Have you read this, Fiona?

Video Clip 1 [02:38:15] And yes, I think when we look at the parable. So in the early Christianity, the paradigm was our God loving, gentle, parental, working with us, collaborating with us, so that

Video Clip 1 [02:38:30] we could reach the measure of our creation.

Video Clip 1 [02:38:34] But unfortunately, the Book of Mormon came out in the 19th century, and the

Video Clip 1 [02:38:41] 19th century was dominated by a religious

Video Clip 1 [02:38:44] tradition that was essentially Calvinist. And so there had to be a language. There had to be a familiar language

Video Clip 1 [02:38:52] spoken so that people would have a bridge to cross into the rest, into the restoration.

Video Clip 1 [02:39:01] And Brigham Young himself said, you know,

Video Clip 1 [02:39:03] had the Book of Mormon being written in any other century, it would be

Video Clip 1 [02:39:06] completely different from the 19th century version.

Video Clip 1 [02:39:08] So I think if we understand that,

Video Clip 1 [02:39:10] it's helped me, I have to say, considerably.

Video Clip 1 [02:39:13] Okay, this is a paradigm in which they were working. This is a 19th century text.

Video Clip 1 [02:39:17] Just grab all of the 21st century

Video Clip 1 [02:39:19] things you possibly can out of it. And there are a lot in there.

Video Clip 1 [02:39:22] Yeah, I'm sorry, Go ahead, go ahead. I was just going to ask if that's your litmus test. You know, I think there are. There are so many contradictions that don't matter, that are totally innocuous, like lineage or dates, and it doesn't matter. But like, when you find a contradiction that is about the character of God, how do you decide what you go with?

Video Clip 1 [02:39:41] It turns out, you know, sometimes we

Video Clip 1 [02:39:43] think that we moderns are the first

Video Clip 1 [02:39:45] people to grab, to have to grapple with these problems. Well, the first real theologian of the

Video Clip 1 [02:39:51] church who wrote the first systematic treatment

Video Clip 1 [02:39:53] of Christianity was Origen, early third century.

Video Clip 1 [02:39:57] And he is the first to grasp

Video Clip 1 [02:39:59] this bull by the horns. And he does provide exactly that, a litmus test. And I think it's inspired. He says, if we know the nature of God, then the litmus test for

Video Clip 1 [02:40:14] interpreting scripture is this question, is what

Video Clip 1 [02:40:16] I am reading or interpreting worthy of God?

Video Clip 1 [02:40:20] And that's the language he uses. Are his actions or his words worthy of God?

Video Clip 1 [02:40:26] And if they are not?

Video Clip 1 [02:40:28] If they are not, then I'm going

Video Clip 1 [02:40:29] to privilege what I know about his

Video Clip 1 [02:40:30] nature over what the language of scripture is telling us.

Video Clip 1 [02:40:35] Now, if we would take that to heart, we'd be in such a better place.

Video Clip 1 [02:40:40] Right.

Video Clip 1 [02:40:40] C.S.

John Dehlin [02:40:41] lewis, get. So I'm going to stop that now.

Anthony Miller [02:40:50] Good.

John Dehlin [02:40:50] All right, so let's give everyone a chance to react to that. Do. Do you want to start, Anthony, or.

Anthony Miller [02:40:57] Sure. I. I would just say that tells me which part. I mean, so Fiona acknowledges that the book, the God of the Book of Mormon, that there is a vengeful, vengeful God in there. And. But then I. I don't know, maybe I haven't read or listened to enough of their stuff. But, but I haven't. And I know that Teryl Givens talks about the importance of the Book of Mormon being based on some sort of historical text for it to have value. At least that's my recollection. But here Fiona is acknowledging that the Book of Mormon is a 19th century text and that it's written through the paradigms. It's it the paradigms of Joseph Smith that the Book of Mormon was written through limits what would be in the text by Joseph Smith's understanding. And, and so as a result, it's not a literal, you know, what we would normally call a translation of something that somebody wrote before the 19th century. It's parsed to the paradigm of Calvinism and Protestantism that existed in the day. And, and that then as a result, the way they view Scripture is so incredibly fallible in terms that it's communicated through the biases and paradigms of whoever the writers are in the context and time of where they exist, that she feels like you can read it and just grive out the 21st century things that work for you and you can let go of the difference. Like that is through to the, to me, that is having crossed past the threshold over to some degree of non literalism. And then when Tarot indicates that he measures whether or not Scripture, the litmus test for interpreting scripture is based on his own personal perception or spiritual experiences regarding the nature of God, then that really gives some additional understanding as to why they would have signed that radical orthodoxy manifesto without realizing how it would get interpreted and received by the LGBTQ and ally community or the feminist community. I, I don't think they fully realized what the implications of that would be when they signed it. But what they're communicating here is fundamentalist literalism is a problem and you should be able to, in a very nuanced way, pick and choose based on your litmus test of your own spiritual knowledge or perceptions, which is that this quote, this, this clip here helps me understand how they could have written what they wrote here where they were cherry. I seem, it seemed like they were cherry picking things and ignoring other things and acknowledging fallibility in scripture, but then and pulling out things that were literalist. In my view. This explains how they did that.

John Dehlin [02:44:21] Thanks, Anthony. Jana, any reactions to that clip?

Jana Spangler [02:44:27] Absolutely. So there are a couple things that I see in it. One is a developmental lens. I'm gonna see that that's what my coaching training is in. I definitely think that, that all of scripture is. Anthony alluded to this, is that it is always given to us through the lens of the human who is bringing it to us. If I am a human and I live at a particular point of time and this is my developmental lens, then, and I have some sort of experience with the divine, I don't. I don't see much evidence that God just breaks through all of the cultural baggage that comes with that person in their place and time to reveal some pure thing. I just think there's inspiration and gradual development. So if you look at the Bible, you can see the developmental. Different books are coming from a different developmental space. And so if you're in a very tribal us versus them, you are going to take in that God and you think you feel the love of God, then it. You could naturally say, God loves me and not them. So God's happy when I bash their heads in. So I think that's one thing that's going on, and I think they're speaking to that. And I think the other thing they're speaking to is a hermeneutic, which is not a word we use a whole lot in Mormonism, but theologians do a lot. Britney can speak a lot more clearly to all of that goes around with hermeneutics than I could. But a hermeneutic is basically, what do I use? What's my lens to interpret Scripture? Because you have to have one. There's too much contradiction in all of scripture in the Bible and the Book of Mormon. You've got to have a hermeneutic. And so I don't know how many of your listeners, if you guys have heard of the Naked Pastor, he's a cartoonist that has some really great stuff, some really progressive Christian stuff. But one of the ones that I

John Dehlin [02:46:28] love

Jana Spangler [02:46:30] has Jesus standing there talking to either a group of people from his day, or in this one, it's a group of today's Christians. And he says, the difference between me and you is you use scripture to determine what love means, and I use love to determine what Scripture means. And he. They're speaking to a hermeneutic. And I heard that in what Fiona is saying and what Terrell was saying. You know, if. If this is your conception of God and God is love, then maybe you do need to. We all need to use our own hermeneutic when we are reading the scriptures to, to. And we really don't have any choice. We. We all have to decide how we reconcile those things. So I like what they said. And it can mean some non literalism. It could also just mean using a different Hermeneutic and recognizing that people are speaking through their lens.

Selective Theology, Restoration, and Prophetic Voices

John Dehlin [02:47:31] Love it. Thanks, Jenna Britt.

Brittany Hartley [02:47:34] Okay, so, yeah, so if the argument is that, you know, Terrell and Fiona are chariots, cherry picking theology, just, you know, the, the answer to that is like there's just no way around that. If you read the Bible and you say, I'm a Christian, you're going to cherry pick, you're going to cherry pick verses, you're going to cherry pick, you're going to prefer some theologies over others. There's too much contradiction, there's too much competing values for, for you to do anything but, you know, cherry pick the Christianity that speaks to you. And it's just a human thing to do. You know, when, when we're in Mormonism, you're gonna probably lean a little bit more towards Captain Moroni or you're gonna lean towards the anti Nephi Lehi's like, you know, there's just some human preference going on that you just can't get around. And then when you multiply that by 2000 years of this history, there's just no other way to do theology other than to highlight some things and de emphasize or deconstruct other things. There's just no way around that. And so it's very common to say I'm, I'm putting this in a framework of love. If it doesn't fit within a framework of love, you know, then I'm going to, then I'm going to de emphasize or deconstruct it in some way. And that's very popular. The doctorate professor that I'm under is a guy named Thomas Ord, and he's a leader in this Christian space of really leading with the concept of love. And if it doesn't fit with love, then we've got to get rid of it or nuance it in some way. So I'm going to let my inner atheist come out for a second and I'm just going to say that my critique to that approach is that if you are using modern ethics today, decide what love is to then give you a framework for the Bible. There's a problem with that because today we very much are trying to define love in this way that is Brene Brown, where love is vulnerability, right? Where we love this Mormon thing with the God who weeps, where of course God is vulnerable because that is love. Right? But, but different cultures in different time periods, myriads would not have called that love. They would have maybe called that weakness. If you, if you're a warlike Community, a God that gives you manna or comes to war with you is much more meaningful than a God who maybe weeps with you. And so my, my atheist, you know, a little bit more Sam Harris argument is that if you're using modern ethics as your lens to make sense of the Bible, you can actually cut the Bible out of that equation and just use the modern ethics. And so that would be just. My, my, my atheism kind of came out when they talked about that is that you're using modern ethics outside of the Bible to then go into the Bible and justify it. And I really don't think that that's necessary to do that. Seems like you can cut the middleman out of that equation.

John Dehlin [02:50:43] I love it. This is a brilliant panel and I'm grateful for it and lots of, lots of good comments as well. So really quickly I, I want to just throw this out. This is something we've kind of addressed. But there's this idea that, you know, the whole value of the restoration is that, you know, God used to, this is the, this is the thing that I was taught. God used to speak to prophets in the Bible times. Then there was an apostasy. And the, the joy of the restoration is, is that God speaks to prophets once again. And so not only do we have new scripture like the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, but we have modern day prophets, seers and revelators that speak with God and they tell us what God is thinking and feeling. And so like the truth is restored and there's light on the earth and now we know what to believe and what to follow. And there's, you know, and the Gospel is called the, it's not called the messy and the murky. You know, it's called the plain and the precious. Right. And that's kind of again how I was kind of indoctrinated. And so on the one hand I look at this book as like this, It's a realistic kind of messy, earthy, pragmatic, like we're all in this together and we see through a glass, dark, darkly and, and of course prophets are imperfect and scriptures are imperfect and God's imperfect and life is messy and, and the human experience is messy and we're all kind of getting through this together and we're gonna, we're gonna make 2 inch step forward and then 1 inch step back and then 2 more inch steps forward and 1 inch step back. And that's how the human experience is going to be all. I'm going to just ask everybody to kind of respond to is that. But, you know, what's the purpose of having prophets? Like, why did we need a first presidency, a quorum of the 12 for a couple centuries? How have we really improved anything if we've been getting the atonement wrong? Like, even with Joseph Smith, even with the. With the Restoration, even with all these. The priesthood and the Melchizedek priesthood and all these prophets, sees and revelators. If we're at 20, 21 and we need Fiona and Terrell Givens to help us now finally understand what sin is, what repentance is, what worthiness is, what the atonement is, what Jesus did or didn't do, what God really is. Like, what has been the value of the restoration to begin with? Where's the plain and preciousness of it all? How is God not just a huge failure in inefficiency and poor communication skills? You know, how is God and all the prophets not a huge failure? And then who. Who are Terrell and Fiona Givens to be. To be clearing all this up for us? They're not. They're not sustained as prophesiers and revelators. Why should we even bother listening to them? So those are just two questions that I want to throw out there just to get your guys's sense for. It's probably hard. You probably hate that question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. Jana, you're saying you don't hate it, so I'm gonna let you go first.

Jana Spangler [02:54:04] I love that question. There are no bad questions. I am a proponent of questions, so it is said. I wrote down a few things. What's. What are the purpose of profits, and how have we improved on anything? So this is the world according to me. And I'm not alone. I know, but I think the current structure of the church has a lot of Brigham Young written all over it. And I'm not a fan of what Brigham Young brought to it. The thing that Brigham Young did bring to it that later people kind of improved upon would be that. And I say that in quotations because I don't think it's an improvement. Brigham Young did not fancy himself a prophet in the same way that we look at prophet seers and revelators today. Most of those early leaders of the. Of the church called themselves presidents and not prophets because I think I get the feeling that they understood that a prophet was someone who speaks from the margins, who has some sort of mystical connection to something bigger than themselves. And, I mean, if you look back at the history of scripture and The Bible and everything else. The prophets were not the people in charge by and large. There were often the, the leader of the church and then the prophet was someone else. And you know, somewhere, as I understand it, around David O. McKay, we started calling our current leaders prophets and expecting something of them. And yet personally, I haven't seen something of the current people that resembles what Joseph Smith was. So to me, the purpose of a prophet is to speak truth to power and that, that has been taken away from the leadership that we have now because they are in the center of power of our church. So to me, that was not some key part of the Roman, the restoration. You know, maybe as Joseph is acting as a prophet and I, I personally find prophets to be extremely fallible, and I'm totally fine with that. But I think that Joseph did act as a prophet. So who are the givens to work this out for us? I just love the idea of restoration. I think restoration is always necessary. And, and who are they? Who am I? Who are you? We are all the body of Christ and it takes all of us. So I, I think that the givens are very important. I am so grateful to their wisdom and experience. That brings something more enlightened that to me resonates and feels more enlightened and will be of more service to many, many people who are falling outside the, the orthodox structure of, of who all of this works for. Are they the answer to everybody? Absolutely not. I mean, we need so many more voices. We need so many more voices from so many other groups of marginalized people, but they are one important voice and they are a prophetic voice, and there are so many other prophetic voices from the margins. And I think we need all of that. And what our structure has done is working against us, frankly, in that mission of restoring more and more and more and more truth. Because we're not listening. We are only listening to people. We only listen to the givenses because they have been able to work on the inside, get credibility as scholars, have the jobs where they can get published, have the jobs where they can, they can work for some institutions with some clout, you know, and we need more ability to hear from other kinds of prophets that are bringing their truth and making us all better. So we're all part of this restoration. I just find that we, we've done some little small part of it. People outside of this faith are doing some small part of it. And I just wish we were more expansive and listening to what more people.

John Dehlin [02:58:21] Nice. So Teryl and Fiona, as prophets, I love It. Thanks Jenna. And Jenna and Brit and Anthony as prophets. I love it. All right, Brit.

Brittany Hartley [02:58:32] All right. So you know, Jenna goes to always a place of human development that's just her wheelhouse. And so I, my brain kind of goes to a place of like pros and cons of this theological approach. And so the, the pros of having a prophet, you know, if you, if you believe in a kind of that, that revelation comes, that there's a bottom up revelation happening, that we as a church body are moving in a certain direction towards black skinning, the priesthood, for example. What the prophet does is, is there's an approval stamp thing happening that's actually very helpful for this kind of religious society where we say we've moved in this direction, we've wrestled this, now we're doing it. And that can actually be really helpful for religious systems, Religious systems who don't have that. There are, there are problems that come up that we don't often think about. We don't often think of, of the problems of religions where there's no prophet, there's no institutional leader. So there's no one stopping and there's no, there's no one in authority to stop someone from taking a scripture and using it to strap a bomb on someone and blowing someone up. There's no one to stop that from happening. And that can be a problem in a whole, on the opposite end of the spectrum. And so there are pros to having a prophet in that kind of approach, approval process because now you have a body and an approval stamp and they're continually working together hopefully towards progress is, is kind of the pro of a prophetic system. And when you get liberal churches that have no authority, sometimes there isn't enough unifying force going on there that they really just kind of crumble and they just don't, they just don't sustain themselves. They certainly wouldn't sustain themselves, you know, multiple generations like Mormonism did. But to Jana's point, for me personally, the role of the, the hierarchy and the institution, the core institutional power, which is not what Joseph was, but is what, what happened, what we put, what we did to power is we kind of institution institutionalized it, right? Is that now we have something to push against. And there are no, there's no Jesus without Pharisees, there is no prophetic voice, there is no wilderness from which prophetic voice comes without a center. And so for me now, you know, the institution is just kind of a necessary part. It's what humans do. We, we accumulate power and we put People on pedestals, and we do this to leadership. And then what happens is prophetic voice starts coming from the margins. What about the gay kids who are dying? We have Gina Colvin. She's this voice for international Mormons. We have prophetic voices all around Mormonism that are calling us to some things that we're missing, some higher truths. And so the shocking thing for me is that when Mormons read about John the Baptist, who is in the wilderness, you know, in rags, baptizing people outside of the institution, I don't know how you don't see that. If you are the covenant people, you are, by the definition, the Pharisees. Now, that doesn't mean that you're not a Pharisee who follows who then follows Christ. But by definition, you are the Pharisees. And we are not the John the Baptist in that. In that allegory, someone on the outside who's doing really beautiful prophetic work is the one who Christ went to. And so that's just like Janice said. That's where I see the role of. The role of institutions today is. Is that's where we get John the Baptist. That's where you get beautiful prophetic voices. And they play a role in that because there's something to push up against. And if we just continually cycling, like that institution and a narrative and a power and prophetic voices, and then a new institution and a new narrative and a new power and prophetic voices, and it's just kind of the process that we've always done as humans.

John Dehlin [03:03:05] Beautiful. All right, those are two good answers. Anthony. I. I pity you to have to follow Jana and Britt, but that's just the way this panel's set up. So sorry.

Anthony Miller [03:03:16] I'm grateful. I love, love these women. They. I was. I'd give a shout out to both of them, as well as Blair Osler. I was going to say that back In December of 2019, we recorded a Mormon discussion episode about the Mother in Heaven essay. And Brit helped with the prep, and Jana was on it, and so was Blair Osler. So I've enjoyed working with these women for quite some time, and I'm grateful to call them friends.

John Dehlin [03:03:46] One of our. One of our listeners says, you can do it, Anthony. Someone's. This is what binds us. Us, which I think is Darcy Blevins on Twitter.

Anthony Miller [03:03:55] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:03:55] She says, you can do it. So you got someone cheering you on.

Anthony Miller [03:03:58] Thank you. So the first thing I would say is what Brit was describing was the process of creative destruction that we talked about in my interview. And that what happens is innovators and entrepreneurs create something new and then it grows and then it becomes big and then it becomes a large, large lethargic institution that self protects and, and it pushes out the innovators because the innovators are a threat to the institution. And then eventually what happens is they've got to decide whether they're going to be the Apple Computer company that was going to die or whether they were going to bring Steve Jobs back in and bring the innovators back in so that Apple could become what it is today as a company. And, and that happens. Britt talked about this cycle that happens, that happens in religious movements and institutions. And so what we have now is we have a large institution where there were innovators and creative people, people who spoke from the margins. But then it became this super large institution where we don't distinguish the difference between what it means to be a leader, what it means to be an authority and what it means to be a prophet. And like Brett and Jana indicated, theology comes from the margins and the prophets always come from the margins. And Gene is a prophet and Brene Brown's a prophet. And, and many people that are doing amazing things, the givens, what they're doing is the role of what a prophet does. They are the innovators, they are the entrepreneurs. They are the ones that threaten the stability of the institution. And, and the way I think this gets fixed, if we decide to go the way of what Apple Computer did and bring back the innovators versus do what Kmart did and be and went through bankruptcy and then Sears took them over and Sears is going through bank went through bankruptcy. Is, is you have to bring back, you have to accept theology from the margins. And in order to do that, the, the, the leaders of the church need to understand that their role is to be leaders and not authorities. And the, the theology comes from the margin, from the prophets. And we can look to our cousins at Community of Christ where, where they f. They don't have hero worship like we have. Like if you want to talk with one of their quorum of the 12, you're not going to have a hard time having, finding out how to have a discussion with them. They aren't given the same kind of reverence like a head of state kind of thing that you know, Elder Bednar wants everybody to stand when, when he walks in the room and, and, and leaders administer and they're not afraid of innovation and they serve their period of time and then it's somebody else's turn to take the lead. And the problem is, is Brigham Young consolidated all those things. And it was actually against what Joseph Smith created. Because in the Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith created an institution that was supposed to be more democratic and independent because the quorum of the 12, their role was to go preach the gospel, not to be the ones that held all the keys and administered. And they were equal in authority with the quorums of the seventies and the councils of the Church. And there was a law of common consent. And Brigham Young, after Joseph passed away, consolidated all those things. The general patriarch of the Church was the one who held all the keys. Brigham Young totally changed what Joseph Smith created. So I, I see. What I see is the creative destruction, the institution that's long in the tooth. They're losing control. They're afraid. They're more afraid of the Ammon Bundy types. Like Ammon Bundy probably still has a temple recommend. The members of the Church who went and invaded the Capitol, an act of sedition, many of those probably still have a temple recommend. But the leaders of the church are afraid of the conservatives. And so they don't go after those kind of people. They go after the people who are the prophetic voices, like the Gina Colvins instead. And so we're just going to see, you know, we're Kremlin launching what is going to happen in the future. Are they going to reintroduce and allow these prophetic voices and the theology from the margins to make a difference? And will the quorum of the 15 let go of the degree of power and influence and royalty that they have and, and, and explore and enhance and amplify the voices of people like the Gibbons and have emeritus status and have women have full and equal priesthood? And will they do those things to, to introduce the kind of innovation that needs to happen going forward? And the Givens are just playing their role now. The last thing that I would share is in the book, the Givens talk about the restoration, but they don't. They don't share the. A completely false narrative that if you were to go back to, you know, 40 CE, that there would be wards and stakes and deacons, priests and teachers in a Melchizedek and Aaronic priesthood and temple where they wore green aprons and all that kind of stuff, and that today's church is a restoration of that. The Givens don't allude to that at all. What they do in the book when they talk about what's being restored is they explain that the first Christians turned ad hoc communities into a society governed by love. The Christian Revolution was the presence of a group joined by spiritual power into an extended family and everyone was equal, male, female, servant, slave, etc. That's what the original Christian communities were. That's what the Givens are presenting, is the thing that needs to be restored. Is, are, are, are these kinds of things. Now, whether or not the Givens think that we can do that and transition to theology from the margins and, and have the leaders of the church just be leaders instead of authorities or things like that, I don't know how they would answer that question, but that's how I put together what Brit and Jana have shared.

Creative Destruction, Final Reflections, and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [03:11:12] I love it. You know, I think, I think that it'd be hard unless you just hate the church and want to see it destroyed. It's really hard to argue that the, the church replacing Daniel Peterson and Lewis Midgley and Bill Hamblin with people like Spencer Fluman and Patrick Mason and Terrell and Fiona Givens and Phil Barlow. How could, how could that be interpreted as anything other than a very positive move? Right.

Anthony Miller [03:11:50] Yeah, it's introducing innovators actually into the system.

John Dehlin [03:11:55] But, but general, I mean, and I'm kind of the worst at this, of sometimes feeling really triggered by, by, by apologists or neo apologists, partly because I feel like sometimes I just feel gaslit. But, but the truth is, if any of you know Patrick Mason or Philip Barlow or Fiona Givens or, you know, Spencer Flumen or any of these people, they're kind people, they're smart people. They are generally people who try and do good in the world. And how is that not promising? And, and you don't, you don't get a position or a double spouse position at the Maxwell Institute without the Brethren approving it. So at some level there is approval for what's going on down there and what's going on all around us. They aren't making, you know, Terrell and Fiona authorities per se, but they're certainly on a mission and they're probably playing a really important role. And how can that not even for someone who is really grouchy about problems in the Church, how could this not be seen as an improvement? How can this book, and I'll just show it one time, I'll just show the image of it because I think it bears promoting. How can this book, All Things New, not be viewed as a step, a positive step forward? If you hate Boyd K. Packer, if you hate Bruce Armaconka, if you hate Joseph Fielding Smith, how can you not love All Things New by Fiona and Terrell Givens. I think that's. I think it's hard to argue with that. Okay, I want to give all of you guys a final chance to say anything you want to close. I didn't give you a warning, but, Anthony, I'm going to have you go first, and I'm going to let Jenna and Britt gather their thoughts. So any final thoughts you want to share, Anthony, before we end,

Anthony Miller [03:13:58] I would just express how grateful I am for the opportunity to participate in this discussion and super grateful that Jana and Britt joined us. We had one other person that we had hoped to join us, but hopefully she'll join us in future discussions. I experience a sense of meaning and connection having these kinds of discussions, whether you want to call it God or whatever it is that you want to call it. You know, I find it value, valuable. It helps me in the work that I do to support people in our local Mormon spectrum group and other people that I interact with. And I'm just really grateful for the forum and the opportunity to participate.

John Dehlin [03:14:41] And I'll do a brag for Anthony. Check out his blog, Unpacking Ambiguity. Anthony is one of the best writers we have in Mormonism, certainly one of the least known for how amazing his writing is. He's coming out with a book. We're all counting on that. He's giving a TED Talk soon. And Anthony is just a beautiful human and a great thinker. And I'm plugging your blog, Anthony, and thank you for those closing comments.

Anthony Miller [03:15:11] Thank you very much.

John Dehlin [03:15:12] All right, Jana, you want to go next?

Jana Spangler [03:15:16] Sure. So I'll just echo how happy I've been to be part of this discussion. I just love all of you, all of the panelists. I love you, John. Love the work that everybody is doing. And I would just say that I also echo. John, what you said about the Givens is in this book and that this is a step in the right direction. Is it the entire solution? No. And I just love that they are doing this. And really, you know, I. My personality type, if anyone knows Enneagram I'm known as, my personality type is the reformer. Like, I feel a lot of. And. And I work with clients in the trenches in a lot of pain like you do, John. And there is a part of me that is always wanting to just get so angry and burn it down and, you know, see a book like this, and it's not enough, and we're not. And I always have to take a reality check. And, you know, from the developmental scientists that I'VE worked with. You know, they will all say, if you take an institution and you try to fix everything all at once and make it a new thing tomorrow, the institution falls apart. Development has to be gradual. You can. You just. It doesn't work. And I hate that, and I hate the pain that so many people are in. And I do think that the things that Terrell and Fiona are doing in this book, if this could trickle through, would help a lot because it would help on the ground leadership and ward members and just people who are making up the body of Christ. Christ think of things in a different way. That would open our hearts in a different way, because when we do imagine a more loving God, which that's what they're bringing to us is this parental, deep, parental love. When you. When that is how you imagine God, then it leaks down to us and our nature and how we treat ourselves and how we treat other people. And that is how we become better. And we probably become better quicker than if it's all just done by leadership. So I hope people will read the book and I hope people will take. Really think about the way that. That they're talking about these things. And I think it be. It's just. It's nothing but good for the state of where we are in the church. And if, personally, if I had had some of these definitions 40 years ago, I. I would have avoided a lot of pain myself. So

John Dehlin [03:18:00] I love it. Thank you, Jana. And I'm gonna. I'm gonna do it again. Jana is one of the four or five coaches or therapists that I refer directly to, because I'm not. I'm not in a position to take clients right now. I'm too busy doing. Doing stuff like this. So Janice Spangler, you can find her at Symmetry Solutions. She's a coach. She does mixed faith marriages. She does individual faith journey stuff. She does development work. She does all sorts of cool things. Adolescents, young adults, adults, relational dynamics, spousal support, all that stuff. Use Jana, because she. She does great work and she can help you and. Or your relationships. Is that all right, Jenna?

Jana Spangler [03:18:50] That's great. Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:18:52] All right. Okay. Take us home, Britt.

Brittany Hartley [03:18:56] Okay, so to Anthony's question of. Of what will the church do with this great work? You know, we aren't the ones who are in positions of power to answer that. And so it'll be interesting to see. To watch Mormonism kind of. Of wrestle with these things. And I hope they can integrate these things fast enough, you know, to match the kids that are leaving who don't know any way other way of Mormonism than the more damaging one that they've been taught. So it'll be interesting to see how they answer that question. I have one more quote that I'm going to end with. It's in the very last chapter of the book. It says Joseph quote quickly came to recognize that like the ruins of an ancient temple, beautiful remnants of the original church lay all about them, broken, rent and disjointed as scattered fragments of Mormonism. So this whole book was about the great story of Mormonism and how it can lead one to. To live a full relational life. And my challenge to people is that whatever is your great source story, make it the best possible story that brings out the best possible you, right? If Mormonism is the story that speaks to you, make it the best Mormon story. Mormon great story. And Terrell and Fiona Givens are a huge piece in really establishing that story. And if you want to go more the Christian route, make it the best great story of Christianity, this kind of universal Christ that Jenna talks about. And if you're gonna do humanism and you just call all that humanism, make it the most expansive humanism and not kind of the judgmental atheist, you know, kind of form of humanism. And so whatever is your great story, just make it the best, the best possible so that you can become the best possible you through it. And then if there's anything shameless plug, if there's anything that would talked about, we got into a little bit of philosophy and theology, if any of that is super interesting to you. John brought up there's my book right there. Mormon Philosophy Simplified and Easy LDS approach to Classic Philosophical Questions. And the premise of the book is that if you took all the greatest thinkers, and we've mentioned many in this process, in this podcast, if you mentioned all the greatest thinkers of Mormonism and you put them in a room room and you ask them basic philosophy, you know, philosophy, 101 questions. What would be the best answers that would come out of that room? What would that look like for Mormonism? And then as you're, you know, reading these questions, you can also ask yourself, you know, does this still speak to you? Is this something that you want to carry with you in your journey or is are you answering the question a different way? Because each of us have a philosophy that we live by, and so the more we can think about it and kind of, you know, really have it be an expression of our beliefs, then the more, you know, true and authentic it is for your life. So that's all I have. John.

John Dehlin [03:22:02] All right, well, Britt, Jenna and Anthony, you guys are so lovely, you humans, I shouldn't say guys, you all are lovely. I'm so happy to have you back. I hope to have you back many times more. And I know we went three and a half hours and I just want to thank you guys for your commitment, who you are in the community, the thoughtfulness and the love that you and the fairness that you guys all exemplify. And I just appreciate your friendship and I, I think I'm better because I associate with you all. So thank you for joining us today.

Anthony Miller [03:22:41] Thank you.

Jana Spangler [03:22:42] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:22:44] All right. Yeah, lots of love. All right, everyone, and come back again. Listeners, we have thought about doing a second episode where we have just listeners come on and share their reactions to this book. So if any of you are interested in that, we've got a few men that have expressed some interest. Interest. We would only want to do a balance of men, women, transgender, non, binary. We would want, you know, LGBT people. We would want youth, young people, millennials. It would be fun to get a diverse set of views or reactions to this book. So if any of you are interested in appearing on a panel or just hopping on like a call in show and sharing some perspectives about this book book, reach out to me and I'll put you in a queue and we'll do a follow up episode. Thanks to Taryn and Fiona for writing this book. You guys are on my naughty list until you come on Mormon Stories. There was a time where you were willing to do that. You and Richard Bushman have no longer shown a willingness to do that. And until you do, you're on my naughty list. But you can find fix that. I'll treat you well, but I'm going to just swallow my pride and I'm going to say check out this book. Give it to a loved one. All Things New, Rethinking Sin, Salvation and Everything in between by Fiona and Taro Givens. Shout out to the Faith Matters folks for making this happen. I'm going to hold Patrick Mason to his word that he's going to come on Mormon Stories and also and talk about his new book. So I hope he does that and I'll just end by saying please. Thank you to everyone who supports Mormon Stories podcast, who your donations make all this possible. If you want to see more programming like this, you can go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button and you can become a monthly subscriber. Less than one out of A thousand of my listeners actually donate. And we can only do this with your support. So thank you. If you support us, please support us. If you don't also support other good things out there, there's lots of good efforts out there. Gina Colvin's a thoughtful faith. Sunstone is great. Our Radio Free Mormons, great. What am I forgetting, guys? Any other cool things that people need to support?

Community Recommendations and Sign-Off

Anthony Miller [03:25:15] Marriage on a tightrope.

John Dehlin [03:25:16] Marriage on a tightrope. Women's exponent, too. What else?

Brittany Hartley [03:25:21] If you donated to all of those, you would. You would go to liberal Mormon heaven. If you donated to all of those, that would be a great place to start.

John Dehlin [03:25:31] All right, yes, I hear Latter Day Lesbian podcast is good. I haven't listened to it, but all right, so, yeah, support worthy, worthy causes and email us. And then again, just share this episode with us. Many people as possible. Give us positive reviews on Facebook or on Apple podcast app or on itunes. Spread the word and give us your feedback. Please comment on YouTube, please comment on Facebook, please comment in the MormonStories.org comment section of this post. And just stay in touch. And if you have ideas, email me@mormonstoriesmail.com if you want to be mean, send those to Anthony. Anthony, what's your email? Anthony will take all your mean email unpacking ambiguitymail.com Whoa. Anthony wants the mean emails. Okay. All right. All right, thanks, everybody. You guys take care. Have a good night and we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast.

Anthony Miller [03:26:32] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:26:32] Take care, everybody.

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.