Introduction and Guest Background

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's February 23, 2026, and we have today on Mormon Stories, a man who was a Mormon bishop just two years ago and an active temple worker just four months ago.

John Dehlin [00:00:17] And he reached out to us in response to Bishop Bo Euler's soft white underbelly interview where Bo Euler told the story of his interactions reporting a child abuser to the LDS Chur hotline for dealing with child abuse. And in response to Beau telling his story as a bishop about reporting a child abuser to the Mormon Church's hotline, the LDS Church responded with a press release calling basically calling Beau a liar. And also an army of Mormon apologists on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube all came out basically smearing Bishop Bo Euler to call him a liar about what he said were his experiences as a Mormon bishop reporting a child abuser to the Mormon Church's hotline.

John Dehlin [00:01:12] And in response to that smearing of Bishop Bo Euler, Christopher Jenkins reached out because he has also relatively recently and even as recently as a week or two ago, had interactions with the Mormon Church's hotline and he felt in inspired to want to come on Mormon Stories to share his views. Now, just a couple disclaimers. He's still currently attending church with his family. And also I think it's important to note that a major theme for today will also be his faith journey and messages that the church taught him around the LGBT experience, particularly parenting as his kids grow into maturity will be important themes as well as.

John Dehlin [00:02:00] But you know, that's the introduction. I think today is going to be a really important issue to help shed more light on all sorts of things, including how the Mormon Church handles child sexual abuse and LGBT issues and faith issues. So without any further ado, Christopher Jenkins, thank you for coming on Mormon Stories podcast.

Christopher Jenkins [00:02:19] Thank you, John. I'm happy to be here, I think.

John Dehlin [00:02:24] Well, we didn't. You reached out to us.

Christopher Jenkins [00:02:26] I did, I did.

John Dehlin [00:02:27] Hopefully we didn't twist your arm, I don't think. No, no.

Christopher Jenkins [00:02:30] I felt it was important to tell my experience.

John Dehlin [00:02:37] And of course, Margi is with me as well. Hey, Margi, thanks for joining.

Margi Dehlin [00:02:41] Yes, I'm really happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:02:44] Christopher, do you want to give any. I mean, I just stated my understanding of your intentions and the backstory at a high level. Is there anything you want to say about why you wanted to come on to do this interview today, especially given that you're still attending Church. You were so recently a temple worker and a bishop just two years ago.

Christopher Jenkins [00:03:05] I recently went through a change in my faith, but wanting to support my two children that are still attending and my wife, I had been very quiet about it. I told her and my bishop, and that's about it. As far as members of my ward, I told a couple of my children, and I didn't really want to speak out. But when I saw the press release on Beau Euler and then watched his interview, I felt it was something I needed to do and let the chips fall where they may, pretty much. That being said, my goal was never to dissuade anyone else from their faith in the church. In fact, if my kids get a hold of this video, and you don't necessarily need to watch it because it may not help your faith in the church. If you're happy and you want to stay, I'm happy to support you.

Margi Dehlin [00:04:21] We're there.

John Dehlin [00:04:23] Love it.

Christopher Jenkins [00:04:24] That's my disclaimer.

John Dehlin [00:04:25] Okay. Beautiful. And I also. It's worth noting that your patriarchal blessing you mentioned as a key theme that played a pivotal role in your life that we'll weave into the narrative if you'd like.

Christopher Jenkins [00:04:38] Yeah, it did direct a significant portion, actually. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:42] So we'll get to that, too. All right, so let's do just some of the basics of your Mormon childhood, just to know to what extent. It's pretty similar to what others have experienced. Were your parents LDs?

Christopher's Mormon Upbringing and Youth

Christopher Jenkins [00:04:58] My parents were both active LDs most of my life. In my teenage years, they were a little inactive. I fell in with a great group of young men that there were the five of us. We still get together every few years and for a weekend and things.

John Dehlin [00:05:19] What city, state?

Christopher Jenkins [00:05:21] Grew up in Walla Walla, Washington. Okay. Which is current. My current hometown. I moved back several years ago. My parents were both, you know, Idaho. Farm kids, met, married. My dad was probably a closeted narcissist, honestly. So that played into my youth and their interactions and some mental health issues for myself through my life.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:02] But, yeah, were the mental health issues present as a child?

Christopher Jenkins [00:06:08] I dealt with some depression in high school.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:11] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:06:13] Yeah. And had some counseling and some medications through just realizing that I would never receive the love that I sought from him. He wasn't capable of that. And coming to that realization, I could move past it and. And kind of heal.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:39] Wow. I feel like that's a story all unto itself.

Christopher Jenkins [00:06:43] Probably.

John Dehlin [00:06:43] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:44] I imagine. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:46] You mentioned work being an important theme, and it almost sounds like working for your worthiness.

Christopher Jenkins [00:06:52] Yeah. Yeah, it was you know, being a child of two Idaho farm kids, you worked. That's how you, you provided value to the family and to life. You got out and worked. And at 14, I painted the house on my own. And 16, I taught myself how to weld. And I finished welding a pickup bed on my dad's truck so I could then drive it to school.

John Dehlin [00:07:28] Dang.

Christopher Jenkins [00:07:30] So yeah, I learned how to work and I was very self motivated, trying to. Seek the love that I was, you know, I was trying to seek love and appreciation from my parents and things, which.

Margi Dehlin [00:07:51] So yeah, if we were going to go back for a minute to childhood, meaning, let's just say up to like 12 years old. Ish. How would you describe what you're mentioning it? But I kind of want to go a little bit deeper. The love that you experienced, what messages you absorbed about love through that time and what you yearned for.

Christopher Jenkins [00:08:17] I experienced love when I was contributing, when I was doing well in school, when I was doing my chores, things like that, you know, helping. And you know, I, I also learned that from example. My mother will readily admit that she was always striving to earn her father's

John Dehlin [00:08:49] love

Margi Dehlin [00:08:52] and some generational.

Christopher Jenkins [00:08:56] So I mean, just now I can look back and say, yeah, I was wishing for love unconditional, just to be loved for being me.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:07] And you were pretty aware of that. No, at the time. So not at the time.

Christopher Jenkins [00:09:11] At the time. This is retrospect.

Margi Dehlin [00:09:13] Okay, so let me ask you this. As a boy through those ages, how did you experience your home and love in the moment?

Christopher Jenkins [00:09:26] I mean, I think I had a good home life. Good. Growing up, third of four kids, two older brothers, They called me the labor negotiator because I was always trying to negotiate my fair share as being the third child. Um, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:49] And

Christopher Jenkins [00:09:51] I was always, I guess I always had this innate sense of fairness and what should be right and trying to, Trying to protect myself, I guess.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:02] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [00:10:04] But no, my. I felt love from my siblings, my mom. I don't. I realize now my dad wasn't really capable of that. I mean, he was supportive. As much as it could revolve around him.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:26] And then just one more question from 0 to 12 and kind of answering for who the boy. Right. As opposed to like you being an adult looking back. But do you remember in the years, kind of in primary, it feeling like a good fit to be in the church as opposed to like. Nope. You already had, you know, some friction. It was difficult or shame already appearing. How is the fit for you? You know, up until Kind of teen.

Christopher Jenkins [00:11:02] Yeah, that's a good question. I didn't actually enjoy the church as a. In the prior when I was a. Under age 12, I would rather just stay home. It wasn't until I was 12 and I fell in with these other young men that I was all my same age that I really started enjoying having the social experience at the church. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:32] And you mentioned all of your friends were sons of bishops. Mormon bishops at one point or another, or many of them.

Christopher Jenkins [00:11:38] Three of the five.

John Dehlin [00:11:39] Okay. That's a lot. Ye.

Christopher Jenkins [00:11:40] Three of the five. I and another friend were the odd guys out. We caused all the trouble, but they included us anyways. We were the instigators. We were the. Actually one of the bishop's sons was. He came up with all the ideas but never would do them.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] He's like Tom Sawyer.

Christopher Jenkins [00:12:05] The other two of us would say, okay, let's go toilet papering. How many rolls are we going to go buy?

John Dehlin [00:12:11] That's so Mormon.

Christopher Jenkins [00:12:12] Y.

John Dehlin [00:12:12] We have not discussed toilet papering houses enough on Mormon Street. That was a core part of.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:19] Thank you for bringing that.

Christopher Jenkins [00:12:20] There was epic toilet paper battles growing up.

John Dehlin [00:12:25] I bet there's people that don't know what toilet papering is. Is that a national thing or is that a Mormon thing?

Christopher Jenkins [00:12:29] I don't know. I think it's.

Margi Dehlin [00:12:31] It definitely extended back east as a Mormon thing.

Christopher Jenkins [00:12:34] I haven't heard of my kids ever doing it now.

John Dehlin [00:12:37] We would toilet paper cute girls that we liked. And I think looking back, like, I'm not sure that was smart. We would. Their parents probably didn't love it. They had to clean it up.

Christopher Jenkins [00:12:50] Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. We recruited our seminary teacher to drive us and yeah, it was. We. It was a lot of fun.

John Dehlin [00:13:00] So did you do seminary? I did in the high school years.

Christopher Jenkins [00:13:04] Early morning seminary for four years. Well, three and a half. I spent one semester in Arizona with my aunt and uncle in high school, and so I got to experience release time for one semester.

John Dehlin [00:13:16] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:13:17] I learned more in that semester than I did probably the other three and a half years.

John Dehlin [00:13:21] That's where you attended on the school premises while you were going to high school.

Christopher Jenkins [00:13:27] You walked across the street to the.

John Dehlin [00:13:29] At or near the school premises. That was better than the home. Like the early morning seminary.

Christopher Jenkins [00:13:36] Early morning. I actually enjoyed early morning seminary. But yeah, we didn't learn as much. I had a couple of my friends would pride themselves on seeing how long they could distract the teacher from the lesson. And sometimes our lesson was five minutes.

Patriarchal Blessing and Mission Experience

John Dehlin [00:13:54] You mentioned the patriarchal blessing, having a Pivotal role in your life and maybe in a not so good way. Do you want to talk about that?

Christopher Jenkins [00:14:01] So, yeah, I can't say it was a bad thing because of how my life has turned out. But. So I received my patriarchal blessing when I was 16 and the patriarch. So before that I had strong interest in engineering or architecture. I really enjoyed drawing. I was setting the curve in my drafting class at school and just doing. I really enjoyed that sort of thing. Got my patriarchal blessing. And it stated specifically that I should consider the profession of medicine.

John Dehlin [00:14:40] Wow, that's so prescriptive.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:43] Yeah, well. And detailed.

Christopher Jenkins [00:14:44] Detailed, yes. Specific. And so immediately I shifted my focus. I quit drafting and started taking chemistry and biology and that sort of thing as a junior in high school and

Margi Dehlin [00:15:00] had a big impact.

Christopher Jenkins [00:15:01] Had a big impact. There was a promise in there, which I. Right after he said that the promise was that the Lord would bless my mind to be able to. Because the first thing that crossed my mind was I'm not smart enough to be a doctor. But then there was this promise of that the Lord would bless my mind that I would be able to understand. And you know, I think psychologically that really affected me and I never really doubted I could do it. So I just forged ahead.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:36] Yeah. And for anyone new to Mormon stories, do you like to share what a patriarchal version is?

John Dehlin [00:15:41] I'll just summarize. That's basically some 50 plus year old Mormon man laying his hands on your head, basically saying a prayer, pronouncing a blessing on you that tells you what the rest of your life is going to be like. And in that he's telling you you should pursue medicine.

Christopher Jenkins [00:16:02] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:16:03] Right, yes. Which is kind of like fortune telling or tarot card reading, but from a religious perspective.

Christopher Jenkins [00:16:09] And very unusual that it was that specific. From what I've heard, that is unusual.

John Dehlin [00:16:14] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We'll see later in the story how that turns out. So by the time you're graduating, are you feeling like you're on the normal Mormon track that we've talked about a lot on Mormon stories?

Christopher Jenkins [00:16:33] I worked for six months, didn't really want to go to college right after because I wanted to leave on my mission as soon as I turned 19. So I just worked for six months and then left on my mission. I served in Rosario, Argentina, around what year time frame? 95 to 97.

John Dehlin [00:17:00] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:17:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:02] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:17:05] Had a great time there. I really enjoyed it. I probably wouldn't have been able to learn Spanish any other way. I, you know, I'm not real quick with languages. So, but yeah, I had a great experience. I enjoyed it. I had some spiritual experiences.

John Dehlin [00:17:33] You mentioned that some scrupulosity or some religious OCD started emerging on your mission, is that right?

Christopher Jenkins [00:17:39] Yeah, I was very letter of the law when I got there, you know, and I again was kind of working for my value. I was trying to hustle. Hustle? Yeah. I memorized the discussions in four months. The goal was set by the mission president was to memorize them in six months.

Christopher Jenkins [00:18:05] And I just had to be an overachiever. You know, I was letter of the law. Getting out in the studying and getting out in the morning and getting back to the apartment on time. Once in my mission, our zone leaders came up with this grand idea to tell us all to get up an hour earlier.

Christopher Jenkins [00:18:32] So instead of getting up at 6:30, we got up at 5:30. I don't know if anybody else in the zone actually did this, but my companion and I, we may have been the only ones. But yeah, for a month so, maybe six weeks, we were getting up at 5:30 in the morning.

Christopher Jenkins [00:18:50] And during that I think I had a nervous breakdown. I don't know what exactly I had. I got up or I woke up one morning and couldn't get out of bed. Just had this mental block. I laid there for a couple hours. My companion didn't know what to do with me. Finally we called the mission president and we traveled across the city and I visited with him. I can't remember the interaction there.

Margi Dehlin [00:19:18] Were you in distress? Not being able to, like, how would you describe.

Christopher Jenkins [00:19:22] Okay, I was just numb. I think my body and brain were just shut down. Shut down because I was overworking. So I think the mission president, when he heard about that, shut that idea down and told everyone, no, you need sleep. Sleep till 6:30. And those zone leaders got reprimanded. But. Yeah, but I think through my mission I actually learned to relax a little bit and I wasn't as letter of the law by the end.

John Dehlin [00:20:06] It sounds like a healthy change.

Christopher Jenkins [00:20:08] I think it was, yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:09] And would you say, do you think it was brought on by that extreme response to trying to overachieve in an already, let's just say demanding situation or

Christopher Jenkins [00:20:21] no, I don't know.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:23] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:20:24] Yeah, I don't know. Maybe.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:30] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:20:30] So you get home and college, you finished college pretty quickly?

Christopher Jenkins [00:20:35] Yes. So I got home in mid December, started at BYU in January of that of 98 and graduated in August of 2000. So I went. I was actually eight semesters because I went spring, summer, halfway through my experience at byu. I realized if I changed majors from microbiology to marriage and Family Science, that I could graduate a year earlier because it was a lot less demanding of a major.

John Dehlin [00:21:16] But you're still taking pre med classes, so it's not like you're taking easy classes at that point.

Christopher Jenkins [00:21:20] I had finished most of my pre med classes and I had taken the M or I was taking the mcat. And so, yeah, I did the fast track. Yeah, kind of the fast track.

John Dehlin [00:21:36] But also you mentioned you were working 30 hours a week. So doing school in two and a half years, eight straight semesters, working 30 hours a week, taking a pre med course load. I guess that kind of shows the Idaho farm parents work ethic shining through.

Christopher Jenkins [00:21:55] I think it also goes to. I never felt like I was so smart as everyone else. I always viewed myself as. I may not be as smart as everyone else, but I can work. I can make up the difference by working hard.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:14] Right.

Christopher Jenkins [00:22:16] And so that's what I did.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:18] That's so interesting. And you probably, I mean, did you receive, I feel like culturally American culture, but also Mormon culture. Did you receive a lot of positive reinforcement for that?

Christopher Jenkins [00:22:30] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:31] Yeah. So you feel this deficit inside yourself and then you try to compensate by saying, well, what I can control is just to work really hard.

Christopher Jenkins [00:22:40] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:41] Yep.

Marriage, Medical Career, and Church Callings

John Dehlin [00:22:44] So we agreed that we, you know, kind of your, your wife and certain parts of your family journey we, you know, won't focus on today. But tell us just at a high level, you got, I assume you got married in the temple. Tell us how many kids you had and kind of what, you know, you went to med school.

Christopher Jenkins [00:23:03] Actually, we. I went to Missouri for med school. Kirksville, Missouri, which is a. I come from a small town and it was the smallest town in the United States that has a medical school. So I like that idea. And my wife happened to be attending the state school there. She. I kind of robbed the cradle, I guess. She was an 18 year old freshman and I was a first year med school med student when we met.

Margi Dehlin [00:23:36] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:23:38] We started dating and two weeks later we were engaged. And then, oh, wow, we were married five months later, six months later.

John Dehlin [00:23:52] And that's not super unusual.

Christopher Jenkins [00:23:56] I don't know. I don't regret any of that. It's been a wonderful ride. She's a wonderful person.

John Dehlin [00:24:02] And how many kids did y' all end up having?

Christopher Jenkins [00:24:04] We have six children. Oh, wow.

John Dehlin [00:24:07] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:24:08] Oldest is 22 and the youngest is 12.

John Dehlin [00:24:10] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:24:11] Right now.

John Dehlin [00:24:12] And anything abnormal about the time between getting married, having kids and becoming a Mormon bishop? Anything important to your Eventual faith journey or

Christopher Jenkins [00:24:27] graduated from medical school. I always had. My mom had had to work when I was a child, and so I always had. And she had gotten her college degree. So when we got married, I told her, I don't care what you do, but you have to finish your schooling. You have to finish your degree. So my wife graduated at the same time I graduated from med school. We moved back to Washington state for residency.

John Dehlin [00:25:05] What was your area?

Christopher Jenkins [00:25:07] Family medicine.

John Dehlin [00:25:08] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:25:08] That's what I specialized in. I went to that specific residency because they had a strong OB component. So I finished residency doing C sections and deliveries. And then we went to Idaho. Rural town in Idaho for four years. And I did everything from cradle to grave medicine, did colonoscopies, EGTs. I loved it. It was great. Only problem was that the school system wasn't up to par, and it was kind of going downhill at the time.

John Dehlin [00:25:45] So are you comfortable sharing the name of the town?

Christopher Jenkins [00:25:48] Orphino, Idaho.

John Dehlin [00:25:49] Okay. And what's the closest city that we would have heard of?

Christopher Jenkins [00:25:53] Lewiston, Idaho, maybe.

John Dehlin [00:25:54] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:56] Do you know Lewiston, John?

John Dehlin [00:25:57] I mean, I've heard of it, but

Christopher Jenkins [00:25:59] it's on the middle of nowhere on the Clearada River. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. And I loved working at the hospital there. They treated me so well. And, yeah, we moved to Walla Walla for the schools and to be closer to my parents because they were getting older. Two weeks after we moved to Walla Walla, I told my wife, I want to move back because I hated my new job. And she said, nope, we're here. We've been there ever since.

John Dehlin [00:26:31] In Walla Walla?

Christopher Jenkins [00:26:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:32] Where you grew up?

Christopher Jenkins [00:26:33] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:26:33] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:34] Has it grown on you?

Christopher Jenkins [00:26:36] Oh, no. I love Walla Walla itself.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:38] I just kind of ingest.

Christopher Jenkins [00:26:41] The medical community is difficult.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:46] Oh.

Christopher Jenkins [00:26:47] There's a lot of walla. A lot of politics.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:49] Mm, I see. So, okay. I mean, should we take a minute to touch on parenting?

Christopher Jenkins [00:26:55] Sure.

Margi Dehlin [00:26:56] Are we there yet, or you want to talk about your approach, how you found yourself parenting during these years as your kids are growing up?

Christopher Jenkins [00:27:07] So I. You know, my major in college was marriage and Family Science, Child development.

John Dehlin [00:27:15] From byu.

Christopher Jenkins [00:27:16] From byu. So, you know, I'm supposed to be the expert, Right. So I was. Probably a little more. If I had to go back and do it again, I'd probably be a little less authoritative and a little more permissive.

John Dehlin [00:27:37] Well, byu, I think, taught high control, high support. Right.

Christopher Jenkins [00:27:42] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:27:43] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [00:27:45] And that's kind of what I grew up with and what I felt was right. Some of my kids set what worked well for, and some were more resistant to it. I think they've all turned out pretty well so far. So they still talk to me.

John Dehlin [00:28:10] You didn't do, as far as, you know, irreparable damage?

Christopher Jenkins [00:28:13] I don't. I don't think so.

John Dehlin [00:28:14] Okay. All right. So I assume you and your wife both had many of the significant callings in your Mormon congregations leading up to your becoming bishop, but what were the major callings you both had?

Christopher Jenkins [00:28:28] Just in residency, I was called as a counselor in a student ward, a single student ward. Before my kids didn't need a primary, I was there. And then when we moved to Idaho, I served as counselor again in a bishopric. Always kind of focused on the youth when I was there. And then when we moved to Walla Walla, I was called as a scoutmaster, which I really enjoyed and would have stayed there. Forever if they would have let me. But so, yeah, always had callings with the youth and always really enjoyed being out camping and being with the boys. And that was actually, as a bishop, that was one of my favorite things was priest quorum.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:43] Oh, yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [00:29:44] And, you know, I was happy if we had a five minute lesson or not. I mean, we'd go around and do cherries and pits and just ask everybody about their week and just talk and just my main goal was just to have a connection with them and. Yeah, and that was. That was actually one of my favorite things of being a bishop was hanging out with priests.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:15] Really just that connection time. It seems like you and cherries and pits. I mean, I'm going to make an assumption, but is it kind of like highlights things that are good, things that are hard?

Christopher Jenkins [00:30:25] What good happened this week? What bad happened this week? Tell us about your. Your week type thing. And, you know, if they weren't taking enough time with that, I'm like, come on, tell me more. We don't want to rush to get to this lesson.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:39] Yeah, that's really connection based.

Called as Bishop: Training and Approach

John Dehlin [00:30:43] What year were you called as bishop?

Christopher Jenkins [00:30:44] 2019.

John Dehlin [00:30:45] 2019. So that's 7ish years ago.

Christopher Jenkins [00:30:50] Yeah, it was the end of 2019. Six and a half years.

John Dehlin [00:30:53] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:30:54] One of the first things I did was I bought a pair of wingback chairs like these and put them in my office because I didn't want to sit behind a desk.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:08] Oh, so it allows you to be.

Christopher Jenkins [00:31:09] I didn't have an authoritarian relationship. I just wanted to. I mean, if people are in for an interview, I want to sit and talk to them, find out what's going on with Them. I wanted to have that connection with them. And as an added bonus, the priest would rush to my office to see who could get the wing back chairs.

Margi Dehlin [00:31:30] And apparently they liked talking with you.

Christopher Jenkins [00:31:34] Well, they were all competing over who get the soft chairs meeting.

John Dehlin [00:31:41] And what type of training did you get as a Mormon bishop? And let's just say specifically around matters of abuse.

Christopher Jenkins [00:31:54] We may have touched on it in a bishopric training. I don't remember specifically. I spent five years as a counselor in bishop two different bishoprics, but I never got exposed to any abuse issues through that. A couple of disciplinary counsels, but never really any abuse. I did have training with abuse professionally and had to report some child abuse as a physician a couple times. But no, I didn't have any much training that I remember. I knew about the hotline and I knew I was supposed to call it if I ran into abuse.

John Dehlin [00:32:51] Okay. And that's. That's pretty much all you knew about that?

Margi Dehlin [00:32:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:55] Okay. And so there's a lot that you mentioned loving about being a bishop, including working with the priests quorum and that sort of thing. Did you have opinions about how to handle people who had sins or transgressions? Worthiness stuff. Also, did you have opinions about being lgbt? What types of worldviews did you have about sin and appropriate behavior that influenced how you bishoped?

Christopher Jenkins [00:33:34] I probably pretty much towed the. The church policy line. Yeah, I was probably pretty letter of the law about a lot of things. When people came in confess, I tried to be an open ear and help them try to understand the atonement and feel forgiven. I did have an interesting experience with a young man who came in and actually it was at Trek he confessed to having issues with masturbation. And I kind of gave him a puzzled look and said, you know, I'm going to have to look, but I don't even think that's in the manual anymore. I don't know if we even call that a sin.

John Dehlin [00:34:41] Growing up, what had you been taught about that?

Christopher Jenkins [00:34:44] Definitely, definitely Miracle forgiveness. Chapter four, verse, first page. I can show you exactly where it was.

John Dehlin [00:34:51] For those who don't know, what did it say?

Christopher Jenkins [00:34:53] It said masturbation was a sin and would lead to. I can't remember exactly, but homosexuality and other things. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:07] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:35:08] I knew the exact page that was on.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] But you got the sense that somewhere along the way the church softened that stance.

Christopher Jenkins [00:35:15] Yeah. And I don't know when it happened. Somebody told me back in 2010 they took it out of the handbook of instructions. Yeah. And I don't remember not hearing about it. I just. And I couldn't remember at the time that young man came to me and I actually, you know, went to my stake president and asked him about it, and he said, well, I think we should still consider it a sin. Like what? There's nothing. There's no guidelines on it. Unless somebody tells me. And I'm not going to go by miracle forgiveness anymore. Some. Unless somebody tells me or shows me where it is, I'm not going to tell my congregation it is a sin. Now, you can release me for that if you want, but that's where I'm at.

John Dehlin [00:36:16] Your stake president you felt was wanting.

Christopher Jenkins [00:36:19] Yes, he was encouraging me to still consider it a sin and have members repent.

John Dehlin [00:36:26] You know, what that's introducing is two things. The influence of your stake president, the influence of stake presidents over bishops, which is off book, it's off script, it's off manual. And that's normal, that a stake president's gonna think about how they were raised in the church, how they were a bishop, how. How they were counseled by their stake presidents. And so there's this whole. I think Boyd K. Packer used to call it the unwritten order of things. There's this whole culture of obedience and practice that isn't even institutionalized formally that is influential.

Christopher Jenkins [00:37:05] And I understand completely where he's coming from, because we're the exact same age.

John Dehlin [00:37:08] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [00:37:09] My stake president and. And myself, we were raised in the same era of the church. In mid-90s. For the strength of the Youth came out when I was 14. It was first published and it did talk about masturbation as a sin.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:28] I feel like this is also introducing that concept of ecclesiastical. The roulette side.

John Dehlin [00:37:35] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:37:35] Because there's space here for how it's being interpreted and implemented. And so depending if a youth saw you, it would be a very different thing than if they saw the stake president. And this is what we hear all the time. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:53] You mentioned one of your first interviews being with your son or one of your kids. Do you want to talk about that?

Christopher Jenkins [00:38:01] Yeah. So my daughter, she's trans female. And I know it sounds kind of odd when she came in for her interview to become a priest, advancing in the priesthood. This is, you know, two months after I'd been called as bishop, she told me that she'd read the CES letter and didn't believe in the Book of Mormon, didn't believe any of it. And I was like, what's the CS letter?

John Dehlin [00:38:38] So this is 2019. 2020, something like that.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:41] And Your child is the one that. Wow.

John Dehlin [00:38:46] So as a bishop, you hadn't had training in either that a CS letter existed and certainly not about the historical or truth claims problems addressed to the CES letter? No. And that's after the Gospel topics essays had been released. Had you been made aware of the Gospel Topics essays?

Christopher Jenkins [00:39:05] I didn't know about the Gospel Topics essays until four months ago.

John Dehlin [00:39:09] Oh, okay. So. Wow.

Christopher Jenkins [00:39:11] So I served four years as a bishop and never knew about the Gospel topic essays.

John Dehlin [00:39:15] So years after the Gospel Topics essays addressing truth claims issues were released, you would not. Neither had you been told that they existed or taught about them, nor did you ever instruct members to consult them because you didn't know they existed As a Mormon bishop.

Christopher Jenkins [00:39:33] Yes. Correct.

John Dehlin [00:39:34] That's wild.

Christopher Jenkins [00:39:35] Didn't know about him.

John Dehlin [00:39:36] Wow. Until just a couple months ago. Okay, so certainly the issues in the CES letter, you hadn't.

A Child's LGBT Identity Challenges the Family

Christopher Jenkins [00:39:43] No, I, you know, I skimmed through it at the time. I was very resistant to a. Very defensive. In my mind. I read. I can't remember whose rebuttal to that, and

John Dehlin [00:40:02] probably Jim Bennett's.

Christopher Jenkins [00:40:04] Yeah, probably. I don't remember. And I felt like, oh, well, this doesn't make me feel good, so it must not be of the spirit. So.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:17] Mm.

Christopher Jenkins [00:40:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:21] So how did you respond to your kid when they're.

Christopher Jenkins [00:40:25] I didn't really. We left it. I didn't know how to respond to him.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:29] And to be clear, she brought it to you in a bishop's capacity?

Christopher Jenkins [00:40:33] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:40:34] Not in a.

Christopher Jenkins [00:40:38] My wife and I kind of decided that. Okay, well, you can still come to church with us because we go to church as a family. So she continued to come to church with us for a while and then about two months later, my third child came to us. This was not as a bishop. They came to us and said that they were non binary bisexual, And I had no idea even what that meant at the time. So. They also said that as a 12 year old in young women's class, she had been made to feel very uncomfortable when they had a lesson about LGBTQ issues. She was having. Some thoughts that direction already and didn't know who to talk to or anything. And, you know, she kept it to herself for a couple years and then finally came to us when. Yeah, when she was 14, I think. 13 or 14.

John Dehlin [00:42:08] Did the church give you any training on how to deal with a member and or youth that comes to you with LGBTQ perspective? Huh? No, none.

Christopher Jenkins [00:42:22] None.

John Dehlin [00:42:22] And did they give you any training on how to deal with the member that came to you? With truth claims or history or faith crisis issues? No, I mean, I'm already thinking a major theme is how unprepared the Mormon church leaves its bishops from today's.

Christopher Jenkins [00:42:39] I didn't really think about it at all like that. At the time. I was thinking more, you know, why me? Why. How did I. What did I do wrong? As a parent, you were looking at two children leave the. Leave the path. You know, how. What. You know, was I too strict with them? As when they were little do you know, blaming yourself, blaming myself, blaming society. You know, I let them have too much Internet access, you know, that they can go online and read the CES letter type thing.

John Dehlin [00:43:25] And I guess with the LGBT stuff, you might wonder if they're socially were influenced.

Christopher Jenkins [00:43:30] Yes, definitely.

John Dehlin [00:43:31] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [00:43:31] You know, it's. I kind of saw it as a. At the time, I kind of saw it as a social contagion.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:41] I see.

Christopher Jenkins [00:43:44] You know, especially in the. Seems like in the middle school, it just seemed like everybody was. Was talking about it and whatnot.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:58] So what I'm kind of hearing you say is that at this point in time, your beliefs kind of created a barrier to you being able to connect with your children in this moment. Would you say that's true or am I?

Christopher Jenkins [00:44:16] Yes, I.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:17] That's what I'm hearing.

Christopher Jenkins [00:44:18] I grew up. When did the proclamation on the family come out? I mean.

John Dehlin [00:44:23] Oh, man, 95.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:25] That was a big time.

Christopher Jenkins [00:44:26] That was the year I left on my mission. I was fully. That was fully ingrained in my mind.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:31] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [00:44:34] Those, you know, preset truths that. That, you know, of gender and sexuality and, you know, marriage that are. That can only be found in these very structured settings and that anything else isn't of God.

John Dehlin [00:44:56] Yeah. So you're a bishop. You're supposed to. You're feeling the pressure to have the model family, to be the model father in your ward. You're counseling other ward members on how to be parents and spouses and good church members. And now you have two of your kids, two of six have either lost their faith or come out to you as LGBT in some way. What was that like?

Christopher Jenkins [00:45:26] That was hard. And it was hard because of the, you know, I was thinking that, you know, if I, you know, have family home in the evening and take them to church every week, and we have family prayer every day, and we read our scriptures, they'll stay in the path and, you know, this is. God will bless my family, and then my kids will follow the path. Right. And that wasn't happening. I was doing everything right. And it Wasn't happening. They were choosing their own path, which is, you know, in hindsight is great,

Margi Dehlin [00:46:07] but so I'm curious, so when your child came to you and talked about being non binary and bisexual, was that the first time? Cause it feels like in your story, it's earlier when you were bishop, but was that the first time as a bishop that you had been introduced to lgbtq? Kind of. Okay. By your. And it was, to be clear, not in a bishop's office. It was in a parenting role. Right.

Christopher Jenkins [00:46:36] Yes, she did that.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:37] They came to you. They came to you and were saying.

Christopher Jenkins [00:46:40] And told us this. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:44] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [00:46:46] And yes, I had been a bishop maybe four or five months.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:52] Yeah. So kind of early on, I think it's interesting within Mormonism, and this is one of those key times of life that, you know, within the box or within the path, what is allowed and what, let's just say success looks like as a parent, what righteousness looks like. It's so specific, it's so narrow that anything that falls outside that, you view it as a deficit, you view it as something as opposed to even things that are good in general life, or things that without this conditioning, without this sort of prescriptive, very narrow path, you would be great things. Right. Like, you have a child that's curious, that is a critical thinker that came upon this.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:45] Right. As a. As a young person that could be viewed as a very positive thing. You have another child that has deconstructed things and really looked internally and is doing work around their identity, and that could have been viewed as a positive thing. But how many times in Mormonism, you know, do we show up and we. We realize, like, that the life that is allowed is so. Not only specific, but so narrow, and anything outside that, it's your fault.

Christopher Jenkins [00:48:16] Yes. And what's my job as a father is to see what I can do to fix this.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:22] To fix it. There's something wrong.

Christopher Jenkins [00:48:23] To fix them. Yeah, there's something wrong. It's either I raised them wrong. What can I do to fix that now? How can I talk them out of this? Yeah, yeah. All these, you know, now I see them as destructive ideas. But.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:42] But at the time.

Christopher Jenkins [00:48:43] But at the time. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:46] I'm just feeling so sad about how unprepared you were, both as an LDS father, but also just especially as a bishop, because it's one thing if you weren't prepared on how to be a healthy dad when your kids come to you with faith or LGBT issues, but to have a bishop that's in charge of an entire congregation, multiple families, multiple parents, multiple kids. And I don't mean to come out too harshly, but knowing the church has $300 billion in assets, it could afford to train its bishops with a basics in Mormon church history, a basics in Mormon church truth claims, basics in, you know, the biology of LGBT issues, even basics in how to handle basic mental health issues, but specifically LGBT issues, even if it's. Just refer them to a competent, licensed, ethical therapist. But it just sounds like you were just kind of pushed out to swim.

Christopher Jenkins [00:49:56] And honestly, it was mostly. Nobody else was coming to me about these issues. It was really just my kids in my congregation. So I thought it was just an us problem. But even if, you know, I'll counter your thought there, though, and say that even if they had a training program, would I have had time to.

Christopher Jenkins [00:50:23] To do that? Training program? I mean, there's so many things they want bishops to do and be trained in. And, you know, and I'm running my practice and. Yeah, I don't know that I would have gotten to it either. Well, I mean, I would have gotten to it after they came to me. I would have gone back and been able to say, okay, what sort of resources? And they have come out with some resources.

Christopher Jenkins [00:50:55] I haven't looked at them in a while. I don't know. There's some things online that focus more on that, but like I said, I haven't looked at them in a while.

John Dehlin [00:51:11] Yeah. And so you mentioned in your outline that you were kind of upset with your children.

Christopher Jenkins [00:51:16] Yeah, there was some resentment. I mean, why are you doing this? Or, like, you know, just, You know, blaming myself, blaming others, saying, you know, we're not. We're not doing what we're supposed to. We're not the eternal family because we have kids straying. And

John Dehlin [00:51:39] being a bishop has to add pressure because, again, like I said previously, you're supposed to be the role model. You might feel pressure to be the role model father and the role model family for the ward.

Christopher Jenkins [00:51:52] There's some of that, I think maybe I don't know that I was ever too worried about being the perfect bishop. I kind of said that you called me so you get what you get type thing.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:12] Hmm.

Christopher Jenkins [00:52:16] I think I probably would have had a lot of. A lot of the same feelings even if I hadn't been bishop at the time.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:26] Can I say something that I feel like it could sound. Well, let me put it this way. So, like, all the love for you, because we all are human. We all, in these instances. And I'll just Say parenting, because that's where we are in parenting.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:44] We show up as we are. We don't know what we don't know, you know. And so offering self compassion to you in that moment, I've been there as well. I think it's innate to parenting, but also recognizing where the conditioning leaves us in those moments, how it fails us. One thing I notice that the church teachings kind of support is inadvertently creating adults that become immature, emotionally immature, and how I would say that is like our children come to us in a confiding capacity and for whatever reason, we have all the conditioning to make it about us right. Instead of truly being able to do the work and focus on the child of the moment and really hear the child and show up for the child and kind of do that work that we are supported through, the way the church actually works through the type of parenting it kind of supports us to be.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:50] To really focus the attention on. This is so stressful. What have I done wrong? Now we have to do these things now we have to fix it. I'm going to give you, I'm going to exude a lot of anxiety now, a lot of sense of. Of failure in my feelings. And it inadvertently creates this focus on the parent along with what we just discussed. And I think it's worth mentioning this dynamic I share in that I've had my own moments with that and it's definitely been part of my reckoning. So just wanted to take a moment for that.

Christopher Jenkins [00:54:30] Yeah, I completely agree. I love that dynamic term, the emotional immaturity. And I recognized that I was immature. I was making it about me and what I was doing as a parent or not doing as a parent or what the. You know, it wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't there for them and support them when they were. They were trying to come to me with something hard.

Margi Dehlin [00:54:59] Right.

John Dehlin [00:55:02] Yeah. And before we now talk about the hotline, I just want to reiterate that even though your sense was that masturbation was no longer prohibited by the church manuals, that your stake president was telling you that it was still wrong even if the manuals didn't say so.

A Confession of Child Abuse Lands on the Bishop's Desk

Christopher Jenkins [00:55:21] Yes. Well, I had some other influence along the lines there when I was trying to understand my child. My wife had sent me a podcast concerning talking to your children about sexuality by Jennifer Finlayson Fife. And I immediately took to her work and listened to a lot of her podcasts. We did several of her courses and grew as a couple, my wife and I.

Christopher Jenkins [00:56:01] So it, you know, and I try. I was working on not seeing how it was about me and seeing how, you know, I could more support my child still in the context of the proclamation on the family though. And that made it very difficult to see past that they were not in compliance with what the church wanted.

Christopher Jenkins [00:56:37] My feelings on masturbation and things like that were more from, you know, the learning with my wife and understanding better our sexuality and things. So yeah, when that young man came to me about masturbation, I was like, I don't see a problem with it.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:05] I see. So it was actually from some education and growth on your own.

Christopher Jenkins [00:57:11] Yes. At that point, nothing from the church.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:14] Yeah, that's important.

Christopher Jenkins [00:57:15] I actually went to one of her in person.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:21] Workshops.

Christopher Jenkins [00:57:22] Workshops a little over three years ago. It was a great experience. It was what I said to several people was what Elders Quorum should be because it was a men's retreat.

John Dehlin [00:57:37] You went as a bishop?

Christopher Jenkins [00:57:39] I was bishop at the time and I had already gone.

John Dehlin [00:57:43] So you're getting training from Jennifer Vinlis in Fife.

Margi Dehlin [00:57:45] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:57:46] That maybe that you should have been giving you.

Christopher Jenkins [00:57:47] There were bishops there where. There was a stake president there.

John Dehlin [00:57:52] Good for her.

Christopher Jenkins [00:57:53] And it was just a wonderful experience because everybody was really open and we were talking and connecting on levels that we should connect in Elders Quorum. But we don't.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:08] Right.

Christopher Jenkins [00:58:08] We're too superficial. We don't. We're not honest. There's just an inherent dishonesty and the superficiality of membership in the church.

John Dehlin [00:58:27] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [00:58:29] And so, yeah, so my feelings on that were. Were changed and influenced by some of Jennifer's work.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:41] Yeah, that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:58:43] Well, shout out to Jennifer. She's a friend and I think she does great work. Okay, well, let's go ahead and dive into the experience you had with somebody who had. Who had engaged in child abuse. And how did they. How do you. And what was, you know, what was the situation?

Christopher Jenkins [00:59:05] So it was a less active sister, maybe late 20s, early 30s, came in and confessed to me that she had had a relationship with a 14 year old teenage boy. The teenage boy had no idea who he was. He wasn't a member of our congregation. And I kind of sat back and said, okay, I'm not sure what to do with that. I'm going to find out. And. As a physician in the state of Washington, I am a mandatory reporter. And so my first thought, well, I need to call the police and we need to have you turn yourself in. But of course, I've been told about the hotline, so I called the hotline.

John Dehlin [01:00:07] So immediately you felt like Your allegiance was to the hotline in the church first?

Christopher Jenkins [01:00:12] Well, I wanted to find out. I wanted to know. I figured they were going to tell me to report before I called. I mean, I figured then they would help me work through how to counsel this sister on turning herself in and, you know, dealing with the legal part of it, and then I could help her work on the repentance part. The legal part is part of the repentance process.

John Dehlin [01:00:40] But, and this was just to be clear, the year. This was around two, three years ago,

Christopher Jenkins [01:00:49] probably three or four years ago. 2022, maybe.

John Dehlin [01:00:52] Okay. 2023. Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [01:00:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:54] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [01:00:55] I don't remember exactly.

John Dehlin [01:00:56] Oh, that's around then.

Christopher Jenkins [01:00:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:57] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [01:01:01] So they. It was a Sunday afternoon. There was nobody in there. Well, they have a secretary answer the phone, and then they take your name and number and they called me back. Same day or same day, about an hour later, I was at home and told me, asked me where I was from and asked me the situation. I told them, and they said, okay, you're not a mandatory reporter. I'm like, I'm not. What do you mean? I thought I had to report this. No, State of Washington, you do not. Have to. Do not have to report. And I was like, okay, so what am I supposed to do?

John Dehlin [01:01:44] Before we jump in there, can I ask you a couple questions? Sure. So we've done some episodes based on the reporting of Michael Resendez of the Associated Press, and then also based on some of the experiences with an attorney, Timothy Kozanoff and others that they were able to, through a lawsuit, obtain the questions that the hotline people used to ask bishops who called in.

John Dehlin [01:02:11] And, you know, we've reviewed those questions at least as they were several years ago. And there were questions like, was the person, was the abuse on church property, and was the abuse done by someone who had a calling in the church? And all of the questions, literally all of them seemed to be around assessing the Mormon Church's legal liability.

John Dehlin [01:02:38] None of the questions were around the health and safety of the victim or of making sure that the perpetrator seeks justice. So do you remember the questions asked, any of the questions asked to you by the hotline person to then lead them to tell you you're not a mandatory reporter? Did they ask legal assessment questions or victim care questions or any of that that you recall?

Christopher Jenkins [01:03:11] I don't remember specifically. They may have just asked me the situation. I had told them and that answered some of those questions. I was just volunteering that, you know, it's a less active sister, so they Would have known that there was no calling, didn't happen on church property. I don't remember if they asked that or if I told them that specifically.

John Dehlin [01:03:42] Got it.

Christopher Jenkins [01:03:43] The. Like I said, I didn't know the victim. I was able to tell them that the abuse was no longer happening. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:59] And was the abuse to a church member?

Christopher Jenkins [01:04:03] Not that I know of.

John Dehlin [01:04:04] Okay. So it's just. It was in this case, pre penitent kind of exchange where somebody is coming to you to confess. Okay. Correct. And do you know the pre penitent laws in Washington?

Christopher Jenkins [01:04:19] I do now. Since this last. I looked them up this last week because I was. In response to the press release. I looked them up and the Bo Euler press release.

John Dehlin [01:04:37] Okay. Do you know what the laws were at the time or now?

Christopher Jenkins [01:04:42] There was no requirement of mandatory reporting. Okay. Might be a little gray area because I was a physician. Right. I'm a physician in the state of Washington.

John Dehlin [01:04:56] Which ethics do you have to.

Christopher Jenkins [01:04:58] I wasn't functioning as a physician and I told them that. That I thought I was a mandatory reporter. And to be clear, when I called them, I only spoke to the secretary and then a lawyer called me back. I never spoke to anybody else. No social worker, therapist, no priesthood leader that could give me any guidance on how to counsel the sister. It was just encouraged them to turn themselves in and work through the repentance process with them.

John Dehlin [01:05:35] So they did tell you to encourage them to turn themselves in?

Christopher Jenkins [01:05:41] I don't remember exactly what they told me at the time, but I think that was part of it.

John Dehlin [01:05:52] Or just that they have the option to turn themselves in. But in terms of telling you what to do. Or what you should do or.

Directed Not to Report: The Abuse Hotline Call

Christopher Jenkins [01:06:04] They didn't really. They just told me I was not a mandatory reporter.

John Dehlin [01:06:07] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [01:06:07] And then I, they.

John Dehlin [01:06:09] They.

Christopher Jenkins [01:06:10] It felt like they were directing me not to report.

John Dehlin [01:06:15] That's how you experience.

Christopher Jenkins [01:06:16] That's how I experienced. They may not have said that outright. You know, I realize I am talking to lawyers and so they will hedge their bets. I understand that and I'm probably reading a lot into that, but that's the way I felt that it was better that I didn't report.

John Dehlin [01:06:42] And this was a Curt McConkey lawyer, do you know?

Christopher Jenkins [01:06:45] I believe so.

John Dehlin [01:06:46] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [01:06:47] I mean, they didn't say. They probably told me their name. I don't remember. They did give me, I think, a case number and a phone number to call back if I had further questions, but I lost that a long time ago.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:06] And to clarify, how long ago was this?

Christopher Jenkins [01:07:09] Probably three to four Years ago?

Margi Dehlin [01:07:11] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:07:11] Just wanted to maybe around four years ago.

Margi Dehlin [01:07:14] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:07:15] Okay. So even though your medical training and ethics would have immediately led you to report, you left that phone call with the church's hotline lawyer with the impression that the church did not want you to report the abuser. Is that right?

Christopher Jenkins [01:07:35] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:07:36] And so you didn't report the abuser?

Christopher Jenkins [01:07:38] I did not.

John Dehlin [01:07:38] Is that right? I did not. Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [01:07:40] And I always felt uneasy about that decision. I never felt. I never felt that that was quite the right thing to do. I. Unfortunately, she stopped responding to my phone calls and texts, and so I couldn't work with her on, you know, further on the repentance process.

John Dehlin [01:08:05] Do you know why she stopped?

Christopher Jenkins [01:08:07] I don't. Could have been that situation, but I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:08:16] And had you received counsel from the stake president?

Christopher Jenkins [01:08:20] I didn't.

John Dehlin [01:08:21] Before or after that.

Christopher Jenkins [01:08:23] Not on this specific case. They may have given us some general guidelines on reporting abuse at some point. I don't remember.

John Dehlin [01:08:35] And just to be clear, I know I've already asked this, but at no point did the church. From what I'm hearing, at no point did the church put you in touch with the therapist or a social worker.

Christopher Jenkins [01:08:46] No.

John Dehlin [01:08:47] To help you get care for the victim?

Christopher Jenkins [01:08:50] No, I didn't have any contact with the victim. I didn't know who he was at all, either, so.

John Dehlin [01:08:56] But. Okay. And part of the complication is, as far as you know, they weren't a member.

Christopher Jenkins [01:09:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:09:02] So it would have been weird for some Mormon bishop to randomly try and reach out.

Christopher Jenkins [01:09:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:07] To a teen or their parents. But, I mean, on the other hand, dang, if I'm a parent and somebody knows that someone had abused my kid, I'd want to know.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:19] That's so true.

Christopher Jenkins [01:09:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:21] Right.

Christopher Jenkins [01:09:22] That's why I never felt settled about that.

John Dehlin [01:09:27] But the church didn't try to make any effort to help you get in touch with the parents of that kid?

Christopher Jenkins [01:09:35] No, no, they didn't encourage me to do anything like that. They just. Kurt McConkie only told me to, you know, work with the sister through the repentance process.

John Dehlin [01:09:51] Do you know why she cut off contact with you?

Christopher Jenkins [01:09:54] I don't.

John Dehlin [01:09:54] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:59] Can I do a quick little exercise? So can we compare. Contrast this with your medical situation? I just think it's kind of an enlightening thing to do. So if you had been in a doctor role, this idea of mandatory reporting, what would it have looked like? What would you have done?

Christopher Jenkins [01:10:20] I would have. If, like, I saw her in a clinic setting, I would have said, okay, hold on. I need to go check something outside in your chart or something. I would have excused myself from the room and gone and called the police. While she was still there?

Margi Dehlin [01:10:43] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:10:47] I mean, it really depends. Also, if I see there's an immediate threat to somebody's. If the abuse is ongoing, if she's going to leave there and harm someone, I would have called the police immediately. If I don't see that happening, then I might have let her go and contacted them later or contacted dshs, the Department of Social Health Services, directly. It kind of depends. There is an abuse hotline, but where there's an immediate threat, I would have contacted the local police.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:29] I see.

John Dehlin [01:11:32] Okay. So the advice the Mormon Church's attorneys gave you, you felt like, was to not report this to the police.

Christopher Jenkins [01:11:40] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:11:40] And the Mormon Church gave no. Made no attempt to notify the parents of the victim or to see if the victim was okay or to provide any relief to the victim?

Christopher Jenkins [01:11:51] No.

John Dehlin [01:11:51] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [01:11:53] Nobody knew who the victim was in

John Dehlin [01:11:54] that case, but there was no attempt to try and find out. Okay. And then did you end up, did Curtin McConkie, the Mormon Church's attorneys, give you any instruction on how to officiate in church discipline of this member who was a child abuser? Did they say you got a hold of court, excommunicate them?

Christopher Jenkins [01:12:18] No, they didn't give me any guidelines on that. They said, you know, follow the manual or. They just told me to work through the repentance process with them. As far as I remember. I don't. I mean, it was four years ago. I don't remember the specifics.

John Dehlin [01:12:33] And then. But you say, did you try to, like, hold a dis. Did you, with your training, did it even occur to you that you needed to hold a disciplinary council and potentially disfellowship or excommunicate this member? Yes. Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [01:12:53] Unfortunately, she stopped responding to my phone calls and texts and wouldn't answer the door when I went to visit her.

John Dehlin [01:13:04] Okay, so you actually went to visit her, but she wouldn't answer the door. You don't know why?

Christopher Jenkins [01:13:09] Couldn't find her at home. Maybe she wasn't at home. Maybe she was just not answering the door. I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:13:15] So do you know if there was any annotation made to her record such that if she transferred to another ward or stake, the knowledge that she had confessed child sexual abuse would have gone with her to other wards or congregations?

Christopher Jenkins [01:13:36] I never knew. I guess I knew that was a thing, but nobody had told me that that's what I needed to Do. And I didn't even think about it. Like I said, I was trying to get a hold of her again. So no, I don't think her record was ever annotated. I was actually thinking about this last week that I should probably go to her current bishop and have him do that.

Aftermath of the Abuse Case and Church Discipline

John Dehlin [01:14:03] Were any ward or stake members notified that there was a member who is a child abuser kind of in their midst that they need to kind of watch out for anything done to help notify the members to help keep the other children safe?

Christopher Jenkins [01:14:24] Like I said, she kind of broke off contact, so she stopped attending. And had she continued to attend, I probably would have made some effort there.

John Dehlin [01:14:42] Did Curt McConkie want you to tell your stake president that this had happened?

Christopher Jenkins [01:14:47] No, nobody ever mentioned that. And thinking back on it, that probably would have been a good idea had talk to him about it.

John Dehlin [01:14:55] But yeah. And did Curtin McConkey follow up to make sure that the right actions had been taken place?

Christopher Jenkins [01:15:07] No, there was no follow up to

John Dehlin [01:15:09] make sure members were safe or that the discipline happened?

Christopher Jenkins [01:15:14] No. They did give me a phone number and I think a case number, but I can't remember that. I could call back if I had further questions.

John Dehlin [01:15:24] So. Yeah, it sounds like. Do you feel like now you have some regrets about how you handled it? Do you wish you had handled it differently?

Christopher Jenkins [01:15:38] Yeah. Yes. I. I can't say for sure what I would have done with my current knowledge in the situation. I'd like to say that I would have pushed her more forcefully to go confess, turn herself in. And if she hadn't, I would have called police department to start an investigation on her.

John Dehlin [01:16:16] Yeah. So how do you feel about either the training or the policy or the Curt McConkey's the lawyer's handling of the situation in terms of it influencing or not influencing appropriately the ultimate way you handled it?

Christopher Jenkins [01:16:42] The problem is we're treating an ethical issue strictly by the law. We're leaving something to the lawyers that we need to deal with as humans. And I'm not. Sorry, I'm not saying lawyers aren't humans, but they just have a different perspective on. On how to handle things. And their main goal is to protect their client. That's what they're trained to do.

John Dehlin [01:17:17] From legal risk.

Christopher Jenkins [01:17:18] Yes. And their client is the church. Basically their client at the church and myself as a bishop.

John Dehlin [01:17:24] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:17:25] Is to protect us. Now, the state of Washington did change their laws this last year and they made clergy mandatory reporters. But then, interestingly, the Catholic Church, the Jehovah's Witnesses and The LDS Church. I believe those three, from what I've read, joined together and fought that in court and got a confessional exemption. So if a clergy finds out in confession that they're not a mandatory reporter in that case.

John Dehlin [01:18:08] So the Mormon Church teamed with Jehovah's Witnesses and Catholics, as far as you know?

Christopher Jenkins [01:18:13] I believe so, yes.

John Dehlin [01:18:14] Despite an attempt to get rid of the priest penitent privilege.

Christopher Jenkins [01:18:22] They were trying to defend the priest penitent privilege and then got an exemption through court.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:30] Wow, that's so wild.

Christopher Jenkins [01:18:31] In December and just two months ago,

John Dehlin [01:18:34] they were fighting any attempt to make bishops, Mormon bishops, mandatory reporters of child sexual abuse.

Christopher Jenkins [01:18:41] So the clergy are still mandatory reporters if they find out. Not in confession. So if the perpetrator come. If the victim comes, yes, they have to report. But if the perpetrator comes and confesses, than they are not.

John Dehlin [01:18:59] And I mean, how often is a child going to come to a bishop to say an adult in power abused me or my parent abused me? I mean, that's. I don't know how many kids feel comfortable going to some random bishop to tell on their parents or their sibling or, you know, some adult in power that seems like expecting too much for a kid.

Christopher Jenkins [01:19:28] But it is something. It's better than what it was. But honestly, I look at the track record of those three churches and how they've handled abuse internally and legally, I don't think we should let them retain that. That power to deal with that internally. They haven't done a good job and their track record proves it.

John Dehlin [01:19:57] Yeah, it's like those are the last three churches that should get exemptions.

Christopher Jenkins [01:20:01] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:20:02] I mean, them and the Boy Scouts. It's like leaving a fox in the hen house, basically, it seems.

Christopher Jenkins [01:20:09] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:20:10] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:20:13] Saying that the scoutmaster can receive confession from an assistant scoutmaster for something like that. Yeah. No, it doesn't make any sense at all. Legally, they've claimed it under the First Amendment, religious freedom, and it passed the Washington State Supreme Court. Or they got that exemption.

Margi Dehlin [01:20:34] Yeah, that is telling.

John Dehlin [01:20:35] I mean, that's where the Church's money and power came in.

Christopher Jenkins [01:20:37] But 41 states don't allow that.

John Dehlin [01:20:42] But where the church can wield its influence.

Christopher Jenkins [01:20:44] Yeah, I don't think it'll ever change in Utah. Yeah, but I'm just.

John Dehlin [01:20:49] You're saying 41 states are like Utah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:20:51] No, 41 states don't. Are 41 states clergy are mandatory reporters.

John Dehlin [01:20:58] Okay, it's just nine.

Christopher Jenkins [01:21:00] It's just nine states that are.

John Dehlin [01:21:02] And I'm guessing it's gonna. Many of those states are gonna be ones where the Mormon Church has its heaviest influence, like Utah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:21:08] So the first question that they ask you when you call the abuse hotline, at least I experienced, was where. Where did this occur? Where did you hear this?

Margi Dehlin [01:21:19] Right.

Christopher Jenkins [01:21:19] What state were you in?

Margi Dehlin [01:21:21] Right.

Christopher Jenkins [01:21:21] It's jurisdictional dependent, which, you know, if we're talking about repentance and God's law, why does it depend on what state you're in?

John Dehlin [01:21:33] Yeah. I also just want to say that it seems to me that when the church flags someone for apostasy, they track those people down to make sure church discipline happens. They don't just let them disappear or go to some other ward and continue being members in good standing. So it does not seem like the church feels anywhere as motivated to, let's just say, spiritually prosecute a child sexual abuser as they do someone who disagrees with the church on LGBT issues or on historical interpretations and has spoken about that publicly. The church is going to go after someone who doesn't believe Joseph Smith practiced polygamy or who criticizes the church and its problems. They're going to track them down to the ends of the earth.

Margi Dehlin [01:22:25] And we could even say, having experienced the power of the church surveillance efforts, we know they can.

John Dehlin [01:22:35] Yeah, but with your case, they did not seem to have any concern about tracking this person down to make sure there was at least annotation on their record, if not church discipline.

Christopher Jenkins [01:22:48] Yeah, and maybe that, maybe I'm to blame for the lack of the annotation. I don't know. It didn't even occur to me at the time.

John Dehlin [01:22:57] I mean, you didn't know that the Gospel Topics essays existed. You had never heard of the CES letter. You were not trained to handle LGBTQ issues, and you were not trained to. You didn't know the law as it related to the church and reporting.

Margi Dehlin [01:23:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:11] And you didn't know about. Did you know about the church's history of child abuse coverups?

Christopher Jenkins [01:23:19] No.

John Dehlin [01:23:19] You know, you didn't know about that either. Like, you were. It's kind of like you were set up to be ignorant.

Christopher Jenkins [01:23:25] I still don't know about the church's history of COVID ups, but. Oh, yeah, I've learned a little bit in the last.

John Dehlin [01:23:32] I mean, one of the main reasons the Boy Scouts of America went bankrupt is because such a huge percentage of Boy Scouts were victims of child abuse. And tens of thousands of of Mormon boys were sexually abused as Boy Scouts while the church, again, was trying to hide and cover up child abuse, including the Boy Scouts. So, yeah, yeah, the church had a heavily disproportionate involvement in Boy Scouts, which means a heavily disproportionate percentage of boys abused in the Boy Scouts were lds. And the church appointed high level leaders in the Boy Scouts throughout its history to help manage and govern the Boy Scouts. So anyway, you didn't know any of that as a bishop?

Christopher Jenkins [01:24:19] I mean, I knew of what was happening with the Boy Scouts, what was in the press and things. I thought it was. Honestly I wanted to defend the church in my mind and so thought it was more other troops that weren't part of the church that was probably having the issues. I never experienced it, I never saw any of it. You know, I went through the youth protection training every year because I was a scoutmaster for years. I loved my involvement with the Scouts and I was sad to see it go, but I didn't have a firsthand knowledge of that. I think it's sad that they fostered that sort of environment that that could breed in the Boy Scouts.

John Dehlin [01:25:08] Given the prevalence that we now know of of child abuse in the Mormon Church, it's a testament to its lawyers skillfulness that so few members know about the prevalence of abuse or how to hand. And so in your case, I think your case is a perfect case of how the church knows exactly how to deal with it to get the exact response that they want, which is minimal accountability for the perpetrator and minimum minimal knowledge for the rest of the membership about the existence of a predator in their midst or the existence of the problem of child abuse generally.

John Dehlin [01:25:51] They have the attorney talk to the bishop and give the impression that they really should just kind of quietly handle it. But all of those interactions, plus your ignorance max minimizes the number of people that even know about this and maximizes the chances that it's going to happen again unfortunately and be handled inappropriately.

John Dehlin [01:26:17] And that's from the laws to the policies to the hotline. They've carefully influenced all of it. And so really quickly there's kind of an apologetic argument that the church supporting priest penitent laws in states actually leads to more reporting and more protection of children.

John Dehlin [01:26:45] Because if a member feels safe reporting to their bishop knowing that they won't necessarily be turned into the police, then more children get protected because more abusers feel comfortable confessing their abuse to their bishop. Do you have a response to that?

Christopher Jenkins [01:27:05] I do have a response to that. The problem with that argument is the track record. I mean, if the church had a history of receiving that information and preventing future abuse with it, I could totally get behind that. That. Yeah. If we're going to prevent more abuse by people feeling more comfortable confessing and repenting and changing their ways. Sure. But from what I've seen, they haven't. That hasn't been the case. And it's a subject that's very difficult to study. But from my experience and how I was counseled in this, that wasn't the focus. The system, in my experience, is more set up to protect the name of the church and not to protect the

John Dehlin [01:28:06] victim and to protect the church from legal liability.

Christopher Jenkins [01:28:10] Correct?

Margi Dehlin [01:28:11] Right.

John Dehlin [01:28:11] It's the name of the church and its legal liability.

Christopher Jenkins [01:28:14] Correct.

John Dehlin [01:28:14] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:28:16] So, yeah. They haven't been trustworthy with that responsibility, so they shouldn't have it.

John Dehlin [01:28:29] What about the idea that the atonement can make. Can be the solution for a child abuser? Like, just get them the atonement and that. That will be what the child abuser needs. Not the law, not legal justice. They just need the atonement.

Christopher Jenkins [01:28:53] You have to protect the victim first. He can't allow someone to work on their repentance and still have access to their victims. He can't let the victims continue to be abused while somebody's trying to change their ways.

John Dehlin [01:29:16] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:29:21] I mean, if you want to, I can get into further on how I feel about the atonement and things, but that's.

John Dehlin [01:29:27] No, I mean, in this context. For now.

Christopher Jenkins [01:29:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:29] And we can talk about your own faith journey after a couple more questions. Do you have any sense for whether. Before we talk about Bo, do you have any sense or experience for whether your experience was similar or dissimilar to other bishops or stake presidents in the church?

Comparing Experiences With the Church Abuse Hotline

Christopher Jenkins [01:29:49] The only other experience I've heard about, talked about was Bo's.

John Dehlin [01:29:53] Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [01:29:54] And what he described was very similar to what I experienced. Now let's talk about that.

John Dehlin [01:30:00] So how did you hear about Beau's experience? Bo Euler, Bishop Bo Euler's experience. He went on. Soft, white underbelly. He told his story. So he told the story of having a member confess to him that they had abused a child and that his interactions with the hotline were. That he, you know, he left with the impression that he wasn't to report it to the police.

Christopher Jenkins [01:30:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:27] Okay. So how'd you even hear about Beau Euler at all?

Christopher Jenkins [01:30:33] Or if you remember, I was. So when I started on my faith journey, my wife asked me to examine both sides or listen to both. Continue to listen to both sides. So I was actually listening to a podcast. I can't remember exactly what podcast it was, but it was a faithful podcast. And they started talking about this press release and how the church proved this bishop was a liar and all this stuff.

Christopher Jenkins [01:31:11] I was like, that's interesting. And they were talking about his, you know, his interaction with the abuse hotline. I'm like, that's interesting. And so that made me go look up the press release and I read it and I was like, well, what he's asserting is exactly what I experienced.

Christopher Jenkins [01:31:35] And so then I went and watched the soft white. I had never heard of the soft white underbelly to that point. And. And I went and watched his interview. And there was a lot of things in his interview that rang true with me.

Christopher Jenkins [01:31:49] I was almost that bishop that died on the trail when he became bishop. I also had a heart attack when I was bishop, but luckily I was at home. But yeah, just him telling his experience was almost exactly like what I experienced now, except that the abuse was different and I didn't have a victim that was continuing to be abused and that I needed to protect.

John Dehlin [01:32:23] But the way he talked about his interactions with the hotline was similar to

Christopher Jenkins [01:32:28] yours and really rang true. And I went back and I reread the. The press release, and I became very angry.

John Dehlin [01:32:38] What about the press release made you angry? Feel angry?

Christopher Jenkins [01:32:43] Because I felt like Beau was telling the truth. And it felt like the church was trying to cover it up. And now Beau may not have told everything. He was in a. He couldn't have. I mean, that.

John Dehlin [01:33:04] That whole one hour interview, that whole

Christopher Jenkins [01:33:06] interaction to tell all the story, just about the. That

John Dehlin [01:33:14] he was telling the story of his life.

Christopher Jenkins [01:33:15] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:33:16] And the story with his reporting to the hotline was like 10 minutes, you know, so.

Christopher Jenkins [01:33:21] But I could totally see his first interaction with the church saying, no, you shouldn't report, then him saying, well, I'm not going to do that. And I'm sure there were some social workers involved and stuff. In my case, there weren't.

John Dehlin [01:33:38] He doesn't remember a social worker being involved. And then the church is insisting that there was.

Christopher Jenkins [01:33:44] And if the church there wasn't with

John Dehlin [01:33:46] you, and that's important.

Christopher Jenkins [01:33:47] I was never offered that there was never a social worker involved. I would like to see the evidence. I've listened to all the apologetics podcasts on this. They're all calling Beau a liar based on a press release that the church has released. And it could be all fiction. The church is good at producing fiction. I don't believe it. Unless they want to show us the actual records. That's the only way that I would trust them.

John Dehlin [01:34:23] And this part's complicated because when other people have sued the church for covering up child sexual abuse, they've asked for the notes that the person fielding the call, the hotline, the notes that they take when the bishop calls in. And what the Church has said, as I understand it, in past lawsuits, is we instruct the people fielding those calls from the hotline to destroy the notes at the end of each day, which in and of itself is deeply suspect. Why wouldn't they keep those notes?

John Dehlin [01:35:03] But I'm sure lawyers set up that process to destroy those notes, at least in part, so there would be no evidence of what was involved, advised, or what was counseled or what information was obtained. And so the Church is on record as telling the world we don't keep those notes.

John Dehlin [01:35:22] And that came out in the Michael Rosendez AP report from several years back. Well, in Beau's case, bizarrely, the Church used as evidence for them calling Beau a liar their possession of the very notes that they've told the world that they destroy at the end of each day, which means either they've been lying about destroying those notes, or they were lying about having notes to have justification for calling Beau a liar. So it seems to me as though they've lied in either case.

John Dehlin [01:36:03] Or there's a third option, which is the attorneys keep notes. And so now they've potentially sacrificed attorney client privilege because they were relying on attorney's notes to call Beau a liar, which would then mean they should be sued and we should now have access to those attorney records.

Christopher Jenkins [01:36:26] I suspect that latter is the case that the record of me calling in and talking to that secretary was destroyed. But then I spoke to a lawyer, and they keep those notes separate, and those fall under attorney client privilege so that they can have deniability. Yeah, those records were destroyed, but what about the record between the lawyer and the client? And that's protected by attorney client privilege. I could be completely off base on that. I'm not a lawyer, but. But I'm.

John Dehlin [01:37:06] Anyway, yeah, okay, so. And it may have very well been that a social worker was involved in Beau's case at some point. But my understanding is when he was on the line with the hotline, no social worker was involved. And I think that's what he was trying to say in his interview. But let me just make another point in addition to how, well, just problematic this whole system seems to me, of hotlines caring about protecting the Church, not caring about victims suggesting or counseling bishops not to report to the police claiming that they delete the notes or Destroy the notes so there's no evidence. Like all that's super problematic.

John Dehlin [01:37:49] There's something else that's deeply problematic. I'm unaware of the Mormon Church ever releasing a press release to warn the. The membership or the world about a perpetrator abusing children. And yet they're going to issue a press release about an actual former bishop who was telling his. Doing his best to tell an honest story about how. What he experienced when he tried to handle an abuse story. They're going to issue a press release about that and to smear that good individual who served the church for no pay for five years and who gave his life to the church. That person the Church is gonna smear with a press release and with an army of dozens of social media influencers all smearing Bo by name, calling him a lawyer without providing any evidence.

Margi Dehlin [01:38:41] A liar. A liar.

John Dehlin [01:38:42] What did I say?

Margi Dehlin [01:38:42] A lawyer.

John Dehlin [01:38:44] Wait, no, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna disparage lawyers. I'll just correct.

Christopher Jenkins [01:38:48] I've already done enough of that.

John Dehlin [01:38:50] Yeah. They're gonna use dozens of social media influencers to smear Bishop Bo Euler and call him a liar without providing any evidence. But they would never. They don't even tell the membership that there's an abuser among them frequently. Let alone have they ever issued a press release or dispatched dozens of social media influencers to smear an actual child abuser.

John Dehlin [01:39:19] To me, that's pretty horrific and telling about what the Church's priorities are. They would much rather smear and destroy the life of a whistleblower calling the church to account for its mishandling of abuse. They would much rather smear and destroy that person than the thousands of actual child abusers that are out there. And I'm personally aware of many, many, many child abusers and who never received any excommunication. And yet Boiler is being threatened with excommunication in part largely for just telling his authentic story on soft white underbelly. While many, many Mormon child abusers have never been excommunicated.

Margi Dehlin [01:40:07] Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:40:08] No. It's difficult to understand unless you look at it from the perspective of they're only interested in protecting the name of

John Dehlin [01:40:19] the Church and it's money. Yeah. So you decided to call, make a phone call in the past week or two.

Christopher Jenkins [01:40:29] I did.

John Dehlin [01:40:31] That was your own decision. That was your own idea.

Christopher Jenkins [01:40:33] You know, I'm under the radar. I'm still an active member. I figure, just to be clear, you

John Dehlin [01:40:38] are active in the church.

Christopher Jenkins [01:40:39] I am active.

John Dehlin [01:40:39] You're attending the church. Right now. Okay, keep going.

Christopher Jenkins [01:40:44] Yeah, I just called them and said, hey, I called you three, four years ago.

John Dehlin [01:40:50] Is this the hotline you called?

Christopher Jenkins [01:40:51] I called the hotline.

John Dehlin [01:40:52] Okay, same hotline.

Christopher Jenkins [01:40:53] Well, I first talked to my bishop and I was just like, you know, this never sat right with me. What do you recommend? And he said, well, here's the address of the church in Salt Lake. You can write him a letter. And of course, I know the handbook of instructions say that all letters addressed to Salt Lake will be returned to local authorities. So the next thing I did was I texted my stake president and just with a link to the press release and just said, hey, this press release came up.

John Dehlin [01:41:34] I.

Christopher Jenkins [01:41:35] It doesn't sit right with me. Can I talk to you about it? And he said, yeah, I'll find some time. Well, I didn't give him enough time, honestly, I'm here doing this. Anyways, his executive secretary texted me Saturday, actually, for an appointment for tomorrow evening, which I told him I was going to be gone in Utah here.

Christopher Jenkins [01:41:56] So I didn't really give him a chance to talk to me. But the next thing I thought of was, well, I could just call the hotline and just see if I can resolve my concerns with them. You know, maybe I just misremembered it.

Christopher Jenkins [01:42:12] I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. I want to be fair. So I, yeah, just called them one morning and said, hey, you know, I called you three, four years ago about this. I had this case where. And. And it never sat right with me. The results of that. Can you look it up and talk me through it here?

Christopher Jenkins [01:42:37] You know, just trying to be fair with them and give them a chance to respond. They actually couldn't find any record that I had called. I spoke to Curt McConkey, lawyer there. They couldn't find the secretary, couldn't find it, and the lawyer couldn't find it either.

Christopher Jenkins [01:43:07] But I told him the situation as I remembered it, and they told me pretty much the same thing. I did ask more questions this time, though. They told me again that I was not a mandatory reporter at the time and didn't have any obligation to report.

Christopher Jenkins [01:43:28] They never told me whether I should or shouldn't have reported, But they did. Then I asked our question. Well, I understand legally I wasn't required to report, but the question is, ethically, should I have reported? And he told me that, no, that the clergy confessioner privilege is sacred and we need to protect that.

Margi Dehlin [01:44:01] Oh, wow.

Christopher Jenkins [01:44:02] Is what they told me so more

John Dehlin [01:44:04] sacred than protecting the children?

Margi Dehlin [01:44:05] Interesting. Yes. That's bold.

John Dehlin [01:44:12] And that's in February of 2026.

Christopher Jenkins [01:44:15] That was last week.

John Dehlin [01:44:16] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And miraculously, they don't have any records of your call.

Christopher Jenkins [01:44:26] No, they couldn't find any records.

John Dehlin [01:44:28] I imagine that if you. I mean, if. If Software Belly or some other podcast blew up your story enough, maybe magically, they would be able to find some records that contradicted your story, too.

Christopher Jenkins [01:44:42] I don't know. I know two people told me on the phone that they couldn't find any record that I had called.

John Dehlin [01:44:47] Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:44:50] And. Yeah, we'll see if they come up with records. Great. Show me them. If you have records, I'll stand corrected. That, you know, I misremembered it or something. Yeah, same. Same with Beau. I mean, show us the records. Bo seems like a reasonable guy. If he misremembered it, I bet he would have issued an apology, but I don't think so. You know, I. Yeah, I don't think they'll release records, and they won't because I don't think they'll reflect what they've told us.

Early Release as Bishop and Growing Doubts

John Dehlin [01:45:35] Is there any part of you that's concerned that, like with Bo threatening him with excommunication, your church leaders might try to punish you for telling your story and for supporting Beau?

Christopher Jenkins [01:45:52] Like I said, I came here to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. If that happens and that happens, yeah. I. Not going to be afraid of. Of telling the truth. If they want to punish me for that, then it's not an organization I want to be affiliated with.

John Dehlin [01:46:19] Wow.

Margi Dehlin [01:46:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:46:21] And that's from someone who's currently attending.

Christopher Jenkins [01:46:24] Yeah. I still love singing. Love singing the hymns. I have. You know, I have the bass part memorized on most of the hymns and love singing in primary and playing Play DOH with Sunbeams.

John Dehlin [01:46:38] It's just. And I'll just. I'll just say really quickly, I want to invite any other current or former bishops or stake presidents or anyone who has experience calling the hotline and being told it's not told not to report. It's being led to believe that they shouldn't report is how they do it. And we've already done an episode where we read, like, 200 accounts. I'm gonna ask Brooklyn to include that in the show notes. Cause we did an episode where like 200 people sent us their accounts of being led to believe they shouldn't report abusers to police either. But if others want to tell their story to support your story and to support Beau's, please reach out and we

Christopher Jenkins [01:47:23] will consider I thought I was the only one until I saw Beau's story.

John Dehlin [01:47:27] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So please just email us@mormonstoriesmail.com and we want to hear your story as well. Anything else you want to say about abuse or BO before we talk about your own faith unraveling? Because I think that's important too.

Christopher Jenkins [01:47:46] I think I said enough.

John Dehlin [01:47:48] Okay, so then. So did you finish out five years as bishop or.

Christopher Jenkins [01:47:54] I did not.

John Dehlin [01:47:58] Okay, what happened? So

Christopher Jenkins [01:48:02] about six months before I was released, I had a heart attack. I had a 100% blockage of my left anterior descending artery, which is the widowmaker. Luckily I was at home. My wife drove me to the hospital at a stent placed and I'm here to talk about it.

Christopher Jenkins [01:48:32] I had some resulting depression after that that I was dealing with. Just a lot of apathy. Not I actually in an interview with my stake president I told him, you know, I'm not going to be. I would never ask to be released, but I won't be offended if you release me early.

Christopher Jenkins [01:48:57] And they were already planning a consolidation of wards at that time. So I was released right at the four year mark for my being a bishop. That was just about two and a half years ago. The same day that I thought that I had an interview to be released with the stake president, I got online on the temple worker recommendation portal and recommend myself as a temple worker.

Christopher Jenkins [01:49:42] I kind of knew that I was going to get released so. I became a temple worker right at that time. The new bishop called me as a young man's advisor to the priest. So I got to continue to hang out with my priests as well.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:04] I can tell they mean a lot to you. Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:50:08] So yeah, our temple was an hour drive for me. So I would get up every Friday at 4:30 and drive to the temple and work the morning and then I'd drive home and go do my medical practice. And I did that for two years.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:36] Wow, that's really something.

Faith Transition and Leaving Church Activity

John Dehlin [01:50:40] It sounds like your faith is very different now than it was when you became bishop. And do you want to tell the

Christopher Jenkins [01:50:46] story of your faith journey? Well, it's very different than September 1st

John Dehlin [01:50:50] of last year and also how your, your kids evolution in terms of their relationship with the church has also impacted you all that and them and your family.

Christopher Jenkins [01:51:02] So I have three children who left the church, stopped attending. The first one to stop attending was my third child.

Margi Dehlin [01:51:16] Yeah. When she brought the one that brought

Christopher Jenkins [01:51:19] the sins when they came out as non binary. They also told me about an experience as a 12 year old in young Women's being, she wasn't out at the time, but being very uncomfortable and being told that what she was feeling was evil and wrong.

Christopher Jenkins [01:51:40] You know, the same sex attraction and whatnot. So she became very anxious at church and didn't want to go to young women's. We didn't really know what was going on with her until. With them. Sorry. Until they came out to us.

Christopher Jenkins [01:52:03] We tried to continue to get them to come to church with us but you know, as much as a 14 year old can put their foot down and they've always been very determined and we didn't feel like it was a fight we wanted to make.

Christopher Jenkins [01:52:23] So they stopped coming to church and then their older sister followed them and then a younger sister also. She just decided that she didn't believe the church was true and didn't want to go anymore. And we worked at trying to keep her going to church at the time.

Christopher Jenkins [01:52:56] I think along the lines I kind of resolved that the relationship was more important than getting him to come to church. And as a faithful parent I said someday they'll come back, right? If I can maintain the relationship. That's kind of what I had in my mind. So through all that I was still very much faithful believing. Like I said, I was a temple worker after

Margi Dehlin [01:53:33] being a bishop.

Christopher Jenkins [01:53:34] Being a bishop and yeah, we didn't get much into my profession but I work as a physician in long term care. I have nursing homes that I am medical director of. Makes it very flexible on my schedule and after having a heart attack I kind of scaled back and turned more over to a couple mid levels that work for me and they do a majority of the work and I only actually spend approximately 12 hours in the facilities a week. So the other time I spend on some real estate work that I do and I pretty much buy old houses and I fix them up myself and I do all the work myself because I enjoy doing that and it's kind of therapy for me. I tell people it's my Prozac, so. So but during that I can work all day, many days just by myself and I listen to podcasts all day and.

John Dehlin [01:54:37] Or

Christopher Jenkins [01:54:40] so I don't know. I was listening to I think Word radio of all podcasts and the next thing that came up on my feedback was it was just suggested by Google or YouTube algorithm. On the algorithm came up was something about, I can't even remember what it was but it was something about Joseph Smith's polyandry.

John Dehlin [01:55:15] I was like, how long ago was this?

Christopher Jenkins [01:55:18] This was October 27th of last year.

Margi Dehlin [01:55:21] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:55:22] So four, four, five, five months ago? Four or five months ago.

Margi Dehlin [01:55:25] Okay, that's very recent.

Christopher Jenkins [01:55:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:27] So, like, up until five months ago, you hadn't really dug into the church's history or truth claims. Okay.

Christopher Jenkins [01:55:35] And all of a sudden I was like, radio. It wasn't word radio. It was.

John Dehlin [01:55:39] Leads you to.

Christopher Jenkins [01:55:40] It wasn't word radio. I was list. I was radio Award radio.

John Dehlin [01:55:45] Video leads you to a video about polyandry.

Christopher Jenkins [01:55:49] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:55:49] Okay. That's important.

Christopher Jenkins [01:55:51] And I'm just listening to someone like polyandry. I think I know what that means.

John Dehlin [01:55:55] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:55:57] What? Joseph Smith was marrying other men's wives. What in the world? How am I 48 years old and I had never heard this before? And I've gone to seminary and religion classes at BYU and Sunday school all my life, and I've never heard this. What else do I not know?

John Dehlin [01:56:18] When my friend at Microsoft Back in 2000, 2001, when I asked him why he left the church, he's like, oh, it's the polyandry. And I'm like, oh, you mean polygamy? And he's like, no, I mean polyandry. I'm like, what? What's that? I had a very similar experience. Yeah, well.

Christopher Jenkins [01:56:33] And it wasn't polyandry per se. It was the fact that I didn't know about it.

John Dehlin [01:56:39] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [01:56:41] And which was the.

John Dehlin [01:56:42] What state of regards to Joseph Smith, what was it that you didn't know?

Christopher Jenkins [01:56:48] That I didn't know he had married 11 or 13 women who were married to other men. I mean, it just didn't fit into what I knew about polygamy and the purpose of polygamy and why it was practiced and stuff. It didn't. It was incongruous. And so then I was like, okay, what else about polygamy don't I know? And I went into a deep dive into the history of polygamy in the church, which led me to everything else.

John Dehlin [01:57:28] Like what?

Christopher Jenkins [01:57:34] I don't know. Where do we start? The truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith's first vision. You know what? Really? But I kept going back. I was still going, attending the temple, and I kept going back to the polygamy. And in the temple, you only have the scriptures. And so in break time, that's the only thing you have to read. And so I kept going back to 132.

John Dehlin [01:58:11] So Doctrine and Covenants, Section 132, Doctrine

Christopher Jenkins [01:58:13] and Covenants 132, which is the revelation on polygamy. And I read it probably a dozen times.

John Dehlin [01:58:21] Ouch.

Christopher Jenkins [01:58:22] And every time I read it, after about the third or fourth time, I was like, you know, this is so manipulative and it's so damning. It just cannot be from God. And every time I read just became so comical. I've never heard it described.

John Dehlin [01:58:49] I've never heard it described as comical.

Christopher Jenkins [01:58:50] Well, verse eight says that. But God is a God of order in this revelation. That's the most confusing, chaotic, secretive, lying to everyone, lying to Emma. And it just doesn't make any sense. But two of the verses in there say God is a God of order.

Christopher Jenkins [01:59:16] I mean, I laugh when I hear that. It's like, no, you can't put this into this scripture because it's not. This is not any order. This is just confusing. There's a reason, you know, And I tried to give the church benefit of doubt. I went and I read the Sunday school manual on that section. It doesn't go beyond verse 40, just stops.

Christopher Jenkins [01:59:43] And then the. I went and listened to John, by the way, and, and Hank Smith, their podcast on it, and they stop at verse 40. They don't. I mean, they don't even get into Emma being threatened with destruction and, and all that manipulation in there.

Christopher Jenkins [02:00:09] And then one last chance, I went and listened to Jared Halvorson. I love Jared Halverson, but his podcast on that was nauseating. It was so hard to listen to. It was so. There was so much emotional. Pleading to emotion in his reasoning. And it turned me away even further.

Christopher Jenkins [02:00:45] Those two podcasts on D and C. I mean, the fact that you can't even address the last 25 verses, 23 verses, whatever it is. And if you do, your reasoning is so suspect that anything else you say is discounted. Now I can't listen to either of them anymore because it's just not.

Christopher Jenkins [02:01:16] They lost all credibility. And then I started thinking about it more from all the manipulation, the manipulation of Emma and the fact that she didn't know about this until Joseph had married 20 some women and he was lying to her the whole time. And the fact that she denied it later in life that he ever practiced polygamy tells me of the deep codependent relationship they must have had and how narcissistic he was.

Christopher Jenkins [02:02:01] I'm sorry. And then reading the happiness letter, it's like, you know, I know you can't make a diagnosis of narcissism based on 100-year-old documents, but there's some significant narcissistic traits in there. It's just all manipulation of, of Nancy Rigdon. I mean, Nancy Rigdon is one of my heroes now. She was awesome. She turned him down.

John Dehlin [02:02:31] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [02:02:32] She called him a liar.

John Dehlin [02:02:33] And like with Bo Euler, he, Joseph Smith and his followers smeared her publicly as a punishment for telling the truth about what he was doing.

Christopher Jenkins [02:02:44] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:02:46] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [02:02:52] So she's my favorite person from all of the restoration, Nancy Rigdon.

John Dehlin [02:02:58] Also, there is another tie to the hotline sexual abuse story when you were bishop, and that's that, you know, the core theme is that the church's handling of sexual abuse seems to be to keep, as much as possible, any knowledge of the abuse happening from the membership and the church history. Church truth claim stuff seems to be handled the similar way because not only were you a bishop for four years, a missionary, seminary graduate, BYU graduate, 49. 48. It wasn't until you were 48, had given a half century to the church, that you just started learning some of the basics about its founding prophets, marriages and polygamous behaviors and illegal behaviors and abusive behaviors, honestly. So you must have felt not just repugnant about Joseph Smith's behaviors, but about the fact that the church had hid that information from you.

Christopher Jenkins [02:04:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:06] Right.

Christopher Jenkins [02:04:06] Yeah. And so, yeah, I looked into everything. I weighed both sides, honestly. If I listen to an apologetic podcast anymore, it drives me further away from the church. Their arguments don't make any sense. They're reaching for straws. I see why they're doing it.

John Dehlin [02:04:32] Do you have examples just so that we know who you're talking about, or is that not worthwhile to say?

Christopher Jenkins [02:04:39] I mean, off the top of my head, I don't want to misquote anyone. I mean.

John Dehlin [02:04:44] No, I don't mean. I just mean the personalities that have not been helpful to you, I guess

Christopher Jenkins [02:04:50] Word Radio, their reporting on Beau Euler was disgusting. They were so hypocritical in that podcast. I will never listen to them again. Sorry. They just, you know, they're taking the church's word for it as gospel truth and not asking for actual proof and, you know, calling Boy Bo all these names when they're guilty of the same. You know, they. Yeah, I just. I won't listen to them again. There's others. I actually, you know, tried to watch everything that anybody put out on vocals. I was, like, wanting to learn more, get everybody's take on it. I'll listen to all sides.

John Dehlin [02:05:54] And it sounds like the LDS discussion series on Mormon stories was helpful to you as well.

Christopher Jenkins [02:05:58] It was. I went through all of those probably in two or three weeks. I don't remember exactly. Tells you how much. 6065 episodes, and they're all, like, two hours long, so. 120 hours or three.

John Dehlin [02:06:14] Two or three.

Christopher Jenkins [02:06:15] Yeah, yeah. No, but I thought they were great. I still. I haven't read the CES letter. I have a little bit of, you know, the way it was presented to me, it still is kind of emotionally, it was. It was hard when I learned about it because, you know, and so it was. It was. It was an emotional thing for me. And so I still have a little bit of an emotional resistance to it, but. But I think I got the same information through the LDS discussions.

Reflections on LGBT Issues and Church Handling

John Dehlin [02:06:52] How have you processed the church's handling of LGBT issues now that it's part of your family and the treatment of people like your children in the church?

Christopher Jenkins [02:07:10] Yeah, I'm still processing that, and I probably still have a lot of work to do and. Because, I mean, there was so. It was so ingrained in me. The. The proclamation of the family came out in a really vulnerable time for me as like, you know, leaving on my mission, preaching that.

Christopher Jenkins [02:07:48] That it. That idea of. That marriage can only be one way. And, you know, that gender is binary and definite and defined previous to this life. I mean, that was ingrained in me. And so when my children start choosing different paths, there was a lot of resentment, and I didn't understand it, and I tried to rationalize it in different ways, but.

Christopher Jenkins [02:08:30] And, you know, I still tried to love and accept my children, but it's impossible from that context, that framework. I don't think it's possible to love an LGBTQ child if you hold so tightly to that context. And so, you know, giving up that.

Christopher Jenkins [02:09:01] And not recognizing the church as the only authority on truth, I can say, okay, I may not understand same sex attraction myself not having experienced it. I may not understand gender.

John Dehlin [02:09:27] Identity.

Christopher Jenkins [02:09:28] Identity myself, not having. But I can understand that what the church taught me was not correct, wasn't the truth, and that I can accept them and wherever they're at.

John Dehlin [02:09:42] Your kids.

Christopher Jenkins [02:09:43] My kids. And I can love them wherever they're at. And I don't think I could fully do that before. Before discarding the context of gender and marriage in the church.

John Dehlin [02:10:04] Powerful.

Christopher Jenkins [02:10:06] I also. I took the opportunity yesterday, driving down. I listened to David Archuleta's book, and that was that. I kind of resisted listening to the perspective, that perspective for a long time. I hadn't really wanted to see my kids perspective, unfortunately. But listening to him and talk about his story was. Was helpful for me to see what my kids have gone through and. And see them in a more loving Light.

John Dehlin [02:10:53] Do you remember when the November policy came out?

Christopher Jenkins [02:10:57] No, I don't. I wasn't paying attention at that time.

John Dehlin [02:11:01] And do you remember when it was removed?

Christopher Jenkins [02:11:04] No, I think that was all done quietly. I was working as scoutmaster at the time. I wasn't a bishop.

John Dehlin [02:11:10] You were just oblivious to it all.

Christopher Jenkins [02:11:12] I was oblivious. My kids were too young.

John Dehlin [02:11:14] So then when David Archuleta admits that Elder Ballard told him that the entire November 2015 policy was a mistake, that probably doesn't even really emotionally register with you because you weren't.

Christopher Jenkins [02:11:26] No, I wasn't. I see why it was such an issue for so many people, but it wasn't. I mean, it wasn't on my radar at that time. My child came out in early 2020.

Margi Dehlin [02:11:40] So, yeah, I do think that's sometimes how it is. Right. Until, for many people anyway, it's like until it hits your immediate sphere of experience. Sometimes humans can be slow to that. So, yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [02:12:00] And until five months ago, I probably would have been 100% defender of it. I just didn't realize what an impact it had on so many people.

Stepping Back From Callings While Staying Nominal

John Dehlin [02:12:22] So you mentioned asking to be released as a temple worker and as a ward mission leader. You've decided to stay active in the church for now. Do you want to talk about your resolution, you know, reconstruction, healing, specifically how you've tried to talk to your kids and even maybe reconcile with your kids?

Christopher Jenkins [02:12:47] Yeah, part of my deconstruction, I wrestled with the fact that I've had these spiritual experiences that have affirmed my faith in the church. And then I find out it's not exactly. And I started questioning, okay, people all over the world have faith affirming experiences and things that are completely opposite from our church. How do they resolve that? I actually read Sapiens, which, you know, very science based anthropological book. What's his name?

John Dehlin [02:13:33] Yuval. Noah Harari.

Christopher Jenkins [02:13:34] Yeah, Yuval Harari. And I, it just kind of made sense to me that it's all chemicals in my brain that have reaffirmed my connection with my current community and reaffirmed that community. And we've evolved to affirm, to affirm community and these stories we have to promote our community.

Christopher Jenkins [02:14:18] And it comes down to emotions and chemicals in our brain. And then on, I think listening to one of your Mormon Stories podcast, you spoke to somebody about Brit Hartley. And so I started listening to some of hers and I realized that, okay, if I'm not going to believe in this, I can have other spiritual experiences and it doesn't have to revolve around the church.

Christopher Jenkins [02:14:57] So I Actually stopped going to testimony meeting. I didn't really want to listen to that anymore. And I started taking my daughters out to brunch on the first Sunday of the month. And that's a new ritual for us.

Christopher Jenkins [02:15:19] I still love to sing, and I kind of view it as, you know, singing along to the songs on Disney movie like Hercules. They're. They have good messages. I'm. It's a. It's a fantasy, it's a. It's a fable, but it has a good message. And I can still sing these hymns and. And I can have an emotional response to them and feel good about it.

Christopher Jenkins [02:15:50] I'm actually singing in a local Lamb of God production we're doing. I don't know if you've heard of the Lamb of God. It was this big Easter production that I remember. The church actually wrote orchestra and vocal choir and some of the sisters in our stake organized an interfaith production of this.

Christopher Jenkins [02:16:28] And, you know, I don't have to believe in it to enjoy the beauty of the music and the beauty of the story. Another thing that's influenced me is my wife told me I needed to read the Life of PI.

Christopher Jenkins [02:16:47] And so it had such a slow start. It was hard, just. But it's not something I normally draw to. But the meaning in it was very, you know, just that there's different stories we can tell ourselves. And you can choose to believe what story you want.

Christopher Jenkins [02:17:20] And then that really helped me. Okay, I can choose to believe this story. My wife can choose to believe a different story, and that's okay. My kids can choose to believe their own story. It's what we need. It's the story we need at that time in our life to get us through.

Christopher Jenkins [02:17:39] We don't have to believe the really nasty story. I don't have to have anger towards the church. I don't think anybody at the church has deliberately tried to harm me personally. I can still be associated with it. I can still go and attend and sing the hymns. I don't think they're going to want me in Sunday school because I might be tempted to tell my true, honest opinion. And they probably won't hear that.

Christopher Jenkins [02:18:06] But I'll be part of that community as long as, you know, I see it's a good enough influence on me and my family. Two of my or three of my kids don't want to have anything to do with that. And that's okay.

John Dehlin [02:18:25] That's half your kids, right?

Christopher Jenkins [02:18:27] Half my kids, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:18:30] Yeah. That's kind of split the family a little bit.

Christopher Jenkins [02:18:35] Yeah. But I don't know. I.

John Dehlin [02:18:40] We're.

Christopher Jenkins [02:18:41] We've learned to. We're learning to have different rituals that include everyone. You know, we. Our family night doesn't include reading the scriptures or prayer, but we're religious about family game night. And we. Even with our kids moving off to school, we do jackbox with them online, you know, and Sunday night is sacred in our house because we have family game night, which includes everyone.

Margi Dehlin [02:19:21] I really love that. I think what I see as an underlying current to what you're saying is, you know, the shift from, let's just say, conditional love to unconditional love, moving to a larger space of love, and then also the shift. The shift from sort of we need to be the same to acknowledging that's impossible. Acknowledging reality, which is we are all different. That's what I'm hearing. Would you say that's. Yeah, that's so.

Christopher Jenkins [02:20:02] Yeah. And going back to your emotional maturity, it's, you know, that, you know, five years ago, I was emotionally immature. I'm not saying I'm that much more emotionally mature now, but I think I have grown. But I recognize my immaturity then in wanting my kids to all be in the same box, following the same path. But now I can learn to love them where they're at and the beauty they bring to the world in their own way.

Seeking Post-Mormon Community and New Perspectives

John Dehlin [02:20:40] You mentioned seeking connection with post Mormons. Why has that been important for you?

Christopher Jenkins [02:20:45] Well, I haven't.

John Dehlin [02:20:49] Even though you're technically post Mormon.

Christopher Jenkins [02:20:51] I know I'm post Mormon in belief. I will claim that they call it

John Dehlin [02:20:58] PIMO these days, physically and mentally.

Christopher Jenkins [02:21:00] I know.

John Dehlin [02:21:01] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [02:21:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:21:02] That was for our audience.

Christopher Jenkins [02:21:07] I haven't told anyone except my three kids that were already out and my wife and my bishop. And last week I told my brother, and then yesterday I told my sister, and there were other than people that were already out. And so I reached out. I was, like, wondering what to do. So I reached out to people who I'd known had already left, and I just said, hey, I think I'm in the same boat as you regarding the church. Can we talk? And yeah, that's been helpful.

Margi Dehlin [02:21:58] How has that been helpful?

Christopher Jenkins [02:22:01] We still need community. I don't feel like I can talk and be honest with anybody at church. I don't necessarily want to talk and be honest with anybody at church. If they're happy in their faith. I don't want to destroy that. I don't want to take anybody down.

Christopher Jenkins [02:22:22] Take anybody down. Like, I've taken them down with me. I don't Feel like I've gone down. I feel like I've just changed. And so I recognize that we still need people to talk to and connect with. And, you know, my wife is loving and supportive, but I don't necessarily want to tell her everything I'm thinking because that's not where she's at.

Christopher Jenkins [02:22:56] And we are very honest and open about everything, or most everything. I just didn't feel like that was. And I probably told her way more than she wanted to hear. But, Yeah, I just recognized, especially from Brit Hartley's work, that connection is still important. We're wired for connection. And this is a community I've been in for 48 years, and I'm considering leaving it.

Christopher Jenkins [02:23:39] Where do I go from here? Or if they do find out how I truly believe, am I going to be accepted in this community anymore?

John Dehlin [02:23:51] It might be you're just about to find out once this episode's released.

Christopher Jenkins [02:23:56] Like I said, I was wanting to just coast for a while and see, but felt I needed to speak up.

John Dehlin [02:24:05] You mentioned that you view the Holy Ghost and the spirit and emotions differently now than you used to. Is that worth mentioning?

Christopher Jenkins [02:24:14] Yeah. Yeah. I view it more, like I said, in the context of emotions that are driving us to have community. We have emotions that draw us into these stories and these fables that we can establish larger communities over, and whatever reinforces that is positive emotions. And so what do you do when you're. When evidence of truth and those emotions contradict?

John Dehlin [02:24:56] Yeah,

Christopher Jenkins [02:24:59] that's where I'm at.

John Dehlin [02:25:03] And I've already asked you this, but there is a chance your bishop or stake president won't like that you did this interview. Both because I'm sure of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:25:15] That's become clear to you.

John Dehlin [02:25:17] Both because you're telling your own bishop experience with the hotline, but also because you're supporting Beau, and then also because you're talking about losing your faith. There's all sorts of reasons why they may call you in. And what are your thoughts about how you'll handle being threatened with excommunication or actually being excommunicated?

Christopher Jenkins [02:25:39] That's an interesting word, threatened. I don't think it would threaten me. I mean, if they don't want me in their community because I go out and tell my truth, then it's not a community I want to be in. I mean, I'm happy to continue being a part of their community. And I'm not, except for this, I haven't preached anything really against the church. Yeah. I'm not trying to take down the church. I mean, I think it needs to change in some ways. You know, if I think if they were completely honest, that I don't know that anybody would still believe. But, you know, that's.

Margi Dehlin [02:26:35] Yeah. Your response reminds me of. Do you know Brene Brown? The work of Brene Brown, when she talks about the difference between fitting in and belonging. And what I'm hearing a bit in your response is there are moments where it becomes very clear that you're fitting in and you're willing to take the hit of whatever comes because you realize it really would be sacrificing. The idea behind fitting in is that you're part of something, but it's oftentimes it's sacrifice to your, you know, your welfare, your well being, your sense of authenticity, being able to show up fully as yourself. And so you sacrifice some of that to be part of this group.

Margi Dehlin [02:27:23] Whereas belonging, you show up fully as who you are. You're able to. And what I'm hearing you kind of say is it'll become apparent to me that I'm in a fitting in space and I'm not willing to sacrifice that level. This level of being able to say my truth. Is that kind of what you're.

Christopher Jenkins [02:27:40] Yeah, no, I was feeling that in the last few weeks at church. It was like, I don't believe this anymore. I'm happy to. I mean, I still enjoy coming here, but I can't be truthful here. And honesty has been. Has become a bigger priority for me in the last. Being honest. You know, I'm recovering. Nice guy. I don't know if you've read no More Mr. Nice Guy. You know, really do everything to keep everybody happy with me. Very shame based, very do what I'm supposed to do.

Margi Dehlin [02:28:29] Pleaser. Is there pleaser in there?

Christopher Jenkins [02:28:30] Yes. And so to. I mean, I. After that first YouTube video I watched about polyandry, I. I've been completely honest with my wife. I was like, this is what I ran into and this is what I'm thinking, which is a complete. It's a significant change from a few years ago for me. And just otherwise, I mean, before I probably would have hit it and just come out later and say, I don't think I want to go to church anymore. But I let her know where I'm at all the way through. Tried to. To a reasonable extent. But yeah, no, I completely get the fitting in versus belonging. And I, Yeah, I don't know that I feel like I belong. I think if I could be honest, I could feel like I can Belong, but I don't. People at church don't want to hear this story. It's not. Faith promoting, so therefore it's not welcome.

Margi Dehlin [02:29:42] Come on.

John Dehlin [02:29:43] What happens when the truth isn't faith promoting?

Christopher Jenkins [02:29:46] Well, that's where I get into the inherent dishonesty in. Because we always. We can't be truthful at church. We just. We're always putting on a show. We're always. You can't talk about your doubts. You can't talk about what's hard. You can't talk about, you know, I couldn't talk about my.

Christopher Jenkins [02:30:10] How hard it was for my kids to leave the church. Heaven forbid you ever mentioned sex at church. We just can't be honest. And that's what I was getting at with the difference in going to that conference, the Men's sexuality Conference. It was mostly members of the church or people who had been members of the church, and we were. I mean, we were sitting down, talking about really intimate things and being honest, and it was just so refreshing. It was one of the best weekends. And I was just there with a bunch of men I had never met before. I'm still friends with some of them, but,

Margi Dehlin [02:30:57] yeah,

Christopher Jenkins [02:30:59] the honesty is lacking, and I don't think anybody in the church is willing to recognize that.

Margi Dehlin [02:31:07] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [02:31:08] I mean, you look at the apologetics podcast and they're lying to themselves, they're lying to everyone else, and they're making up stories to cover up the discomfort they have when faced with the faults and the truth claims.

John Dehlin [02:31:31] Well said. Powerful. Well, we really appreciate your reaching out and your courage to want to both speak up for Beau, who I think has been grossly and unfairly maligned and smeared systematically by the church, much like Nancy Rigdon and others. So we appreciate your courage. It's even self sacrifice to speak up, even if it comes at a personal cost to you. So thank you for that and also congratulations. I think you're going to have a better relationship with your kids as a result, at least many of them, as a result of your faith journey. Is that true?

Christopher Jenkins [02:32:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:32:16] Yeah. The church doesn't take my counsel often, but they think somehow that bad apologetics are a good response to problems. But bad apologetics just informs people about the problems and then more often than not, turns them off to the church because the answers are bad or abusive.

Christopher Jenkins [02:32:41] They highlight the logical fallacies that. And I watch them and yeah, I'm driven further away from the church by the apologetics.

John Dehlin [02:32:51] Yeah. The truth wins either way.

Christopher Jenkins [02:32:53] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:32:54] Yeah. Whether they hide it and whatever or don't. Respond or get bad responses. Truth wins. That's the good way. In this case, the House always wins. We have three final questions that we like to ask. The first was, what is a book, podcast, TV show, etc. That you have enjoyed lately? And you list a lot of things and tell me if you need me to help. Cue you. Oh, you mentioned sapiens already.

Book Recommendations and Closing Reflections

Christopher Jenkins [02:33:22] I mentioned sapiens. I mentioned David Archuleta's book, Devout. Those were both excellent. I listened to books. I don't actually sit down and read much, but I listen to books a lot and. Been listening to. What is it? Nexus. You all know Harari's latest, his newest, Talking about. It's been very interesting. The chapter I'm on was talking about the organizations that have little adaptability to change. And he specifically talks about the Catholic Church and then never admit to change when they do change. And I just saw a lot of parallels versus science. Who's always looking and admitting change and changing and how much healthier that is.

John Dehlin [02:34:30] It's

Christopher Jenkins [02:34:34] seeking the truth or trying to ignore the truth until you can't anymore and then changing and pretending like you were always following the truth in the first place.

John Dehlin [02:34:47] I heard Greg Prince, historian Greg Prince give a talk on Saturday, and he told the story of him asking a Catholic leader whether women in the Catholic Church will ever receive the priesthood. And Greg Prince says that Catholic leader said, when it happens, the one thing we know for sure is that when they give women the priesthood in the Catholic Church, the statement will begin by saying, it has always been so. I believe it not to disown the Catholics, but it's a human thing. It's a human thing.

Christopher Jenkins [02:35:27] It is a human thing.

John Dehlin [02:35:27] That's my point. It's a human thing.

Margi Dehlin [02:35:30] There are no droids here.

John Dehlin [02:35:31] These are not the droids.

Margi Dehlin [02:35:32] These are not the droids you're looking.

John Dehlin [02:35:35] It's a human thing. It's not just Mormons. All right. Who's someone you admire, a hero?

Christopher Jenkins [02:35:44] Oh, I already mentioned Nancy Rigdon.

John Dehlin [02:35:47] Yeah, that's right.

Christopher Jenkins [02:35:48] I think she was awesome.

John Dehlin [02:35:49] Yeah, she was.

Christopher Jenkins [02:35:50] She called Joseph Smith a liar to

John Dehlin [02:35:53] his face, so he called her a whore in the newspapers.

Christopher Jenkins [02:35:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, she stood up for truth.

John Dehlin [02:36:01] Yeah,

Christopher Jenkins [02:36:04] yeah. I mean, I can name. I also put down my wife just, you know, in her putting up with me through all this in a. In such a loving way, honestly, you know, that it. I never felt like I was going to sacrifice our relationship and going down this road. And, you know, I've heard stories of women divorcing their husbands For a lot less than just losing their faith. So yeah, each of my kids are my heroes too, one way or another. You know, I have three that left the church before me that. I mean, you think of that 13 year old kid in an interview with their 15 year old kid in an interview with their father, who's the bishop, how much courage it takes to say, I don't believe this, dad.

Margi Dehlin [02:37:13] Yeah, absolutely.

Christopher Jenkins [02:37:16] I didn't realize at the time.

John Dehlin [02:37:21] To their dad who's a bishop.

Margi Dehlin [02:37:22] Yeah, that's right.

John Dehlin [02:37:23] Yeah, yeah, that is courage.

Margi Dehlin [02:37:25] The courage of that.

Christopher Jenkins [02:37:26] So she's my hero. And then to come out and tell us that she was trans a year ago. Yeah, yeah,

Margi Dehlin [02:37:43] absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:37:44] And then what's something that's been lighting you up lately?

Christopher Jenkins [02:37:50] Just seeking truth and not having to worry about where the source is coming from, I guess. You know, not. Oh, that's anti Mormon. I can't read that. I just read anything and assimilate it to. For what good in it and

Margi Dehlin [02:38:14] not

Christopher Jenkins [02:38:14] worry about it if it's. I can just see the good in that and I can see the good in the church too. And just enjoy the music if that's the only thing that I'm going to enjoy that day.

John Dehlin [02:38:37] And breakfast with your daughters.

Christopher Jenkins [02:38:39] Breakfast with my daughters. Yes.

John Dehlin [02:38:42] Beautiful.

Christopher Jenkins [02:38:43] We have to get done early enough that I can still make it to sunbeams though.

Margi Dehlin [02:38:48] Team teach because.

Christopher Jenkins [02:38:49] Yeah, I have to team teach with my wife.

John Dehlin [02:38:53] Well, I hope the church doesn't go after you like they went after Beau Oiler and others.

Christopher Jenkins [02:39:00] If they do. They do.

Margi Dehlin [02:39:01] Yeah. I'm sensing that.

Christopher Jenkins [02:39:03] I mean, I'm not going to hide anything. And yeah, you know, it's such. This is kind of my coming out. Right. I'm coming out of the belief closet, I guess, or the lack of belief closet and acknowledging it publicly. My change in faith. And it's freeing.

Margi Dehlin [02:39:41] Yeah.

Christopher Jenkins [02:39:42] And it feels good.

Margi Dehlin [02:39:44] That's right. Beautiful.

John Dehlin [02:39:49] And just we'll reiterate, if you are a Mormon bishop or relatively recently have been tried to report abuse to the Mormon Church's hotline and you've received suggestions or counsel to not report the abuser to the police, we would also consider your story for Mormon stories because as long as the church is going to deny that they handle things that way and smear people who say otherwise, we think as many stories like this should be shared until the Church is more willing to admit, at minimum, stop smearing people that tell the truth, but at best admit that they have been doing that and change their policy.

John Dehlin [02:40:40] So please reach out@mormonstoriesmail.com we would appreciate it if you. We're about a thousand away from 300,000 subscribers on YouTube. We would love it if y' all would subscribe to this YouTube channel and a Spotify and Instagram and Facebook and TikTok, because that helps promote this work and it helps with the algorithms, et cetera. So please, please do subscribe and apply. If you have a story you want to tell in Mormon Stories, just go to mormonstories.org apply and you can apply to be on the podcast. And of course, we do all this at the generosity of our donors.

John Dehlin [02:41:23] So if you are not a donor and you want to see this type of content, continue, you can go to mormonstories.org donate and become a monthly donor. But mostly today. Christopher Jenkins, thank you for traveling here to Salt Lake City, Utah, and for being willing to reach out to us and to tell your story at such short notice and to stick up for BO who deserves to be supported, you know.

Christopher Jenkins [02:41:51] Thank you.

Margi Dehlin [02:41:51] Yeah. We wish you all the care.

Christopher Jenkins [02:41:54] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:41:55] Yeah. Any final words? No.

Christopher Jenkins [02:41:58] No.

John Dehlin [02:42:00] All right. And Margi, thanks for being here. You always make our interviews better.

Margi Dehlin [02:42:04] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:42:05] Yeah. All right, everyone, thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. We've loved having you. Thanks to Brooklyn and Julia for all they do in post production. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care of.

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.