Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 370

John Dehlin [00:00:06] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you.

Guest [00:00:19] Come, come, ye Saints. No toil nor labor fear, but with joy when you're

John Dehlin [00:00:33] hello, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. As I'm always want to say, a special edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. Today we have a special guest for me, a very special guest, and also we're sort of announcing a new project podcast in conjunction, and so there's a lot to do today. My guest today is Dr. Philip Barlow.

John Dehlin [00:01:03] He if I had a short list of maybe, you know, if I had started Mormon Stories with a short list of maybe five or ten people that I really wanted to interview, Dr. Barlow definitely, or Phil definitely would have been on that short list. In fact, the first URL that I ever grabbed, the first domain name that I ever grabbed, was A Thoughtful Faith before I ever grabbed Mormon Stories, because that's how I thought about framing the podcast. And it was based on this book that we're going to talk about in just a second called A thoughtful faith. But Dr. Barlow, you know, he's not an attention seeker.

John Dehlin [00:01:46] He's not a grandstander. My guess is that unless you're into Mormon studies, many of you will not have heard of Phil Barlow yet. In my estimation, at least in the areas that I'm most interested in, I consider him to be one of the most important Latter Day saints in the 20th, 21st century. Again, as it relates to sort of what I see as the future of what I'll call thoughtful and faithful Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:02:17] I remember after I finished my interview with Terrell Givens, I was just so impressed by his knowledge and memory and thoughtfulness about his faith. And I asked him, just out of excitement, is there anybody else in Mormonism that could do something comparable to what we just did today? And his answer was Philip Barlow.

John Dehlin [00:02:42] Dr. Barlow is the Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture here at Utah State University, where we're recording this interview in 2012. He has his MTS, which I'm assuming is a Master's of Theological studies and his PhD from Harvard University in Religion and American Culture and History of Christianity.

John Dehlin [00:03:06] He is the author or editor of several books, including a book that my friend Ann Peffer says is one of her favorite books in Mormonism, Mormons in the Bible, the Place of the Latter Day Saints in American Religion. And he's also the editor of this book, a Thoughtful Faith, which has been and continues to be an instrumental book for me within Mormonism. He's a past president of the Mormon Historical association and he's currently serving as a high councilman in a stake here in Logan.

John Dehlin [00:03:40] So he's an active, and I think he would be comfortable saying believing Latter Day Saint. What? You know, the reason why I think an interview like this is so important is it definitely will belong aside of my interviews with Richard Bushman and Terrell Givens in that there's this sort of common assumption on the Internet today within sort of, oh, say, disaffected Mormonism that if you are informed about Mormonism, if you know all the history, if you're activated by some of the cultural issues that vex, you know, investigating Mormons, like racism or feminism or sexism or homosexuality, you know, once you sort of become enlightened to those dynamics, then you certainly cannot remain a sincere believing participant of Mormonism and also maintain your integrity that either you need to sort of live in denial or be deceptive or disingenuous in how you talk about your faith, or you just need to be ignorant of these difficulties.

John Dehlin [00:05:00] But you certainly almost like the theodicy. You know, you certainly can't totally know and be aware and be honest and open and still be believing and participating that there's three legs of that stool where one of them has to fall if you're going to stay engaged with the church. And I would just sort of say, and here Phil Barlow stands definitely aware, probably more aware than any of us listening of a lot of things that are causing people to leave Mormonism today.

John Dehlin [00:05:35] I definitely wouldn't say that he's dishonest or deceptive in how he approaches his faith. And he's definitely believing in participating. So the purpose of this interview is to sort of talk a bit about his life, but most importantly to establish maybe one potential framework for a 21st century Mormon belief.

John Dehlin [00:06:01] Now, Phil, I know you well enough to know that you would never want to hold yourself up as a role model for people because I find you to be kind of a modest, non assuming kind of individual. Nonetheless, people are looking for role models, people who are both thoughtful and faithful.

John Dehlin [00:06:22] And my fear is that if we don't have those role models, we're going to continue to lose and maybe even lose more people. And I'm assuming that you would feel that that would be a loss to our community.

John Dehlin [00:06:37] So before we actually dive into the interview, this book, A Thoughtful Faith is has become sort of the foundation for a new project that we want to pilot Within Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation and maybe even launch outright. We have a team of like 30 or 40 people who have signed up to be a part of this project.

John Dehlin [00:07:01] My friend Micah is leading it, along with a lot of other really good people. But the idea is to launch a podcast series dedicated to thoughtful faith. In other words, we're going to interview, and this team is going to interview. It won't necessarily be me doing the interviews, but we're going to interview as many people as we can who are models of thoughtful, faithful Mormonism, sort of in the 21st century. So you'll be able to access that podcast@athoughtfulfaith.org we'll have a reference to this book, A Thoughtful Faith, which is no longer in print. But my understanding is that Greg Coford is. Is considering not only doing a reissue of this book, but I've been talking to him a little bit about maybe even a new version or two.

John Dehlin [00:07:46] And maybe Phil, you've talked to him about that as well. But I would love to have this project result in, let's just say, a good 40 or 50 hours or more of interviews with some of the leading thoughtful, faithful Mormons today to serve as role models for those who want to find reasons or ways to remain in the church. And so I'm announcing that project now.

John Dehlin [00:08:14] These interviews, some of them will be included in the Mormon Stories podcast stream. Others will just stay on the Thoughtful Faith podcast stream. But this will be one of the first interviews in that project. And so with that, Dr. Phil Barlow, welcome to Mormon Stories and A Thoughtful Faith.

Philip Barlow [00:08:36] My pleasure.

John Dehlin [00:08:36] John, are you uncomfortable with that introduction?

Philip Barlow [00:08:41] Thank you, kind.

Philip Barlow's Early Life in the Church

John Dehlin [00:08:44] All right. Well, you know, one of the things that we do in Mormon Stories is start by having you talk a little bit about your early years in the church and any formative stories or experiences that you feel like have helped shape your perspective today. And so it's kind of a broad question to say talk about your early years in the church, but maybe you could just walk us a little bit through some of your early experiences or stories that you would consider to be formative in maybe your thoughtful, faithful perspective today.

Philip Barlow [00:09:30] Well, my younger years were. I don't know what the word traditional might mean, since Mormons, as I'm fond of saying, are not made from cookie cutters and Mormon families are not made from cookie cutters. But I was raised in a fully active Ladre Saint family. Both folks, both parents were active, and we had a good experience in church growing up, sneaking into the church at midnight to play basketball like typical boys, thoroughly enmeshed in. This is in Bountiful Utah.

Philip Barlow [00:10:10] I'm one of six brothers and two sisters. I'm the fourth. And in our growing up years, everybody was active. A couple of them are not in their adult years and pretty typical. We can probe that more if you like, but pretty typical. Just a good experience in church, but not a critical or thoughtful one. Until I got to college, at Weber State College, I had a philosophy professor by the name of Jennings Olson. He was one of the famous swearing elders with stirring McMurran and company. And he. When I first came off my mission, which I went to in Haight Ashbury, San Francisco, cool experience on mission.

John Dehlin [00:11:01] What year. What year would you have been there?

Philip Barlow [00:11:02] 69 to 71.

John Dehlin [00:11:03] Oh, so you were in Haight Ashbury. Right. During.

Philip Barlow [00:11:06] There was stuff going on. I walked across the Stanford campus and they used to misunderstand us for FBI agents. So there was a lot going on. My friends had all gone to exotic locales around the globe and I felt a little domestic in being called to Central California. But the truth is I had a fabulously interesting mission. Lots of challenges and lots of people willing to talk.

John Dehlin [00:11:33] Two years or three?

Philip Barlow [00:11:34] Two.

John Dehlin [00:11:35] Two years. Okay.

Philip Barlow [00:11:36] Should have had a third one just to learn the foreign culture of the Bay Area, but just for the English speaking.

John Dehlin [00:11:42] I don't want to. I don't want to be discourteous to my listeners or viewers, but I think there's going to be some people who don't understand what Haight Ashbury is. But let me just tell you, as I understand it, it's sort of where, you know, the hippie movement, where the free love movement, all the Woodstock kind of stuff, it kind of all emerged out of that little, little community, it seems. And you would have been there right during that Woodstock, Beatles kind of timeframe, is that right?

Philip Barlow [00:12:10] Yeah. And I wasn't particularly culturally mature or informed. I encountered all that with rather wide eyes. But only a year or two before the nation was on fire with race riots. It was a lively time, Vietnam War still going.

Philip Barlow [00:12:30] So lots of interesting conversations. And in California had a rich, good, challenging, growing experience there. When I came back and went to college in my first class, it was an honors philosophy class, meaning that there were only six or eight people in the class. And Professor Olson, who was a very nice, very smart man, gracious to a fault, very formal and polite, but he asked questions or made comments that seemed to me derogatory towards the church. And as a fresh, raw missionary after a Few such comments or class periods, I at last raised my hand and said, yeah, but. And then he engaged me and we were the only ones who talked for the rest of the period, back and forth.

Philip Barlow [00:13:25] And then the next class period, he came in loaded with books from his chin to his hands like this, including the Book of Mormon and Joseph Fielding Smith, and plopped them ceremoniously on the table, and we started interrogating them under his guidance. So that as we run the religious studies program here at Utah State University, that seems kind of like a forum experience, but that's what happened. So that's when I started thinking critically about Mormon things. Mormon philosophy, theology, history.

John Dehlin [00:14:05] So up until that point where this professor starts hitting you with some of the hard questions, did you have what you would consider to be some pillars in a faith? And if so, what were those pillars?

Philip Barlow [00:14:20] Yeah, I'm not sure I had any reason to be deeply thoughtful. I was naive and young, so I had faith in the Book of Mormon. It felt true in my hand as I walked along the streets of Oakland and San Francisco. Found it edifying, found some of it puzzling, of course, I'm sure, but they weren't in depth, thoughtful questions. I certainly ran into questioning on my mission, as I just said, but I didn't have any education to speak of to gain traction in critical thinking about them.

Post-Mission Doubts and Teaching Experience

John Dehlin [00:14:59] Okay, so nothing in your mission was particularly troubling or alarming. You came off your mission guns a blazing, faithful guns a blazing.

Philip Barlow [00:15:08] Yeah, that might be a theatrical phrase for it, but solid believing, practicing and happy as a Latter Day Saint. It was a good, good lifestyle.

John Dehlin [00:15:20] So did you emerge from this class with this professor troubled or disturbed or just excited about new questions and thinking?

Philip Barlow [00:15:30] I don't feel that I was. I don't remember feeling lacerated, but certainly there were new issues back in those days. It wasn't public knowledge that there were multiple accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision that didn't line up neatly and simply. And so he spent a session or two laying all that out. And I didn't know about things like that. He raised archaeological questions about the historicity of the Book of Mormon, so there were things to confront that early.

John Dehlin [00:16:06] Did you get the sense that he was a believer?

Philip Barlow [00:16:09] No, by no means he was. He had been a Mormon, but it was clear that he wasn't a believer.

John Dehlin [00:16:16] Okay.

Philip Barlow [00:16:17] Anytime I wanted to check something out or was on a research project in that class, I think he had something of a photographic memory, so he would like to flaunt it. It was kind of charming and impressive and braggadocio. So he would assign me to go check some book and he'd say, oh, and I think the call number is thus. And so. And he'd. He'd look in his mind and have access to this considerable knowledge. So he was an impressive guy along those lines, but he was not a believing Latter Day Saint.

John Dehlin [00:16:53] So you had this sort of early. I don't know if you want to call him a mentor, but an early teacher or guide who was a non believer putting to you these very difficult issues. Was that. How was that for you emotionally?

Philip Barlow [00:17:13] Yeah, I think I'm half amnesiac on all these things, so I'm not positive I can give an accurate rendition of my emotional or psychological state in response to them. But they raised questions, but they weren't tearing me in half. I was just sorting through them.

Philip Barlow [00:17:30] I think his questions were relevant. Not the only thing informing, but relevant to my ultimate decision to go study religion formally. When I eventually did that, I graduated in 1975 with a degree in history and a lot of psychology mixed in there. And then I stalled for a couple of years studying languages. I thought I'd go on to graduate school, but I didn't have a clear path in what. And the study of religion hadn't occurred to me because there were no programs at Weber State where I was studying, nor in the state generally to study religion formally as in a place that you could major in religion. So it never crossed my mind.

John Dehlin [00:18:22] Had you read Fawn Brodie by that point?

Philip Barlow [00:18:27] I think it was in those years, yeah. I think I would have been in college when I encountered Fawn Brody.

John Dehlin [00:18:33] Okay. Okay.

Philip Barlow [00:18:35] So, I mean, this is not the Joseph I was raised with. I have that experience like others do, of course, encountering her work.

John Dehlin [00:18:42] Right, okay. So you. You pretty much probably had a decent grasp then of the issues that. That vex people today. Or at least an introduction to them, maybe.

Philip Barlow [00:18:55] An introduction to them, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:57] Okay. So what was it like to go to Harvard and really study religion in depth?

Returning to Harvard to Study Religion

Philip Barlow [00:19:03] Yeah. Well, it was fabulous, but it was a struggle, as I say. I stalled for a couple of years until I found my calling. And then I met a new friend in Ogden who had gone back there to study religion. And I met him between his first and second years of his graduate program.

Philip Barlow [00:19:24] And I learned. And then I was electrified, like, man, I gotta go do that. And so then I applied and went back there and learned afterwards that he had had a very hard time. It had been hard on his faith, and he didn't like that. And therefore didn't really like his experience back there, although I'm sure he recognizes that it had some value. But I went back there and had to encounter.

Philip Barlow [00:19:52] So it was thrilling to plunge in and I went back there intending to study everything but Mormonism. I thought I understood Mormonism and eventually it was. I learned that there were smarter people than me and that there were a lot more experienced people than me. So I was surrounded by a lot of people who were wonderful, admirable, but also daunting. And so I had to work my way through that. And it's in that context that I had the opportunity to question myself, my faith, belief in God or Mormonism more thoroughly. Of course.

John Dehlin [00:20:37] So the Harvard years were what years? From when to when?

Philip Barlow [00:20:41] I did a master's degree there till 1980.

John Dehlin [00:20:46] Starting when?

Philip Barlow [00:20:47] In 77.

John Dehlin [00:20:48] So 77 to 80 masters.

Philip Barlow [00:20:50] Okay, yeah. And then I had to sort out what to do and I got invited into the doctoral program, but I also got invited to a job with the Elias Institute there in Cambridge, and I wanted to do both of those, so I did both of those. So I slowed down my doctoral program track and, and took that job and did that on the side.

John Dehlin [00:21:15] And so you finished your PhD?

Philip Barlow [00:21:18] I didn't finish till 88. I got interrupted for a couple of years. I left Cambridge in 1985 and took a year's pause and then went back and finished my generals and came back to Salt Lake City because I had migrated to the idea of doing a dissertation on Mormonism which turned out to be Mormonism and the Bible, the basis for Mormonism in the Bible that you just mentioned, Ernie.

John Dehlin [00:21:46] So kind of 11ish years from beginning to end.

Philip Barlow [00:21:50] Well, from a master's degree from when I entered the doctoral program. It was eight years before I had the dissertation finished. Not a world record setting pace.

John Dehlin [00:22:00] No, but. So do you remember, if you started, would you say that you struggled or even had a crisis of faith at Harvard then?

A Slow-Motion Crisis of Faith

Philip Barlow [00:22:13] Yeah. Crisis is a wonderfully elastic word, kind of a slow motion, long developing crisis. Do I really believe what I thought I believed? And do I have responsible, informed, ethical grounds for believing what I thought I believed? And how shall I know that?

Philip Barlow [00:22:36] The traditional Mormon answers to that of pray and you'll be told. That had to intersect with the content of what I was studying, including epistemological issues of how do we know when we're doing wish fulfillment? How do we know when we're making up our own thoughts? Since we live in our consciousness, how should we discern our consciousness from Exterior influences of the divine, if there be the divine, arguments for and against God, the parochialism of my own mind, the smallness of my experience, my sense of the superiority of Mormonism without really understanding other religions and their histories, let alone difficulties in my own faith's history.

Philip Barlow [00:23:28] So all those questions that are, they've been around for many decades or in some ways since the beginnings of Mormonism, but in the age of the Internet and a shrunken world, they've taken on a different sort of atmosphere today, I think. But it was those sort of things while I was studying religion as such and other religions as such, trying to locate myself and what I really thought and felt in that context.

John Dehlin [00:24:02] And those things that you mention, I kind of think of them as kind of the bigger questions, the broader questions that really transcend Mormonism that any believing or non believing person in the world would have to grapple with, whether it's the existence of God or theodicy, or the relative truthfulness between religious traditions. What about the particularities, the questions or the concerns regarding the particularities of Mormonism, the, you know, Joseph Smith and polygamy, or, you know, the, the historicity of the Book of Mormon? Were those all things that were also part of that faith struggle for you?

Philip Barlow [00:24:48] Sure, the wider questions can be threatening to a Mormon faith in particular as well as to non Latter Day Saints, or they can be the opposite. If I can work myself through the idea of a literal physical resurrection, then I can work my way through smaller miracles, whether performed by Jesus or in Mormon history or not. So yeah, certainly Mormon particularities all had to be addressed as part of that. So what is the Book of Mormon and what is revelation and the claims are fantastic and outrageous and how shall I weigh all those so Mormon and metamormon questions?

John Dehlin [00:25:41] So do you remember any particular moments of real concern or distress, some type of moments of truth or even contemplation of disbelieving or disaffiliating? Like how dramatic or non dramatic did it kind of get for you? Just for those who are saying, who are trying to. Maybe there are some listening who are saying, did he ever really get to the brink like I am right now or like I, not me personally, but my listener, like they might be or might have reached. Did it ever reach a point of sort of severity or of high distress for you?

Philip Barlow [00:26:25] Yeah, very high distress. Separating it out from other distresses in life is a little tricky because they were all intermingled. But you mentioned a thoughtful faith and in my essay, in that collection of essays I talk about a statue across the street from my office and Longfellow Park Church there on Brattle Street, a few blocks from Harvard Square, which is where the institute office was also. And across the street there's a statue, a life size statue with.

Philip Barlow [00:27:06] It took me a while to figure out that it was supposed to represent Christ. I just thought it represented the human condition and you can merge those two concepts at some point. And I used to spend, I used to think, my cheerful Mormon positive faith and friends in Cambridge, that people weren't studying religion like I was and that while it's a very thoughtful, engaged place, they weren't encountering what I was encountering.

Philip Barlow [00:27:41] Probably some of them were and I could have found more cultural conversation partners, but it felt kind of lonely and isolated and there was not a critical mass of people like there are today fellow graduate students studying religion. There were a few others here and there.

Philip Barlow [00:27:59] So I spend a lot of time with that statue that I named Anguish, Lord, where are you? Or I'm drowning here and not knowing this. So tears, loneliness and then some personal struggles in wider life got in the way. My wife ended up leaving the church and we ended up getting a divorce. Not particularly over religion, but that was important to us when we arrived in Cambridge and evolution happened. So on other grounds we did decided it was the most constructive thing to leave. And that was an agonizing thing. So I do remember having a pit in my stomach for the better part of a year that this is what anxiety feels like. And some portion of that was barlows don't get divorce, how can this be? And some of it was certainly the religious philosophical struggles.

John Dehlin [00:29:07] So sounds like some dark times for you.

Philip Barlow [00:29:11] Yeah, I remember actually this will be a humbling sort of a thing to admit publicly, but it's true. I remember a time or two getting in my car and getting on the freeway and screaming all the way for I don't know for how long, but needing a physical emotional outlet. It wasn't like I was any more nutty than I usually am, but I needed some sort of release. And it felt, as Jean Paul Sartre, the philosopher would have said, like no exit. There was no door out of here. And so that helps me remember I was in some emotional difficulty.

John Dehlin [00:29:56] Knowing you, that's hard for me to imagine you driving down the freeway screaming.

Philip Barlow [00:30:03] That's a strange sounding picture even to me, but got that disturbing.

Leaving Church Education and Notable Students

John Dehlin [00:30:08] Okay, so how did you. And I guess it's also worth noting, and you refer to this in your recent sunstone why I stay presentation but you had made a decision to cast your lot with the institute program, probably at some personal sacrifice or cost, maybe. And then what happened?

Philip Barlow [00:30:37] An economic cost because the living was modest. And a conversation with myself about whether I wanted to stay on an academic track and enter university life in the longer run or whether I wanted to do institute. And I had a fabulous experience back there with the Institute in Cambridge. And it's an unusual collection of people, again, many of them smarter than me. So we had great explorations there, and I had a good time.

John Dehlin [00:31:06] Are there people we'd know that you had the privilege to teach?

Philip Barlow [00:31:12] Let's see. I might have to give that a little thought. I could certainly. Next. A lot of wonderful people, but when you say, would we know them? Have they become public figures? I taught some of the Richard and Claudia Bushman children who are very accomplished people, but they're not public intellectuals like their parents are. Steve Huffner, Bill Bradshaw, you know, from work on issues of gay and lesbian matters. BYU professor. I only learned last week, I guess, when he came and introduced himself, that he was the father of a really terrific student of mine, one of my favorite, Fritz, who's a Bart Bradshaw, who's a practicing physician. So they're accomplished and wonderful. I'm not sure who's public.

John Dehlin [00:32:07] So a lot of the children of many of the people that we might know,

Philip Barlow [00:32:15] Ed Geary, the wonderful literature, wonderful short story and novelist writer from byu, his brilliant son, Edward Geary Chase and Greta Peterson's two sons and daughter.

John Dehlin [00:32:31] So folks like that, people that in the. In 2012 would be kind of in their mid-40s. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Philip Barlow [00:32:39] So mere children, John, What? Mere children.

John Dehlin [00:32:43] Thank you. I'll take it. Yeah. So what happened? Tell us real quickly what happened with that job. Just because I think that that's a formative experience for you, maybe.

Involvement with Dialogue and Sunstone

Philip Barlow [00:32:55] Yes. Well, I was treated in very gentle tones of love and counseling, but was, in essence, fired, let go from the job sympathetically by people who actually, the people in the church education system tried to preserve my job. So it wasn't an accusation that I had done some great wrong and the circumstances were actually a little unusual, but probably not appropriate to go into the details for respect for my friend and former wife.

Philip Barlow [00:33:37] But anyway, there was an unwritten rule that divorced people couldn't remain teaching in the institute system. And they had conversations about that and tried to request if that policy could be reconsidered or given specific application to a real particular situation. And the answer came down no. So that's a lot of words to say I was fired from the church education system.

Philip Barlow [00:34:06] And that was, I think, as you were asking earlier or maybe implying by your question, that was traumatic in that time when I was having an economic stress under faith challenge. I was still faithful, but still challenged as I sorted through those to also be fired and take my two children back to.

Philip Barlow [00:34:32] Back home to Bountiful, Utah, to sort out what road I was going to go on now. So that was not helpful at the time.

John Dehlin [00:34:43] And just to capture it in the story, part of the logic that they used in the dismissal was what around having to teach a class or counsel.

Philip Barlow [00:34:52] Yeah. They said to one again, nice man, nice person. So I don't mean to be unfairly critical, just said, it's too bad it has to be that way. But how would it be for you if you were asked to teach a course on marriage and family and there you would be this divorced person. And the implication was that isn't the modeling that we want to set up for young people. So I might have liked it better if I was invited to help write curriculum or something at the time. But anyway, that was their policy and decision.

John Dehlin [00:35:34] And so how was that, how was that experience for you? Was that like insult to injury as you've just been divorced, as you're struggling in your crisis of faith? I imagine that I might have felt even rejected by my church.

Philip Barlow [00:35:52] Yeah. Or abandoned or something. Those feelings come. The church, like other employers don't have the obligation to employ you. So I think in the middle of the hurt, it would be possible for me to have been self pitying and stuff. So I don't mean to vilify them. It isn't a policy. I would advise if they came and asked my opinion. But it's also true that I'm too close to the situation or certainly was in the middle of that stew. Having those different realms of crises amount to a kind of a life crisis that it didn't feel comforting at the time.

John Dehlin [00:36:33] Right now, parallel to this, they're humans

Philip Barlow [00:36:37] doing the best they can.

John Dehlin [00:36:39] Right. Parallel to this, I'm thinking mid-80s now. You know, Sunstone, you know, dialogue would have been started in the 60s. Leonard Arrington would have had his Camelot years all through the 70s. And then Sunstone would have really been gaining steam in the mid-80s and so forth.

Philip Barlow [00:36:58] Mormon studies gaining steam and evolving. Not just growing and accelerating, but it's

John Dehlin [00:37:06] character evolving from the Peggy Fletcher kind of years to the Albert Peck years. Is that kind of what you mean?

Philip Barlow [00:37:12] Yeah, I'd have to lay out the history but yeah, a lot of other influences. So the character, in my experience of what it was like to attend Sunstone. Sunstone naturally has a. There's a biography to be written of Sunstone or Dialogue or just as there is the church unfolding. So it wasn't just momentum, but the flavor of who was there and what they were saying and what it was founded for versus what had become culturally weren't the same. It was originally as was Dialogue, by people operating critically, wanting to ask all and any questions, sort of as you do on your podcast. But its founders were operating from within the premises of faith, or as they adopted Saint Anselm for their moniker at Sunstone, Faith Seeking Understanding.

Philip Barlow [00:38:15] And at times I think it became an exercise in whining or how to work out your personal demons. So my point is you can't just say Sunstone and have it mean the same thing. It evolved.

John Dehlin [00:38:33] Right. To what extent were you plugged into or aware of or participating in or affected by Leonard Arrington Dialogue and then Sunstone during late 70s, early 80s, mid-80s?

Philip Barlow [00:38:55] Oh, well, I like to, when I was in the vicinity or had the means to get there, go to the. I can't remember when the first symposia were in relation to that time. Do you?

John Dehlin [00:39:05] It would have been late 70s, early 80s.

Philip Barlow [00:39:07] Yeah, it seems like that. So I would intend the symposia and find them refreshing, sometimes inspiring, certainly freeing. Leonard Arrington became an acquaintance and had lots of good talks with him and certainly was aware of all the commotion.

Philip Barlow [00:39:26] I was writing a dissertation or research that would eventually feed into a dissertation when I left Cambridge and came back to Salt Lake City in 85 and 86. And I remember being at the University of Utah library sometimes and at the church archives, historical archives sometimes. And I remember coming up State street and. And I'm getting home. And by the time I got home to Bountiful Mark Hoffman had blown himself.

Philip Barlow [00:40:08] Not blown himself up as in to smithereens, but wounded himself near the Deseret Gym there on State street that I had just driven by. So there was all of that commotion in the historical community and with Hoffman and therefore the general public. So they were lively, lively times.

John Dehlin [00:40:30] And did you. Do you. And I only ask you this just to get a sense for whether you were kind of plugged into that zeitgeist a little bit. But were you kind of a reader of Dialogue in Sunstone during late 70s, early mid-80s?

Philip Barlow [00:40:44] Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin [00:40:47] You kind of knew what was going on.

Philip Barlow [00:40:48] When I had lived back in Cambridge, Peggy Fletcher then And Alan Roberts had come back and talked to me about sunstone things and things that were going on. So I read as much as I could in the Journal of Mormon History.

John Dehlin [00:41:06] Right. Okay.

Guest [00:41:09] So.

John Dehlin [00:41:14] What made you. What made you decide to write, to edit this book? And how did it overlay with these things you were experiencing? Because it was released sort of during this time, if I'm not mistaken.

Philip Barlow [00:41:30] Yes, that's right. I did decide to respond to that general series of bruises and crises by exploring what is the nature of my allegiance to Mormonism and what would it be like to gather a group of thoughtful people who have encountered reasons to doubt that.

Philip Barlow [00:41:58] And I might say I was criticized for that collection for not having more women in it. And I told people, I'm only going to say this once. I have asked a half dozen other women who have demurred or who weren't available or who agreed but didn't get their essays in on the record. Even back in that era, I wanted more women. But I did have the privilege of asking a number of thoughtful people and not homogenized people. I think they're very. There's quite a range of voices and approach that ended up in that collection. But it was an act of. How shall I say to myself what the most constructive case is for my faith and for my allegiance to the Church.

John Dehlin [00:42:48] Did the Church ask you to do this? Did they show interest?

Philip Barlow [00:42:52] When I decided to do that, I hadn't decided if I could go back and face my doctoral exams. I was so bothered by the series of events in my life that I wasn't psychologically ready to go face. In fact, they irrationally grew to be Mount Everest. How shall I ever get over my general doctoral exams? Because I stopped thinking well and being able to focus on that task as well. So when I pulled out, it was in that context. So what shall I do that's constructive? I decided to try to eke out some money from somewhere and make sure I could feed my children for a while while I sorted my path out.

Philip Barlow [00:43:37] I took on that project. No one asked me to do it, but it was partly a product of that autobiographical moment. And I decided to. To start writing a novel that I intend to get back to as soon as I possibly can.

Philip Barlow [00:43:56] That had to do with evil and suffering and faith. Inspired by Dostoevsky and Milton and my Mormon background. I'm working on a novel about the war in heaven. So I started making sketches about that and feeling sorry for myself. Not, no doubt, during that year that I took off before I decided to Go back to Harvard and finish up things.

John Dehlin [00:44:23] So this was one of those projects during those years you took off?

Philip Barlow [00:44:28] Uh huh. During.

John Dehlin [00:44:29] Okay.

Philip Barlow [00:44:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:30] And I just want to, you know, anybody who is looking to strengthen their faith or who is contemplating leaving the church, I think they would be making a mistake to not get a copy of this book and at least read through some of the essays here. This contains some of the authors. Leonard Arrington wrote an essay here. Phil's essay. I just read it this morning. Reread. It is so good. But also Mary Bradford, Richard Bushman, Richard Paul. His. His essay, I think it's called what the Church Means to People Like Me. The whole iron Rod Liahona speech is in here. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has an essay in here. You know, Eugene, England. And you know Emily Thane was hers Lusterware. Is that.

Philip Barlow [00:45:28] No, that was Laurel Ulrich.

John Dehlin [00:45:29] That was Laura Ulrich, a classic. And Emily Thanes was.

Philip Barlow [00:45:35] Was.

John Dehlin [00:45:35] I remember it being fabulous as well.

Philip Barlow [00:45:37] Yes, very good. I've just forgotten the title. But she has great imagery about a wild rope swing of adventure.

John Dehlin [00:45:46] The landing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This, this book is. Is a classic. It's. It's so inspiring and it's so worth reading.

Philip Barlow [00:45:56] And by the way, as we republish that, I've been busy with other things, so I need to get that done and we'll bring that to fruition. But I contacted the living authors. Leonard and others had passed away. Richard Paul. But I contacted the living authors a year or two ago to get a little addendum. Does what you wrote here really still represent your faith? Or would you like to talk a little bit about how that's changed? So there will be a little epilogue from each of the living authors.

Why Philip Barlow Stays in the Church

John Dehlin [00:46:32] Nice. Nice. Well, so something really interesting happened to me for me this morning because I heard you give your talk at Sunstone a few weeks ago on why I stay. And then you sent me a few other essays that you've penned recently, or maybe not so recently that provide some perspective into your faith. And I was thinking, wow, this is clearly the perspective of a mature man who's been thinking about this stuff for a long time. Then this morning I went back and read your essay that you would have written here, probably in your 30s, and found that there was a lot of consistency and redundancy between what you had written then and kind of what you're saying today. So in some sense, this essay that you wrote back then is still very much foundational for how you construct your faith or view your faith now. Is that fair to say?

Philip Barlow [00:47:41] I Haven't reread that recently. And I would suspect that I would be critical of some of my prose if I were to go do that. But I'm sure there's an organic connection. I'm sure a number of the principles I tried to articulate there would still inform me, although I'm always realizing how little I know and therefore growing as I encounter new thoughts and new information. So I. And I'm sure it would be bigger than that, but some continuity.

John Dehlin [00:48:14] Well, if it's okay, I'm ready to kind of launch into kind of a part two of this interview. We've talked about your history and kind of what led up to this book and some of the formative things about your faith. Now I kind of want to do something that's a little bit different than I've ever done on Mormon stories before because as I think back to my interviews, all my interviews, really up until now, I was trying to work out difficulties or problems that I had, I had with historical issues, historicity issues with the Book of Mormon, you know, a lot of the problems that people lose their faith over or leave the church over.

John Dehlin [00:49:05] And so if you listen to my interviews with Tara Givens or with Richard Bushman or Brant Gardner, it's sort of like me coming up with a list of all the difficult things and peppering the interviewee with the difficult questions to see how they stand.

John Dehlin [00:49:24] Almost like it's a court of law and, and I'm an attorney trying to put someone on the witness stand and deconstruct and attack their faith. I'm not saying that's what I was consciously trying to do, but I think one could easily interpret a lot of my past interviews in that way. And over the past several months, and really for a long time I've been feeling like, okay, I've done that. You know, we've covered polyandry, we've covered DNA, we've covered historicity, we've covered all that stuff. And you know, that's one, I think it's not an invalid approach to sort of having a dialogue.

Philip Barlow [00:50:12] But by the way, don't be too hard on yourself. I've listened to a couple of those and that sort of thing can be overdone or excessively redundant, repeated endlessly with, with different figures. But someone has to ask hard questions, not pull punches, but ask them in a well intended search for truth. And it seems to me you've done that admirably.

John Dehlin [00:50:34] Well, thank you. I've tried. It's hard. But what I'm more interested in doing with this thoughtful faith project and beginning with you, and I'm hoping and assuming that the thoughtful faith team is to. Going. Going to share this perspective, is I'm more interested going forward in, with each individual interview, laying a foundation of faith. So in sort of focusing on the problems starting, sort of allowing people to build from the ground up what their foundations of their faith are. And that's a different way to come at this discussion.

Philip Barlow [00:51:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:19] And so that's kind of what I want to do now. And I'm going to give you your essay. In part three of your essay, you sort of lay out, I believe it's 15 kind of points, and I'm not going to expect you to cover each one in depth. I'm not going to expect you to remember everything.

Walking Through the Pillars of Belief

John Dehlin [00:51:40] But what I thought might make sense would be to go through each of those 15 points because you really do start from a very base, foundational level, very base, and then you build. And each one of these points I found to be very interesting and very important and relevant to the.

John Dehlin [00:52:04] Without trying to be boastful, the thousands of people that I've now talked to who have gone through a faith struggle or are struggling in their faith now. So that's what I'd like to do. And again, don't feel the need to recall anything specific or to be comprehensive in any way. Some of these points we might be able to just touch on very lightly.

John Dehlin [00:52:24] But I think it'd be fun to kind of lay out this foundation as you laid it out in this book and see how you construct your faith and approach to the church. And then at the end, we can add whatever new perspectives you might have now to it. Is that all right?

Philip Barlow [00:52:41] Sure, you bet.

John Dehlin [00:52:42] Okay, so I found it interesting that you start in a very Descartian. Is that a phrase?

Philip Barlow [00:52:49] Cartesian.

John Dehlin [00:52:50] Cartesian. Sorry, listeners, you start in a very Cartesian way because you start with the pillar number one that you exist. Why do you start.

Philip Barlow [00:53:01] I remember Davis Bitten sort of making fun of me for that. Like, my, my.

John Dehlin [00:53:07] So the opening pillar of your testimony is that you exist. Why is that important and what do you mean by that?

Philip Barlow [00:53:14] I think these points we can consider along the lines that you've suggested, but it's also a little stilted. So it's not the only way. I think. It's not like I think faith has arrived at necessarily the best way in a Euclidean logic.

Philip Barlow [00:53:35] Here's the first premise. Like, this is all based on reason. In fact, in the preface and in this essay, I take on that Presupposition that happens with intellectuals. I don't think the only form of important intelligence or epistemological avenues to truth necessarily can be reduced to reason. So I apologize for the stiltedness of it, but I guess I was maybe informed by a little bit of graduate school pretense, even for all I know, I'm not sure.

Philip Barlow [00:54:14] Talking about how we know things and can we know anything about anything. And there are philosophical schools that not only doubt that, but are quite skeptical, aggressively skeptical. Doubt that we can know anything outside our own mind, which is to say, possibly outside our own imagination.

Philip Barlow [00:54:36] Because whatever reality may be out there, the only access we have to it is how we image it with our ridiculously limited, wondrous, but ridiculously limited five senses or six, six or seven senses, whatever one argues that we have. And that entails an act of the imagination, and it entails a bit of faith. Like, I'm really encountering a John Dehlin entity here as we talk. And it's not just a figment of me. And to ordinary intelligent people out on the street, that will sound absurd. Why bother with that?

Philip Barlow [00:55:17] Philosophers wrestle in very deliberate, long, deep ways with it. I just thought I'd start with this little paragraph, that I'm willing to take that step of faith. And there's no knowing outside my knowing or knowing outside my imagination at one level. But at another level, I'm perfectly comfortable taking that step of faith, reason, consciousness, that I'm here. I'm not starting literally from nowhere. But it does entail faith, even at that level.

John Dehlin [00:55:55] Yeah, I think it's important to start there. It is a leap. It is a choice. And sometimes academia and philosophy can become so philosophical that it leaves one to feel like there's no ground upon which one can stand.

Philip Barlow [00:56:18] Yeah, And I think that can be, as I put it to myself, I don't think that we can think too well. And anybody, certainly anybody within who's conversing within or about Mormonism, who wants to submerge the mind or the intellect or the reason in favor of the spirit and revelation.

Philip Barlow [00:56:46] That's a little problematic because Joseph taught that we are intelligences in our essence, fully as much as we're spirits. Sometimes I think he used those as hyphenated synonyms that were spirit, intelligence, things. But if not, if those are separable, then the thing that's core, at the inner core of that is intelligence.

Philip Barlow [00:57:13] That had to be Matryushka, like Russian dolls. The intelligence had to be put in spirit, and then the intelligence, spirit had to be incarnated into flesh and bones. So it's either that or. Or intelligence and spirit are the same thing. So I don't think you can submerge that and be true to Joseph Smith's theology.

Philip Barlow [00:57:36] And therefore I don't think you can think too well outside Mormonism or within Mormon theology. But you can think too much. I know the experience of thinking too much or people thinking too much. I've been on dates where in my younger years where my woman friend thought she had to take the pulse and have a conversation about where do we sit now in our relationship every other date. And it helped, helped undermine the relationship. Or swimmers who know you can't float on water because they've seen rocks and humans sink are never going to learn to swim that way. Based on pure reason. So you can think too much.

Philip Barlow [00:58:24] You can't think too well. Now you better. I probably got on a tangent there, sparked by something you asked and I forgot what it was. Tell me again.

John Dehlin [00:58:33] No, just. Do we have a solid ground upon which we can stand?

Philip Barlow [00:58:37] Oh yeah. And it's not based merely on reason. I guess that's my bridge. We need to think hard about that. But part of that is intuitional and intuition is subject to error, but so is reason subject to error. So we need to have some recipe that welcomes both those.

Belief in God and the Search for the Transcendent

John Dehlin [00:59:00] All right, so pillar number two is that God exists and you felt his influence. Mormons would say gods exist, right?

Philip Barlow [00:59:12] Yeah. The divine exists, something transcendent exists. Mormon theology, deriving from Joseph Smith and more widely from Christianity and Judaism, takes that. That something that exists is intelligent rather than utterly impersonal or a force like gravity or dark energy or dark matter. The faith is that it's intelligent.

Philip Barlow [00:59:43] And I have just about zero. I'm interested in listening, but I have just about zero interest in basing my faith on Aristotelian logic or Aquinas type arguments of God's existence. Because while I don't want to judge other people, my experience is that ultimate reality is not something we know.

Philip Barlow [01:00:16] We'll have to talk about that word know and knowledge when you're ready. But ultimate reality is not something we know. It's something in which we put our trust. And trust is closely related to the concept of faith. So I don't mean it to be blind, naive faith. I don't mean it to be anti intellectual faith.

Philip Barlow [01:00:42] I don't mean it to be anti scientific. If there's anything we can test, which is science's essence, then I'm all for that. Let's test but it can't test all sorts of stuff. So it's not the only epistemological tool we humans have. So I don't have any interest in proving God, but I am available for any friends or interviewers who are seeking for faith and what's the ground of that. And I think we have impulses, we humans, that can lead towards thought about and radar about experience, however veiled and cloudy or projected and imagined, about the idea of a deity or the experience or truth of a deity.

Philip Barlow [01:01:35] I think as some philosophers, Reinhold Niebuhr, as an important 20th century theologian would be an example, would argue against anthropologists of his time that the most fundamental thing that makes human humans is their capacity to use tools or their capacity to reason.

Philip Barlow [01:02:00] He argues instead, and not alone. He argues instead that what makes humans most human is their self transcendence. That is, humans are so constituted and so wired that we in some measure step outside ourselves. We can't completely step outside ourselves, but we can look at ourselves and contemplate ourselves and study psychology, study ourselves in groups, anthropologically or sociologically. That's a remarkable thing to come to terms with.

Philip Barlow [01:02:39] And, and I'm not sure if there's going to be some way to measure whether that happens in dolphins or chimpanzees or others. But as far as we can tell, we're the creatures who transcend ourselves. And that transcendence, it doesn't prove anything about God, but it does set up the possibility of the contemplation about transcendent themes themselves. And that Peter Berger is an interesting mind. I don't know if you've ever read any Peter Berger. I'm sort of a philosophical sociologist who wrote a book called A Rumor of no, Not A Rumor of Angels but the Sacred Canopy. And that was a sociological approach to something that was a little Freudian.

Philip Barlow [01:03:31] How societies and people project a sacred roof over them, a sacred canopy in the universe because the universe is a very spooky thing and asteroid can come and blow us all up, or diseases come, or the existential problem about we're not safe here, we're vulnerable creatures. And so he wrote a thoughtful, influential analysis going about that sociologically. But the intelligentsia who read him applauded, as they applauded Freud, like, could we get past this naive adolescent religion that we're in as humans and get beyond this God talk? Because it's clearly an individual psychological. Psychological or social, sociological projection.

Philip Barlow [01:04:28] And so then he wrote a sequel to that book called A Room of Angels and say no, no, that's not at all what I meant. I happen to believe that there's something transcendent. He said, the fact that people do wish fulfillment and social projection says zippo about whether there's a reality out there or not. And so in A Rumor of Angels, he analyzed a series of impulses that humans do towards the transcendent. And I haven't read it for a long time, so I won't try to get too tricky with it. But an example. They're not proofs, but they're signals of are there implications to our impulses, to the transcendent?

Philip Barlow [01:05:12] Is it wish fulfillment? Or are we hotwired to do just that. To imagine and seek and ask about ourselves and our station and whence we came? So he wrote, for instance, this is back. I was reading him when I was back in the Boston area.

Philip Barlow [01:05:29] And he wrote a book. He wrote. One of his five or six Signals of the Transcendent was about what a mother does when her infant child is disturbed. And when the child wakes up in the middle of the night and is disturbed, the mother is going to go pick her up and say, there, there. It's all right, honey. And what the mother means, he asserted, was not it's okay. I'm here. But when she says, everything's okay, she means everything, like the universe.

Philip Barlow [01:06:08] I thought, oh, that was interesting. But only several nights later, I had just that experience. My little girl got sick in the middle of the night. And I got a bunch of pressures the next day. I struggle in there like a mother or father would. I want to sleep. Oh, no, you've thrown up. I've got to clean that up. You've got a fever.

Philip Barlow [01:06:29] Will I ever get back to sleep after I rock you? But then I wake up a little more. It's a privilege to do that. I'm honored to be able to do it. So that's all sort of redeeming. And I started rocking the chair in the rocker in her room and said, it's okay, honey. And then when I said those exact words, I plugged in to the unconscious wire I had to. The truth of Berger's statement, I really was, without being conscious of saying, everything is all right, not just you'll be all right. I was saying something bigger, instinctively. Again, that's not a proof. But he gives gallows humor the capacity for condemned prisoners who are going to be hanged in the morning to transcend the situation and make humor of it.

Philip Barlow [01:07:18] And he maps out a psychology and philosophy behind it anyway. You could explore a whole realm where we Humans have instincts toward seeking the transcendent. Are they homing devices or wish fulfillment? There's no proving that. But that instinct towards God and the transcendent can't in my judgment be reduced to a we know. Freud has just explained away all religions, religion.

John Dehlin [01:07:50] How does it manifest itself in your life? You gave the example of your daughter, but is it through whisperings? Is it through creative inspiration? What are the non empirical or non logical, non intellectual. Manifestations of the divine for you?

Philip Barlow [01:08:24] Well again, that word know always has an asterisk for me because I don't pretend to know in the way that I know that I exist as we were just talking about, or that I believe that I know, have faith that you exist and that we're really having an authenticity conversation. Because I can trust empirically something of my senses about your reality and my access to God is more veiled and imagined than that. Although again, I'm not afraid of that word imagine. I try to be self critical about it and aware of how that can go wild. But I think the imagination may be a very good point place to find God, to experience the possibility of God.

Philip Barlow [01:09:14] So part of it takes place in the imagination. And when you say non intellectual, again, I don't think the rational is the only form of important intelligence. So I think it's quite intellectual, but it's not what we ordinarily mean by that word. It's supra rational possibility as opposed to irrational.

Philip Barlow [01:09:40] Part of it's logical, like I experience part of it's logical, but logical intuitional. I recognize that I don't exist of my own accord on this planet. I'm contingent or dependent. That's what Schleiermacher thought was the origin of the religious impulse as one's consciousness of one's dependency on the outside, which isn't going to inspire skeptics. So again, that doesn't prove anything, but it is related to this transcendent idea that we seek.

Philip Barlow [01:10:21] I have a keen sense that I'm beckoned to something higher. I, like Walt Disney's Simba, can almost hear Mufasa, his father, who has passed on, calling from the sky, saying, simba, Philip, you are more than you have become.

Philip Barlow [01:10:42] I experience a growth impulse, a yearning impulse. What Augustine famously said, as our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, that when I aspire to things and sometimes achieve them, I can feel their relativeness or their hollowness if they work like idolatry, if they don't lead me to something higher, yet a truth, a God, a principle A something that's ultimate beyond all our small g gods and aspirations and idolatries that get in the way. So I feel called to something higher and finer and better and more, which fits in nicely with Mormon theology. But I experience that. Do I experience it just because I was taught it?

Philip Barlow [01:11:38] Surely I was taught some of it. I've had an adult life lifetime to reflect and probe it. So I don't think that says anything about its truth or falseness ultimately any more than you were taught algebra. That doesn't make it false just because you were taught it. Right.

Philip Barlow [01:11:58] So none of those are proof things. None of those are rational Aquinas rational, logical arguments for God. But I experience. I'm answering this too circuitously, so I'll try to bring it to a close. I'm sorry to go all over the place.

John Dehlin [01:12:15] Don't hurry, this is really important.

Philip Barlow [01:12:19] I said a little allusion in that sunstone talk on why I stay the other day that's important to me. And that is I recognize that there's an element of choice in my choice to believe or to disbelieve that the world is so odd,

John Dehlin [01:12:42] awed or odd,

Philip Barlow [01:12:45] we ought to be awed by it. A w e d But it is so odd. Odd. It is so curious, it is so outrageous. The fact that I love my friends, my bride, my parents, and that they disappear on me and break my heart is too outrageous to exist. The fact that I sweat or grow little hair things out of my chin, or that I sit here with two long skinny legs and walk like an erector set for locomotion. Everything about everything, from some angle of visions is just too weird and implausible.

Philip Barlow [01:13:30] But it's here. And then everything is too awesome. A w e so wondrous, so beautiful. The beauty of a human face or a human intelligence or human nobility or sunsets or the universe is also awesome that you're struck people, we people are struck with There is something transcendent that's impossible. How can you doubt it? So there's those two poles and Voltaire put it as I mentioned in my talk, and I may be getting the words adjectives backwards, but its point is to believe in God is impossible.

Philip Barlow [01:14:15] Not to believe is absurd. Absurd. And there is an existential what universe are you going to live in? There is logic, there are arguments for and against God. There's these intuitions or transcendent impulses that I allude to. But there's also an element of choice in there. If you want to see a brilliant but almost neurotic wrestle. Try reading Tolstoy's Confessions. He goes on for the first hundred pages of that book, if you've ever read it.

Philip Barlow [01:14:48] I've got all this doubt. I'm about to die and fall over an existential abyss. And no, no, no, I see through that now and it's all true. And he goes back and forth for a hundred pages and then he ends and realizes that I, Tolstoy, do recognize and believe that I exist.

Philip Barlow [01:15:09] And this is more in harmony, the belief is more in harmony with the actuality that I exist. But there's really no proving that you could do that and ad infinitum. So there's part of my recipe of faith is a choice, but it's not intellectual compromise. Because the me who knows what it's like to almost choose disbelief or to temporarily choose disbelief, or the friends that I have who believe they've seen through things and now disbelieve, I recognize in them and their language and their manner and their character, when I know them well enough to know them, I see that at work as I do in myself.

Philip Barlow [01:15:50] So that doesn't prove anything either. And I am entirely comfortable with that. Again, utter reality is not something I know with absoluteness. It's something in which I put my trust quite comfortably. I'm comfortable with all the questions and all my atheist friends wanting to shoot holes in that. But I'm also entirely comfortable with that choice.

Anthropomorphism, Meaning, and Mormon Culture

John Dehlin [01:16:17] How important is an anthropomorphic nature or state of God to you in your construction, destruction of belief in the divine? How essential is it? How central or important?

Philip Barlow [01:16:32] Yeah, well, I allow in the spirit of what I've said, so you'll have to forgive redundance. But I don't want you or any of your viewers listeners to forget that

Guest [01:16:44] I have

Philip Barlow [01:16:46] a seasoning of agnosticism in everything that I'm saying about my faith.

John Dehlin [01:16:53] And for those who haven't thought about that word. You mean not knowing? Is that what you mean by agnostic?

Philip Barlow [01:17:00] Gnosis comes from the word to know and a negates that. So not knowing. And I am not. I don't define myself as an agnostic. I'm a theist and a faithful theist, and I cast my life that way, but with all my knowing, including my knowing of the authenticity about whether Fred is my friend or not. I don't know know that.

Philip Barlow [01:17:27] But I know enough to bet my life on it or my time on it. So I don't know that God is anthropological, as you put it, anthropomorphic, rather. Joseph taught that and I haven't met God in that direct empirical way. So I don't have direct experience with that. But I think the idea is profound.

Philip Barlow [01:17:57] A lot of people want to dismiss that as anthropomorphism. You can't help but you're a human and you project your humanity into your pet and onto the sky. And God's got a great big beard and all that. So we do do that. And that's a possible intellectual error, reasoning error, but it's not a silly thing to say about me, this self transcendent being who can contemplate himself and outer reality to be oriented to, to the notion that God might be intelligent or supra intelligent rather than sub or non intelligent.

Philip Barlow [01:18:46] That's not silly or superficial necessarily. So Joseph's anthropomorphism might be simple projection of anthropomorphism if one were standing outside Mormonism saying what's possible. Or it might be as he felt, I think because he thought it was radical, he thought it was extreme and counter to the religion of his day. It might be 359 degrees away from anthropomorphism to theo morphism.

Philip Barlow [01:19:21] That is, it's not so much that we're projecting, projecting a humanity onto God as we're responding and taking quite earnestly the biblical notion that we're made in the image of God. And traditional Christians take that image to be not physical form. But I rather am drawn to Joseph Smith's insistence on the importance of, of physicality.

Philip Barlow [01:19:53] I think I understand where Gnostics and Christian Scientists and many more traditional Christians or Buddhists are horrified by depending on the physical too much because it's also transient and it's subject to disease and death, as the Buddha apparently discovered on the way to enlightenment. So I understand all that. But in the philosophical realm of why is there something rather than nothing? There seems to be something and part of it seems to be physical. And I think the physical is a terrific thing that exists rather than not existing. I like touch a lot. And one of the things that inspires me that I take pleasure in playfully and that symbolizes the divine for me is simply the breeze, the smell of the breeze, the feel of the breeze, the appearance of the effects of the breeze and all those leaves that dance reminds me of Jesus saying of the Spirit blows where it listeth, blows where it will blow.

Philip Barlow [01:21:09] Or as Carolyn Pearson, whom I've read with some of her stuff with admiration and who's a friend of yours, wrote early on, whether she still holds to this or not. But in earlier years, one of her lines was all calls out for form.

Philip Barlow [01:21:31] And that goes hand in glove with Joseph's notion of. Of creation, being pulling into order, fashioning out of chaos, all cries out for form. So I like the physical. I don't find it a trivial notion to think that we might be literally theomorphic.

Philip Barlow [01:21:53] And that's not 180 degrees away from anthropomorphism. That's 359 degrees away from. So I'm drawn to those ideas. Do I know them with some assurance or not? No. I know that I have some faith in Joseph Smith and I live with those conceptions in my head. I orient myself that way. And I also believe that I don't know very much. I'm a tiny little speck in a big universe. So when you ask the question that way, how important is it? I comfortably lean into that as a working model and faith. But the more metaphysical we get and the more cosmic and the more out there beyond my life, the less I'm actually putting my weight on that ground.

Philip Barlow [01:22:43] Those are my horizons and my wider framework, and I like them. I'm drawn to them, and I don't know anything about them until I know know them more than I know.

John Dehlin [01:22:53] Right, okay.

Philip Barlow [01:22:54] I'm using too many words to get to answer.

John Dehlin [01:22:57] No, not at all. I'm hanging on every word. I'm sure our listeners are too, and viewers. Okay, so point three, you had was the world, and I have purpose. I feel like you've kind of talked about that a bit, but I. But I want to leave you a chance to address or expand on that if you.

Philip Barlow [01:23:20] That was a very short paragraph in this essay, as you noticed. So it derives from the notion, from a belief that there's God and that. And that creation exists. When the philosophers ask why is there something rather than nothing? I think in the mind of he, she, they, the creator of this stuff, that since I have a faith in an intelligence in deity, that that's purposeful.

Philip Barlow [01:23:58] I also call on Viktor Frankl's profound, still profound. Not too many books that have impact in their time remain profound, but I think his man's search for meaning still seems like a profound book. One of my studies, if I ever get around to it, is to do a study of people's faith when they're in prison or when they're facing death, because there's a sort of upping the ante, playing for keeps thing. Like with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for instance, that forced him to a deeper meditation and rumination to truth, and it forced him to considerable insight. I think Frankl was in a position like that in the Nazi concentration camps.

Philip Barlow [01:24:52] He just happened to be smart and trained and could think better than most of us could in a situation like that. And his book is poorly titled, Man's Search for Men, meaning at least. At least if that were to suggest the thesis of the book.

Philip Barlow [01:25:12] Because part of his point is you don't search for meaning and get fulfilled in some ways. If you're in a Nazi death camp and your wife dies and everything you love, your means of wealth and your love of your life and your home is gone, your health and your comfort is gone, you don't get to meaning by looking under a rock and holding your breath or finding a guru on top of a mountain and saying, here's the meaning, John, of life.

Philip Barlow [01:25:49] Rather, that's what Franco calls super meaning that may exist, but it's super or supra, that is outside our universe. It's outside what's accessible to you. So your task is to create meaning. It's not a search, as in there's one true answer that's going to come to you. Your job is a search to fashion it, find it, discover it, make it so. It might be man's making of or the human forging of meaning. And I think there's a lot of truth to that idea about where our attention should go, not just the world. However I put it here, the world and I have purpose.

Philip Barlow [01:26:39] But partly, I think we respond to the existential conditions that we're in, and we create purpose or we find adversity and we bring courage or intelligence or nobility into being by responding to that stuff, that resistance coming to us.

Philip Barlow [01:26:57] But that implies a kind of a purpose. So I want to go a little beyond Frankl at that point. That becomes soul making. If I'm forging purpose in the face of the trial, this is what I'm choosing to live for. So that's my meaning for living, my reason for living.

Philip Barlow [01:27:21] In the act of making those choices, those value judgments, those moral choices, as Frankl said, in those conditions, the best among us did not come back because they were willing to sacrifice rather than just preserve. You can't help but while you're forging

John Dehlin [01:27:39] meaning,

Philip Barlow [01:27:41] whether you're an atheist or a theist or whatever, a Mormon or not a Mormon, you're bringing yourself into being. And then you could step back and say, that's a meaning and that's a purpose. And it's kind of traditional in some ways and certainly very Mormon. It's a soul making exercise. And I think some of that's going on on even if there's not a God. So I think there's a purpose there. God or not, I just happen to be a God believer, purpose believer.

John Dehlin [01:28:18] And then you move right to. I would say after some assertions of faith and conviction, I would say some points about humility where you say I am ignorant and the existence on earth bewilders, yet we're equipped with tools for learning. And then you go on to say that we can't escape our culture. You breathe it and it's sort of necessary and inescapable.

Philip Barlow [01:28:52] Yeah, it's a. I'm ignorant, meaning every time my friends who are atheists or friends who are Buddhists or friends who are Mormons or I myself or I'm in a Mormon testimony meeting and I have beloved people in my ward pronouncing this is the way reality is, then I'm.

Philip Barlow [01:29:18] Then I love them and I interpret what they mean. But for me, if I were grappling through what that means, I don't know very much about anything because I'm too small. It seems to me that it's my existence in this wide universe of Higgs bosons and dark black holes in space and wormholes in space and stuff.

Philip Barlow [01:29:46] I don't think we know how to explain a thought or a moth, let alone myself, let alone the magic of how trees know how to put their limbs out and achieve perfection sort of randomly. I don't think we know much. So I find awe and disciplined curiosity and disciplined wonder to be a healthy spiritual and psychological place to be. So I'm ignorant, but I'm not nothing. I'm a person, I'm a man. I have a modest mind and modest and failing sight or hearing or taste or touch or friends or wise people who've written books centuries ago that I might draw from. I'm not nothing. I have memory, I have intuitions, and those are not small things.

Philip Barlow [01:30:48] I have memory by which I can digest, experience and have it challenge me or inform me or shape and reshape break me and reconstruct me or allow me to reconstruct, allow perhaps God to help reconstruct me. Those are in their own way infinitely rich and yet I'm infinitely small in the universe. That's paradoxical. But one of those polar truths that I think are both true. Did I forget your question? No, that's just a little elaboration of those points you alluded to.

John Dehlin [01:31:25] Yeah, there's both humility, there And a sense of knowing nothing and a real belief that it's important to learn as much as we can, that we can learn in spite of how little we know or could ever know.

John Dehlin [01:31:44] You talk about not being able to escape your culture. This is a really important foundation because as I mentioned in my Sunstone YSA talk, if you cut a tree down and then try and replant, I know you can replant a branch, but if you cut down an entire tree and replant it, chances are without the root system, it's not going to grow.

John Dehlin [01:32:09] And that's. I was trying to speak to this idea of the fact that we are raised in and are constructed from a culture, and that culture is not. It's not easy to escape, and potentially it's inescapable. And so I hear in this your statement of just sort of recognition that you're in it. You swim it, you breathe it, and it might make more sense to bloom where you're planted culturally than to try and uproot it and start again. Am I at all touching on what you're trying to say with that point?

Philip Barlow [01:32:47] I think so. In the specific, there are such things as unhealthy cultures. I could have been raised, raised in a mafia family that have elaborate rituals of kissing and courtesy while they're prepared to take you out that night or whatever. So it's possible and even necessary to think critically about one's own culture. But in the case of a Mormon culture and many other cultures, I think there's so much good, so much rich culture, resources, not only can't you escape it in some ways, but I celebrate the goodness. I hear all sorts of complaints by people around. So we could think critically about the people doing the complaining and what makes that happen, or weaknesses in the culture that are taught us by my personal likes and dislikes or my studying other cultures sociologically or historically and say, why don't we do more of this good thing?

Philip Barlow [01:33:51] Well, we can and ought. In fact, our Mormonism teaches us to grab onto every good thing and bring it in. So, yeah, let's do that. But I celebrate the culture and I celebrate being an American without a sense of superiority and necessarily just it's fabulous, it's rich, it's good, and it's inescapable.

Philip Barlow [01:34:18] So cults, in a religious sense, cults become cultures. Cult like Jesus. The Jesus movement is originally a cult or a cultus around which disciples gathered. And then in its case, it grew into a full religious tradition and broke away and became an independent thing. From Judaism. And so Mormonism was a kind of occultist and developed a culture. And a culture is like a group personality with mores and consciousness and assumptions and habits and folkways and brilliant insights and revealed insights, perhaps. But it's like a personality. And that means is there something about John Dehlin we can criticize in his personality or Philip Barlow or Mormonism?

Philip Barlow [01:35:08] Duh. So sure, I think it's a great cause of celebration. I find it rich and wonderful and take nourishment. I celebrate staying planted in it. But that doesn't mean I'm brain dead or don't want to fix things in my own personality that I come to see have been damaging or limiting or ugly. There's certainly some of that in the group personality called Mormon culture.

John Dehlin [01:35:38] And is there a recognition or a decision on your part that you will have the most success or the most happiness or fulfillment by working and operating within it than by leaving it or deserting it or trying to make sense of the world through some other means than by the culture with which you were constructed?

Philip Barlow [01:36:06] Yes, because as I understand the culture with which I've been constructed, by which you mean Mormon culture, but of course that means male culture and 20th century culture and Barlow culture and everything. But if we're talking about LDS culture, as I understand that culture, part of which includes Joseph Smith's teachings, I understand it to be my task to seek, as I alluded to earlier, seek after that everything which is virtuous, lovely, of good report or praiseworthy. And what I learned from my atheist Buddhist friends has all sorts of lovely virtuous things in it. And I want to embrace that. So I don't find that a narrow or imprisoning culture at all, except for limited by our educations and imaginations and intelligence and non defense or defense we can limit ourselves.

Philip Barlow [01:37:11] But I don't take Joseph's teachings to be a limiting culture. And I embrace the right also, as Joseph taught at least the seeds of to be critical about that culture if it's part of our culture, to not just respect authority, which can be a good thing, but defer like a coward to authoritarianism when a person with authority gets authoritarian in a negative sense. Joseph taught amen to the authority of that person. And we have learned that that's very common when anybody gets a little authority. So any form of power, I'm prepared to respect and see that it can be a valuable tool or influence for good.

Philip Barlow [01:38:03] And I think Joseph was right and other philosophers that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Then I think within the seeds of my culture that embrace Joseph Smith's teachings that I take to be healthy and inspired, that I'm invited to be critical, respectful, responsive, but not brain dead about that culture. And if it's properly Mormon according to Joseph's teaching, it's a very open and embracing culture. So I find that a fine place to be.

John Dehlin [01:38:45] In your response, I think it's fair to say you touched on some of the subsequent points. Your point seven was that you adjust and restructure your reality and value systems perhaps many times throughout your life. So there's a I'm going to kind of brush over a few of these just for the sake of time. There seems to be a real openness and willingness to change and adapt as life and experience sort of inform.

Philip Barlow [01:39:17] Failure to do that is a form of damnation. Which is to say, not yaha, I'm God. I get to burn you to a crisp. But is to say, you're limited. You're dammed up like a stream is dammed up. And that doesn't comport with the notion of growth or progress.

John Dehlin [01:39:35] So for you, remaining open and flexible is an important pillar.

Philip Barlow [01:39:40] Mm. But I hear voices out in our culture in America and in Mormonism or former Mormonism that makes a God of flexibility and openness. So flexibility is good to the extent that it's good. If I'm pole vaulting, doing that with a wet spaghetti noodle is eminently flexible and not eminently helpful when I'm in the Olympics. If not, my objective is to get over that bar. Nor is it to be overly rigid and pole vault with a long stick of iron. It's not going to get me over that bar. So flexibility needs to involve some intelligent application to the task at hand. And one can be overly flexible and one can be overly rigid, but rigidity as such is not an evil, and flexibility as such is not an evil.

John Dehlin [01:40:48] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast to discuss this podcast with others, please check us out@mormonstories.org to join one of our 80 plus support communities across the globe. Click on the Support communities tab@mormonstories.org to get this podcast alive. Please please consider a tax deductible donation today by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org audio and video for this podcast were provided by Richard Holdman. A big thanks to the Saber Rattlers for providing the music for today's episode. The Mormont Stories logo was generously donated by studiocase.com come come ye Saints no

Guest [01:41:27] toil nor labor fear but with joy wend your way Though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to see Stride our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jo, your hearts will swell oh, all is well all is well.

Humility, Chosenness, and the Book of Mormon

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 371

John Dehlin [00:00:06] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you.

Guest [00:00:19] Come, come ye saints. No toil nor labor fear, but with joy when you're.

John Dehlin [00:00:34] Your point, number eight, touches on something that for me would be essential in the construction of my own faith. And that would be, you know, universality. You know, this impulse that says we have a lot to learn from other people, that we're not the arbiters or the possessors of all truth, and that we have a lot to learn and value and respect from others. Is that pretty essential for you? And does that still feel like it can be a Mormon impulse? Some people today like to associate Mormonism with just exclusivity and superiority, and I'm not hearing that in that point, no.

Philip Barlow [00:01:25] I think that's contrary to what Joseph taught, and I meant to allude to some of that before. If I am under the illusion that I possess all goodness and all truth because I'm a Latter Day Saint, that makes the 13th article of faith inert and wrong, doesn't it?

Philip Barlow [00:01:45] So in popular culture, any of us Mormons, like any of us Americans or any of us Chinese, can imagine that we're at the center of everything. If you live in New York, you think you're at the center of the universe sometimes. So that's not a Mormon problem merely, that's a human problem that we can get us. Or even an urban parochialism that thinks you've got it all, that's not humble. And a lack of humility is not just off putting. It's less smart.

Philip Barlow [00:02:23] You cut off your radar for reality if you start thinking like that. So yes, I would say that is as essential as anything else I could say about my faith because I have direct experience of that, direct testimony of that, that I have much to learn from all sorts of people. This notion of being the chosen people.

Philip Barlow [00:02:50] I like to examine that article, the before chosen. It does feel to me, since I invest in Joseph Smith and the fruits that came out of Joseph Smith's teaching in the form of Mormon, the Mormon Church and Mormon culture.

Philip Barlow [00:03:08] I am comfortable thinking that he was chosen for a task and that we as a people are chosen. But I mean chosen with a commission or a task, chosen for a purpose to go do certain good things. What seems to me a logical mistake is to presume that because you're chosen that someone else isn't chosen by God for their tasks.

Philip Barlow [00:03:37] There are passages in the Book of Mormon like 2nd Nephi 29 that suggest that God gives his word to all the people of the earth. I'm the God of the peoples in the north and the south and the east and the west and the isles of the sea, and I give my word to all of them.

Philip Barlow [00:03:55] So if there's anything to the biblical account of God choosing the Levites, I choose you to have this priesthood and do this role that doesn't smack of superiority. It sort of is like me saying, I choose you, my family third daughter, to do the dishes tonight or something.

Philip Barlow [00:04:17] So not necessarily superiority, not exclusivism, but also not being afraid of that word chosen. Just it wants a careful direct object at the end of that sentence that starts out with chosen.

John Dehlin [00:04:34] Not the only ones who are chosen, Is that what you're saying?

Philip Barlow [00:04:36] Not exclusively chosen, not exclusively chosen, or not necessarily exclusively chosen for any particular task. And chosenness does not necessarily imply superiority.

John Dehlin [00:04:50] And yet I like that way of looking at things. And yet we have the Doctrine and Covenants, Section one, I believe it is, that basically says the one and only true Church, with whom God is pleased and others are abominations. And we have this notion of authority as it relates to ordinances that basically negates every other religious, to some people's understanding, negates the validity of every other religious ordinance performed in terms of baptism or marriage or whatever in the entire world. And of course all of the non Christian traditions especially. And so. And then we have the brethren that some would say very much encourage this air of superiority or exclusivity or of not just a chosen, but the chosen. I think there's a lot in Mormonism that would push us in the other direction. And I wonder how you cope with that.

Philip Barlow [00:05:59] Well, I cope with it. Interrupt me please, if I said this already, but I have a basic premise that is a platform for everything we've been talking about, and that is that I do not construe. I think I formulated it when I was writing what I wrote in a thoughtful faith, by the way. So that's been with me for a long time. I do not construe that the Church is essentially divine with only being marred by some errors by people because they're humans, but rather I flip that upside down. I think the church is entirely made up of human beings, including Joseph Smith. And we Mormons say that to ourselves, but then we almost deify him too readily.

Philip Barlow [00:06:46] But I think Joseph Smith was entirely a human being like you or I, with everything that that entails human beings who are trying to respond to the divine with which they've been touched. Did I say that already? No.

Philip Barlow [00:07:01] So if you enter the conversation that way, then you're left with Joseph Smith, like the rest of us, is encountering the divine and trying to respond to it. The divine as he believes that he's encountering and trying to respond to it. So he understood things differently along the way.

Philip Barlow [00:07:24] He had to cast God's words or his sense of these revelations. This is the only true and living church with which I, the Lord, am well pleased. But he also talked later in his life about the first great and fundamental principle of Mormonism is to embrace truth and goodness from whatever source. How does one hold both those together?

Philip Barlow [00:07:46] Well, I could talk about that, but if you're going to be a Mormon, you got to find a way to reconcile what that means. So that word first of all, in either case, it's Joseph having to cast his sense of revelation into words. And sometimes he changed those. So sometimes that got a little experimental. So there's room for growth, line upon line, truth upon truth, principle precept on precept.

Philip Barlow [00:08:17] Another thing is, what does that word true mean in that sentence? So we Mormons who have been to the Temple have reference to the true order of prayer. And deference to Mormon sense of privacy about the temple precludes me from wanting to go into detail. But there's a spot in the Temple ceremony where you assemble in a particular fashion in the context of making covenants of obedience and purity and, and pray in that form. And that's called the true order of prayer.

Philip Barlow [00:08:56] What does that mean? That my prayer, when I'm not doing that is false order of prayer. That would be silly. And Mormons wouldn't think that I wouldn't in that true order of prayer in the Temple necessarily be pleading certain things in my heart or certain things that are intimate, struggle with my family. I might with some, but I might not, because there are other places where other forms of prayer are more appropriate, more fitting to the needs of the moment. So there is that word, only true church, with which I, the Lord. I'm well pleased. But it's just got to be balanced with other Mormon scripture and frankly, with experience.

Philip Barlow [00:09:45] My friend, the Unitarian pastor here in Logan, Utah has had me over to speak at her church, and I would love to have her come and speak at my church and learn from them, as Joseph's other teachings said. So it could be contradiction, it could be growth on Joseph's part even, or change Joseph we have in those accounts of the first vision what it seemed to mean to him, how he interpreted it, probably changed as he grew and had more experiences.

Philip Barlow [00:10:24] Famously, these days, all of the 19th century leaders virtually seem to assume that the Book of Mormon explained all the Native American peoples in the land. And many of the authorities, and certainly even the apologetic folks at BYU or elsewhere, defense spending their scholarly careers largely defending the Book of Mormon, don't think that way. So that's what they thought. And we don't think that now there's room for growth and shift.

John Dehlin [00:11:02] But in the Mormonism that I sort of absorbed, you could look at the Bible as being flawed because it wasn't necessarily translated correctly, but I wasn't raised to be able to have that flexibility, to look at the Book of Mormon of the Doctrine and Covenants and discount certain sections as potentially an error or contradictory or a sign of a less mature understanding by Joseph Smith, for example. It sounds like you're okay even taking a Scripture out of the Doctrine and Covenants and saying one possibility is I'm not reading it correctly, but another is that it may not be completely accurate.

Philip Barlow [00:11:48] I don't want to come across as disrespectful to Joseph Smith. And I do think we can talk about this cafeteria Mormon conversation that's all over the place in last decades, but especially recently. I think there are some real dangers with a do it yourself, make it up as you go. I'm more important than the institution or I know as much as Joseph Smith did if there's anything to God breaking through ordinariness to give flashes of light to Joseph, that may not be true. So I don't want to declare my own religion, but it does seem to me the Bible doesn't have contradiction and error in it merely because it was mistranslated.

Philip Barlow [00:12:40] In some sense, it's a record of a people doing just what I said that we Mormons do, including Mormon leaders, and that is trying to respond to the divine with which they've been touched. And the process in the Hebrew Bible is a very human, messy affair. And people can go too far and forget the profundity there. I mean, there was growth with the very idea of encountering a God or imagining a God, understanding a God who cared about goodness instead of just various forms of power. That's revolutionary in human history. That's a big, big deal.

Philip Barlow [00:13:17] To have that righteous God require righteousness of his people and a covenant is a profound exercise, as the ancient world goes. So I don't want to treat Scripture Lightly. But there is a process both in the Bible and in Joseph Smith's life where he.

Philip Barlow [00:13:40] One example, and it's kind of contradictory, some of the reports of how he received revelations are that he paused, he spoke deliberately, he dictated them, and he didn't change anything. And there they are. Or some reports that the Book of Mormon came out that way. But on the other hand, we have his translation of the Bible, which the records imply was clearly quite an experimental thing, where in the Bible that he was working from, and on some of the manuscript pages in which dictation was taken from him, he crosses out parts and then crosses out the parts he changed and crosses those out. And you must the ninth section of the Doctrine and Covenants that says you've got to work it out in your mind and pray about it, and I'll reinforce it with discouraging or encouraging confirmation or disconfirmation.

Philip Barlow [00:14:34] So it's not all neat and simple. There is growth. And so I'd want to say of any passage that I encounter, what's the context? What's it referring to? What is this true? What does this word true mean? How is it used elsewhere in the Scriptures?

Philip Barlow [00:14:51] Did Joseph teach other things that we need to contextualize that with? Because if I don't, I'm being a cafeteria Mormon, only paying attention to that first section of Doctrine and Covenants and not paying attention to the 13th Article of Faith or Joseph Slater Sermons or the 49th section of the Doctrine and Covenants that talks about other holy men that I, the Lord, have that you know not of.

Philip Barlow [00:15:23] You can't just choose that one verse and say that's the essence of our religion, without accounting for these other passages and without changes in Joseph on other fronts. So comfortable is a little interesting word. I don't mean to be casual or facile about it, but it seems to me you can only lock onto one phrase by being irresponsible.

John Dehlin [00:15:50] So I understand what you're saying about both a flexibility with our approach to the Scriptures, but also a respect for them. You're kind of asking, calling for both. What about ordinances? The fact that my understanding of Mormonism declares all non LDS religious ordinances invalid. Do you have ways to think about that that might be helpful for someone like me?

Mormon Theology on Christ and Other Ways of Knowing

Philip Barlow [00:16:22] Well, I'm aware that Mormonism came into being with thinking like that, but. Captain Moroni made a banner and made a sort of an ordinance. I mean, ordinances are symbols or if they're full, ordinances that develop a ritual behind them, like temple ordinances, that are in motion, even plays in form. Then they're elongated, developed symbols or acted out symbols and Pledge of Allegiance, the American flag. Those aren't evil rituals or evil ordinances if one wanted to use a religious term on them. So I respect Mormon restored authority and authority to perform baptisms or do other work in the church as the authority to do that work in the church rather than a fence against all the bad guys or wrong guys are out there and all the right guys are here.

Philip Barlow [00:17:40] So the restored true church and the authority that informs it is for the task and work of the Church. Do people in popular culture at all levels of the church and earlier accentuate this exclusiveness, exclusivity more than I might contextualize it? I'm aware that that's common, but.

Philip Barlow [00:18:05] But I don't feel like a disloyal Mormon. I just have too much experience with my Presbyterian and Baptist and Methodist and Catholic friends and non Christian friends making ordinances or symbols for them that move them, that sometimes commit people to good principles. And I can't say stop that or that's all for naught.

Philip Barlow [00:18:33] I see it operate directly. I have a testimony that it helps lives in some instances. And yet was there a sense of Joseph having a restored authority to do these things in the work of the church? Yes. So I take those things less as screens to divide the sheep and the goats or to make sure you're sitting in the right pew when the last trumpet blows and the earth winds up. Then blessings, ordinances, that's what religions do is they have a worldview and they have an ethical, moral creed and they have community.

Philip Barlow [00:19:16] They do it together religio to bind together the root word of religion. And they have a symbol system or a ritual system, a cultus that embodies or symbolizes those things. And Mormons aren't the only one who do that and they're not the only one who do it with good effect. But we can claim exclusivity in the commission that we're called to within the purposes of the Church. That doesn't seem contradictory to me though. I acknowledge that a lot of people either don't see it the same way I do, or they assume that it means everyone else is wrong and bad.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] Because the logic as I understand it behind all our temple work for the proxy ordinances is that without, I don't want to say Mormon baptism, but really it's without a Mormon baptism, these people aren't going to be able to actually be saved. And without a Mormon marriage, you can't reach the highest degree. So it's not framed for us in a way even by the top church leadership, seemingly as doctrine. It's not framed for us as just activities to be done within the context of our sphere, but instead the fact that we're baptizing Jews from the Holocaust, it's because that's what they need to be able to have a chance in the afterlife. And so I'm sort of asking you again what I've already asked you. And I can just respond by saying you're saying that's not your understanding or that's not where you're putting your investment of belief.

Philip Barlow [00:21:03] I have limited investment on all that exclusivity stuff because I have so much experience in the spirit of other aspects of Mormonism that we've been discussing that I have to welcome and that I take to be authentically Mormon requirements.

Philip Barlow [00:21:18] So I think that's important. But maybe it works that way. God didn't tell me that directly. And there are elements in what Joseph presumed or understood and was revealed to him, since I haven't asked Joseph that directly face to face.

Philip Barlow [00:21:41] And so it might well be that those ordinances, like a temple marriage, need to be performed vicariously. So maybe it works that way. And if so, I still take it to be a blessing. And you didn't have the opportunity to do that. And this symbolizes this. And so it's a necessity.

Philip Barlow [00:22:03] So I can respect vicarious work even with some exclusivity to it. If that's how the Lord wants it done, then I want to defer to that. I just don't think that negates. I'm sure there's all sorts of empty symbols taking the name of the Lord God in vain with covenants inside and outside the church. So I'm sure there's wrong unhelpful rituals or imperial emptiness, apostate notions that get off track. That's all plausible to me. What is not plausible to me is

Guest [00:22:40] that

Philip Barlow [00:22:43] other symbols or baptisms don't have value in their spheres. Right.

John Dehlin [00:22:54] I'm going to cluster a few of some of these final points you make, and I don't want to give short shrift to it. But the truth is there's some things that I really want to get to on behalf of my listeners that just make it so we don't have time to really dig deep.

John Dehlin [00:23:11] But there's a real reliance on Christ in some of these points for you. That Christ for you, represents what the purpose of life is, which you list as we're invited to Live to render service and to acquire knowledge. And that Christ in some ways is the model of authenticity or God's essence.

John Dehlin [00:23:39] So it's seemingly heretical for me to say, give me a minute on Christ, you know, when I know that that's the pillar. But sometimes that's not what people are hung up on. And I want to be able to address the things that people get hung up on. But I also don't want to just leave Christ out of it. So maybe talk briefly about that.

Philip Barlow [00:24:00] We can talk again sometime if you ever want to pursue any of these things. More than we have time for. But Christ is like us, but not altogether. In Mormon thinking, there's something haunting about that figure. I think we're all terribly presumptuous about Christ, that we have a grip or when we say what would Jesus do? Sort of questions that's not always obvious to me in response, if the New Testament and the Book of Mormon as Jesus is portrayed there, by the way, Christ surprises everybody and challenges everybody and uses pretty harsh language about it sometime, which we proper Mormons never do, we think, what would Christ do?

Philip Barlow [00:24:56] Means always be polite. But he said things like, listen, you bloodsuckers, you bag of maggots who are inside full of worms and decay, and on the outside are all pretty and polished. To me, this is not polite talk.

Philip Barlow [00:25:12] He says, get thee behind me, Satan. For Peter's trying to honor him for saying, you'll never wash my feet. So Jesus is a surprising, challenging, bracing as well as loving and merciful figure. And I think that we're all very casual when we evangelicals might put a bumper sticker on our car saying, jesus is my best friend.

Philip Barlow [00:25:39] There's a problem with that. But there's so much potency to this uneducated peasant person from this obscure country. There's so much that you can get figures. One of my favorites is Franz Kafka, who writes haunting, penetrating parables and stories getting at elements of the human condition that others don't articulate so well.

Philip Barlow [00:26:09] So as a not a Christian, not a theist, as far as I know, and he's asked, so what do you do about Christ, the Christian Christ? His answer is, take care that you don't look too deeply into that abyss of light, lest you find fall in.

Philip Barlow [00:26:31] I find Christ. For me, that there's something there surprising, challenging, whether it's literally the words of Christ as they're portrayed in the New Testament or it's the early community remembering the spirit of his teaching and shaping the story in their sincere memories. As those gospels have, some of. We can demonstrate because of some of their differences.

Philip Barlow [00:26:56] This idea. When you, John Dehlin, have felt betrayed, orphaned, or not supported in some thing that you should have been supported in, you know what it feels like to be undercut. You don't know what it's like to be put to death by being betrayed or crucified.

Philip Barlow [00:27:20] Some of us humans don't do. To have a figure in the memory of his intimate followers or literally saying historically, while being impaled, forgive. That's kind of a. That's not normal. You know, there's a. There's a. I can say if there's divine or transcendence, maybe it looks like something like that.

Philip Barlow [00:27:49] So I think there's a. Something there for Christ. But we're not getting at Christ. We're getting at portraits of Christ and memories that are passed down of disciples about Christ. So we have to allow for the human in that process as well as this figure. But I think there's a light that shines through the darkness there. I don't know about creeds or everybody's articles of faith, about every metaphysical, ontological thing about him. I just know that there's something that captures me.

John Dehlin [00:28:22] I think I remember you writing something to the effect of even if you were to discover that Christ was a construction of man, that to you it would have been a significant and a marvelous construction. Just the idea of what he stood for, what he taught, and what we might derive from his example, that that would be an achievement in and of itself from a historical perspective.

Philip Barlow [00:28:53] What I was drawing on is Dostoevsky's writing in that direction. And he said, if I were, as he wrote in some personal correspondence to a friend while he was in Siberia and not having fun, if I were to find that Christ were outside the truth and the truth were outside of Christ, I would choose to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.

Philip Barlow [00:29:23] And that's more complicated than you want to get into. But it can lead us to a kind of a philosophy of how we think we know truth and how that relates to goodness. So it takes us to the edge of our apprehension of reality.

Philip Barlow [00:29:39] An example of a secular struggle that way would be to go read or reread Robert Pirsig's famous book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. And the thesis of that profound and delightful book, but entirely secular book is that quality, capital Q quality, which is a rich, tough concept that he maps out and unpacks in the book, defines truth philosophically more than truth defines quality. So that's a tough wrestle. Something like that I think Dostoevsky is getting at because he had so much intuition, was willing to suffer and die for truth. It wasn't that he was being light with regard for the truth, but I think he meant something like how do you tell, at some level of consciousness, is light a particle or a ray?

Philip Barlow [00:30:42] Can't tell. It's both of those things. Quality and truth have this symbiotic relationship there. So there's some light emitting some for even an atheist Kafka, some abyss of light that is true, whether it's true or not in the Christian creeds or access to this figure. So he's clearly not a construction. There are scholars in the 19th century who tried to allege that, and people who don't know very much tried to allege it's possible that Jesus was just a manufactured figure. There's evidence to show that that's silly. This was a historical figure and we know it from some non Christian sources.

Philip Barlow [00:31:28] But the portrait done accomplished by these fishermen, there's just. There's something there. So I don't think it's manufactured, but it is partly manufactured in the sense, as I said earlier, it's a memory, it's a portrait. We're not shaking hands with Jesus, we're encountering Jesus obliquely through the memories of these early communities.

John Dehlin [00:31:59] And when you talk about you'd rather go with Jesus than truth, I'm just trying to sort of restate it in and maybe more closely accessible.

Philip Barlow [00:32:14] I say that Dostoevsky said that and that I point to there's something there to wrestle with.

John Dehlin [00:32:20] And I just want to sort of reiterate the point you might be making, which is that for you, maybe there's more to truth than what science can reveal and what logic or evidence, quote evidence, historical or otherwise, can produce. Is that sure.

Philip Barlow [00:32:45] Science, as I suggested earlier, is a wonderful method. That's very new, by the way. We didn't mean in 1850 by the word science what we mean today. We used to mean careful examination and then a taxonomy like the periodic table.

Philip Barlow [00:33:03] The idea that there's hypothesis and then testing is kind of a late 19th century and afterwards sort of a thing for defining science. It's a wonderful tool. I'll take all of it I can get, as I said, but not all things are testable through those means. And so that alone, let alone everything else you just said suggests that science doesn't get at all truth.

Philip Barlow [00:33:31] What it gets at I have high regard for, even though it's sometimes overturned by other models and other modes of testing that later scientists developed. So it doesn't mean foolproof. But I have very high regard for science and the scientific method. And I have no illusion, as most scientists ought, not that that gets at all truth. Or is that the only way for us to proceed in how we think we know things? Scientists don't really. There's a few, Mr. Spock, like folks who may. But from Star Trek, that is pure rationality and no other part of humanity. But they don't really live that way in their friendships or when they encounter art or other ways of knowing.

John Dehlin [00:34:17] And some of the other ways of knowing, just as a quick, just enumeration of a couple.

Philip Barlow [00:34:23] Well, when I encounter music, I sometimes feel like I'm encountering not just phenomena, but some sort of truth, some sort of intelligence giving me access to a different realm. I can encounter that in art. I've already suggested when I learn to swim, when I learn to ride a bike, when I learn to shoot a basketball.

Philip Barlow [00:34:45] There's a body now there's an intelligence. That's not a rational thing. In the process of athletics, if I could do it, I'm sure it works that way in ballet or the uneven bars while we're talking in the midst of the Olympics here.

Philip Barlow [00:35:01] Friendship, love are important truths, relational truths that come from experience, but not broken down into little Euclidean grids of logic and reason. So there's lots of common sense, everyday experience, examples. Give me all the reason you can marshal. Give me all the science and evidence you can marshal. Don't be dull enough to misunderstand that as our only access to verities. Right.

John Dehlin [00:35:35] So just to sort of close the little section. On Christmas you write here, no matter your faith or disbelief, all are better off with the light of his image. Do you still feel that way today?

Philip Barlow [00:35:52] Yeah. Which isn't to say a Buddhist living three centuries before Christ is damned and couldn't be a noble great soul. And I take, I take it that our growth and refinement and expansion is part of a point of our being here and our making, purpose and meaning.

Philip Barlow [00:36:17] And living into God's purpose and meaning is part of my belief. But if that's true, then that is not to say that a Buddhist living three centuries before Christ can't be on the path to betterment, to growth, to goodness, to nobility, just like I am.

Philip Barlow [00:36:35] But I think Christ as a figure is a gift, emanates things that are good, true and beautiful, that I think it's kind of pathetic to go to university and not encounter that figure, not by someone preaching the religion to you, but encountering that most influential human who ever lived.

Philip Barlow [00:37:05] That seems weak to me. So, yes, better off knowing Christ, Knowing Christ, grappling with Christ, not missing the import of what my conjuring Kafka on that point represents. I don't have to ask you to become a Christian necessarily to say that that's important. There's something there to grapple with as a human being. And I also don't think you ought to graduate with encountering Gandhi.

John Dehlin [00:37:42] Right. You will touch on a couple more points here, but you talk about. You say anyone can conform blindly to the church. Now we're talking. And anyone can withdraw. But you write that the more difficult and worthy accomplishment maybe lies in the way of Jesus, which is in meek, courageous service and in constructive interaction with God's children, which you seem to say that at least for you. There's something about the weekly church experience that facilitates this or makes it more likely or more probable or more accessible than just extricating yourself from that church experience and trying to kind of do it yourself.

Philip Barlow [00:38:36] What's the it? Live a good life.

John Dehlin [00:38:41] Yeah,

Philip Barlow [00:38:45] I need. I think we could do all sorts of things better in our culture. So sometimes our Sunday schools don't tend to be thoughtful things. They tend to be socially scripted things and overly correlated things. And I think they're that way because we're a lay church and we don't want some intellectual cousin of John Dolan being a bozo with irrelevant egghead questions that lead us off into some thicket that's not relevant to constructive living.

Philip Barlow [00:39:19] And I think we overdo it as a people so much that we have correlated thoughtfulness out of our conversations. So I certainly need respite from that sometimes. And as part of the 13th Article of Faith, I make it a point a number of times a year to visit other churches and be edified with the Episcopalians who are asking good, thoughtful, socially relevant questions on a frequent basis. And that's not disloyal to my Mormon faith or Mormon membership at all, as far as I can make out. I also need sometimes a way to worship in nature, in the canyons by myself, but as a default drive.

Philip Barlow [00:40:06] There are some things that happen in church that for me, and I don't want to come across the same for you and you and you necessarily, but I think I am better off working from within. It's sort of like you can lose the. The pulse of the community and the power and energy there by a do it yourself. I had a I can't remember if you alluded to it in your introduction of me when we began, but I had a couple of years at the University of Rochester as a Mellon Postdoc Fellow and that was a privileged situation where I had a lot of time to do my writing and research and that's what I needed and was hungry to do and yay.

Philip Barlow [00:40:50] But if I didn't force myself to the office and be involved in that community, a certain evolution happened. I got isolated in a way that I wrote less well. I might be more clever or more brilliant or get more dumb, but it was less organically informed by the pulse of the community. That's a set secular analog to being in church, being involved.

Philip Barlow [00:41:23] It's kind of like a gyroscope. I really do think we can get out of tune and a little into ourselves or a little so free that we make our own religion as we go, which is a very popular thing and much on the ascendant in America these days. But I think it's problematic. I think that America's headlong rush away from institutions and the institutional church, in the case of Mormonism, forfeits a fabulous rich resource that we as a people can do things that I as an individual can't or my little self made groups.

Philip Barlow [00:42:08] I think that's important, an enormous resource, and I think it would be a mistake for me to step away from that. And I think it's one of the core elements of what makes a full blown religion a religion. So this business about I am spiritual but not religious, that is all the rage.

Philip Barlow [00:42:31] Is forfeiting the power of institutions. And within that institutional framework, if we imprison ourselves by it's a naughty thing not to be to every meeting or to go visit another church or something. I think that's equally problematic. So I know that misinterpreted institutional churches can be oppressive or limiting, but I don't think they are by definition. I don't think they need to be. In fact, I think you and I have a responsibility in faithfulness to the tradition not to let that be for ourselves.

John Dehlin [00:43:10] There's a certain amount of privilege that you and I might enjoy as white heterosexual males in the church that would make it so. We might have a different experience than someone who's of color or female or of a different sexual orientation, such that they might experience a very different thing when they attend the LDS church. They might experience oppression or abuse or a culture that feels suffocating or even untrue, you know, spiritually stifling to Them.

Philip Barlow [00:43:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:54] And you know, we see a lot of these people voting with their feet, so to speak. What would be your commentary to those who. Who experience a very different church and who for them decide that they just. That this isn't the place for them? Do you feel like they're missing out, that they should reconsider? Do you feel like that path is equally legitimate to leave? What are your reflections? Do you see good cause for that for some people? Or do you feel like anyone who leaves is missing the boat and selling themselves short?

Philip Barlow [00:44:35] Yeah, I say if and I mean when. Because a constant stream of people are in my office on campus having me take off my academic religious studies. Professor Hatton, could you talk to me as a Latter Day Saint? I'm struggling or I am gay or whatever other issues, having intellectual issues with the church or social ones. And my first, deepest commitment is to listen, know who it is that I'm talking to.

Philip Barlow [00:45:16] Because while all sorts of religious people, including Latter Day Saints, talk them into belief by cheerleading or by ostrich faith, not looking at hard things, etc. It's also true that disbelievers often want to hear what they want to hear, want to hear a comforting message and follow that comforting.

Philip Barlow [00:45:39] I give myself permission to be away. So the psychology of belief and unbelief, commitment and lack of commitment or forsaking is complex. And I want to know who it is that I'm talking to. But certainly that's such a complex issue and cluster of issues you're talking about. It's hard to. Hard to parse it out. But if I were making a historical analogy, saying that I were living in the 1940s and encountering racism all over in the church in its racialist policy, they didn't mean to be racist with any animosity. The Saints by and large meant to be loving, good people. What is that recent film based on a book, the Help.

Racism, History, and Challenging Church Issues

Philip Barlow [00:46:36] Did you ever see the Help? The Help was kind of touching and funny, but it was missing a character that was very common in real life and that is not just racist white people and one good noble white person here and there. There was a whole lot of white people who had inherited racism but had good hearts. They just couldn't see through this inherited problem that they had. And so we Mormons were part of that with virtually all other Americans. We had inherited a racism and we had to work our way through it. And had worked our way through it as much as most people had by the 1970s, except.

Philip Barlow [00:47:21] Except for this big official policy and then as the authorities proclaimed by revelation, we got through it. And people make fun of that, like, oh, God changed his mind. Maybe not. Maybe God didn't change his mind, but said it's now time for a change. But a different way to interpret it was, yeah, this is wrong. Here's a revelation, feel that it's wrong. We released from it. There's various ways to interpret that, but we worked our way through it as a people. And racism is. The vestiges of racism are dramatically slight compared to what was in already centuries for Mormons and for other Americans. And so we've got analogous issues here.

Philip Barlow [00:48:09] Are we anti intellectual? And therefore I feel betrayed when I encounter matters of history that really bug me, like who was Joseph Smith married to when? Or different accounts of the first vision or Abraham doesn't comport with modern translations of those manuscripts.

Philip Barlow [00:48:32] So I think it's my choice that I. I know those issues as well as you do, Peter or Marianne. I think I understand those issues as well as you do. And it's not a necessary interpretation how you're responding this. It may be that you need to do this with integrity, but if you're looking for grounds for faith and staying in the church, it's possible to explore those issues and come to terms with them with integrity. And I think personally that there's such a great resource in the church on spiritual and social grounds and there's so much goodness that happens there that I value it highly.

Philip Barlow [00:49:20] So highly that I've chosen to work from within. And when I do that, I'll come to homosexuality in a minute. So I'm not ignoring that. But when I do that on individual intellectual issues or matters of history, and I do it in love instead of I'm an arrogant intellectual twit who went to school and learned these things and you didn't because you're a dentist or you're a car mechanic.

Philip Barlow [00:49:49] If I do that humbly, knowing that I can't fix my car and I'm very grateful for you, and I can't fix my cavity, I'm very grateful, grateful for you and I have something to offer because I wrestled with these issues. If I do that with love and not with haughtiness or trying to go in like a bull in a piner in a china shop, but show forbearance and care, I find that I can gain the trust often of people, including people of influence in the local or wider community church, so that I'm not read as an enemy to the church. So, for instance, this is not the only High council I've been on.

Philip Barlow [00:50:32] And I've been on high council where I was asked to take time in high council saying, how should we address our young people who are suffering or our older people who are suffering? And asking hard questions, how might this issue be handled? And what is the truth of the matter?

Philip Barlow [00:50:52] An entire High Council meeting turned over to me to talk about principles of that, and then afterwards said, we need to address that people are hurting. And then I was asked to do that for high councils evermore take a smaller amount of time and take an issue and in love, trust, faith, camaraderie, and not taking my saber and putting a Z in everybody's shirt.

Philip Barlow [00:51:21] I found that that approach that people are quite flexible. They can be conservative and come from a conservative background, but be quite open to, oh, we didn't know it was like that. Or we have to allow for Masonic influence here if we're gonna actually come to terms with this. And then so what if that's done in a context of support and faith, it can be addressed. So the fact that the general church isn't there yet, it's basically well intended. Sometimes fearful, but it's basically well intended. And it's trying. There's curriculum being written right now in the church education system for the next church history cycle.

Philip Barlow [00:52:08] It's trying to say, oh yeah, we got to address these things and we're going to do it better. And the historical department of the Church is saying, we'd like to publish and let you look at all the documents we look at and making our judgments. We'd like to give you short answers and if you want them, longer answers and if you want all the materials that we look at and make your own judgments. We're not trying to hide things. So the church as an entity, just like you or me as an individual, has to struggle through about how to do that on matters like homosexuality.

Philip Barlow [00:52:45] That is going to be, in my estimate, more thorny for us as a people to work through and rest where we're finally going to rest with than. Than the black issue, because it's got analogously all the components of that difficulty in some ways. Plus it's closer to home with the theology about how salvation and exaltation happens.

Philip Barlow [00:53:14] So it impinges on matters that are at the core of Mormon theology. We are moving and are going to move on that issue as a people, I think. And where we're moving is not at all obvious. But clearly general authorities of the Church certainly acknowledge that there's a whole lot of discussion and prayer to keep happening as they address that issue. And a whole bunch of eye openers to happen as we educate ourselves. Because Mormon ways and Mormon theology, the church itself came into being at a time when that wasn't much contemplated. It isn't a live in your face sort of an issue. Of course, it was assumed to be wicked, unnatural and an abomination.

Philip Barlow [00:54:09] And now complexity is revealing itself to us. Kind of like it used to be that we thought God alone controlled life and death. And now we can create life in a lot of tricky and vitriol ways and clone sheep. And some of our assumptions are manifestly not so what's the so what to that as we work through it. So we have to, as a people, address that. I hope, Melvin, as you talk to me about your struggle with this and how do I have a place in the church? I hope you can find a place. I find it a fabulous resource. And we're in motion.

Philip Barlow [00:54:54] Sort of like if we were in 1935 Mormonism dealing with the black issue. I think the discussion is happening and warming and will continue. But. But if you were my son, I want you to. I think it's clear. I'm entirely convinced that while there's a whole lot of messed up gender identity and sexuality and sexual expression among heterosexuals and homosexuals and transgender people, I think human sexuality and gender is fraught and difficult.

Philip Barlow [00:55:36] And I think the church, in being conservative in some ways, by which I mean being careful to conserve valuable principles instead of be tossed about with every new cultural turn in the river, that that's not a silly thing, but I don't think we're where we need to be. And I'm entirely convinced that through all of that confusion and even wrongness sin about sexuality in both heterosexual and homosexual arenas, that there is such a thing. And not uncommonly as a homosexual who is naturally homosexual, as naturally as I am heterosexual and who's as good and ethical and smart as I am by and large. And that we as a church have to grasp that fact in compassion.

Philip Barlow [00:56:36] And I don't think all debate about this issue and opposing points of view is necessarily homophobic as it's easily labeled. But it's clear that we haven't come to terms with that fact. We haven't grasped it, and we haven't worked through the so what now? Now what? So we have a long ways to go with a person, as a people. And if you as my son, were to ask what for me, that's tricky. I can't answer that. For you, I can only answer on those terms of I'm willing to declare publicly, I have declared publicly in parades, for instance, my intention to acknowledge that there's such a human as you that's as human as me and that we have to grapple through with that.

Philip Barlow [00:57:35] What that means, not dictated to by social antagonisms and pressures, but in love. Sort out what that means. You might help us from within if you choose. And if you choose without, I will understand because I want you to love and be loved because I know that matters to you as much as it matters to me. So something along those lines.

Reasons People Leave and Staying Faithful

John Dehlin [00:58:05] So if for any of these reasons, intellectual, historical, cultural, sexual, if somebody felt led spiritually or by God to leave Mormonism and pursue another route, do you have a view or a sense for God that could allow that to be somehow legitimate as the quest that they need to make?

Philip Barlow [00:58:33] Yeah. Well, my default drive would not be to encourage it because I have an experience, a witness, in common parlance a testimony of the rich, good spiritual power there of we imperfect humans striving to respond to the divine. So my default drive would to see if we could be to see if we could explore options where you might, with integrity, find a way to work from within. And doubtless you like, like me, need some rough edges knocked off too. It's not if we villainize the church. My experience is that we're doing a caricature because there's so much rich goodness there.

Philip Barlow [00:59:15] But I, like you, am aware that there are problematic elements and it's not for me but you and God to judge what your path is. So I have children, Barlow children and Barlow siblings who have opted out of the church either explicitly or in any meaningful way. And I have others who are within and faithful, and I have zero sense of capacity to judge. Well, ear sunk, Buckle.

Philip Barlow [00:59:50] I recognize the principled and admirable ways in their character. And so one non King James translation of a favorite passage in the Bible that my wife drew my attention to alludes to God's rich, the rich variety of God's wisdom.

Philip Barlow [01:00:16] And I imagine, as I imagine God, as I have faith in God, God is nothing if not pure love. If God is pure power without pure love, then I may fear that God, but I'm not devoted to that God.

Philip Barlow [01:00:37] So the God that I believe in, have faith in, is a God of pure love. And that love is an active reaching out on God's part to invite John and Margi and Deborah and everyone to bitterness, to fullness, to happiness. And those paths aren't like that they're like in human life.

Philip Barlow [01:01:06] So I wouldn't be prepared to assign anybody to. I'm in good shape and you're in bad shape very easily. I just know it's my experience and my observation that I'm not at all sure that in the majority of cases people are.

Philip Barlow [01:01:25] Their lives are bettered by leaving, but I could certainly imagine instances where that is. I'm a little loathe, maybe even too loath to say that sentence because. Because I think we're so susceptible to self justification that we might take the ways of least resistance. And I don't necessarily think that's the way that's most constructive for souls or characters.

John Dehlin [01:01:55] Okay, so.

Philip Barlow [01:01:56] Sounds kind of preachy, wasn't it?

John Dehlin [01:01:58] That sounds all right, that's good. Preach it. Okay, so I'll just say that for now we're wrapping up those pillars of your faith and thank you for sharing them. And now I want to just sort of react to it and say that, yeah, this is a thoughtful faith, this is a Mormonism that I John de Lynn in 2012 and that many of my friends and colleagues, I'm guessing not all, maybe not even most, but at least some will say, okay, this Phil Barlow approach to Mormonism is one that is a good balance of thought and faith and universalistic impulses and flexibility.

John Dehlin [01:02:47] I could sign up for that. However, if you look at the way that the church leadership has responded to things like dialogue or Sunstone or intellectuals, if you look at the way that they talk about faith and truth, people like you certainly haven't been elevated into church leadership status as far as we can see. Now there's a Marlon Jensen and maybe even a Jeffrey Holland that gives signals to the extent that they might view you as a kindred perspective in how you view your Mormonism. But if you certainly listen to the General Conference talks or read the curriculum, this is not the flavor of Mormonism that is endorsed or encouraged.

John Dehlin [01:03:51] And you might even have a decent case to say that this is a type of Mormonism that in the past has been punished or de emphasized or chastised. And it's just not official, it's not sanctioned, it's not blessed.

John Dehlin [01:04:12] And so I don't know if that's how you would experience the church in 2012 or 2001 or even 1995. But how can someone. What if someone's saying, I feel like I need permission to approach Mormonism in a way similar to the way Phil Barlow is approaching it? Because I don't feel like that's what the brethren are encouraging me. You know, you'll hear a general conference talk that says either the Book of Mormon is everything it claims to be or it's the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on mankind. Either this church is the one and only true church or not. Very binary black and white type of thinking.

John Dehlin [01:05:00] What would you say to someone who says, I don't feel like this approach would be blessed by the brethren, that I'm not welcome, I'm not wanted, this perspective would be discouraged and chastised by those who lead it.

Philip Barlow [01:05:15] Yeah, well, I would certainly want to recognize first of all some required modesty on my part that I may be wrong about various things. I'm human and I'm always learning that I'm wrong with my best intention and being a flub up at home or in work or wherever. So what I've said isn't perfect, it's just my working understanding.

Philip Barlow [01:05:42] And I would also want to acknowledge what you say to the culture, that there is a thread, not a thread. There's a dimension of hostility towards the intellect or hostility towards asking questions even. And that's a cultural water that's developed that is out there to be navigated. So I do think you don't understand that any better than I understand that whoever is listening to us here.

Philip Barlow [01:06:21] But I have found, I've already given some examples of when I am temperate, careful and show forth faith and love in how I go about entering that conversation or being that I have found ways to do that. When I went off to school to study religion formally, I had a lot of people elbow me and say, what are your going to do with that? You're being educated for the ministry sort of things. And there was a haha joke behind that, like Mormons don't have that. So this is a bridge to nowhere or a degree to nowhere.

Philip Barlow [01:07:09] And in some considerable minority of those voices, I also felt envy like, and I want to do that too. And so I said to myself, I don't know if there's a door there for me that's going to lead to an academic position or an institute position. I don't know if anything practical and professional come with it. I am going to do this. It will change who I am and I would like to work through these issues and sort through what I think. So I'm going to commit at least to this two year master's program and do this whether it's culturally popular or not. I'm going to try to be good, try to remain faithful, try not to Threaten others or flaunt at all or what, But I'm going to do it.

Philip Barlow [01:08:03] So I think attitude has an awful lot to do with it. So intellectuals, I've already gone on record here with the intelligence to say, I don't think we can think too well. Joseph Smith's theology emphasize the intellect. God's the greatest intelligence. Whatever principles of intelligence we master here, we take with us, and then we'll be better off. All those threads. I try to look to deeply authentic Mormon sources when I'm asked about it, or if it's appropriate when I'm not starting a fight or intimidating anyone, but acting in authentic care, fullness and care for the other, that there's a way to have those conversations and have them even be valued by many people.

Philip Barlow [01:08:50] And I know a lot of people and certainly across history, that there's an anti intellectual dimension and that's there. So what do I do if Christ is Christ, he had to confront ignorance, fear, lack of faith everywhere. So we as a people have to learn to be more mature together and open and understand that authentic questions in the spirit that I experience you as asking them, by the way, can be, can be a faithful act, necessary act. That inquiry that Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.

Philip Barlow [01:09:41] License to inquire and seek grounds for authentic faith is essential to a healthy spirituality. And that many people know that without knowing it, they know it interiorly. And if they can be in conversation of faithful inquiry instead of, like I said earlier, wise guy, esoteric questions that aren't helpful, then they can be made to see that even as I recognize that I, I don't know if the word intellectual sounds arrogant, but by that word I mean people who value the life of the mind. So intellectuals are prone to temptations, and one of them is arrogance.

Philip Barlow [01:10:33] So are people with authority, and so are people who are very beautiful and so are people who are very wealthy. Any form of power carries with it the danger of arrogance and abuse of power. And so intellectuals need to be wary of that. So do people who look like Hollywood folk.

Philip Barlow [01:10:57] So yes, I know that we've all encountered that. And to say that that's not what's encouraged, I think it's not encouraged because of well intended fears that people will get involved in secular ways and be so beguiled by a bit of education that they lose stuff that's precious along the way and throw babies out with the bathwater. And if I were looking at that history, I think we need to do way better than that. We need to address Our manuals, so that they become Sunday school classes in a lay church in Haiti or Peoria or Salt Lake City don't need to become college courses batting things back and forth.

Philip Barlow [01:11:49] They're meant to perpetuate and foster faith and goodness. But faith and goodness are better served if we marry the mind and the spirit. So we need to do better than that. Our manuals need to be better. We need to be simple but not simplistic. We need to be childlike without being childish.

Philip Barlow [01:12:11] And we failed a lot of the times as a culture. We can do better and need to do better. And so I acknowledge the concern, but they haven't booted me out yet. So I'm trying. And I see movement in some circles of the culture and some signals from leadership that they recognize that a need to adjust our mode is there.

Philip Barlow [01:12:52] If you're feeling that, Bill, if you're feeling that realistic, then come and come to church with me and we'll teach each other as we navigate how to be that in a class and see how it's done. Because I've done it poorly. I've spoken when silence would have been a better thing, and I've been silent when speaking might have been a better thing. So I think it's an art form, not a science about how to navigate that.

John Dehlin [01:13:22] I don't know how you experience it. I know that when Elder Jensen came here to Utah State last year, he made the statement that the church is experiencing apostasy on a scale not seen since Kirtland, when I believe they lost a third of their membership approximately.

John Dehlin [01:13:43] And I don't want to make too much of that in a literal sense, but. But I am exposed to the host of people who are deciding to question and in many cases just completely abandon the faith. And I see that trend as significant and growing.

John Dehlin [01:14:08] In my conversation with at least one high ranking, I'll say leader in the church, he was in tears as he basically said that we're losing many of our best and brightest. And so I believe that that is a real concern for the church, regardless of your beliefs about the church.

John Dehlin [01:14:37] And it's a real problem and it's growing in my estimation, and it's something that needs to really be addressed. And I'm just wondering if you have thoughts on what the church might do to, one, avoid losing so many people and then two, figure out if there's any way to bring some of these people back who have. Who have decided that they're no longer interested. Do you have thoughts on that? Have you spent time thinking about that?

Envisioning a More Thoughtful Mormon Faith

Philip Barlow [01:15:14] Yeah. Well, some of it is laced into our earlier conversations. Some of the principles I might turn to. I'm entirely convinced that the people who are leading the church are aware of the difficulty or crucial people among them and that those conversations are ongoing. What can we do better and remain one church internationally? How do we speak with. How does Mitt Romney or Barack Obama speak on some point of candor about something without having it play in Syria in this disastrous way that analogously the church. How does it send a message globally to a lay church and have that work?

Philip Barlow [01:16:04] So I think I just said some of them. Some of them is that our manuals and philosophy of what we mean by Sunday schools and priesthood and Relief Society gatherings, when they involve lessons, ought to embrace a thoughtful faith, to use our term, not just faith.

Philip Barlow [01:16:31] If it's not a thoughtful faith, as I've tried to suggest, it's less faithful to Joseph Smith's teaching of who we are and how we get truth. And it won't help in the long run. An awful lot of people.

Philip Barlow [01:16:46] So we need a thoughtful faith. And that means we might think about the days when Lowell Bennion wrote our manuals in the middle decades of the 20th century, or Hugh Nibley for that matter, quite a different individual than Lowell Binion.

John Dehlin [01:17:05] But

Philip Barlow [01:17:08] there were works that were thoughtful, that weren't, that did not have homogenized, did not homogenize and correlate the lifeblood out of our manuals and our lessons. As part of a thoughtful faith, we need to acknowledge that faithful inquiry is a thing that opens up instead of asking scripted questions that have catechetical answers implied or established in every lesson. We ought to not be afraid of questions and learn the difference between fruitful and unfruitful questions. And while that may seem, I don't know if your eyebrows are telling me, don't give me generic answers. So I hope they're not sounding generic. I think they're foundational principles that could change our curricula and our culture to engage them.

Philip Barlow [01:18:09] I was hot wired to be curious. I see it in my two year old child or my two year old grandchild. It's a sin to snuff that out. It needs discipline, it needs schooling, and it needs to know where danger is, etc. But curiosity is of the essence of who I am and how I grow. We ought to make room for that in the church.

Philip Barlow [01:18:34] But the, you know, again, there is movement. So one thing they could do is make some general statements along these lines, show it by better manuals And I don't mean to be seen guilty of counseling the brethren, as they put it. It's not that I'm.

Philip Barlow [01:18:57] I'm just trying to answer your question. If someone asks my opinion, I mean, I think we as a people need to do that. But there's a recent statement put up in early July on the church's website through the newsroom. I think that makes a statement about these things. And it's a different statement.

Philip Barlow [01:19:23] It's different than the culture you're describing, than the church leaders. And it wouldn't be up there unless they blessed it. And it hits on some of these notes, actually it says that things like science and faith or science and revelation naturally might engender a sort of attention and that that's intrinsic to religious life in all sorts of areas, not just in Mormonism.

Philip Barlow [01:19:55] And that it might generate good questions, even perpetual questions. That's not out of the spirit of how I try to remain a Latter Day Saint. And that's coming from official sources. So there are signals that the brethren are trying to respond constructively and probably had to be had to learn that that's necessary.

John Dehlin [01:20:24] So I mean, you look at taking Catholicism aside for a second, you look at mainline Protestant Christianity, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, and signs are potentially that they're in trouble, that their memberships and attendance are declining and that signs are potential

Philip Barlow [01:20:49] is way too gentle a way to put it.

John Dehlin [01:20:51] Okay, I'm trying to.

Philip Barlow [01:20:53] For 50 years, 50 or 60 years, they've been, they have many admirable things, but they've been bleeding members dramatically. It's not just Mormons have a struggle with retaining members, but the liberal churches have had for more than half a century, century.

John Dehlin [01:21:14] And I'm just wondering, I guess as we, as we contemplate, if you have a sense of optimism or even, you know, a sense for whether the church can avoid that same fate. Can it change in directions that might be similar directions that some of these other faiths have also followed and not end up with the same outcome, which is a weakening of the vitality and dismantling of the things that make us strong.

Philip Barlow [01:21:56] I think that's an excellent question because it's a real danger, that's a tragic thing that so many admirable people, unadmirable or admirable, seem or admirable, but dangerous or wrong headed pseudo admirable principles are potentially dissolving. I mean some of the decline has been very rapid and it brings on economic crisis within those denominations and they have less resources to do what they need to do. And so it cycles downward. So it's not clear to me that some of those churches will survive 50 years hence.

Philip Barlow [01:22:40] So that's a real danger to be. Words like conservative and liberal are problematic because people attach such freight to them that you never know how to pronounce those words without mispronouncing the words. But I think there's a natural tension in sociological terms, the notion would be how do you remain in sufficient prophetic tension with the wider host culture without dissolving into that culture?

Philip Barlow [01:23:15] Or how do you not be so weird and different from that culture without getting smushed by that culture? Mormonism has actually done quite an admirable remark, remarkable job navigating and shifting and that amount of tension and accommodation one can observe. And careful studies have been done by some of our scholars about how that works and by and large, Mormonism, even though if authorities of the church were asking my opinion about this or that, I'd be willing to offer it as a council.

Philip Barlow [01:23:52] Nevertheless, in the wider scheme of things, there's been quite a successful navigation. And just introducing more rationality or more regard for education and addressing questions does not necessarily solve the problem, as our case study of the liberal churches manifest. And the community of Christ has decided to join their ranks, and there's a great deal to admire in them, and they are in trouble in various ways. It's not an easy road, necessarily. So I think that the sweet spot on that tennis racket of how to be a Mormon individually and the sweet spot on that racket of how to be a church and a people together is there is a sweet spot to how to do that.

Philip Barlow [01:24:48] And it's not necessarily becoming the culture, and it's not being retrograde and not addressing matters of the intellect and of history and of social issues. It's somewhere in between in that tension. When I. One metaphor I use is I try to minimize friction in some instances, so I pour oil in my engine and try to minimize friction in other instances. Friction is my friend. I try to maximize it with good tennis shoes so I can cut left when I'm on the ball court.

Philip Barlow [01:25:34] So there's a place for liberalism and conservativism, because if you just go the way that the culture goes, you'll end up going the way the culture goes. And that's often not a pretty place to end up. There are some values, disciplines, inconveniences of discipline that are ultimately going to free us more that need to be conserved, as well as the virtues of liberalism openness and high regard for freedom instead of just rhetorical regard for freedom. We've got to make a good salad dressing out of that stuff. You can get too sweet and too sour.

John Dehlin [01:26:17] And do you, in your mind, envision a balance that the Brethren could strike to help us both move in a bit more of this direction and maintain its vitality? Do you think it's doable? Or do you think we're destined to either bleed people because we don't incorporate enough thoughtfulness or liberalness, or we're destined to bleed because we do move in that direction, but then we become like the other Protestant churches. In other words, we bleed either way.

Philip Barlow [01:26:52] We will bleed either way because the psychological forces, the individual choices and minds that we have and the cultural sway at any given minute from both ends of that spectrum will always be at work. Seems like we could do better and find a sweeter spot on that racket.

Philip Barlow [01:27:13] And by and large, I would say that is to move more in the direction of regard for the intellect, Regard I had in a class on this university that I was teaching, as I may have told you before even, I had three converts, one of them brilliant and a couple of them, I don't know how brilliant, yet I need to sound their depths more. But all Brighton able converts to the church who are learning for the first time in my class, and a couple of them had been in the church for 10 years or more that Joseph Smith was a polygamist, we can do better than that.

Philip Barlow [01:27:59] If we say, well, our Sunday school classes aren't about that, so how would they know? Or we assume that they'll know and bump into it. We ought to be able to teach our history in our institute classes, in our Sunday school or priesthood classes in a way that comes to terms with that's not even a hard one in some ways. But it's so basic that we got to do better than that. So sure we can. And as I say, I'm informed that a process of. I don't know if I'll toast the quality of the result. I can't speak to that. But the attempt to inoculate the youth, to use a term that's being bandied about, to incorporate more historical responsibility into it.

Philip Barlow [01:28:46] This church statement, what if this church statement became prominent, was referred to in General conference, was exercised in how we do our manuals, exercised in how we share the gospel exercised over the pulpit. Do I think it's possible that we could?

Philip Barlow [01:29:06] If I didn't think it was possible, I don't know how that statement exists. It's brand new out there and quite official. So, sure, I think we can do better. But that's again, like saying, welcome to the human race. We can always do better.

What Makes Mormonism Distinctive and Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [01:29:23] Last question for today. And if we can have another few hours to maybe explore the other two thirds of the questions I had for you, that'd be fabulous. But I appreciate so much of what you've shared with us today. My final question for you today would be, as I've read through the pillars of your faith, one of the things that really comes through for me is something that touches on what's spoken about in Alma 32, which is when you plant the seed, when you live the gospel, the Mormon gospel, it bears fruit.

John Dehlin [01:30:11] It blossoms forth in your life in ways that are edifying and enriching and that lead you to feel like this is the right path for you. I guess what I'd like to ask you to end on is your sharing with us a bit about what is it about Mormonism that when you've followed it, when you've planted the seed and you've lived it, what types of fruits have you seen in your life that. That have led you to want to stick around?

Philip Barlow [01:30:48] Yeah, thanks. Well, a preliminary to that we have. Over what period of time, I'm not sure, but I think it bears historical examination. I know of one study, one dissertation that may have some of this in there. But somewhere in the last 50 or 70 years, Moroni 10 trumped all other epistemological avenues. You'll read these things, you'll pray, you'll get a witness, you'll know this is true. But there are others equally part of latter day saint Christianity that aren't necessarily like that. Alma 32 works a little differently. Or maybe Moroni 10 means that you can do this through the principles spread out in Alma 32, or Christ said as he's portrayed in the New Testament Gospels, you're calling me a servant of the devil.

Philip Barlow [01:31:49] Try the doctrine and you'll experience it for yourself, and you'll know whether I speak of myself or speak for God or as you say, by their fruits you shall know them. There's other Search it out in your mind, pray about it, and you'll get a sense of it. There's lots of epistemological things that need to be brought to bear there. And so in the spirit of by their fruit she shall know them. Or Alma 32.

Philip Barlow [01:32:15] There's a number of things that I've stressed throughout our conversation this afternoon that I don't know in some absolute way. But as Joseph was always saying, this doctrine tastes good. Sometimes I feel the appeal and the taste of it that way. So I like Mormon thinking about a virtual lack of limits on progress, on what we can become. I think that can be abused and made into an absurd and blasphemous caricature, just like our critics are horrified by Yaha. I can't wait till I zap this planet into existence. Or I mean, it can be vulgarized quite readily with stuff I don't know about. But I like human potentiality being unleashed.

Philip Barlow [01:33:07] And Mormon theology and culture, and even popular culture tends to have a green that I think is constructive. When I sit in a ward council meeting, I get often thrilled. I can be in other meetings that are less thrilling. Like I've been in a High Council meeting where we take 10 minutes on the wickedness of singing a rest hymn in fast and testimony meeting because that's reserved for testimony. So instead of announcing that we could take a long time. So I'm not glorifying church church meetings.

Philip Barlow [01:33:47] I don't mean to deify church meetings, but basically when I sit in a bishop brick meeting, as I do currently in one of the young single adult wards as a high councilman assigned to that ward, or when formally I've sat in ward council meetings, I'm kind of thrilled. The basic thing that's going on is how can we look after and promote human welfare?

Philip Barlow [01:34:15] Who needs what and what can we do to be helpful? Is it sometimes informed by a culture of anti intellectualism now that we could find examples of that as easily as if I asked you to say there's the ground, step on it. That's not hard. But the intent, the flow of the stream, the reach is bearing one another's burdens in love and kindness and humility and goodwill.

Philip Barlow [01:34:45] I'm thrilled by the practice of daily Mormonism along those lines. I like the Mormon thought that affects how I live and think that salvation, in Mormon parlance, uber salvation. Exaltation is a relational affair, not an individual matter. I cannot be perfect, except as the word means etymologically whole in relationship with others. So family unit, but wider communities, generations.

Philip Barlow [01:35:24] America, because of democracy and the virtues of democracy, also has a flip side to that coin. And one of it is individualism on steroids. That can be a problem. So I am taught, as my friend Claudia Bushman has put it before, I'm taught by my Mormon culture to say yes when I'm asked, rather than no, to be willing to feel uneasy if I'm saying no. For calls for service.

Philip Barlow [01:36:00] There's all sorts of limits and frustration to the geographical makeup of Mormonism. And I can't go where imagination and good talks actually happen. Over here, assigned to this ward, but in the spirit of Gene England's why actually he was sort of forced or felt forced to delude it to why the church is as true as the gospel, but in its draft form it was why the church is truer than the gospel. He tried to flaunt his irony a little bit or his paradox a little bit more. But the practical everyday encounters not just when I'm in the mood, but like loving my family, not just when I'm in the mood of service and being there and not succumbing to popularity contests of ability, but working where I am to make things constructive.

Philip Barlow [01:37:00] That's a nice. At least it has plenty of strengths to recommend it. A lay church has all sorts of difficulties when people are talking and proclaiming things that they don't even know the problems or questions to ask about.

Philip Barlow [01:37:18] But I can get that elsewhere and I can find other avenues to have those conversations even within the church, let alone without the church. So I think our lay church is more an asset than a liability. I don't know what would happen if intellectual smarty pants were put in charge of the church. It would maybe become the community of Christ or it would become Episcopalianism which has so many things that I've stressed that I admire about them, but I'm very happy with my Mormonism. Maybe that would be analogous to making the generals the chief commanding officer instead of a civilian. Maybe it's a good idea that we have a civilian rather than the military be there.

Philip Barlow [01:38:15] Who needs to be open? Who needs to hear those generals and those intellectuals and those laypeople and the concern for a global church. But maybe those natural tensions can be worked out better than we have so far. I believe they can. And I believe there's efforts on the part of some of the highest echelons of the church to be repetitive that are doing that. So I think the very struggle is admirable.

Philip Barlow [01:38:43] The fruits of diligence and deseret and honeybees, the fabulous, almost incomparable. But maybe it's comparable but not exceeded capacity for organization in the cause of relief of suffering. Maybe a hands on welfare system that ranks up there with the best in human history.

Philip Barlow [01:39:11] The purpose of life that we were talking about earlier for a 26 year old Joseph Smith means maybe since his birthday was In December, a 25 year old Joseph Smith to be Writing in the book of Moses and articulate God's purpose in a line is potent for me. It needs to be unpacked about what it all means. But the philosopher Nietzsche said it's my ambitious and he was brilliant and colorful and dangerous and crazy. But there's a whole lot to admire in Nietzsche and he says it's my ambition to write what the great thinkers of the ages have written in 10 pages, nay in 10 lines.

Philip Barlow [01:40:11] Or a Shakespeare puts it, brevity is the soul of wit and the idea of what does God do for a living? In one famous line of this is my work and my glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

Philip Barlow [01:40:29] Which is a way to say to love, but to love. Love doesn't have any meaning apart from context of what you think you mean by that term. And I think it means the most healthy psychiatric psychological definition of love would go somewhere in the direction of reaching out, extending yourself, being effortful in fostering the well being and growth of others, other intelligences, other humans, other life.

Philip Barlow [01:41:07] I allow for inspiration in the capacity to was a 20 something to articulate such things. So I think there's a lot of fruits we could explore in a lot of directions. Some of them intellectual, theological, social, personal. And as I already established, I think they're circumstances described by limits.

Philip Barlow [01:41:31] It's made up of human beings. Human beings get off track and so I can cut them a lot of slack because I do too. And one of the ways that they can get off track is thinking they're the only chosen people or that authority means the answer to everything and we're always right. But Joseph already said that's not so so stuff like that and the terrible terrible to contemplate price and sacrifice and giving that's in our legacy and the make me weep on camera goodness and generosity of people called in young men's and women's organizations who are humans and can teach wacky things sometimes of course, but by and large how they've reached out to my own children in various situations.

Philip Barlow [01:42:30] The generosity that I swim in and my family swims in is not unique to Mormonism, but it's fabulously and distinctively well orchestrated and extracted from the minds of the mountains of humanity. It's brought to efficient usefulness. Those are good fruits.

John Dehlin [01:43:00] Beautiful. Well, Dr. Phil Barlow, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and feelings and perspective. The book is a thoughtful faith. Again, I want to encourage listeners to check out MormonStories.org you can comment on this discussion there. Also check out a thoughtfulfaith.org as a separate new pilot project of profiling various voices of thoughtful Mormon faith. Again, personally, I just want to thank you, Phil, for what you've meant to me and for your willingness to put yourself out there as one set of perspectives on how to make the Church work in the 21st century. It's been wonderful and I hope we can have you on again.

Philip Barlow [01:44:00] Well, that's too many hours to impose on the world, maybe, but at least we know know we're talking conversationally about important matters. And I've appreciated your thoughts over time too, and your good earnest candor and good questioning. So I enjoyed being here.

John Dehlin [01:44:16] All right, thanks, Phil, and thanks for tuning in. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast. To discuss this podcast with others, please check us out@mormonstories.org to join one of our 80 plus support communities across the globe. Click on the Support communities tab@mormonstories.org to keep this podcast alive. Please consider a tax deductible donation today by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org audio and video for this podcast were provided by Richard Holdman. A big thanks to the Saber Rattlers for providing the music for today's episode. The Mormont Stories logo was generously done, donated by studiocase.com come, come ye saints.

Guest [01:45:01] No toil nor labor fear but with joy wend your way Though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day. Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to listen Jo, your hearts will swell. Oh, all is well, all is well.

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