Introduction and Panel Welcome

Nemo [00:00:00] Foreign

John Dehlin [00:00:04] and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I am John Dehlin. It is Jesus's birthday. The date the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in a. In a previous incarnation was founded. April 6th. It's 2023. And today we are here to do a 2023, April 2023 general conference review, something that we hope will become more and more of a tradition here on Mormon Stories Podcast. And joining us from across the pond as the producer and the coordinator for this episode is none other than Nemo the Mormon from the Nemo the Mormon YouTube channel. Hey, Nemo, how's it going?

Nemo [00:00:48] Not too bad, not too bad.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Thanks for. What time is it there? Tell us what time it is.

Nemo [00:00:53] There it is. What time is it? My goodness, it's one o' clock in the morning.

John Dehlin [00:00:57] Why in the world did you schedule this at 1:00am in the morning, Nemo, what do you think?

Nemo [00:01:02] Well, because Sam wasn't available earlier in the day and sorry, you know, and she's not around tomorrow. So I was like, well, it's got to happen. So it's basically all Sam's fault.

John Dehlin [00:01:12] All right, Sam, how do you feel about that?

Samantha Shelley [00:01:13] And my camping trip tomorrow got canceled, so.

Nemo [00:01:16] Oh, sorry.

John Dehlin [00:01:20] All right, well, yeah, so that's, that's a way to introduce Samantha Shelley from Zelf on the Shelf.

Samantha Shelley [00:01:26] That's a heavy button.

John Dehlin [00:01:28] Samantha Shelley. Coaching. What's your, what's your website? Your coaching website again, Samantha yesellicoaching.com. all right, well, thanks for joining us again. It's so good to have you back. And also joining us today is the Gerardo Sumano. Hey, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [00:01:45] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:01:45] How's it going?

Gerardo Sumano [00:01:46] Hi, Samantha. Nemo. Good.

John Dehlin [00:01:49] Doing good. How excited are you for. For this general conference? Pretty excited, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:01:54] Nine out of ten.

John Dehlin [00:01:55] Nine out of ten?

Gerardo Sumano [00:01:56] Ten.

John Dehlin [00:01:57] All right, well, Nemo, you produced this one, so let's give you a chance to kind of introduce it in your own way.

Nemo [00:02:02] Yeah, sure. I clearly, for those that don't know, I do a series of halftime shows during the conference weekend. So after every session, 15 minutes after, I will give you a breakdown of exactly what happened. So I watched all 10 hours of conference and did about 5 hours worth of live streaming that weekend. And I just can't get enough of conference. So I said to John, please, please, please can we do a roundup show so that those that don't want to watch all five hours of what I did can watch a couple of hours of this and know everything that went on? So we're not going to be Going through every single talk, there will be a list.

Nemo [00:02:35] We'll go through a slide that will have a list of everyone that spoke, who said the prayers and what happened that session. But I will have highlighted the talks that are pertinent. We've got some clips from those talks. We'll play them, we'll talk about them, and in Nemo fashion, we'll do this as quick as we can because I want to go to bed.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] All right, we'll give a shout out to Maven that's moderating the comments we have. We're live streaming both the YouTube and Facebook. Thanks to everyone who's joining us on the live stream. We welcome your comments. We'll do our best to incorporate some of your comments, and we always appreciate you subscribing to Mormon Stories Podcast, Zelph on the Shelf, and Nemo the Mormon. We always love your subscriptions. And, you know, again, if you can donate through the super chat feature on YouTube if you value this content, or through the Stars feature on Facebook, we always appreciate it. All right, so, Nemo, where should we begin?

Jeffrey R. Holland's Absence from Conference

Nemo [00:03:29] Well, I think we need to start with the first slide and the conspicuous absence of a certain apostle, Mr. Jeffrey R. Holland, who. Breaking news today. Seems like he's. He's. Well, he had Covid, and that's why he wasn't there. But he's also got a problem with his kidneys, and he's been excused from church duties for a couple of months, which means, conveniently, he's not going to have to go to suu. I think that's the first thing we should talk about because the protesters seem to have won through his ill health.

John Dehlin [00:03:57] Yeah, I mean, the truth is we wish him sincere recovery, and we want to show him love and respect, and we don't. We don't wish ill health on anyone. So that's the first thing I think we should all say is, is get well soon.

John Dehlin [00:04:14] Jeffrey R. Holland and obviously his. His decision in the church's decision to. To push Southern Utah University to allow him to speak at the graduation ceremony caused all sorts of disruptions in the SUU LGBTQ community and in the broader community.

John Dehlin [00:04:36] And then suuu, after all the protests, we did an episode on this. There was a huge community backlash, and SUU decided to stay and to keep him as a commencement speaker. And we wondered whether in some way there would be a way for SUU to affirm him as a speaker, but for also him to be able to back out and to save face. We assume he's just genuinely Sick. But what do you think, Gerardo? You were a part of that episode. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:05:04] Just interesting that, you know, it's exactly two months, his recovery, where. Well, they're saying at least two months. And that happens to be when the commencement ceremony is supposed to happen. But then at the same time, you know, they're mentioning dialysis and other kinds of health complications, which is kind of sad. And who knows?

John Dehlin [00:05:25] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:05:26] Maybe God didn't want him to. To be in at suu.

John Dehlin [00:05:30] Yeah. At least the Mormon stories. God intervened. But. But sincere condolences to the Holland family. Get well soon. And honestly, congratulations to the SUU community. I think we all. I think even the church feels like this is the best outcome. Do you think, Samantha? What do you think? Is that stretching?

Samantha Shelley [00:05:48] It does seem like a bit of a win. Win for everyone.

John Dehlin [00:05:50] Yeah, it really does.

Nemo [00:05:51] Bullets have been dodged.

John Dehlin [00:05:53] Bullets have been dodged. Let's use the passive voice. Okay, Nemo. So. So Edward Holland was also not at general conference. And he. It's the first time, I think, in his apostleship that he hadn't attended general conference.

Nemo [00:06:07] And he came out on Instagram and said, you know, he's really happy that he actually gets to, like, chill out and watch conference with his wife and relieve some of the pressure, which that combined with the fact that we don't have this on the slides, but there was an article beforehand in LDS Living of like, how to take care of yourself psychologically while watching conference. You know, so it's like it's telling that an apostle is coming out and saying, you know, well, we have, you know, it's nice for me not to have to be there, you know, if he's finding it stressful and the entire weekend is essentially about him, imagine how the members could feel.

John Dehlin [00:06:39] Yeah, good point.

Samantha Shelley [00:06:40] Emo.

Gerardo Sumano [00:06:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:42] All right.

Nemo [00:06:42] But yeah, we can. We can crack on with the next slide. So Saturday morning session, we got opening prayers, the usual stuff, and all the talks were fairly interesting. But Garrett W. Gong is the first one I want to talk about, as well as Alan D. Haney. Alan D. Haney became meme worthy over the weekend. A lot of people are. Are using some of his logic to justify things. But if we go to the next slide, we'll start with Gong. And I want to get everyone's reactions to this video.

John Dehlin [00:07:08] Is there. Do you want to set this up first? Is there anything you want to.

Nemo [00:07:11] Not particularly. It speaks for itself.

Elder Gong's Talk and Concerns About Youth Safety

John Dehlin [00:07:14] All right, this is Garrett gong at the April 2023 General Conference session. A convert was ministered to by personal example as a Young man. He said he spent his days lounging at the beach. One day, he said, I saw an attractive girl in a modest swimsuit. Amazed, he went to ask why such an attractive girl would wear such a modest swimsuit. She was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and asked with a smile, would you like to come to church Sunday? He said, yes.

Nemo [00:07:58] Can we get the camera on Sam, please?

John Dehlin [00:07:59] Yeah. Gets to comment.

Samantha Shelley [00:08:02] So I'm hearing a sexual harassment anecdote that the woman did not feel compelled to call out. Understandable, perhaps. And just immediately turned it into a conversion opportunity. Imagine going up to it. Sorry, but like, that story is why I hate being in any kind of swimsuit in public. Because just a. The fact that he's like scanning the modesty level of women's bathing suits and then went up to one and said, why are you dressed so modestly when you're so hot? Oh my God, nightmare.

Nemo [00:08:32] Why are you dressed so modestly when you're so hot? That is the essence of what he said.

Samantha Shelley [00:08:36] It's literally sexual harassment at the beach. And this is being told as a wonderful little tale.

John Dehlin [00:08:42] So in the spirit of constructiveness, Samantha, if you were to pull Elder Gong aside and say, elder Gong, let me explain to you in human terms why that was cringeworthy and non helpful, what would you say to him?

Samantha Shelley [00:08:56] I'd say, hun girl, boss, let's talk. First of all, modesty is completely arbitrary. What is modest to you in this culture is incredibly scandalous in another. And what we view as sexual about women's bodies is culturally conditioned. And so all you're doing is just reinforcing the idea that a woman's body is inherently sexual. And if it's on display a certain amount that she is in some way inviting, being sexualized. This woman was sexualized in her modest bathing suit. So doesn't really seem to be helping.

John Dehlin [00:09:29] But yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:09:31] Yeah, Just really hate that story.

John Dehlin [00:09:33] Yeah. Just men don't comment on women's appearance.

Samantha Shelley [00:09:36] Never bring it up.

John Dehlin [00:09:37] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:09:37] Maybe just look away. Maybe don't go to the beach. You know, that's something you're kind of wrestling with.

John Dehlin [00:09:43] So good. You want to add.

Gerardo Sumano [00:09:47] So on the last review that we did of General Conference, we. It was when they announced the last year for the Strength of Youth, the new pamphlet. I think one of the things that we talked about was that, you know, there were a lot of progressive members who were really happy about this new improvements to the pamphlet. It doesn't give specifics as to what kind of clothes Miss. Like, you know, women should wear or men should wear is just very generalized and basically says, make your own decisions as to how. How. How you want to, you know, respect your body. And one of the comments that I made and I think others made on the panel was that, yeah, they were making this improvement, but it was going to take years or decades for that message to actually resonate with the older generations in the church.

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:41] And I think Elder Gong is just displaying that exact sentiment here in the. In this exact next general conference where, like, you know, he's bringing this back into the rhetoric when supposedly we were. We. We had given a step ahead.

John Dehlin [00:10:58] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:10:59] It's a man sharing another man's story about his opinion on a woman's body like this. Just think about that chain.

John Dehlin [00:11:08] It.

Samantha Shelley [00:11:09] So grim. And then also this woman who's been sexually harassed at the beach, it's being the fact that she turned around and invited a pervert to come to church with her is being heralded. I wouldn't want that man coming to my church. Hate it.

John Dehlin [00:11:24] Don't we love having Samantha Shelley on Mormon Stories podcast?

Samantha Shelley [00:11:27] You love it or you don't, John?

Nemo [00:11:29] There's a reason I wanted Sam on this episode, and it's because I knew we were playing this clip. I was like, this is. This is gonna make waves.

John Dehlin [00:11:38] All right, Nemo. Well, that's. That's a good clip to start with.

Nemo [00:11:41] Yeah, I think that. And in fact, Harada's comment helps us segue on to the next clip, which is excellent, because. What. Well, that's an example of Gong not getting the memo right.

John Dehlin [00:11:52] Yeah.

Nemo [00:11:53] And this is another memo that he didn't get. So Gong clearly didn't listen to the safeguarding training that the church has put out, because we're going to play two videos in a row, one of him talking about how ministering should happen, and then another from the church's safeguarding video to show why he's wrong.

John Dehlin [00:12:09] Okay, let's roll the tape. Higher and holier. Ministering comes when we pray for the pure love of Christ and follow the Spirit. It also comes as elders, quorum and release. Society presidencies, under the bishop's direction, oversee ministering efforts, including assigning ministering companionships. Please give our young men and young women needed opportunity to accompany and be mentored by experienced ministering brothers and sisters. And please let our young, rising generation inspire ministering brother and sister companions.

Nemo [00:12:55] So he's encouraging the young people to be paired with experienced ministering companions, and he doesn't specify that that should be their Parents. He just says he wants them with experienced ministry companions. And if you play the next video, we'll see why that's problematic.

John Dehlin [00:13:11] All right, here we go.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:13:19] At a primary activity, Sister Jackson notices another leader asking Jasmine, an 11 year

Video Clip 1 [00:13:24] old girl, to get into her car.

Video Clip 1 [00:13:27] The leader explains that she needs help

Video Clip 1 [00:13:29] to retrieve some supplies and will only

Video Clip 1 [00:13:31] be gone for a few minutes. What should Sister Jackson do?

Nemo [00:13:37] And then this is from the training. So we'll see some options selected and see what happens when the church sees you put the wrong one. So she remind the leader that they should be more than one person with the youth. And then the correct answer is remind them they should always avoid one on one situations with the youth. So why is Elder Gong encouraging teenagers, young rising generation ministers, 14s and over to be paired with potentially just senior members of the ward? More experienced ministers in the ward ending up in their car, going on home visits, going into other people's homes. The safeguarding optics on this are terrible and in contradiction to the Church's own safeguarding training thoughts.

Samantha Shelley [00:14:17] Is he necessarily advocating for them, you know, traveling there in a one on one situation together?

Nemo [00:14:24] Well, it's companionships, right? So there's usually only two people in, in those companionships. And like I said, it could be with their parents. But he's not, he's not making that clear enough certainly.

John Dehlin [00:14:36] And for those who don't have the Mormon context, just like the Catholic Church and the movie Spotlight illustrated, you know, many, many Christian churches in the United States and abroad have a real problem with the abuse of children and with the abuse of youth and even of young adults. And the Mormon Church is no exception to that. And as the Associated Press has highlighted recently, and also as the Boy Scouts of America lawsuit also is highlighted, the Mormon Church has a massive, massive history of abuse of children and youth and of COVID ups of abuse of children and youth. And that's why. Is that kind of what you're getting at, Nemo?

Nemo [00:15:19] Well, just that, yeah, the Church has got a problem with safeguarding. They refuse to do background checks here in the UK even though they're quite simply obtained. They've said to a national government inquiry here in the UK that we don't do them because we have our own system of checks and balances which when you look into that, just are completely inadequate. So the idea then that, you know, you are suggesting in any way that youth can end up with older members of the ward that aren't their parents who haven't been background checked in a one on one situation in A car on their way to a ministering appointment. Just that's alarm bells to me from a safeguarding perspective.

Gerardo Sumano [00:15:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:57] Sam Hiroto, anything you want to add?

Gerardo Sumano [00:15:59] Well, I had to. Two thoughts. One, it seems like Elder Gong did have, hasn't taken the training, the training and he doesn't know about it. And then like, like you said, Nemo, it just shows that these decisions to make, improve the church's pr, you know, to add like this type of training or to improve the pamphlet of For Strength of Youth is not resonating with the higher, you know, top leadership of the church and is not coming from the top down. But these decisions to look more progressive are probably coming from bottom up and then still not. They're not getting the memo.

John Dehlin [00:16:45] Yeah, yeah.

Nemo [00:16:46] And Gong's not talking about just doing like phone calls here either. He said earlier in this talk that we should be doing more. You should be going out to homes more. You should be seeing people in their houses more. Like he was basically trying to push back to the old home teaching, visiting, teaching narrative because the people had kind of slacked off when ministering came out because they were actively told that, you know, you can, you can use different forms of contact to count as serving with others. But then Gongs come out and kind of pushed back against that now and he's saying, no, no, you need to get out and more formally visit people again. So that also plays into it.

John Dehlin [00:17:21] Got it.

Samantha Shelley [00:17:22] So it just seems like a really boring general conference talk that is completely missing the mark. I'm like, ministering is not going to be the thing that gets people staying in church and just the bureaucracy of like the whole thing, it just had a, you know, just all the jargon and the.

John Dehlin [00:17:38] So interesting that you mentioned that, Samantha. This may be relevant to later parts of, of your presentation or of this discussion today, Nemo. But I was talking to a very close family member who's an, who's an orthodox believing Mormon and she said to me this is the most, this is the first time in the history of her life and she's in her 60s. She's been an orthodox believing Mormon for over 60 years. She says this is the first time she's ever been flat out bored at a general conference.

Samantha Shelley [00:18:08] I saw that a lot on the ODS subreddit. A lot of people just saying they just found it really boring and unfulfilling and they obviously felt shame about that.

John Dehlin [00:18:15] And, and that's the trap, that's the, the double bind the church is in if they want to keep it engaging and interesting. They're going to be talking about Joseph Smith. They're going to be talking about distinctive Mormon theology. They're going to be doing lgbt, you know, anti LGBT rhetoric. They're going to be polarizing, you know, politically or socially, other churches, you know. Yeah. Condemning other churches. That's what they have to do to keep members engaged and excited and motivated.

Samantha Shelley [00:18:43] But as we know from Stephen Hassan, the purpose of, or like the, the way that general conference realistically makes the biggest impact is through the hypnotic effect that it has. Like you see the photos of people at conference all slumped over in their seats, you know, listening to these like dreary monotone voices. I mean that is having like a, a belief reinforcing effect. So I suppose it's still functioning as designed in that way.

John Dehlin [00:19:09] In that way. But you know, but, but the reality is it's probably one of the most boring conferences in memory.

Samantha Shelley [00:19:17] And it's always been boring, to be honest. Even if you're someone who aggressively tried to extract meaning from it, which I was, and was, you know, taking notes and just pulling whatever you could still

John Dehlin [00:19:27] boring then, so to say it's the most boring ever is really saying something. Yeah, right. But then, yeah, but then if, if, if, you know, and that's the double bind because if they just focus on Jesus, if they stay away from controversy, which we all want them to do, like, don't we all want them to just focus on love and peace and to stay away from polarizing stuff, then they bore everybody and make people want to go become snufferites. Anyway. Nemo, back to.

Nemo [00:19:52] It's almost like there's not enough to say on that to fill 10 hours of people's time, nine hours.

Samantha Shelley [00:19:57] They don't really have any like needle moving ideas about how to be kind or expand your circle of compassion. It's just kind of like say the platitude so then we can get the brownie points for it. Peace prize, please. We already paid for one of those.

Nemo [00:20:09] Well, we'll get to that, don't you worry. We'll get, we'll get to his. Here's my talk to prove I earned this peace prize that I paid for. That's right near the end. But this, this guy Haney that we're going to come to next, he came out with reducing the canon of scripture that you can look at. But first he wants to talk about, you know, that game that we all play. You know the game we play that the debate we're all engaged in of when he's speaking as a prophet, and when we can just pick and choose what we want to listen to. You know we were all playing that game, right?

Living Prophets and Selective Rejection of Prophecy

John Dehlin [00:20:39] Yeah.

Nemo [00:20:39] This guy reckons. So let's play the clip.

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 [00:20:41] All right, let's play the clip. Knowing by revelation that there's a living prophet on the earth changes everything. It causes one to be uninterested in the debate about when is a prophet

Video Clip 2 [00:20:56] speaking as a prophet or whether one

Video Clip 2 [00:20:58] is ever justified in selective rejection of prophetic counsel.

Nemo [00:21:05] Rejection of prophetic counsel is what he said. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:09] Okay, Nemo, what are you. What are your thoughts on that?

Nemo [00:21:12] I mean, where to start? Because, you know, he's gonna. It's gonna get worse. But he's essentially saying that, well, if you accept that there's a living prophet, then you don't need to worry about when he's speaking as a prophet and when he's not because you should just listen to all of it. That idea of selective rejection of prophetic counsel, he's using pejorative language. He's using very negative language to describe someone that doesn't just listen to all of it. So it's very clear from what he's saying that he wants people to listen to everything the prophet says. You shouldn't be playing the game of when does he speak as a man? Wednesday. Speak as a prophet. Which becomes. Sorry, yeah, go on, go on, please.

Samantha Shelley [00:21:50] Woman Apologetics hinge on is being able to say he was speaking as a man, not a prophet.

Nemo [00:21:54] So, yeah, this guy is not popular with Scott Gordon at fair. You know, the. The church apologist institution, Fair Mormon. They are not happy with this guy because, like you said, they rely on being able to play the game of, well, he was only speaking as a man. And in order to deal with that, we'll. We'll use the next clip, and then we can have a broader discussion about this.

John Dehlin [00:22:19] So the key is to follow the living prophet, brothers and sisters.

Nemo [00:22:23] Unlike vintage comic books and classic cars,

John Dehlin [00:22:27] prophetic teachings do not become more valuable with age.

Nemo [00:22:32] That is why we should not seek

John Dehlin [00:22:33] to use the words of past prophets to dismiss the teachings of living prophets. I want to get Gerardo in here.

Gerardo Sumano [00:22:44] Well, we don't need to go that much back. We can use their same words, you know, from 2015 and then from 2019 and see that there's different things. The same prophet, but for new people

John Dehlin [00:22:58] who are new to Mormon stories or have never been Mormons. What are you talking about?

Gerardo Sumano [00:23:02] Yeah, so we. We have prophets like Russell Manelson, Darling H. Oaks, who put policies that they say, are revelations and then three years later change it. You know, like the November 15th policy, the exclusion targets. Yeah, the exclusion policy targeting LGBT people in the church and then reversing it and completely removing it three years later. But yeah, what he's saying is really interesting because then isn't a prophet, again, supposed to tell us about what's going to happen in the future? So if their words become less valuable over time, then how can we rely on them to tell us what's going to happen later?

John Dehlin [00:23:44] It's literally the opposite of what they're supposed to be doing. Am I wrong? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I. And whether it's the, the 2015 November exclusion policy that got rescinded, whether it's the, the, the ban for, you know, people of African descent from, from holding the priesthood or attending the temple, whether it's polygamy, that was rescinded, you know, which prophets do we believe? And what this reminds me of is the 14 fundamentals of following the prophets that I think it was Ezra Tap Benson came up with. Are we going to talk about that, Nemo?

Nemo [00:24:18] Well, no, no, it's not going to come up specifically, but it is absolutely. This is a, a reproduction of that same sentiment, which is a, A living prophet is more important than a dead prophet, I think.

John Dehlin [00:24:29] Is the phrase living prophets trump dead prophets?

Nemo [00:24:31] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:24:32] But the problem with that is, doesn't, isn't the whole point is that God is unchanging, God's doctrine is eternal and that, that prophets shouldn't be changing, you know, doctrines or policies. Ordinances depending, or ordinances, temple ordinances depending on what civil rights movement is happening at the time, what the grassroots membership is protesting. When Google emerges, you know, whatever it is, that's just not how revelation's supposed to work.

Nemo [00:25:00] And they're like, they're prophets till they die.

John Dehlin [00:25:04] Right.

Nemo [00:25:05] So there's going to be a dead prophet at some point. So you meant to just disregard his words? Like loads of people are holding up on the Internet my copies of this, like, teachings of the President of the Church. I've got these. Are they just useless now?

John Dehlin [00:25:15] Right.

Nemo [00:25:16] Do I not need them anymore?

John Dehlin [00:25:17] And what I concluded is that, you know, how do you know when a, when a prophet is speaking as a prophet? Their mouth is moving. Right. In other words, if they're dead, their mouth isn't moving. And what they said doesn't matter. All that matters is what the current breathing living prophet is saying. And that's a bait and switch. Isn't that a bait and switch?

Samantha Shelley [00:25:39] It's also not acknowledging all the times when a prophet has been like, hey, God just told me this, like, straight from him. I'm telling you guys, if this thing ever changes, that's how you'll know the church is in apostasy or this thing is an eternal unchanging. It's not reckoning with any of that. And it's also just once again, painting a picture of a God who does not find it in any way valuable for people to have a conscience or even, you know, a connection to the Holy Ghost that's brought. That's bigger than, you know, let's say the racist shit that prophets were saying. So it's essentially reinforcing that any racist stuff.

Samantha Shelley [00:26:13] Brigham Young said, for example, what God wanted you to do is bow your head and say yes. So God just wanted sheep. He restored his church just so that he could have people bow their head and say yes, regardless of what up. Sorry. Messed up stuff was going on.

John Dehlin [00:26:27] Samantha's spicy today.

Nemo [00:26:30] We're only half an hour in.

Samantha Shelley [00:26:31] Please, babies, it's your fault. If you thought they would appreciate in value.

John Dehlin [00:26:36] Nice that we'll make it. Maybe make it. Make a TikTok out of that one. Okay. All right, Nemo.

Nemo [00:26:43] Yeah. Well, I mean, the other thing as well. It's like you take your quad here, and this is, I'm pretty sure, the words of loads of prophets.

Gerardo Sumano [00:26:49] Right.

Nemo [00:26:50] I'm pretty sure even Haney himself called Jesus Christ a prophet later in his talk. So we meant to ignore Jesus now because he is a dead prophet.

Samantha Shelley [00:26:58] Yeah, Famously dead.

Nemo [00:27:00] So famously corrected, though.

John Dehlin [00:27:01] So we can ignore. We can basically ignore Jesus.

Samantha Shelley [00:27:03] It is his birthday, though.

Nemo [00:27:05] It is. Yeah. Maybe not. Maybe we need to be, like, affirming Jesus on his birthday.

John Dehlin [00:27:09] Okay. Yeah.

Nemo [00:27:10] Building him up. Yeah. That's all I got to say about that. I don't know about you guys. It's pretty tragic.

John Dehlin [00:27:16] That's good.

Nemo [00:27:18] Cool. The next clip. The next slide, please. Yeah, we're gonna. We're gonna.

John Dehlin [00:27:23] All right. There we go.

Nemo [00:27:24] Challenge through this. So the Saturday afternoon session, typically when we get the sustaining of church officers and the audit and nothing else here was worth looking at, apart from the audit and the sustaining of church officers, because boy, oh, boy.

John Dehlin [00:27:38] So wait, did we get some news. Luke Dorf's talk wasn't super noteworthy.

Nemo [00:27:43] He was. He was it. He's a cuddly teddy bear.

John Dehlin [00:27:46] Okay, really quick, Samantha, What'd you like about Ugdorf or think about?

Samantha Shelley [00:27:50] Well, he gave this talk about how, you know, you need to. The metaphor was like, children are like plants. And you need to give them access to like the right soil, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it was all like, you know, just sort of like flowery, nice sounding things. But to me, the issue with that is this is a high control group that fundamentally misunderstands what children need to thrive and actively, you know, like perpetuate systems that are harmful to children. So it just feels like a classic example of you can have the best intentions in the world, but if you have a flawed worldview or you know, like ineffective, even harmful ideas about what healthy child development looks like, for example, it doesn't matter.

Samantha Shelley [00:28:29] You can give the most poetic talk in the world. You know, we talks likable and everything, but it just really is meaningless because what people watching that talk think it means to, you know, give a child the right ingredients to thrive is just quite inaccurate.

Nemo [00:28:48] But Sam, Sam, Sam, he did give us a great quote. He said, daily bread is best prepared and served at home.

Samantha Shelley [00:28:58] Makes you think.

John Dehlin [00:29:00] You forgot to mention that Uchtdorf is hot, Samantha.

Samantha Shelley [00:29:03] Yeah, well, I don't want to objectify right now, but I'm glad that you threw it up.

John Dehlin [00:29:09] Okay, Nemo, back to you.

Nemo [00:29:11] A lot of thirst for Uchtdorf online and, and everywhere else.

Samantha Shelley [00:29:14] I thought that in the room added to the vibe of this podcast.

Sustaining Church Officers and Dissenting Votes

Nemo [00:29:18] So. Okay, let's start with the sustaining of church offices. I've done a little edit of our good friend Brian Pugh into the sustainable church offices because, you know, I want everyone to just experience a, a sliver of the boredom that is general conference. So we're going to watch the sustaining of church officers interspersed with a little bit of spiciness.

John Dehlin [00:29:40] Really quickly explain to our never Mormons what sustaining means in a Mormon country.

Nemo [00:29:45] Well, depends if your bishop wants you to get in line or not. Because to my bishop it means just please say you sustain them. So we stop having these really difficult interviews. But, but what sustaining is in general is the idea that you will support and uphold the individual in their task within the church. So when they ask for a sustaining vote, it is a vote of loyalty, of fidelity almost to those individuals in their calling. So you're sustaining the, these men as prophecies and revelators, saying that you believe that that's what they are and that's what you will uphold them as, and you will support them as such.

Nemo [00:30:20] And you do it on a local level as well for like individual callings. And if you, if you oppose that sustaining it is because you have information that means that person shouldn't be serving in that calling. You have reason to. To object to their being in that position. And there is multitude of reasons why the men in the first presidency and Quorum of the twelve shouldn't be in that position.

John Dehlin [00:30:45] But I'll just say, in my 45 years as an active believing Mormon or active Mormon, I never saw anyone oppose ever. So it's super rare for anyone to ever oppose, at least historically.

Nemo [00:30:58] Yeah, it's a big deal.

John Dehlin [00:30:59] Yeah.

Nemo [00:30:59] Yeah, big deal.

John Dehlin [00:31:00] Yeah.

Nemo [00:31:01] Because like I said, the. The sustaining vote is all about loyalty, about fidelity. So you've got this big in group, sort of in group out group behavior going on where those that are all in the in group are all showing that they're in the in group by raising their hand to sustain. And then, you know, you end up in a position where if you're standing out by saying, no, I oppose, that's a problem.

John Dehlin [00:31:22] Right. So it's kind of a farce of a democratic process, right?

Nemo [00:31:26] Oh, yeah, yeah. Farcical for sure.

John Dehlin [00:31:28] Okay. Not to be confused with the farcical Aquatic Ceremony, but that's another movie. Okay, let's play Elder Oaks. Is that right?

Nemo [00:31:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:38] All right. It is proposed that we sustain Russell Marion Nelson as prophet, seer and revelator and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Dallin Harris Oaks as first counselor in the first presidency, and Henry Bennion Eyring as second counselor in the first Presidency. Those in favor may manifest it. Those opposed, if any may manifest is proposed. Okay, now wait, I'm gonna pause it for a second. For those who are just listening and weren't able to see, all they heard was the audio turned weird. You want to just quickly explain what you just showed?

Nemo [00:32:31] The audio turned weird because a very brave man recorded himself voting opposed in a conference center that seats 22.

John Dehlin [00:32:39] In a red. In a red coat. Right.

Nemo [00:32:41] In a red coat. Just so that he could stand out. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:46] Do we remember his name?

Nemo [00:32:47] Brian Pugh.

John Dehlin [00:32:48] Brian Pugh. Shout out to Brian Pugh. He lives in. I think it's Queens, New York. It might be. Might be another one of the. Another one of those areas. But anyway, he reached out to me. He's a great guy. We hope to have him on Mormon stories. But it was a super courageous moment. He videoed himself opposing. And that got shared on. I shared it on Reddit, on Instagram, on YouTube, and it got hundreds of thousands of views and people saw it. Really courageous. Were you gonna say anything else about that email?

Nemo [00:33:20] No, no, no. And I was just gonna show him doing it each time.

John Dehlin [00:33:24] Okay. And I was just gonna say we'll show it again. Well, we'll go ahead and roll it and then. And then we'll talk a bit more about that. Okay.

Nemo [00:33:30] Yeah, sorry.

John Dehlin [00:33:31] I'll go ahead and continue the.

Nemo [00:33:33] That's fine. The snooze fest.

John Dehlin [00:33:36] Okay. Of the Quorum of the twelve Apostles and M. Russell Ballard as acting president of the Quorum of the twelve Apostles. Those in favor, please signify any opposed may manifest it is proposal we sustain the following as members of the cross of the twelve Apostles. M. Russell Ballard, Jeffrey R. Holland, Dieter F. Uchtdorf, David A. Bednar, Quentin L. Cook, D. Todd Christofferson, Neil L. Anderson, Ronald A. Rasband, Gary E. Stevenson, Dale G. Renlund, Garrett W. Gong, and Ulisses Soares. Those in favor, please manifest it.

Nemo [00:34:45] There you go. So three times.

John Dehlin [00:34:47] What do you want to say about that? Nemo. And I should say Nemo, that this, this sustaining thing or voting opposed to something very personal to you as well, which is why I wanted to make sure you got included on that sharing. Go ahead and talk about that if you want.

Nemo [00:35:02] Yeah, voting opposed is very important to me. It's something I've done a lot of. I just shared a short recently, including footage of me where I was singing in the choir on the stand at state conference and I voted opposed. And where they'd. They'd conveniently put me in the choir right behind my stake president. So my head just pops up and I do this and they're back down again.

Nemo [00:35:21] Go check that out. But yeah, voting opposed is something that's very important to me because I feel like it is. It is a public declaration of your position in a way that allows others to see that non conformity is acceptable because it is asked for you notice. He didn't just start waving his arm around and go, I oppose. I oppose. They asked if anyone opposed they could make it known. They ask a question. Not really. For the. For the appearance of democracy. For the appearance of common consent, which is the scriptural principle. This is based on founding doctrine and covenants. For the appearance of that.

Nemo [00:35:57] They ask if anyone is opposed, but they don't ever expect anyone to put their hand up. And when you do, it helps show all those around you that there is an option other than non conformity. And that's why I think it's really important personally to me. And I'm really grateful whenever anyone does this and records himself doing it and shares it, because we know that someone else in that session who was singing in the BYU choir voted opposed as well, we have an eyewitness from within the choir reached out and told me that. That someone in the choir voted opposed as well. So there was at least two people in that conference center of tens of thousands who. Who stood up and went. Or put their arm up and said, no, I don't agree. And that's. That's a brave move.

Gerardo Sumano [00:36:38] I thought it was interesting that they mentioned the middle names for the First Presidency and not the Apostles.

John Dehlin [00:36:44] Interesting.

Gerardo Sumano [00:36:45] Do you have any thoughts?

Samantha Shelley [00:36:45] No.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] Yeah. I didn't even realize that because I've

Gerardo Sumano [00:36:48] never heard them mention the middle names before on General Conference. And then. And then I noticed that they only did it for the. For the First Presidency.

Samantha Shelley [00:36:57] Interesting worship.

Nemo [00:36:59] They've always done it for the first presidency, I think, because I've got. I've got in my head an American trying to say Friedrich, which is Dieter Fuckdorf's middle name. So I've definitely heard them say it for him, but he was on the first presidency in the Monson era.

Gerardo Sumano [00:37:13] Yeah.

Nemo [00:37:14] So maybe it's just them.

John Dehlin [00:37:15] Really quickly. Going back to Brian Pugh, I just want to say I thought it was remarkable how respectful he was. He didn't try and shout out or be disruptive. All he did was just elegantly and courageously raise his arm. Did. Did any of you notice the faces of the people around him as he raised his. His arm?

Samantha Shelley [00:37:34] I swear, they were all just trying to act like they did. They all seemed like they didn't even see it.

John Dehlin [00:37:38] Didn't even look up. Yeah. And a lot of people commented that that was kind of weird that they

Samantha Shelley [00:37:44] didn't even, like, is it threatening to even look over? Because I'd be curious.

John Dehlin [00:37:48] Yeah. But they didn't even avert their eyes, so. So that was interesting.

Samantha Shelley [00:37:52] Also, I know that's. This isn't really what this section is about, but I just felt like all of the men on the stand, I know they're old and stuff, I just felt like none of them had any life force in them, and they all just looked, like, completely sapped of any kind of zest. And again, it's fine to be old and, you know, you're not always feeling zesty. I get it. But, like, just all of them just seemed. There wasn't like, you know, I'm thinking of other spiritual leaders that I like. I feel like they. They generally have kind of a. A serenity to them or. And obviously, like, looks can be deceiving, too, In. In this, you know, vibe doesn't always say everything, but it's like, you didn't really get any kind of sense of. I don't know, any. Anything lovely. Yeah. Any vitality or.

John Dehlin [00:38:40] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:38:40] Any serenity.

John Dehlin [00:38:42] And that's. That's probably some projection on our part because I'm sure a bunch of the attendees saw them glowing with. Yeah, with goodness.

Samantha Shelley [00:38:49] I thought Neil looked a little bit less gormless than the rest.

Gerardo Sumano [00:38:53] Something that did hit me when. When they pan the camera towards the quorum of the 12. You know, I just had this thought of like, I don't imagine like Peter, James and John and Jesus, you know, like all with like. With like very humble clothes. You know, how they were supposed to like Armani suits.

John Dehlin [00:39:15] You don't think.

Samantha Shelley [00:39:16] Comical that they were all dressed like that.

Gerardo Sumano [00:39:18] And then like sitting on these red chairs, you know, like, I just. It's just really straight. Because that's who they are supposed to be representing. Right? The apostle. The original apostles of Christ.

John Dehlin [00:39:29] Yeah. The opulence might even remind us of the Book of Mormon's denunciation of the Catholic Church. Or the great and abominable horror of all the earth with all the fine apparel and the. And the. And the great and spacious building. Honestly.

Samantha Shelley [00:39:43] Yeah. Who approved velvet chairs? I do think everyone deserves to be comfortable, but it's just not a good look.

John Dehlin [00:39:48] Yeah.

Nemo [00:39:49] And the little bowls of sweets next to them as well. Or candy, if you will.

Samantha Shelley [00:39:53] They're like Mariah Carey green M M's. Only I wonder.

Nemo [00:39:56] Yeah. I wonder what their runners are like when they. When they're at conference. Like what? It's. One of them's like, no, it must be Evian water. You know, they've got their. Their foibles.

John Dehlin [00:40:06] All right, well, that's the sustaining portion. Again, shout out to Brian Pugh.

Nemo [00:40:11] All right, so I wanted to get Brian in.

John Dehlin [00:40:12] Let's make that a tradition. Why don't we? Like, what if every General conference a people that are opposed to what the church leaders are doing take the church seriously in the. In. In the common consent policies that have been enacted, go to general conference, video themselves raising their arms in defiance and sharing those.

Nemo [00:40:36] I'm. I'm tempted to start a GoFundMe to get me flown out so I can attend General conference of opposed in person.

John Dehlin [00:40:43] Well, we'll make that happen. We'll make that happen.

Samantha Shelley [00:40:45] And also, people should feel free to not take the church seriously, not attend general conference and not try to operate within this.

Nemo [00:40:51] No, Sam, you're ruining my vibe.

Samantha Shelley [00:40:54] I love. We need all kinds, you know, what speaks to you.

John Dehlin [00:40:58] All right.

Nemo [00:40:59] Sam's absolutely right. If that's what you need to do, particularly on conference weekend, if you just need to ignore it all and pretend it doesn't exist. Please do. Don't feel any pressure.

John Dehlin [00:41:07] Did you watch General Conference, Samantha?

Nemo [00:41:09] No.

John Dehlin [00:41:10] No. Okay. All right.

Nemo [00:41:12] That's why I watch it for people. So that I watch it so other people don't have to. That's my, my motto. When, when I, when it's four in the morning and I'm watching the Saturday evening session and I'm shaking a little bit from caffeine. I'm like, I'm doing this so that people don't have to. I'm doing it.

John Dehlin [00:41:26] Okay, can we, can we call that Nemo's atonement? Like Nemo sacrifice?

Nemo [00:41:31] Yeah, I'm just making up for all the missionary work I did.

John Dehlin [00:41:37] Okay, that's good. All right, let's go to the next slide. Nemo.

New Callings, Releases, and Brad Wilcox Controversy

Nemo [00:41:41] Yeah. So we got some new church officers. Tom Phillips, the man who blew the whistle on the second anointing, his son got an upgrade and there's a little fun anecdote I can share about that. So.

John Dehlin [00:41:52] Yeah. So Mormon Stories podcast, we interviewed Tom Phillips years ago and he, he lost his faith after being buddies with Elder Holland and being a stake president twice and getting a second anointing. He. Which is, which is being told that you've made it to the celestial kingdom unless you kill somebody. That's one of the most important Mormon stories episodes of all time. Go check it out right now. Pause this. Go watch that. It's ground breaking, earth shattering. And you're telling us his son was just made a general authority. Take that over Nemo.

Nemo [00:42:25] So his son was a Area 70. And he was my Area 70 that I dealt with a lot when I was working my concerns all the way up to Elder Oaks. And if you've not seen that, basically I got Elder Oaks to read a three and a half thousand word document I wrote calling them all out as liars. And he tried to defend it and failed. Massive own goal on his part. So, yeah, check that out later. But I. So I've got a bit of a relationship with him. And then he got. When. When Russia invaded Ukraine, the church went, how are we going to deal with this?

Nemo [00:43:00] You know, administratively? So they sandboxed Russia and all their economic buddies like Kyrgyzstan and those sorts of places, put them in a new Europe east area. And all the leaders of that are now Russian nationals. So there's no GA 70s there. They're all area 70s. Then they took Europe north and brought it back because we used to have it in the early 2000s. And so we needed a Europe north area presidency. So Europe north area presidency was two GA 70s and Alan Phillips. So Alan Phillips, Tom Phillips son, as a area 70, still unpaid, was doing area presidency work until this conference when he got released.

Nemo [00:43:39] So I sent him an email straight away. The moment he got released. I said, oh, thanks for all your help during all this. I bet you're glad that I'm not your problem anymore. And sent it off. And then, you know, 30 seconds later he gets called as a general authority 70. And I realize, oh, okay, well, what they've actually done is just given him a pay rise so that he's actually getting paid for doing his job and he's now got a seat at the table proper. So I sent him a second email saying, I guess you don't get away with it that easily.

Gerardo Sumano [00:44:05] They had to pay him to deal with it.

Samantha Shelley [00:44:07] You would trouble me.

Nemo [00:44:10] So, yeah, so that's my fun little anecdote about him getting upgraded to a GA70. But he looked very uncomfortable. There's some footage I didn't get a chance to put it in, but he's there kind of sat looking quite uncomfortable at having to sit on the rostrum at the conference center. So we'll, we'll see, we'll see what his career looks like.

John Dehlin [00:44:29] All right, well, so that's one calling that's super cool.

Nemo [00:44:34] We got a new Young Women's General presidency. That was pretty sweet. And they were released effective August 1st, I think is what they said. And then the new Young Women's presidency will come into. Come into effect. There will be. There'll be new Young Women's presidency, but the Young Men's General presidency had something happen to it which was with effect immediately. And I'll tell you why I think that happened after we play the next clip.

John Dehlin [00:45:01] Okay, so on to the next clip. Effective immediately, we hereby release brothers Ahmed S. Corbett and Bradley Ray Wilcox from serving as first, as and second counselors in the Young Men General Presidency. Those who wish to show appreciation to these brethren for their service may so manifest a few moments later, it is proposed that we sustain the following as counselors in the Young Men General Presidency effective immediately. Bradley Ray Wilcox as first counselor and Michael T. Nelson as second counselor. All in favor? May manifest it. Any opposed? May so manifest. Okay, Nemo, spell that out for us.

Nemo [00:46:05] He failed upwards. The whole Internet for like 30 glorious seconds thought Brad Wilcox had been released after the absol. Abomination. That was his talk in Alpine, Utah last Year.

Samantha Shelley [00:46:18] Brad, what about the whites? Wilcox.

Nemo [00:46:21] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:46:22] No, this is literally. This is stunning because the biggest moment probably in Mormon stories history was last year when we broke the story of Brad.

Nemo [00:46:31] It was February.

John Dehlin [00:46:33] Yeah, February. If you look at our YouTube statistics, they've been destroyed because the baseline was, you know, normal. And then Brad Wilcox day. There's a gazillion people who watch Mormon stories, all of them completely shocked and outraged at, you know, what were two or three of the worst things that Brad Wilcox said. Gerardo, do you remember the whites? You know, he said we should stop asking why the blacks didn't receive the priesthood until night. Didn't receive the priesthood until 1978. What we should be asking is why the whites didn't receive the priesthood until 1830. That's one, right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:47:11] Yeah.

Nemo [00:47:11] He also said other churches are playing church, that they're not really like, they're not really. They're not really doing it properly. Yeah, that was another one.

John Dehlin [00:47:21] Yeah. Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:47:21] There was something. There was something sexist, if you haven't Shameless plug. But we made a Brad Wilcox rap. Well, Brad made a Brad Wilcox rap on Zelf on the Shelf. That is well worth watching after this live stream.

John Dehlin [00:47:34] Yeah, but, but I mean. Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:47:36] What was this thing? How come the girls. What was it? It's like, brother Wilcox, how come the girls can't remember, don't have the priesthood?

John Dehlin [00:47:44] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:47:44] Oh, yeah, probably.

John Dehlin [00:47:46] Yeah. It was just a horrendous talk. And, and honestly, I guarantee you thousands, if not tens of thousands of people left the church because of Brad Wilcox talk. So if there was ever a time for the church to censure or distance themselves from somebody, this would have been the time.

Samantha Shelley [00:48:05] Especially because he's been memed to death. Like, to have him as like a youth leader just doesn't make sense. He's lost all respect. He's too memed.

John Dehlin [00:48:13] It's kind of tone deaf.

Gerardo Sumano [00:48:14] Well, you Google Brad Wilcox and, you know, all you see is the controversy.

John Dehlin [00:48:19] Yeah, yeah, but. But I guess they're defiant. I don't know. Nemo, how do you explain this?

Nemo [00:48:23] So he, he came out with an apology and said, oh, I, I just. I miscalculated. I misthought. I then put out a video saying, actually, he's done this before. And there's other footage of him having done it. It's a talk that he had rehearsed and he had given a number of times, so it wasn't a spur of the moment mistake. So that apology meant nothing then Ahmed Corbett, his counselor in the General Ye Men's presidency came on to a video, and it was essentially a video of, hey, look, I have a black friend. I'm not racist. And so what they've done here is they can't get rid of Brad for some reason. He's too well beloved. So they've decided, well, we'll move Ahmed Corbett away from him and bring someone else onto the young men's presidency. And we'll, you know, in the Mormon church, you fail upwards.

Gerardo Sumano [00:49:12] So did you notice what happened with Ahmed, though?

Nemo [00:49:15] Oh, yes. That's what I'm going to talk about next is that he got made a general authority. 70. Now, a prediction that I made alongside Colby Reddish on one of my halftime shows and Colby brought this up, was that we think he's being positioned to be the next apostle when one of these guys croaks and it's only a matter of time.

John Dehlin [00:49:34] Corbett.

Nemo [00:49:35] He's in. Corbett. Corbett will. He's been made a Ga. 70. I think he's gonna. He's gonna become the first African American or black apostle. I think that's what he's been positioned. Yeah, that's why they did it immediately. They didn't wait till the summer because I think I. I think with the health problems that are going on within the quorum, someone's not going to make it till next conference. And he has to be in position to. To take place immediately.

John Dehlin [00:50:00] And this is where critics of the church or post Mormons have to be careful because on the one hand, don't we all want to see more people of color in high church leadership? Gerardo, you're. You're making a face. Why?

Gerardo Sumano [00:50:12] Oh, man, I. I don't know how else to. To say it. I. I try to never be political, but, you know, I don't know. I. I can see why some people would have problems if, you know, the resemblance of the people of the person of color that they're putting on as an apostle is, you know, for example, like Candace Owens. You know, I can see why some critics.

Nemo [00:50:38] Yeah, I don't get that reference.

John Dehlin [00:50:39] What do you mean by that?

Gerardo Sumano [00:50:41] So she's a political commentary commentator. Republican. Very conservative.

John Dehlin [00:50:47] Who's black.

Gerardo Sumano [00:50:48] Yeah. Who's a person of color. And a lot. A lot of liberal people or Democrats accuse her of being, you know, kind of like a puppet for the Republicans. Whether you agree with that or not doesn't really matter. But what my point is that I can see why some critics of the church would see Elder Corbett and say, you know, that's kind of like what the Republican Party has done with Candace Owens.

John Dehlin [00:51:18] Yeah.

Samantha Shelley [00:51:19] Yeah. It doesn't really feel worthy of celebration to have a black person being a figurehead for a racist organization.

John Dehlin [00:51:28] Right. And I guess it's more, you know, just putting a woman in a position of power, I guess, only is meaningful if the woman is really looking out for and representing her constituency, other women. But if all she's doing is doing the bidding of the men, then it's. Then it's. You know, there's probably a word for that.

Samantha Shelley [00:51:50] Yeah. And it. Yeah. Because it almost has more potential.

John Dehlin [00:51:53] Is it tokenized?

Samantha Shelley [00:51:54] Definitely that. Yeah. Yeah. Especially because they wouldn't even consider having a black apostle until it's become so necessary. And, I mean, they still haven't done it, but.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:02] And I would want to say that we're.

John Dehlin [00:52:04] We're.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:04] I'm making this comment very specifically because also other talks from Elder Corbett have been, you know, been controversial where he's taking very regressive positions about, you know, prophets, seers and revelators and what that means and following them and being really, really, really, really orthodox to the point where it becomes a little unhealthy. So that. That's why I'm mentioning it.

Nemo [00:52:35] And we've got some of that later in the episode as well, because we're going to look at some of Corbett's talk and how he denigrates the very activism that means he's now in a position to have the priesthood, which is just wild when you actually think about it. But, John, can you throw the next slide up for a second? Because I think this best represents how the Internet felt about Brad Wilcox.

John Dehlin [00:52:55] There we go. Go and read it for those who are listening.

Nemo [00:52:57] Brad Wilcox releases Second Young Men's Second Counselor Smiley Face. He's called his first counselor Shock Face.

John Dehlin [00:53:04] Right.

Nemo [00:53:05] It's that. It's that meme. It's great meme.

John Dehlin [00:53:07] Yeah. And people did reach out to me and say, whoa, he's been released. This is amazing. Right.

Nemo [00:53:13] And it's almost the same thing I did with Alan Phillips. I sent him a message going, oh, yeah, cool, you've been released. And then, boom, he gets called again. Oh, so I got whiplash. So there's a. There was a bit of. Yeah. Conference whiplash over this, for sure. So if we move on to the next slide.

Church Auditing Statement and Financial Transparency

John Dehlin [00:53:29] Yeah.

Nemo [00:53:30] Let's have a look at the audit statement, shall we? And just to set up some context for this, the church paid a $5 million settlement to the SEC in February. Was it February?

John Dehlin [00:53:43] Security and Exchange Commission.

Nemo [00:53:44] The Security Exchange Commission in the United States.

John Dehlin [00:53:47] For what?

Samantha Shelley [00:53:47] For.

Nemo [00:53:48] For hiding $32 billion of their assets in 13 shell companies over the course of about 20 years. Yeah, it's not great behavior. I've been calling for church discipline against those involved because if you read the church handbook carefully, all the actions undertaken to do such a thing necessitate church discipline according to the Handbook of Instructions. So someone's bishop in. Well, I. I will tell you. Russell M. Nelson's bishop has got a letter from me. Instruct, telling him that he may want to consider disciplinary action against one of his congregants because he is engaged in harmful financial behavior that has hurt members of the church. So, yeah, we'll see how that goes.

John Dehlin [00:54:32] Yeah. And people have been sharing that letter in their own wards and states and all over. It's caused quite a stir. Yeah, so.

Nemo [00:54:43] So it's a big deal. And so every. It made, you know, international news. I've got a copy of the Financial Times up there which made front, front page news in the Financial Times. It's a big, big deal. And you would think the Church auditing department would come out and say something about it because it's their responsibility to say something about the finances of the church, to reassure the members that the finances of the Church are in order. So perhaps they want to give a bit of extra reassurance to the members. Don't worry, despite the fine, everything is still okay or, you know, whatever. But what a lot of us predicted would happen was this. Would you play it

John Dehlin [00:55:21] to the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Dear Brethren, directed by Revelation as recorded in section 120 of the doctrine and Covenants, the Council on the Disposition of the Tithes, composed of the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and the Presiding Bishopric, authorizes the expenditure of church funds.

John Dehlin [00:55:44] Church entities disburse funds in accordance with approved budgets, policies and procedures. Church auditing, which consists of credentialed professionals and is independent of all other Church departments and entities, has responsibility to perform audits for the purpose of providing reasonable assurance regarding contributions received, expenditures made, and safeguarding of Church assets based upon audits performed. Church auditing is of the opinion that in all material respects, contributions received, expenditures made, and assets of the Church for the year 2022 have been recorded and administered in accordance with Church approved budgets, accounting practices and policies.

John Dehlin [00:56:33] The Church follows the practices taught to its members of living within a budget, avoiding debt and saving against a time of need. Respectfully submitted, Church Auditing Department. Jared B. Larsen, Managing Director, Right Watch Oaks.

Nemo [00:56:48] Watch Oaks. Watch Oaks, Nice little thumbs up there for the auditor. Good job, son.

John Dehlin [00:56:56] Thank you, brethren. So. So I just have to say that was one of the most Orwellian and shocking moments of my Mormon life. And, you know, it was doubly shocking, you know, the fact that the church just shamelessly ignored that anything had happened and gave that vanilla speech. Not acknowledging the fact that they had just been fined and censured by the United States government. And the Security Exchange Commission was totally Orwellian and mind blowing. But what was maybe for me, even more shocking and mind blowing was that there was no audible gasp or even rebellion amongst the membership because the membership, many of them know that the church had been fined. So, like, the fact that there wasn't even outrage is just a double testament to, I guess, the power and the control that the church has.

Nemo [00:57:46] I don't know, John. They consider the matter closed, right?

Samantha Shelley [00:57:49] Yeah. From their perspective, like, they paid the fine, you know.

John Dehlin [00:57:52] Right. Yeah. But to say, to say nothing, like an apology, we're sorry, we goofed up, we'll try and do better, or even just to say we were fine, we disagree with it, but we should mention that to everybody. Like, that was outrageous.

Gerardo Sumano [00:58:09] Even the wording that they use, you know, that the, the church did everything right, and they use this wording of that the church spent the money according to the budgets that they had already preset. How did they know that we're going to get a million and a four million dollar fine? You know, and how, you know, so even the wording that they. Is not just what they left out, it's also that the wording that you're using is a little deceptive.

Nemo [00:58:33] I love how much of a sham it is because if you listen to the words he said, it is. The money has essentially been spent in accordance with approved church budgets, policies and practices.

Samantha Shelley [00:58:44] Yeah, obviously.

Nemo [00:58:45] So it's like, yeah, so we did everything the way that we wanted to.

Samantha Shelley [00:58:49] Yeah, we wanted to pay the fine, actually.

Gerardo Sumano [00:58:52] But isn't a budget something you do previously? You know, you have a budget and then you spend according to that budget. But if you're gonna get a fine that you didn't know about also in

Nemo [00:59:03] that case, we'd expect to see something next year, because they'll. In the, in that financial year, then, yes, they'll. They'll see it.

John Dehlin [00:59:10] I guess that's true. Yeah, I guess that's true.

Nemo [00:59:13] So watch this space, people.

Samantha Shelley [00:59:15] Yeah, that was like the energy of when my dad asks me how my finances are going so good.

Nemo [00:59:21] And you're like, I I have spent my money in accordance with. Yeah. With my approved budget.

Samantha Shelley [00:59:26] With my approved budgets. Retroactively.

John Dehlin [00:59:31] Yeah. I mean.

Nemo [00:59:31] Oh, dear.

John Dehlin [00:59:32] I. I said on another podcast that this is a brilliant opportunity, a lost opportunity for the Mormon Church to model the repentance that it teaches its members and that it taught us all that you have to confess the sin, that you have to make restitution, forsake the sin. And they. This is a really important missed opportunity for the church to model what it teaches. And it's really unfortunate.

Nemo [01:00:00] And it's. The irony is we had some talks this conference about repentance and about how repentance will involve changing the way you act and doing things slightly differently and acknowledging what went wrong. And you're just there thinking, okay, great, you're teaching this to us. Do it yourself.

John Dehlin [01:00:17] Yeah, please.

Nemo [01:00:18] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:00:19] Really quickly, a quick shout out to Karen Katherine Class, who writes Brad, Brad. Brad. Shaking my head. And she. She throws in a super chat donation. We really appreciate it, Catherine, because these donations go to help pay for Samantha, Gerardo, Nemo and Maven and me. So thanks for your super chats and your support. Please subscribe on YouTube and Facebook and everywhere else. All right, Nemo, what's next? What's next in the agenda? What's next?

Notable Talks from the Weekend Sessions

Nemo [01:00:48] Okay, so this session, there's really nothing to say other than K. Brett Naturus is an interesting chap and he came right after a guy who kind of just shuffled up, he ran to the pulpit like he was so excited to be getting his chance to speak. It was. It was wild. Bragg also moved quite quick, but that was only an hour long session. That's all we're going to say about that. It was an hour long session, it went short, and I wonder whether Holland was due to speak in that session and so therefore they cut it short. But I've noticed that that that evening session was short last year as well. So that one seems to be kind of getting a bit shorter.

John Dehlin [01:01:28] Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a. You know, I imagine that was not the most interesting or fulfilling session, even though it was an hour. Is that true, Nemo?

Nemo [01:01:39] Yeah, it was. It was boring as dishwater, if I'm honest. It was. It was not great. But what was interesting was it was a. It was a session with no apostles. So this is just like. This is what conference would look like if everyone doing it was under the age of 60. This is what conference looks like when young people speak. So it was slightly more engaging, I guess. But isn't it.

Gerardo Sumano [01:02:06] A lot of people were Pointing out that. And Nelson didn't speak in any like of the sessions on Saturday.

John Dehlin [01:02:12] Yeah, that's not normal. Yeah.

Nemo [01:02:14] He didn't even do like a welcome to conference or anything.

John Dehlin [01:02:16] Yeah.

Nemo [01:02:17] Which he normally does.

Samantha Shelley [01:02:18] Got his peace prayers, you know, he's just basking now. He doesn't need. He's said all that needs to be said. He's like, he has one line. He's just doing the hits.

John Dehlin [01:02:24] But, but in all seriousness, he's 98, right?

Samantha Shelley [01:02:27] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:02:27] But he moves like. Like if he was 60, dude.

John Dehlin [01:02:31] Okay.

Samantha Shelley [01:02:32] Does he?

Gerardo Sumano [01:02:33] Yeah. Like watch him on the video conference, how he walks like it's crazy.

Nemo [01:02:37] But then he has to have a little stool when he stands. So for too long. And, and, and I don't like to focus too much on how they're doing physically, but I think it is important. Eyring looked tired. Like he looked worn out this conference. Even Oaks isn't looking as kind of chipper as he normally is. Well, chipper's the wrong word. That man hasn't smiled in a long time. But you know, it wasn't looking as he didn't have as much zest for life.

John Dehlin [01:03:04] The most senior ones are octo or nano generians running a 250 billion dollar multinational corporation. Like, that's just inhumane. Really quickly shout out to Doug Vincent. Doug Wright's gotta support my amigos. Doug, you're always a great supporter. Thanks for the super chat.

Samantha Shelley [01:03:21] I liked Doug's comment where he said, sack the Bradster.

Nemo [01:03:27] All right, back to you next session. As we roll up to the next

John Dehlin [01:03:30] one, we're basically skipping.

Nemo [01:03:33] All right, nothing to say. So the next one we have again, we got Kazuhiko Yamashita was interesting because he gave the second talk of the weekend about patriarchal blessings. He kind of got up and went, oh, someone else has already talked about it, but I kind of want to talk about it too. So I'm going to talk about it. Almost as though they weren't coordinated for some reason.

Nemo [01:03:58] But what was interesting is his talk was a lot more positive about patriarchal blessings. He was saying, you know, you get them and they're great and it's all lovely, etc. It was almost like a convert's perspective. The other talk from an earlier session on Saturday about patriarchal blessings legitimately said you should get a patriarchal blessing while there are still major life decisions to be made.

Nemo [01:04:22] Stop and think about that for a moment. Encourage people to get patriarchal blessings while they still have major life decisions in front of them. Why would the Church want that, do you think, Sam?

Samantha Shelley [01:04:32] Yeah, right. For men.

John Dehlin [01:04:34] Because it's more about influence than it is prediction, right?

Nemo [01:04:38] Yeah, for sure.

Samantha Shelley [01:04:38] You can't rely on the simple gift of the Holy Ghost that is supposed to be, you know, the driving force behind decisions. That's not enough. You need a patriarchal blessing to tell

John Dehlin [01:04:48] you you're going to serve a mission,

Samantha Shelley [01:04:49] get married after four months, you're going

John Dehlin [01:04:51] to get married in the temple or

Samantha Shelley [01:04:52] do all the things that you already know you should do.

John Dehlin [01:04:54] You'll pay your tithing, you will live the law of chastity, you will serve in your colleagues. Yeah, it's predictive, right? It's, it's, yeah.

Samantha Shelley [01:05:04] Your power further to the patriarchy.

Nemo [01:05:06] Right. But the main things about this session were Anderson, basically Neil L. Anderson gave us a bit of a Freudian slip, which is the next video where he, he clearly thinks of President Nelson because he, he often is up there with what I call the PBK Award, which is the profit Butt Kisser Award, which is the person who quotes Russell M. Nelson the most that that session. And he's often in the contention and, and I wonder whether he views Russell Nelson as literally Jesus because this is what he had to say as a bit of a Freudian slip.

Samantha Shelley [01:05:49] I'm scared.

Nemo [01:05:53] Jesus is never in a forgotten corner because our thoughts of him are always

John Dehlin [01:06:00] present and all that is in us adores him.

Nemo [01:06:05] Always president.

John Dehlin [01:06:08] Jesus is always president

Nemo [01:06:13] indeed. Sorry, that was just a short one for a bit of light relief. The main thing in that session was actually Russell M. Nelson himself. And this was his war, this was his talk where he tried to get his Peace Prize. Yeah. Sam, tell you've done an episode on this. Tell us a little bit about what you thought about his talk.

Samantha Shelley [01:06:35] This talk. Yeah, basically our whole conference review episode on ZELF ended up being about this whole be kind thing. I suppose my, the general gist of my opinion is just, it's completely meaningless. And General conference has been responsible for so much unkindness over the, you know, the entirety of its existence. Simply. Governor Cox of Utah, did you see this? Called Nelson's talk a masterclass in kindness, despite the fact that it doesn't wrestle with any complexity, dispel any us versus them thinking, encourage people to do anything that would actually widen their circle of compassion, like you know, removing their biases or questioning the narratives they have about people not in their in group, which is kind of the primary function of general conferences to perpetuate those narratives. No, didn't do any of that. Just like Be kind, become, be nice.

John Dehlin [01:07:21] Well, should we play it?

Nemo [01:07:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah, play the first clip.

John Dehlin [01:07:24] Okay. Even now, decades later, I find myself wondering if the contaminated scalpel that landed in my arm was any more toxic than the venomous contention that infects our civic dialogue and too many personal relationships today. Civility and decency seem to have disappeared during this era of polarization and passionate disagreements. Vulgarity, fault finding and evil. Speaking of others are all too common. Too many pundits, politicians, entertainers and other influencers throw insults constantly. I am greatly concerned that so many people seem to believe that it is completely acceptable to condemn, malign and vilify anyone who does not agree with them. Many seem eager to damage another's reputation with pathetic and pithy barbs.

Nemo [01:08:41] You hear that, Jeffrey Holland? He's calling you pathetic when you maligned Matt for his valedictorian speech at byu.

Russell M. Nelson's Talk on Civility and Contention

John Dehlin [01:08:50] Okay, really quickly, like, we want to try and give credit where credit is due and to be kind. And so I just want to say, if I were to, if the Mormon Church were to come to me, which I'm sure they will at some point, and say, John, what's one talk that we should give in general Conference? I would have said give a talk about being kind, about decreasing polarization in society and increasing peacemaking, bridge building, love and respect. And so can't we, can we begin by, by actually thanking or congratulating Russell M. Nelson for giving the talk that we all probably think he should be giving?

John Dehlin [01:09:29] Because I can say that for many people, my family members, you know, Patrick Mason, friends of mine, they would have said they were deeply inspired and moved and grateful for this talk. Now can we extend a little bit of grace and then, and then attack. What do you guys think? Any. Any grace?

Samantha Shelley [01:09:48] Here's the thing, right? I don't Ness. I agree with him. I do think civility is like a value that we should all be striving for a bit more. I do think we are too polarized. Those things are all true. It's an extremely surface level take, but those things are true. But a few points. First of all, the people watching believers ideas about what it means to be kind, what it means to be loving, are completely informed by Mormonism and these types of conferences which have advocated for the kind of us versus them thinking that he is now, you know, like softly nicely condemning others for.

Samantha Shelley [01:10:27] So it's, it feels completely hypocritical for one thing, because it's like your entire church is, is like relies on us versus them thinking. He even talked about Condemning, maligning and vilifying people for not agreeing with you. So that's what so much of General Conference has been for like the last decade and just throughout the history of the church is condemning, vilifying and maligning people who have left. But it's like those people in Russell's mind don't. They're probably not important enough to, to be worth widening your circle of compassion for because obviously he didn't call out any specific groups of people or make do any kind of atonement for the ways that he has like advanced us versus them thinking that has made people less kind.

Samantha Shelley [01:11:10] Also he's supposed to be the God's mouthpiece on the earth today and he's saying, you know, polarization, blah, blah. And it's like there's, there's no meaningful addressing of what is causing polarization or there's no like meaningful reflection on like there are serious injustices going on in the world that you know, it's totally understandable that people are really angry about. But you know, let's talk about non violent communication. Let's talk, let's have some like actionable conversation about what we can do to make things better while also making sure that we're not just being passive to injustice. Because that's what he's longing to return to. His longing to return to civility is just a time when, you know, white supremacy was the norm and nobody challenges it.

Samantha Shelley [01:11:54] And it's like, yeah, we do see a lot of polarization. Anytime there is an advancement in like social justice or whenever people start fighting for any cause, there's always pushback. And it's not ideal, you know, but it is kind of. There's just like no meaningful exploration of any of that. So to consider, I just don't really consider this meaningful in any way. Like it sure be kind and maybe it will inspire some members to be a bit kinder. But most members ideas of what it means to be kind is just dropping cookies off to a member of their in group or dropping cookies off to a member of their out group to try and get them to be back in the in group.

Samantha Shelley [01:12:29] Not how can I challenge my narratives about people who are not in my in group so that I am more genuinely compassionate and not just compassionate through the lens of getting spiritual brownie points. Sorry, I'm really going off here.

John Dehlin [01:12:40] Beautiful.

Samantha Shelley [01:12:40] But so like, yes, I do, I think we need to be more civil. Do I think we need to all treat each other with respect regardless of our beliefs? Yes, because I think that when we treat people like they are their beliefs, they cling to their beliefs. Sorry. When we treat people like. Yeah, when we treat people like their beliefs are their identity, they cling to them as such. Everyone does deserve kindness and respect and civility.

Samantha Shelley [01:12:59] I agree with that. But just, it's just the shallowest take. Like he, and he's lived. He's. What was he, 98? It's like I, a 30 year old shouldn't be able to give a better take than the president of this multi billion dollar organization who's responsible being the mouthpiece of Christ on this earth today. You know, like there's so many people on this planet who are so much more inspiring than that. So I, I really, I know that you like to give credit where credit is due and like I get that and like I see where you're coming from, but it just as you roll your eyes coming from a disdain written on my face.

Samantha Shelley [01:13:31] No, like it, as I said, like agree fundamentally, but it just the, the hypocrisy and the complete lack of awareness that is like part of it. It's just, it's, it's really hard for me to really celebrate it that much because again, I feel like if you want to make your church kinder, then you need to challenge some narratives which, you know, you have been responsible for perpetuating. I mean, isn't it him who talked about lazy learners and you know, openly maligned entire groups of people?

Samantha Shelley [01:14:06] And isn't that what him and all his, all the people at the top are doing all the time? And isn't that what most devotionals and steak firesides and isn't that what all of it is mostly about? And then he gets up and says that and then we're all just supposed to clap him. It just doesn't do anything. It's just double speak. Right?

Nemo [01:14:22] Yeah, that's what. Oh no, Harada, please.

Gerardo Sumano [01:14:26] Oh, so wasn't he supposed to receive an award for fighting against prejudice and, and anti racism? Yeah, like, like, like super peaceful.

John Dehlin [01:14:36] Some civil rights group in Georgia awarded him like the Gandhi Mandela Prize of Peace.

Gerardo Sumano [01:14:43] Yeah, well, there was so many people against, against it.

Nemo [01:14:48] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:14:48] And there was I think like change.org or like several people emailing this organization saying, well, this is kind of bs. This is the type of talk that you would be expecting of him giving after pushback from him receiving that award.

John Dehlin [01:15:03] Right. Oh, you think it might have been a response?

Nemo [01:15:05] Right, right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:15:06] So saying like, well guess what? I didn't just give one talk about against prejudice. Now I'm Giving a second talk against prejudice just after I received this award. So there's that.

Samantha Shelley [01:15:16] And he's also only talking about prejudice in these, like, large, sweeping terms. He's not calling out any systemic prejudice or like, doing anything that would be actually meaningful.

Gerardo Sumano [01:15:25] No. Yeah. And another point is, like, what are actually. Like you said, Samantha, what are average conservative members sitting in general conference and watching general conference thinking in their mind of what he's referring to? You know, they're not thinking, oh, I have to be more laughing to my LGBT child or I have to.

John Dehlin [01:15:47] Or to the. Or to the Desnat people.

Gerardo Sumano [01:15:51] Right.

John Dehlin [01:15:51] I need to stop being so vicious on the Internet.

Nemo [01:15:53] Right, Right.

Samantha Shelley [01:15:54] Because there were other talks in this very conference, right. Saying, like, don't do that. Don't bow down, you know.

Gerardo Sumano [01:16:00] Yeah. So, yeah, that's not what they're thinking. And he's not being specific. So, you know, the amount of people that are taking. That are gonna take something meaningful out of it and you know, and put it in practice as to what really peace. Peace making means, you know, it's probably relatively small. And then the other one is like, aren't they rewarding people that have been polaris, you know, that have advanced polarization, like Wilcox? Like, they've giving him an upgrade, you know, what about. They're giving him an upgrade? Yeah, so they're rewarding people that are known to be polar, you know, that. To, you know, be given this types of talks that are kind of out

Samantha Shelley [01:16:47] there and so with like no meaningful decision, distinction between. Because it kind of just feels like it's reinforcing the Mormon narrative of like, contention is of the devil. Right. Which easily carries over into fighting for social justice. Is of the devil, which they're now actually explicitly saying too.

Gerardo Sumano [01:17:04] Right.

Samantha Shelley [01:17:05] So he's just lumping everything together. So then when a member sees someone who's angry about racial injustice, in their minds, they're just thinking like, they're not being very kind, you know, it just feels like it has more. You can never really know the net positive or the net negative of a thing like this, but I'd be really surprised.

Gerardo Sumano [01:17:23] Who do you think, John? Who do you think Nelson is talking to or speaking to? Like, what is he talking about?

John Dehlin [01:17:29] Honestly, I think. I think someone on his mind is people like us, like critics of the church. But I think he probably is bothered by political animosity. I think he's probably bothered by all the people that criticized him for supporting vaccines in the church, for supporting mask wearing in the church, you know, and he's probably honestly tired of like ultra conservative, almost like fundamentalist Denver snuffer type Mormons attack, you know, or, and. Or the, the Meldrumites and, and the Heartland theory people or the, the Daniel Peterson kind of like former Maxwell Institute classic apologists attacking the Joseph Smith Papers project.

Samantha Shelley [01:18:15] Do you think he's even that engaged?

John Dehlin [01:18:16] I mean, I'm probably giving him too.

Samantha Shelley [01:18:20] I feel like this is a classic example of kind of with like the Uchtdorf talk about how you raise children. Like, we don't really. We don't need to know really what his intentions are because they may be good and that's fine. And, and it, it kind of doesn't really matter what they are either way. All we can do is look at the substance and again, like the lack of any like, actionable advice for becoming more compassionate.

John Dehlin [01:18:44] Right.

Samantha Shelley [01:18:44] Which other belief systems and religions have baked into them. Like Buddhism has various strategies for widening your circle of compassion until it includes everyone. But it just feels like saying be kind is. Sorry, I feel like I'm repeating myself saying be kind is not. Yeah, it's not. It's not doing anything to address, well, what is it that helps people become kinder? What limits our ability to be kind to others? Well, it's us versus them thinking like almost all of the time, which is what. What conference is usually all about.

John Dehlin [01:19:18] Nemo, I have a final thought, but do you want to give a take before I give a final take on this particular point?

Nemo [01:19:23] Yeah, sure. I mean, there's a reason that Sam's comments get made into shorts and mine don't, because hers are better than mine. But what I would say is that in isolation and in fact, a family member said this to me, so I can't even take credit for this, but a family member said to me his talk was great. Out of context. In context, it's massively hypocritical and does nothing to forward the position of the church that it actually believes any of these things because it's not showing them. So it's teaching its members to act one way. Even if you take the.

Nemo [01:19:52] The best possible reading of this, they're teaching the members of the church to act one way, one not acting that way themselves. You've just got to look at musket fire. You've just got the musket fire talk. You've just got to look at what Jeffrey R. Holland said about Matt Eason and his valdictorian speech. You've just got to look at Brad Wilcox. Like Gerardo said, you just have to look at what these church leaders do and say, actions speak louder than words. So he can talk about how we all need to be peaceful, but until they're actually doing something to reduce contention in the world, until they're actually stepping up, like, where was he when the conflict in Ukraine broke out?

Nemo [01:20:28] Where was he to stand up and saying that this needs to stop? He actually just gave a talk saying that, well, we should, we should remove contention in our own hearts and in our own interpersonal relationships. Nothing from a global faith leader on what we can do or what should happen in the cessation of a invasion of one country by another. Nothing. Not a word. So again, it's hollow and hypocritical and

Samantha Shelley [01:20:53] it's almost virtue signaling. And it, it feels, it feels more about. Yeah. Image than anything else. And also it just makes me think of like such a hallmark, I feel like of racism as it has existed in America is just this idea that everyone is very polite and like, we don't say anything out of line. And you know, black people, if they get remotely angry at any point, like, are just immediately dismissed and ballistic like politeness. And, you know, the surface of the water appearing calm is kind of a hallmark of a lot of oppressive systems. Like, that's how they function, that's how we keep them going. So I feel like to just say be kind and, you know, just advocate for that sort of surface level kindness without calling out injustices in systems, which is the true unkindness that is operating insidiously and in a way that gets good people to be unkind.

John Dehlin [01:21:48] Right.

Nemo [01:21:49] Didn't someone in this. Sorry, just before you go, didn't someone in this conference or around this conference talk about Potemkin and his and his towns that all seemed lovely from the outside but were hollow. Is this not just Potemkinism? Isn't he. Is he not just. That's Mormonism.

Samantha Shelley [01:22:08] Isn't it a massive passive aggression crisis that damages families and children enormously?

John Dehlin [01:22:15] So I'll just make the. I'll just note I have like three points. I, I note that for orthodox speaking of polarization, I'll note that for orthodox believing Mormons, this was by far probably one of the most inspiring general conference talks of their lifetime.

Samantha Shelley [01:22:32] And then you switch is on the floor.

John Dehlin [01:22:34] And then you switch to Mormon Stories podcast. And this will be the one that we ranted most about that got Samantha to go on like a five minute rant. Who's someone who doesn't like to speak more than 20 words.

Samantha Shelley [01:22:44] That's so dependent. But just a Thing I want to point out again. Okay, start the show. No, I'm just kidding. Like, what he's saying that, you know, he's essentially advocating for nonviolent communication and all these things. Those are things that I advocate for on my YouTube channel on self on the shelf. Like, we. We do believe in, like, what he's saying. It's just that he's. He's doing it on such a surface level again with, like, rampant hypocrisy. And he's the leader of a multi billion dollar organization with massive power to enact, like, kind, compassionate, systemic change and is not doing it. So it's not that I'm in, obviously in disagreement with what he says.

Samantha Shelley [01:23:23] Like, I believe in those values, and I believe I do bring those values to the way I try and show up in content. And, you know, even now, like, I'm ranting, but, like, am I being unkind? No. Like, sometimes kindness looks like righteous anger. You know, It's. I mean, I don't feel, like, too angry, but you know what I'm saying? It's.

Nemo [01:23:42] Yeah, it's something they failed to mention about Palm Sunday. They're all going on about Palm Sunday. They failed to mention the cleansing of the temple where Jesus enacted righteous indignation and flipped tables. So.

Samantha Shelley [01:23:52] Sam, go flip some tables to justify their nonsense.

John Dehlin [01:23:55] Sam's about to throw a bottle at me. Gerardo, what were you gonna say?

Gerardo Sumano [01:23:58] I just want to say. I just wanted to say that. Well, just to challenge your point a little bit, John, too, you know, when we see.

John Dehlin [01:24:08] Let's never, never compliment Russell M. Nelson in front of this crowd. Ever.

Nemo [01:24:13] Don't do it, John. That's a mistake.

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:15] If you think about a company, you know, that is polluting, you know, and throwing garbage to the Great Salt Lake and polluting the Great Salt Lake, and then they get hit with a fine or they, you know, donate $5 million to the Amazon in. In Brazil, you know, like, does that fix the problem? Should we applaud them for that $5 million?

John Dehlin [01:24:38] Or if they give some public statement about taking care of the environment.

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:41] Right.

John Dehlin [01:24:42] As one of the world's greatest polluters. Is that your point?

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:45] Same time polluting more, you know, because we have Wilcox being promoted and Corvid being promoted.

Samantha Shelley [01:24:49] It's like kindness washing, you know, greenwashing in the environmental world. Kindness washing right there.

John Dehlin [01:24:54] No, it's all fair. So the, The. The other two points I'll make, if Samantha will let me. I'm just kidding. Is, you know, when he went and enumerated all the different types of people that are guilty of hateful speech.

Samantha Shelley [01:25:06] Influences.

Nemo [01:25:07] He mentions influences.

Samantha Shelley [01:25:10] I'm not hateful about him, but you're allowed to punch up a little bit satirically.

John Dehlin [01:25:13] Won't let me say three sentences. He ment mentions pundits, he mentions influencers, he mentions politicians. What this would have been a great opportunity for him to say religious leaders and then to go even one step further and say even we, even I have been guilty of this in the past. And, and we. I are committed to doing better. If he had just redirected it at himself and to our organization, what a powerful impact that would have had.

Samantha Shelley [01:25:44] Yeah. This is what's so frustrating because most people on this earth will maintain that they try to be kind and that they are a kind person. Few people are going to be like, no, I'm not kind, I'm unkind, I'm a jerk. Yeah. Because the way that you actually become kinder is by challenging again, the ways that you maybe impose your narratives on other groups of people or the ways that you see certain types of people as not deserving of compassion.

Samantha Shelley [01:26:07] So it's like it would be so powerful to hear from a leader of an organization this powerful. You know, what are some ways that he has recognized his shadow side creeping out and. But of course, this is a man who's received his second anointing and has been guaranteed access to heaven no matter what he does. So like, is there any meaningful exploration at that point? I don't really know. I'm not in his head, but.

John Dehlin [01:26:27] And they painted themselves into this corner that we don't seek or offer apologies, so they literally can't apologize.

Samantha Shelley [01:26:33] The worst thing I think you can do for building compassion, which is a skill that, that needs to be cultivated throughout life. Like it's not just a one and done thing, building compassion. The worst thing you can do is just assert that like, you know, I am kind and my organization is the kindest organization in the world. And if you just see yourself as kind all the time, you're going to be completely blind to the ways that you are not kind. Because no human is, is compassionate 100% of the time. Maybe there's a few res end monks, you know, but like it takes ongoing work to build the skill of compassion. And you never really hear, I mean, certainly not in that talk. There's just no exploration of, of ways he's analyzed because he sees himself as someone who's transcended the human condition which so antithetical to helping people build kindness.

Nemo [01:27:20] I wonder if that's why they feel as though, like, why they're stuck with this massive hoard of wealth or whether it's a contributing factor, they already view themselves as charitable and kind and good. So, like, well, what more could we do? And so they've got just this surplus because they can't get it through their head that they could do more because they already view themselves as. As running at max.

Samantha Shelley [01:27:41] And anyone criticizing how much they are doing is gonna get the unkind label slapped on them for being. You know, first of all, you're not allowed to be an activist. So that's already one strike. And then, you know, you're not allowed to be, like, speaking out in ways that are vulgar, which, you know, to them, it's like you use a swear word and instantly your point is null, regardless of whether your point is a deeply compassionate point. And humor is just kind of part of your communication style, and you're not directing it in, like, a hateful way towards an individual person who's kind of beneath you in some way.

Nemo [01:28:11] Feel like Sam's looking for acceptance there from the Mormon Church for her channel self on the shelf. Please, please listen to us.

Samantha Shelley [01:28:16] Even though we swear, but we do like comedy.

Church Policies, Exclusion, and Leadership Criticism

John Dehlin [01:28:21] Nemo, should we play the next clip? Because we haven't even got a good clip yet.

Nemo [01:28:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it.

John Dehlin [01:28:26] Play the second clip of Russell and Nelson. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are to be examples of how to interact with others, especially when we have differences of opinion. One of the easiest ways to identify a true follower of Jesus Christ is how compassionately that person treats other people.

Nemo [01:28:53] Yeah. Mr. November 2015 policy. How's that? Sorry, I shouldn't have snorted in derision during it either. I feel bad.

John Dehlin [01:29:01] And then, Samantha, I thought that was.

Gerardo Sumano [01:29:03] That was a good statement. I thought, you know, he's. I. I think he's calling out his own members and saying, you know, you have to be specifically, really quick.

John Dehlin [01:29:14] Gerardo, is this personal to you? Because he's. Even though the November 2015 exclusion policy happened while Thomas S. Monson was prophet, it's widely understood that Monson had dementia and that Nelson, as the most senior apostle, was probably the guy who rammed that through and then later doubled down by saying it was doctrine, which is a really homophobic, hateful thing to have done to a supposedly 17 million-member church. Is this in some ways personal to you, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [01:29:50] Yeah. Well, and it also affects how, you know, other people treat us who are members of the church, family members. Something I wanted to say was that it is interesting that we. My husband and I have noticed that the people who we. We feel closest to or more kindness, that they're kinder to us or they treat us, you know, they don't treat us differently or they see us as, you know, their equals are.

Gerardo Sumano [01:30:21] Are always Mormons who have. Who are a lot more progressive on their views, who don't listen to everything that the prophet has to say, who probably don't pay tithing sometimes, who, you know, don't have the most prominent callings, and the people who are the most orthodox, who listen and hit to all the words of the prophets are the ones who have alienated the most.

Gerardo Sumano [01:30:47] So, yeah, it is kind of interesting, you know, to see to. To notice that difference. And like, again, going back to what we've been talking, like, how much does. Do these words really are going to have an impact? I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:31:03] But would it be overstated, Gerardo, to say that for you, the current living faces of LGBT bigotry in Mormon church leadership are the faces of Downey Chokes and Russell M. Nelson?

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:19] For you?

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:20] Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [01:31:21] So to have him saying let's speak kind words makes you feel what?

Gerardo Sumano [01:31:26] Well, feel like he's. I feel like he. He's being hypercritical a little bit.

John Dehlin [01:31:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hurtful. Samantha, you've got a. You've got a hot take. Okay.

Samantha Shelley [01:31:35] So he said, as disciples of Christ or whatever, we need to be examples in how we interact with people who have different opinions to us. Right. And I agree that the way we all interact with people who believe differently to us is very important. I know I do, you know, content creation. But if I meet, you know, the most Mormon patriarchal sex system, I. I could meet sort of the most bigoted type of person in real life. And I try to interact with them through the lens of like, okay, they are the product of their genetics and conditioning. How can I bring compassion to this conversation with.

Samantha Shelley [01:32:11] And, you know, treat them with respect and dignity without obviously endorsing any of their view? But I'm not someone who, like, goes in guns blazing if I have an interaction with a believer. Not at all. I don't think it's effective or useful. So he's saying we need to be examples when we encounter people with different opinions. What did we see around. What was his name? Brian? The guy who raised a post. What did we see all around him when he did that? That people looking away, people refusing to watch. And I feel like that feels so symbolic of kind of just the whole Phenomenon of like when, like when people leave the LDS church, what happens?

Samantha Shelley [01:32:47] A lot of the time their loved ones don't even ask them why they aren't willing to turn towards the suffering because they're worried the suffering will infect them in some way because it threatens their belief system. And I feel like that is at the root of so much unkindness in the world is like we're so scared to challenge our own perceptions about ourselves and life. And so we protect ourselves and our perceived identities, which aren't our truest identities. And, and the cost of that is that we don't turn towards the suffering of others because it's too threatening to do so. So I just feel like that guy voting opposed and everyone averting their gaze all around him was the perfect example of that in action.

Samantha Shelley [01:33:25] And again, we've seen time and time again at general conference them encouraging members to not turn towards the suffering of certain people. They might pay lip service to it. Like, you know, we need to love them. But we've, we've heard there's a million quotes we could give of, you know, if you have a gay son, don't have them over for tea or like, whatever. The thing was, we just, there's just so much rhetoric that has been perpetuated at general conference that encourages members to project their own narratives, self soothing narratives about other people. Like whether it's gay people or feminists or intellectuals or people who leave the church instead of like, I think the way that we all become kinder and more compassionate is turning towards the suffering and saying, what's your story?

Samantha Shelley [01:34:09] Like, what's your truth? I have my. Like, it's recognizing that we all have our own preconceived notions that are often limiting our ability to be compassionate. And it is that willingness to, to genuinely hear the stories of others. I feel like this is why this podcast is so great. That's what expands our compassion. Like, that's an actionable way that that happens. It's it. So again, it just feels very meaningless hearing him say because, you know, it's like he's advocating for politeness essentially, which, like, great. But there are so many, like, politeness is just the, the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to compassion.

Samantha Shelley [01:34:42] There are so many levels deep that you can go. There are so many other like belief systems, ideologies, religions, Buddhism, for example, that, that do go to the depths of that, that. And so yeah, I've said enough.

John Dehlin [01:34:56] It's beautiful. I can, I love how passionate and articulate you are. About this, Samantha. So thank you for that. And the viewers and. And listeners are loving it as well. Really quickly, thanks to Lydia Belem from New Zealand. She says thanks Mormon stories. You help me and my family so much. Keep the messages coming. Much love. Thanks, Lydia. Thanks for the super chat and the donation and our beloved Radio Free Mormon donated and said, for God's sake, would somebody get Nemo a proper shirt?

Samantha Shelley [01:35:25] Nemo, what's he wearing?

Nemo [01:35:27] I don't know. What's wrong with my shirt?

John Dehlin [01:35:29] Why is RFM dissing your shirt, Nemo?

Nemo [01:35:31] I don't know. It doesn't have superheroes on it maybe.

John Dehlin [01:35:37] Please check out Mormonism Live every Wednesday night at 6:20 with Bill Real and RFM and maybe. We love you, RFM. Thanks for joining us. And you suck for not joining this panel tonight. You were invited, you declined, and now you're in the comments. You officially.

Nemo [01:35:52] Well, no, that's. That's me on scheduling. So he was, he was up for it. That was, that was my fault. Blame me.

John Dehlin [01:36:01] Neymar. Are we done with Nelson or do we have more?

Nemo [01:36:04] I think we're done with Nelson, but I'm not done with Sam Shelley because I want to say, John, I don't appreciate her level of passion. Sam, can we bring the British apathy back Back, please? I'm gonna have to revoke your British card if you continue to be so impassioned and, you know, and, and forward about these things.

Samantha Shelley [01:36:22] I don't even bother to care.

John Dehlin [01:36:23] Thank you.

Nemo [01:36:24] Thank you. That's the energy we're after. Okay. Yeah, let's move on.

Sunday Afternoon Session and Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [01:36:30] Okay, so we finally are at the last session of general conference, which is the Sunday afternoon session we made.

Samantha Shelley [01:36:36] It looks like we've got two bangers up ahead.

Nemo [01:36:41] Yeah, well, jokes that talk. I. I was tempted to put that talk in here at like 20 times speed and just run it through for like a minute because all he did was he got up and said, basically, after Adam and Eve, anytime it talks about the Lord in scripture or deity in scripture, it's Jesus.

Nemo [01:37:03] Can you put that slide up on the screen for me, John? I've got this down eight jokes trolls, Nemo. So if anyone watches my halftime shows, they'll know that I keep an account of something called Jesus, Joe or Russell. It's a little game we play and it's a game of who is quoted more. Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, or Russell M. Nelson. Russell M. Nelson has a habit of winning, so he gets quoted directly. And this is not who's talked about more, but who's quoted Directly more because they do a lot of speaking in the name of Jesus Christ, but they speak their own words in his name.

Nemo [01:37:36] They don't teach Jesus's words as often as they teach Russell M. Nelson's words. And Russell M. Nelson was actually winning 40 to 36. No, 40 to 34. I believe it was against Jesus. Joseph Smith's always in the background. He was on like 10.

Nemo [01:37:54] So you've got Russell Nelson streaking ed in the lead, and then you come into the final session and Danish Oaks delivers this talk, which I'm convinced was just to mess with me. He quoted Jesus Christ 36 times in that talk.

Nemo [01:38:10] He just got up there, quoted Jesus, just reeled them off, said the words, we believe in Jesus Christ. And it was just a big middle finger to everyone who says that Mormons aren't Christians and to everyone who says that people like me that they're too focused on the words of their prophets and they don't speak about Jesus enough.

Nemo [01:38:28] So Oaks was like, right, well, screw you, Nemo. I'm gonna ruin all this for you. That was that talk. I'm taking it very personally.

John Dehlin [01:38:40] All right, quick, quick. Shout out to Cactoid Jim for the super chat. He writes, someone said, Nemo needs a new shirt and clothing the poor is a kind thing to do.

Nemo [01:38:50] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:38:51] So thanks, Cactoy Jim, for doing okay.

Nemo [01:38:55] Okay, cheers. Cactuate gym. What shirt shall I get, guys?

Gerardo Sumano [01:38:58] I think I need a really expensive shirt.

Nemo [01:38:59] I need a BYU shirt. I think I need one of those ones with a Y on.

John Dehlin [01:39:03] Rise and shout. The Cougars are out.

Nemo [01:39:06] Okay, yeah, so someone sent me a BYU shirt. Do that.

John Dehlin [01:39:09] Okay.

Nemo [01:39:10] Yeah. So I think what we can do after Oaks, because his talk was a complete nothing burger. And yet, you know, he did what we asked him to do. We wanted more Jesus, so he gave us more Jesus, but he gave us none of his own prophetic insight. It's like when he responded to my three and a half thousand word letter by saying, fair Mormon says this about me and my honesty. So. Well, great actually. But I wanted to hear what you had to say, Dallin. So, yeah, that's what, that's. That's all I got to say about that, John.

John Dehlin [01:39:39] You guys are going to hate me, but I'm going to say it again. There's a perspective that I think is a credible one, that with UX Mormons, the church, they can do nothing to please you. You complain that the church has hateful rhetoric and then when they talk about peace, Samantha complains for. For 12 hours.

Samantha Shelley [01:39:55] And then I have a PR degree.

John Dehlin [01:39:57] Okay.

Samantha Shelley [01:39:57] It's like, no, I'm not gonna celebrate, like, obvious PR moves.

John Dehlin [01:40:02] The other, the other example is finally we get them talking more about Jesus than Joseph Smith. The Russell and Nelson and UX Mormons are going to complain. Come on. I know it's a little bit funny, but there's a little bit of truth to that, right?

Nemo [01:40:13] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:40:15] Nothing they can do to make you guys happy.

Nemo [01:40:17] I recognize that about myself. You know, I'll own up to that and be like, you know what? I'm mad about it, even though I shouldn't be, because he absolutely did what I'd been criticizing them for not doing. But it's just the way he did it. He didn't talk about Jesus more organically and give his own opinions and teach from the words of Jesus. He just spoke the words of Jesus verbatim. It's like an on, off switch. They can either talk about Jesus and quote him verbatim, or they can just kiss Russell M. Nelson's butt and quote him all the time. But they don't seem to be able to incorporate the words of Jesus into their teachings.

Samantha Shelley [01:40:47] Yeah, just invoking the words of Jesus to suit their own multi billion dollar corporation purposes. So again, it's like having, you know, a black person in a prominent position, it's like, great. But you're like, serving the aims of this white supremacist organization. Isn't it kind of like in that same vein? I mean, I think that's why ex Mormons have an issue with stuff a lot of the time is because it feels like they. They will just do these shallow PR like, responses to issues that are so deep. And it's like you're. You're such a powerful organization, you're deliberately not diving any deeper or, or addressing things in a more meaningful way.

John Dehlin [01:41:21] Samantha, you're proving my point.

Samantha Shelley [01:41:22] Yeah, I love to prove a point.

John Dehlin [01:41:26] Yeah.

Nemo [01:41:26] All right.

John Dehlin [01:41:27] No, it's good. And also, Rebecca Shrine donates and says, oh, thank you. It's fine.

Nemo [01:41:33] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:41:33] Oh, save your money, Nemo. All right. Thanks for the support, Rebecca. Samantha's got one more point.

Samantha Shelley [01:41:38] It's just like, instead of, instead of just quoting Jesus, act like Jesus, do something Christ. Like, like, I. You're all sitting up there in your velvet chairs and your suits and ties and you're. There's like, no, don't just.

Nemo [01:41:54] Well, no, if you go back to Gong's.

John Dehlin [01:41:58] Gong's tour, we're officially gonna retitle this Samantha Rance. That's gonna be.

Nemo [01:42:02] Yeah, yeah, that I think we should.

John Dehlin [01:42:03] With the. The. The thumbnail needs to just be Samantha.

Samantha Shelley [01:42:07] A woman ranting. Not ideal. No, no.

John Dehlin [01:42:10] You're brilliant, Samantha. I'm just giving you a hard time. What were you gonna say?

Nemo [01:42:13] No, no. There's two points there. Like, the first, if you go back to Gong's talk. Actually, he slummed it with the plebs. Like, the beginning of his talk was he went down amongst the great unwashed and spoke to them. And, you know, wasn't it lovely that he did so. And then the second point is that this. Also. The reason that this seems shallow is it came off the back of literally every speaker going, did you know it's Palm Sunday? Did you know it's Palm Sunday? We just learned what Palm Sunday is. Don't you know it's Palm Sunday? The rest of the Christian world have been doing this for a thousand years, at least.

Nemo [01:42:43] And he's like, oh, but did you know it's Holy Week? Oh, did you know there's names for the days that are coming up? Sorry, it's late at night. I get a little bit like this. But the point was, they'd made this point to sound more mainstream and Christian.

Nemo [01:42:59] And Oakes was. His talk was literally just. Can't be bothered to write a real talk. I finally got one of those Bibles where it's got all the red writing for where Jesus speaks. Really neat. So he just looked through one of those and went, that'll do. And just gave that talk. It just. It was low effort.

Samantha Shelley [01:43:14] I just really don't think this is the kind of stuff Jesus would be caring about his disciples doing. Like, his message was clear of, you know, feed. Feed the hungry, clothe the poor, minister to the sick. Like, just. Just quoting him and being like, it's Palm Sunday. And did you know all these, like, little details. It's like, does he care? Is he that much of a narcissist that that's what he cares about over, you know?

Nemo [01:43:38] Well, he cares about the correct name of the church.

Samantha Shelley [01:43:40] So clearly really cares about that. And he workshopped it for a while, so you can't blame him.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:44] No, you can't. Was it Nelson who made the association between the palms of Jesus and Palm Sunday? Was it Nelson? Oh, my. My good friend Brenton Erickson, who studied languages, ancient languages at byu. He pointed that. That's totally bogus.

John Dehlin [01:44:05] It's the palm leaves.

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:06] Yeah, yeah, that. The palm leaves in Hebrew. You know, Aramaic doesn't. Don't have in, like, any relations to the. To the word for the palms of Jesus. And that. That's just showing how.

John Dehlin [01:44:23] Out of touch or anyone.

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:24] Yeah. Uninformed. And also how. How he's, like, always willing, like, always trying to find something to impress people when, you know, it's not even that good of an argument or point.

Nemo [01:44:38] Because in that tour, in that conference the whole weekend we had this word means this in the old French and the Latin. We had. This word means this in the Greek. Didn't you know? And. And we had the Hebrew as well. So we had. We had a few ancient languages. And I'm always skeptical the moment someone goes, the original meaning of this word was X or Y. The moment anyone gets into etymology, like Gerardo said, I start to get a little bit nervous because often it is anglicisms, like the fact that palm. It's like the word steak and steak, they come from two completely different etymologies, but all they sound the same. So we can make a cool little kind of teaching device out there of them.

Gerardo Sumano [01:45:15] And.

Nemo [01:45:15] Yes, you can. But don't go pretending that etymologically they're linked, because they're not. Rant over.

John Dehlin [01:45:21] So really quickly prove my point even further. Gina Marie de Meo writes, john makes it hard to watch sometimes. So I'm not doing my job as a good ex Mormon. I'm trying to represent multiple sides. And Gina's calling me out on it. I don't know. I haven't. Sorry. I haven't proved myself worthy of what you want ex Mormons and anti Mormons to be.

Samantha Shelley [01:45:43] John? Block out the haters. Make no apologies. Yeah, but people who say that all you want to do is criticize the church. I'm like, have you been on a panel with John Struggle?

John Dehlin [01:45:53] I'm tedious.

Nemo [01:45:54] I'm so tedious.

John Dehlin [01:45:56] Never stick up for the church.

Samantha Shelley [01:45:57] Slavish devotion to tedious.

John Dehlin [01:46:01] Okay, Nemo.

Nemo [01:46:02] Yeah. This is the final clip. This is Ahmed Corbett, the man who, like I said earlier, denigrates the very activism that allows him to hold the priesthood. He gave. He gave a talk a little while back about activism, again towards the church ATC that he called it. And he basically said, you know, it's of the devil. It's terrible. It's wrong. Activism's not okay. You know, there's no such thing as loyal opposition. You can raise concerns, but you can't, you know, get all het up about it. Just stick to your lane kind of stuff.

Samantha Shelley [01:46:35] And if we don't listen, just pipe down.

John Dehlin [01:46:37] Okay.

Nemo [01:46:37] Yeah, exactly. And so in this talk, he. Yeah, he. He really went off on One about how. Well, just play the tape and I'll explain it.

▶ Video Clip 3

Video Clip 3 [01:46:49] The doctrine of Christ empowers those who are struggling or feel they don't belong in the church because it helps them. As Elder D. Todd Christofferson stated, affirm, Jesus Christ died for me and loves me. Parents, if your child struggles with a gospel principle or prophetic teaching, please resist any type of evil speaking or activism toward the church or its leaders. These lesser secular approaches are beneath you

Video Clip 3 [01:47:26] and can be lethal to the long

Video Clip 3 [01:47:28] term faithfulness of your child. It speaks so well of you that you would protect or advocate for your precious child or show signs of solidarity with him or her. But my wife Jane and I know from personal experience that teaching your beloved child, why we all desperately need Jesus Christ and how to apply his joyful doctrines is what will strengthen and heal him or her.

Video Clip 3 [01:48:02] Let us turn them to Jesus, who

Video Clip 3 [01:48:04] is their true advocate with the Father. The Apostle John taught, whosoever abideth in

Video Clip 3 [01:48:12] the doctrine of Christ hath both the

Video Clip 3 [01:48:14] Father and the Son. He then warns us to beware if there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine. Close quote. Gerardo, you go first.

Gerardo Sumano [01:48:32] Yeah, kind of. Well, it's just really. It's almost like he took a quote from that talk that we reviewed a while ago, and then, you know, he brought a couple paragraphs to this talk.

John Dehlin [01:48:43] It's almost like that talk got him his general authority. Yeah. Status, Right.

Samantha Shelley [01:48:46] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [01:48:47] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:48:48] And. Yeah, so that's exactly what I was gonna say. It reminds me to what Ezra Todd Benson did before he knew he was gonna become the prophet. He started campaigning for this idea of the fundamentals of following the prophet, you know, and telling people, you know, you don't criticize the leader. The prophet is the most important one that you need to pay attention to and don't listen to past prophets because the current one is the most important. Benson, you know, we. We've known that Benson was doing this because he knew he was gonna become the prophet really soon. And, And I see Elder Corbett doing a very similar thing here.

John Dehlin [01:49:31] Thanks, Ro. My, my. You know what bothers me the most is I'm. I'm. I'll say the oldest of the four of us here by a lot. And I've seen. I've. I've seen the church for five decades, more than five decades, and I've watched to see what leads to change in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And I lived through the 70s, I lived through the 80s, I watched the September 6th get excommunicated. I watched no change throughout the 80s and 90s. And it literally wasn't until the Internet came online and then blogs and then podcasts and then the CES letter and then YouTube and, and tick tock.

John Dehlin [01:50:14] It's, it's been. The only thing that leads to positive change in the church is the very thing that Corbett is decrying, which is activism. Whether it's, it's, you know, people on the Internet calling for, for historical transparency, whether it's the ordained women movement calling for more equity and less misogyny and, and a greater status for women.

John Dehlin [01:50:39] Polygamy was only the result of protests and even legal actions against the Mormon Church. We all know that the civil rights movement and the protests of Stanford University and the University of Wyoming and many NCAA athletic teams wearing black wristbands, refusing to play BYU in sports events, you know, negative national coverage that led to the changes in the priesthood policy and of course, what led to the temple changes that we're all experiencing over the past few decades. It was the God Makers movie made by evangelical Christians and the God Makers book that came out later, and all the ways the evangelical Christians have criticized the church and its doctrine.

John Dehlin [01:51:25] And so Corbett, of all people, not only because, you know, because he's an African American who has benefited from activism broadly within the United States, is the last person up there in General conference that should be decrying and criticizing and denouncing activism. He and all the other people on that stand should know more than anyone what it is that truly leads to positive change within the Mormon Church. And it's criticism, it's bad pr, it's, it's activism, and specifically Internet activism that, that results in all the positive change. And so that for me was one of the most outrageous moments, along with the, the auditing statement saying, there's nothing to see here. These are not the droids you're looking for. Samantha.

Samantha Shelley [01:52:10] That was fire.

John Dehlin [01:52:11] John, I'm trying to keep up with you.

Samantha Shelley [01:52:15] I think this is a classic example of how high control groups co opt concepts like love repackage them into this weird, twisted version of love that is actually completely removed of what love actually is. Because again, love is turning towards suffering. It's being willing to challenge your preconceived notions. It's being often willing to challenge authority, even when it's uncomfortable. Things like that, I feel like, are all part of creating a more loving world, both inwardly and outwardly. And he's essentially saying, you know, if you're the mother of a gay child and your intuition is Telling you to stand up for your son, let's say in certain ways, and speak up about the harmful rhetoric the church has perpetuated that has caused, you know, many other gay people to end their lives and things like, he's basically saying, like, crush all that.

Samantha Shelley [01:53:07] What it means to be loving is to follow our organization. If you have any kind of instincts as a parent to, you know, go against what we say us, the multi billion dollar organization that you pay 10% of your income towards, if you have any instincts that are different from what we're teaching you, shut those off, distrust them.

Samantha Shelley [01:53:27] Essentially, it's again, it's like, this isn't love. This is a talk designed to protect the multi billion dollar system that he is a figurehead for. It's. But it's like, this is, this is my issue with people like Nelson saying, be kind, be loving. It's like, well, this is, this is what their understanding of love is informed by this. You know, we see people be homophobic all the time because they think the most loving thing you can do is teach God's truth about gay people, which is that it's wrong and it's a sin and you're choosing to be wicked. You know what I mean? So it's, this is, this is exactly like a prime example of why I take issue with just these wishy washy statements about being more loving, being more kind.

Samantha Shelley [01:54:08] Because like this is what it's backed up by. This is what, this is what love looks like within Mormonism, which is the saddest thing about high control groups is because they take these like beautiful fundamental parts of the human experience. They rob you of them, then they sell you back this artificial version which is deeply harmful a lot of the time. And that's like, that's, that's what's happening there.

John Dehlin [01:54:30] Beautiful. And Samantha, a really important question has been asked. New Richard Jones wants to know, what does your sweater mean?

Nemo [01:54:38] That's a jumper.

John Dehlin [01:54:38] So I'm just going to educate him of what it's actually called that you're wearing.

Samantha Shelley [01:54:43] It is a jumper. Yeah. You know, I think it can mean whatever you want it to mean. That's kind of the, the beauty of it. But it to me, it's a tranquil lake next to a pond, a road, going somewhere. Where do you want it to go?

John Dehlin [01:54:54] You know, thanks. That was beautiful, Samantha. And, and I think you win the award for the, for the best commentary of this episode. Mama C writes hit the like everyone. It helps Mormon stories so much. We agree. Please give us super chat Donations. If you can please subscribe to Mormon Stories and Zel on the Shelf and Nemo the Mormon and also please share this with friends and like all the likes that that's super helpful. So what I think is most beautiful about this review of General Conference is it's going to last almost exactly the number of hours as a general conference session within two hours because we're at 155. Nemo, let's bring it back to you because you were the producer of this one. Any final thoughts or summations you want to share about General Conference and your review of it?

Nemo [01:55:44] I think as I can't believe this is bragging rights. As someone that has watched all 10 hours of conference, I can say that it is. It is 90 filler, 10% horror. You've just got. You've got so much in there that is just word soup, word salad just designed. They use key phrases that that make you think of Mormon things and they say the same old tropes and the same old tired things and then either down late jokes makes an effort to say nothing that could be offensive to anyone by literally just quoting Jesus. No one can get mad at him. I'll find a way to get mad at him still.

Nemo [01:56:28] But like generally no one can get mad at him. Or you get people who have benefited from activism by being able to have the priesthood post 1978 saying activism is bad, don't do it. And if you feel inclined to side with your children, don't, because they need healing and Jesus will advocate for them. Even though I claim to represent Jesus and I'm certainly not advocating for your children that are struggling with these issues. So really, who is? Because you're not allowed to. I won't. And Jesus isn't going to intervene directly, is he? So who's actually activating for you, advocating for your children? No one. And that's the problem with things like that.

Nemo [01:57:07] So I'll end my rant there. Thank you very much for letting me put this together. I clearly love conference a lot, lot. And I would like to make this a tradition because I think between my halftime shows and this, there's no excuse for people to not know what's going on in the world of Mormonism every six months.

John Dehlin [01:57:25] I love it. Really quickly I'll share a couple comments. Flo M writes, hats off to you, Nemo. Can't subject myself to that abuse for so long. I think Samantha dubbed it Nemo's Gethsemane. Is that right? Is that blasphemous? All sessions of General conferences, Nemo's Gethsemane. I'm gonna do us. I'm gonna do a self gratifying quote. Lauren writes. I appreciate John saying positive things about the church. I don't want to hear everything one sided from either direction, either positive or negative. Thank you very much. No, I'm just kidding. You guys are awesome. And then my dear friend Allison. Allison, you know, you're the best. Allison writes, appreciate the people that watched it it so we didn't have to. So triggering for me for sure. Shout out to you Allison. Gerardo, you were going to share some comments?

Gerardo Sumano [01:58:15] Yeah, just my final comments. Yeah, so yeah, I thought this was, this conference was relatively benign as far as you know, rhetoric that we've heard before in the past. It took Dallin Hok folks to, to literally quote Jesus his whole, whole talk to get benign general conference session. And yeah, so I'm glad we did it. I, I thought everyone's thoughts were, were great and my thoughts is are you know, uh, we should probably do better at uh, being kind uh to other people and people who disagree with us and maybe we'll be examples to other Mormons on, on that.

John Dehlin [01:59:06] Gerardo, you know, one of the ironies about Nelson's peace talk, to your point Samantha, is that for at least the past couple decades, you could probably say for the past four or five decades, those of us who really watch general conference with the critical eye always thought of conference as the weekend that sends people to the emergency rooms. Like, like at some points, especially during the Prop 8 in the aftermath, whether it's Boyd K. Packers talks or Oaks homophobic talks or an occasional Holland talk. That's super offensive. Literally there was a body count that would come out of each general conference because of outrageously horrid things said. Gerardo, in your opinion, did they avoid that for the most part this time and at least, at least avoid kind of the types of talks that would send people to the emergency room. Do you think that was a, a silver lining?

Gerardo Sumano [02:00:01] Yeah, I think, I mean that's why I, I said the word benign. But I can't speak for everybody. You know, people go through different situations in lives and things that other, you know this, you are taught to revere this man. As you know, mouth speaks of God. So yeah, sometimes they're not very careful to what they say. So there might be things that we didn't highlight that could have affected other people. But, but yeah, in my opinion, relatively benign.

John Dehlin [02:00:31] Yeah. So more Jesus, more peace and, and continue the trend of less inflammatory, hateful Life ending statements would be nice.

Nemo [02:00:41] Couple it with apologies and they'll be golden.

John Dehlin [02:00:43] Yeah, some apologies would be super nice.

Nemo [02:00:45] That's, that's all they need to throw in.

Samantha Shelley [02:00:47] Samantha, I just, I don't think I know what you're saying, but I, I just don't think we should minimize the fact that this is a high control group. And so much like, yeah, there was a bit more kindness and Jesus and like, less overtly hateful rhetoric this conference, but we also heard a lot of talks by leaders saying, don't think for yourself, just follow us. Ignore your own intuition, remain disconnected from yourself. Like, and that is not a small harm of, of Mormonism. Like, that is, that's if in a way, like the biggest harm of all, right, is encouraging people to distrust themselves and that and to, and to use these thought control strategies and to make them psychologically dependent on this high control group.

Samantha Shelley [02:01:38] And so, you know, as much as, yeah, there's, there's these positives, to me it's still just not that different because it still was encouraging people to, to be disconnected from themselves and, and that is like, hugely harmful. And it was still massively encouraging psychological dependency and just like reinforcing these really damaging ideas that are authoritarian.

Samantha Shelley [02:02:08] And also all the bigoted stuff in the past, all the, all the most. A lot of those leaders are still alive. Like every, almost every person on that stand has said a bunch of bigoted stuff that still exists, is still sold at Deseret Book is still on lds.org it's still informing the way that people are, you know, they're not dead yet. I guess when they're dead, then it'll be null and void. But until then, you know, when there's no like, apologies for that or reckoning with that, it's like it's still passively endorsing all of those messages too. But it's just like, well, our money's dipping maybe, and now pr, we got to keep our PR up.

Samantha Shelley [02:02:42] We're going to peace prayer. You know, it's, it just feels like, again, hard for me to be too celebratory because such an enormous damage done by Mormonism is the fact that it's a high control group and that people are psychologically dependent on it and it's authoritarian and all this stuff. I've already said like four times.

John Dehlin [02:02:59] Beautiful. Well, I think we should end by sharing a few final comments. Andrea Dorsey writes. Thank you, Samantha, for speaking so loud and proud. I agree with all your comments. Thanks, Andrea. JP writes, if the General Conference sends people to the emergency room. Maybe they should put the suicide hotline on screen over their bumper music. Sheesh.

Final Comments, Audience Shoutouts, and Wrap-Up

John Dehlin [02:03:21] William Charles writes, love Gerardo. I love that we do too. Cindy. Bill Cash Jackman writes, as a lifetime Quaker, I've been laughing the whole time because we act so much the same. That surprises me. I thought the Quakers would be an order of magnitude better than the Mormon Church, but apparently not.

John Dehlin [02:03:41] Mama C writes, love this channel so much. I'm fairly new and very late to the live, but I'll go back and watch from the beginning. Much love to the panel, John and the chat love one another. Maggie Mae also says, love Gerardo. And so that Nemo doesn't feel left out, Cat Smith writes, nemo, you have been a great addition to the Mormon Truth Brigade. And then Joyce writes, out of curiosity, John, why do you wear a hat while broadcasting? Thanks for calling me out, Joyce. The truth is I, I've tried to make a New Year's resolution and not wear a hat because so many people don't like it.

John Dehlin [02:04:17] I've been running since like 6am this morning, meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting. I didn't have to and I just recorded something with Cara Burrell before this one. I literally didn't have time to go home and shower today. But I apologize because my best self wouldn't be wearing a baseball cap on Mormon Stories podcast. And then we'll show one more it's

Samantha Shelley [02:04:38] the ponytail of men.

John Dehlin [02:04:39] I don't think you should apologize for it, Samantha. You got one flying proud Mary Jepsen writes, you got it Sam. Just what needs to be said. Thank you.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:49] Oh, I wanted to mention so I discovered a few hours ago that Hulu in the us Disney plus in other in Spanish speaking countries released, I don't know if it's called should be called a documentary but it's a, it's a show where they have Pope Francis from the Catholic Church speaking to a group of young adults and one of them is like an evangelical, one of them is a non binary and they're challenging him on topics of abortion, of lgbt, of pedophilia in the, in the Catholic Church and they press him and it, the trailer is pretty impactful. I haven't watched it yet but you know, those are the types of, types of things that I feel like the Mormon Church should be looking at.

John Dehlin [02:05:40] So what you're saying is in 20 years we can expect the same types of movies from the Marmots?

Gerardo Sumano [02:05:44] Hopefully. I mean I, I mean the trailer look amazing. I, I read an article about it. Yeah, Just, you know, one of the most recognized religious leaders in the world, confronting youth who may are not seeing the same as he does and you know, like answering their questions.

Samantha Shelley [02:06:04] Really?

Gerardo Sumano [02:06:04] Really?

John Dehlin [02:06:04] You can. I said it here. Within 20 to 30 years you're going to see the church produce a similar movie.

Gerardo Sumano [02:06:10] I thought that. I think it would be awesome.

John Dehlin [02:06:12] Maven can include that in the show notes as well. And also Mama C writes, thank you for all you do and everyone at Mormon Stories. Thanks for the Super Chat. Thanks to everyone who donated to us through the Super Chat feature or who subscribe to our channels or who like or comment. All of that helps the algorithms. I want to thank Nemo. Thank you so much. And freaking Nemo, it's like 3am there in the UK. Is that right?

Samantha Shelley [02:06:35] Right?

Nemo [02:06:36] Yeah, it is.

John Dehlin [02:06:38] I don't want to break Nemo. So Nemo, we've got to find a better way to do these sessions. Okay. Anyway, but Nemo, thank you so much for joining us and for organizing all these clips and for all you do your channel. There was, I don't know, I hope you saw this, Nemo. There's a whole Reddit thread basically saying Nemo's amazing. Why doesn't Nemo get more support? You saw that, right, Nemo?

Nemo [02:06:59] Yeah, someone sent it to me. There's one person was like, he makes great content but I don't subscribe because he comes across as a bit of an ass and pretentious. I'd just like them to know that I just like to say thank you for speaking my love language. I feel seen and heard. I am a pretentious ass. I'm British. Like, like they, they've seen me for who I really am. So thanks for that.

John Dehlin [02:07:19] Yeah, no, but all seriousness, Nemo, thanks for staying up, thanks for pleasure and thanks for all you do to on your side of the pond and beyond to make a big difference. Thanks, Nemo.

Nemo [02:07:30] Yep, pleasure.

John Dehlin [02:07:31] Go get some sleep. All right.

Nemo [02:07:32] I will do.

John Dehlin [02:07:33] All right. And Samantha, check out SamanthaShelleyCoaching.com if you want support in healing and growth beyond whatever situation you're emerging from. And check out Zelf on the shelf and subscribe to them I plug so you don't have to Samantha anything out?

Gerardo Sumano [02:07:51] No.

John Dehlin [02:07:52] All right. And check out gerardosumano.com is that. No, I'm just kidding.

Nemo [02:07:58] But Gerardo, you're amazing buying that domain.

Gerardo Sumano [02:08:00] It does exist. It does, but it.

John Dehlin [02:08:03] Yeah, well, Gerardo, you're. You are help make Mormon stories exist. So thanks for being my right hand man and all you do behind the scenes and in front of the camera to keep us alive and thriving.

Gerardo Sumano [02:08:17] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [02:08:18] And thanks for your wisdom. People love your comments.

Gerardo Sumano [02:08:21] And thanks to Maven, who's in the background.

John Dehlin [02:08:23] Yeah, Maven. And I was going to shout out, maven, thanks for doing the. The. The. The moderations and the time codes in the show notes and all you do, both for us and for Mormonism live. Maven, you're the best. All right, thanks, everyone. Thanks. And by the way, not only did we go the length of an entire general conference session, we went nine minutes beyond the two hours of a normal general conversation. Thanks to everyone who comment today. Thanks everyone who donates to the OPA Stories Foundation. Your donations make all this possible. So if you want to see this program and Continue, go to MormonStories.org Click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor, and we promise to keep this content going. And, Nemo, we hope this can be a semiannual tradition. Can you sign up for that, brother?

Nemo [02:09:06] Yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:09:07] All right, we'll see if we can get Samantha even more ranty next time.

Samantha Shelley [02:09:11] We did the last one together as well.

John Dehlin [02:09:13] That's right. Yeah. The tradition is.

Samantha Shelley [02:09:15] Yeah, it's in full swing.

John Dehlin [02:09:16] All right.

Nemo [02:09:16] I like it.

John Dehlin [02:09:17] All right, thanks, everyone. Take care. Be kind to each other. It for real. Love each other. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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.