Welcome and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Mormon News Podcast, brought to you by Mormon Stories Podcast and generally unquotable. I am Dr. John Dehlin. I am here with Meggan Hayes. Hey, Meggan.

Guest [00:00:21] Hey.

Meggan Hayes [00:00:21] Happy Friday again.

John Dehlin [00:00:23] Happy Friday to you. And it's August 28, 2026, and I'm happy to announce that Nemo and I discovered who is the cause of our Mormon News episodes going too long. It's officially Meggan Hayes.

Meggan Hayes [00:00:37] I thought you were going to say John de Lin at the end of that, and then I would have agreed with you.

John Dehlin [00:00:42] No, Nemo and I did an episode in like an hour and a half.

Meggan Hayes [00:00:45] Yeah, but Nemo and I did an episode in an hour and a half.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] I'm teasing. I'm teasing. Meggan, welcome back. We missed you last week.

Meggan Hayes [00:00:54] Yes, it's good to be back.

John Dehlin [00:00:56] Stop going away.

Meggan Hayes [00:00:57] Well, that's not going to happen.

John Dehlin [00:01:00] Okay, well, I joke every. Every episode that the Mormon News Podcast in its current iteration is Meggan Hayes from Generally Unquotable Telling to me and also my audience, the news of the week. So, Meggan, what do you want to say as an introduction before we dive in?

Meggan Hayes [00:01:21] There were 7,288 news stories I wanted to include today, but we're only going to do five.

John Dehlin [00:01:28] We're only doing five,

Guest 2 [00:01:32] but.

Meggan Hayes [00:01:32] Well, we're doing five with some tangential ones that kind of mix together. But yeah, there's just always so much going on.

John Dehlin [00:01:39] All right, well, we welcome our live streamed audience. We. We promise that any super chat that gets shared, a question or a comment, we will share. But we're also just grateful for everyone, including Trevor and Julia, that help us with moderation and time codes and show notes in Brooklyn and everyone else.

John Dehlin [00:02:00] The Mormon News Podcast is brought to you by the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories Podcast. And it comes about also because of the donations of Mormon Stories donors and you. If you want to support this episode, you can do so by going to. What's the URL? MormonNews.com youm can go to MormonNews.com and click on the donate button there. And then there's also a direct donation link at donor box donorbox.org/ I think it's Mormon News.

John Dehlin [00:02:43] So anyway, yeah, Mormon News donorbox.org Mormon News. If you like this content you want to see continue, please check us out there. All right, Meggan, take it away. And I'm really excited to hear today's in this week's news.

Bloomberg Exposes the Mormon Church's Land Empire

Meggan Hayes [00:02:57] Yeah, the big story today is that Bloomberg came out with some more information about how much land the church owns in the United States States. They have done a deep dive and it's very, very interesting. So that's our top story today.

John Dehlin [00:03:11] I'm going to guess that it's a lot.

Meggan Hayes [00:03:13] It's, you know what, I think they use those exact words.

John Dehlin [00:03:18] All right, let's dive in. So. Oh, Casey. Of a preview of the stories.

Meggan Hayes [00:03:24] Yeah, so that's the top one. And then we're going to talk about more data and less sharing with an article from the Salt Lake Tribune that is talking about a presentation that was given at the fair conference recently. So, yeah, that. Then very quickly, just another update on Sam Bateman, the FLDS leader who was sentenced again. Then we're going to talk about Drive through church. That's going to be coming up shortly for anyone who is still attending and maybe not drive thru church, but that's what some people are calling it. And then we will discuss activity sharing and a survey that I did recently.

John Dehlin [00:04:01] All right, sounds fun. So should we dive into the first story?

Meggan Hayes [00:04:05] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:04:06] Okay, here we go.

Meggan Hayes [00:04:08] Yeah. So this is the headline from Bloomberg, the Mormon Church's Land Empire by the numbers. And I couldn't actually read this article because it was behind a paywall, but they also did a YouTube video, well, a podcast on YouTube. And so that's where the information will be coming from.

John Dehlin [00:04:27] Okay, so we got a clip.

Meggan Hayes [00:04:30] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:04:31] All right, let's roll the clip.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:04:32] About 20 minutes south of Denver International Airport, there's a chunk of land bigger than Manhattan Central Park.

Video Clip 1 [00:04:40] They're planning for it to house more than 12,000 people, have a school and a fire station.

Video Clip 1 [00:04:45] It's almost 1,000 acres, slated to become a new neighborhood called Tributary.

Video Clip 1 [00:04:51] The Tributary is mainly state, still raw land. When we stumbled upon this, there wasn't really anything written about it. We spoke to people. Nobody really knew too much about it.

Video Clip 1 [00:05:02] The developer behind the property is called Property Reserve Inc. It's not a company that people might immediately recognize, but the name behind Property

Video Clip 1 [00:05:11] Reserve is much more known. And it's actually the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which has quietly held the land for many decades

Video Clip 1 [00:05:18] now, also known as the Mormon Church. It bought this land in Aurora, Colorado back in the 1980s. And now with the help of its real estate development arm, it's turning it into a master plan community.

Video Clip 1 [00:05:32] So we sought out to answer the question, you know, why is the church investing in such a big project in Aurora, Colorado? And what do they plan on doing with the site?

John Dehlin [00:05:42] What do they plan on doing with the site, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [00:05:44] Well, they're Building it into a bunch of homes. One thing that stuck out to me in that part of the video was that they bought the land in 1980. So then I was looking back in my life. In 1980, I actually lived in Colorado. I was a, you know, really little kid running around with a bunch of siblings, and my dad was the only one working in my family. We were, I'm certain, not really making ends meet and paying tithing. You know, I had one of those little boxes with the three sections. And so if I made a dime, I put a penny in the tithing box. And here the church was buying land like it's. It's wild to me.

John Dehlin [00:06:25] Yeah. Or having land donated to them. Right. By. By wealthy, wealthy donors.

Meggan Hayes [00:06:32] Yeah. And because I think a lot of times when I think of the church and their billions of dollars, it goes back to maybe when the SEC scandal came out, but they've been doing this for a long, long time. That was just when we all found out about it. So in my mind, it helps for me to place it in the timeline of my life and think this has been going on for a long, long time.

John Dehlin [00:06:58] I Googled how much 1,000 acres is, and it's 758 football fields.

Meggan Hayes [00:07:04] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:07:06] That's how big this, this one piece of property is just in Denver.

Meggan Hayes [00:07:11] Right. And it's prime. You know, in the 80s, who knows what that land looked like. I think it was just, you know, outside of town or whatever. But now it's prime real estate.

John Dehlin [00:07:22] And it's interesting. They call their. The LLC or whatever it is, Property Reserve. They're not using any. Any distinguishable Mormon name in it for some reason. I wonder why that is.

Meggan Hayes [00:07:34] Yeah, and they'll talk about that a little bit going forward. But when I have looked into what the church does with land, when people report on it, there are so many different names that, that they use. Property Reserve is not the only one.

John Dehlin [00:07:50] Yeah, I know. The Intellectual Reserve is what they call their intellectual property arm because that's part of who's suing me, I think. Anyway, should we go to the next clip?

Meggan Hayes [00:08:00] Yep.

Guest 1 [00:08:01] Okay.

Guest [00:08:03] There was another pivot moment for the Mormon Church's real estate investment strategy in 2017 when Ashley Powell took over Property Reserve, which is the chur as real estate investment arm. Who is Ashley Powell? What is his background and how does he kind of shake things up?

Guest 2 [00:08:17] Powell is a commercial real estate veteran. He had spent many years working in the commercial real estate investment arms of Deutsche Bank, Bentle Kennedy, and these are firms that have deployed billions into real estate. And we've seen that when Powell came and took over leadership at property reserve in 2017, he really amped up the types of investments they have globally.

John Dehlin [00:08:41] Okay. Ashley Powell.

Meggan Hayes [00:08:43] Yeah, that was someone who's honestly name I hadn't heard before. So when they started saying that I. Their video was just audio and one picture. So I actually added in those other pictures of a little bit more of his background. But it was interesting to listen to someone from an outside perspective saying it took off in 2017 and this was the person that they hired the kind of made that push.

John Dehlin [00:09:06] I mean, it makes sense. The church generates a lot of white collar professionals with, with lots of great experience and or advanced degrees, and they go and become super rich in their respective fields, whether it's investment banking or real estate development. And then the church hires them back to help grow the church's assets. Right. And that's who this Ashley Powell is.

Guest 2 [00:09:33] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [00:09:33] Well, and I could see you having, having been on that track. Right. If you hadn't kind of taken the, the turn that you did.

John Dehlin [00:09:41] No, I, when I worked at Bain, you know, as a management consultant, the church. Bain had the LDS Church as a client. So the church was hiring Bain management consultants to consult the church in its business operations. I think that's where they got the idea to hand over janitorial work to the members. Like a management consultant basically said, hey, you could save X amount of dollars a year if you just fire all your janitorial staff and have the church do it as volunteer labor. So.

Guest 3 [00:10:14] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:10:16] That's what management consultants do.

Guest 4 [00:10:19] Right?

Meggan Hayes [00:10:19] Well, and the church is a corporation, so.

John Dehlin [00:10:24] It is.

Guest 4 [00:10:24] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:10:25] They are functioning like one.

Guest 2 [00:10:27] Yeah.

Guest 4 [00:10:27] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:10:27] Okay, so it's smart. All right, should we go to the next clip?

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 [00:10:31] Okay, so we sought out to answer the question, you know, why is the church investing in such a big project in Aurora, Colorado? And what do they plan on doing with the site? And it's not just home building. They're setting out to build entire communities across Florida, across Arizona, maybe even in Texas.

Video Clip 2 [00:10:49] It's not exactly a secret that over the past century, the Mormon Church has acquired a lot of land around the US but what hasn't been clear is how much land the church has where and what it's doing with it.

Video Clip 2 [00:11:04] As far as we can tell, the church owns about 2.4 million acres. The size about three Rhode Islands. And if you were to compare their size to other private landholders, it puts the church into one of the largest, if not the largest landowner in the states. To our Estimate it's worth upwards of $20 billion.

John Dehlin [00:11:29] Holy. They're bringing numbers, right? Billion dollars. Possibly the largest private landowner in the entire United States.

Meggan Hayes [00:11:41] It just, it's. I have no words, obviously, like it, it blows my mind that a church that I thought that I needed to give 10% of my very meager income to is doing this. And they, they think it's amazing that they're, that this is what they're doing with that money.

John Dehlin [00:12:05] No, I mean, you know, you talk to members and you say, wow, the church has $300 billion. And so, so many orthodox members are like, yay, go church. Earn more. Like richer the better. You know, Jesus needs a super wealthy church to usher in his millennium. We need a rainy day fund in case the church, you know, the economy goes south. So get wealthier and wealthier. And you know, it might be concerning to some, but to others it's a, it's a feature, not a bug.

Meggan Hayes [00:12:37] Right. I think there are a lot of people who see it as proof or further proof that the Church is true because it has been so successful.

John Dehlin [00:12:46] Yeah, but, but three Rhode Islands, 2.4 million acres, possibly largest in the U.S. it's cool to see some numbers.

Meggan Hayes [00:12:57] Yeah, I think they've been diving into this for a while.

John Dehlin [00:12:59] I love it. All right, next clip. All right,

Data Reporting and How the Church Finances Property

▶ Video Clip 3

Video Clip 3 [00:13:05] how do we know what we know about the size of the Mormon Church's holdings? Tell us about the data reporting you did to come to this number.

Video Clip 3 [00:13:13] Through Natalie's reporting, we identified key subsidiaries of the church. We did additional reporting to find out what other entities they used to purchase land. So we provided multiple addresses, multiple names of the entities or key members behind the entities to a third party data provider. And we asked, can you scour your database to give us a sense of most comprehensive look at their current land ownership? They scour thousands of counties, tax records, office, they track down sales transaction data. And this is really the hard part because, because some states, like Texas, they're not required to disclose the sales price at the time of transaction. So really the $20 billion figure is an underestimation.

Video Clip 3 [00:13:58] What don't we know about these holdings? What could be left out here?

Video Clip 3 [00:14:02] We do not have the comprehensive list of the subsidiaries of the Church. We do not know the true value of the price that they paid for different lands.

John Dehlin [00:14:13] Holy moly. Okay, what'd you think about that?

Meggan Hayes [00:14:16] Well, someone in the comments said, remember, this is only the land in the US And I think that is important to remember. But the other thing is that like I said, they're trying to chase down all of these subsidiaries. That's the word that we always hear. And they're not sure they got them all because there's no way to know because there's so many different little businesses and different names that they put them under. So you would have to go into every single city, county, state database and look for this subsidiary and who the parent company is, which is a lot of work.

John Dehlin [00:14:52] Yeah. And with AI, that's going to get easier and easier to do. But you know, to me it really does beg the question, why is an organization worth 300 billion plus not taxed? You know, at what point is this more a corporation than a church? And I think we all know the answer to that question. But why also aren't these organizations required to be transparent? Why isn't there a comprehensive list? If for no other reason than the members who are funding the church, don't they deserve to know what's being done with their money? But weirdly orthodox Mormons don't care. They just blindly trust the church and just say, hey, they know what they're doing. I'm too busy raising kids and, you know, earning my money so I can pay my tithing and serving in the church. So there's no accountability?

Meggan Hayes [00:15:49] No. And as far as the government goes, they pushed the church into filing the 13F's right. Because they need to know that someone with that big of a stake in the stock market what they're doing with their money. Right. That's the reasoning behind that. So how is it different for land? How can someone who owns that much of the US not have to be transparent to some degree?

John Dehlin [00:16:19] Yeah, it's wild. All right, let's go to the next, next clip. This is great.

▶ Video Clip 4

Video Clip 4 [00:16:24] How does the Mormon Church pay for these purchases?

Video Clip 4 [00:16:28] So what we've heard from our sources is that the Mormon Church likes to pay in all cash. They don't like to take on debt and that ties back to their faith. They don't like to take on leverage. So they think with a very long term view. So the types of investors that I cover, for example, you know, let's just say they look at an office building, they look at leases that span 15 years. You know, they might look at selling in 10 to 20 years. The Mormon Church looks in a generational perspective, 50 to 100 years. So some of these Mass master plan housing developments that they're plotting will take place over multiple decades.

Video Clip 4 [00:17:04] And no debt, all cash offers. How much of an outlier is that in the real estate industry?

Video Clip 4 [00:17:09] Most real estate Players really love to use leverage. It's a very attractive way to make these deals work. We've seen that they are able to outbid certain investors, especially in the post pandemic age where we have seen commercial real estate suffer. The Mormon Church is able to come in with all cash. They can close much quicker than other folks who may find it a little, little bit harder to get lenders for certain deals because borrowing costs are so much higher than they were pre pandemic. Example of that in 2021, their land division outbid Bill Gates firm to buy a bankrupt portfolio of Washington farms that's nearly the size of Manhattan for almost 210 million. This may alone, they acquired a luxury apartment complex in Boca Raton. And we found out that that's one of the priciest commercial real estate deals in that area this year. Whoa.

John Dehlin [00:17:59] What do you think, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [00:18:00] What percentage of their members could not afford to live in that Boca Raton complex that they just bought? That's what I want to know.

John Dehlin [00:18:11] Yeah, well, I'm, I'm, you know, I think it's stunning to hear that the, that the Mormon Church outbid Bill Gates, one of the world's richest men. But that's what happens because is rich. You know, only Elon Musk is wealthier than the Mormon Church. Like I'd like to see world's wealthiest men and then where the church's assets rank as compared to the world's wealthiest men, Bezos and you know, Steve Ballmer and, and Bill Gates. But it's, it's also, it's also interesting that a nonprofit that doesn't have to pay taxes and doesn't have to be transparent in its finances has an advantage over people that do have to disclose their finances and do have to pay taxes. Why would us taxpayers be supporting a corporation masquerading as a church that isn't a tax paying entity to be outbidding legitimate taxpayers, giving them an advantage? That just doesn't seem right.

Meggan Hayes [00:19:24] It doesn't. I agree. And I wonder how many people actually realize that this is happening at this scale because like you said, even members are like, well, I'm just gonna pay my tithing because it's about obedience. And then I'm gonna, you know, go organize the Relief Society activity for the week.

John Dehlin [00:19:44] Yeah, I mean, I, I do think it's good that the church doesn't get into debt. Like, that's actually one of the positive things that I feel like learned from my Mormon upbringing is stay away from debt. And so, I mean, I guess that's laudable that the church doesn't assume a lot of debt and pays cash for everything. I think that's smart financially. So you got to give them credit for that, I think.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:12] I mean, if I had access to other people's money at the rate they do, I could probably do the same thing.

John Dehlin [00:20:18] Come on, Meggan. I'm trying to. I'm trying to be positive here. I'm trying to be bad.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:23] It's so. It's hard for me sometimes when it comes to the money stuff, because I gave money to the church when I literally could not afford to feed my kids, the kids that the church told me to have so I could be righteous.

Guest 5 [00:20:33] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:20:34] So it gets mixed up inside me where I'm like, oh, the church does do some good things, but, man, they took my money when they really could have just let me buy food for my kids.

Guest 4 [00:20:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:44] And. And weirdly, oftentimes, the. The. The tithing that members are required to pay causes the members to go into debt. So the church is able to not have to go into debt at times by causing its members to go into debt.

Guest 2 [00:21:02] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [00:21:02] Yeah. I've had people tell me who are still active members right now that they had to put their tithing on a credit card.

John Dehlin [00:21:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also, just imagine if all the Mormons in the world, instead of paying tithing, just paid down their mortgages. How much less interest they'd be paying, you know, to some financial institution. They'd be making a lot of money. So, anyway. All right, let's go to the next clip.

Guest [00:21:30] And where do they get all this cash? Is this coming from some of the tithes that are made by the church's members?

Guest 2 [00:21:37] Yes. Members are expected to tie 10% of their income, so that's definitely a big part of it. Another big part is just their massive investing machine. And so when we speak to sources about how they see the Mormon Church's real estate investing arm, for example, or their investment arm, we hear them being referred to like a sovereign wealth fund. They have a lot, a lot of money.

Guest 1 [00:22:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:02] I was looking at some of the widow's mite reports, and I noticed that they compare the Mormon Church's assets to sovereign wealth funds like Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. It's so funny. Meggan, what do you think?

Meggan Hayes [00:22:17] Oh, yeah, I just. That's the part where she said a lot, a lot. It's like we don't even have the words to describe the amount of wealth that the church manages between stocks, cash, land. It's. It's unreal I bet the church doesn't

John Dehlin [00:22:35] even know how wealthy this church is.

Meggan Hayes [00:22:37] No, probably not. I was actually talking to Colby Reddish this week and we were discussing how when we were members, we thought the church ran so smoothly and it was this well oiled machine and every other part was communicating with every other part. But when in reality, there's parts of the church that are very siloed and a lot of people don't know what's going on in other departments. So there really could be a lot of people who don't understand what's going on in the other places and they don't know how wealthy they are because it's not really just one big, you know, family all talking to each other about what's going on.

John Dehlin [00:23:13] Yeah, yeah. Let me share a super chat. Thank you, Exmo Ramo, for supporting our program. Exmo Ramo writes they also call hundreds of senior missionaries to live on, manage and maintain each of these properties. All free labor. Yeah, there's a whole massive. It's not just a volunteer missionary force. These missionaries pay to be missionaries.

Meggan Hayes [00:23:41] Yes. They had at BYU Education Week they had an entire seminar on teaching retired couples how to manage their money so that they could go provide free labor for the church.

John Dehlin [00:23:52] Yeah, it's wild. All right, let's keep. This is great. Let's keep going. Meggan.

Guest 2 [00:24:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:00] Why does this matter? Let me see, Let me pull the clip up.

Meggan Hayes [00:24:07] Yeah, yeah, quick.

John Dehlin [00:24:09] Okay.

Guest 1 [00:24:09] There we go.

Guest [00:24:10] Why does it matter that there's so little we know about the size of the Mormon Church's holdings and even in some cases, whether they are the ones behind a specific project?

Guest 2 [00:24:21] I mean, a lot of their own members have been concerned about the lack of transparency because they want to know that what they're tithing is going into the church's mission and what they believe in. And there's almost no clarity as to what exactly is going on and how the money is being used.

John Dehlin [00:24:37] Okay, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [00:24:39] I mean, that's just what we've talked about. I mean, I think there are a large portion of members that don't want to know. They just maybe don't even have the time to know. But there are quite a few nowadays, especially after the whistleblower came out, that are like, hold on, if I'm going to put this money in there, I want to know that it's actually helping people.

John Dehlin [00:24:59] Yeah, well, the truth is the church won't come clean about its finances till the members, you know, or the government demand it. Just like Mormon women won't get the priesthood until Mormon Women demand it, which I don't think they're going to do anytime soon.

John Dehlin [00:25:16] The other thing I'll say is if, if City Creek Mall is any example, what the church has a history of is claiming that none of these business endeavors have anything to do with tithing. And that doesn't make sense because where did they get the money, you know, to fund the business adventures, you know, the business ventures. They got the money for business adventures from prior generations, tithing. So it's usually the shell game where they ask for tithing, save it up, make investments, earn interest off the investments, and then make more investments.

John Dehlin [00:25:53] But there's also probably commingling of funds where they also take tithing at present and intermingle it with a lot of these investments. And we'll never know until it's all transparent. But what we do know is that to tell the membership no tithing is involved in things like City Creek Mall or the beneficial life bailout or these massive real estate investments to say, don't worry, members, you're tithing is not involved in any of this. I mean, it's almost insulting to their intelligence except for the fact that they don't care.

Guest 6 [00:26:27] Yes.

Meggan Hayes [00:26:28] Yeah. Because all when I realized that, when I realized, like, even though they said it didn't come from tithing, where. Where else did they get their money?

Guest 1 [00:26:35] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:26:36] I was like, oh, yeah, they're just saying what they need to say right now. But the truth is, everything they have originally came from tithing.

John Dehlin [00:26:45] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:26:46] Somebody sacrificed. And actually the next clip is going to be.

John Dehlin [00:26:51] I love this clip.

Guest 2 [00:26:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:52] All right, this is a tithing montage. I'm predicting this is going to be leaders telling members how essential it is to pay their tithing. Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:27:04] I guess we'll see, John.

John Dehlin [00:27:05] All right, we'll see. We learn about tithing by paying it. Indeed, I believe it is possible to break out of poverty by having the faith to give back to the Lord. Part of that little we have, given

Tithing Burdens and Calls for Accountability

Meggan Hayes [00:27:20] the significant financial strain that tithing is for those in war and abject poverty. Is there any discussion within the church about not requiring that for people in those situations, or at least tithing only what is left after paying for housing, food and other necessities.

John Dehlin [00:27:35] President Hinckley stood at this pulpit in 2020, made reference to the law of tithing.

Guest 2 [00:27:41] I remember watching him teach in impoverished

John Dehlin [00:27:44] areas of the country and promising the people the pathway out of poverty is keeping the commandments of God, including tithing. The church doesn't need their money, but those people need the blessings that come from obeying God's commandments. The spiritual power of the divine law of tithing is not measured by the amount of money contributed. For both the prosperous and the poor are commanded by the lord to contribute 10% of their income. Many of them are unemployed. I know that many of them work for very meager wages.

John Dehlin [00:28:23] I know that they live in simple and inadequate little houses, the only thing they can afford. I believe they will not walk out of poverty unless they pay their tithing. Like the widow, if a destitute family is faced with the decision of paying their tithing or eating, they should pay their tithing.

John Dehlin [00:28:48] I've also seen quotes like if you don't have shoes, pay your tithing before you buy shoes, but keep. What do you think about that Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [00:28:56] I think that it is unethical for them to stand at the pulpit and say those things when they have the amount of money and resources that they do. I think tithing should truly be voluntary. I don't think it should be part of the temple recommend questions. I don't think people should think that tithing is going to keep them out of heaven at this point. Like Bednar said, the church doesn't need your money.

John Dehlin [00:29:24] Yeah, yeah. Other things that members don't know is that most apostles when they die it's revealed when there's transparency that there are states, they have multi million dollar estates. Even Boyd K. Packer, Thomas S. Monson, people who most of the life, most of their life was spent inside the church serving the church. Somehow when they die they have multi, multi million dollar estates, multiple homes.

John Dehlin [00:30:00] So somehow the church has even been able to get members to believe that their leaders do it for free or just volunteers or don't make six figure sums with massive pensions and die wealthy. So it's a real bait and switch or a real deception but also just devil's advocate. Meggan, what if number one, you know I interviewed, I just this week I interviewed someone whose parents were immigrants to the uk. Her name is Mariama. We haven't released the episode yet. Mariama's parents immigrated to, you know, immigrated to England, raised the kids in the church and then the kids went on to, you know, university and I a guy named Joe Gatia who I think was born and raised in Kenya.

John Dehlin [00:30:53] He ends up coming to BYU from Africa and then becoming a medical doctor. And I asked him, even though he doesn't believe anymore, do you regret having been raised in the church? And he's like no, I don't regret it because I have a great Life now. And I asked even Mariama, who's left the church and has all sorts of strong feelings about how the church hurt her.

John Dehlin [00:31:15] I said, mariama, if immigrants came to you today and said, hey, we're African immigrants, we're living in the uk, there's this great ward that's, that's loving us and showing us support, can you tell us not to baptize? You know, get baptized? And she said, no, I can't tell them that necessarily. These are my words, not hers. She would want them to have full informed consent. But what about the argument that,

Guest 6 [00:31:41] that

John Dehlin [00:31:42] people pay tithing to support the church because the church positively transforms lives and in tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of instances, brings people out of poverty and takes them to higher socioeconomic statuses. And there's got to be the paying of tithing to then sustain the organization, to lift more people out of poverty. So what if they're right, that paying your tithing ends up lifting you and others out of poverty? I think there might be truth to that, that that's where this gets complicated for me. Tell me if you completely disagree or how you view it.

Meggan Hayes [00:32:21] Do you think people have to pay their tithing to be invested? Is that why? Because the church literally does not need the money anymore. They can do all of those amazing things and way more without one more cent from their members. But do you think that the members need to pay tithing so that they're more invested?

John Dehlin [00:32:38] I mean, yeah. I remember I had a lunch with Elder Jeffrey R. Holland twice, and I asked him whether he and the apostles wanted members like me, kind of liberal, non literal believing, progressive Mormons. And he said, yeah, we want you in the church, of course, but I'm not going to lie to you. He said, the ripples are strongest if you throw a rock into the pond. The ripples are strongest closest to the rock. And his basic point was, you're going to get more out of the church, the more orthodox and the more devout you are.

John Dehlin [00:33:17] And I think that's true from a psychological perspective. I think people are more committed to organizations they give more to. The more you give to an organization, the more committed you are to it. The more you give to your marriage, the more committed you are to it. The more you give to parenting, the better or the more committed of a parent you are. And so his argument is you're going to get more out of it the more you give to it. And I think there actually is psychological evidence behind that. That thing now, it can be misused and Cult members can be abused because they give everything, everything to the church or their.

John Dehlin [00:33:54] Their cult, and then they're just exploited and abused. But if you could argue that if the church makes the right balance, where you're giving a lot, but they're giving, they're giving you back a lot and others a lot, you could argue that requiring a lot of your members is the best way to keep your organization healthy and strong. And I'll make the last argument, Meggan, and then I'll let you give the final word here. These Protestant Christian churches that don't really require a lot of their members, guess what? They're all dying. And they're dying at a heavier, At a faster rate than a lot of other churches. And so what do you think, Meggan? You get the final word.

Meggan Hayes [00:34:34] So I think then what we're doing is extra important because maybe we allow people to keep paying tithing, but we push the church towards greater transparency and using more of that money to actually help people.

John Dehlin [00:34:50] Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. That's a role we. Well, I think we have to play the role of informed consent, because I don't think anyone can argue that people don't deserve to know what they're giving their money and their lives to. And then, yeah, if the church has no accountability because there's no financial transparency, then they could literally be corrupt and do whatever they want. So there needs to, you know, sunlight is the best disinfectant. So whether it's the widow's mite, which is a crucial resource for understanding the church's finances today, I'll have Julia and or Brooklyn put a link to the widow's mite in the show notes.

John Dehlin [00:35:27] Whether it's that or these podcasts like Mormonish and Mormonism Live and us and generally unquotable, I think we're just like journalism. As a political science major, we used to call the journalistic discipline the fourth branch of government. There's the legislative, judicial, executive, and then there's the media, because the media provides the public, the voting public, with the information and the transparency and the accountability to help keep the government honest. And I think that's the role podcasters are playing in 2026. And that's why I believe the church is suing Mormon Stories podcast.

Guest 3 [00:36:07] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [00:36:08] So it is extra important that we keep doing what we're doing, because if people are going to pay tithing, there needs to be more accountability.

John Dehlin [00:36:14] Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, you know, I'll just end by saying that that widows might projects that the Mormon Church, if it's not already worth a trillion dollars, just mathematically will be worth a trillion dollars, you know, in the next 20 to 30 years, I believe. And so I think US citizens are going to also, I'll say two things. US citizens are going to have to figure out whether at any point a church no longer deserves non transparency and non taxable status. You know, at some point and members are going to have to decide at what point. You know, wasn't there, wasn't it Joseph F. Smith, the prophet that wrote there will become a time when tithing is no longer required of the members because the church will be in a position to no longer need it. I think if ever that time we're approaching, it's now. What do you think, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [00:37:14] Yep, I agree.

John Dehlin [00:37:16] So let's let one, let's let one Mormon prophets prophecy come true.

Meggan Hayes [00:37:21] Yes, maybe they should look at it that way. Let's start talking about that in general conference. A fulfilled prophecy.

John Dehlin [00:37:27] Interestingly, that's one general authority quote they don't mention much these days.

Meggan Hayes [00:37:31] Yeah, they don't like that one. It's a past prophet, so he's not relevant.

John Dehlin [00:37:36] Yeah, modern prophets trump past prophets. Okay, well this next topic, Meggan, is one near and dear to my heart. I'm sure you know that, but I'll let you kick it off.

Baseball Baptisms and Inflated Membership Numbers

Guest 5 [00:37:47] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:37:47] So this is from the Salt Lake Tribune. Remember, baseball baptisms don't lose sight of the Savior in quest for converts. LDS historian warns and wasn't that your first episode of Mormon Stories, John?

John Dehlin [00:37:58] Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know about baseball baptisms when I served my mission in Guatemala. In my mission there were soccer baptisms, but basically missionaries would go out to a soccer field on a Saturday afternoon, play soccer with 10, you know, 7 to 10 year old poor Guatemalan children, get them all hot and sweaty and then take them all back to the church. No missionary discussions, no parental consent, baptize them 10 at a time and then get 40 baptisms in a month and become assistants to the president. And our, our mission, you know, was getting 6, 700 baptisms a month and I thought it was corrupt.

John Dehlin [00:38:39] And, and I was a whistleblower on my mission and my mission president ended up sending me home early because I was a whistleblower and that's what started me on my faith crisis. And then when I got to byu, I discovered Sunstone magazine and none other than D. Michael Quinn, himself, the famous September 6th historian, had served in the British Isles as a missionary during the baseball baptism scandal along with do you know who Meggan, this is A trivia question. Who else served? What modern Mormon apostles served in the British Isles in the early 60s during the baseball baptism scandal?

Meggan Hayes [00:39:21] Do you know, I wanted to say Holland, Jeffrey R. Holland.

John Dehlin [00:39:25] And.

Meggan Hayes [00:39:25] Oh, that's the only one I could think of.

John Dehlin [00:39:27] Quentin Cook, who is in charge of the worldwide what missionary program. So anyway, that happened and it basically. I'll let you take over and then we'll go from there. So.

Meggan Hayes [00:39:39] Well, so the. The video that I put. So this is referencing a talk that was given at fair by James Perry, who is the. What does it say on their church history? Area manager of Europe North. That's what the article is referencing. So I actually got clips from his fair presentation. And the next clip explains baseball baptisms in his words. So we can listen to it, but since you just kind of talked it through, we don't have to do let's play it. Okay.

Guest 1 [00:40:03] In an effort to jumpstart growth, British Mission president T. Baron Woodbury leveraged athletic activities to connect with local youth. His missionary, starting in South Wales, had found success in playing sports games with young men and young women. And this pragmatism, which started as a good idea, ultimately yielded an unprecedented spike in conversions, including in July and August of 1960, over a thousand baptisms, which in turn drove the mission to have some of the highest baptismal rates in the global church at the time. This good idea was bastardized in a race to higher and higher numbers. What started as a good idea slowly descended into a speedy race to try and baptize as many people as possible.

Guest 1 [00:40:48] Now, while the numbers looked spectacular on paper, the strategy inadvertently created a crisis of nominal membership. Hundreds of unattached youths were rushed into baptism without family support or deep conversion. This led to rapid, widespread inactivity. Today, these conversions, sometimes referred to as the baseball baptisms, did yield some positive results, even if there were times when sight of the Savior was lost in the pursuit of baptisms for the sake of baptisms.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] All right, what'd you think of that?

Meggan Hayes [00:41:19] Yeah, I just thought it was a really good description of what was going on. And I thought it was interesting that he was super honest about it. This isn't something that I heard of when I was an active member.

John Dehlin [00:41:28] No, I mean, this is something the church hid. And ironically, you know, the church was. When I was at BYU in the early 90s, the church was excommunicating. Authors of Sunstone Magazine above articles in Sunstone Magazine, including D. Michael Quinn, who wrote the article on baseball baptisms, was excommunicated my senior year at byu, ironically.

John Dehlin [00:41:50] And by the way, Meggan, most people haven't read our response, My response, my legal team's response to the Mormon Church's lawsuit against me and the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories podcast. But I mentioned at the very beginning of the narrative my experience with soccer baptisms in Guatemala in the lawsuit. Because, Meggan, when I got home from BYU and was in a very, very dark place, I felt like I needed to report what happened to me in Guatemala to an apostle. Guess which apostle I wrote and had a phone call with while I was a BYU student reporting the soccer baptisms from Guatemala.

Meggan Hayes [00:42:35] Was it Dallin Oaks?

John Dehlin [00:42:36] It was Dallin H. Oaks. He called me while I was on a Washington, D.C. internship, and we actually had a conversation. So that was. That's in my lawsuit. And it ties to this idea that Oaks has known about me literally since 1992. That's when our relationship begins, and it continues after that as well. So, anyway, the church is known about this stuff forever. They silenced and excommunicated people who talked about it.

John Dehlin [00:43:05] I brought this up in my lawsuit. I've been bringing this up on Mormon Stories for many, many years. I have to wonder whether FAIR is realizing, especially now it's entered into the lawsuit, that they have to start talking about it publicly and they can't really just have no answer for it, especially as the Africa baptisms skyrocket. We know, I can guarantee you these baptism shenanigans are happening in Africa right now, and that's what's inflating the number of converts in Africa.

John Dehlin [00:43:37] And so it makes all the sense in the world, for all those reasons and probably others, that FAIR Mormon decides Now, now in 2026, they're going to talk about baseball baptisms.

Guest 3 [00:43:49] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:43:49] All right, keep going, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [00:43:52] All right, well, you can. Yeah. The next slide, the latest membership stats. In the decades since these ill fated baseball baptisms, Perry said the church has become more careful in the conversion process and with numbers regarding membership growth, which I don't think that's true. Last year, the Utah based church reported a record rise of 385,490 converts, boosting worldwide membership to 17,888,212, nearly 530,000 in Europe. These totals, of course, represent individuals listed on the church's roles, not whether they still practice or identify with the faith, which is something. Throughout his entire presentation, he kept saying, I don't know why people get so upset with the church's numbers, because we all know it's people who are on the rolls. It's not active members.

John Dehlin [00:44:40] Yeah, but we all know that in outside the US the activity rate in in other countries is like 10% and that there's like a, you know, like a 10% retention rate of international converts. So again, it's super disingenuous for the church to claim 17 or 18 million members when we know maybe 20% worldwide are actually active and self identify as Mormons.

Guest 3 [00:45:05] Sense.

John Dehlin [00:45:06] Yeah, yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:45:07] He spent a lot of time in his speech trying to refute that, saying one time we were. Well, so I didn't put his holes, his whole presentation in here, but he spent a lot of time at the beginning talking about how one time in the 1800s the church numbers were under reported by a census.

John Dehlin [00:45:25] Oh my God. Well, let's go to the next step.

Guest 2 [00:45:28] I'm dying.

John Dehlin [00:45:29] I need to watch this talk clearly.

Meggan Hayes [00:45:31] Yes, you do.

John Dehlin [00:45:31] Thanks for bringing to our attention.

Guest 1 [00:45:34] Many modern members would perhaps not be too interested to know exactly how many BYU pathway students there are in each stake or how many missionaries are out from each ward in the world. These detailed and granular facts are best preserved institutionally. But the appetite for such data doesn't exist to any great extent among the general membership. I would feel comfortable in saying that having people study for come follow me or reading their scriptures is what most leaders would rather members spend their time on. Given the busyness of our lives and the limited amount of time we have to spend on pursuits such as studying statistics or studying scriptures.

John Dehlin [00:46:15] I'm getting like, these are not the droids you're looking for. Vibes. What did you think was interesting about that quote?

Meggan Hayes [00:46:21] Right, that was his other argument. So his first argument was that there was a time in the 1800s when stuff statistics were underreported by the world, when the church was reporting them properly. And then one of his second arguments was people who are active members, they don't really care about the statistics.

John Dehlin [00:46:38] Convenient.

Meggan Hayes [00:46:40] Yes, very convenient. And he made the point a handful of times in his presentation that the. That the brethren would rather have people reading the scriptures than looking at church statistics.

John Dehlin [00:46:52] Yeah, and there's a. There, there really is a suggestive element to that. It's like you don't want to be learning about statistics, you want to be studying your scriptures. I mean, to me, right.

Meggan Hayes [00:47:02] Have you looked at come follow me this week? Because if you haven't, you don't have time for statistics.

John Dehlin [00:47:08] All right, let's keep going.

Guest 1 [00:47:10] Counting only fully participating members could unintentionally imply that less engaged members no longer matter by retaining them in membership. Records. The church emphasizes continued responsibility to minister and invite them back.

John Dehlin [00:47:25] Okay,

Meggan Hayes [00:47:28] raise your hand if after you stopped going to church, people came to look for you. Because that did not happen to me. But he's saying that they keep people on the rolls even when they're not attending, because then the church will reach out to them. You know, it's leaving the 90 and 9 to go look for the 1.

John Dehlin [00:47:46] And, and I, I actually don't have a problem with that logic, but it's kind of a straw man. You know, it's like when an apologist will say, critics claim that Joseph Smith ate babies, but he did need babies. You know, it's like, no, nobody's claiming that. I don't think anybody's claiming that the church shouldn't track all the people that have ever been baptized. But guess what, Meggan, There's a middle ground here. It's not between the church counting all baptized members as members and the church throwing away, you know, everyone. Everyone's records who aren't attending. Do you know what the middle ground is?

Meggan Hayes [00:48:27] Well, I don't know. Use some of their resources and just find out who still wants to be on the rolls.

John Dehlin [00:48:31] How about report? Yeah, how about reporting both? How about reporting total number of baptized who are still alive and total number of active members in a current month? Do you think the church has that number, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [00:48:43] Oh, absolutely. And he's going to admit that eventually.

John Dehlin [00:48:47] Yeah. So he's. It's. It really. They really are deceptive. They're professional deceivers. I don't think they think of themselves that way. But there's a really simple answer, and I. I wonder if he gets to it. The church just publishes their activity rates.

Meggan Hayes [00:49:03] Well, he. Yeah, it seems simple, but let's. Let's listen to what else he has to say.

Guest 1 [00:49:11] Ironically, the church probably collects more internal statistics today than ever before.

John Dehlin [00:49:16] Yes, they do.

Guest 1 [00:49:16] Publishes fewer of them. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:21] Understatement. Understatement of the century.

Guest 3 [00:49:24] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [00:49:24] Yeah. So the, the overall point of his speech was sometimes the church has been misrepresented. Members don't have time for the statistics, and the church has them, but that's not their goal.

John Dehlin [00:49:42] I mean, that's the understatement of the century.

Guest 1 [00:49:44] They.

John Dehlin [00:49:44] They publish less statistics than they keep. Really?

Meggan Hayes [00:49:52] Who knew? Well, and it's interesting because then last night the church. Or yesterday the church published. Go to the next slide.

John Dehlin [00:49:59] Oh, my God, the slide makes me so mad.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:02] Right, so this came out on the church news, August 27th, which was yesterday at 6:00am okay, so it Was in the morning. But off to the right is another quote from him. These data are all collected, but communications have shifted away from numerical growth as evidence of success.

John Dehlin [00:50:19] What?

Meggan Hayes [00:50:20] That's something else he said.

Guest 6 [00:50:22] What.

Guest 4 [00:50:22] What is.

John Dehlin [00:50:22] What does he mean by that? Communications have shifted away from numerical growth as evidence of success. What does he mean?

Guest [00:50:31] I don't.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:32] Like, you know how they used to really push the stone cut out of the mountain without hands. He's saying that's not our focus in anymore.

John Dehlin [00:50:40] I get it.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:40] I get it.

Guest 1 [00:50:40] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:50:41] Oh, okay. Can I. Can I just. As an old person, can I tell you what I'm reading here?

Meggan Hayes [00:50:46] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:50:47] So when I'm growing up, right, I'm growing up, there's 5,6 million Mormons. I'm being told in seminary someday there's going to be hundreds of millions of mormons. Temples are going to dot the globe. And one of you know, like you, like we've quoted. You've quoted the Daniel 2 in the old testament prophecy of the stone being cut out of the mountain without hands and consuming all nations. That was the narrative. Part of the evidence of the church growing.

John Dehlin [00:51:15] Part of the evidence of the church being true is its incredible growth. And I was taught it was the fastest growing church in the world. And I would tell my peers that. I'd be like, nah, nah, nah, baptist. You're not cool. Because we're the fastest growing church in the world now. I don't even think it was true then, but that's what I was taught. And what he's saying here, what James Perry seems to be saying here, is that the church is shifting away from the message that numerical growth is an evidence of success.

John Dehlin [00:51:47] But that spin, because you know what? The church used to report membership growth in general conference, and as I understand it, they stopped doing it, right?

Meggan Hayes [00:51:58] Yes. Yeah. Their statistics are pared way down in conference.

John Dehlin [00:52:01] Pop quiz, Meggan. If the church were growing in leaps and bounds, truly consuming all nations, do you think they would have stopped reporting their membership statistics in general conference?

Meggan Hayes [00:52:14] Absolutely not.

John Dehlin [00:52:16] So they stopped reporting the numbers because the numbers started looking bad. But they don't just say that. They spin it as these sort of orwellian quotes that make it sound like, you know, the church is still doing great, and it's not. It's literally shrinking in the United States, shrinking in western Europe, which makes this chart so outrageously infuriating. But tell us about this chart, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:44] So church membership growth across u. S. States over 25 years. Yeah. If you go to the next slide, it has it bigger.

John Dehlin [00:52:51] Okay. Yeah. Tell us about this deceitful slide.

Meggan Hayes [00:52:55] Yeah, so it's saying church membership growth in each state was positive over the last 25 years. The only state that didn't grow membership was California. So look at this, it's so blue. And North Dakota.

Guest [00:53:08] Wow.

Meggan Hayes [00:53:08] 131% growth.

John Dehlin [00:53:13] Well, why, why, why do you have a, why do you have a problem with that slide?

Meggan Hayes [00:53:18] Because this is number one. We have no idea, we have no way to know whether this is accurate because they don't publish their numbers. Okay. So we have to take their word for it, first of all. Second of all, we know that activity rates versus membership growth, which is what James Perry said in his thing so many times, just presents an unrealistic picture. This is just raw membership numbers that they have.

John Dehlin [00:53:42] Yeah, it's not active members, it's just. And it also, there's population ship shifts, there's population growth. And we know, I believe last year was the first year that there were less self identifying Mormons in the United States than there were in the previous year. So the church is officially in decline in the United States. And, and the best, one of the best evidences of that is in Salt Lake County. I live in Salt Lake County. And every month they're closing wards, they're closing stakes, they're selling off chapels and closing chapels and they're not building new ones. So yes, they're building temples because they can just, they've got the money to do that. But it's so clear the church is in decline. And that alone is what makes this chart so outrageous. Anything else you want to say about it?

Meggan Hayes [00:54:42] Well, go to the next one. So I took that same map and I compared the growth rate. I wrote it down so I would say it properly.

John Dehlin [00:54:54] Wait, did you create this chart?

Meggan Hayes [00:54:55] I did. I created this one. And this one is the church's claimed numbers from 2000 to 2025, with population growth, growth in the US as the other variable. So maybe they say that like if in 2000, 10 out of 100 people, let's say in Colorado were LDS, and then in 2025, 13 were, but the population of Colorado went up to 150. That's what this chart is looking at. So if membership grows 30%, but the population grows 60%, the church has more members than it did before, but a smaller share of the people. And this is still using their numbers that we know are incredibly inflated, but it changes the color of the map quite a bit. If you compare it to population growth

John Dehlin [00:55:49] in each of those United States is red.

Meggan Hayes [00:55:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:52] Are you saying that if you measure falsely claimed LDS church growth as, as compared to population growth rates per state, the church is actually falling behind in terms of growth rates relative to growth rates of the western states?

Meggan Hayes [00:56:15] Basically, yes. Yes, I, I did another one, but I didn't include it because I didn't flesh it out all the way. But it was with a 20% activity rate in 2025. And if you do that, then the entire United States is red. So.

John Dehlin [00:56:32] And again, this is an active membership. These are just raw.

Meggan Hayes [00:56:35] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:56:36] Membership numbers. Yeah, so it's so, it's so deceptive. And, and it's just the church is desperate because they say nothing succeeds like success. I mean, this is a business term. If you appear to be successful. You know, that's why a struggling real estate agent might buy a Cadillac or a Mercedes or whatever, because if you appear successful, then people are going to want to be a part of what you're doing because you look successful. They say, fake it till you make it. Well, the church is kind of doing that in reverse. They're basically failing.

John Dehlin [00:57:13] And so they're trying to fake success while failing. And I can see why, because if they just admitted, yeah, we're in freefall, yeah, we're hemorrhaging, then, then people are. Members are going to say, why are we hemorrhaging? Why is God's one true church hemorrhaging? And the truth is we have, we. You know, the church has its own immunization to decline because they can just blame it on sin. They could blame it on Satan, they could blame it on signs of the times. It just means Jesus is around the corner. There's that phrase, even the very elect will be deceived.

John Dehlin [00:57:50] So the church has antibodies to defend itself against hemorrhaging. But even so, it realizes that the more it looks like a loser, the more it's going to lose. And I also think the more people leave, the more people leave. And that's one of the biggest problems the church has fallen into is that the more of us who have parents who leave the church, siblings who leave the church, children who leave the church, aunts and uncles and cousins, neighbors who leave the church, guess what? We go, hey, why are you leaving the church? And they're like peep stones, polyandry, child abuse, fraud, you know, and they go on and on and on with all the reasons why they're leaving, Depression, anxiety, and, and it makes other people want to leave too.

John Dehlin [00:58:40] So it's all, I believe it's only going to get worse for the church. Except statistically. And statistically, I predict they're going to go gangbusters.

Guest [00:58:49] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [00:58:50] Yeah. California is going to come right out of this slump. They're going to be just fine.

John Dehlin [00:58:56] Anyway. It's a. It's a. It's. It's a Potemkin town. It's a fake. It's a fake. A statistical, you know, deception. Honestly.

Guest 3 [00:59:08] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:59:10] All right, well, thanks for getting me all riled up. I committed to myself to not rant and not be too riled up. We're. We're 57 minutes in. I think we're gonna. I think we're gonna make it, Meggan. We're gonna make it.

Meggan Hayes [00:59:20] We got it this time.

Sam Bateman Sentenced for Child Abuse

John Dehlin [00:59:23] All right, who's this? Who's this goober? Why are all the cult leaders goobers? Like Keith Ranieri, Warren Jeffs? Pick your cult leader, David Koresh. They're all goobers.

Guest 6 [00:59:37] Right.

Meggan Hayes [00:59:37] Where is the Brad Pitt cult leader?

John Dehlin [00:59:40] Yeah, exactly. All right, tell us about Sam Bateman.

Meggan Hayes [00:59:45] So Sam Bateman was sentenced again.

John Dehlin [00:59:49] Oh, you are?

Meggan Hayes [00:59:49] Yeah. He's FLDS offshoot leader Samuel Bateman. He's 50 years old. He got sentenced to 24 years in Arizona State Prison on three child abuse convictions. The sentence begins after his existing 50 year federal sentence. Charges stem from the 2022 discovery of three girls, ages 11 to 14, being transported in an unventilated trailer. Bateman claimed more than 20 spiritual wives, and the judge cited the insane danger posed to the girls. So he is an FLDS offshoot leader. There is a great documentary on Netflix about him. And he has already been sentenced to 50 years with a federal sentence. And then this 24 years has been added on to that.

John Dehlin [01:00:35] And so imagine. You think that's a good thing that he's been. He's been sentenced?

Meggan Hayes [01:00:41] Yeah, I don't know if any. I think we played this clip maybe where he said in his own defense in the courtroom, he said, I'm just a really nice guy. I would never hurt anybody. So I think he needs to probably be away from people if he believes that what he did was being a really nice guy.

John Dehlin [01:01:01] Yeah. We're all the hero of our own stories, ourselves included, Meggan. So we have to always watch out for self deception, confirmation bias, that sort of thing.

Meggan Hayes [01:01:12] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:01:13] But, yeah, this guy's a creeper and he deserves to be behind bars.

Guest [01:01:16] So.

John Dehlin [01:01:17] Yeah. All right, what's the next. Is this schedule gate? Is that the next one?

New Sunday Schedule and Shrinking Church Community

Meggan Hayes [01:01:23] Yes. Yes. So Mormon Land came out with an episode called Shorter Lessons, Less Foyer time. Will new Sunday schedule lead to a drive through church members worry that community connections and deeper scripture understanding may become casualties in this change.

John Dehlin [01:01:41] Okay, so you're going to give people the background on what the story is about or is the video going to explain that?

Meggan Hayes [01:01:46] The video will explain it.

John Dehlin [01:01:47] Okay. All right, let's run this. Let's run the clip.

Guest 6 [01:01:51] Starting in September, the Sabbath experience will change for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints around the world. Services each Sunday will feature all of the faith's traditional classes for adults and youths rather than every other week. That means an hour long sacrament meeting, the faith's main worship gathering, followed by 25 minutes of Sunday school sessions for adults and teens, and then 25 minutes for all male priesthood classes. Along with the Women's Relief Society and young women classes, Children's primary will remain 55 minutes long. Essentially, church leaders are cramming classes and meetings that used to take three hours into the two hour block. The faith adopted in 2019.

John Dehlin [01:02:35] All right, that's a good explanation. Meggan, any thoughts, commentary on that?

Meggan Hayes [01:02:40] Well, there were some voices in the background. I think somebody on there had a child crying in the background, but that was not from my house. But yeah, I think he gave a good overview of the schedule. Went from three hours years ago, which is what I was used to, to two hours and they were alternating the second hour between Sunday school and gender based classes. And now they're going to cram it all into that second hour every week. And it's, it's a big deal. People have been talking about it for months and months and it's upon us because it starts in September.

John Dehlin [01:03:11] All right, well, let's, let's keep watching. I've already got some thoughts, but I'm going to save them. Let's go ahead and see what other clips you got.

Guest 3 [01:03:19] Okay.

Guest 6 [01:03:20] I mean, I think it depends on what the goal of Sunday school is. If the goal of Sunday school is to help people understand now that we're in the Hebrew Bible, difficult passages of scripture to get them to engage with the scriptures in a meaningful way and to help them, you know, create a space where everybody has a chance to share all of the things that they've learned, then this is going to not work. It's just not going to work. 25 minutes is simply not long enough to, to develop the kind of lesson that would foster that kind of learning. If, however, the goal of Sunday school is really just to be kind of a beefed up devotional thought that's primarily focused on affirmations of faith and statements of support for very narrow gospel principles, then I think it will work because that's exactly what it's built to do.

John Dehlin [01:04:21] I love it. Meggan, what are your thoughts?

Meggan Hayes [01:04:23] Yeah, I think he nailed it. So this is David Houston, I think is how they pronounced his last name. And he writes for Common Consent. By Common Consent, that blog. And I, I think he's right. If the goal is to just have platitudes and, you know, milk and no meat, then it's going to be just fine.

John Dehlin [01:04:44] I want, I, I'm really curious what, like the, like the Jacob Hansens and the, the, the, the quick guy, Greg Madsen, what those guys that are kind of hardcore Mormons that are like, we need more sacrifice, we need to be more orthodox, more hardcore. I'm curious what they think about the schedule change, because they're the ones always saying, we need the meat. You know, it's the podcast, it's the faithful, orthodox Mormon podcasters that are bringing the meat. And they're often criticizing church pr, you know, kind of almost advancing the idea that there's some deep church, deep state church where, you know, people of bureaucrats have taken over the church and, and are corrupting it at BYU and in other places.

John Dehlin [01:05:36] But I wonder if they like this schedule change, because I totally had the same comment. It basically means there's going to be just an endless diet of milk, meaning no substantive discourse. But I think the church leaders, I think we talked about this in previous Mormon News podcast episodes. I think that's by design.

John Dehlin [01:05:59] I think Mormon church leaders don't want substantive discussions. They don't want substantive scriptural study. They don't want substantive analysis of Mormon history. Certainly not. And they don't want substantive analysis of doctrine and theology because it's constantly changing and it's creepy and it's weird and it's problematic.

John Dehlin [01:06:22] So for all those reasons, they want to keep it shallow, they want to keep it social, and they don't want deep engagement. One of my favorite stories of all time, of the past 21 years is when I had lunch with Richard Bushman. I don't know if you know this, Meggan, but back in like 2007, 2008, Richard Bushman was doing a seminar at the Maxwell Institute, and I had started giving presentations on why people are leaving the church, back when I was trying to help the church get ahead of this problem.

John Dehlin [01:06:57] And so Richard Bushman invited me to the Maxwell Institute to present to a bunch of church historians on why people were leaving the church. Did you know the story, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:07:07] Have you told it on Mormon stories like, I knew you were helping the church, but keep going.

John Dehlin [01:07:11] I don't think I have. But anyway, I'm having lunch with Richard Bushman, and, you know, I'm talking about possible solutions to help the church members get more educated about history. And his analysis of Sunday school, Mormon Sunday school was that Mormon Sunday school is more of a ritual than it is an actual school. And he basically characterized it as this place where members get together weekly to reaffirm their faith and belief in the church, not to actually learn stuff and study. And he's a former stake president, former patriarch, and that was his view. And now it's even worse, right, because

Meggan Hayes [01:07:56] it went from an hour. Now it's going to be 25 minutes long. Like, what can you learn in 25 minutes?

John Dehlin [01:08:03] Well, they don't want you learning. That's the thing. They want you socializing. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:08:08] They want you just reaffirming what you already know.

John Dehlin [01:08:11] And even if these lessons are an hour long every other week, that's too long to go deep. That's long enough to go deep. And so I have to think the motivation for this, at least in part, was to just never let a conversation go longer than 10 or 15 minutes. Because by the time you have the announcements, the opening prayer, and then the closing prayer, wrap up, what, 10 minutes of a lesson? Fifteen minutes.

Guest 3 [01:08:37] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:08:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:08:40] Anyway. All right. Any reaction you have, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:08:44] Oh, I. I think we should go to the next video, next clip.

Guest 5 [01:08:47] I want to know why, like, what wasn't working? What. What do our leaders think wasn't working before? That they felt like, let's do this instead, and that will solve that problem. And that's something I haven't seen in all of the press releases and all of the videos. I haven't seen anything. Please fill me in if. If there is. But I haven't seen anything that said this was the problem and we're going to fix the problem.

John Dehlin [01:09:14] Oh, leaders don't explain themselves to the members. Cynthia Winward, what do you think about that, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:09:21] I loved that. I love that. She's like, why are we changing it? Why are we trying to fix what wasn't broken? Please tell me why we are changing this.

John Dehlin [01:09:32] I mean, I was gonna. I was gonna say that, like, the fact that the church made the schedule change. They went from three to two hours, and then they, you know, did the alternating second hour back to, like, you know, the combined second hour alternating.

John Dehlin [01:09:51] It really is new, relatively new, for the church to make a reversal so quickly after the original decision was made. And the first whiplash of that for me was the November 2015 policy that was just so horrific, so horrendous, that even though it was declared as revelation, within four years, less than four years, it's reversed also, you know, as a revelation.

John Dehlin [01:10:19] But, you know, of course, the brother aren't going to be explaining why, because it would imply what, that God's not making the decision right. What do you think, Meggan? Why, why isn't. Why aren't the church leaders explaining to the members every time they reverse the bad decisions that they make?

Meggan Hayes [01:10:37] Right. Because it makes God look so unorganized. They did the same thing with the. The other general conference session, that fifth session, that was the priesthood session, and then it was alternating between priesthood and relief Society or young women's. And then they did away with it and then they brought. Brought it back and now it's gone again. Like, they. They can't say that God is in charge of all of that at the same time changing it that often, because then why. Why do we have God if he can't make up his mind better than, say, a regular human being?

John Dehlin [01:11:11] Yeah, it's clear they're just making stuff up and trying stuff. But the fact that they're doing it, they're not even trying to pretend that, like, these decisions have any staying power. So it must show how desperate they are, because they gotta know this is a bad look and destabilizing to the membership. So they must. I mean, they're clearly reading the stats that we all know are factual behind the scenes, which is that the church is hemorrhaging. So these whiplashy changes back and forth are clearly a sign of how desperate they're becoming and how plugged in, at least internally, they are to the real numbers. And by the way, let's not forget a major change that we're seeing this month and this week, which is after the term Mormon is denounced as a victory for Satan and the entire church is told never to use it again and move away from it.

John Dehlin [01:12:04] We now even this week are reading reports that under Dallin H. Oaks administration, he's telling people that they can start using the term again.

Meggan Hayes [01:12:12] Yeah, behind the scenes, of course.

John Dehlin [01:12:15] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:12:15] So he's not going to stand up in conference and say, turns out God changed his mind and he's not offended anymore.

John Dehlin [01:12:21] God needed that rule for about six or seven years, and then he. He was good with going back to the waivers. All right, should we go to the next clip?

Guest 3 [01:12:31] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:12:32] Okay. I hope this is the right one.

Guest 6 [01:12:35] We're giving up In a sense, the community focus. Like, I think that it's important that we spend time in our families and alone studying, and I think it's equally important that we spend time in community studying with people. I think if we change it to just like, here's the three spiritual thoughts I had as I read. We're not benef. We're not actually studying together, and that entire aspect of community is lost.

John Dehlin [01:12:59] What do you think about that argument, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:13:02] I think he's right. And I think that's how a lot of the members are feeling. Like we. In the 80s and 90s, the church was my community. It was everything that I did. And they keep trying to make it more palatable to people, and they're stripping away the parts that made people want to go in the first place.

John Dehlin [01:13:22] Yeah. I think mental health. You know, studies have shown that if religion, if attending a religion contributes positively to one's mental health over someone who doesn't, the active ingredient in that is. Is community. It's not scripture, it's not doctrine, it's not theology. It's community. And they're. They're literally weakening and continually eviscerating the most important active ingredient in whatever success the Mormon Church has had.

Meggan Hayes [01:13:56] Yeah, like, you give people five minutes to get to class. That's like middle school. Like, we don't want you talking in the halls because you're going to make a bad choice. Like, we get in there and sit down and learn nothing for 25 minutes, and then you have five minutes to get somewhere else. You don't get to chat with the people who you haven't seen since last week.

John Dehlin [01:14:14] Yeah, it's sad because I want the church to be the healthiest possible thing to its members. And if they're going to. If they're going to bleed and weaken and ultimately kill the church's most important asset, the community, they're just literally going to be a hedge fund.

Guest 2 [01:14:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:32] That's what the Mormon Church is becoming is a hedge fund. Because they're going to lose all the members, and guess what? They won't need them.

Meggan Hayes [01:14:39] Yeah. It reminds me of what has happened with Scientology.

John Dehlin [01:14:42] Yeah. Because a 7 to 12% return on 300 or 500 billion, you don't need tithing. At some point, the members tithing is going to become irrelevant. And that's why the church doesn't care about the member experience. They're not making these changes to improve the member experience. They're making these changes to try and minimize the hemorrhaging and to try and Protect their, their reputation, their, you know, the, the defections. But they're not making these decisions based on what's best for the members. They're just not.

Meggan Hayes [01:15:17] No, it just feels like they've lost the plot.

John Dehlin [01:15:19] Yeah, they've lost the plot. Well said. Well said. All right, next clip.

Guest 5 [01:15:23] I was a youth Sunday school teacher for many, many years and I would ask my students, because we were doing the come follow me, which home centered church supported? And I would ask them, have you studied this with your family? And the answer was always no. I don't understand how going down to 20 minute lessons, I mean, is their goal to make it so that they are trying to force even more of that gospel study at home? Because it's not happening as it is, at least in my experience. And also the whole idea of like home centered. Well, okay, home, maybe that's great if you're in a fully active family with, you know, two parents and siblings that you can discuss things with. But for so many people, like, home centered is a very lonely approach.

John Dehlin [01:16:11] What do you think about that, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:16:13] I thought she brought up a great point, something that I hadn't actually thought about. Like they keep saying home centered church supported, but not everybody's home looks like the ideal Mormon family with a mom and dad and six to eight kids, especially not anymore. So if someone's supposed to be sharing all this information with this come follow me manual at home, but they're the only person in their home that doesn't look very fun for them.

John Dehlin [01:16:39] Yeah, yeah. I love the Cynthia Windward person. I need to have her on Mormon Stories. She probably won't come, but I'd love to have her. If any of you know Cynthia Winward, tell her I've invited her to come on Mormon Stories. I'd love to. I'd love to have her. Do you know her? Do you follow her?

Meggan Hayes [01:16:56] So I listened to some of her stuff when I was kind of transitioning out of the church and she's brilliant. Yeah, I love the stuff that she says.

Guest 2 [01:17:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:17:06] All right, let's roll the next clip of Cynthia Winward.

Guest 5 [01:17:09] If you're going to have a 20 minute drive thru lesson, you know, do you get fries with that? I don't know. I mean, it just feels like a drive through. It's fast food, religion and so fine, okay. Ask one question and have a discussion on that. I mean, and let's be honest, are we really going to get a 20, 25 minute lesson? I mean, the best part about being a Latter Day Saint for me is the hall class.

John Dehlin [01:17:33] Like, I love, is this woman active. She's literally calling the church's revealed policies fast food religion publicly. Can I get surprised with that? What the heck?

Guest 5 [01:17:48] I know.

Meggan Hayes [01:17:49] I don't actually know what her, like, what she perceives her status as, you know, like pimo or nuanced or I don't know. But I love her commentary. This. Everybody should go listen to this entire Mormon Land episode. It is fantastic.

John Dehlin [01:18:05] I'm pretty sure the women of At Last she said it are active and faithful. I think that's their brand. I think that's their shtick, so.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:12] Right. I just don't know how. I mean, I know she still attends, she talks about her callings, but I just don't know, like in her mind and in her heart, like, how nuanced she might be.

John Dehlin [01:18:20] Oh, of course they're nuanced.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:21] Yeah, but.

John Dehlin [01:18:22] But, you know, I'm struck by like, what could get you excommunicated just five or 10 years ago, like, Lee and Cody Young got excommunicated for starting a support group for questioning Mormons in Ohio. Sam Young got excommunicated for trying to advocate for the protection of children from child abuse. Natasha Helfer got excommunicated for advocating evidence based ethical mental health principles. You know, Bill Reel and I and Jeremy Runnels got, you know, excommunicated for, or Grant Palmer or whoever for just trying to encourage the open discussion of history or in my case, supporting same sex marriage. Like, this is the type of stuff that would have gotten someone excommunicated just a few years ago. Public criticism of the brethren or their teachings. How do you think Cynthia Winward is getting away with this? Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:19:19] I think maybe the church is just getting a little shy of publicly excommunicating people because they know they're hemorrhaging. I think they're just being a little more leery.

John Dehlin [01:19:33] I mean, the truth is, prior to, you know, 2005, when I started Mormon stories, what the church would do is they would excommunicate somebody and then silence them. And I try, I did my best over the past 20 years to make disciplinary councils, a sacrament and a celebration where the me, you know, where supporters would show up outside the stake center in Mass and the media would come and we would live stream it. And I did that with Bill Real and I did that with Sam Young, and I did that with Natasha Helfer and others.

John Dehlin [01:20:04] And I think that has led to more people leaving the church, the more visible. We made disciplinary councils, we just made, made. We punished the church for its past history of excommunicating and silencing people. And I think the church maybe in one area has gotten smart and realized that when you excommunicate honest, sincere critics, it's going to. It's going to come back to bite you in ways that do more damage. That's my. That's my interpretation. What do you think?

Meggan Hayes [01:20:39] Well, because when Sam Young was excommunicated, a lot of people followed him out. And I think if Cynthia was excommunicated, the same thing would happen because she is likely helping a lot of people to stay in.

John Dehlin [01:20:50] Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's go to the next clip.

Guest 6 [01:20:57] An obscure 70 will be getting as much or more screen time as the Sermon on the Mount. And so I don't understand why we are investing so much time as a church using General Conference tops for instructions. It just doesn't. It doesn't make much sense to me if I'm being totally frank.

John Dehlin [01:21:16] Holy moly. He's basically. What do you think of that, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:21:21] I loved it because it's another thing I had never even considered when we studied General Conference talks, I was like, this is Scripture. But what he's saying is if you're spending 20 minutes on the New Testament and 20 minutes on in priesthood and relief study on General Conference talks, which is all they talk about, then, yes, an obscure 70 is getting more screen time in Mormon Church than the Sermon on the Mount. Like, they might have gone to General Conference and said, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. But when you're talking about what people said and you're talking about a 70 instead of Jesus's words, that is interesting.

John Dehlin [01:22:02] I'm struck by how disparaging he talks. He's devaluing the 70. An obscure 70. Is this David Houston guy, a faithful member in good standing. Like, that's.

Meggan Hayes [01:22:14] It was hard for me to find any information about him. I couldn't even find a picture he writes for by common consent.

John Dehlin [01:22:20] Yeah. So he's faithful because that's a faithful blog. Yeah. Wow, that's wild. Yeah. Again, that's the type of commentary that would get someone excommunicated just five, ten years ago. So, I mean, I guess kudos to the church for not excommunicating people as much. But again, we know that they probably just learned that it backfires, although it took them a long time to figure that out.

Meggan Hayes [01:22:42] Yeah, they had to excommunicate quite a few people.

John Dehlin [01:22:45] Yeah. All right, let's go the next clip. I love this coverage, Meggan, for our

Guest 5 [01:22:50] podcast at Last she said it, we had a social media post a couple of weeks ago where we just asked the question, is there a church program you wish would come back? Like, over 57,000 people interacted with this post, and they were saying roadshows, dance festivals, homemaking. I mean, I'm from the Los Angeles area. We went to Mormon Night at Disneyland. It was $10. I mean, everyone had all of these amazing things that happened in the past. And I get. I get it. We can't go back to the past. A lot of that was built on the free labor of women. However, it was really interesting to see how much people. The nostalgia for what the church used to be and now to just look at it, what it's become, and there's a deep mourning for so many of us, including myself.

Guest 4 [01:23:41] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:23:42] Meggan, what do you think about that commentary?

Meggan Hayes [01:23:44] I have two comments. First of all, my heart is broken for someone like her who is seeing this happen and really trying to stay in because she longs for that community, for friends, for a real sense of fellowship. And the second thing that I thought of is the church could absolutely go back to that without the free labor of women. If they just paid people to foster that community, they could have paid positions like. My husband is a parks and recreation director. He has been planning events. He gets paid to plan events. There are people who do that who are very good at it. The church could go back to the past without going back to the past if they really wanted to.

John Dehlin [01:24:31] Do you remember roadshows and festivals, youth conferences? And do you. Do you have fond memories of them?

Meggan Hayes [01:24:38] Absolutely. If anything, in the church I have fond memories of it is those. Because we did a roadshow, and it was written by one of the women in the award. It was fantastic. It was super funny. We spent weekends practicing it, and then we videoed it. I mean, it was a whole thing. It was wonderful.

John Dehlin [01:24:55] Yeah, me too. That's. That's what. That's what made me who I am. And, you know, my parents got divorced when I was in middle school. I could have. You know, my older siblings were really struggling. The church made me, in so many ways, who I am, which is why I care about it, which is why I try to help it, which is why I, in some ways, don't want to let it go and why I claim to be Mormon to this day, even though I miscommunicated and. Yeah, you know, I. I remember when they were getting rid of, like, road shows and. And temple trips and even, like, the pageants, like, Hill Cumor Pageant.

John Dehlin [01:25:35] So many things. Golden green balls, Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, so much. I remember the justification was people are too busy now and the church is taking too much time. I just think that's where prophets who can actually see the future and know things would really come in handy because they should know better the less you demand of your members. Even Brigham Young said it, a church that doesn't require everything of its members doesn't probably have the power to save them.

John Dehlin [01:26:06] And the church that isn't demanding, isn't really demanding, probably isn't really adding much value to the lives of the members. And the more they've gutted these programs, the more they've weakened the true crown jewel of Mormonism, which is the community. And I would just argue. I disagree.

John Dehlin [01:26:27] Why not defy social norms and continue demanding, you know, high amounts of devotion for the membership? The Amish do it like Orthodox Jews do it. You can be a religion that doesn't cave to cultural trends. What if The Mormon Church 10 or 20 years ago had said, no screens, no smartphones anywhere?

John Dehlin [01:26:55] We're saying no to smartphones. We're saying no to the Internet, and we're going to be learning from the best books. And yeah, we're going to just skip the whole social media thing, just like we skipped coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, pornography. We're just saying no to all social media and screens, and we're going to say yes to roadshows and temple trips and youth conferences and dance festivals. Do you think they'd be in a stronger position now or a weaker position now if they had done that, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:27:35] Likely stronger. Honestly, people who sacrifice for something are more likely to stay with it.

John Dehlin [01:27:42] And also all those things have harmed the members. You know, so, like, didn't. Isn't Facebook now paying $18 billion because they created addictive products that they're being sued in a punitive way for, for harming and leading, contributing to a nationwide youth and young adult mental health crisis?

Guest 3 [01:28:04] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:28:05] Well, that's something a prophet could have foreseen. And a prophet could have added to the word of wisdom certain prohibitions that could have saved a lot of members a lot of depression and anxiety and suicidality and self harm.

Meggan Hayes [01:28:19] Yes.

Guest 3 [01:28:20] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:28:20] Well, and if the church wants people to have more children and they want them to afford them, then they could start paying the women to do these events and foster more community at the same time.

John Dehlin [01:28:33] Yeah. Meggan, what's this last clip? Is this. Is this last clip part of this past segment or a future one?

Meggan Hayes [01:28:41] So it's part of the past one. Because, Cynthia, there was a clip I didn't play from her, but she said that one of her memories is that in the church they kept President Oaks when he, before he was prophet, would say. She said she remembered it from 20 years ago, that he would say, the church isn't a social club. You're just supposed to come here to talk about Jesus. And she wonders if now that he's prophet, that's why this change is being made. So this was just a tiny clip of this comment.

John Dehlin [01:29:07] All right, let's roll it. You were not called to invite people to join a social club whose rules are made by its members. You are called to testify of Jesus Christ and to invite people to do what he has required to come unto him and walk the path he has defined by his doctrines to reach exaltation in the celestial kingdom. Okay, what do you think about that?

Meggan Hayes [01:29:37] Yeah, I just. That's something that she had in her memory of why she thinks these changes are being made. And we have seen. Seen that Dallin is running the church and. And changing the direction of the church since he's become prophet.

John Dehlin [01:29:49] I love that you call him Dallin. I'm sure he and faithful members appreciate that familiarity.

Meggan Hayes [01:29:56] Oops.

John Dehlin [01:29:59] You know, I just. Can I just say, is Anyone out there, Ms. Gordon B. Hinckley, like. Gordon B. Hinckley presided over the September six and a lot of those decades of non transparent history. And I think he was one of the originators of Ensign Peak. I mean, he's got his downfalls, but this strict, harsh, legalistic, impersonal brand of Mormonism that Oaks and some would say Bednar kind of represent. Give me Gordon b. Hinckley Mormonism 100 out of 100 times.

Guest 2 [01:30:45] Right.

Meggan Hayes [01:30:46] Well, in his rapport with his wife and. Yeah, I agree.

John Dehlin [01:30:51] Bednar.

Meggan Hayes [01:30:52] No, Gordon B. Hinckley. His right. No, not Petnar.

John Dehlin [01:30:55] Yeah. Yeah, well, I didn't know what you meant.

Meggan Hayes [01:30:57] No, no, Gordon Hinckley is like the. The loving relationship that they seem to have.

John Dehlin [01:31:02] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:31:03] And the way that she showed up, very authentic.

John Dehlin [01:31:06] Yeah. Yeah. The. The church has really gone downhill since Hinckley died. I think Monson was. Had dementia.

Meggan Hayes [01:31:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:17] And then Nelson really broke the church, and now Oaks is try. Oaks is not the man to save a broken church by any stretch. Plus, he's 93. Everyone I know who has direct access to Oaks says that he has Parkinson's, he can't walk unassisted, that he. He.

Guest 6 [01:31:39] He.

John Dehlin [01:31:39] He has. He has dementia, and that he's not a functioning, you know, competent human at this point. So even if he were in his healthiest state, he'd probably be a disaster, but he's certainly not that either, so. Oh, this is. It's. It's kind of like watching a painful train wreck.

Meggan Hayes [01:32:03] Yeah. Yeah. Well, and it's. I mean, I think you feel similarly. This was the culture that raised us not.

John Dehlin [01:32:13] I love the church, and I think it has the potential to do a lot of good today. And I want the members in it to have a good experience. And I want the church to take that 300 or 500 billion and make its members in the world a better place. So I don't want the church to be in decline. I don't want the church to hemorrhage. I don't want the church to have a bad reputation. I just want it to be able to do what it does with honesty and with ethics and with, you know, compassion and kindness and love.

Meggan Hayes [01:32:42] Yeah. Yeah. For it to feel more like the Hinckley Church, where we can be out there and we can be happy and we can show the world how peculiar we are.

John Dehlin [01:32:52] The good news, Meggan, is they're listening. Like, they are making changes in response to you and Rebecca and RFM and Bill Real and Nemo and Julie Hanks and me and many, many others like. And Alyssa Grenfell, like, the. The church is paying attention and we're helping it change. And I just hope they can get up a charismatic, kind leader in there who's young enough to actually make a difference. And maybe Uchtdorf will be that prophet, because I hear Eyring's not super healthy.

Meggan Hayes [01:33:33] Yeah, I'm hoping for Uchtdorf.

John Dehlin [01:33:37] We'll see. All right, one more story. Is that right?

Church Survey Targeting Non-Members

Meggan Hayes [01:33:40] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:33:41] All right, tell us the story.

Meggan Hayes [01:33:43] So this was interesting to me. This article just came out, let's see, about a week or a little over a week ago, and it says, activity sharing. A simple way for Latter Day Saints to invite friends to church and ward events, which in and of itself doesn't seem that particularly.

John Dehlin [01:34:01] Where's the beef, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:34:02] Right, exciting. So then it says, using the church calendar, ward leaders can publish activities to their wardrobe website, and members can then share those events with friends with links or social media. Published activities can appear in online search results, making it easy for anyone looking for local worship services, events, activities, or service opportunities to find them and tap the RSVP button. That's just a brief description of what this is for anyone who's not familiar, because this was not around when I was an active member, so it's somewhat new.

Meggan Hayes [01:34:34] The Reason that this is interesting to me is if you go to the next slide. Just this past week I was sent a survey from the church and this was the email. It says hello, you are receiving this email because you previously RSVP yes to attend an activity hosted by the church. I'm working with an independent agency to conduct a brief survey on behalf of the church to better understand attendees experiences and gather feedback that may help inform future activities. We would greatly appreciate a few minutes of your time to complete this survey. And it's from Joe Rigby at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Meggan Hayes [01:35:13] Okay, so yeah, so I got the email for the survey because at some point in the past year I RSVP for an event because I had found one of these event pages and I was like, oh, I haven't seen this before. I'm going to RSVP to see what happens.

Meggan Hayes [01:35:29] So then I got the survey and it's interesting to me that this article in the Church News, because these activity sharing pages have been around for years came out at the same time time roughly that I received this survey request. So I just thought would be interesting to talk about survey a tiny bit. I'm not going to go through all of the questions because there were 43 I think. Yeah, but yeah, go to the next slide.

John Dehlin [01:35:53] Okay.

Meggan Hayes [01:35:54] So the survey began by screening specifically for people who say they are not members of the church. That's how it started. And then there was a pretty extensive demographic section that they wanted to know. Age, gender, location, race, education, marital status, religious affiliation, how religious or spiritual someone considers themselves and even how often they attended religious services. Then this was one of the questions that really stood out to me. John, do you want to read that?

John Dehlin [01:36:27] Okay. The one at the top.

Meggan Hayes [01:36:30] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:36:31] Are there any parts of your life where you're looking for more meaning, clarity or a stronger sense of direction? Feel free to share as much or as little as you'd like.

Meggan Hayes [01:36:44] So the survey was directed to people who aren't members who RSVP to an event and they are trying to ascertain it. Sounds like, what are they looking for? Why did they RSB RSVP to this event and then look at the next? Go back to that slide and read the next one that's underneath it. I had to split it side by side so it could be bigger.

John Dehlin [01:37:05] But when you consider your spiritual beliefs, what would you say you are looking for? And then it's the options are growth, salvation, inner peace, forgiveness, hope, purpose, truth, healing, meaning, guidance and other.

Meggan Hayes [01:37:25] Okay, so I found I Mean, I want to hear your thoughts on this, because I found it so telling that the church has these sites. They're having people rsvp and then they're sending out a survey to non members who RSVP and asking them, what are you looking for when you RSVP for an event? If we had the event geared toward making you less lonely, say, would you be more likely to rsvp? I mean, that's not what they said. But what, what are you hearing here?

John Dehlin [01:37:58] I mean, I don't know. Tell me if this sounds right, but they're basically fishing for, you know, a problem that they can provide themselves as the solution to.

Guest 3 [01:38:10] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:38:12] Which on the one hand. Okay, devil's advocate, what's wrong with that? Like, how do we meet your needs? Hey, non Mormons out there, we want to use our money and our wealth and our power and our status and our membership to bless the world. What are your needs? So that we can meet your needs.

Meggan Hayes [01:38:30] I think that's great. I. I also wish that, like they say they can, they could ask God

John Dehlin [01:38:35] and he would tell them, who would God survey? Right. What, what, what marketing research firm would God use to conduct his marketing research?

Meggan Hayes [01:38:43] Well, it looks like Boncom is the Bonneville Communications. Yes, it's the one on here. So then the survey went through satisfaction with the RSVP process, which was a lot of questions, like 10 questions. The ease of using the RSVP, whether church terminology processes were confusing specifically because the respondent wasn't a member. Like, did they say ward? And they didn't know what that meant. Whether this was their first church activity, whether they attended satisfaction with the activity, whether they felt welcomed, interest in attending another church activity, likelihood of recommending one, what can improve the experience, and whether they will remain on the email and contact list and then go to the next slide. Because this one I thought was particularly interesting as well. Go ahead and read that.

John Dehlin [01:39:31] Have you recently experienced any of these life changes in the past year? Select all that apply. Starting or resuming higher education, change of religion, marriage, new job, chronic illness, divorce, death of a loved one, moving, birth of a child, or prefer not to say, or none of the above.

Meggan Hayes [01:39:52] Does any of that sound familiar to you from any other church publications?

Guest 2 [01:39:56] John,

Meggan Hayes [01:40:00] Pop quizzing me all the time.

John Dehlin [01:40:01] So, yeah, now I'm getting my own medicine. Yeah. Tell me what you're thinking, because I. Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:40:10] So in the Preach My Gospel manual, in two different chapters, it tells missionaries to specifically seek people out.

John Dehlin [01:40:18] Oh, yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:40:19] Who have experienced a major life change. And now the church has put out a survey asking non members who RS RSVP'd for an event whether they've experienced a major life change.

John Dehlin [01:40:33] So it's just a fancy way of missionary work through market research. Just, you know, it's basically missionary work disguised as market research. Is that right?

Meggan Hayes [01:40:44] Yeah, I just found it fascinating and that the article came out in the Church News that corresponded with the survey. I was like, there are some departments, I think, that might be talking to one another.

John Dehlin [01:40:56] Yeah, that's fascinating, huh? Well, that's, you know, the. The church is. One of the things they're actually really, really good at is doing membership research, marketing research, you know, membership satisfaction. Again, it's just there's a treasure trove of membership experience and satisfaction data that, like the membership activity statistics, they're never going to publish. But if. If that information were published, it would be one of the most fascinating things to ever come out of Mormonism.

Guest 2 [01:41:33] Right.

Meggan Hayes [01:41:33] Well, and I. So I think we've come full circle now. Like, the church is not being transparent, and they're still not being transparent. Yeah, sadly. But I would love to see the results of even just one of the surveys that they've done.

John Dehlin [01:41:47] Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's fascinating, Meggan. Well, what a wonderful set of stories that you've pulled together. Because we've got a few minutes left. Is it okay if I play a couple quick clips and we talk about them?

Meggan Hayes [01:42:05] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:42:06] Okay, so I sent these to you, so these aren't going to be totally new to you, but let's just go ahead and break them down, you know, while we have a few more minutes. So this first one comes from ex Mormon Reddit, and it's basically, is that a black woman or do you know,

Meggan Hayes [01:42:29] I actually think that they're an athlete, and I was not sure on how they identify with their gender.

John Dehlin [01:42:36] Well, she's somehow at a gas station with some white Mormon guy who looks like a returned missionary without a tie, and he's explaining the priesthood band, and I thought it was fascinating. His justification. Do you mind if we play a little bit of this and maybe break it down for a few minutes in our remaining time?

Guest 2 [01:43:00] Yeah, go ahead.

Guest 4 [01:43:01] Go.

Meggan Hayes [01:43:01] I listen to it. It is really interesting.

Priesthood Restrictions and the Curse of Cain

John Dehlin [01:43:03] All right, so let's. Let's play a little.

▶ Video Clip 5

Video Clip 5 [01:43:05] Michael, I've been getting a lot of comments lately in my video saying that the Mormon Church believes that black people are from the curse of Cain and that we're inferior because of that. Could you mind educating them on what that actually is and why that's not the case?

Video Clip 5 [01:43:23] Well, if anyone tries to tell you that the LDS Church teaches that black people have the curse of Cain and are somehow lesser than you can respond by saying in Southern Protestant America, America is a vastly and has been evangelical Protestant nation and culture. The Southern Protestant preachers developed this idea of the curse of Cain or the curse of Ham to justify slavery in the south, especially in the early 19th century when abolition beginning to be talked about. And one thing to note is Brigham Young grew up Protestant. He was born and raised a Protestant before he became a Latter Day Saint. And when he became a Latter Day Saint, some of those cultural Protestant tiltings and doctrines led in to the Restoration movement that followed Brigham Young and subsequent leaders.

Video Clip 5 [01:44:14] And so as Brigham Young did that in 1852 in the Utah Territory legislature, he included doctrines and ideas from the curse of Cain to subordinate black people and talk about voting rights and what have you. But this was not a thus saith the Lord. This was not a formal revelation, any kind of formal revelation. This was simply Brigham Young's bigoted and racist ideas that came from his Southern Protestant background that had bled over into the Restoration movement. So if anyone tries to tell you that this is a doctrine or a dogma of the Restoration, you can look at them and say it's true that the curse of Cain and racist policies as such influenced and heavily impacted the Restoration.

Video Clip 5 [01:44:56] But it's absolutely not a doctrine of the Restoration. Not found in the Book of Mormon, not found in the pure doctrines and teachings and dogma and gospel of our faith. And for that reason it's just, it's just simply not true that Latter Day Saints are racist in that way.

John Dehlin [01:45:15] Holy moly, I want to flip a table, but tell me what your reactions are to that.

Meggan Hayes [01:45:20] Meggan, I am currently reading Second Class Saints.

John Dehlin [01:45:23] Tell us more. Tell us more.

Meggan Hayes [01:45:26] I am in the beginning chapters and he obviously hasn't read it. Okay, Brigham Young, he was trying to just. This guy's trying to say that Brigham Young just said it politically. No, he stood up in sermons and said this. Just because he didn't say thus saith the Lord doesn't mean that people didn't take it that way. And it doesn't mean that he didn't believe it that way. He didn't have to say, the next thing I'm going to say is a doctrine. The other thing that guy said that really bothered me, he said it's not found in the Book of Mormon. If we deleted everything out of the church that's not found in the Book of Mormon, the church would not exist. In the way that we know it right now, the Melchizedek priesthood. Is that in the Book of Mormon? Is the word of wisdom in the Book of Mormon?

John Dehlin [01:46:11] I mean, temple ceremony, baptisms for the dead, the succession of prophets, polygamy, you know, theosis. None of that's in the Book of Mormon.

Meggan Hayes [01:46:23] Yeah, yeah. And, and if it was just a racist thought that Brigham Young had and it bled into the restoration, well, he was the prophet. What does that tell us about prophets? If a prophet can be that influenced by the world around him and God can't stop him from doing that, even though God knows it's racist and he doesn't want it, then why do we need prophets?

John Dehlin [01:46:44] Yeah, that's very fair. Great take. Meggan, can I share a couple things that.

Meggan Hayes [01:46:49] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:46:51] So first of all, what are the chances that this guy's literally puppy gas, like you heard the click go off where the gas tank is full and that this is just a, like, happenstance, random black woman asks random informed white Mormon guy about the Curse of Cain and he happens to have a five minute prepared script ready to, to talk about how, you know, the curse of Cain was never doctrine. Was that completely staged or was that authentically spontaneous?

Meggan Hayes [01:47:33] It definitely felt staged. Hey, random person, I don't know who looks like a missionary without a tie. What do you think about the Curse of Cain?

John Dehlin [01:47:42] Black first could ask you the question while filming it on us. You know, anyway, it's funny, but also it's just incredibly deceptive. Now, it's true that Brigham Young grew up in a racist time and it's true that Mormonism, you know, the Mormon Church or Brigham Young didn't invent the Curse of Cain and even Joseph Smith didn't invent the curse of Cain. What's unique about the Curse of Cain and Mormonism is that the Mormon Church is one of the only churches in the history of Christianity that wrote the curse of Cain into Scripture.

John Dehlin [01:48:22] The curse of Joseph Smith, other than the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith could not create scripture without injecting the curse of Cain into it. Because you know what convenient omissions that Gomer made when he was talking about the Curse of Cain? He said it's not in the Book of Mormon and it's not Mormon doctrine. But guess what?

John Dehlin [01:48:48] It's in the Doctrine and Covenants and it's in the Book of Abraham and it's in the Book of Moses, and he conveniently leaves that out. And then when you combine that with the curse of dark skin and the Lamanite curse of dark Skin. Joseph Smith could not produce scripture without creating doctrine that God curses wicked people with dark skin.

Guest 2 [01:49:12] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:49:13] He was incapable of creating scripture that didn't write that into it. So that is it. That has to be an intentional omission. And in that sense, it's incredibly deceptive. And he just kind of throws Brigham Young under the bus as if it was just Brigham Young who was racist and we don't have to believe it anymore. And he totally skips Joseph. Not just Joseph Smith, but like 3/4 of the Mormon scriptural canon. And how is it possible that he doesn't do that intentionally?

Meggan Hayes [01:49:44] Right. Well, and not to mention all of the prophets after Joseph Smith and Brigham Young that perpetuated the ban. Yeah, what about them? This wasn't one rogue prophet. It's not like the rogue artists who, you know, put Joseph Smith with his face looking at the plates. No, this. This was a long succession of prophets for many years.

John Dehlin [01:50:08] Yeah. Everybody needs to read Second Class Saints. Check out my I Thought 1718 part series with Matt Harris on any of your favorite YouTuber podcast platform, Spotify. Whatever. There's visuals. Matt Harris is brilliant. That book, Second Class Saints is brilliant. It should be a top five book along with John Turner's Joseph Smith and the Rise of All the American Prophet. John Turner's book Brigham Young Pioneer Prophet, which I'm currently now. I've recorded two parts of a multi part series with John Turner and Brigham Young that'll be releasing soon on Mormon Stories and Fawn Brody's no Man Knows My History. Let's make those four books amongst along with Jeff Strong's Torn Along. Let's make those five books the top five selling books in Mormonism right now. Meggan, is there time for one more video clip before we. Before we end?

Same-Sex Attraction and Church Teachings on Marriage

Meggan Hayes [01:51:05] Let's try it.

John Dehlin [01:51:06] Let's give it a try. All right. You've already seen this clip. It's a topic near and dear to my heart because it was a big part of my PhD for my dissertation. Let's go ahead and roll the clip.

Guest 4 [01:51:22] To build our family. I'm kind of in this weird situation where I'm also a gay Latter Day Saint who used IVF to build our family. But I couldn't disagree more with the path that Charlie and Ryan are taking through surrogacy. But before I try to explain that, I think that we can all agree that wanting children is a good thing. The desire to build a family.

John Dehlin [01:51:43] Tell it. Tell us, Meggan, who Charlie and Ryan are. For those who don't know.

Meggan Hayes [01:51:47] So Charlie was the mascot for byu.

Guest 2 [01:51:52] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:51:52] Charlie Bird. He is. Which made him very famous. And he is gay. He married another man and they are somehow not excommunicated, still participating in their

John Dehlin [01:52:03] ward, as we know.

Meggan Hayes [01:52:05] Right. And they have announced recently that they're going to go through surrogacy IVF to try to have a child, which, on

John Dehlin [01:52:14] the one hand, how is this in any way the Mormon Church I grew up in? On the other hand, I guess, does that mean, congratulations, Mormon Church, that you're letting gay men get married and have babies and be active and serve in a church and not get excommunicated? Should we call that a good thing? I think we should, yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:52:32] Yeah. I mean, I think that it hurts people who aren't being allowed that privilege at the same time, that yay for them. I think both things can be true at the same time where there are people who are actively being harmed by the church's stance on this, who trying to do the same thing as Charlie Bird, but they don't have the level of privilege that he has.

John Dehlin [01:52:49] Baby steps, Meggan. Baby steps. All right, let's keep the clip rolling.

▶ Video Clip 6

Video Clip 6 [01:52:54] Family. To love children and sacrifice for them is rooted deeply in who we are as children of God. And I understand that desire deeply. Growing up with same sex attraction, I still wanted a life in the church. I wanted a wife, children, and the eternal family that I believed in. And today, my wife and my children are some of the greatest sources of joy in my life. So this isn't about saying you shouldn't want a family. The question is whether every sincere desire should be pursued in every way possible. Years ago, when I was trying to figure out what to call my book, I was wondering what personalized counsel God might give someone in my situation.

Video Clip 6 [01:53:38] And this phrase kept coming to mind. Exclude not thyself. I think we tend to see ourselves as the exception. And for sexual minorities in the church, that can mean seeing ourselves as exceptions either to God's laws or to his blessings. And I came to believe that I was neither. I wasn't an exception to his commandments and I wasn't an exception to his blessings. For a while, I assumed that marriage to a woman would feel more like a sacrifice than a blessing. Thankfully, I was completely and totally wrong. And that is why this matters so much to me. When Latter Day Saints celebrate a same sex couple intentionally creating a family in which a child by design will not have both a mother and a father, and we're communicating something about what we believe marriage and family are for, especially to young Latter Day Saints experiencing Same sex attraction.

Video Clip 6 [01:54:36] We're telling them whether the doctrine applies to them too. And I worry that we're teaching young Latter Day Saints that compassion requires celebration. That's an incredibly confusing message for a teenager who's trying to understand discipleship, let alone us as adults. Charlie and Ryan's desire for children may be rooted in something genuinely good, but good desires don't automatically make every way of fulfilling them good. And I don't think loving someone requires us to pretend otherwise. I think we can look at Ryan and Charlie with genuine affection, refuse cruelty or mockery toward them, and still believe that children are entitled to both a mother and a father.

Video Clip 6 [01:55:24] Those convictions don't cancel each other out. And I think part of the challenge of discipleship is learning how to hold both. I'm kind of in this weird situation where I'm also.

John Dehlin [01:55:37] What's your final take in one minute or two?

Meggan Hayes [01:55:40] Why is he even saying this? If the Brethren have a problem with Ryan and Charlie, why aren't they the ones saying it? Why does he think he needs to come out here and say that what they're doing is not supported by the church and it's not doctrine? Why is that his job? If the Brethren are not doing anything about it, then I think his responsibility would be to just celebrate them, which he's saying then condones them. But is that not what the Brethren are doing? Is silence from the Brethren not condoning what they are doing?

John Dehlin [01:56:16] I mean, the Brethren are. The Brethren are just feedback. Push back a little bit. The Brethren are telling the world that marriage is between a man and a woman and that that's the way the family should be. The proclamation of the family says that.

Meggan Hayes [01:56:32] Yeah, but they know that Charlie and Ryan are very public about what they're doing.

John Dehlin [01:56:36] Yeah, they're not condemning or punishing Charlie and Ryan.

Meggan Hayes [01:56:39] Yeah, right. So why does sky need to do that?

John Dehlin [01:56:41] Yeah, well, that's how the I'll. We'll just end. That's how the Mormon Internet is these days is. The Brethren are saying less and less. The days of like Gordon B. Hinckley being interviewed by Mike Wallace or Larry King or Jeffrey Holland interviewed by the BBC. Those days are bye bye. And now the church leaves it to Greg Matson and Jacob Hansen and. And Fair and this guy sky to. To just say whatever they want because the brother and sure aren't going to speak out on any real issues. So that's just the way the world is. Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [01:57:14] Yeah, I, I just don't think that because sky has found a way that works for him that it has to work for everybody. And I think that is what he's saying, is that this is how I have found a way to be in the church. And you should do the same thing. It just doesn't work for everybody.

John Dehlin [01:57:30] Well, a couple quick super chats. Autistic grandma writes, starting late here, a section of land is one square mile which is equal to 640 acres. Thanks for the important weekly news. And Steve Tavernier writes, as a clerk, years ago, I used to count how many were attending soccer meeting. They know how many are attending every Sunday. All right, Meggan, we have to end in like, one minute. I just want to thank you so much, Meggan, for your incredible work every week. I look forward to my time with you. I know my audience loves you. We made it under two hours. We're longer than 30 minutes. That's got to be because you talk too much. Just kidding. Just kidding.

Meggan Hayes [01:58:14] And I added those clips at the end.

John Dehlin [01:58:16] You did that, too?

Guest 2 [01:58:17] No.

John Dehlin [01:58:17] You're brilliant. Thanks for all you do. Everyone, please subscribe and check out to Generally unquotable. Please support Meggan and her great work as you're doing that. Subscribe and like this channel. Please go to mormonnews.com Click on the Donate button. Become a monthly donor to this program as well. Comment and like in the chat. Huge thanks to Julia and Brooklyn and everyone who makes what we do possible. All right, you get the final word, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [01:58:47] Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we will see you again next week on another edition of the Mormon News Podcast.

John Dehlin [01:58:56] Thanks, Meggan. Thanks, everybody. Y' all take care. See you soon. Bye. Bye. Touche.

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