Introduction to the Mormon Stories Book Club

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your two co hosts for today, John Dehlin. It is November 18, 2022, and I am over the moon, excited for today's episode. Today we are reviewing a book, and this book is one of the most important books I've read in my time working on Mormon stories, which is, you know, 18 years or more, that's saying a lot. But it is a super important book. And I shouldn't say that I'm surprised at how much I love this book, but I just. There are stories in here I had no idea. And they're really important and interesting stories. The book, for those of you who are listening, that we're going to be talking about today is called Lighthouse Gerald and Sandra Tanner, Despised and Beloved Critics of Mormonism, written by Ronald Huggins. And it's going to be talking about the lives of Gerald and Sandra Tanner. Now, of course, we've had Sandra Tanner on Mormon Stories many times, and we've told a lot of stories. But even so, I learned so many fascinating things from this book and I'm. This isn't just hyperbole. This isn't just, like, me trying to hype something up. This book is a must purchase. So right now, pause this episode, go and buy this book, and then return to this episode. This book is published by Signature Books, and we want to sell this book out. We want Barbara Brown to send us flowers because we sold all these books, but it is that good. So, anyway, we have Sandra Tanner in the studio. Hey, Sandra.

Sandra Tanner [00:01:41] Hi.

John Dehlin [00:01:42] Welcome back.

Sandra Tanner [00:01:42] Yes, good.

John Dehlin [00:01:44] This book is good.

Sandra Tanner [00:01:45] Well, yes. Surprise. We actually had a pretty adventurous life.

John Dehlin [00:01:50] You had an amazing life. And I already knew you and Gerald were legends, but you're even more legends than I thought.

Sandra Tanner [00:01:57] Yeah, that's.

John Dehlin [00:01:59] That's kind of a high bar because I don't know who's above you guys. Fawn Brody. Yeah, I think I put Fon Brody ahead of you. Only because she's doing her stuff in 35.

Sandra Tanner [00:02:09] Right.

John Dehlin [00:02:09] But other than that, I think you.

Ronald Huggins [00:02:11] You.

John Dehlin [00:02:11] Do you mind if I put you guys second to fun Brody?

Sandra Tanner [00:02:13] Well, we've certainly been involved the longest of anybody.

John Dehlin [00:02:16] That's true. Actually. You. You actually mace. Just through longevity and breadth of work, you probably surpass them. But in terms of like, oh, gee, original gangster, Fon's pretty good. Anyway, why am I talking about Fawn Brody? We are so excited to have you back, Sandra, and to talk about this amazing book. Our goal is to get you to tell as many cool stories as you can, because of course they can read the book. But what we want to hear is just you tell some of the amazing stories from this book. How does that sound?

Sandra Tanner [00:02:44] Well, kind of scary because I don't know that I remember them all, but.

John Dehlin [00:02:47] Well, okay, we'll do our best to help you. How's that? Okay. So another reason why I'm over the moon excited is because today, joining us for the first time is a human who I've just gotten to know over the past few months. I've known her a little bit longer, but I mean, I've really gotten to know her a little bit more over the past few months. And she is a legend in the making. She's going by Rebecca Bibliotheca. Hey, Rebecca.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:03:11] Hey, John. How are you?

John Dehlin [00:03:12] How do you want me to call you or address you?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:03:13] You can just call me Rebecca.

John Dehlin [00:03:15] Just Rebecca?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:03:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:16] Does that work?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:03:16] It works.

John Dehlin [00:03:17] Well, Rebecca has been running a book club called the Good Book Club. Is that right?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:03:23] That's correct.

John Dehlin [00:03:24] For how long?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:03:25] It's almost two and a half years now, believe it or not.

John Dehlin [00:03:28] Yeah. Tell us really quickly about that book club.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:03:30] Well, two and a half years ago, myself and a few other co founders decided that Post Mormons needed a place to read. And so we created the Good Book Club. It's a virtual national book club. And our philosophy is sort of, now that we know what we don't believe, let's try to figure out what we do believe. And we do that by. By reading. So we read a book a month and we have virtual meetings and we have met people and made friends and created a community across. Across the nation. So it's really fun.

John Dehlin [00:04:00] Yeah. And you are, you know, you're good friends with Steven Pinegar, Our good friend Steven Pinegar. You've helped him a little bit, collaborated with him on his podcast called Mormon Book Review, which we love, Stephen, and the work he's doing. And you're launching a new podcast. As if there aren't enough, but there aren't, you know, your podcast doesn't exist yet. You're launching a podcast, is that right?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:04:21] That's true. It just dropped today. The podcast is called Mormon Ish. Finding Joy and Living a Joyful Life on the Other side of Mormonism. And it's just myself and my co host, Landon, who is also my co founder, Landon Brophy of the Good Book Club. And we are talking and interviewing people about what amazing things they are doing and communities they're finding and service they're providing on the other side of Mormonism. And this could be a post Mormon, an ex Mormon, or a nuanced Mormon, but somebody that's just engaged in something else. And so we have some really fun and interesting guests lined up, and it's. It's been really awesome to talk to these people. So we're excited about it. It's called Mormon Ish.

John Dehlin [00:05:01] Awesome. And we've resurrected an old Facebook group called what? Mormon Stories Book Club.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:05:06] The Mormon Stories Book Club.

John Dehlin [00:05:08] That's it. And, you know, we hope to be featuring books as a regular feature on Mormon Stories podcast. We've always done it, but we want to do it more planned and methodically. So if any of you want to be a part of our book club, you can go to Mormon Stories Book Club on Facebook and join. And what Rebecca's trying to do is to, like, do special conversations about these books, but also just to advertise the upcoming books and to get questions and participation from you, our listeners and viewers. Anything else you want to say about that project?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:05:38] Nope, that's pretty much it. And it is a special Facebook page, the Mormon Stories Book Club. And we just kind of talk and we talk about the book that we're reading throughout the month. We ask questions for our authors. I have several here today from. For Sandra, from some of our readers. And again, just a community of readers and interesting information and collaboration in books. So it's good.

Launching the Book Club and Next Month's Reading

John Dehlin [00:05:59] All right. There's already a book we've lined up for next month. Do you want to just quickly. There is a book.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:06:04] Let me see if I can hold this up.

John Dehlin [00:06:06] Yes, this will be super quick.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:06:07] Really quick. We chose a little bit of a shorter book. It's called no Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners. This is Noah Rashada, if you're familiar with him. We chose a shorter book for the month of December because it is December. And this is also on audiobook, which makes it easy. And we also felt maybe a lot of you during the holidays might need some of the techniques in this book. So we're. And we're. We've. Noah is in Nepal right now with a group of podcast listeners, but he's been communicating with me. He's very excited to be involved. We're going to book him on the show in December, but in the meantime, everybody go out, grab no Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners, and we'll get reading for that for December.

John Dehlin [00:06:44] Beautiful. And yeah, we've had Noah Rashetta Reshetta on Mormon Stories podcast a few times. He's brilliant. But his. His podcast, Secular Buddhism, is probably the top Buddhism podcast in the world. I'm guessing he's a great guy, and we're really thrilled to have him back. So first, right now, Maven's already included the link to this book, Lighthouse. Go buy that now. And then also go by Noah's book. And you will be doing your good turn daily as whatever type of scout you may be. Yeah. So that's exciting. And, Rebecca, just. You've already done so much good work, so we're so glad to have you here today. Thank you for making this happen. This would not have happened without you.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:07:24] Oh, well, thank you. I'm just excited in this book. Oh, I can't wait to dive in. This was way more than I thought it was. I thought I knew a little. I now learned that I didn't know anything. This is incredible.

John Dehlin [00:07:34] Yeah, it's an incredible book. Okay. And of course, we're welcoming our viewers who are joining us on the live stream, both on YouTube and on Facebook. We're grateful to Maven for moderating Maven. If you'll include all the links that we're talking about. I didn't. I know you've already included some. And Maven will include these in the show notes as well, so. All right, so we're ready to begin. We also potentially are going to try and see if we can bring the author of this book on, and I'm going to take a little risk here. Ron Huggins, can you hear us?

Ronald Huggins [00:08:11] I can hear you. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:08:12] Hi, Ron, welcome.

Ronald Huggins [00:08:13] Hi.

John Dehlin [00:08:15] So for those who. For those who don't know, Ron is the author of this book. So, Ron, for as long as your phone and network connection will allow, we would love to have you join us as well.

Ronald Huggins [00:08:28] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:08:29] Yeah.

Ronald Huggins [00:08:30] Glad to be here.

John Dehlin [00:08:31] Yeah. All right, so I guess. I guess we should begin. Rebecca, why don't you begin with some of the questions you thought about starting with, if that's all right.

How the Tanner Biography Came to Be

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:08:40] Yeah. I definitely wanted to ask Ron first, how did this project even begin? Were you approached? Was this something you'd been thinking of doing? I guess the question is, why are you the author of this book?

Ronald Huggins [00:08:54] Well, what happened was I was approached by Gary Brugara of signature in 2008, and he said, we want you to write a biography of the Tanner. And I had sort of a sinking feeling, because that's a massive task by any account. But then he said, well, if you don't write it, this other guy's going to write it. And I happen to know that the other guy had a real axe to grind. At least I felt and would not give A fair presentation in my view and I thought it was worth doing a Tanner biography but only if it was done by someone who could treat them in a sympathetic way or at least a fair hand even handed way. And so I agreed on the spot. Well then I was away for a few years and then finally I came back to Salt Lake because he had to be here to I'm in Denver right now but I live in Salt Lake. Had to be in Salt Lake to effectively access people and Tanner's files, Sandra's files and the University of Utah archives. And so that's how it came about. It's not that I really wanted to write the biography but it was like I was sort of cornered by Gary.

John Dehlin [00:10:16] So yeah, I did. I said I would really quick Ron, have you written any books before this one? Tell us a tiny bit about your. Your bibliography slash CV background and then your relationship with Gerald and Sandra if you have one.

Ronald Huggins [00:10:33] Historically yes, I'm. I'm not a. I, I haven't read written books per se. I write a lot of articles my areas like biblical studies. I was a professor of church history at Salt Lake Seminary for a number of years and a professor of New Testament and Greek and where at that school or somewhere Christian and Hindu interrelations and on Carl, you in different things. I've known about Gerald and Sander from it from since about 1980 and I've always admired their work. The thing that attracted me to it initially was back in the days of the God Makers and I remember the God Makers was going. That's Ed Decker's film and it was going from campus to campus and making a big splash and I knew, you know, that what he wrote was sensational. It was kind of sloppy and yet on the other hand there were these strange little homemade 8 by 11 books that the Tanner were doing and they were good and they were very credible and careful and addressed issues that were really directed towards Mormons rather than just to sort of scandalize Christians. So I was. That's really what first initiated me to them and then I've known them since 2006 years before Gerald died. I see that the IT guys are just arriving here and so I'm going to have to shift ground and leave.

John Dehlin [00:12:22] No worries, no worries. We'll be excited to see you when you come back. So thanks. Thanks Ronald. That's great to get a little bit of background. Sandra. I noticed when I was trying to read up on one of the figures in the book that Ronald had written maybe some articles for UTLM Did I get that right or.

Sandra Tanner [00:12:41] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:12:41] So what, what has his role been with utlm, if any?

Sandra Tanner [00:12:45] Well, since. Since about the time when Gerald was getting really bad in his Alzheimer's. We saw Ron quite often in the bookstore. He was researching different areas of Mormonism. He writes on so many other subjects that this is just a small part of what he has some expertise in. But he wrote in Dialogue years back an article on Joseph Smith's money digging and on the Captain Kidd.

John Dehlin [00:13:21] Oh, that's him. That's him. I've read that article.

Sandra Tanner [00:13:24] Okay. And so through the years he's done different articles in other publications on Mormonism. But then he did a three part series in our newsletter on how Gerald and I met and how we got started in our research. And I assume that was some sort of catalyst for getting Signature interested in having him do the biography. I haven't talked to him personally about how that fit together, but it seems like it must have sparked the interest in having him do it.

John Dehlin [00:13:55] Got it. Okay. Okay.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:13:58] Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. How did you, Sandra, how did you feel when, when you knew there was going to be a biography coming out? What were your thoughts on that?

Sandra Reflects on the Biography

Sandra Tanner [00:14:08] Well, excited on the one hand that people would know how much our lives intersected with all the big areas of Mormonism through the years. But it's a little intimidating to have someone go through your whole life and see all your papers because you don't know what they're going to come up with. But it's been a really good experience. Ron's been a very good friend and I tried to make it very clear to Ron right from the start that I didn't want him granting us any special favors. I wanted it to be an honest recounting of our lives and I wanted him to feel free that if he had criticisms to put him in. Ron was kind to us, which I appreciate, but it was a difficult task. When you're covering 60 years of two people's complicated engagement with Mormonism, there's just an awful lot of stuff to read and catch up on. I think John has found that too in reading the book, that there's just so much just general Mormon history that happened in those 60 years that if you're coming into the scene after the 80s, you missed a whole lot of important stories. So it was, I'm sure, very daunting to think you'd have to go back and, and refresh and find out all the things that were going on in those 60 years.

John Dehlin [00:15:51] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's a. It's a monstrous task. I Ron still setting up. I'm wondering, I'm kind of curious, like, if there are any difficulties in terms of, like, gathering information, doing the research, deciding what to include and not to include his collaborations with you. He's not yet available to be able to even talk about that, but would you have anything to add about that?

Sandra Tanner [00:16:20] Well, he pretty much decided what areas to cover and. And how to approach them. What was amazing to me was how much he could pull together of the early part of our life. But several of our friends that knew us in those earlier years also gave material to the University of Utah Library. So Ron was able to go back and look up files on different important people that we intersected with in the 60s and 70s. So by combining those people's files with what he found in our files, and he was able to put together a lot of the events where you have a bigger picture than you would have got from just any one of us in our files. So I thought that was pretty intriguing. The whole First Vision problems, the Book of Abraham, the problems on the blacks, all those things were going on through the 60s and 70s, and most people today weren't aware or around to have known what was going on in the 60s and 70s in all those areas. So it's an exciting time that people just aren't aware of. They need to know how it all came about. Our knowledge of these different topics didn't just happen in the last 20 years. These are things that we discussed in the 60s. So I think it's fascinating to see how the development came of our understanding of all these different topics. But you got. Well, it all starts with Brody in 1940s. When she does her book, she sets the groundwork. Everyone else after that is building on Brody's initial research. And we carried it forward in the 60s with our research on first vision, the 26th trial, the book of Abraham, Blacks and priesthood, all these things, these were the major topics of the 60s and 70s. So I think people would find it interesting to see how it all began, that it isn't just a current phenomena. It seems current because of the Internet, but it was all going on back in the day of typewriters.

John Dehlin [00:19:00] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, it looks like we. We may have Ron back. Hey, Ron, are you back?

Ronald Huggins [00:19:08] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:19:09] All right. Well, we talked about you while you were gone, so we imagine your ears are burning.

Ronald Huggins [00:19:15] Any.

John Dehlin [00:19:15] Anything you want to say? We talked a bit about your scholarly and academic background, and we talked about, you know, a little bit about your process for writing this book with Sandra. Is there anything you want to talk about? Just the difficulties in researching any obstacles, roadblocks, problems, miracles, anything. Any really quick stories you want to share about the process of writing this book?

Ronald Huggins [00:19:43] Yeah, I think it was one of the things that I was really pleased to be able to do, being in Salt Lake, was to access so many people who were involved in the story, from Brett Metcalf to, to Mike Quinn, although very briefly with Mike Quinn and other people who were involved, was a great help and really quite a pleasure. Shannon Flynn and so, especially for those who have passed on since, since the book's been done, one of the greatest difficulties was trying to give a sympathetic reading to people that as I was studying them, they did not come across as particularly likable. An example would be Joseph Fielding Smith. And I often found myself biting my tongue very, very hard and taking out adjectives that I put in that I knew would, would, would ruin the balance of the narrative. And so I think the hardest chapter would have been of all was the lawsuit the LDS Church, which I viewed as frivolous.

John Dehlin [00:20:56] Oh, yeah,

Ronald Huggins [00:20:59] the million dollar lawsuit against the Tanner, which also probably hurried Gerald's death. Just the pressure and the anxiety and everything. But that was very hard to write, that chapter.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:21:16] That's funny you would say that, Ron. I felt when I was reading it, Joseph Fielding Smith was a prophet when I was a child. And I said to my husband a couple chapters in, he's a villain. So, yeah, you definitely showed some restraint. But the circumstances were just so in just the suppression of information. It's incredible that you were able to pull out and compile what you did. That's absolutely amazing. I have a question for Sandra really quick. The title of the book, Lighthouse, obviously that's significant and it's the title of your ministry. Can you talk a little bit about how, why the word lighthouse?

Sandra Tanner [00:21:53] Well, in the 80s, when we were setting up as a nonprofit, we sat around with several friends and we brainstormed on what are we going to call this ministry. We had had a business before that was called Modern Microfilm Company where we had a microfilm machine that we were photocopying old books with and then selling reprints. So if we go nonprofit, what do we call it? Well, we threw out all kind of different words. We're trying to think of something that didn't sound too flamboyant and outrageous because when we went in to do business with anybody in Salt Lake, we didn't want it to raise a red flag that these are some kind of heretics. So the lighthouse is a word that's used a lot in Christian circles for different things as a metaphor for truth. And the light shines out over the dark ocean and leads people to safety. And so lighthouse seemed like a good, good kind of word to throw into what we were doing then. How do we identify that as dealing with Mormonism where people would have some idea what we were about? And so we didn't want to put Mormon in it or lds, so. Well, how about Utah? If you use the word Utah lighthouse, people around the country hearing about you would hopefully be able to put together, oh, Utah. They're trying to bring in light to Utah. So we came up with Utah Lighthouse.

John Dehlin [00:23:35] I love it.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:23:35] Oh, it's great. It's wonderful.

John Dehlin [00:23:39] Okay, so, you know, for our viewers and listeners, we're going to put in the show notes the fact, you know, the previous episodes that we've interviewed Sandra about, we definitely did a multi hour epic interview with Sandra kind of talking about her entire story from, from start to finish. And there, there's probably not, it's probably not the best use of our time to recover some of those things that we talked about in depth. And then also we, we interviewed you for Murder among the Mormons about the Mark Hoffman kind of stuff. And we really went in depth there. So I agreed with Rebecca that, you know, there's a whole chapter on the Mark Hoffman stuff that maybe we're not going to focus on as much this time. But, but what we, what I really want to do, and I think Rebecca's on board, is there's just some amazing stories here that just kind of blow. Blew my mind and I think they're going to blow the listener's mind. So if we're going to prioritize, I want to just get her on record telling some of these stories and educating our listeners and viewers about some of these mind blowing stories so that they'll go by the book and read it all. How does that sound, Rebecca?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:24:50] Absolutely. There's so much here and some of it, like I said, I thought I knew something I learned. I know next to nothing. There's incredible stories in here. So yeah, yeah, let's talk about the good stuff. That's what I say.

John Dehlin [00:25:01] Yeah, okay. All right. So, and Ronald, I guess I want to say, is there anything else you want to say about writing the book before we jump in, having Sandra tell some stories?

Ronald Huggins [00:25:11] No, no, go ahead. Let's, let's hear the stories. That's what the book's about.

John Dehlin [00:25:14] And then Ronald, if you want to, you know, just jump in with any filler or color or background, we, we would love that. Is that all right?

Ronald Huggins [00:25:23] Yeah, that's great.

John Dehlin [00:25:24] Okay. All right. Okay. So if you look at my copy of this book, see that everybody, these. Sandra joked that I have my own table of contents. Like, these are just the questions that, the topics that I wanted to cover today. But, but this book is. Blew my mind. So I think where I want to begin is, is can you tell us a little bit about the, the barber, the State Street. The State street barber, who that was how you got to know him and what role, because you, you kind of stand on the shoulders of some giants, right?

Gerald and Sandra's Early Lives and Meeting

Sandra Tanner [00:26:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:07] And I guess, I guess our barber friend is in the first because your mom is kind of a giant whose shoulders you stand on. So in terms of studying Mormon history, tell us about who the characters are, whose, whose shoulders you and Gerald stood on just to honor them. Does that make sense?

Sandra Tanner [00:26:28] Yeah. Okay. Well, first, I guess I would say Pauline Hancock and the little Church of Christ Book of Mormon group in Independence, Missouri, because they left the reorganized LDS church and ended up forming a little, I guess you'd say, splinter group, although they didn't see themselves that way because they got into all kind of Mormon research and providing photocopies to people. They became a catalyst for Gerald and a springboard for him and his research. Also for my mother. My mother read Brody and started studying. And when you started studying in the 50s, you at some point would probably end up at Zion's Bookstore, Weller's Bookstore, which is still in business today, run by the grandson. But Mr. Weller's bookstore had controversial books on Mormonism, information about the splinter groups, and all back in a back corner where you wouldn't just stumble across it, you had to know it was there. So anyone studying Mormon history would have ended up at Weller's Bookstore. They would have also then found out about James Wardle's Barber Shop. That would have been two blocks away in downtown Salt Lake. And James Wardle looked like Groucho Marx and had an equal sense of humor and little two chair barbershop, like going in 1900 time frame. Barbershop State Street.

John Dehlin [00:28:12] Right.

Sandra Tanner [00:28:12] States on state. Yeah. 424 South State, where the Matheson Courthouse is now. And in his barber shop at the back, in a back room, he had one of the largest private collections of early LDS literature of anyone in the state. Now I'm sure the State Historical Society had more than James, but as far as a private individual, he had One of the largest private collections. So if you're researching Mormonism, you would have heard about James. So you have this little circle of people that you would have visited around to talk to that could point you to different research material or people to talk to. And through finding out and meeting James, that connected us to where we met polygamous prophets and Mormon church defenders like Francis Kirkham, the polygamist, Joel LeBaron and such people as that. So it was an intersection of the west. Without the Internet. Where do you go to find out what's going on? Well, James Wardle was the center of all sorts of people. I mean, Mike Marquardt, that's written all kind of research on Mormonism, contacted us. Then he got in contact with James Wardle. I mean, Metcalfe, Dan Vogel, all intersect with the same crowd there in Salt Lake. But also our friend Wes Walters, who was a Presbyterian minister back in Illinois who had done so much research, and he was the one that found the 1826 trial document and did research on what revivals happened in New York in the early 1820s. But they all circle around Salt Lake City. And so you just ended up all knowing each other and aware of who was doing research. Our friend Lamar Peterson, who was organist here in Salt Lake, taught Oregon. He was very much involved in Mormon history, and he wrote articles for the Utah State Historical Society. He became part of the crowd. Everyone talked to each other about what they were researching. And that's how we came across Ogden Kraut, the polygamist

John Dehlin [00:30:53] husband of Ann Wilde.

Sandra Tanner [00:30:54] Yes. And so there was just this, like a magnet drew people into the different people in Salt Lake that were known to be researching different areas. So whether you were on the same side or not, you ended up talking to all these different people because they all had a specialty of what they were looking into, documents they had seen, or knowing who else you needed to talk to. Stan Ivins was another one of these people. He was the brother of Anthony Ivins, whose father was Anton Ivins. And they were in the top leadership of the church and very much involved in polygamy in colonial Juarez. And we spent so many hours at Stanford House with all the research he had done on polygamy. Unfortunately, I fell asleep through a lot of these discussions because I had just had kids and I was too tired. But Gerald just sought out everyone in the 60s that was doing research on anything. It was an exciting time to do research because we all were just finding different things that we were sharing with each other. And the body of knowledge Was growing and events were happening. I mean, Wes Walters is finding all this stuff on the early First Vision material. And then you have the Book of Abraham start to develop where our friend Grant Heward, Who was a mailman. Mailman, but he delivered the mail to James Wardle. And at Wardle's Barbershop, he had a little glass box at the front of his barbershop window. And he would put our books and newsletters in the window so you could see them when you walked by. And so that put us in touch with Grant Heward, who ends up doing research on the Book of Abraham and gets excommunicated because he puts out some little pamphlets that Gerald assured him would not get him excommunicated, but it did anyways. It just shows like a pebble in the lake with the ripples going out. There was just these ripples coming out from Salt Lake, mainly centered out of James Warble's Barber Shop. That just affected more and more people.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:33:38] It truly was an underground.

Sandra Tanner [00:33:40] It was a Mormon underground.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:33:41] Yeah. I mean, you guys were like superheroes, everyone using their power for good. That's amazing. So. And I think it's very interesting that as we talked about, your mom and your grandmother had these different points of view. Sort of visionary for the era, maybe, and that's actually how you ended up meeting Gerald. That's the part of the story I was not familiar with that. Maybe you've talked about that here before, but just the idea that your grandmother was invited to a meeting thinking that she might be someone that would enjoy that, and then she brought you and that's. Can you talk a little bit about that? Just. I love that story. It's a love story. Yes.

Sandra Tanner [00:34:16] Well, I had come back to Salt Lake with my grandma, who had been visiting in California for a few months, visiting all her kids down there. And I came with her back on the bus to help her with her luggage and things. Then when she got home, she had this postcard inviting her to a meeting. And she was real cagey about what it was about, but she needed me to drive her there. So she didn't tell me much, which made me very leery of what I was even going to. I assumed it was a bunch of old people and that's why she didn't want to tell me about it, for fear that as an 18 year old I wouldn't want to go, which was true. But we got over to the other side of town and I walked up and knocked on the door and this cute young guy answers the door named Gerald Tanner. And so he's 20 years old and just cute as can be. So I was immediately interested in the meeting and Charles talking about stuff that my mom had talked about changes and problems in early Mormonism and telling about his involvement with this little group in Missouri that believe the Bible and Book of Mormon and that all the rest of Mormonism was wrong. Well, my mom had talked to me about some of the same areas, so that wasn't a shock to me. But afterwards I asked Gerald to come to my grandma's to tell me more. And that was really subterfuge because I didn't pay that much attention to what he said.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:35:50] You didn't care what he said. You just wanted to see him?

Sandra Tanner [00:35:52] No. Yes.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:35:53] Such a great story.

Sandra Tanner [00:35:54] I want this cute guy to come over to my grandma's. And so he came out. Oh, bless his heart. He comes with all these photocopies and books to show me all the problems in early Mormonism.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:36:07] How romantic.

Sandra Tanner [00:36:09] Yes. Well, that was our whole courtship. Was meeting as often as we could get together to go over his research and photos that he had on early problems of Mormonism. Once he got me looking at the documents, it wasn't hard to get me to see there was a problem that needed resolved and that hooked me into studying Mormonism. But it wouldn't have happened if Gerald hadn't been cute.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:36:43] And there you have it.

Sandra Tanner [00:36:44] And there you have it.

John Dehlin [00:36:45] Yeah, I want to bring Ronald in, but just before I do, like, okay, so you meet Gerald. Your mom seeded your interest in Mormon truth claims. Gerald brought his own interests. You're starting to meet some of these other characters, including the people back in the Midwest who were previously connected with Community of Christ. You talk about all these people that you met, including Wes Walters and the barber guy. What was the motive? Like, were you all trying to. Was it. I'll just give you some options as strawman. We're all trying to take the church down and destroy the church. Or, you know, we don't want people being misled, so we just want to help people not be misled. Or we love Jesus and we want to make sure everybody believes in the right kind of Jesus. Like what could you talk about the. You know, we talked about an underground. Were there explicit or just implied or non explicit motives for why you were all meeting, why you were all sharing information and what was motivating you all to do what you were doing?

Sandra Tanner [00:37:53] I would say the bigger picture. Motivating us as a cabal. Large group. Yeah, Cabal would be probably. Yeah. Is. Was the search for truth. We wanted to know how the story really happened. What was the real origins of Mormonism? Who were the real players? Is there really outside forces involved with Joseph Smith, Other people behind him, or is it all his idea? But when you look at individuals, then the quest becomes a little different. James Wardle wasn't trying to take down the Mormon Church. He was out of the Reorganized Church, and he just wanted straight history, wanted

John Dehlin [00:38:39] to learn, figure out.

Sandra Tanner [00:38:40] Just figured out how it really happened.

John Dehlin [00:38:42] What really happened. Okay.

Sandra Tanner [00:38:43] Lamar Peterson, that did a lot of coaching with us on history. His was just to figure out what really happened. I would say with my mom and my aunt and my grandma. Theirs was a quest for how it really happened. Gerald and I were motivated. Beyond that, we had those goals as well. But beyond that, we had our own Christian commitment that we felt that the community was being done a disservice by committing them into a life of controlled living under Mormonism that was keeping them from a broader experience of Christ and God that was much more open and freeing than the. Well, I was going to say dictatorial, patriarchal. I don't know what the right word is, but from the control of the Mormon Church. So there were different motives, but for us, it was a spiritual journey as well as a commitment to finding out just how the story really played out.

John Dehlin [00:39:49] And what about, like, taking the church down and destroying it, you know?

Sandra Tanner [00:39:53] Well, I don't think we ever thought that we had that kind of power.

John Dehlin [00:39:57] You didn't?

Sandra Tanner [00:39:58] No, no, we're. We're two dumb kids that don't have any money or nothing, you know, I mean, how are we going to. We just wanted to get the story out there to set the record straight.

John Dehlin [00:40:08] Well, you know, I'm connecting. I connected with you on several instances of this book, but, like, I remember, it's like 2005, I learned about podcasts, and I'm like, maybe I should buy a microphone. You know, And I buy the microphone and I record my first episode, and I'm about to push, you know, publish. And I'm like, I wonder what's going to come of this. Like, maybe nothing. Maybe it'll all die out. Or maybe a bunch of people listen to it, and maybe a lot of people listen to it. And in my wildest dreams, it would be something that would know and, like, be around the world. Right? But you don't know. Right when you start, you have maybe some visions of how big it could get, but you also realize that it could be anywhere between really big and nothing. Did you have dreams about how big it could get in your wildest dreams?

Sandra Tanner [00:40:56] Well, I don't know that our wildest dreams were that big. There were a million Mormons approximately at the time that I was coming out of Mormonism. So I didn't see it as important in. In terms of looking at the whole world. Mormonism was a pretty small speck on the map, but we felt we could have an influence on Mormonism. I don't know that we ever really dreamed of taking the church down, but of making the church reform. I would say probably that was a bigger, more achievable goal that we saw was that they would have to come clean and tell the real history. And then whatever came from that, we weren't sure. But our hope was that they would eventually get rid of their extra books of scripture and just go back to following the Bible. Of course, when we started out, it was the Book of Mormon too. You know, okay, fine, scrap everything but the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:42:04] Right, right.

Sandra Tanner [00:42:06] And then a couple years later, we got rid of the Book of Mormon too. But right in the original, we. I guess we're seeking a reformed Mormonism to take it back to 1830.

John Dehlin [00:42:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that was interesting that you guys clung to the Book of Mormon a few more years after losing your faith. Let's bring Ron in really quick, and then I want to get Rebecca back in. So, Ron, do you. Is there anything you want to add or fill in any color before we throw back to Rebecca?

Motivation for Leaving the Church and Early Research

Ronald Huggins [00:42:36] Yes, actually. You asked what the motivation was. I don't think the LDS Church as a thing was anywhere near as important to Gerald as finding the true church or finding the true relationship with God. And then it sort of is a secondary thing, the fact that. Well, a lot of this comes into conflict with his. The church of his being raised in. So I think for Gerald, it seems to have been a spiritual journey from the beginning. And then Sandra, as she said, she kind of comes alongside Gerald and is romantically interested. And then actually she. She dates her coming to Christ after the. The marriage was already in place. And so, yeah, that was the dominating motive with Gerald. And then the situation was. It was kind of like a snowball. They said, well, you know, here, let's tell everybody these problems. And they sent letters out to the apostles, the first presidency, everybody they knew. And here they're both from fairly prominent Mormon families. And so the letters probably had a whole lot more impact. It led to a long interchange of letters between Le Grand Richards and Sandra's parents, mother, for example, and you just wouldn't get that kind of feedback or reaction. So that things snowballed. It would be like the Tanner would do something. There would be kind of a slap down and a bad response from the LDS church. And then they would respond by sort of redoubling their effort. And that's the whole career. It just seems to go along that way. So that would be my little added point.

John Dehlin [00:44:34] I love it. I love it. Yeah. Rebecca, I'm sure you agree with me. It was so fascinating to read her corresponding with apostles in the late 50s. You know what I mean? They have no idea who they're dealing with. Right.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:44:48] And just the idea that it was a day where you could get an envelope and a stamp and put in a couple bucks and say, can you send me this document? You know, of course they say, oh, we don't know what document you're talking about. No, just fascinating. I love that. If I could maybe it kind of goes back to the other point of motivation. I have some questions from some of our book club members. Somebody wants to know, do you feel vindicated by the church now having to admit to many of the truths that you and Gerald were able to bring to light? Are there any thoughts?

Rediscovering the First Vision Account

Sandra Tanner [00:45:17] Oh, wow. Yes. It's absolutely astounding to me. Gerald wouldn't have believed it if he'd have been here to see it. That the things that we were told in the 60s either didn't exist or were too sacred to show to us or whatever excuses the church would come up with, but things that they would hide or lie about. And now they talk about the same things in the gospel topics essays as though everyone always knew about these things. And I find different historians say, well, the church has never hit their history. They've never had. We've always had everything open. And I'm thinking, excuse me, they weren't in the 50s and 60s.

John Dehlin [00:46:06] What are some of the biggest lies you remember being told either by apostles or, you know, people, the church? At the church history archive. What are some of the whoppers that you remember being told?

Sandra Tanner [00:46:20] Well, the one would be on trying to see the first copy of Joseph Smith's first vision account that Joseph Fielding Smith sidestepped when I asked for a copy of the first account of the first vision by Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:46:36] Let's. Let's back up. So that starts with the grad student publishing a thesis on the first vision accounts, isn't that right? And you learning about it. Do you want to tell that story?

Sandra Tanner [00:46:45] Starts about earlier than that.

John Dehlin [00:46:48] Tell the story.

Sandra Tanner [00:46:49] Oh, wow. Okay. When after Gerald and I get married and I'm sending out letters to different Mormons that I know saying I was taking my membership off the church and things like this. And one of the things I said in one of my little letters was that there were problems with the first vision. And this started series of letters and correspondence and things with Apostle Grand Richards and my mom and me and my bishop. And my bishop was trying to help me find answers. And he said, well, if I would submit a question to Joseph Fielding Smith, who was acting historian and apostle, he said, you get your one question, I'll send it up to Joseph Fielding Smith and see if we can get an answer for you. And so when I got together with Gerald and my mom and my aunt, we were trying to figure out, okay, what question can we send to Joseph Fielding Smith? And we wanted to ask specifically about first vision material. In our reading of Fawn Brody, she had brought up that there were questions about the first vision account that didn't seem to flow, that there was more to the story. So one of the things that we had found was that Mormon assistant historian Andrew Jensen in the 1880s was doing a newspaper called the Historical Record. And in it, he had recounted Joseph's first vision story. But when he recounts it, he tells the story as an angel appearing. And then a couple of years later, they did a reprint of his little magazine. And then the article on the first vision said that the Christ appeared to him instead of the angel. And so we were set back by this. Why was it changed from angel to Christ then? We had also found in our research that it looked like many of the statements about the first vision that were printed in the 1850s-1880s all seem to refer to the first vision story as appearance of angels, not as God and Jesus. But it seemed in the late 80s, early 1890s that the emphasis switched from angels to a clearer demand of it being interpreted as the father and son. So we were curious about why the switch and when did the church start emphasizing this other account because of the problems this raised with how you tell the first vision story. I had said in the letter I would like a copy of Joseph Smith's earliest account of the first vision in his own hand. I assumed they had to have one. I mean, what's your earliest copy? I would assume that it would be in Joseph Smith's handwriting, and so I wanted a copy of it. Well, evidently, Joseph Fielding Smith thought I knew more than I did. Our friend Lamar Peterson evidently was privy to the fact that there was an early account that the church was hiding, but I wasn't aware of it. But I figured they had to have a first account that Joseph would have written. So when Joseph Fielding wrote back to my bishop response to my letter, he tells me off for asking questions and looking for problems instead of answers, and I should be praying and not writing and, you know, that kind of stuff. And then he says, well, as far as who was Jensen talking about when he talked to the first vision, you know, or whatever. Anyways, he says, oh, that's Moroni. That's just talking about Moroni. And I thought, well, he didn't look at the material I sent him or he would see that he's confusing the whole story. So that upset me that he just was brushing me off without seeing what the real problem was. And then he says, well, and if I were to show her a first vision account, it wouldn't matter what I showed her. It wouldn't convince her. So he just brushed that one off. Well, it turns out they did have a first vision account they were hiding. And it's the 1832 account that people refer to now where he just talks about Jesus appearing to him in the woods and doesn't mention the Father in it. And it doesn't have him talking about all the churches are wrong. Joseph Smith seems to already know that all the churches are wrong when he goes out to pray. So it has a different message in it. So Joseph Fielding Smith. We aren't sure the time frame of this, but at some point, Joseph Fielding smith sees this 1832 account in Joseph Smith's papers in is evidently worried that people will be confused on the first vision story. And he cuts those several pages out of Joseph Smith's notebook. And then I'm assuming when I start asking about this first vision account, he puts the pages back in the book. And it's obvious when you look at the Joseph Smith papers that the pages have been glued back in. And so that gets into a whole funny story on the suppression of this earliest first vision account. So the whole thing shows the duplicity of Joseph Fielding Smith in hiding material, saying he's not hiding material, obfuscating the whole issue of what accounts of the first vision they have and whether they'd help restore my testimony or not. Well, he'd already seen that vision. He knew it wouldn't help me any because I would have confirmed the very things I was asking about. So I think that the hiding of the 1832 account is a very significant example of how the church has handled Their history, how they have tried to hide it. And when they are in a position of looking like it's going to be made public, they come out with then saying, oh yeah, we've had that all along, there's no problem. So now the historians say, oh, we've always talked about all the different accounts of the first vision. Well, no, they didn't always talk about it and they were denying it when I was asking about it in 1960.

John Dehlin [00:53:47] And Joseph Fielding Smith was an apostle.

Sandra Tanner [00:53:50] Yes, this is an apostle.

John Dehlin [00:53:52] This isn't just like some bureaucrat.

Sandra Tanner [00:53:54] Right?

John Dehlin [00:53:54] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:53:55] Joseph Fielding Smith, he's not only the apostle, he's the custodian of all the church archives and papers. He's the gatekeeper of knowing church history.

John Dehlin [00:54:06] Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:54:06] And he's standing in the way of people knowing what really happened.

John Dehlin [00:54:10] Yeah, that's a great example. Ron Ronald, let's get you in. Anything you want to add to that story?

Ronald Huggins [00:54:16] Yeah, well, I mean there's, she mentioned Lamar Peterson knew about the vision. Levi Edgar Young had found out about it and told him and asked him not to reveal it until he died. But Levi Edgar Young, I believe was, I think I have the name right, was one of the 70. And he would, you know, he told stories himself about how Joseph Mealing Smith would laugh in his face when he asked for documents. And so. But Lamar did keep his promise and he didn't tell the Tanner about it until after, after his death. And then another case is a story with Fawn Brody. She asked for the 1832 diary, which isn't where the, which isn't where the account is. It's not in the diary book. But Joseph Fielding Smith's answer there was. There are some things here that we don't let anyone see. Well, it ended up with a conflict with her, with David O. McKay, which was her relative. And she never, never researched in the LDS archives again. And even when the church was giving, I think James Allen some of the early accounts of the vision, he was getting second, third hand versions. Like for example, he published a copy of the 1835 diary, but it was put in the third person. They didn't even give him the real 1835 diary. So if you go through the early, the early Dialogue Journal, you see that the suppression and just sort of not being, coming forward with, with the facts was, was very broad in those days.

John Dehlin [00:56:04] Yeah, yeah. For me that's a really significant smoking gun is the intentional deception. You know, it's a big deal for me.

Ronald Huggins [00:56:15] Yeah. I mean, how can you say we are the church of God and here have an apostle doing things like that. I mean, if it's a private individual, if he was acting just like a private individual, or like you said, a bureaucrat, it would be a little different.

John Dehlin [00:56:31] Yeah, but it's a man we would have sustained as a special witness of Christ and as a prophet, seer and revelator. All right, Rebecca, what's your next question?

The Tanner, the FBI, and Church Surveillance

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:56:40] Well, I think it's fascinating that your letter is what led to the pages being put back in. That's so interesting to me. And it seems like in the book you were everywhere, you and Gerald. And people accused you of being everywhere. You were in bookstores stealing things. You were in the archives looking through things and getting them. Somehow you were at BYU somehow coming across things. You were almost like super sleuth investigative reporters. And you were. You absolutely were. But it's funny the things that they attribute to you. So along those lines, one of the more fascinating stories that I found in here in your book, Watergate and the connection to Mormonism. Did you find that, John, that just had no idea anything like that. I just thought that was so interesting.

John Dehlin [00:57:24] And looping in former Senator Bob Bennett, Jim Bennett's dad. Yeah. Do you want to. What story? Do you want to try to tell a story from that?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:57:31] Yeah, I would love to hear a little bit more about that. And also just the idea that you and Gerald were being wiretapped. I mean, it just doesn't get any crazier than that.

John Dehlin [00:57:39] Tell us the story of you becoming wiretapped by the FBI.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [00:57:43] By the FBI, yeah.

Sandra Tanner [00:57:46] Wow. I don't know how to put all of that into a short sentence.

John Dehlin [00:57:51] Well, you know, I guess, I mean, we can start with the fact that, that Bob Bennett was connected to Howard Hughes, the multimillionaire, if not billionaire, and was also connected somehow to the FBI, and he was also a Mormon. Right. And he was involved in the Watergate with the people who ended up being a part of Watergate.

Sandra Tanner [00:58:12] Right, right. The Watergate break in was planned in the offices of the PR firm that handled the Mormon Church things. And so you had this behind the scenes involvement of the handful of Mormons that were in Washington, D.C. that were connected to different people in the government. And they end up. So these Mormons end up involved in Watergate stuff. So they're just a small part of the whole Watergate story. But it was curious to us how Mormon people factored into the story. But I couldn't give you all the details now.

John Dehlin [00:59:00] Well, maybe we can bring Ronald in, but what was interesting to me is that I guess you have Bob Bennett learning about wiretapping technology and there's kind of either the, either the direct association or implication that somehow he brings this wiretapping technology or helps influence the wiretapping tapping technology to be brought to Utah that then gets. End up, that ends up being used on you. So let's bring Ronald in. Maybe he can, he can fill in some of these gaps a little bit.

Ronald Huggins [00:59:35] Yeah, it wasn't actually the FBI there. It was the CIA.

John Dehlin [00:59:39] Oh, sorry.

Ronald Huggins [00:59:40] The Mullen Company was, had been a CIA front for years when Bob Bennett bought it. And Bob Bennett claimed he never knew anything about this connection. But that, that's probably not right. He recruited people to be involved in the CIA in terms really quick.

John Dehlin [01:00:03] This is much, this is much beloved Bob Bennett who ends up becoming U.S. senator. And it's the father of Jim Bennett, who, who we brought up Mormon story several times, who ended up writing the response to the CES letter. So this is, these are people that are, you know, we know about. Right.

Ronald Huggins [01:00:23] Yeah. And then what happened? It was probably Apostle Markey Peterson, because, you know, he was the liaison with the Mullen Company who, who was. We have letters of his encouraging bishops to look in on people and to spy. And of course, Ann Wild's diary she was taking down for Ogden Grout was actually stolen from her basement. And there's the rumor at least that when Ogden was excommunicated, they used tapes from his phone. And so, and just to be clear,

John Dehlin [01:01:01] Ron, if it's okay, I just want to make this explicit. So the church was so worried about fundamentalist activities that it was likely stealing people's diaries, wiretapping illegally people's phone conversations, and using stolen diaries and illegally obtained wiretapped phone calls to be able to excommunicate polygamists. Do I have that right?

Ronald Huggins [01:01:26] Well, that's what it looks like and that's what it seems like. Yeah. And so there was actually. The church put out a statement, don't use recordings. Eventually they put out a statement, don't use recordings that were acquired without the knowledge of the people. But this, the situation was that Gerald and Sandra, they were talking to somebody on the phone and they quickly picked the phone up again to redial out and heard a voice in the background saying they're calling out. And why anybody would be stupid enough to tap a phone and have a microphone that you could talk. But it happened more than once in Watergate. Then there was these CIA spies who were showing up, some of whom I Found out that they really were from their biographies that they eventually wrote. And then another case from WikiLeaks, you know, they didn't admit that that's what they were doing, but they were. All of a sudden, the Tanner were finding themselves surrounded by people in the CIA, you know, so it was amazing. But I've heard, now, in fairness, Brent Metcalfe, who was working up there at the church office at the time, he says he was aware of Markey Peterson's spying efforts, but he had the impression anyway, that this was kind of a private thing that Markey Peterson was carrying on himself. But there's no doubt he was. He. He even. Mike Marquardt even got called in on suspicion of promoting polygamy.

John Dehlin [01:03:06] Yeah. That's so crazy. Wow. Thank you, Ronald. That's important. So, Sandra, there's a point in the book where you write, you use like the Freedom of Information act or whatever, and you ask, you inquire to see if there's a file on you in the FBI or the CIA. Do you want to tell us about that?

Sandra Tanner [01:03:26] Oh, yes. So, yes, we get this big file, but almost everything in it's blacked out.

John Dehlin [01:03:32] So there. So the point was a file. There was a file on you and Gerald. Was it with the CIA or the FBI?

Sandra Tanner [01:03:39] Well, I think that would be FBI.

John Dehlin [01:03:41] Okay. Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:03:42] And so there's a big file there. Well, we got accused of being communists, evidently, because if you're fighting in the only true church, obviously you must be communist. But anyways, they had a big file on us, but you would just get one sentence, and then they went out blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. And then someone else came in, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. You know, and so you couldn't make any sense out of anything because everything important was all black. I mean, literally blacked out. So I don't know what. We were never political. I don't know what they would have in all those pages. But we must have really been bad guys because they had a big file.

John Dehlin [01:04:26] I mean, this is J. Edgar Hoover, like, red scare, McCarthy hearing kind of stuff.

Sandra Tanner [01:04:32] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:04:33] Ron, did you want to add anything about that?

Ronald Huggins [01:04:36] No. I mean, it was just remarkable. 39 pages of nothing but a few words. Redaction, anything redacted like that, and 18 additional pages withheld entirely.

Sandra Tanner [01:04:48] Yeah, who knows?

Ronald Huggins [01:04:51] Actually, Gerald had to sue the FBI in order to make them give them that.

John Dehlin [01:04:57] That's so crazy. That's so crazy. All right, well, the. You know, Rebecca and I are taking turns telling stories. The next. The next one I want to hear about is your work with the Book of Commandments and. And how. You know, one of the most deceitful things I read in the book was when you went up to the. Was it the church archives to ask, you know, for a copy of the Book of Commandments. But let's back up. Tell us the story of you and Gerald and the Book of Commandments, if you don't mind.

Changes in the Doctrine and Covenants and Book of Commandments

Sandra Tanner [01:05:33] Okay. When Gerald and I were first studying. Well, when we were courting, Gerald told me about changes in the Doctrine and Covenants. I went down to Weller's bookstore and bought a reprint of the Book of commandments. That's the 1833 printing of Joseph Smith's Revelations, and brought it back and read it again. Steve. A current Doctrine of Covenants and marked all the changes that were being made. And so later, a couple years later, I can't remember when it was, Hugh Nibley was giving a lecture at BYU on the first Vision, and we wanted to go down to hear him. And when we got down to the lecture, it cost too much money. We didn't have enough cash on us. And this was before the days of credit cards. I don't even know if we had a checking account at that point. Anyways, we didn't have enough cash to go to the lecture. So we went to the BYU library and we started photocopying the Wilford Woodruff's copy of the Book of Commandments. And we only got half of it done. And then later, we got the other half from Yale University and we put out a reprint of the Book of Commandments.

John Dehlin [01:06:57] Didn't. Didn't you ask the librarian for a copy? And he gave you a very dishonest answer. There was some exchange where it's like, oh, I want to see this. And then they're like, oh, it doesn't exist. And then you're like, oh, we know you have it.

Sandra Tanner [01:07:10] And then that was Lamar Peterson's story.

John Dehlin [01:07:12] Okay, will you tell that story? Start from the beginning, because that story was unbelievable.

Sandra Tanner [01:07:17] Okay, who's Lamar Peterson? Lamar Peterson is this musician, historian, and the general authority that lived in his ward had been trying to reactivate him into the church. And then I think it was his bishop talked to him, and he was telling Lamar, told him about the changes in the Book of Commandments. So they went up to the historian's office to see a copy of the Book of Commandments so Lamar can show. I think it was this bishop, the changes that were made. And I think it was Earl Olson, the historian up there. That talked to them. And he first tells them, oh, well, the Book of Commandments was never finished. They were doing the printing when the press got destroyed. And so there aren't any copies to show because it wasn't completed. And Lamar says, oh, that's interesting, because I've seen a copy at New York Public Library, at Yale, Berkeley, I don't remember where all he lifted it off. And our LDS library had seen copies of the Book of Commandments. And so then the historian, the church, tells him, oh, well, I didn't know you'd seen copies. And so he gets up and goes in the back room and comes out with a copy of the Book of Commandments and the bishops. Well, well, well, well, wait a minute, wait a minute. I thought you just said that it wasn't completed. Well, yeah, it wasn't completed, but I mean, they. They did gather up copies and bind them and. Yeah, so there are copies of the book. Well, yeah, but. But yeah, and it was just an example of how they turn on such fine wording of ways to excuse what is deceptive. And the guy knows he's being deceptive. Oh, well, it wasn't completed. Well, technically, yeah, it wasn't completed, but it was bound up and printed. People did have copies of it, and there were copies in their own library at the time. So it was a deceptive way of trying to get out of having to show someone that, yes, the changes in the Revelations really did happen, and this book would demonstrate it.

John Dehlin [01:09:37] Before I ask you a couple more questions about that, then turn it back over to Rebecca. Ron, did you want to add anything to that?

Sandra Tanner [01:09:43] No.

Ronald Huggins [01:09:43] I mean, that's. That's the story.

John Dehlin [01:09:45] Okay. All right. So, Sandra, do you want to just finish telling us how you and Gerald were instrumental in helping us all learn about Joseph, changing his prophecies between the Book of Commandments and the Doctrine and Covenants?

Sandra Tanner [01:10:00] Oh, no, I'm not sure what story you're after.

John Dehlin [01:10:03] Well, I mean, so you said you. You got some of the copies of the Book of Commandments at byu, but you weren't able to get them all. And so then you went to Yale.

Sandra Tanner [01:10:12] We didn't have enough money to get the rest of the book photocopied.

John Dehlin [01:10:15] Right.

Sandra Tanner [01:10:15] And so we got as much as we could afford, and so then we weren't going to be able to go back to BYU to get the rest of it. So we contacted Yale and they let us have photocopies of it that we then used to print from. We had a big problem even getting that printed. And advertising it because the. No one wanted to touch it.

John Dehlin [01:10:40] So what you, what you did is you compiled sort of like in all

Sandra Tanner [01:10:45] the photos and to make a book of the photo reprint because there was

John Dehlin [01:10:49] no one who was publishing and making available the. The A complete Book of Commandments for people to purchase and look at. Is that right?

Sandra Tanner [01:10:57] Well, there was a copy that was reset type. I mean, the, the Salt Lake Tribunal years before had done a reprint of the Book of Commandments, but it wasn't photocopied. So Mormons would keep saying, oh well, you can't believe that that that Tribune has changed all the words. And so we wanted to afford photocopy of it where they couldn't say, no, you're cheating. And so when we got these pages from the Wilford Woodruff copy, we thought, well, we got you now this is your own guy's copy of the book. And anyone can read this and see that the changes have happened in the revelations. But half of the book was photocopied out of Yale. And because of that, we had people telling us, oh well, you can't trust Yale. They're run by a bunch of communists. And they just changed all the wording. And so you can't rely on that. So it didn't matter how we tried to present the photocopies. Everyone had an excuse why it can't be the real thing.

John Dehlin [01:11:59] It's just like the gospel topics essays when so many members have said that anti Mormons have hijacked the church's website and changed and like, and like planted anti Mormon lies in the gospel topics essays. It's like history just repeats itself over and over again.

Sandra Tanner [01:12:14] Right?

John Dehlin [01:12:15] Yeah, yeah. And we did just, just as a call out, we did an episode or two on the LDS discussion series on Mormon stories about changes of Joseph Smith's prophecies and revelations between the Book of Commandments and the Doctrine and Covenants. And you. There are these pages that my friend Mike shows of analysis that you and Gerald did.

Sandra Tanner [01:12:36] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:12:36] Comparing the original Book of Commandments with written commandments that Joseph Smith published. And then in the margins, you write all the ways that things were either taken out that you scratch out or added to revelations that would have been published.

Sandra Tanner [01:12:53] Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:12:54] That was one of the first major projects you guys worked on. Is that right?

Sandra Tanner [01:12:57] Right. And it was. Was very disillusioning when you read that one of the revelations said the first, the only gifted calling Joseph had was to bring out the Book of Mormon. And then he rewrites that later, a few years later to Say, that's the first gift I've given you. And so Joseph then opens the door for him to bring in anything he wants after that. Where the witnesses all felt that there was a limit on what God was going to call him to do, and he had fulfilled that.

John Dehlin [01:13:30] Also, all the changes to the way that priesthood was talked about between the Book of Commandments.

Sandra Tanner [01:13:35] Right.

John Dehlin [01:13:35] And the polygamy. Of course, the polygamy. So. So really quickly you tried to advertise this, this offering, is that right? With the Deseret News in the Slug Tribune.

Sandra Tanner [01:13:47] Yes. And the newspapers had. The two days papers had a agreement on advertising. If you ran in both papers, you got a special price. So, okay, we want to run an ad on the Book of Commandments in both papers. But the Deseret News didn't want to run the ad. We said, well, we'll pay for both newspapers, but they wouldn't let us.

John Dehlin [01:14:14] So Desert News wouldn't run the ad? No, but the trip did.

Sandra Tanner [01:14:18] Well, let's see. Did they finally run the ad? I can't remember now.

John Dehlin [01:14:21] It seems.

Sandra Tanner [01:14:22] I think they did.

John Dehlin [01:14:23] Ronald can tell us. But it seems like the Deseret News wouldn't run the ad and they wouldn't pay the money back. Is that right, Ronald? Did we get that right?

Ronald Huggins [01:14:31] Yeah, that's right. And you know, if you want a little bit more on the detail, the Tanner did try to get the rest of the Book of Commandments from byu. And it was funny. One of the things that struck me was just how everything went. Gerald and Sandra had sort of accidentally been allowed to do all this photocopying, but when it was discovered that they had, then there's all this flurry of trying to cover up, find out what they had and so on. And so Gerald asks for the rest of the pages and they say, oh, we can't give you the rest of the pages because it's personal material. It's in copyright. Well, it wasn't in copyright. It was out of copyright and just lying, you know, about. About why they couldn't show it to him, but they wouldn't show it to him. Otherwise they would have probably printed the whole thing from the BYU copy.

John Dehlin [01:15:29] I mean, it's guaranteed. If somehow it would have been faith affirming, they would have published it for the world. Right?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:15:34] Right.

John Dehlin [01:15:35] All right, Rebecca, you're next.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:15:37] And that's the bottom line, I think, right there. So I'm going to ask paraphrase a question from one of our book club members, and they just want to know all this intrigue, everything you're doing, the studying and the writing, letters and the researching, and yet you're still a mom and you're running your family. Talk a little bit about that. Juggling. It must have been. Juggling, I think, is the only word that you can use for it.

Balancing Family Life and Activist Scholarship

Sandra Tanner [01:16:04] Well, yes. And then there's the family side of the story.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:16:09] Maybe we need a whole other episode on that, but our readers were curious. If you could just touch on it very briefly, and then we'll get back to the stories.

Sandra Tanner [01:16:17] It was very hard with three little kids and Gerald so engrossed in all of this research and yet needing photocopies from the libraries, needing to go do research at the state Historical Society or whatever was going on. And then there was the production of all of this. It's one thing to write it all up, but then it has to be typed up, it has to be mimeographed, then later printed. It has to be collated, it has to be bound. Someone has to run a little bookstore in the front room selling the reprints and things that we did. So my life was very complicated. So was Gerald's. And this was like trying to have two careers at the same time for me. And it did cause conflicts early on. At one point, when the kids were in grammar school, I finally told Gerald, I said, I have to have a day off. I feel like I'm a slave. I'm just tied to the house. Now, remember, we're doing all this in our home. So this means I'm never leaving the house. I am just tied there to taking care of three kids, collating books, binding them up, waiting on customers. And so, yeah, it was a very grueling schedule and a very demanding schedule for the two of us to produce these things. It took us doing this day and evening. It was not just something you did casually for a couple hours a day. This consumed our time, and we did work out to where I got one day a week off. And the rule was that I got to go do whatever I wanted until dinner time, no questions asked. I didn't have to account for my time. I could take as long as I wanted in the grocery store. This is one of the issues, of course, I think this applies to a lot of men. I took too long at the grocery store because I read the labels. And Charles just wants, just get a bottle of milk, you know, Just get

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:18:42] a bottle of ketchup to read the label.

Sandra Tanner [01:18:44] That's part of it, you know, and so checking prices, you know, it doesn't matter. So it's $0.05 more. Just get the bottle of ketchup, you know. So anyways, we worked out to where I had one day a week where I was free from not just the household things, but from the bookstores and printing and publishing stuff. So we worked together side by side, day in, day out for all those years, what was it, 47 years or something. And it took negotiation, it took commitment, it took give and take. And there was tension at times. We did have disagreements over how we were doing things, how long we were doing things. Do I get to go spend an evening with relatives or do I have to stay home and collate books because we have orders waiting? And so there was a lot of hard work going into all of this, but we made it through. We didn't get divorced, and we still loved each other and we were still talking.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:19:57] Oh, see, it's a wonderful story. And your kids were impacted in the book, the story where your son Dennis

Sandra Tanner [01:20:03] goes to Senior city to college, and

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:20:07] they knew he was. They, whoever they is, knew he was coming.

Sandra Tanner [01:20:10] So that, yes, that's a very impact, very funny story, because Dennis thought he was getting away from Mormonism. I don't know whatever got that in his head, if he's going to Cedar City, that he didn't realize he's going to BYU South. But somehow it didn't register. But somehow the Mormon Institute of Religion in Cedar City figured out that our son was coming down to school. And for whatever reason, they thought this was some sort of sinister attack on their school, I guess. So the institute arranged to have this Mormon defender of the faith that had a Sunday afternoon radio program on ksl, Van Hale. And they had him come down to speak on the Tanner's material to try to offset Dennis's nefarious influence he might have on the school. But the problem was Van had a very nuanced kind of Mormonism, and he didn't believe the Book of Mormon was historical. So when he's up, given his. All his criticism of the Tanner, it all comes out in his discussion that he didn't take the Book of Mormon as an actual historical record. So that got all the students so riled up, they forgot about anything about the Tanner, and they all are getting up, giving their testimonies how they knew the Book of Mormon was true and it was real history and everything. So the whole meeting turned into sort of a fiasco as far as any big effort to offset the Tanner's influence. But poor Dennis, he didn't go down there to cause any Trouble. I mean, he wanted to be there incognito. He didn't want any attention. He had had enough trouble with people finding out he was the Tanner's son and thinking he was some sort of nefarious character. And then he goes to school and just runs right into it.

John Dehlin [01:22:00] I love it. Ronald, anything you want to add to that?

Ronald Huggins [01:22:04] Yeah, I mean, this is one of the things that I. That really struck me. Just imagine what it would be like to be the children of the Tanner and one of the, you know, people running up to you all the time and telling you on the one hand, oh, your parents are so wonderful, you know, they mean so much to us and everything. And knowing that, well, mom and dad could be kind of grouchy sometime and not that the picture's false. And then on the other hand, oh, they're the devils from hell, which is also false, and you're their children. It just seemed like an impossible situation for the kids. And, you know, I really felt for them having to be the children of Gerald and Sandra because Gerald and Sandra chose to do what they did, but the kids didn't. And that's something, you know, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to go through what they went through. It's amazing they came through as well as they did.

Sandra Tanner [01:23:02] It's a problem, I think, for children of anyone famous or that does something notorious. It has fallout and repercussions to families. And our kids had problems with friends, with jobs because of who their parents were, which wasn't fair to them. But they all survived, and they all come out to be decent citizens and responsible people in their community. But it was a tough experience to be always in the limelight when you didn't have anything to do with creating it.

John Dehlin [01:23:47] Yeah.

Ronald Huggins [01:23:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:49] I can say my kids will relate to this part of the conversation 100%. Yeah, it's. You don't, you know, when you. When you pick up that microphone or when you. Or when you buy that first. What's the machine you bought?

Sandra Tanner [01:24:02] Mimeograph machine.

John Dehlin [01:24:03] When you buy that first mimeograph machine. I don't know if this is true for you. I felt motivated by, like, the civil rights movement and truth. And you think, well, if I'm doing what's right, it's going to be good for my kids. It'll be good for my relationship for my kids. But that's naive, isn't it?

Sandra Tanner [01:24:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:24:21] She just unambiguously said yes.

Sandra Tanner [01:24:23] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:24:25] Yeah, it's hard. All right, well, I. So I'm going to go next and We've already referred to this guy. But one of the moments I wanted to throw this book against the wall was when I learned about the story of Grant S. Heward. Because, you know, you learn about Juanita Brooks and Fawn Brody and the Tanner and the September Six, and you learn about all these kind. B.H. roberts, you learn about all these kind of heroes or William Law or even with the Book of Abraham, you guys are Brett Metcalf or whatever. But I had never heard the name Grant S. He was a very important figure. He had no business doing Egyptology, and he's a real hero. And he met a really tragic fate. And so, Ronald, I know you've written a lot about him, so I wonder if, Ronald, this should be your story to tell.

The Book of Abraham and Joseph Smith's Egyptian Grammar

Ronald Huggins [01:25:21] Well, I haven't written that much about him, but what was interesting is he. He really wanted to know. He thought when the Egyptian grammar and Alphabet, which is Grant.

John Dehlin [01:25:31] Ronald, if you don't mind, just start by telling who he was and a little bit about him. Tell the story of Grant Hewitt. Okay, if you don't mind.

Ronald Huggins [01:25:39] He's a believing, faithful Mormon. Prayer in his home. Regular prayer. A devoted believer, married with family. He's a postman. He's James Wardle's postman. And all of a sudden what happened was James got a hold of a microfilm of this document called the Egyptian Grammar and Alphabet, and the Tanner published it, and Grant Ewart thought, oh, this is wonderful, because now it's actually its basis for part of the. Of the Book of Abraham. So if you. If you look at the text of the developing text in the Alphabet and grammar, you can see that the earlier of the Book of Abraham were taken from it. I mean, like chapter four of the Book of Abraham comes from Genesis one, reworked. But that early part comes from the Alphabet grammar, where you have a symbol and then you have a translation, and then it's refined and then it becomes text. The Book of Abraham. And so Grant Hewitt's looking at these symbols, Egyptian symbols and some others that Joseph threw in. And he's thinking, well, now we can prove that Joseph is a true prophet. And so he was going to prove by learning Egyptian that Joseph was a true prophet. And so he starts studying Egyptian and Gerald gets in on it, too. So if you. I was just in Sandra's library, basement library, and saw Gerald's Egyptian grammars and dictionaries. So what happened was Grant actually discovered. Well, let me preface that. Hugh Nibley denied that this Alphabet and grammar has anything to do with the Book of Abraham or with Joseph Smith even, really. But that's just not true. So, anyhow, so Gerald and Grant are studying Egyptian, and Grant tries to. He finds out, you know, this thing, this Alphabet and grammar, whoever produced is fake. So he wants to make sure it's real, because if he learns enough Egyptian to know that that just isn't true, that's not Egyptian. You see an Egyptian character, and next to it you have this 75 words, and when it's really only one maybe consonant in Egyptian. And so he goes up to talk to Joseph Fielding Smith to ask to see the original microfilm. And he's given the third degree and just given a terrible time trying to see it. And as it's happening to him, he's suspecting that, you know, Joseph Fielding Smith probably knows this is faults, but he's just trying to guild Grant Hewitt and make him feel bad, as if he's being bad, wanting to see the actual microfilm to make sure it's authentic. Well, eventually he gets to see it and he finds out it is authentic.

John Dehlin [01:28:44] And by the way, just really quickly, Ronald, the church had the grammar and Alphabet in its possession for decades and did not ever make it public. To me, it seems like they hid it intentionally for decades. Is that fair?

Ronald Huggins [01:28:59] Well, yes. In fact, it was only like with the Joseph Smith papers, I think, in 2013, that you ever got a good copy of it. Before that, you were relying on the Tanner's reprint of it, and it wasn't in order in the microfilm. So Mike Morcourt put it in order, and the microfilm was very bad condition. And so, yeah, they did not let it. So while I was writing this book, it's still. When I was starting in the early stages, it was only then being made available, even though it was done in the 1830s. And so Grant, he started to look at the Joseph Smith Papyrus when they became available in 1967, and he discovered. He and Gerald discovered together which pieces of the Joseph Smith papyrus were used to create this grammar and Alphabet and therefore to create also the early part of the Book of Abraham. And together they wrote an article for dialogue explaining this. But in the meantime, Grant had thought, well, you know, Mormons are going to want to know about this. So he made up this nice little tract that showed you how to write your name in Egyptian and explained where the letters came from, and then gave an example of how Joseph supposedly translated one of the characters. And then he had. On the other side, I think, well, we're Mormons. We want to know truth and he asked Gerald, well, do you think I'll get in trouble if I go up at general conference and distribute this? Gerald said, oh, no, probably not. Well, he was excommunicated at the. Apparently at the direction of Joseph Fielding Smith in the original. One of the things about the book is the editor took out a lot of the more colorful language. Initially, I said he'd been piddled on from a great height because that's what happened to him. So it really was a sad story. Here is a faithful Mormon just trying to prove that Joseph is a prophet. He hits a brick wall trying to see the actual material. Comes to believe that those guys don't even believe it, that Joseph Fielding Smith knows all this stuff there and he's only hiding it because he knows it won't stand. And then ultimately they excommunicate him for his attempt to be truthful and faithful. What can you say?

John Dehlin [01:31:39] In the pamphlet, he gives kind of an analogy about, like, a children's book. Can you relate the analogy that he gave that kind of helped people understand why. Why the grammar and Alphabet analysis showed that Joseph Smith was not providing an accurate translation? Do you remember what I'm talking about?

Ronald Huggins [01:31:59] I am afraid I don't. I'm sorry.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:32:01] Wasn't it Little Red Riding Hood?

John Dehlin [01:32:03] Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Ronald Huggins [01:32:08] That skip. I'm sorry. Maybe you could read it or something. I don't remember it. I'm sorry.

John Dehlin [01:32:14] Do you. Do you remember it, Rebecca?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:32:16] I just remember that it would be like hearing the story of Little Red Riding Hood, all the characters and all the events that happened, and then finding out maybe now that jogged Ron's memory where you can finish.

Ronald Huggins [01:32:25] Yeah. It was like having Little Red Riding Hood taking a dot and supposedly getting all of Little Red Riding Hood out of it. And that's what his analogy was. And so. So basically, Joseph, mark one little letter in. In Egyptian, and you'd get a paragraph of words, and it just doesn't work that way.

John Dehlin [01:32:46] Yeah. Okay. So if I'm understanding it right, Joseph Smith would take. Using the grammar and Alphabet, it would show that he would just take a character or two of hieroglyphics and produce sometimes paragraphs worth of. Worth of text that just, you know, that would have been equivalent to a children's story from. From. From a period. In other words, he was just generating fiction or fantasy or fan fiction,

Ronald Huggins [01:33:18] you

John Dehlin [01:33:18] know, claiming to be translating authentic Egyptian characters. Is that right?

Ronald Huggins [01:33:23] Yeah, that's what he was doing.

John Dehlin [01:33:25] Yeah. Yeah.

Ronald Huggins [01:33:26] And I mean, there's no doubt about it, even though there's still some Mormon writers who are claiming that's not what happened. They're trying to blame it all on his scribes, but there's enough evidence here and there to show that Joseph himself was. Was the instigator.

John Dehlin [01:33:43] Yeah. And really quickly, I want to know what happened to him. Obviously, this is personal to me because I feel like I had similar motives as him. I wanted people just to know the truth. I started as a faithful Mormon and then I end up excommunicated. Can either of you talk about what happened to him after his excommunication? Because he went on to live a couple more decades, right?

Sandra Tanner [01:34:10] Yeah. Well, after he was put out of the church, he went on studying Egyptian, but he also ended up going, I think it was to China to teach English as a second language for a while. So maybe Ron has more to add on that, but he had a number of different interests that he pursued.

John Dehlin [01:34:38] So he didn't just stay a mailman.

Sandra Tanner [01:34:40] Well, he stayed a mailman, yeah, but he had all kind of other things that he got involved in.

John Dehlin [01:34:45] Did you. Did you remain his friend? And did he. Did. Did like it affect his marriage? Did he. Did he, you know, tell his kids, you know, did. Was he depressed? Was he a tragic figure? Do we know how the excommunication affected his health, his. His family, his relationship, any of that stuff?

Sandra Tanner [01:35:05] I don't know what Ron knows about it. I think it affected his family, but not his marriage. I think his wife was somewhat on the same page as him. They had both come over and talked to us about the temple ritual at one time, before we did our first printing of the temple ritual. Gee, when did we do that? In 1970 or somewhere? that time, Grant and his wife were trying to remember all the temple ceremony to help us get a more accurate copy than the one we had had before. And so she was open enough that she came over and helped try to get a transcript of the temple ritual. But I think it was a problem for his children. And I don't really know that much about what happened to his family later on. We kind of got so involved in our research from that point on, with the Book of Abraham and everything opening up into the 70s, that we didn't see Grant as much kind of lost touch.

John Dehlin [01:36:20] Anything you want to add about that, Ronald?

Ronald Huggins [01:36:22] Yeah, well, I mean, there's one thing I know. I talked to Mike Morcourt, who knew him better, and he presented him as having a good sense of humor about everything, kind of like James Wardle. Did, you know, James and Grant were friends. And Mike remembers him kind of, you know, taking it in stride once it became clear what was going on and just coming to terms with it. At least that's what Mike told me.

John Dehlin [01:36:51] Okay. All right. Well, thanks, Ronald, for telling that important story. I think there's just too many unsung heroes in. In. In this field, and he's one of them. All right, Rebecca, you're next.

Race, Civil Rights, and the Mormon Church

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:37:05] Oh, wow. I just want to thumb through the book and pick one now. I'm. The whole idea of the Black Panthers arriving in Salt Lake. I would love to hear more about the Edward Lund prophecy and just that whole era and the tensions, and that was an incredible part of the story for me.

Sandra Tanner [01:37:24] Okay, Ron, how much do you remember of all that?

Ronald Huggins [01:37:29] Well, yeah, I put that all together kind of so well, the situation was those were very politically heated times. And.

John Dehlin [01:37:42] Can we. Can we start. Can we start with John Taylor revelation about Salt Lake being invaded? Can we start there?

Ronald Huggins [01:37:50] Sure. What had happened there is that there was a John Taylor revelation, but it got expanded somewhere and added additional information where supposedly blacks were going to come into Salt Lake City and enter from a certain side, and they were going to enter the temple and ravish the women. And then the people of Salt Lake were going to. The faithful ones of the. The Mormons were going to become so outraged that they would attack back and there would be blood in the streets and this, this and that. The. There was a long discussion in the. In the added part about how, you know, the blacks would be doing this all in the pretense of gaining rights and so on. And, you know, there are copies. I think that was the Edward Lynn prophecy, if I remember right. But there were copies other than the one that this fellow brought forward that didn't have this material in it. So it was obviously added. And even reading it, you can tell it was made up in light of the kind of social tensions during the civil rights era. But people were scared. And on one level, Utah was having a hard time. BYU with its playing other teams. And also there was a lot of talk that was inflammatory on both sides. But, yeah, the Salt Lake was very paranoid at that time.

Sandra Tanner [01:39:17] The talk radio station at the time would be the equivalent of podcasts today, I guess. And so on talk radio, on the local channels, you had these talk show hosts. One in particular that was very right wing, faithful Mormon, and he had everyone riled up that there was going to be this invasion of blacks into Salt Lake City, and they had to get ready for this. And there was all sorts of talk on the radio about everyone getting their rifles and getting their ammunitions, getting their year's supply of food for the big invasion that was going to happen. And there were talks on the radio that I. I mean, I personally heard a lot of this stuff that there. Oh, some guy would call in. Yeah, I'm on the fifth floor of the office building down the street from the temple, and I have a clear shot of the street and the temple from my office. And I have my rifle right here to the side of me so that if when they come in, I'm ready,

John Dehlin [01:40:24] they, meaning the blacks.

Sandra Tanner [01:40:25] When the blacks come in, I'm ready to defend the faithful, defend the Temple square and all this. I mean, it was. It was scary when you heard these people talking on these radio programs. It was alarming that so many callers would say that they had guns in their offices in Salt Lake to defend themselves. When the big invasion came of all these blacks, Supposedly Southern California was full of these blacks that were just militant and going to come in and slaughter everyone or something. And it's a wonder we didn't have a bloodbath in Salt Lake, because it was that tense, it was that scary that people really believed this was going to happen. And they were all boasting of how much ammunition and rifles they had at the ready when the invasion came in. I mean, there was a point at which you just prayed that no busload of blacks would just happen stance come to Temple Square. Because I was worried that, you know, any kind of bus that might come in with a boatload of blacks could touch this off all unintentionally, but just their presence could set it off.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:41:45] Now, that's really interesting. I think it says that they were going to take over Temple Square and. Or blow up Mountain Dell Reservoir. And then it also mentioned in the book that there were neighborhood almost vigilante groups, neighborhood emergency teams or something. And it alluded. And it alluded. I thought this was interesting. It alluded. Eventually the church said, you can't meet in the stake centers of the meeting house. That almost said to me that they had been meeting there maybe. And then we're told not to. So were you familiar with any of

Sandra Tanner [01:42:18] those groups or not to the groups. I don't know where they might have been meeting, but on talk radio, they obviously had places where they were congregating, because they talked as though there were planning meetings and people telling each other where they could get ammunitions and rifles and what they would need to stockpile. It was really a scary time.

John Dehlin [01:42:48] Anything you Want to add to that, Ronald?

Ronald Huggins [01:42:50] Yeah, I mean, they were, for example, making clubs and shop class in one town nearby, but I would say clubs

John Dehlin [01:42:58] to hit people with. Right, right.

Ronald Huggins [01:43:00] In case that, you know, so at least in our area, near our school will be safe if we all have clubs. And so they were making clubs. I would say it was kind of. I don't know if you can. If you can claim that they were meeting in ward houses prior to that order. Basically, the Salt Lake Police Department was alarmed, and so was the church, because all of this, you know, the prophecy comes out. There's already all this racial tension, and then this whole thing developed rather quickly and. And the church responded fairly quickly officially that, well, we don't want this going on in the wards. So I wouldn't. I. It may have gone on in wards, but I wouldn't swear to it. They may have met that. That. Just my two cents. There.

John Dehlin [01:43:50] There was a quote that Joseph Fielding Smith made, I think, to the New York Times in the early 60s. Do either of you want to tell us what that quote was and what he's. How he referred to black people in that quote?

Ronald Huggins [01:44:04] Yeah, he said, what was it? We have. We have great affection for the coloreds or something like that.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:44:10] I think that wasn't the word he used. I don't even want to use it on the air.

John Dehlin [01:44:15] No, dude, go ahead. What was the word?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:44:17] Well, and I. I was looking for the quote, but let's see. It was darkies.

John Dehlin [01:44:22] Darkies, actually.

Ronald Huggins [01:44:23] Yes.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:44:25] Magazine.

John Dehlin [01:44:26] Yeah, yeah. So Joseph Smith refers. Refers to. To black people as darkies in the early 1960s and saying, hey, we don't have a problem with them as long as they kind of keep to themselves.

Ronald Huggins [01:44:39] No, in 1970s, it was actually.

John Dehlin [01:44:42] Okay. Yeah, okay.

Ronald Huggins [01:44:43] And it was, we, We. We like the darkies. That's what he said. We have room for the darkies in the church. And, and of course, then JET magazine, which was an all African American magazine, had a special little blurb. Mormon prophet says we. We like the darkies. And so it was a. It was kind of an embarrassing moment for Joseph Fielding Smith and the church.

John Dehlin [01:45:08] Yeah, yeah. And just to round out that chapter, it was so fascinating to just bring it together for me, kind of how tragic it was that the 1978 priesthood revelation, you know, we all like to think. Well, the believing Mormons like to think that that was just a genuine revelation where God just decided he. He wanted to, you know, change his mind about black people, as the Book of Moron musical says. But this. This book really Brought it home that Kimball knew they were in trouble. Kimball learned that they had been giving the priesthood to a ton of Brazilians, men who all had drops of Negro blood in. In their ancestry or in their lineage. And it almost seemed like that. It's like, oh, Kimball happened to love Lamanites, and he, you know, wouldn't care about Africans per se. He wouldn't care about African Americans per se. You know, that's. You know, they're suffering, their sadness, their exclusion, the bigotry against them. Yeah, you know, we can. We can sustain that. They must deserve it because of the curse of Cain. But once Kimball finds out that his beloved, you know, laymanites or the Brazilian people, that they. The church, had already been giving the priesthood to a bunch of people with Negro ancestry, that's what pushed. Pushed him over the edge to, you know, to, quote, receive the revelation that black. Black people should receive the priesthood. And, of course, only when Markey Peterson was. Was out of the country. Anything you guys want to say about that? I mean, it kind of paints it as kind of like public pressure.

Sandra Tanner [01:46:57] Yes, absolutely.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [01:46:59] Well, I was floored by the story. I think it was a young man that you knew who had received the priesthood. And then when they looked into his background a little bit or it became apparent that he. There were some questions about his race, and they actually. I don't even know how you. How do you revoke priesthood? I don't even know how you.

John Dehlin [01:47:17] That was a family member, right? You want to tell that story?

Sandra Tanner [01:47:19] Yeah, it's not a family member of mine. It was a fellow in our stake.

John Dehlin [01:47:24] Okay.

Sandra Tanner [01:47:26] The family was converted into Mormonism, and I believe they were from the south or their ancestry came from the south. And when they got into genealogy, because once you join the church, you want to save all your family, so you go to genealogy to find out who your great grandparents were and all that sort of stuff. The parents get into genealogy and realize that they descend from a. I don't know if the woman would have been full black, but part black, a slave in the South. And so once this comes out, then they have more than a drop of black blood. This had not been obvious before. And so when the church leaders become aware that this family has Negro ancestry, they tell them, well, you can't have the priesthood. So I don't know what the technicalities of how you do that. I don't know. Do you tear up your priesthood ordination paper or something? But the boy was stripped of his priesthood, a teenage boy. And so in a Mormon community, for a Teenage boy in the Mormon community in the 50s, to suddenly be told he has no authority in the priesthood anymore means that no Mormon girl is going to want to date him because he can't get married in the temple. And it would have just been devastating. At the time that I heard of this boy, my friends and I discussed it, and we all felt terrible for the kid for what a terrible. Can you think of anything worse that could happen to you than find out that your great, great grandma was black? And so it was a very tragic story to us. It didn't signal to me problems of racism, because at that point in my life as a white girl in a white neighborhood, the story to me was, the tragedy was that he could no longer get married in the temple. But looking back on it, you know, what a terrible thing for this family to experience the rejection of their newfound faith and told that they don't fit anymore.

John Dehlin [01:49:48] Yeah. So, Ronald, did you want to jump in on that part specifically?

Ronald Huggins [01:49:59] I guess I had something to say, but it. I lost it in this thing. What Sandra was saying.

John Dehlin [01:50:05] No worries. If you think about it, we can. We can come back to you. Ron.

Ronald Huggins [01:50:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:09] I just want to say for me, another one of these throw the book at the wall moments was when, you know, like when I found out when. When Malcolm X had. Had been demonized to me my whole life. And then I found out he was actually in many ways heroic, where I felt like I had been misled through history. I had one of those moments in this book in, In a way that I don't want to. I don't want to come across wrong, but I'll just tell you what upset me so. As I was starting to read and become familiar with Mormon history, and I'm starting to learn about the, the, you know, the 1978 lifting of the priesthood ban. The story that I was always told was the story of Lester Bush. It's like, oh, Lester Bush, Lester Bush. Here's a man who, I don't know, worked for the FBI or the CIA, living in the D.C. area, and he comes out with this groundbreaking article in 1973, in dialogue that for the first time showed the world that Joseph Smith had given the priesthood to Elijah Abel, a black man. And then somehow somebody sent a copy of this groundbreaking dialogue article to Spencer W. Kimball. And now Ed Kimball, Spencer W. Kimball's son, has a copy of the dialogue article, and it's underlined and things written in the margins. And if it weren't for. For Lester bush and the 1973 dialogue article, you know, black people would have never gotten the priesthood. And thank you, Lester Bush. Now, I don't mean to be disrespectful because my understanding is Lester Bush was an incredibly important historian and he did really important work. And it probably is accurate to say that that dialogue article in 1973 was incredibly influential. But Sandra, I saw you smile for a second. Do you know why I'm a little bit salty about that version of the, the story that I heard on your behalf?

Sandra Tanner [01:52:11] Well, Gerald and I had been digging into the priesthood and black issue for several years by that point.

John Dehlin [01:52:18] A decade.

Sandra Tanner [01:52:19] Yeah. And we'd already come up with the proof of the ordination of not just Elijah Abel, but of his grandson, who up in Logan, I believe had also been given the priesthood out here in Utah years later. Then it was known that Elijah Abel had been ordained by Joseph Smith, well, not by him, but under him during his lifetime, which had been a big discussion in the background of the church leadership of how to view Elijah Abel and whether or not it was approved of Joseph Smith and all kind of discussions. But he was serving as a 70 out here in Utah, went on a mission for the church and all. It wasn't like that. This was a one act thing and then forgot about. I mean, he was an active Mormon out here in Utah and his family continued to be active. The church just covered it all over and hoped everyone would forget. But then us and some friends got studying and researching into it all and found the. Or I found the ordination certificate at, on a microfilm at the genealogy library for the grandson. So we had already come out with material documenting all of this before Lester Bush article even came out.

John Dehlin [01:53:47] So it must have been that Lester Bush was reading Tanner's.

Sandra Tanner [01:53:50] Oh, God forbid. No, no, disillusion me.

John Dehlin [01:53:55] And do you think he referenced any of that in his Dialogue article?

Sandra Tanner [01:53:59] I don't think so.

John Dehlin [01:54:00] Yeah. Yeah. And that's why I'm salty, because I, you know, and not to make this about me, but like there are ways I connect with you and Gerald. And one of the ways is I feel like many of us, Jeremy Runnels is a perfect example. You know, we've received really poor treatment by the Mormon scholar community, the Mormon studies community. They've got this kind of, what appears to me sometimes is kind of the snobbish in group of who they like and who is, who's approved and who's in the club. And then there's kind of like people that aren't in the club and regardless of their important contributions to the world. Well, you don't talk about them or you talk about them behind their backs, or you exclude them because they're not part the of club. And I just got a sense that that that's how you guys have been treated over the years, because, you know, it feels like you guys have been left out of the club and snubbed. And that was just another validating example of that sort of poor treatment, that kind of. And not to disparage Lester Bush or any of those dialogue people anyway, anything you have to say about that?

Sandra Tanner [01:55:10] Well, that was sort of our whole career was we would write on something and then it would seem like then the church would write on it and we would write on another topic and the church would write on something, and whenever they bring it up, it all. Ta da. We have this new discovery. And I'm thinking, well, we wrote about that last year. And so there was two tracks of discussion, of information, and everyone only knew about the church's side. Oh, the church had this wonderful new article about xyz, whatever it is. And it's like, yeah, it's a year after we did. But yes, our research didn't count because we didn't go through educated channels and through the regular publishing track, so. And we didn't have a college education or anything. But it's been curious through the years how many things that we wrote about. First, that the church leaders just simply act like it never happened.

John Dehlin [01:56:22] But not just church leaders. The dialogue.

Sandra Tanner [01:56:23] I mean, yeah, the historians, the dialogue

John Dehlin [01:56:25] and Sunstone crowd and even the Leonard Arrington folks.

Sandra Tanner [01:56:28] Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:56:29] They kind of treated you like you didn't exist.

Ronald Huggins [01:56:31] Right.

John Dehlin [01:56:32] But then relied a lot on your

Sandra Tanner [01:56:34] scholarship, the least Reddit.

John Dehlin [01:56:37] Yeah, yeah. To get up to speed.

Sandra Tanner [01:56:39] Come up to speed here.

John Dehlin [01:56:40] Yeah, yeah. So I just. You guys deserve just so much respect. All right, so I am. I, you know, I'll let Rebecca do the next question, but like, I would not let this podcast happen without you telling the doctor Clandestine story. Holy moly. This is a huge story that I had never heard of. So between you, Sandra and Ronald, really quickly, Ronald, was there anything you wanted to add to the. The conversation that we just had about Lester Bush and. And dialogue and Mormon studies crowd and all that?

Mormonism Shadow or Reality and Its Clandestine Impact

Ronald Huggins [01:57:21] Yeah, well, everybody's reading the Tanner, obviously, and, and they all knew what they were saying, but they would never reference them. And I mean, this was the, this was the Salt Lake City even that I came to in 2000.

John Dehlin [01:57:36] Yeah.

Ronald Huggins [01:57:37] And now there is the other side of that formula. What's going to happen to you if you teach at BYU and you're putting your footnotes, you know, so, I mean, it's a two side. A two sided, double edged sword. But yeah, I mean, Sandra once said, you know, it's amazing how much influence you. You can have, so long as you don't care who gets the credit.

John Dehlin [01:57:59] Yeah, yeah, that's powerful. All right, well, I want you guys to start from the beginning. I guess. We need to mention Mormonism, Shadow and reality, and we need to. I want. I want on the podcast to have a video and high quality audio recording of the story of Dr. Clandestine. Who wants to begin?

Sandra Tanner [01:58:21] Okay, Ron, you got that story done.

Ronald Huggins [01:58:24] You start.

Sandra Tanner [01:58:26] Well, so we're doing this book, mormonism in the 60s, that's first mimeographed, and then we graduate to a printing press, and then we change the name to Mormonism, Shadow or Reality. Homegrown book that we print on our own little press. And we're doing, at this point, thousands of copies of this homemade book that's going all over creation. And people are asking the church all the time, what's the answer to the questions the Tanner are bringing up in this book? How do we resolve this?

John Dehlin [01:59:10] It's. It's kind of like a CES letter, but like an actual massive book with actual scholarship and tons of original scholarship and footnotes, and it was just like. It was like a nuclear bomb to people's faith. Like the CES letter has become. We've got a copy over there on the bookshelf if you want to grab it, Rebecca. But. But it wouldn't be un. I guess it wouldn't do it justice to compare it to the CES letter, but in terms of its impact.

Sandra Tanner [01:59:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:40] Wouldn't you say, Sandra, that it's had like a massive impact? Like the CES letter?

Sandra Tanner [01:59:44] Yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:59:45] Bigger. Yeah.

Sandra Tanner [01:59:46] Yeah. And it's around the final printing. It's around 600 pages, and it's like an encyclopedia.

John Dehlin [01:59:54] Show it, Rebecca. Show it to the camera. Oh, sorry.

Sandra Tanner [01:59:56] It's the size of a phone book.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [02:00:00] And those of you that watch, come

John Dehlin [02:00:02] close to the camera, to the mic.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [02:00:04] For those of you that watched under the Banner of Heaven and you saw Detective Piri having his faith crisis in the front seat of the car. They showed the red book. So it kind of had. It's kind of popular again. This is it. Everyone wanted to know, what is that book that's on the front seat with Detective Piri? And this was it.

John Dehlin [02:00:23] And sometimes you would go, yeah, you'd be on a mission. And there'd be like this secret copy of this book that the elders passed down one to another. Like, this book was significant. Okay, keep going.

Sandra Tanner [02:00:35] Right. And so many people were asking different church leaders for resolution of the problems. What do we answer to our kids or whoever that challenged us with this book? And so different ones at the historian's office felt that it needed to have a response. But the problem was, to respond to our book, you would. To have an incredible response, you would have to have some kind of discussion of some of the problem areas. And if you have a discussion of the problem areas, are you putting gas on the fire and making the problem worse? If the church leaders make reference to the problems to try to give an answer, because this is one of the problems that people have had all along with studying on Mormonism, someone may bring up to you the problem of the first vision, for instance. And so you may go try to research the first vision. Well, then you find out, well, not only that we have changes in the Doctrine and Covenants. So then you try to research that. Next thing you know, you're going down the rabbit hole.

John Dehlin [02:01:49] And priesthood restoration.

Sandra Tanner [02:01:51] What about priesthood restoration? What about plaques? What about masonry? What about the temple ritual?

John Dehlin [02:01:56] Polygamy.

Sandra Tanner [02:01:57] Polygamy. And it just goes on and on and on. And so the church historians were on the horns of a dilemma. They felt they could give rationalizations for the problems that could help a person weather the storm and maybe come out being some kind of nuanced Mormon. But they knew that the brethren at the top of the church would not be happy with that, that the brethren would expect the historians to come out with some hard hitting expose of the Tanner and how crooked we were, and we were inventing all these stories and it all was a bunch of lies. Well, the historians knew it was not that simple. You could say, well, the Tanner are claiming that Joseph had too many wives. He didn't have 65 or whatever, 35. No, it was only 40. 40.

John Dehlin [02:02:54] And

Sandra Tanner [02:02:56] he didn't sleep with every woman. There's only a few accounts, only 12. So how do you deal with all these problems of church history without confirming there's enough of a problem to be concerned?

John Dehlin [02:03:12] So wait, so tell the story of Sam Weller and the magic box that shows up. Who wants to tell that? Is it Ronald or you?

Sandra Tanner [02:03:21] Well, you gotta. Quinn is the guy.

John Dehlin [02:03:25] No, no, no, no. Don't give that away. Don't give that away. So the. So Ronald, Ronald, tell the story of the box.

Ronald Huggins [02:03:32] Okay, so what happens is Sam Weller gets. Gets a letter with a key in it and tells. It tells him to go to. Out on Redwood Road. People who aren't from. From Salt Lake won't know. Redwood World is sort of this eastern western boundary before the salt wastes beyond. It's industrial. And so he gets a letter that tells him to go to a certain storage area out there with this key. And so he sends one of his workers out there and he goes out there and he finds the storage room and he opens it up, and inside are all these boxes of this anonymous pamphlet with a note saying, well, you could reprint this with any money you make from it. And so it's all this clandestine stuff right from the beginning. So he brings it in and all of a sudden it's this book, you know, an answer to the Tanner Shadow or Reality, by an anonymous Mormon historian. And yeah, so that's how it starts.

John Dehlin [02:04:43] So somebody goes to the trouble of drafting an entire response to Mormonism, Shadow and Reality, to print up a bunch of copies and then secretly through like P.O. boxes or like, you know, little moving sheds or whatever, gets into the hands of a prominent bookseller. Copies of this response with no attribution to who the author is or who published it or, or, or the source of the document. Is that right, Ronald?

Ronald Huggins [02:05:16] Yeah, that's right. It says it was published in Salt Lake City and you're free to copy it and. But it doesn't give any attribution at all to Or. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:05:26] So did was assigned doctor Clandestine or did that name come up somewhere else?

Ronald Huggins [02:05:30] No, but how it came up was that Gerald read it and he quickly figured out who the author was, but he had a high view of that author's capacity. And the scholarship in the pamphlet was varied. And the reason the scholarship was varied was that the author had expertise in certain areas and not in other areas. And that's pretty obvious. So when he talks about ancient Near Eastern subjects he knows very little about, but when he talks about 19th century Mormonism, he knows a whole lot about it. So Gerald didn't want to blame one person for the whole pamphlet, so he came up with a generic term, Dr. Clandestine.

John Dehlin [02:06:14] Okay, so. So it was Gerald who came up with the name Dr. Clandestine, but Gerald's on a search to try and figure out who authored it. That's a fascinating part of the book. Ronald, really quick, for some reason your audio sounds really muffled, and I don't know you, if, if whatever you've put your phone on is muffling the microphone, but I want to give you a chance to tell the rest of the story. And I don't even know if there's any way for you to unobstruct your microphone, but either way, I don't want to. To kind of disrupt the flow of the story. So unless there's something you can do super quickly, just make any difference. Yeah, that's better. But. Okay, but go ahead and. Yeah, get back in frame. And we want to. So Gerald. Gerald sets off to figure out who writes this. This pamphlet.

Michael Quinn and Church Historians' Secret Engagement

Ronald Huggins [02:07:01] Yeah, it takes him about two weeks to find out. It's Mike Quinn.

John Dehlin [02:07:07] My Quinn. This is where I wanted to throw the book against the wall. Like, Mike Quinn is this revered historian guy who we all have come to know and love. And Gerald snoops and figures out it's the beloved historian Michael Quinn.

Ronald Huggins [02:07:26] Yeah, he figures out. Well, there's two things. One, he figures out no one would use Latin phrases like Mike Quinn. And he gets hold of Mike Quinn's Yale dissertation and his master's degree. He finds out that there are footnotes in both the tract and in the dissertation next to each other that only come from the Yale archives. But the real giveaway was this one phrase. What it was what do you remember the phrase?

John Dehlin [02:07:55] It's ex post ergopro propter hawk or something like that, right?

Ronald Huggins [02:07:59] Yeah, yeah. It's after, therefore, because of. Or something like that.

John Dehlin [02:08:05] Yeah.

Ronald Huggins [02:08:06] But it's.

John Dehlin [02:08:07] It's a logical fallacy. It's a logical fallacy.

Ronald Huggins [02:08:10] Right.

John Dehlin [02:08:10] Written in Latin.

Ronald Huggins [02:08:12] And so Gerald's got him pinned, and I guess in Mike Quinn's new memoirs that are going to be published, he's asking, how did Gerald figure it out? But he figured it out real quick. And then he calls Leonard Arrington.

John Dehlin [02:08:26] Well, didn't he. Didn't he confront Michael Quinn and say, did you write this?

Ronald Huggins [02:08:30] Well, he did, but Mike. Mike's. Mike denied it at first. Everybody denied it.

John Dehlin [02:08:35] Mike lied. Michael Quinn lied to Gerald Tanner.

Ronald Huggins [02:08:40] Well, ultimately, he said, I neither admit nor deny. And then he held that right through to when I asked him myself, but he had already written down in his memoirs that were at Yale admitting that he wrote it. Wait, you.

John Dehlin [02:08:57] In the modern era, in the past five to 10 years, you asked Michael Quinn if he was the author of. Of Dr. If he was Dr. Clandestine. And he denied it to you?

Ronald Huggins [02:09:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:09:09] Oh, man.

Ronald Huggins [02:09:12] You know, he wouldn't confirm or deny.

John Dehlin [02:09:13] Okay, I. I have to admit I've lost a little bit of respect for Michael Quinn, but keep going. So then Gerald takes it to. To the church historians. Now, just to give people a little context, those of you who don't know Mormon insider baseball because of Fawn Brody and because of the Tanner, the church, the Mormon church was getting its clock cleaned for being. For its deceptive practices with history. And so like totally against the church's will, they say we gotta hire an actual professional historian. In 1772 they bring on Leonard Arrington, a reputable historian, and they start the church history department with the sort of this Camelot years optimism that finally the Mormon Church is going to come clean and Leonard Arrington is our savior and he's going to tell help the church come clean and tell the truth about its history. And so we've all grown to know and love Leonard Arrington. So you go to Leonard Arrington now as a. No, Gerald goes to Leonard Arrington as official beloved church historian and asks him if Leonard Arrington was involved. Is that right?

Ronald Huggins [02:10:28] Right. And Leonard nice any knowledge of it but unfortunately he had previously sent out copies of it to some people and their copies, the rough drafts ended up in the hands of the tax and he was distributing it on BYU campus. He was seen distributing it I think at the day that it hit the shelf of Sam Wellers, if I remember right. But Arrington was in an impossible situation. He really did want real history and he really did try and protect. He was afraid the Tanner would scuttle that. And he had people spying on him, insiders and taking everything he said and going through his writings and marking things to show to the brethren to try and get him in trouble. And so actually it was I think one month or a very short time after this attempt to put out this pamphlet failed that Homer Durham called him in and took away his title.

John Dehlin [02:11:32] Called who? It called who in the who Homer. Homer Durham called who? It called Leonard Arrington in.

Ronald Huggins [02:11:41] Yes. And there and took away his title. Said he he could couldn't use it anymore, but just changed it to something else and said not to tell anybody that he lost his title.

John Dehlin [02:11:51] So Leonard Arrington loses his title and is told not to tell anyone that he loses his title as church historian. Even though he was called, he was sustained in general conference as church historian. Now they quietly demote him and ask him not to tell anyone. Now do you. Are you guys surmising that his demotion that like this Dr. Clandon's clandestine fiasco was sort of like the straw that broke the camel's back that kind of ended the the Arrington administration or am I over? Am I over interpreting? Okay, wait, your voice, your voice just got really bad, Ronald. So tweak your phone Sandra, I'll let you answer that, and then we'll come right back to you. Ronald.

Sandra Tanner [02:12:38] Yes, it is the last straw. Arrington was already under suspicion of being too liberal and writing too factual church history, not smoothing out the rough edges well enough. And so his job was already, I think, somewhat precarious. And this just was the final blow. The Church doesn't want any attention being brought to the historian's office or any attention being brought to controversy about their history. And having this big discussion about where did this pamphlet come from and does it lead back to the church historian's office all got him in trouble, which. Which obviously he feared that would happen because that's why they had it done anonymously and delivered to this lockup box storage unit to give to Sam Weller, because the church historian's office feared such a reprisal if they were to publicly print the pamphlet. One of the problems in printing the pamphlet is they had to concede too many stories of bad things in church history that the faithful would be surprised to know about. The average person didn't know there were different accounts of the first vision. They didn't know problems of the Book of Abraham and all these different things that the church historian's office was trying to deal with.

John Dehlin [02:14:05] And hide.

Sandra Tanner [02:14:06] And hide.

John Dehlin [02:14:06] Don't forget hide.

Sandra Tanner [02:14:07] Yeah. So they knew they'd be in trouble with the Gentiles authorities for discussing too directly, too publicly problem areas in the church. So the only solution they saw was to do an anonymous pamphlet, and then they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. So then the church has to separate itself from the historical department that brought this embarrassment out in public.

John Dehlin [02:14:34] And what year was all this?

Sandra Tanner [02:14:35] Did all this go down in the 70s? I can't remember what the year was

John Dehlin [02:14:40] because I associate 82 with the ending of Leonard Arrington's administration. What do you remember, Ronald? Ronald, you're. You're. Ronald, you're. You're. Your microphone is kind of died. Why don't you exit out and come back in to streamyard? Because you're. You're kind of. We can't hear you. Yeah, okay. Thanks, Ronald. So, yeah, I just want to call attention, Sandra and Rebecca, to the parallels between this, Dr. Clandon's story, clandestine Story, and what we've seen in the modern era with both the Gospel Topics essays and the CES Letter. Because the Gospel Topics essays didn't come out just sort of out of the goodwill of the church. Church wanting to have integrity. It was sort of like the Internet, like Mormonism, Shadow and Reality started slacking the church with factual history. So the church wants to come out with some type of response, but it doesn't want to put any names to it. And so again, these gospel topics essays, like, you know, like the response to Mormonism Shadow Reality, were produced where no names were attached to the gospel topics essays. And instead of the church just being really upfront and sharing it with the entire church membership, they do this mousy, squirrely releasing of the gospel topics essays but not telling everybody, trying to minimize who actually learns about them and who actually reads them and basically releasing it without wanting to take full responsibility, written by committee. Like, like this response to your, your book was, and then trying to release it in a way to where only the people who really, really need to know can learn the true history, but otherwise they're going to do everything they can to keep the rank and file membership from really learning the truth. It feels like history repeating itself. Now, Sandra, I don't know if any of those, if that feels like parallelism or if you feel like there are some parallels there.

Parallels Between the Tanner' Era and the Gospel Topics Essays

Sandra Tanner [02:16:58] Well, no, it's very much the same kind of situation. And the clandestine stuff was in the 1978 time frame.

John Dehlin [02:17:09] Okay.

Sandra Tanner [02:17:09] That that stuff was happening. And so what, you had to go another 30 years to get up to where the church tried it again with the gospel topics essays. What year did they come out? I don't remember.

John Dehlin [02:17:23] 14, 2014.

Sandra Tanner [02:17:25] Yeah. Okay, so 88, 98, 2008. So you got 45 years there or something to let's do it again.

John Dehlin [02:17:37] I mean, this is super important because there's. And Rebecca, I don't know if you would have opinions about this as well, but there's always this tendency. In the past 20 to 30 years, I've heard Greg Prince make this argument that like poor brethren, they were as surprised as anyone to learn the problems with the church history. You know, these apostles were so busy. You know, they were just businessmen, family men who rose in the ranks of the church. And they were, they were as ignorant as all of us about the problems with the church history. And so they get to the, you know, when rough stone rolling comes out or when the Internet comes out, they were as taken back as anyone as to the factual truth about the Mormon church history, as if, you know, Ezra Taft Benson, you know, Boyd K. Packer, Bruce R. McConkie, Mark E. Peterson, as if all these dudes didn't know anything about the problems with the church history in the, in the tens and twenties and thirties and forties and fifties and sixties. And seventies, they were victims just as much as the rest of us. And of course we've already had Shannon Caldwell Montez on Mormon stories to talk about the secret Mormon meetings of 1922 where all the Brethren were put on notice about problems with the Book of Mormon because of the work of B.H. roberts in the 20s. And then of course we all know about Fawn Brody coming out with her book in the 40s, right?

Sandra Tanner [02:19:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:07] But this was another example in the 60s and 70s where the brethren knew, they knew and they. And they hit it. Am I overstating that?

Sandra Tanner [02:19:19] I think that's true for all of the older ones, Hinckley included. Hinckley is one of the outstanding examples of this. Hinckley wrote that little book, Truth Restored, a little booklet, the Deseret Book passed out. I think missionaries passed it out. And originally the pamphlet had Hinckley's name on as the author. Years later they quit using his name and just put it out without any author on it. And it gives a kind of short history of the beginnings of Mormonism. And when you look at Hinckley's start of the Mormon story, the way he frames the story around the first vision, I felt showed that Hinckley knew what the problems were because of the delicate wording that's used. It shows he knows where the pitfalls are and he's very careful how certain time frames of the church history are worded very carefully that only could happen by someone who knew what you had to hide. It's like when they do movie. They did a movie of the Book of Mormon a number of years ago now and I think one of the Osmonds was involved in producing it that they showed at the church visitor center. And I went to see it and it shows the guy in this. It's the one where they have the made up story about a love affair between this. I don't know if it was Nephite or Lamanite, boy and girl. Anyways, I thought leave it to the church to come up with a fictitious story to sell you on a fictitious book of scripture. But because they don't use a Book of Mormon story, they invent one. Anyways, in the storyline they show the village community, farmers market kind of stuff and this fellow that's a merchant comes into town with his goods and they're on these poles to carry litter to carry the goods in. Because I went to the movie to see if they were going to show horses or some kind of animal pulling

John Dehlin [02:21:35] in the Book of Mortal.

Sandra Tanner [02:21:36] In the Book of Mormon story, you know, okay, so whoever's making the film knows that they got to be careful not to show any horses or elephants or anything like that. So they got to have the farm goods being brought in on litters that guys are carrying with poles. And so there's just things when you see that, you know, someone knows they need to avoid certain problem areas in the story. And that's the way it is in reading Joseph Hinckley. Hinckley's writings is you can tell he knows the problem areas, and he frames things in a way as to not to fall in the trap of saying something you could show wasn't true or didn't happen the way that he's framing it. So Hinckley knew Oakes knows all church history. He wrote the book on the martyrdom of Joseph Smith and what was it, the trial and aftermath of the murder. So Oakes has plenty of information on church history. Hinckley has plenty of information on church history. These are men that are aware of the story. Now, you take some guy that becomes called us a 70 from Japan or from Panama or some. Something, they don't know church history. But the old timers from the old families of Salt Lake that are in the apostleship, they all grow up knowing these stories. They knew the church history. They knew the old people that knew the church history. So there's no excuse for these ones to say, oh, well, how would we expect them to know? Well, we expect them to know because they've been in charge of writing church history for the last 70 years, and they have withheld all the information.

John Dehlin [02:23:29] Absolutely. So, Ronald. Ronald, you. You had to leave us for a second. We're talking about kind of these moments when you're really. You know, the big question I always get really is, do the. Do the Quorum of the twelve and the First Presidency, you. Do they know about the problems and. And are they sincere believers or are they consciously, intentionally perpetrating a fraud? And it's. It's reading stories like the Secret Mormon meanings of 19, you know, 22, or reading about the Camelot years and the scuttling of the church history program, where you really start to feel like it's an intentional conspiracy on the part of several quorum of the 12 members. Ronald, let's try and bring you back in. Is there anything you want to say about that as it relates to Arrington or anything else in your. In your studies of. Of this book?

Ronald Huggins [02:24:23] Yeah, I mean, I think you have to. There. There's a fairly large middle ground because you Know knowledge kind of passes within communities of trusted sources. And it's very hard to bring yourself to listen to people that have been demonized to you since you were a child. And so you, you just. And then you have people like Nibley out there giving the impression that all these problems can be solved. And so it's hard to. And you have this deep investment in hoping and believing that all this is true. And so it's hard for me to say it's just a big conspiracy entirely. You can point individ who, who you really can't let off the hook of knowing. And Sandra pointed out yeah, who are they?

John Dehlin [02:25:19] Who are those. Who are the figures that you feel like probably really knew they were big problems and were major players in kind of the COVID up and or the punishment of the truth tellers.

Ronald Huggins [02:25:34] Well, certainly Joseph Fielding Smith is the, is the big major guy that stands out to me right off hand. That's the one that I dealt with. Most others don't come to mind. In my own experience I knew or I felt very strongly that Gordon B. Hinckley was that kind of a person who you know, you'd see him being interviewed about whether Lorenzo Snow Lorenzo Snow's couplet. He didn't, he said he didn't know anything about it to the San Francisco Chronicle or when he was confronted with issues of DNA. Well, we don't know anything about that yet and I just don't believe it. And then when he sort of redoubles the effort with the first vision by instead of trying to cover, he comes on stronger. If the first vision is false, then the whole works is false. And to me that seemed like he was protesting too much. It's really, really hard thing for me personally to, to negotiate who's lying and who's not. But I think with, with those two figures especially there's a. It would be very hard not to feel that they were and that they were knowingly covering up. And I and the whole culture that the very first thing when you ask like I asked for a document and the person at the desk at the LDS archives said oh, they're never going to show you that it was Matthias Cowley's record of post manifesto marriages. Well, I mean just the attitude. That's the kind of feeling that dominates the place up there. Now happily they gave me, they scanned the whole thing for me. So that was very good. But there is this idea deny first and then not worry about it if you don't have to. So I imagine that there's just, just Kind of. I. I don't understand it. It's more of a psychological or sociological reality that let's suppress first because we never know what these people are. Are going to use this information for. Yeah, that's my answer, I guess.

John Dehlin [02:27:52] Yeah. And you mentioned Ezra Tap, Benson, Markey Peterson, Boyd K. Packer.

Ronald Huggins [02:27:58] Oh, yeah. I would add probably them. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:00] Yeah.

Ronald Huggins [02:28:01] In the book, maybe Boyd K. Packer is just an absolute true believer and thinks he can work it all out and put it all together at the end. I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:28:12] Yeah. All right. Well, thank you. Anything else about Dr. Clandestine? And then we're going to let Rebecca, anything else you guys want to say about Dr. Clandestine, or did we make that point? We got it.

Sandra Tanner [02:28:24] Good.

John Dehlin [02:28:24] All right. All right, Rebecca.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [02:28:26] Yeah, it's interesting. I think that was one of the biggest takeaways as I talked to the book. Book club members. The reasons they threw the book against the wall was just that it really shattered any ability to say, well, maybe they just really didn't know. The book makes that extremely clear that they did and they've known for a very long time. So let's see. I'll pick another question. Just really quick from another one of our readers. I thought this was really good. They said, sandra, you and Gerald spent a lifetime in the pursuit of truth, and yet you were very often hated, rich, ridiculed, bullied, sued, and almost driven to bankruptcy multiple times. Was it worth it? And would you change anything about how you lived your lives?

The Tanner' Lifelong Pursuit of Truth

John Dehlin [02:29:06] Great question.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [02:29:07] Yeah, I thought so.

John Dehlin [02:29:07] Great question.

Sandra Tanner [02:29:10] Well, would I change anything? I think we would have still done all the same things. I mean, certainly you can look back on your life and think of different times when wisdom would have said to have taken maybe a little different approach to something. But overall, no, I wouldn't have lived my life any differently. And it's been a life that had its challenges and its disappointments. But on the plus side, there's been so much good from it all. I mean, I have been a part of so many people's lives that have helped them in their journey that it brings a great sense of fulfillment knowing that you have been a help and a blessing to other people in their journey to make that way a little easier for them. So I'm glad we did what we did, and we'd have probably done the whole thing about the same way if we had to do it again. So I'm content now that I'm retiring and I look back over all these years. They've been amazing years. So, yeah, I would do it again.

John Dehlin [02:30:33] Piggybacking on that question, Rebecca, for Ronald. Ronald, if you had to summarize the impact that Gerald and Sandra Tanner have had on the Mormon Church and the Mormon people, as someone who is their biographer, how would you summarize or describe their impact?

Ronald Huggins [02:30:56] Too large to summarize or describe. I mean imagine what, what would, what if the Tanner weren't there? Mike Hoffman's forgeries might be still passing around. Passed around and regarded by the LDS Church as authentic. That would be the kind of differences they, they made. It's just an inest contribution because they push forward at every point. The research, they were the ones who were kicking it off. The blacks might not yet have the priesthood. I mean all these things are almost unimaginable. But so it's just impossible to measure. One of the things that they did hold up is a standard for truth and just kind of unflinching, not, not caring who it benefited. That, that has helped Mormon history very greatly. I don't know if Signature Press would be, would be flourishing like it would flourish like it did without the Tanner. I don't know if, if you would have your podcast without the Tanner. I don't know if the CES letter would ever have been written because most of the stuff in there was already dealt with by the Tanner. You know, so, so I guess you would say that people would eventually find all these things. Maybe they did, but the LDS Church would be a very different church. It would be maybe the church of the 70s or something. I don't know what would have happened. Who could have say? Who could say?

John Dehlin [02:32:38] Anyway, it would be a much bigger church and it would be a much stronger church. If you, if any of you know about the name Rodney Stark, he's the sociologist who I believe in the 80s like forecasts that Mormonism is going to be like tens if not hundreds of millions of people like within a 30 or 40 year time period. And I remember, I remember the kind of those growth projections in the 80s and 90s about temples dotting the globe and exponential growth in the Mormon Church. And you know the Daniel 2, 44 and 45 prophecy that the stones cut out of the mount without hands, that it's going to roll forth and consume all nations. That's the Mormonism. That was the, that was the projections of the Mormonism I, I grew up with. And if you now fast forward to the, you know, 2022, you look at a church that not only is hemorrhaging but it's shrinking in Many, many of the developed parts of the world and projections are that within a decade or two, it's actually going to be a. A net shrinking church. The only thing that is keeping the church growing at this point is the birth rate, but we're losing more members than we are converting to the church. And, and you know, again, I started by asking you, Sandra, whether your intent was to take down the church or not, and that wasn't your intent.

Sandra Tanner [02:34:09] No, but.

John Dehlin [02:34:10] But certainly the church is. Is in a very different place than. Than it was projected to go in the 50s and 60s.

Sandra Tanner [02:34:18] Right. We wanted to reform it in the sense of making it open their books and to be honest about their past, whatever they did in the future, we didn't envision what all that would look like, but we felt they had to come clean about the past if they were going to go forward.

John Dehlin [02:34:35] Yeah. Well, Rebecca and I and all of our viewers and listeners and on behalf of all the people we know and love and are in contact with Sandra Tanner, we can't thank you and your dear husband for all that you have done to help improve our lives.

Sandra Tanner [02:34:55] I appreciate it. Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:34:57] Yeah. Yeah. And, Ronald, thank you so much for writing such a stunningly brilliant biography. Is there anything you want to say in closing?

Legacy, Closing Reflections, and Sandra's Testimony

Ronald Huggins [02:35:08] Well, thank you for having us on and for now, obviously, for reading the biography. One of the things is that, like you, I. I admire the Tanner so much. One of the things that Sandra mentioned earlier was. And one of the motivations for me in writing is that I'm an academic, and very often the Tanner were despised because they weren't part of the academic guild. And as an academic, I can say that Gerald and Sandra, and particularly Gerald. Well, both of them. But Gerald's research and his. His carefulness surpasses many people. I. Many of my colleagues in academia. And so that inspired me to tell this story because I felt like, you know, first of all, many of the best Mormon historians are not. Don't have PhDs. I mean, you think of Will Bagley and others. And so I think that I was really pleased to write this biography as an academic and appreciating the model that Gerald especially, but also Sandra set for me in my own doctoral research and so on. So that would be sort of my final word, I guess.

John Dehlin [02:36:35] Beautiful. Thank you, Ronald. Well, the book is Lighthouse Geraldine Sandra Tanner, Despised and Beloved Critics of Mormonism by Ronald Huggins, published by Signature Books. Buy it now. Let's sell out this book. Let's reward our historians for the great work they do. And the publishers that make these books happen. And, and let's become informed about our history so that we can then make informed, you know, we talk about informed, informed consent. We can make informed decisions with our lives, help our loved ones make informed decisions about their lives by having all the evidence. Rebecca, can you remind everybody really quickly what, what the next book in our, in our. In this series is going to be?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [02:37:24] Of course I can. And I have to say that first of all, this was the perfect choice for the resurrection of the Mormon Stories Book Club. We just enjoyed it so much. And we also enjoyed your, your participation on the Facebook page.

Sandra Tanner [02:37:36] That was wonderful.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [02:37:37] She chimed in all the time and talking to us. So book for December, no Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners by the amazing Noah Rashada. So pick this up and let's get reading. And we'll be discussing it on our Facebook page prior to the meeting.

John Dehlin [02:37:51] And the reason we're doing it is because so many Mormons say, well, now I've lost my faith. What do I do? What do I believe in? How do I become healthy and happy? I don't think of Buddhism as so much of a religion as I do tips and tricks for mental health.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [02:38:08] Yeah. In fact, I'll tell you, I've been talking to Noah. He's in Nepal right now, I think I mentioned at base camp, Mount Everest. And I said, is there anything that you'd like to say to everybody? Because I'm probably going to be announcing your book tomorrow. And he said his favorite quote, do not use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist. Use what you learn to be a better whatever you already are. And that's exactly what it's all about.

John Dehlin [02:38:31] And Sandra, I know you want to go, but the last thing I'm going to ask you is, do you want to bear any testimony about the importance of God and Jesus in your life? Because I think if we were going to end our interview with you, that's what you would want to end on.

Sandra Tanner [02:38:44] Well, certainly Gerald and I would not have done all our research if we hadn't believed in God. We would not have pursued all of the trials and disappointments along the way if we hadn't have felt the direction of God and help in our research and in what we're doing. Our faith as Christians has guided our lives. And Gerald's commitment to truth was based on a commitment to God. Without that Christian underpinning, I don't know that he would have had the ethical drive to press forward in trying to show his own people that they had not been given an honest examination of their own faith, that if we're going to claim to follow Christ, it has to be based on truth. And that was the basis of Gerald's research.

John Dehlin [02:39:46] All right, so give. Are you saying give Christ a chance, Sandra Tanner?

Sandra Tanner [02:39:49] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:39:50] Yeah, give Christ a chance.

Sandra Tanner [02:39:51] Go back and read that New Testament again.

John Dehlin [02:39:54] All right. You gonna do it, Rebecca? You gonna go read the New Testament?

Rebecca Bibliotheca [02:39:56] I'm gonna do it. I'm a big fan of the New Testament. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:39:59] All right, well, Sandra Tanner, we love you. We'll have you back anytime. And by the way, Ronald Higgins, you know a thing or two about history. Could we some maybe have you back on Mormon Stories at some point?

Ronald Huggins [02:40:12] Sure. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:40:14] All right. That's an open invitation because you are a smart dude. Okay, thanks again.

Ronald Huggins [02:40:20] I'm not sure about that.

John Dehlin [02:40:22] Oh, I'm sure about that. All right. Thanks, Ron Higgins. Thanks, Sandra Tanner. Rebecca Bibliotheca. Thank you so much. We adore you. And welcome to Mormon Stories. You've been great.

Rebecca Bibliotheca [02:40:34] Oh, thank you so much for letting me be a part. I love it. All right.

Wrapping Up and Book Club Recommendations

John Dehlin [02:40:37] Right. You guys buy this book right now. Be kind to each other, be good to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.