Pt 1: Mormon Stories: Launching on Patreon

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 812

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's October 23, 2017 and we could not be more excited or thrilled or eager to have you join us for this very exciting interview with D. Michael Quinn, author of the book the Mormon Hierarchy, wealth and Corporate Power, published by Signature Books. So we are recording this in front of a live studio audience in Lehigh, Utah and we're just very excited to have Dr. D. Michael Quinn back with us. This is not his first appearance on Mormon Stories. For those of you who don't know about Michael Quinn, please go back and watch that interview. It's definitely one of the most powerful and important and fascinating interviews we've ever done on Mormon Stories Podcast, so I'll make sure you guys know that. A couple just quick announcements. We are announcing the launching of a Mormon Stories Podcast being available through Patreon. Patreon is a really wonderful platform to make it possible for people to pay for or support these podcasts sort of on a per release basis. So you can sign up for $1 per interview or per release. And let's just say we have six or eight a month. It's just six or eight dollars a month. Just to be really clear about why we're doing that and what we're doing, we've got great supporters for the Open Stories foundation of people who Support us at 10 or 25 or $100 a month. That revenue is critical to the Open Stories foundation because it's how we fund the Open Stories foundation and our staff. Unfortunately, it turns out that only less than 1% of our listeners actually donate to Mormon stories, so 99.5% of our listeners just listen for free and don't support us. And so the reason why we've added Patreon to the mix is to incentivize those of you who feel like $10 or 15 or 20 or 100 bucks a month is too much. It's a way for you to just pay a lower amount and only to pay as we release things so we definitely don't want any of you who support us through the normal channels to cancel and switch to Patreon. But we are trying to capture a little bit more higher percentage of our listeners because we really do need that support to keep the operations of the Open Stories foundation going. So I think the link is something like patreon.com mormonstories podcast. You can go there, you can sign up. And as an incentive, what we're doing is we're going to be releasing these interviews two days early on Patreon before the rest of everyone, the free listening audience, gets to sign up. So if you want to get any of these interviews free or early going forward, not free, but early going forward, please sign up to Patreon. And if you just want to be a normal Mormon Stories podcast listener again, you can go to MormonStories.org and sign up there. Please check out our events page, mormonstories.org events for the upcoming events that we have to support those who are struggling and need support in their faith transition. We get great feedback from those events and we'd love to support you with that as well as you need it. So those are all the announcements for this, this interview before we begin. So without any further ado, Michael Quinn, welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast.

Pt 1: Michael Quinn

D. Michael Quinn [00:04:18] Thank you. It's great to be back.

John Dehlin [00:04:20] Yeah, it's so great to have you. And I just have to say it was a real treat to get this long awaited book. We know that you've been working on it for quite a long time.

D. Michael Quinn [00:04:32] Too long.

John Dehlin [00:04:32] Uh huh. Yeah. Well, it was worth the wait. So, so we're really excited to talk to you about it today. And we've got a bunch of stuff to talk about today. We do want to talk about the book, we want to talk about the research, we want to talk about responses to the book. We're going to be taking live questions from the audience, but then we're also going to do just an update on your life and how you're doing and, and also just talk to you a bit about the state of the LDS Church today and all the new and exciting things that have been happening over the past few years because we think your perspective and insight would be really valuable. So we're really excited. Thanks again for joining us.

D. Michael Quinn [00:05:12] Glad to.

Pt 1: The Making of Book 1

John Dehlin [00:05:13] All right, so let's begin with a little bit of the history about the making of this book. Do you mind telling us sort of when you first thought about writing this book and maybe sort of what the timeline was in actually getting it written?

D. Michael Quinn [00:05:29] Well, it Started before some of you here were born. It started with a course I took as a new graduate student at the University of Utah, and it was about historical methods and it was taught by Davis Bitten. And it was a two term course. And the first term was involved in readings and discussions. And the second term was primarily research to present, toward the end of the term, a paper of 30 to 50 pages based on one of the methods that we learned about and read about during the first term. And it was an exploration of methodologies or ways of approaching history that at the time were called the New History, because these were approaches that were not traditional in the writing of history, whether it was in Europe or in the United States and, but particularly in the United States, it was called the New History. And so our topics and the examples of usually books within those topics were things like women's history, which had been ignored during the previous centuries of history that looked primarily at males, common people's history, which had also been ignored in previous centuries with the traditional emphasis on elites, and then demographic history, which was a kind of merger of social science work, particularly sociology, with historical analysis, so that you would look at a population, it might be the population of a town over time, so that you got a historical overview of it, but you're looking at the characteristics of that entire population on various things that you, as an author and researcher were interested in, so that you presented an image of what that population was. And that was demography. And typically in demography you don't identify people by name, even though you looked at records that identified them by name. You're looking at the characteristics of an entire group. Another one of the things that interested me particularly, and that was the beginning of what is now the Mormon hierarchy series, was what was called group biography. And the readings that we had in group biography were one, an English example and another one an Italian example. And the English example was written by Sir Lewis Namir, looking at an institutional elite, looking at the English Parliament during a period of time that corresponded to the reign of George iii. And things that he was looking at for the characteristics of this limited group, which, unlike demography, was focusing on a smaller group in greater detail. Whereas demography is usually a group of hundreds, thousands, in some cases over time, in this group it was a group of a few hundred over time. And he looked at things like social class and most of the Parliament, including the Commons. The House of Commons had connections with the nobility of Europe and nobility of England, education, military experience and marriage and intermarriage, the relationships of kinship and marriage that existed between them. And then the second book we looked at was, and I forget now, the name of the author of this, but it was a book about the Renaissance elite in Florence and it was looking. And this was a group that was not defined institutionally. It was defined according to the power and their characteristics. So those who were wealthy, those who were known to exert power during that time informally could be defined as a particular group, but were not defined by specific positions that they held, like the parliament. And those two books fascinated me. And so when it came to the point of choosing a topic that I was going to write this 30 to 50 page paper on, I wanted to do group biography. And then I was thinking, well, what group can I do this about? So I thought of the Utah legislature and I thought, oh, that's boring. And so then I thought the U.S. senate. And I thought, well, that's more diverse than the Utah legislature. But I just wasn't, I didn't have a lot of enthusiasm for that. And then it occurred to me as like a light bulb, oh, this is a group I've been reading about for years, the Mormon hierarchy. And that's how it came about. And so I, in the paper that I wrote for Davis Bitten's class, I looked at their place of birth, their origin of where they grew up, their religious affiliation, their educational background and their family to a degree. I didn't go into a lot of detail because I was only writing a 30 to 50 page paper. Well, that paper for his class, 30 to 50 pages grew into what became my master's thesis at the University of Utah. And that was about 200 some odd pages long. And then I was accepted at Yale University primarily through the intervention of Leonard Arrington, who contacted Yale after I was turned down in my application for Yale and had a conversation with the dean of admissions at Yale. And that resulted in Yale extending me another an offer after having turned me down once. And so I went to Yale as a PhD student because of the intervention of Leonard Arrington, who was at that time the church historian. And I had served as his research assistant and co author on one article with him. And then he promoted me to, or promoted my submitting articles of my own to various magazines and periodicals. When I started at the graduate program at Yale in the fall of 1973, my advisor there felt that it would be foolish for me to choose a topic other than the one I had been working on intensely. And so he said, well, certainly you should continue what you began at the University of Utah. And make that your dissertation. And so this expanded, this group biography, or what Lewis Namier called it, prosopography, which is an old term, was what I began writing on for my dissertation. And I completed that 33 months later and got my PhD with the dissertation about the Mormon hierarchy. And I looked at them as an elite group. And then because I was hired just a few months later to teach at byu, I was. Anyone who here has been a teacher, either public school or college, okay, not too many know, but when you are teaching brand, brand new courses for the first time, and I was teaching three new courses at the, at BYU in history, you are basically lucky if you're only two steps ahead of your students in reading, because everything you're doing, you're doing from scratch. And. And so I was so preoccupied with preparing for these Monday, Wednesday, Friday lectures and presentations that I wanted to make always useful to the students for the. For them to, you know, the tuition they were paying and for their commitment to being in the class that working on this project was, you know, beyond the board. So in 1977, I got a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the entire summer. And I spent that entire summer working on business connections and going through the files of county clerk's offices outside Utah, all the counties outside Utah in southern Idaho. And then I went to Montana and I went to Oregon and I did research in Hawaii. And then I went down to Texas and New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California, looking for references in the Articles of Incorporation to these men, 124 of them that were a part of my study of the first century of the Mormon hierarchy. I had initially begun the financial research in 1975, a year before I was hired at BYU. And that research, I investigated the corporate files at the state archives from the filings of corporations for Salt Lake County. And I looked through every. And those were quite detail. They included not only the initial filing of the corporation's articles, but also Salt Lake was unique not only in Utah, with Weber county and Utah county in having preserved these bonds of election for directors throughout the history of the companies before they became dissolved or ended by choice or by the state saying that you haven't paid your fees and therefore you're just dissolved. All the other counties of Utah and virtually every county in the United States that I'm aware of, destroyed all of these other records besides the Articles of Incorporation. And so I went through these files for 13,000 companies, which was their original filing, and also the bonds for every election that they had annually. I did that during the period from the summer of 1975 to early 1976. Then I did not come back to it again until that summer of 1977. Then I got sidetracked from one thing after another. When I came back to BYU in the fall of 1977, I was assigned as a university assignment to work on a biography of J. Rubin Clark, who had not been a part of my original study because he became a general authority after my cutoff period, which was 1932, that took five years. And so I was working on nothing else but that project. And then after that I did going back to teaching again, I was again focused on teaching. And so basically from the mid-70s on, I would skip a decade before I would return to the business activity of the leadership. And so in the mid-1980s, 1983 and 84, I looked at it again and it was because I was invited to give a paper about the general authorities at the Mormon History Association. And so I looked at all of the corporation records as who was involved in the living current leadership in business at that time. And then I got preoccupied with other things and did not return to the research on the Mormon hierarchy until the 90s. And so I then, after I published the first two volumes of the Mormon History.

John Dehlin [00:19:24] Talk about those really quick. Just give our listeners. I didn't introduce the fact that this is actually part three in a three part series. Most of our listeners will probably know that, but just in case they don't, Signature Books has produced two other volumes in this series previously. Do you mind just.

Pt 1: The Mormon Hierarchy Series, Part 3

D. Michael Quinn [00:19:41] No.

John Dehlin [00:19:43] Introducing Those briefly?

D. Michael Quinn [00:19:45] In 1994, the first volume called Origins of Power came out and that covered the period from Joseph Smith as a young man in the 1820s to the arrival of Brigham Young in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. And then in 1997, the second volume came out called Extensions of Power as a subtitle. And that covered from 1848 until 1996, which was the period at which I did my research and analysis and writing and then handed the manuscript to Signature Books to publish. And so those were the two time periods that were covered and went well beyond what I had originally envisioned. I originally thought I would only work on the Mormon hierarchy until 1932, but the assignment from BYU pushed it up to the 1960s. So I had a lot of research that I had done during a five year period on J. Reuben Clark as a member of the First Presidency and all the connections he had with general authorities that were far beyond decades beyond my original cutoff point. And so when I started working on the Mormon hierarchy. Signature books encouraged me to bring it up to the time that I would publish, which was about a year before the publication date. Well, I had biographical sketches in both the first volume covering primarily the Joseph Smith period and the second volume covering down to 1996. And the biographical sketches included different emphasis, different topics of each individual's life. And it was more or less like a sketch. It wasn't a biography. It was usually a page or two pages, some cases three pages in the printed version. And one of those sections was business. And I would just, and I just listed the business names that these men were invited in. And my goal was that I had had, I had put together what I saw as an appendix that included all of these businesses and all of the years in which the general authorities that I had the biographical sketches on, in what respect they were involved in these businesses as president, as director, as incorporator, whatever. Well, it was a very long appendix. And at the end when I did the second volume, the second volume was. Well, when they first set it up at the time the production editor was Connie Disney and she came to me after I'd given them this everything that I had written without except the business appendix. And she said, Mike, it comes out a thousand pages in print. And she said, we can't publish a book that long. And you have another appendix you want to add to it. That's impossible. We can't publish this business appendix that you want. And the only way we're going to be able to publish what you've given us already is if we narrow the margins and make the type smaller and the spaces in between lines smaller. And doing her magic as production editor, she brought that thousand page manuscript down to about 750 pages. And then they printed it on thinner paper and, and got it to be so that it wouldn't be a bindery breaker of the binding for the book. And so here I had this very large appendix and I couldn't publish it. And then after I had done the work on that, I got involved in a book, some of you may know, called Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. And that diverted my attention. And then after I published the 1997 second volume of the Mormon Hierarchy series, I had decided I wanted to update and change the format of the Magic World book. And so I worked on that and got that ready to print as a twice the size of the original second edition of the Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. And that came out in 1998. And so in the period from 1994 to 1998. Oh, and there was a book I'd also published for the University of Illinois Press on same sex relations among 19th century Americans. So in that space of four years, I published four big books and I was exhausted and actually I felt like just leaving the field. I just felt like I'm at the bottom of the barrel, I can't do anything more. And so I had been given this offer to move to Mexico by a man who owned a hacienda in southern Mexico. And finally I was at the point where I just didn't want to do anything else historically. And that had been my excuse for not taking his invitation. And so I said, if the option is still open, I'm going to take a break. I just can't work on Mormon history anymore. And so I went down to Mexico in Chiapas, which is. My family is Mexican. Half of my ancestry is Mexican, but it's from Sinaloa, which is right now, you may know cartel headquarters, the drug cartels in Mexico. And there is a long, decades long resort there in Matzitlan, which is cordoned off from what goes on in the rest of Sinaloa. But my family was from Sinaloa. And when I moved to chiapas, chiapas is 85% Maya and only 15 or so percent mixed. What they call ladinos, which is a derogatory term. It would be like using the N word for African Americans. The people in Chiapas have no love for the rest of Mexico. And this is one of the things about Mexico, that each state in Mexico is almost like a different country. They have different food, they have different traditions, and there are rivalries between them, even though they're all under one country. Well, anyway, that's where I lived during that period. In fact, Will Bagley did an interview the night before I took the airplane to Mexico City. And in that I just told him, I'm leaving Mormonism, I'm leaving Mormon history. By that time I'd been excellent communicated in Mormonism and it was an academic interest of mine. But I was just done. I was just exhausted. And so I went down to Mexico and lived down there for about six months and picked up street Spanish through a tutorial and were able to converse with people on the street and restaurant Spanish, but I didn't ever become fluent in it. And when I came back from that experience, I was more interested in the research I had been doing on same sex relations than I was in what I had done on Mormonism. So I was encouraged to apply for a position at the, pardon me, not Utah, the University of Southern California. And I was given a two year visiting scholar appointment there. And for that period of time I worked full time in researching same sex issues at the USU's Archive of Gay and lesbian bisexual transgender history. And so for that two years I was not working on Mormonism at all. I was working on same sex issues. And the lectures I gave at various courses in classes at USC were all about the historical perspectives that I had gained about GLBTI issues. And I had done a lot of cross cultural. So typically what I did is I not only talked about American history and the American experience of sexuality and gender from the Puritan arrival to the current time, but I also did cross country cross cultural analysis so that I was comparing Europe with the what I knew in the American experience. I was including my research in African sexualities, my research in Asian sexualities and oceanic sociologies primarily, or sexualities primarily Polynesian. And so I would give lectures to courses in anthropology and sexuality that were being offered by professors on a regular basis at usc. But I would be giving guest lectures on this overview of cross cultural perspectives historically on these issues. So Mormonism was just simply not on my radar at this time. I was working on many other things. And then when I went to the conclusion of that two year period beyond my expectations, I was given an invitation for a full ride visiting scholarship. When I say full ride, they just threw money at me at Yale for a year and it paid all of my housing, it paid everything with a handsome honorarium. I had all faculty privileges for a year at Yale, but it was only for a year. But that year at Yale with all the advantages they were giving me, allowed me to pay off for the first time in my adult life all of my loans that I had entered into since I had started as a freshman at BYU when I was 18, that I've been carrying these loans and when I didn't have income during the 90s when I was working on the Hierarchy project, I was living off of credit card loans for my living expenses. And at one point they reached 60k. And during the 90s they generally varied between 90k and, pardon me, between 40k and 60k during the 90s and my year at Yale allowed me to pay off all of them, allowed me to pay off everything going back to when I was a freshman at BYU that I still had paying interest on. And so that was a wonderful gift to me. But Yale wasn't interested in what I knew about Same sex dynamics, because Yale from Yale, I was this publishing expert on Mormonism. And so I was dragged back into Mormon history out of same sex dynamics issues by this, this, this year long appointment I had at byu. And initially I, I wanted to do a continuation of my same sex dynamics kind of work. And they said, well, okay, if you insist you can do that. I mean, well, we'll pay you the same and support you in the same way. But they really wanted me to do Mormonism. And then I ended up switching more and more. By the second semester I was there, I was doing a lot of Mormon polygamy research. And so I thought, okay, well then I'm back in the Mormon thing. And then I got another out of the blue opportunity that again pushed me away from doing anything on the hierarchy. A man died. And I'd known him for a year and a half before he died. And I was stunned to learn that he had made a bequest in his will for me to write a biography of him and gave me a five figure amount as a request to do this. And this is not something I could turn down because I had nothing leaving Yale. I mean, it was leaving an opportunity that allowed me to get out of debt. And my option was to go into debt again because I had nothing to work on if I were to go back to Mormon studies, which I had been thinking I would do. And so I took off another five years and did not. And I was not finished with this study until 2008.

Pt 1: In the Fight for Mormon Studies Profills

John Dehlin [00:33:57] 2008 is when you finished writing the book for that gentleman.

D. Michael Quinn [00:34:00] That gentleman, right.

John Dehlin [00:34:02] We probably talked about this in our first interview, but just to remind people that there was this sense that you were sort of being intentionally excluded from opportunities to sit in chairs of Mormon studies, that basically these chairs like at Claremont or Virginia or at Utah State are primarily funded either by the church or by wealthy believing church members. I even remember talk about an Arizona State chair that maybe you'd been considered for, but the donors basically did what they could to blackball you and keep you from ever being able to have a full time faculty position in Mormon studies.

D. Michael Quinn [00:34:46] Yeah, well, I was turned down when I was the only applicant for two positions. And this was in 2004 while I was working on this other biography. But I was, you know, I had told the trustee of the estate, if I get one of these appointments that I'm applying for, I'll have to defer your completion of this biography. I will work on it. I feel committed to do it. But, you know, if I'm Hired, I'll be hired, and that'll be my first priority is teaching. And initially it was University of Utah and I was offered, well, not offered. I applied and I ended up being the only finalist for this position in Western American history. And so I thought, oh, this is going to be great. It's my alma mater for my master's and I'll come and be hired and I'll end up teaching the last 10 years of my active career life before typically, they try to get you to retire and become emeritus. And I didn't impress them. And the history department at the U of U had for decades been polarized between those who were pro Mormon and those who were anti Mormon. Even if they had been raised Mormon, they did not want Mormonism to be emphasized. And those two who had been at loggerheads for decades and barely on speaking terms, could agree on one thing. We don't want Michael Quinn, because for the pro Mormons, I was anti Mormon and openly gay. For the anti Mormons, I presented too much of a positive image of Mormonism and they didn't want me there for that reason. And also they didn't want somebody who was a Mormon specialist to be their new hire. And so they turned me down, even though I was the only applicant that year for the position they wanted to fill for the following year. So after that happened, Arizona State University, out of the blue again, I keep getting these offers out of the blue that I had not thought for one of them came to a Claremont event that I attended and one of those professors from the religious studies department of the Arizona State University campus said, well, we would like to have you be a guest for our department for a U.S. appointment. And would you be interested? No. Yes, I really would because this is after I'd been slapped in the face and turned down at the U of U. And so I applied for that and the, the department unanimously, this, this woman who had initially made the invitation to me told me that the department had unanimously voted for me to be a one year appointment and it was potentially renewable, but definitely one year full time on the faculty in, in their department. And the outgoing chair, who was being replaced in 1990, or pardon me, 2004, signed on and approved my being hired. And then the incoming new appointed chair of the department approved it. It went up to the college, the college dean approved it and went up to the, to the university. And typically I was told that that was a rubber stamp that it wants the. Particularly when it was a universal approval from the department professors, the chair and Then from the dean of the college, it was almost always a rubber stamp. Well, in the meantime, one of the major donors to the Arizona State University had gotten wind through the grapevine that I was being considered for an appointment as a professor at Arizona State University. And he picked up the phone and called the provost, who I'm not sure if, if the provost was the one who made the, the decision for the university or if it went to the academic vice president, but the provost is the one. This, this man who is a billionaire in Arizona, a Mormon, called and he said, I understand you're considering hiring Michael Quinn as a professor. Yes, he's gotten the full approval down the line. And then the billionaires said, well, I'll give you this choice. You can have Michael Quinn as a professor or you can have a donation of $100 million. And he said, those are my terms. If you hired Michael Quinn, you will not get my donation of $100 million. And I didn't know I was worth that much.

John Dehlin [00:40:16] That's a compliment. That's a big compliment.

D. Michael Quinn [00:40:19] And so this provost, who had no connection with Mormonism, he was Jewish, but he had to be concerned about the welfare of the entire university. If this offer had been made to Harvard or Yale, the answer would have been the same. We will take your donation. And so the university turned down the multi tiered recommendation that I be not the volunteer, the visiting scholar in the religious studies department for the following fall, fall 2004 to spring 2005. And that just came as a shock to everyone. It outraged, I heard from more than one member of the department that they were just outraged that this had been the decision that, contrary to every other experience, that not only their department, that other departments had had, that the university had reversed, a decision that had been unanimous up the line. So anyway, so that happened. Well, this billionaire didn't trust the university that they would keep their promise verbally to him. And so he waited to see what would happen in the fall term. I wasn't hired and I wasn't there. And so in December, he and his wife made the million, the 10 million, $100 million donation. But he waited because he didn't trust them. And so again, another lost cause. But anyway, in 2008, I finally was ready to go back intensively to the research on the hierarchy. And in the meantime, while I was working on this biography of this man that had come to me through his will, I contacted Signature Books. And the managing director at that time was, was Ron Priddis. And I told him, you know, I wanted them to publish this appendix as a standalone. And I said, I'll write a ten page, maybe five or ten page introduction to it, because the people who've read the first two volumes have the names of the companies, but they don't have the histories of the companies that this appendix will give. And he said, mike, we want, we're not going to publish an appendix. You know, that would be contrary to our mission. And he said, you've got to publish an actual, write an actual book, and if you submit an actual book that covers a big swath of material, then we'll consider it and probably publish it, but there's no way we're going to publish an appendix. And I was so tired of this, I was just beyond myself. And I said, well, I don't want to go back to this research that I started in the mid-70s and I'm not going to. And he said, well, then you're not going to get it published. And so I whined and moaned and groaned and had more than one conversation with him. And he just, he was adamant that they wanted a complete book and not just this appendix of one damn fact after another about all these companies. And at the time when I published the the Extensions of Power in 1997, I listed that there were about 900 companies that the hierarchy were involved in from the 1830s to the 1930s. And so, contrary to my wishes and because of these conversations with Ron, I finally gave in. And In June of 2008, I started working full time on not just that early period of the first century of Mormonism, but I thought, damn, I'll bring it right up to the 20th century. I mean, he wants a full, full story, a full, fully developed book. And you know, if I'm publishing it in the 21st century, I'll bite the bullet and I'll bring it up to the 21st century. And so I decided that I was going to cover up to the 20 because I knew it would take me several years of research. And I thought, well, I'll look for everything I can up to 2010. And so I worked on it full time from June 2008 until 2012, that four year period. And then I gave them a manuscript in 2012, and by that time they were happy to receive a full book that was really a book, but there was a big, big line of books ahead of them that they'd already committed and put into line for publishing. And so it took these years to get it published. Five years, basically. And I'm glad I mean, glad for two reasons. I'm glad that Ron forced me to publish a complete book. Because now that appendix, which is Appendix 5 in there, doesn't have 800 companies listed between the 1830s and 1932. It has 1600. I doubled the number of books because of the research that I was forced to do. And I went and I looked, not only from, you know, 1933 onward, I looked over the whole schmear because I thought, if I'm going to do this research, I'm going to cover everything and find everything I can from 1830s to the present. And in the process I doubled the number of companies that I had originally planned to publish as an appendix. And then I included stuff down to the present.

Pt 1: The First Twelve Apostles: Their Companies and Business History

John Dehlin [00:46:34] So why was this appendix, this list of companies of corporations, why do you think that's so important?

D. Michael Quinn [00:46:39] Well, it was important because the. The mere list of names that I provided with each of the men as far as I'd researched them into the 90s, allowed misinterpretations by readers. It allowed readers to think, oh, they were involved in these throughout their whole lives, or maybe they were involved for them for one year. And it was a total mixture. And so that was essentially uninformative. All it told was the readers of the first two volumes was that Brigham Young or that not J. Reuben Clark, Heber J. Grant, in the second volume's biographical sketches, was involved in these many named companies. But there was no indication of how they were involved, president, vice president, or a director without being an officer. And during what time period. So there was no flesh. All that was there were the bare bones titles. And it was really uninformative beyond that for the readers. And I felt they deserved to have a full picture of that business so that they would not overestimate what the involvement was, nor underestimate it. And that's why it had always been so important to me to get that published. But as required by Ron Priddis to do a complete study, I went back and redid that as well as everything from 1933 to the 21st century. And I found a lot of wonderful new material which expanded that initial hundred year time period of business histories almost double to what I originally prepared. And so it fleshed out the involvement of that Original group of 124 men, far more than I had anticipated and far more than I understood. So, you know, it's always good to be forced to do more research than you want to do. And then I found out a lot about the 21st century activity of the church in not only regional corporations, but national corporations and international corporations, something that I had no knowledge of. When I was doing the first two volumes. I had. Had not looked at the international finances and business at all. So it was a tremendous amount of reassessment for me of what I'd already researched and finding new material about that. But also like a kid in a candy store discovering wonderful things that I just hadn't stumbled across before because I hadn't looked for them. And so that, you know, was a. A journey as a researcher and a writer that I just was not willing to do until I was basically forced to do it. And. And then once I was forced to do it, I was so happy that that was what Ron Perdis said required of me.

Pt 1: Bonhoeffer on Sources for The Book

John Dehlin [00:49:56] So to give our listeners a sense for the primary categories of sources for the book, I think a lot of us envision you when you worked for Leonard Arrington, like, photocopying or mimeographing as much as you could in terms of whatever access you had to church archives during that time. So I imagine that that might be one of the sources for this book. Talk about the main buckets of sources that make up this book.

D. Michael Quinn [00:50:23] You're right to a small degree about the photocopying. I, as an employee of the Church historical department from 1972 to. From March 1972 until August 1973 when I went to Yale, I had the right to, as an employee of 2 cents a page per photocopying. And that sounds like really a small amount of money, but my wife and I were just coming, had just come out of the army when I started doing this, this research in the church archives. Initially as a graduate student, we were basically living hand to mouth. And 2 cents a page with all the thousands of pages of great stuff I was reading would have added up to a huge deduction from what we had to live on. And so I don't think I photocopied during that year and a half more than 50 pages. And those 50 pages were all tithing records of the general authorities, tithing they paid, and also the annual reports of the Presiding Bishopric because I didn't want to depend on. On typing and making an error in typing those, or hand, you know, handwriting. And so those I photocopied, and those were basically the only things I photocopied. Everything else I typed, I've been. I was tested in the military while I was a counterintelligence agent at my typing minus errors. And I was 100 words a minute typing after you deduct errors. So I typed fast. And at BYU as undergraduate I had been timed in reading and I read 1500 words a minute. So I read fast and I typed fast. And so during those 15, 18 months that I was Leonard Arrington's not only his only research, I was staff of researchers. I was allowed access to anything I wanted. And so I took research and notes 100 words a minute or so and 1500 words reading. And I would type on a particular source page, one to page, however, and with the diaries of Heber Gill Grant, I took about 300 pages of notes type single space. And then on other things I might only take one page of notes that I found interesting. But I did that for that whole period of time. And so rather than photocopying, that was what I took in the notes. And then after I went to byu, I continued that on Tuesday, Thursdays I spent full days in the archives doing research until I was denied further opportunity to DO research in 1986. And it was because they had a form, a document that all researchers had to sign where they gave the right of review and censorship to a committee of the church of anything they had researched, the researcher had researched at any time in the past. And I said I'm not going to sign an ex post factor document. And when I originally signed that, I said anything and I scratched out at any time and I put in researched after the date that I signed it. And I said, you know, I'll live with that. And they said, well no, we want it to cover everything you've ever researched. And I said fully, I'm not going to do that. And they said, well then you're not going to do any more research here. And I understood that there were some others who refused to sign the form. And therefore from 1986 until about 1982, so for about a six year period they have that 92, I think it was 92. I wasn't doing research and so only go by what people had told me. But I think it was 91 or 92 when they had so much criticism about this requirement that they created a new document that researchers signed. And it had no provision for that. And it simply said anything you publish is governed by federal law, fair use. And you know, that's fine, no one objects to that because everyone is governed by fair use requirements of federal copyright law. And so from that point forward I could have, but I didn't for another five years go back to the church archives until I was working on the revision of the Magic world book in 1997. And by going through their index, which was available without signing the form, I had realized that there were things I needed to research to do that update healing ordinances and other things that I knew pertained to it. And so I thought, well, you know, what can they do? Kill me and eat me if I apply and they turn me down? So I applied for the research permission again, and I had not had it there since 1986, had not been there doing research until 1997. And I submitted the application and I was granted it that day.

John Dehlin [00:56:16] Post excommunication?

D. Michael Quinn [00:56:17] Yeah, post excommunication. Five years. Well, four years after I was excommunicated and three years after Origins of Power came out, and I had not done research at the church archives since 1986.

John Dehlin [00:56:33] Any way to estimate how many of those pages you generated through reading tens

D. Michael Quinn [00:56:36] of thousands of pages?

John Dehlin [00:56:38] How many boxes would you send?

D. Michael Quinn [00:56:39] Well, it's hard for me to estimate. I think I. I think I put 20. 20 boxes and sent them to Yale of those.

John Dehlin [00:56:51] But Yale's got your.

D. Michael Quinn [00:56:52] Could have been more.

John Dehlin [00:56:53] Yale's got your paper collection.

D. Michael Quinn [00:56:54] Yeah, Yale has my collection at the Beinecke Library and it's open for research that's totally open to any researcher. All those notes. And then in the meantime, over the years, other researchers gave me their photocopies of material. And so if you do research in my research files at Yale, you'll find a lot of photocopied material, but it's material that other people gave me. And essentially all I photocopied there were the financial records of tithing paid by general authorities and of the Presiding Bishopric's annual reports that show tithing and that kind of thing. And everything else was in a gift to me that's photocopied from various sources. And then the balance of it is my underwear to minute typescripts. And some of them were verbatim complete typescripts of documents, but most of them were excerpts that I found interesting. And I had wide ranging interest because from the time I started research, before I was hired by Leonard, when he was just a researcher there in the summer of 1971, I was interested in everything. And so I would take down notes of everything I thought I might conceivably use one day to create my own article of whether it was Adam, God or polygamy or theocracy or whatever it might be, decision making of the leaders, relations with their wives. Anything that I found I took notes on. And then our margin I would write what topic it had my notes had pertained to. And for many years I depended on memory to go through my thousands and then ten thousands of pages of notes that somewhere in the Woodford Woodruff Notes I've taken on a page on the right hand side and the upper part of that page is something about Adam, God. And I would depend on my memory for that. And I would read through the entire all my notes. And that's how I kept all of this in my mind, because I was reading and reading every time I wrote something, I would read through the all thousands of pages of notes to look for the things that pertain to my article on the prayer circle or my article on the council of 50 or wherever, because I didn't know exactly where they were. And so by the process of constantly, every time I published a new article, reading through everything that I had all previously researched in my notes, up to the point of preparing that article, I got the stuff stuck in my head. And luckily it's still there.

Pt 1: Sources for the Book on Church Business and Companies

John Dehlin [01:00:04] Other main categories of sources for this

D. Michael Quinn [01:00:06] book besides yeah, byu it's had the the thing about manuscripts is that unless the manuscripts are photocopied or microfilmed, they're unique to whoever holds them. And so a manuscript library, whether it's byu, the manuscripts they have are unique. And you generally have to go there to donate them unless the donor has donated multiple copies. And in some cases that's the case, but in other cases, you go and you have a unique opportunity to research a source that is only at that archive. So the archives of the Utah State I looked at the archives of Logan USU of Weber State University of the University of Utah of BYU of in Utah. Then I did research at Yale. They have a very significant collection at the Huntington Library. They have a very significant collection at the Bancroft Library at the University of California in Berkeley. I researched that and in many cases I went back when I started in 2008, I went back to all of these archives if I thought they had something or if I knew by looking at their online catalogs they had something that I needed for this expanded book on church business and companies. And so I also the Library of Congress I had researched back in the 70s when I was given stack privileges to go wander through all the stacks of all their business trade publications and their annual reports of industries like lumber or mining. They all had publications that came out annually. And I went through every one of those in the Library of Congress for these men during that first century. I didn't want to go back to look for anything that detailed for the 1980s. In the 1980s, I depended primarily on the Utah Corporation division. And then in the 1990s and the 2000s, I again limited it to the archives that were available to me in Utah. And so to the degree that there may be material in the 1990s or pertaining to the 1990s and the 2000s elsewhere, it's thinner research. However, almost all of the stuff that I was interested in is online now, even current financial reports. And because I had waited to do this expanded version until the 21st century, corporation divisions of every state and most counties have the records I was interested in, including 21st century records online. And if they weren't totally available, they had the corporate number and you could write and ask for a PDF. And so I was able to get PDFs of a lot of this material that I would otherwise, back in the old days, had to have seen in person and now is available sometimes for a fee, just sometimes just gratis, if you tell them specifically the name you're interested in of the company and use their indexing online to find the corporation number, because basically they're stuck by that. They don't look up by name. Generally they use the name to find the number and then they look at the number and give you a PDF. So for the 21st century, I had those opportunities. And then. And again, these are just things that sometimes fell into my lap. I had no idea that the Church internationally had to file reports to these. Every country, in every language that the Church is in. And in a conversation with somebody, when I was talking about this, I. I just mentioned, you know, that I'm now looking at the leadership and the activities of the church in the 20th century and reading online reports that are available in newspapers about the Church's investment in one corporation or another. And we'll said, well, have you looked at Canada's annual reports? And I said, what reports? I had no idea. And so it was through these, these chance, considerate recommendations of a couple of people that I realized that there were these reports. And early on, once I looked at the UK reports and the Canada reports, I decided these must be given by every report in every language where the Church is located in Latin America and Asia and Africa and continental Europe. But I don't want to get into these reports and have to translate them from their languages and then be accused of mistranslating or misunderstanding the accounting terms and the terms that would be used for all of these reports. And so I decided, all right, I'm going to limit it to English language reports where I can't be making those kinds of mistakes or have people think I've made those kinds of mistakes. And so I contacted, by going online again, which I hadn't realized until I'd received these recommendations that I could, that there were these reports that were submitted annually in the 20th century and had even earlier than that, but that were available and I decided I would limit my research to the 21st century. So I contacted all of these countries for their English language reports, including Hong Kong, which although it's a special Regional administrative district of the prc, in the prc, generally the reports are in Chinese or Mandarin. In Hong Kong, because of its specific English background, they submit them to the People's Republic of China in Mandarin. But there or. Well, I'm pretty sure they do it in Mandarin, not Cantonese, but they also make it in English because so many of the Hong Kong residents have English background. I wrote to them and like some other countries I had, I was unsuccessful in getting their financial reports. I got what they called financial report and paid for it and they sent it to me by mail. It had nothing financial in detail like the UK reports and the Canada reports did and the Australian reports. So that was, I mean, I may have asked the wrong kind of question, but what I had, what I got from them said financial report, but it had none of the details. And I contacted African countries, Sub Sahara Africa countries like Nigeria and Ghana, where there are very significant. The two of those combined have more than a million Mormons on the records. And both of them said, oh yeah, we'll be glad to give you those reports. And so they gave me the name, but you need to get them from this person. So I contacted this person. Yes, but you need to get. And the person they send me back to, the person I'd already contacted. And so I'd say this person has already said to me after you recommended me to contact him or her for getting copies of these reports. And then I said I'd be glad to pay for any, you know, whatever amount you ask. And they said no, we were correct, it was this person. And I was bouncing back and forth and I got a run around in both Ghana and Nigeria and I could never get their English language reports. So I just noted that and I cited the correspondence, usually email correspondence. South Africa had their one report online and I contacted them and they said that's all they had and it was an incomplete report. And so even though they had English language reports, they said that, you know, that that was the only one that provided Details. And so it ended up being six countries that I depended on. And I got every report I could in the 20th century from New Zealand, Australia, Tonga, the Philippines, Canada, and the UK and some of those reports began as early as the year 2000, and others didn't begin until about 2004 or 5. And then all of them were current up to the year 2010. And this book concludes the 2010 reports from all six countries. But I instead included statistical analyses of the main, what I thought would be the main items of interest to a reader each year, pardon me, each year for these six different countries during the 21st century where those reports were available to me. And again, they varied for each country. But then I put tables in the chapter three for each of those countries and then analyzed in the text the trends. So those annual reports are nowhere in the book. You have tables in the book where I provide numerical values derived directly from those reports, and then I analyze them in percentages, and then I analyze them in the chapter with trends that I observed with regard to those companies. So those are the sources that I used, as well as online newspapers.

Pt 1: Mormon Leaks: As a Source

John Dehlin [01:10:33] What about Mormon Leaks? What role did mormonleaks play play as a source?

D. Michael Quinn [01:10:37] Only in one sense. And I have mixed feelings, I think. I'm not sure if all historians have mixed feelings about using something like WikiLeaks, which is the forerunner of Mormon. And I think it was originally called Mormon Wikileak, and then it became WikiLeaks Mormon version. Many of these documents are stolen documents or obtained through deception, as the WikiLeaks documents are. And as important as they are as sources, historians typically have to balance their ethical issues about using stolen information with the importance of this stolen information that the historians didn't steal, and it is available in our wonderful Internet age to them with the click of a mouse. And all right, do I ignore this crucial information about a subject I'm writing a book on or an article on, or do I bend my ethics about, you know, I would never steal anything from an archive, but this important information was stolen and is now available to me as an Internet user. And so I think every historian struggles with that, at least initially. And I did. And so what I used that originated with WikiLeaks Mormon leaks was I made the decision, if it's been published in the newspaper, then I can blame someone else for it, and I won't have any. I've never had any problem citing any newspapering. I've used communist newspapers and anarchist newspapers. I used a number of those in Nazi newspapers. When I was writing my biography of J. Reuben Clark because those were things that affected his the information that he was receiving and his library included communist publications and Nazi publications for one reason or another, which I won't get into here, but I have no conscience issue or ethical problem issue using something that has been published in a print format. This is old style. I'm old style school in this regard. And I think historians trained in the. Since the 1990s, since the Internet, late 1990s, definitely. I don't think have any of those qualms that I, that I have because I'm old school. But anyway, because Peggy Fletcher Stack did a detailed article using the documents that originally released on Mormon Leagues, then I cited her article and I am so glad that Signature Books could not publish my third volume until this year because her article came out in December 2017 that showed these. Was it 2016? I thought it was 17. It was December 2016. 16. Okay. Anyway, because it came out so late, I was able to use these pay stubs and this photocopy of a letter to a general authority about incomes in the late 1990s. 1999. Exactly. And 2014. And those were crucial for the analysis that I was doing in the book. And so I'm so glad that I did not rush into print with Signature as I wanted to when I handed them the manuscript in 2010, because I would have been absent that crucial information. So, you know, there were multiple reasons that I was mistaken and, and Ron Priddis was right in asking for something expanded. And I was a great beneficiary of the frustration you all and I went through with announcements of the upcoming publication of a book that kept not being published and the release date was being pushed forward from 2012 to 2013 to 2014 in mind. Finally, many of you didn't believe it was going to be 2017 when they announced it, but we all benefited from that because this book has those disclosures that were made by initially Mormon Leaks and then Peggy Fletcher Stack and the Salt Lake Tribune and I quoted her and those are the only things that originated with Mormon Leaks. And I, and I don't use. Many of you may know I'm a semi Luddite. I only use that amount of technology that I absolutely must use. And so I've only had a cell phone for a year and a half. I didn't start using the Internet until I was at Yale in 2002. And I am not online at home in my condo. And so I do my emailing and I do Internet searches during the hour to two hours that public libraries allow me to use their computers for that. And so typically I use up all my library hours just doing emailing. And so I don't have time to browse websites and blog the Mormon blogosphere. I just don't get involved in that at all.

John Dehlin [01:16:55] Yeah. At any point, have you received any indication, any communication from the Church or any indication that the Church was concerned about this book, your research, or this book being published?

Pt 1: No Concern expressed about My Book Publication

D. Michael Quinn [01:17:07] No, and it was very open that I was doing this research. I didn't make any secret of it. And it's not generally. There have been exceptions. There were exceptions for Fawn Brody's no Man Knows my history in 1945. And the other exception I can think of was under the Banner of Heaven that came out that the Church made a formal statement, an official statement about. But generally that's not their style because they know the publishing maxim that banned in Boston means bookseller and book sale and best seller. And so if something gets the notoriety of being attacked or banned in Boston, and that was the old print version of leading into a bestseller, the Church generally has not made public comments. And that's been true of all of my books. They have not. However, the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, when it came out in 1992, cited many of my articles that have been published, primarily those in BYU Studies. But even though I was under the ban even then, before my excommunication, many of those bravehearted contributors cited things that I had published. And many of the publications that have come from BYU's Religious Studies center have cited my publications, including publications that came out in Dialogue and Sunstone and Signature Books publications. So it's depended on the format and the venue. But public statements, church headquarters has never made those about any of my publications

John Dehlin [01:19:20] any private concern expressed.

D. Michael Quinn [01:19:22] No. The only things that I heard were behind the scenes and I heard typically like when the article on Post Manifesto Polygamy came out in 1985 in dialogue. I at that time was still active in the church and participating, had both stake and ward positions and sons of members of. Of the twelve. Not members of the twelve themselves, but sons or daughters, but usually sons. Reported back to me that what was said by Boyd K. Packard in the meeting of the quorum of the 12 about my article in Dialogue magazine. And then I got feedback about my Prayer Circle article that I had published a few years earlier in BYU Studies, which was a safe format to publish something controversial in. I got back positive feedback from. Gordon B. Hinckley directly when I was a visiting high councilman in a ward for his son was the bishop. And I ended up sitting on the stand next to him. He asked me if I was the D. Michael Quinn, who was a professor at BYU since I lived in Salt Lake and was high council visiting high council in Salt Lake stake. And I said yes. And he said, well, you published an interesting article about the prayer circle. That's the only. Apostolic comment about a publication that I made. I got from. From Gordon B. Hinckley. I have. My mission president was a general authority, Marion D. Hanks, and he commented on several occasions.

John Dehlin [01:21:28] But no. No concern expressed about this book before it got published.

D. Michael Quinn [01:21:32] No, only things that I heard from second or third hand sources. And in some cases they were from students of mine when I was at BYU who relayed to me things that members of the 12 or one particular member of the 12 had said to me, said to them about things I had written. And then in other cases I was being told by administrators at BYU what general authorities had told them about things I had published. But that was the extent of it. I received no verbal comment except from Gordon B. Hinckley and Mary D. Hanks, and no secondhand comments except criticism, those usual criticisms of what I'd publish, but they were always secondhand.

John Dehlin [01:22:34] So you don't have a sense that anyone was concerned that this book was.

D. Michael Quinn [01:22:37] And I never received any comment about the. No nervousness or no. If there were comments or concerns expressed about that, I never heard them.

John Dehlin [01:22:48] Okay, and did you attempt to get support from the church, maybe asking for documentation?

D. Michael Quinn [01:22:54] No, I did research. I didn't want to push boundaries that I knew were there and knew that were imposed by authorities higher than those that worked or served at the church history library. So I did inquire for restrictions because some things were restricted locally. When I say locally, they were restricted by the administrators or the people at the church history library. And so I did request items that were of a financial or business nature. On the catalog information it said restricted. And then I made formal requests to see those things and I was given access to those. But it was an in house thing within the church history library because they had imposed the restrictions themselves. And in some cases, and in fact many cases it was because they weren't processed and they didn't know what was exactly in there. So they quickly read them and then said, oh, this is not sensitive enough to keep restricted from Mike. And so they allowed me to see those. There were other things that they wouldn't allow me to see because the restrictions were imposed at a higher level. And they couldn't simply give them to me as documents that were exceptions to the restrictions that had been imposed by a higher authority. So those I, even though I asked for as sweetly as I had the things they did give me as exceptions, they just said, mike, you know, we can't. We are not able to give anyone access to those documents.

John Dehlin [01:24:45] Got it.

D. Michael Quinn [01:24:45] But I never even. And there were things, you know, the Mormor rumor mill is extensive and runs deep, and I was. Often times, you know, people would say they were individually supportive of things I was doing, and they thought my idea for third volume was good and whatever, but I never heard, even from these informal discussions that there was any general authority input one way or the other.

Pt 1: Bookmark Review

John Dehlin [01:25:20] Okay. I had an interesting experience reading this book, and I'm curious if you had other people give the same experience. So I'm thinking it's a thick book, you know, and it's going to take forever to read it. And so I start digging in and, you know, I'm getting about 100 pages in, thinking this is going to take me forever. Right. And then I realized that the actual writing in the book, there's only 120, 130 pages of actual writing. And then a huge chunk is the appendices.

D. Michael Quinn [01:25:58] Right.

John Dehlin [01:25:58] And then even within the pages that you did write, multiple pages of footnotes per. Per chapter.

D. Michael Quinn [01:26:05] Right.

John Dehlin [01:26:06] So I don't, you know, it is a lot less writing than I anticipated.

D. Michael Quinn [01:26:10] Right.

John Dehlin [01:26:10] What are your thoughts or responses to that? Other people said that.

D. Michael Quinn [01:26:13] And, you know, count your blessings because it was going to be five pages to begin with.

John Dehlin [01:26:19] Sure, sure. You said you didn't want to write it, right?

D. Michael Quinn [01:26:21] No, I did not.

John Dehlin [01:26:22] Yeah.

D. Michael Quinn [01:26:23] And it just. It just grew because I found things that were enough to write about.

John Dehlin [01:26:29] Sure.

D. Michael Quinn [01:26:30] And I. Then I found things that I found one very interesting source on, and I thought, I've got to explore and flesh this out. And so, you know, beyond my. And it wasn't better wisdom. It was beyond my entrenched opposition to doing more writing and more research. I did more writing and research. So, you know, if. If you're disappointed.

John Dehlin [01:26:57] No, I didn't say I was disappointed.

D. Michael Quinn [01:26:59] Well, surprised, surprised, or if you're surprised, balance that surprise with the reality that I wrote those chapters under duress. And I treated them. Once I realized what I was really writing about, particularly in the period beyond what I had originally researched, I treated them with loving attention because I realized I had discovered things and was writing about things that I had previously not even known about. And that was exciting. And so I had a lot of kid in the candy store moments in the process of preparing those books. But in large measure, those three chapters derivative from those appendixes, and it's 21 appendixes and you know, it's one damn fact after another. But in trying to understand how I could make those understandable to general readers without the jargon, or with as little jargon as possible and try to make the statistics understandable for a general audience, I sweated bricks over those. And so those chapters represent, and those tables which I tried so hard to make self evident are the result of finding this voluminous amount of information and then trying to distill it into narrative that would flow and that would present an overview in depth, but also an overview of 180 years of business and finance. And so that's what I did. And it ended up being that I found that three chapters was all I needed. And people, after I submitted the book, not Business Week, Bloomberg News made it kind of worldwide, Internet wide known that I was working on a book about church finances that they had interviewed me about and learned about and they promoted. After people read that Bloomberg News report and learned that I was working on a book, people would come up to me and say after I'd submitted the manuscript in the main to signature books, they would say, oh, have you read this thing? Or I, I know somebody who works at church headquarters and I think they have documents that you may want to say. My answer was that can go in your book about the hierarchy and church in, you know, church income and finances and business. I am done. You know, and really the only major addition that I made was the thing that Peggy Fletcher stacked.

John Dehlin [01:30:15] So I did, I did wonder if there were like church employees that wanted to secretly pass on, you know, documents to you or other people who had

D. Michael Quinn [01:30:24] sort of documents from various sources, not church employees directly. But I have, I had people who said, oh, I have a friend who, a friend who has, knows this church employee and maybe if you ask, you know, you can get this information. And I said, forget about it. I'm. I'm over this and I am done with this. And you know, you, if you want to write about it or you want to see it in print, that's great.

John Dehlin [01:30:50] But you didn't have people offering you sort of secret stashes of documents.

D. Michael Quinn [01:30:56] They did. Yeah. And. And I was, and I was just saying I'm done.

John Dehlin [01:31:00] Okay. Okay. That's because they came after 2012. Or you were, you were.

D. Michael Quinn [01:31:05] I was done. And, and you'll find that even though I used the cutoff at 2012, I refer in passing to certain items that pertain all the way up to two, you know, up to the present, including the stuff that Peggy Fletcher Stack published. But they're more. They're more, by the way, things that I felt it was useful to bring to the attention of the reader, even though they went way beyond my 2010 cutoff. But I really just, you know, somebody said after 2012, they had something that I thought they thought I'd be interested in, and I just gave them that strong arm denial of interest. And so there are bits and pieces that go beyond that, but not much.

John Dehlin [01:31:57] So, no. No Deep Throat source for this.

D. Michael Quinn [01:32:00] Well, there. Such a source may exist, but I never wanted to contact anybody. And that's another thing. I did not want to have one single anonymous source as a citation. And there isn't one single anonymous source. Everyone I spoke to, including people like Ellen Blodgett, who were at the center of church investments and church tithing and church income. When I was able to quote them, they allowed me to quote them with their name. And I really did not want the suspicion that readers of one ilk or another have when you cite an anonymous source. I just did not want to encourage that. And so, you know, if you don't like my sources, you can contact them because they're cited.

Pt 1: Part 1 of "The Book of Mormon"

John Dehlin [01:32:54] All right, so. So I think this is going to wrap up part one of this interview. We've been able to get a really good background for Mike's, you know, kind of what it went into, the research over the timeline, what went into writing it, what his main sources were, and kind of the mechanics of how he went about writing the book. We need to swap out some batteries. And so what we'll do is we'll end this first segment. Thank you all for joining us. Those of you joining us through the audio and video as well. And then we'll come back with part two where we're gonna actually dig into the content and the substance of the book and have a lot of fun. And then maybe in part three, we'll be talking about Mike's observations on the church today and his own life and talk about other things going on. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. thank you very much.

Pt 2: Interview

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 813

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Hello everyone and welcome Back to part two of my interview with Dr. Michael Quinn, author of part three of this series on the Mormon hierarchy. This book in particular published by Signature Books, is the Mormon Hierarchy, wealth and Corporate Power, which follows on two other really amazing important books in Mormon history, Origins of Power and Extensions of Power, all published by Signature Books. We're very grateful for the first hour and a half we spent with Michael where he talked to us about the history of writing the book. And it was an extensive history and it was good and it was important, fascinating stuff. Talked a lot about the sources, about the timeline, about what did and didn't go into the book, and about to some extent how Michael was hesitant or even reluctant to write some of the things that he did. But how through the hard work of Ron Priddis and others at Signature Books, they were able to twist Michael's arm enough to get him to write what he wrote. So we're grateful for it.

D. Michael Quinn [00:01:46] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:01:47] We're not at all disappointed. We're grateful and excited. So now for this Part two, we're going to be digging into a bit more of the details of the content of the book and I think it would be maybe useful to begin with. Let's just say that your average Mormon was going to sort of ask the question, what's in this book? At a high level, what is this book about and why should I read it? What would you say?

Pt 2: Mormon Money: The Rollercoaster Ride

D. Michael Quinn [00:02:18] It charts the two prong experience of the Mormon leadership from 1830 to the present, 2007 or 2017, excuse me, in business and finance. And it's been a a kind of roller coaster ride for Mormonism because during that time period the Church generally was just barely financially getting its feet on the ground and the leadership for the most part were living hand to mouth like most early Mormons. And what sets this group and this experience apart is something that is not repeated anywhere else in American history that I know of. You have an organization whose assets were confiscated by the federal government for a nine year period and then after they returned and the Government had also disincorporated this organization. And then after the assets were returned, about every 20 to 30 years, the LDS Church was on the edge of bankruptcy, just within, depending on how you looked at it, within a few months, few days of collapsing financially. And then in the 1960s, in the late 1960s in particular, an upward trajectory began in terms of the success of church businesses and the success of investments in stocks and bonds of national corporations, and in some cases, international, to the extent that now the church is without question worth billions of dollars and its total income annually is tens of billions of dollars. And there is just no parallel, I think, in American history. No other organization, no church has experienced that kind of trajectory from being virtually confiscated all of its assets by the government, and then being on the verge of bankruptcy every few decades or so, and then moving from that to this current situation in the 21st century. And that's what this book tries to present, is the ups and downs, the continuities and the reversals that are involved in this remarkable journey.

John Dehlin [00:05:28] So when you think about the very, very early church years with Joseph Smith in Kirtland and then with Missouri coming on and then Nauvoo, how would you describe kind of the church's financial status during those early years?

D. Michael Quinn [00:05:45] Well, the church was basically on a subsistence level, and most of its members were on a subsistence level during that time period. The population of the church was drawn primarily from farmers, from townspeople who worked in trades. And many of the converts were really poor. They weren't gentlemen farmers by any means, and they were not the leaders of their communities for the most part. And so the income that the church was able to get from tithing, which was defined on an annual basis as 10% of your increase or 10% of your income, that growth of funds to the church was minimal and unpredictable. And even though the church was growing geometrically, even exponentially in times of Joseph Smith, from its original membership of 6 formal members, the finances of the church did not correspond in the same way. I mean, it was very much of a hand delight kind of hand to mouth kind of existence. When Joseph Smith died, he had merged many of his finances with those of the church. And at his death, the probate of his estate showed that he was, in today's terms, more than $2 million in debt. That he just had no assets that you could balance out as saying, these are what he gave to his wife and children to live for the rest of their lives. The family was just able to live comfortably. Many people living less comfortably thought he was rich. But that was not the case with Joseph Smith. Now with Brigham Young in Utah, that became the case. Brigham Young was a millionaire in the terms of his own economy during his lifetime.

John Dehlin [00:08:06] That's a major accomplishment in the 1800s, right?

D. Michael Quinn [00:08:08] Yes. There were very, relatively very few millionaires in 1870s America when he died in 1877. And it's not that he was unknown. There were millionaires, other millionaires in Utah at that same time, but these were the one, clearly the 1% or the less than 1% of those who could claim any assets during the 19th century. Now, the growth of the church. Real quick, excuse me.

John Dehlin [00:08:46] How did Brigham Young get so rich as a Mormon prophet?

D. Michael Quinn [00:08:50] This is really interesting because almost from the beginning of his leadership of the church, after the death of Joseph Smith, he felt that he was entitled to financial benefits that Joseph Smith rarely kind of claimed or sought. Even though Joseph Smith lived in what was called a mansion, the mansion house in Nauvoo, within months after he moved into it, he turned it into a hotel because he couldn't keep its. Spend enough money from his own income to pay for its upkeep. And so the idea of Joseph Smith as a wealthy man was an illusion, whereas Brigham Young was clearly wealthy. And as the money came in from a variety of sources, not just tithing, but also from a gold mission that he established in 1848, sending missionaries to California to mine gold and bringing that gold back to Utah, that increased his personal wealth and the church's wealth dramatically. And Brigham young, from the 1860s onward, when his talks were being published in the Deseret News and then republished in the Journal of Discourses for the benefit of British Mormons, he was very open about his wealth in the sense that he did not apologize for being wealthy. And in fact, one of his caustic comments, kind of sly comments, was, I may not be a prophet, but these people know that I've been very profitable to them. And he was a man who never was shy about how much money and how much wealth he had. And in fact, in one sermon he gave, which I don't think I quote in the book, but he indicated that he felt that his worth as an individual should be equal to the worth of the Church as a whole. That he had allowed the church, he had provided the opportunities for the church to gain its financial stability, and he felt that labor is worthy of his hire, which is a biblical phrase, which was also a phrase used in Joseph Smith's revelations. And Brigham Young clearly felt that he was worth as much as the church itself was worth.

John Dehlin [00:11:31] Would it be unfair to say he was fleecing the members and kind of enriching them?

D. Michael Quinn [00:11:35] That depends on who you'd look at. One of his wives made one of the starkest comments about his wealth in terms of the wealth of the community at large, she wrote in her diary. And this was not intended for publication. It was a private expression that she made. But she said, I'm embarrassed to know that I am the or for people to know that I am the wife of or one of the wives of the richest man in Utah. And yet our family has so little to live on. And so the criticism of Brigham Young's wealth was not limited to anti Mormons or outsiders is the more neutral term. Who came to Utah, observed Brigham Young living in the Beehive House and observed many of his wives in the adjacent Lyon House and observe what many would regard as the sumptuous lifestyle that he had inside the Beehive House, the furnishings, the food, the kind of accoutrements that he was able to provide. There were many who were critical of this, and this caused many to distance themselves, even move away from Mormonism because of this disparity that they saw between Brigham Young and ironically, many of the members of the church assumed that the next tier of leadership, the apostles, also were wealthy. And that was not the case. And one of my appendixes in the book, in fact, it's the first one, shows during decades of Utah history, the general authorities who had less wealth than the average members of the community in Utah. And it's based on the Salt Lake county assessments on a year by year basis. And being in a high level position, high priority, high state status, socially and ecclesiastically, was no guarantee of wealth. And some of them were barely able to put food on the table. Orson Pratt being one of the primary ones who was just always on the edge of poverty. So you have this disparity not only between Brigham Young's personal wealth and the wealth of everybody else, you have disparities within the hierarchy of the Mormon Church itself, where even though people assumed everyone in the hierarchy was, quote, getting wealthy off the benefits of the church, the leadership itself was no stepping stone to wealth and no guarantee of having enough money to put food on the table.

John Dehlin [00:14:47] Yeah, when I read the combination of his. Some at least one of his wives, if not multiple, saying that they felt like he was neglecting them financially, then there's this quote that you include, which is Brigham Young saying, I know my standing before God and before the people, then you will feel and Know things that you never knew before. But as the lot is mine, don't quarrel with it. If it is a man's lot to draw a million dollars, million of money and all the rest get nothing. Don't say you have as much money as I have, but I have a carriage and can ride over you. It makes him sound like a jerk.

D. Michael Quinn [00:15:28] He was not. He was not ashamed of speaking harshly to the quorum of the 12 or to the membership of the church. And those who read these sermons that he gave can be taken aback by how cruel, by our standards, he could be over the pulpit, with people sometimes naming them over the pulpit and ridiculing them or chastising them, including his wives. He didn't name them, but he would point to them in the audience, and they all sat in one location and in the Salt Lake Temple, and he would criticize this group of women who, you know, were his wives for one thing after another. Oftentimes it was because they wanted to spend his money and that he didn't want to spend on them. Brigham Young was not a person that you wanted to cross because if you crossed him, you would get a blistering tongue lashing at the least. And he could do this with members of the quorum of the 12, where he threatened to ride over them with his carriage, or he could do it with these wives where I have correspondence with Brigham Young from some of his wives, where they complain about his neglect and then recount what he said to them in response to the complaint. There's the door. You can leave whenever you want. I mean, this was not a man who chose his words carefully.

John Dehlin [00:17:04] And then when you talk about disparity amongst the other general authorities of the church, you're. You're basically saying that his son was one of the wealthy ones, whereas other First Presidency members or apostles were making a fraction of what his own son made.

D. Michael Quinn [00:17:21] Right.

John Dehlin [00:17:22] It's this idea of patronage, of favoritism, and it's just gross.

Pt 2: Brigham Young's financial affairs

D. Michael Quinn [00:17:27] Yeah, well, the. The financial side of Brigham Young's alive has been something that I think most interpreters, except the most devoted to his memory and image, have commented, indicating discomfort at the least, if not outrage or the kind of condemnation that at the same time, America was giving to what they called the robber barons of America. And for some in Utah who commented negatively, Brigham Young was Mormonism's Robert Barron. And his claim in 1847, when he said, you know, if I get a million dollars and you get nothing, don't complain, that was. It's difficult to understand. How these other apostles would have reacted to that. Because in today's dollars, that would be him saying, If I get $247 million and I'm worth that much and you're worth nothing, then don't complain. I mean, it was that a million dollars at that time was an unbelievable amount of money in the currency of that. That time period.

John Dehlin [00:18:49] So his net worth at death, adjusted for today's dollars was what?

D. Michael Quinn [00:18:54] Oh, no, his. His worth at death, adjusted for today's dollars was more than a million dollars, more than a million two. And the estate was trimmed back by his successor in office, John Taylor, who did not believe that Brigham Young deserved as much money as the Church itself. And so the technical compromise that they worked on was that Brigham Young's estate was about $333,000, and the balance of it went to the Church. That was under the requirement of his successor. If we were to transfer that amount that was originally in the. The inventory of his estate that the original probate officers estimated were his actual benefits of $1,200,000. That would be. I give the exact amount there, but it would be something on the order of $50 million in today's purchasing price. Now, Brigham Young is exceptional in many ways, but he was also exceptional among Mormon leaders. No one outshined Brigham Young financially. Even if you were to, as I did in one of these appendixes, list their value of their wealth at death in today's dollars so that you can equalize what each of them was worth in comparison to each. You can't do it. If you look at the dollar amount for Brigham Young in 1977 and David O. McKay in 1970, you can't compare those dollar amounts that were given for their estates as absolute figures. You have to make them relative to each other in equalized value. And if you do that in $2010, no one comes even close to the value of Brigham Young as a member of the Church at his death or as a member of the leadership of his death. What impressed me was that subsequent leaders of the Church, subsequent presidents of the church, died with moderate incomes, not incomes, but moderate wealth at death. And in fact, it stunned me when I read that here, David O. McKay, who I had met as a teenager and got his signatures on my Book of Mormon triple combination on my Bible, that when he died, in equalized terms, 21 lower ranking members of the hierarchy were wealthier when they died than he was. That just stunned me. I expected that all of the presidents of the Church would, if you equalize their wealth at death that they would all be at the top. And they weren't that lower ranking members of the church in the dozens were, in comparative terms, wealthier at death than the members of the church, with the exception of Brigham Young.

John Dehlin [00:22:30] Would we have known Gordon B. Hinckley's wealth at death?

D. Michael Quinn [00:22:33] No, because Utah laws on which I based the research into these probate of estates changed in the 18. Pardon me, 1980s, and they allowed what was called an informal probate. And then they allowed, because of the rise of estates that were not going through probate, but going through private instruments that families received directly from the deceased person, probate records after 1988 no longer listed the total value of the estate assets that the individual had. This isn't just general authorities. This is everyone in Utah. And so I was not able to assess the wealth at death, which I could assess for every general authority who went through probate prior to 1988. And Gordon B. Hinckley, for example, died long after that. And his estate was not subject to the scrutiny that is available to the public in terms of probate of the states before 1988.

John Dehlin [00:23:56] So did you have Joseph Fielding Smith?

D. Michael Quinn [00:23:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:24:01] Harold B. Lee. Harold B. Lee, Spencer B. Kimball.

D. Michael Quinn [00:24:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:04] What do you have any memory of kind of where they were?

D. Michael Quinn [00:24:07] Well, Hiram B. Lee and Spencer. And no, I didn't have Spencer W. Kimball's. I think his went through a trusteeship. Trusteeship. And so it didn't go through probate, if I remember correctly, with Spencer Kimball, because his was. Was coming when he died in 19. 1988. That was the time period, that was the decade when these changes came to probate law in Utah. And. But with Harold B. Lee, Joseph Fielding Smith, they died as comfortable with six figure estates. But. But there were general authorities, lower ranking general authorities who died with more wealth than they had.

John Dehlin [00:24:55] Okay. And not just to go back. You have Brigham Young's son, annual salary at $344,000 a year, adjusted for today's. So, I mean, that was a pretty.

D. Michael Quinn [00:25:09] Yeah, it was. It was a hefty amount of money even, you know, at the time. It was. It was dimensions above what the other apostles were receiving or the other counselor, Daniel H. Wells, John W. Young, was the one who was receiving this largesse. And he was Joseph, pardon me, he was Brigham Young's favorite son. Brigham Young ordained him an apostle at the age of 11 and made him a secret counselor about 15 years later. And when he had the opportunity of giving him, and there were no set salaries under Brigham Young, you had to Go to Brigham Young and ask what you wanted from him, hat in hand. And so his favorite son, understandably within that system, received a lion's share. Interestingly enough, that that income is higher than leaders of the church today receive, as far as you know, as well, no, I mean, it's, it's, it's higher than they receive.

Pt 2: No Paid Clergy in the LDS Church

John Dehlin [00:26:27] So you talk in the book about this idea of no paid clergy, talk a little bit about the evolution of kind of what that meant and what that didn't mean. And also if you want to talk about the wealth of any other prophets like Heber J. Grant, etc.

D. Michael Quinn [00:26:48] Okay, there was this kind of. I commented about issues that involve contradictions. And on the one hand, Beginning in the 1830s, LDS publications railed against the salaried ministry and salaried priests. And it was this very consistent condemnation of Catholic and Protestant, in particular priests and other ministers, from having support on a regular basis from their congregations or the headquarters of their church. And yet Joseph Smith dictated revelations at the same time of these public condemnations of a salaried ministry in which he said the latter day servants of God were worthy of hire and you had various kinds of remuneration, financial compensation that came to the leadership not in the form of set salaries, but in the form of benefits given to the membership rather to the leadership of the church by the membership. Much of this was happenstance. When the missionaries went through missions, they often went without purse or script, meaning without money or handwriting material. And they were given places to live and food by local members and sometimes by non members who were generous to do that. The leaders of the church who traveled among the members of the church in far distant places, in England, in Scotland, in the eastern states in particular, also received this, and not just in the form of food and housing, but they received money from the members of the church. But it was on an unpredictable basis. And if there was a general authority who happened, like Brigham Young, who happened to be in Massachusetts and encountered a wealthy Mormon who gave him $50, which was a huge amount of money at that time, you know, somebody like Orson Pratt, who was back in Salt Lake, or, pardon me, back in Nauvoo in about the same time period, you know, was living on hand to mouth and was not receiving contributions from the rank and file at headquarters because they thought all the apostles were well off. And it was this assumption that those who went on missions to the far flung outposts of Mormonism in the 1840s needed benefit and needed financial help from the local members, as the local members can give us. So everything was very uneven at that time period. The efforts to set up a salary system for the first presidency were opposed by the local leaders, by the local members of the church in Missouri, and were not resumed again until after Joseph Smith's death. So what happened was in many ways what Brigham Young had done in the Utah period where there was no salary, but people who wanted help financially could get it if they went to him. And that was similar. He was following in many ways what Joseph Smith had done, that the bishops whom he appointed were there for not only the poor among the rank and file, but also the poor among the general authorities to go to for the things that they needed, very often not cash, because it was a barter system economy for the most part, where Mormons settled. But the cash that did exist often went from very wealthy Mormons to build the temple. And those were donated in cash funds to Joseph Smith. And he used it for the purposes of building, for his own support, and then for those other general authorities who might come to him. But the existence of this kind of, even though it was happenstance, was so similar to what Methodist circuit riders were receiving at the same time when they were going out holding camp meetings, that there was a real irony in this condemnation that was basically routine during the 19th century about hireling priests. And then it became even more ironic from 1877 onward, when this continued to be published and spoken of over the pulpit in Salt Lake City's Tabernacle by general authorities and other Mormons when the general authorities were receiving a fixed salary, and they often called it a salary, and that began in 1877. And I found in the publications of the church that I looked at none of these kind of condemnations in the 20th century, but in the sense of condemning hireling priests in that very, very direct way. But even down into the 1990s, I found Deseret Book publications that spoke negatively or superiorly by comparing the Mormon lay ministry for the vast majority of ordained ministers in the Mormon Church to a salaried priesthood. So they, in the 20th century, it didn't directly attack priests. It attacked a system of other churches of providing financial remuneration. But. But Even in the 1990s it was ironic because although it was called a living allowance, the highest leaders of the church and full time servants of the church, such as mission presidents and temple presidents who were devoting 24,7 to the service of the church were receiving financial compensation to live on. I mean, a necessity, just as it is a necessity in Protestant and Catholic Christianity and in Judaism and in all the religious traditions, if you have a ministry that works full time, they have to get their support independent of their ability to support themselves through some secular job. Mormonism has about a 95% unpaid ministry, a lay ministry. But there is a significant. A number of men, very prominent, the most prominent ones in Mormonism do receive compensation, which at one time was called a salary and which in literal terms, I think most people would say, yeah, this is a salary when they receive it on a monthly basis or a yearly basis. So the beginning of fixed salaries, you can date precisely after Brigham Young's death and the beginning of stratified societies began at the same time. By stratified salaries, I mean that salaries were ranked according to your echelon in the hierarchy. The president of the church got the most. His counselors got the next most. The senior members of the 12 got the next most. The junior members of the 12 got the next most. Usually the presiding bishop received about as much as the junior members of the 12. His counselors received less than the presiding bishop. The 70 were down the totem pole quite a ways from everyone else. And the poor patriarch to the church was the lowest paid, no matter when you examine it from the Utah period forward. Now, that was different in Nauvoo because the patriarch to the church in Nauvoo, when we have very detailed records of annual assessments that were made of the value of property owned, personal and real estate, land owned by the general authorities. Hyrum Smith had a very significant value of ownership at that time. But that's the only time when the patriarch to the church, or as it was often called in the 19th and early 20th century presiding patriarchy, Hiram, was the only one holding that office who was not at the bottom of the totem pole in financial wealth and in financial compensation. And it's one of the, I think, really strange things about the financial support that the hierarchy received was that the patriarch to the church, even though he had this very lofty title in the early down to about 1932, of Presiding Patriarch, he was the one who got the least amount of financial compensation. And it's one of these kind of inconsistencies, and there are many of them, and I point out inconsistencies. And whether you see this as disturbing or whether you just see this as a part of life, it's the way things were then. Beginning with Heber J. Grant and continuing increasingly from that point after the death of Heber J. Grant In 1945, the presidents of the church indicated A discomfort with this stratified system of compensation. And George Albert Smith, for example, told the financial secretary to the first Presidency to lower his compensation so that it would be no higher than any of the junior apostles received. Now, he didn't put himself down to the level of the patriarch to the Church, but he did make showed a discomfort with this stratified system. And that discomfort accelerated under David O. McKay, his successor, who became president in 1951 and in the mid-1950s, which I've dated to from diary entries in David O. McKay's diary. David O. McKay, by authority as president of the Church, ended stratified salaries for the general authorities in 1966. And from that time forward the president of the Church has received no more of a living allowance, which is the preferred term that the leadership wants people to use, or just allowance, than the most recently appointed lowest ranking member of the full time hierarchy general authorities. They receive a standard now for a period of time. Even after that, perks came to members of the First Presidency in particular and members of the 12 in particular, but usually not beyond that, except the presiding Bishopric through corporate directorships and officer positions which received in addition to the or which provided in addition to the salary or the allowance, the living allowance, director's fees and officer fees. And these were very significant, typically with the presidents of the Church who's the states that I was able to analyze. They received as much as 60% of their income from these outside sources.

John Dehlin [00:39:18] What are some examples?

D. Michael Quinn [00:39:20] Heber J. Grant is a prime example. He was a avid businessman, had been his entire life before he ever became an apostle. Even though he became apostle at age 25, by then he was already known as a businessman. He calculated that in one year in the 1920s, he received $5,000 just as president of all the companies he was president of in that year. $5,000 was a huge amount of money in the 1920s. And when he died the the majority of his wealth at death was coming from the and the reason I'm able to know this is that the inventory said how much monthly the value of his estate was receiving from his salaries from various sources, including the church salary or living allowance and what he was getting from all these corporations. The same was true of George Albert's Smith. The same was true of David O. McKay and Harold Bealey. Likewise not as much of a percentage of extra salary. But he also was receiving a significant percentage of his annual and monthly income from corporate leadership. And that was true as well of the apostles who served as directors or officers and certainly True of the Presiding Bishopric who served because they were always defined from the beginning as having a responsibility for financial and economic affairs. They were always heavily involved in corporate leadership, particularly of corporate owned or controlled church businesses. That changed under Spencer W. Kimball. And in 1972, no, excuse me, 1975, I think it was 1975, about the third or fourth year of Spencer W. Kimball's becoming president, he made an announcement that he was withdrawing from corporate leadership because he wanted to devote his time to the affairs directly involved with what we would call the ecclesiastical ecclesiastical rather than the corporate side of Mormonism. And this applied within a year to his counselors who withdrew from most but not all of the positions of presidency. But it did not apply to the Apostles and, or the 70, some of whom, some of the 70 were also allowed to have positions of, of corporate income and corporate leadership. In 1996, however, that changed for everybody. And in 1996 the president of the church was limited to responsibility for one or two core corporations of the church, including byu, where he was the president of the Board of Trustees of byu. The Apostles were instructed to not accept the position of director or officer in any of the companies. And so is something that happened to

John Dehlin [00:42:57] make the church make that big change.

D. Michael Quinn [00:42:59] And that I'm not sure. I'm not sure that there was. Except there was this discomfort that you find primarily in the mid 20th century forward, not so much before that of these stratified salaries. And once the salaries were equalized under David O. McKay, for all the echelons of the hierarchy, there were still these opportunities for perks and significant income coming from corporate directorships. J. Allen Blodgett, who was the comptroller initially, then the director of the church Finance department, then he became director of the Investments department in the 1980s. He commented that his church salary, which was higher than any of the general authorities, including the President of the Church, was receiving his church salary as a church bureaucrat or preferred term is church administrator, was higher than any of the general authorities. And that his annual income was 40% from all these directorships, that he very often served on the boards with other general authorities who were favored in his term he youth term favored with appointments to these boards. And so although I cannot in that time period from the 1970s and 80s assess the income that was being made annually by all these men because the evidence just isn't there, the data are not available to me. It's very clear that those who were extensively involved and I have an appendix where I talk about those in 1983 and 84 in directorships and officer positions in corporations were receiving a very significant portion of their annual income as an addition to the standard income that they were receiving as equalized salaries or equalized compensations from the Church. That ended in 1996, but I don't know what triggered it.

Pt 2: Lessons from The Money in the Church

John Dehlin [00:45:16] In the article you did with Peggy Fletcher Stack about your book, there were some quotes that were kind of shocking to me, so I'll just read a couple. Though the Church has enormous wealth, none of the leaders are getting rich off of it. Though the Church's financial trajectory that the Church's financial trajectory as well as the self sacrificing actions of its hierarchy is an enormously faith promoting story. If everyday Mormons could grasp the larger picture, they would breathe a sigh of relief and see the Church is not a profit making business. And then, you know, it was truly humbling to see these men who preside over an institution making tens of billions of dollars turning the funds back to the benefit of the rank and file it basically. And I'm just telling you how I perceived it, it's almost like you took whatever was released by Mormon leaks at $120,000 number and just said, well, that must be all that these brethren are receiving. But you know, you hear about there's the option of salaries, then there's sort of whatever expenses they incur that we don't have transparency into whatever living allowances they may be afforded.

D. Michael Quinn [00:46:31] No, the salary is a living allowance. That's one in the same. They are not separate.

John Dehlin [00:46:36] Okay, so there's no living allowance. But. Well, let me get to the question in just a second. So then you hear about, you know, book deals that they can get through Deseret. Right. Possibly that even sometimes ghostwriters may write. We don't know if they're loans, we don't know if they're vacation homes, tuition waivers to their children possibly or grandchildren, access to, you know, corporate jets or church resources and then any other boards or businesses that they're involved in. You know, we really don't know what the total compensation would be for the first presidency or the quorum of the 12. And so to jump and just say, well, it must be 120 for all of them. Do we know enough to be able to say they're really self sacrificing and that it's an inspirational sort of story.

Pt 2: General Authorities' salary and living allowance

D. Michael Quinn [00:47:25] Well, the salary and living allowance are one and the same. They're not separate things. And so the 120,000 that the letter in 2014 indicated that not indicated it stated specifically that it was being raised to that level as of 2014. That was for every member of the general authorities from the president of the church down to the newest member of the first council of 70 and probably also the second quorum because they're full time for that five or six. It's the same for all of them.

John Dehlin [00:48:04] President Moscow Johnson down to makes 120 grand salary.

D. Michael Quinn [00:48:08] The salary, whether you call it salary or living allowance. Now in terms of book deals that you know is a private thing between the. The Deseret Book or Seagull Press or whoever is the publishing arm and many, in many cases Desert Book has bought many of these what had one at one time like Book Craftman and semi independent Press and they're now under the umbrella of Deseret Book. But these are individual contracts that are not negotiated with these individual general authorities and the press. And I have no idea what those are. I can tell you that in 1972 when Joseph Fielding Smith died, as many of you know, he was a much published author ever since he had started publishing in 2000, probably not 2000. In 1905 he published Blood Atonement and the Origin of Plural Marriage through Deseret press. And from 1905 onward he published dozens of pamphlets, but mainly books. And when he died, the probate of the state gave what his six month royalty check was from all of the publications that he was publishing through Deseret Book. And at that time he wasn't publishing anything in bookcraft. So it was limited to Deseret book. And his six month income that in 1972 was $6,000. So an annual income of about $12,000, which was sizable, but not enough to live on in 1972. What local people are paid now I have no idea. But not everyone who is a general authority publishes and I have heard through the grapevine that some general authorities are certainly more published popular with the reading public than others. And that books that have been published under the imprint of Deseret Book by or about a general authority, or by a general authority, very often simply compilations of their talks which they have not separately written as a book have not sold well. So you know that's going to be a very different thing. Even between those who have contracts, I can't comment on the size of those. But if as and it's an if, but this. He died as president of the church. If Joseph Founding Smith's example is significant when he had so many dozens and dozens of contracts for which he was receiving and he was still getting oralties off Blood Atonement and the Origin of plural marriage since 1905. He was still getting royalties off those in 1972 when he died. So all of those royalties amounting to a total of around $12,000 in 1972 is significant, but not a huge amount of money. And so I would think that it's similar if you look at president of the Church. And they always have books of usually compilations of their talk or biographies about them, sometimes which are co authored and like you say, ghostwritten, where it's an autobiography but somebody else has done most of the work on it. If it's a biography, they're not going to get the royalties. The royalties are going to go to the rank and file Mormon who wrote the biography, like Eleanor Knowles and the books that she wrote about general authorities in the 1980s and the 1990s. But the royalties I don't expect, and I think this is a reasonable conclusion, are going to be that much larger than their annual support than Joseph Fielding Smith's was in 2000. In terms of vehicles, that's separate, they don't receive as far as I, I was given information by those. In fact, at one time I knew the manager of the church fleet and it was the international fleet. He was over all of the vehicles owned by the church and operated by the church or missionaries throughout the United States and throughout the world. The cars that general authorities have are being donated by the car dealers, wealthy car dealers in Salt Lake. They weren't getting church fleet cars unless they were somebody that was not on the radar of a wealthy car dealer. And so somebody told me, I mentioned this at one reference in a meeting, a book talk I gave in in San Francisco and somebody piped up and said, well, I know a member of the First Presidency who drives a Mercedes Benz. And I doubt that the Mercedes Benz dealer simply donated that out of the goodness of his heart. But I pointed out that that member is an independently millionaire and so he didn't need to benefit on the kindness of strangers to have the kind of car that he wanted. I know, for example, in conversations that I had with the Smith family, Joseph Fielding Smith and his wife, who was quite a down to earth person, they drove around in a Rambler at the time that he was president of the 12 and then later president of the church and she would do all the driving. And that's what, that's what they accepted. They didn't want anything pricey from the man who was giving these automobiles to the members of the church. Or members of the church, the hierarchy members, whether it went below the 12, that I don't know. I don't know if the 70s were receiving. I will tell you one thing that Mary D. Hanks told me in. And it goes to this question of the tuitions, free tuitions that their children receive. Marin D. Hanks and I maintained a friendship for decades after. He was my mission president. And every time I was around him, mano a mano, he would talk to me about church headquarters. And he started doing this during my first interview with him as a missionary. I have no idea why, but he would talk to me in great detail about things one would say are private or scandalous or whatever, about conflicts and church headquarters and abuses of power he perceived at church headquarters. He was very open about this. Well, anyway, my wife at the time and I, who and she knew him independently of me through family connections, visited his house one time and had dinner with President Hanks and his family. And afterwards he took me aside for one of our mano a mano talks. And he said, you know, Mike, I'm an alumnus of the University of Utah and I want all my children to go to the University of Utah. And at that time, that was about the time his oldest, his daughter, was about ready or had already enrolled, I can't remember, but it was around the time that she would have been going to college. And he said, I can't afford to send them to the U of U. And as a general authority, I have free tuition for my children at byu, which is still, I'm sure, the case. I doubt it extends beyond byu, but if their children go to byu, they get free tuition and housing and you know, all the whistles and bells. And he said, if I don't send them to byu, I can't afford to send them to college. And he said, I don't want them to go to BYU. And so there he was, a general authority since 1953, telling me in about 1950, 67 or 68, because Jan and I married in 1967, and it may have been during that year before I went into the army, that we had this dinner with him. So, you know, he's been a general authority for about 15 years and can't afford on his living allowance to send his kids to any school other than byu. So, you know, I have reasons for seeing a trajectory of income coming to the general authorities, which by comparison to what the executives of million dollar or billion dollar companies made from the 1960s to the current time, they're making substantially Dimensions less than would be available to them if they were in a similar situation in the secular world. So I find this very faith promoting. But yeah, there are separate perks, but I don't think they're as many as you think they are. For example, the free cars that they get, that's a gift from. And we can name a few of the wealthy car dealers in Salt Lake Valley who could afford to do this for all the general authorities. And maybe unlike the 60s, extends down to the 70, that I don't know. If those gifts are only first presidency in the quorum of the 12, then there is still a stratified award system for being a general authority. But I know nothing about those recent things. I do know about the 60s and the idea of vacation homes. As far as I know, the First Presidency had a vacation home in California from the 1900s under Joseph F. Smith down to the 1950s or 60s, and that was sold. And I think part of the reason that that was sold was because the Church was on a cash flow basis by the early 1960s. I am not aware that the first presidency has a vacation home, although they may in one place or another place where the President of the Church can go to. And this is what it was used for the benefit of only the President of the Church. Very rarely did anyone else use that. And it was in Oceanside, California, Southern California. Very rarely did anyone else use it other than the President of the Church. And I don't know why, you know, it was empty. And I think that's one reason they sold it. It is that it was unused and it was being paid for in terms of gardening and housekeeping, and it was empty most of the time. Whether there is something similar to that since the 60s, and particularly since they built that upper story of Eagle Gate to be the First Presidency's housing with the bulletproof windows and all of that, perhaps as a part of that, maybe there is a vacation home for the First Presidency. Doubt very, very greatly that it goes beyond that.

Pt 2: Joseph Smith's royalties in 1972

John Dehlin [01:00:17] You do hear about President Holland having a home in Midway or Heber. President Uchtdorf having a home in Heber, Midway. You hear about President Packer having multiple residencies. Sometimes if you add up, you know, sometimes people have even done an analysis adding up the present value of their real estate to being in the, you know, over a million dollars. You do hear about them having. Yeah, multiple.

D. Michael Quinn [01:00:43] And that. I don't know. That's not, that's not something I examined. Mainly because after the 1890s, property valuations became such a Nightmare to go through up until the 18, the 1890s in Salt Lake county, for example, the reports that were maintained would assess or not assess. They would add up all of the property owned by an individual like Brigham Young and give it as one amount that he owned in Salt Lake county from the 1896 period onward when Utah became a state, they adopted, I guess, what was a national pattern of listing every parcel separately. So in order to look at what the value of the real estate was that Joseph f. Smith owned, for example, in 1901 as church president, when he became church president, I would have had to have looked up an index that gave me the citation to 20 or 30 different books where he was listed as the owner of a parcel of property and then add up all of those for that one year alone and then do that for every single general authority, and it was like fooly. I'm not going to spend that much time. And so my, my analysis of the property ownership does not go beyond the 1990s. However, I can refer back to, to David, not David, excuse me, to Mary and D. Hanks about this question of living in an expensive home from around 1968, when I think that was the time because I went into the military in June 1968. So sometime in the year between my marriage and going into the military, we'll say spring 1968, when he couldn't afford to send his children to College other than BYU in the 1980s, above the area of the very wealthy area on the east bank of Salt Lake City, he had a gigantic home up there. Gigantic. I mean the windows must have been 50 to 100ft tall. And there were these windows that looked out on the valley. And I, you know, I. Somebody pointed that out to me who lived in that stake and I was a counselor in that stake at the time. And I was just amazed. And then I found out that somebody gave him that house. Some very rich Mormon bought that house for him.

John Dehlin [01:03:44] Right. And that kind of is my point. Do we know enough about what various ways that they may or may not be either compensated or gifted to be able to say that? It's inspiring at how little they're compensated,

D. Michael Quinn [01:04:00] well compensated by the church. That house was not given to him by the church, nor was he able to afford it off what he was receiving as a salary or living allowance he could not have, from my understanding, even in the 1980s, have afforded to build a multi million dollar home up on up above there. And so if you look at the church's resources, whether it's Gifted cars or gifted houses. That has nothing to do with what they're receiving from the church. It has to do with what wealthy people, out of the goodness of their hearts, whether they know them personally or not, have gifted to the general authorities. So it has nothing to do with the finances of the church?

Pt 2: General Authorities are not getting wealthy,

John Dehlin [01:04:47] Sure. It would only have to do with what type of lifestyle they live.

D. Michael Quinn [01:04:53] It does have to do with lifestyle. And at a certain point, Martin Armna Marin D. Hanks lifestyle went from not being able to pay his children's tuition at the University of Utah to living in a multimillion doll home in 1980s dollars. And that was a enormous transition. But from what I was told at the time, it wasn't because his income had increased that much.

John Dehlin [01:05:22] Right, yeah. So I'm just saying maybe it's true that the quorum of the 12, the first presidency, live super modest, you know, get super modest incomes and, you know, whatever.

D. Michael Quinn [01:05:35] Well, I can speak of this, but I'm not at liberty to speak in terms of identifying in any way that could be, I think, taken back to the source. But I know family members of a current member of the general authorities, in fact an apostle, and in conversations with them, they said they visited him in his home. And he has a very modest home. And it's a home that he built from his own money, not something that was provided to him by the church. And that when he became an apostle, he lost 60% of his income or general authority when he became a general authority. So I find with the evidence that it is available to me that the general authorities are not getting wealthy. And I have no apology for that statement that was published. They are not getting wealthy off the church. And I think it's a good thing that they're not living hand to mouth like Orson Pratt did. And I think it's remarkable, as I said, that if you equalize all the money that the members of the hierarchy were worth at death, death, it's totally mind blowing to me that dozens were wealthier than both George Albert Smith and David O. McKay at death. Now, Heber J. Grant was different because he had a very large income through all of his corporate activities and investments and all. And so when he died in 1945, he died with an estate of around 239,000 net, that was huge in 1945. And so he was not out riched, so to speak, or in wealth by the junior members of the hierarchy, as were George Albert Smith and David O. McCain. So I find this faith promoting.

John Dehlin [01:07:43] No, that's great. Maybe it's true. I'm just wondering if sometimes I wonder if we have enough information to really say conclusively, you know, one way or the other.

D. Michael Quinn [01:07:54] Well if you, if you're looking at somebody like Uchtdorf. Uchtdorf was independently wealthy when he came he's not a good he was not well he was also vice president of Lufthansa, not simply a pilot and to you know, you can't look at him and look at his home or look at the cars he drives and make any assessment about other members of the general authorities who were their highest position was a president of BYU before they or a clerk or not a clerk excuse me a jurist on the Utah Supreme Court whose salaries are a public record and the BYU president does not is not the compensation is not like a Harvard president. For example the 20,000 I I mentioned this and I didn't know this at the time. The 120,000 standard salary for all general authorities as of 19 pardon me as of 2014. I I mentioned this to the group I spoke to at in San Francisco and Bob Reese who you you may know and have you interviewed Bob Reese?

John Dehlin [01:09:05] Not yet.

D. Michael Quinn [01:09:06] You haven't. Okay. Well Bob Reese who was a former professor and then a former administrator at a high level at UCLA and is now living in Salt Lake and is an adjunct professor at GTU Graduate Theological Seminary piped up when I commented on this set salary of 120,000 and he said the president of the American red Cross earns $1,200,000 and it's a nonprofit, it's a charity earning 10,000 more than the salary of the president of the church. And I told my son this and he said that's an outrage for a charity executive to earn that much. Well, presidents of by and not BYU donors anything close to what presidents of Yale and Harvard and they earn more than a million dollars a year. And when you compare that with the president of the church or the quorum of the 12 who are not only supervising a multi billion dollar church but the Canadian annual report demonstrates that the highest bureaucrat in Canada as of the time of the standardized salary being 120,000 for all general authorities the highest member of the bureaucracy in Canada, a rank and file Mormon, not a general authority was making more than double in his salary. And I can't imagine that the highly technically trained and high executives of the various church corporations and the highest bureaucrats within the 26 Tower Church office building are earning less than a Canadian bureaucrat and it's basically equal equal amounts of Money within cents of the dollar being equal the same in Canada as it is here. I find that staggering that men who govern a multi billion dollar organization are willing to hire and pay a bureaucrat twice what they receive as salary from the church. And that is incontrovertible because the report from the Canadian to the Canadian government indicates that demonstrates that. And so to me this is a remarkable story of sacrifice and of devotion for a group of men who are certainly compensated enough to live comfortably but not enough to be wealthy.

Pt 2: Grant Palmer's Million-Dollar Signing Bonus

John Dehlin [01:12:08] My listeners will know about Grant Palmer's story that apostles receive a million dollar signing bonus upon becoming apostles. And you were quoted somewhere I read as calling that a malicious lie. I don't know if you.

D. Michael Quinn [01:12:23] I said that, I said that in San Francisco Francisco meeting and I regard it as an absolute falsehood malicious lie.

John Dehlin [01:12:32] Is that you?

D. Michael Quinn [01:12:32] Well yes, I think it is malicious. It could have been malicious from his source, but if he does not actually have a general authority source then it's a malicious lie in its origin, original availability to the public. And I think it's. David Tweed who has resigned his membership from the church, is hardly a devotee or defender of the church. Three days after Grant Palmer published that Tweed published an analysis and a reaction to what Grant Palmer had claimed and said he thought it was false. And he did his best. He bent over backward to say just because somebody says things that are not accurate or not true doesn't mean they're a bad person. Which I think is very, you know, it's really interesting to say that about Grant Palmer. Many ex Mormons are not willing to say that about Joseph Smith. And yet his conclusion was that he just simply did not believe that claim of a million dollar gift to the, to a new apostle. And again from the family of one apostle. I do know that did not happen. What they know according to what they know. Right. And you're right, I mean I, I know I hear skepticism in the tone behind your comment and that's right. I mean it's what they were, what he was willing to tell them and that they know on their own. But he lives in a modest home, that that's not a matter of conjecture. And as far as they know that's his only home. And I just find that claim, even though I think it's reasonable, I think it would be as a claim, I think it would be reasonable to give a million dollars to new general authorities so he would not be struggling in any sense or 100,000 or whatever large amount. And for me, you know, I've always. I've been living hand to mouth most of my life. So for me, when I. When I get $500 for something that is a large amount of money. But having said that, I think it would be reasonable to give a large amount of money to a new general authority, even down to the lowest member of the 70, so that they would not be in any way diverted from their attention to the welfare of the church and its members throughout the world by struggling for financial issues in their own lives. I think it's reasonable. But that claim that Grant Palmer has made I just don't think is true. And I think it was malicious. Malicious either on the part of the person who told him or malicious in its first publication.

John Dehlin [01:15:32] Sort of a let's hurt the reputation of the Brethren.

D. Michael Quinn [01:15:37] Of the Brethren.

John Dehlin [01:15:37] Let's make something up.

D. Michael Quinn [01:15:38] Let's tell you what you already think. Let's give you something that can validate your assumptions that these men are in it for the money. And I would suggest that you read David Tweed's, although he signs it as D. Tweed. Pardon me, David T. He signs it as David T. But he acknowledges his background as an editor of the blog that he was editing at the time he was brought before a Court of Love disciplinary council and then resigned his membership. I find it persuasive that not only me as a believer in Mormonism to the present and as a believer that these men are prophets, seers and revelators to the present, at least they have the title. They have the right to receive revelation from God. And I believe that. But I don't believe they're infallible. I believe they can make terrible mistakes. And I believe they have made. And it's not a matter of belief. I'm convinced they have made terrible mistakes from Joseph Smith's time to the present to the 21st century. But in my view they are prophet seers and revolution. I think that separates me from David Tweed. But I found it very impressive that despite his skepticism, he came to the same conclusion about these leaders and what Grant Palmer had said than I did. That I did the first time I heard it.

John Dehlin [01:17:18] Do you have general frustrations with Grant Palmer's work or scholarship that maybe informs a little bit of your passion?

D. Michael Quinn [01:17:25] Well, to be honest, for decades I have not read anything that I don't need to read to publish what I want to publish. So I have not read any of the Joseph Smith family project things except ones that cited me. I'm arrogant and so I went through the footnotes of the one that came out on the Council of 50 from Nauvoo to see how often they cited me. And so I look at those kinds of things and I read the biography of Leonard Arrington only enough to read my entry in the, in the index and everything that Prince had said about me and his book. I didn't read any other part of the book. So I have not read anything that Grant Palmer has published since I came across without knowing it was Grant Palmer who wrote it, the 1980s secretive publication that he did under the name Paul Pry. And I read those, and those were on early Mormonism because that's what I was researching about for this book on early Mormonism and the magic worldview. But that's the only thing by Grant Palmer I've ever read. And so I can't comment. But in terms I did. Well, I'll take that back. I just. In the last week I did read his posting about this alleged conversation that he had with a mission president and a member of the first quorum of 70 unnamed. But I don't blame him for unnaming them. I mean, I accept the argument or the claim that you can have a meeting with a high member of the general authorities and even though you are an excommunicated member who no longer believes you want to protect them by not identifying them, I can accept that. But the content of what he claims the member of the first council of 70 said, especially when the first council of 70 said that disbelief is rife throughout the quorum of the 12. I don't find that credible. And I see that as telling you as non believers or as transitioning Mormons what you want to hear about these corrupt men who you believe are the ones who are called prophets, seers and revelators. That is my conclusion about what Grant Palmer published. However, like I say, it could have been that he had this interview with somebody who was a disaffected member of the Council of 70 and who said this, this, and therefore he was the liar. But I simply regard it as a malicious lie, no matter who originated it.

John Dehlin [01:20:19] And having not read Grant Palmer's work, do you still have opinions, favorably or unfavorably about his contribution as a writer?

D. Michael Quinn [01:20:27] Well, I can't because all I've read was Paul Pry. And so I really have no view.

John Dehlin [01:20:32] Okay, no, that's no problem. Did you get a sense for total value of assets for the church worldwide as a whole?

Pt 2: Tithing and the Church's Assets

D. Michael Quinn [01:20:45] And that's a very common and logical and fair question to ask. What are the church's total assets? The problem with that is the one that President Hinckley frequently commented on when he talked about church finances. And I quoted them on one talk he gave, but he repeated this often. And it's also stated in official publications, including LDS.org that the assets of the church are huge. And the assets of the church include vast amounts of land. But they consume. They consume money. They don't produce money. They're empty. Lots of that are being prepared for temples or for church construction of steakhouses or wards or administrative buildings. And they take maintenance of mowing the lawn and all of that. Even though they're empty lots, they have a certain amount of security that is involved that is paid for by the church. And the church has to pay, if it isn't specifically being used for church structures on this unused land, they have to pay taxes on this unused land. Once it's used for an administrative or temple or church building, then it's tax free under U.S. law. And that's the real problem is that the vast amount and what the percentage is, I have no idea. And I'm not sure that I ever. I used to read these first, not first, but Presiding Bishopric reports. They went on for pages about all this stuff. And I just, you know, my eyes would just roll back when I was reading these reports in the 1970s. And so I was only interested in very specific things. What is the total tithing revenue? And if it had given total revenue from church businesses, I would have, but very rarely it did did. And what is the total amount of income that the general authorities received? I would xerox those kinds of things. But all these details that showed the assets and those that are net. What the net assets? And that's really the question you're asking. What are the net assets that after you subtract all the taxes, all the maintenance, all the purchases, what are the net assets of the church, which I never paid attention to, even though those were in those Presiding Bishopric reports. All I can say now is that as far as I can tell, as was true in the 20th century, the large percentage, it could be 50%, 60% of the land owned by the church. Is this cash consuming land? They have land that produces income, and I give examples in there of some extraordinary amounts of income that the church headquarters is receiving, ultimately receiving from income generated by land investments throughout the United States. And those investments extend to throughout the world. However, in other parts of the world, the tax laws vary and they don't exempt as many things as American tax laws. So I didn't get into that. I just acknowledged what I could find in the International Church, as I call it, or the uk, Canada, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, and what I couldn't. But the one thing that I'm unable to do, and no one really can do without those annual reports of that detail is to separate out what are net assets. So I can only estimate them in the multiple billions they have. Multiple billions of net assets.

John Dehlin [01:25:03] Tens of billions, Hundreds of billions.

D. Michael Quinn [01:25:05] Well, in the tens at least, because you know, some, and I've heard they

John Dehlin [01:25:12] say 10, 2% of the land in Florida is owned by the Church. There are these massive holdings in Brazil.

D. Michael Quinn [01:25:18] Well, and in some states, I think it's in Nebraska. I quoted a newspaper investigative report that in Nebraska the church is the largest private holder of land. I think it was Nebraska. I always get that mixed up with Iowa. But it's like I can't distinguish Washington state from Oregon. I continue thinking of them as the same and I always mixed up my references to them. But the church is indeed highly blessed with owning land. Some of it non profit, some of it profit. But my understanding is that again that it's a majority, but multiple billions. I mean people have mocked this, this conclusion I have that the church tithing as of 2010 was 33 billion. And that if you add.

Pt 2: The Secret Life of the LDS Church

John Dehlin [01:26:14] So that was, that was a conclusion you made in the book, that you

D. Michael Quinn [01:26:17] estimate $33 billion a year in 1910, pardon me, in 2010 alone. And that corporate income is depending on the low ball estimates, which Bishop Burton said, It's 10%. Or if you go by what I think are the continuation of an Eldon Tanner statements, that it's 40 to 45%. Add on to that the commercial income and even lowball instruments that would, I would, you know, that would come up to maybe 40 billion, 50 billion, 60 billion a year total income. Now again, income is separate from net because they have all these expenditures. And that's my next comment. If you mock or if you doubt that the church is making tens of millions and I estimated 33 tens of billions, and I estimated 33 billion with a B in 2010, then how can you explain that the church was able to give nearly half a billion dollar supplement to one country in 2006, and in 2006 those international reports show that they gave four hundred and change million dollar subsidy to the Church in the United Kingdom because it didn't receive enough tithing to pay its expenses. And that's just one country out of the what, 140 that the church has chapels, missionaries, welfare programs, temples, in throughout the world. How could the church possibly give that much money in cash if it doesn't have tens of billions that it's making every year and that it is banking a large percentage of. Secondly, the only one in the church has multiple many compartmentalized investment arms. And so that even the president of Ensign Peak Advisors doesn't know what another investment company in New York or Met Boston or San Francisco is bringing into the church. The president of epa which is the Salt Lake primary investment arm as a separate corporation, told the Deseret News that billions of dollars are made in financial transactions in stocks and bonds every single day. How could that happen if the Church isn't making tens of billions of dollars a year? And these stock investments. I was told by a stock analyst about this compartmentalization in the 1970s when I was at Yale and I went to a party at the condo of a member of the church in Manhattan. And among the young attenders of that was a 20 something return missionary who worked in an investment. And I don't know the technical name, Alan Blodgett told me I used the wrong name but to me I'll just call it an investment company that dealt in stocks and bonds. And so I started talking with him once he told me what he did and especially when he said that he was in charge of the church church portfolio. And so I asked him more questions about it and this is the summary that he gave me in December 1973 or 74, I forget which year it was, probably was December 1974 but in that early 1970s period he said that all of the. And again I'm probably using the wrong term but all of the investment house in Manhattan had Mormon accounts and every one of them had hired an active card carrying return missionary to govern them. So I asked him about what if and he said in some of the transactions involve money that is rather stocks and bonds that are donated to the church. And I said well what happens when you get RJ Reynolds stock or you know, some of the JB Beam stock donated by somebody who's a non Mormon because many non Mormons for decades have donated sizable chunks of money to the LDS Church. And he said it's click of a key and we immediately sell it for the best price we can get for a stock or bond that fits the ethics of the church. So these stories and rumors that the church owns built millions of dollars in RJ Reynolds or whatever and how hypocritical allegedly the church is supposed to be, that may be true for One second between the time one of these Mormon returned missionaries card carrying temple recommend holders gets it on his screen and hits a key to sell it at the best price he can and buy a stock or bond that fits the ethics of the church. Now at the time that this fellow was talking to me, he said not only does every major investment in house in Manhattan, and he said everyone has a Mormon account. And he says I have no idea what these other friends of mine, and some of them were his friends are managing because that is private information with each of our companies. But he said that's what the church wants, they want it compartmentalized. And then he went beyond that and he said they have similar investment companies in Boston and they have other investment companies in San Francisco and in Chicago. And that's the way he described it from his personal knowledge as one of these managers in the early 1970s. I imagine that has not changed. And so this president of Ensign Peak Advisors who is the principal, I call them investment house for the church portfolio in Salt Lake City is only one part of that story. And that other part of the story is scattered everywhere throughout the world. And I'm sure it's international now. I'm sure that we have similar things operating in Canada in its major financial centers in London, in the European, the Boris and the German stock market in the Nikkei. Sure that this is true wherever the church has faithful return missionaries who can be hired by an investment house by whatever names those are technically called throughout the world to manage the Church's portfolio in all of these financial centers throughout the world. This is the Church's financial reality, right?

John Dehlin [01:34:16] If you go on place like Reddit, you'll have a lot of your readers sort of trying to break down this 33 billion dollar number. And there's a lot of. Frankly, you probably know there's a lot of skepticism about that number, thinking that it should be lower, like in the 8 to 10 billion dollar range for annual tithing receipts. I'll just read one analysis, but there's many. They say if you just assume 5 million active Mormons in the world. Suppose each of them pays tithing on gross, which is probably a Stretch to get 33 billion each of those 5 million members would have to be earning $66,000 per year. That's implausible for a few reasons. Not all the 5 million members have full time jobs. There are kids, people stay at home, spouses. I don't think most pay on growth. 66,000 per year is way above average in a lot of countries. Where the church operates.

D. Michael Quinn [01:35:09] Is that from Mormonism 101?

John Dehlin [01:35:11] What do you mean?

D. Michael Quinn [01:35:12] Is that quote from Mormonism 101?

John Dehlin [01:35:15] This is from Reddit.

D. Michael Quinn [01:35:16] Okay, well, I think it was taken from Mormonism 101, which I have a copy of here. I don't know who the author is, but it sounds to me like word for word from his posting.

John Dehlin [01:35:28] Oh, the person. Yeah, the person who posted it.

D. Michael Quinn [01:35:31] Well, no, I don't know the person. They could have borrowed it from Mormonism 101, but I don't know who came up with these figures. But let me. Let me indicate the problems I see with that analysis. The person who created that analysis, first of all, faulted me for choosing 33 million billion is the. And he said that judging from the figures that Quinn gives, it should actually be. And he says it should actually be 352 million a year. And so he faults me for million. He says 352 million a year, not 33 billion. So he wants to reduce it by 10 times. And then he comes up with his own analysis. And even though he said that it would be more reasonable to say 350 billion, his analysis is 3.5 billion is what it really should be. And all that is is a 10% reduction of my rate. And I really question his ability to do this analysis for one major reason. And he says that my choice of 1960 as the starting date for my projection is terrible because, and I'll quote him, Quinn could not have chosen a worst date on which to base his prediction, because the growth rate of the Mormon Church as we know it started its terminal decline right around that time. 1960 terminal decline, if you look it up on the Internet, indicates that its meaning is getting worse without any chance of improving. 1960. In 1960, it had taken 20 years for the church's income that I know from the annual reports. It had taken 20 years from 1940 income to double, and it doubled as of 1960 from 1960, it doubled in 14 years to 1974. In 1974, the tithing income doubled again by 1983. This does not match what he declines or describes as a terminal decline of income beginning in the year 1960. So I think he's just blowing smoke up wherever he was intending it to go about his analysis, if there are, and I'm not a statistician, the extent of my statistics training was at the Newberry Library in Chicago. And it was a course that ran for social historians using data for historical purposes. So it was very focused. It wasn't Statistics in general, but that's the extent of my analysis and knowledge of statistics. So if I have chosen the wrong way of projecting from the 1960amount, then I'll have to plead guilty. But there are two things that I found. One is that my projections for what the income should be in 1961 and the income for 1962 I compared to the actual tithing income that they received that year and they were lower than the actual income that the tithing received. The reason I think 1950-59 is a very good choice for assessing the average annual income of tithing to the church is that that was a decade when the church sent missionaries to war torn Europe, to war torn Asia and to Latin America in large numbers and were spending a large amount of money in converting people who were primarily impoverished, barely able to put bread on the table because of living in war torn countries, or in Latin America where 1% of the population owned 95% of each country's wealth. And so I think that the tithing that came in during the 1950s is a very, that level of annual growth is a very good measure for here and now when we're expanding into the international church. Now, certainly my straight line projection doesn't take into consideration massive disaffections. And I'm convinced that from my sense of what's been happening with ex Mormons and Mormons for Jesus and various groups, including many of those here, including myself, who's been excommunicated and I no longer pay tithing, those numbers are, you know, are primarily middle class Americans or middle class Europeans or middle class Australians who were at one time contributing very significantly. So I'm willing to be faulted that my straight line comparison doesn't allow for that. And perhaps it is less than 33 billion. But I still find the other argument that I mentioned earlier, how can the church pay half a billion dollars in 2006 for the church in one country if it isn't making something close to that amount of money?

John Dehlin [01:41:46] Okay, I think it's fun that you did your best to estimate and everyone else is going to make theirs. I guess it speaks to this idea of transparency. What do you think about the fact that the church doesn't make its finances transparent? Should it? Is there a moral or an ethical obligation to have it be transparent? Do you wish that it would?

Pt 2: The Church's finances

D. Michael Quinn [01:42:10] I don't see a moral or ethical obligation to, and I don't think Alan Blodgett does either. But I must defer to him when he says that he, even when he was the director of the church finance department and knew all the, you know, all the money that the general authorities were receiving, all the money that every high paid bureaucrat, including himself, was receiving far more than they were receiving, and all the income and all the expenditures. From his experience, and I quote him at length in saying that. That he has always been unable to understand why the church has not resumed financial reports in detail. As he said, it was one time proposed in the 1970s and voted down by Thomas Monson. And so my guess is that that's still not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

John Dehlin [01:43:12] He thinks it should, though.

D. Michael Quinn [01:43:14] He thinks it should. And he thinks it would be faith promoting. Even though the numbers might initially startle members of the church of their size. He thinks that when they see the income and they see the outlay. And I think it would be especially true if you distinguished the income and outlay for the members of the United States and Canada versus everywhere else. And I think that you would. That a member of the church. I mean, these reports can be mind numbing. But I think if they were compared on that basis, the members of the church would see that the international church at the growth levels that the church has been promoting and maintaining could not exist without this massive income from North America north of Mexico, and that it could not. And without that tithing income, I mean, and without that business income, the billions, the tens of billions in my view that the church is receiving from its portfolio and from profit businesses allows the growth of the church in the international arena. In the Philippines, I demonstrated from the reports that they submitted in the 20th century that 90 to 95% of their annual expenditures have to be paid by church headquarters in Salt Lake. These people are barely able to put one meal a day on the table in the Philippines for their families. They cannot support temples and churches and buildings and welfare programs, even for themselves. Even though they might benefit from those out of the income that they receive that only pays on average, one meal a day for each member of their family. That is not true in New Zealand. That is not true in Australia. And yet Australia and New Zealand also from their own tithing, cannot pay all of their expenses. They have to receive subsidies from Utah headquarters. Tonga claims half of its membership are lds. Now, whether half are adhering, whether half still define themselves as Mormons? Separate question. But half of Tonga's membership has been baptized. Pardon me? Total population. Half of total of Tonga's total population has been baptized into the LDS Church. And yet they cannot pay. And they have a very High, I think it's around 60% of their expenses are paid by Utah headquarters and England. Despite all of the years since 1837 that the church has had a presence, significant presence in the United Kingdom. They required a half a billion dollar subsidy from church headquarters in 2006, and on average their supplement has been around 40 to 50% of their expenses. The church could not do that without billions of income annually from these commercial sources. So I said, and I was quoted in the, and I've said it, and I said it in the book, that from the beginning, theologically, Mormonism does not separate between the financial and the spiritual, between the temporal and the divine. And the business of Mormonism with theological reasons has been business ever since the 1830s. You may be uncomfortable with that. You may recognize certainly that there are abuses with large amounts of money or small amounts of money, there are abuse as possible. Most of us who receive some kind of, of monthly or weekly amount of money from our parents knows that even with what little we were given, abuses were possible. And including my stealing money from my parents, our grandparents who were raising me because I ran out of my weekly allowance and so I wanted more candy than I could afford and so I stole money when I was 8 year old. And those were, those sins were washed away by baptism. But I, you know, you can, you can deal with human realities even at that level where you're, you know, we're dealing with pennies and nickels and quarters and dollars and cents and where we're dealing with thousands, tens of thousands, millions, billions. Yes, there are possibilities of abuse, but I think on average it's a faith promoting story. And I think in terms of the church always being business, I quote in the book the statement of Apostle Orson hyde around the 1860s where he said, when it comes to dollars and cents, that also is spiritual to us. That's the Mormon worldview. It has been from the beginning. And if you're, if you don't like it, if you don't believe it, if you, you know, if you reject it, then maybe you should move out of the kitchen because the heat's too hot. And I've told this to groups of Mormons I've spoken to at Sunstone is that I did not seek to leave the church. I was kicked out. And it was not something I wanted. Yet when I was out of the church, I felt an enormous sense of relief and it was not something I anticipated. But I contributed as a member of the church to the church and I contributed to individuals. And if you resign your membership, you're not able to be the leaven that can leaven the whole loaf, that can contribute to mano mano membership in your circle of friends, or who can contribute to the renewal, the improvement of the church as a whole at the local level, at the stake level, at the regional level. And so my urging is that if the church means enough to you to question whether you should leave or not, I would say stay. Unless the pain of staying is worse than the pain of leaving. And if the pain of staying is worse than the pain of leaving, then take a vacation. Don't resign your membership. The vacation may last for a year, or it could last for decades. And then maybe you'll come back and be able to continue to be the leaven that you were before you took your vacation. But in some cases, you know, a vacation isn't what will work for you. And if that's the case, then, you know, I, you know, God bless you and in the path you take. And I really believe that Joseph Campbell was inspired by the saying that he is, that he has been quoted for millions of times, follow your bliss. And if your bliss is found better in another religion or in no religion, then God bless you, even if you don't believe in God. And that's my view. But I think that if you object as a believing Mormon to the linkage of money and the gospel, then you better re examine early Mormonism. Read the Doctrine and Covenants, Revelations in which God thus saith the Lord talks about setting up a tannery and setting up hotels and setting up mills. The business of Mormonism has always been business, right?

John Dehlin [01:51:50] When the mall was built, a lot of, you know, a lot of the justifications were the tithing dollars weren't used. But of course we have to think about whatever money, where'd the money come from to purchase the temple? So a lot of people asked if you have any insight into, you know, how tithing, you know, what happens when the tithing comes in? Is there some time period where it's used as tithing? Is there some sort of grace period or process by which tithing money gets transferred to these other commercial interests such that then that money can be used for some of the profit, you know, gaining endeavors, etc. Do you have any insight into that?

Pt 2: Ways of Tithing

D. Michael Quinn [01:52:34] I have some limited Since I'm not a money person, I'm a socialist by choice. Since I was in my 20s, after I returned from a socialist country and realized that the mocking I had done of its socialism was mocking values that I treasured as A Mormon in feeling that governments have a responsibility to all its citizens and that no government should allow poverty. Having said that. Having said that, I'm a socialist. Having said that, I've struggled financially most of my life. I have no objection to people being wealthy. And my reading of the church's accounts that I was able to do in the 70s indicated that the accountants had all of these columns that one thing or another were put into for income. And one thing or another were put into in terms of expenditures. And I just couldn't be bothered with those details. So I was most interested in what is the total income from tithing? And now in writing the book, what is the added income from commercial sources? And then what are the expenditures that I can trace. Up till 1959, the church was given an account of expenditures. Only in 1915 was the church told what the annual income the previous year had been from tithing. And there's a misconception that that continued throughout those reports that didn't. It was only in 1915. But I really think that the church has not a moral obligation, not an ethical obligation, but a reasonable expectation. In my view. It's a reasonable expectation that revealing those details, as massive as they might be, but revealing them in a way that would be understandable to general readers of the reports or listeners if they're read at General Conference. I hope they won't read them again. But if they make them available to the public, that will benefit the church in the long run. And I think that this issue of how much comes in a expenditure like the million five that they've acknowledged. I think it's double that. The billion 5 billion 5. Excuse me.

John Dehlin [01:55:10] I think them all was 3 billion.

D. Michael Quinn [01:55:12] I think it's double that because even the Salt Lake Council. I mean, the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce indicated that it was 5 billion total. Benton improvements in Salt Lake. Well, the mass of those was like the black hole of city center. So I think it was close to double, if not actually double of what they've acknowledged the 1.5 billion. But how long they had tithing. I don't think those are the kinds of questions that are significant because. Because it's like the income that that financial guy mentioned to me or described to me in the 1970s, liquor company stock came in, lasted, in the terms of church ownership, one second. As soon as it took time for the financial office to see it on his screen, and he sold it and bought something else that was consistent with the church. It's such a revolving account. They have what they Called, and I think the term developed under Councillor J. Reuben Clark, the reserve fund fund. The income that they from all sources, but especially from tithing that they do not allow to be spent, but instead is used for bank income, interest income, and then later stock and bond in diversion and income. And then, you know, there are the amounts of money that go into nonprofit companies and then the amounts of money that go into profit companies. This is so complex in terms of what is coming in every month, what is going out every month, the sources that it's coming in every month. I'm not sure that even the best architects of church finance at church headquarters, if he or she knows all of the answers to those questions. I'm not sure that they could explain how much, even to an audience of the quorum of the 12, how much time they held tithing before they spent those dollars on, let's say, something that might not be strictly ecclesiastical, but I think the attitude that they want to maintain and maintain in practice is similar to what President Smith said at that 1915 report. He said, I want you to know that all of the support and I don't think he used the term allowance, but he might have used allowance that the general authorities receive is not paid by tithing. It is paid by the commercial income of the church. And I think that philosophy is what they use not only for the amount of money that's paid to temple presidents and mission presidents during their service and general authorities during their service, but the money that is paid to employees as standard salaries. I think in their view, they want all of that money to come from the commercial properties.

John Dehlin [01:58:29] But isn't it all tithing? Isn't it a little bit misleading to say the 1.5 billion or the 3 billion or the 5 billion for the mall didn't come from tithing? Ultimately it did, right?

D. Michael Quinn [01:58:40] Ultimately it did. But in terms of if you have, say a million dollars in tithing that you invest in some commercial property and then that commercial property in the during the next year produces say, $100,000 worth of profit, that profit has not come from tithing. That profit has come from the commercial enterprise, whether it's a portfolio or whether it's a for profit business. And so, yes, the origin of the investment was tithing, but what I would call commercial revenue that comes into the pot and that is used in multiple ways is not coming from tithing. It's coming from the portfolio or it's coming from the for profit business, like the desert farms of Florida. And so I think it's not Simply a shell game. I think it's a legitimate distinction to make that distinction. Once the profit, the money had been transferred from tithing received to an account that is purchased stock or has created a for profit business, then from that point forward the commercial income is not coming from tithing. And I think that's a legitimate distinction to make. But again, this is coming from somebody who is not an economist and that's just my kind of man on the street reasonably informed about economics view of it. But I think I'm stating economic and financial principles in the way that they see them. And that's what I've tried to do. I've tried to be empathetic in writing about the hierarchy. Whether I'm writing about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and its occurrence and its horrors, or whether I'm looking at plural marriage and its happiness and its victims and its unhappiness. I try to be empathetic with all sides of an issue of why the people were dragged into a tragedy and how the victims of that tragedy felt and how this occurs within a religious context and why it occurred within a religious context. That's what I have tried to do in all of my, my hierarchy books. And I have members of audiences like this who have come up to me and say, I want to thank you for writing a book that took me out of the church. And my answer to them is thank you, but that is not why I wrote it. But if in any way it has benefited your journey as a human being on earth, then I'm glad for that. And so this effort at empathy is what I've brought to that book. And I've tried to present this material not as a whitewash, not as an apologist for the church, but as somebody who's trying to look empathetically at this is their worldview. This is how they tried to implement their worldview. These are the mistakes they've made, including John W. Young and Brigham Young in their accumulation of wealth and including, and I refer in a footnote to an embezzlement that occurred at a massive level in the 1960s, not by a general authority, but by an accountant at headquarters. These are the dark spots, but I've tried to highlight also the light, you know, the faith promoting things. And I've tried to emphasize that because I think within the worldview and the context of Mormonism that I have seen with all its dark spots, that there are a lot of praiseworthy things in this Mormon experiment that has been going on since Joseph Smith's treasure digging days in the 1820s. That was pre Mormonism and yet was Mormonism in a way, and I find so much to admire, even though there are church policies which from the beginning have turned curdled my blood to the most recent one in 2008. And I cannot apologize for policies like that. I cannot defend. Defend policies like that, but I acknowledge them as part of the tapestry. They're part of the mosaic of Mormonism. And that is what I have tried to do and tried to fill in a lot of the gaps in that mosaic. And historians are limited by their access to evidence and by the survival of evidence. And most evidence has disappeared, has been destroyed or ignored and gone to dust. And so the best a historian can do is provide a mosaic only insofar as the evidence allows him or her to do. And in my mosaic of Mormonism, through all the books I've published, I find it ultimately something that somebody can understand and read, even as a general reader and say, I can still remain a faithful believer. But I have to adjust what I think I'm believing in because it's broader, it's more complex, it's got more lights and shadows than I ever thought it did. And that's how I approached Mormonism. And I think that's the kind of message I would like others to take from my books. But I must acknowledge that I have had mano a mano conversations with men and women who have thanked me for taking them out of the church because of what they've read in my books. And I knew from the beginning that that was a possibility. And I still felt that for me, it was a moral and ethical and professional obligation to create a mosaic without taking out any of the pieces that were black. That that has to be part of the mosaic.

Pt 2: Mormon Stories: The Mosaic

John Dehlin [02:05:08] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

Pt 3: Interviewing Michael Quinn

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 814

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. We're back with Michael Quinn for part three of our interview. As we've been discussing the Mormon hierarchy, wealth and corporate power, we've done our best to dig into some of the details, but obviously we're not going to cover enough. So definitely check out purchase this book published by Signature Books. To dig into the wonderful wealth of information that Michael shared with us about that book, I thought that we'd end do our last segment and just kind of talk about Michael, where he is now and maybe some of his views on the contemporary church. So I've just got like 20 questions and we can just rifle through them.

D. Michael Quinn [00:01:17] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:01:18] If that's all right.

D. Michael Quinn [00:01:19] Sure.

Pt 3: Council of 50 Minutes, review

John Dehlin [00:01:19] So recently the recently the church released the council of 50 minutes. Was there anything new or interesting there?

D. Michael Quinn [00:01:30] Well, like I said, all I read the footnotes was to see if they quoted me and what other sources they quoted. And I actually did not even read one page of the text of those minutes.

John Dehlin [00:01:43] You're not curious?

D. Michael Quinn [00:01:44] Well, it's not that I'm not curious, it's that I've, you know, I just don't read what I don't need to read for writing what I wanted to write. And there was nothing that I expected about finance in there that was civil, significant for my book. And that's when it came out. It came out while I was still working on this book, putting on finishing touches. So I can't comment about those revelations other than what I've heard their editors say about them. And it's what I expected. I mean, the Mormon population despised the

D. Michael Quinn [00:02:24] federal government by 1844 because they felt that they had been abandoned by the

D. Michael Quinn [00:02:31] federal government, very much like the residents

D. Michael Quinn [00:02:34] of Puerto Rico feel today. Brown skinned people who don't get the same kind of respect or attention and much in the way of disrespectful from a national government trying to deal with their emergency situation, whereas the lily white residents of other parts of America get all that attention. And the Mormons felt not only about attention to their welfare, but actual evidence that they were under a fatal attack. That Joseph Smith had been kidnapped multiple times in Illinois and nearly dragged back to uncertain death in Missouri.

D. Michael Quinn [00:03:34] And in those minutes, they saw a federal government which was really limited by the Constitution. It had no power within the states. And that did not change until the Civil War. And that was why Joseph Smith said, I believe in the Constitution as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough in protecting human rights and religious rights. And he was certainly correct in that regard. And that attitude was very painful even before the martyrdom of Joseph Smith to Mormons who felt they'd been abandoned by the federal government. When pleas went to the federal government. And so to find what I have only been reported and heard, reported or read reported by the editors and other readers of those minutes, the shock that many of them had at the animosity that was expressed toward the federal government and toward the United States as a whole is not surprising to me. And I expected that in an article

D. Michael Quinn [00:04:46] that I wrote in 1980 about those

D. Michael Quinn [00:04:48] minutes, I said that I think that we will find in those minutes, if

D. Michael Quinn [00:04:53] they were ever made available, sermons or talks at least, that Joseph Smith gave that are reported and repeated nowhere else. And my understanding is that that is the case, that there are extensive summaries

D. Michael Quinn [00:05:14] of his words, including apparently what the

D. Michael Quinn [00:05:19] clerk intended as exact quotes. And that's a wonderful thing. And that's what I expected. I know that I talked to people who expected that there would be disclosures about polygamy, and they simply didn't understand the Nauvoo Council of 50 before Joseph Smith's death, there wouldn't have been any discussions of polygamy or the temple ordinances in the Council of 50 Mimites, because Joseph Smith chose three non Mormons to be members of the Council of 50. And so those things that were sacred or secret or dangerous or criminal, as polygamy was, would not have been discussed in those minutes or not found in those minutes, because he would not. And no one else who was in the know would have discussed them. And so people who were disappointed not to find those things in the published minutes didn't really understand the nature of the council of 50. And so again, I'm commenting on something I haven't read, which is always dangerous. And some of my critics have frequently done that with my own publications.

D. Michael Quinn [00:06:33] But to the degree I dare do it about the council of 50 minutes, I think that they fulfill what I expected them to be and will certainly provide the kind of details that historians love. And so, you know, I never thought, in view of all the time that they were locked away and made unavailable. I never thought I would live to see their publication. And just as I never thought I would live to see the African Americans and Africans in Africa receive the priesthood, I just didn't expect that to happen. And so that's my response to the publication to the degree that I can comment.

Pt 3: Reasons for Reading the Gospel Topics Essays

John Dehlin [00:07:19] What's your response to the Gospel Topics essays that the Church has released between 2013 and now on various topics?

D. Michael Quinn [00:07:26] Better late than never.

John Dehlin [00:07:30] My objection have you read them?

D. Michael Quinn [00:07:31] Yes, all of them. And my objection is not that they're incomplete, because anything of that length is going to be incomplete. I think they lay out the major issues and the major problems in an honest way. It's not everything a historian would like.

D. Michael Quinn [00:07:54] It's not everything that a probing Mormon would like to read about his or her heritage as a believer and in some cases as a family and for ancestral Mormons who go back to the 1830s or the 1840s. But I applaud what the general leadership allowed to do these scholars to do and to they were obviously

D. Michael Quinn [00:08:28] reviewed and

D. Michael Quinn [00:08:30] edited by higher authorities. I have disappointments. One disappointment is that I have heard members of the church who have said they have never read those because those are just produced by the bureaucracy or

John Dehlin [00:08:51] by anti Mormons who have hacked into the church's website.

D. Michael Quinn [00:08:53] And I wish that the church would publish all of them. And as far as I don't read the Ensign, but has the Church published those in full in the Ensign?

John Dehlin [00:09:04] No, but they do, I think, include it on the apps, the mobile apps.

D. Michael Quinn [00:09:09] That's good enough. That's not good enough to counter this assumption by. And there are people who are willingly ignorant, not just in leadership, but among the rank and file of America, among the rank and file of both political or all political parties. And within Mormonism there are people who are willfully ignorant. And so I think one way to counter that willful ignorance of people who say, well, I'm not going to be bothered by or read what is in those essays. One way to counter it might not completely overcome it would be to publish those in the official and sign magazine magazine and publish them in serial form in the Church News. Because the Church News has a wider readership than the Ensign. The Church News goes out to people throughout the world in a way that the Ensign doesn't. I was in the military and in Munich, Germany. Every week I got a it was a delayed mailing, but I got a mailing of the Church News and it was important. And actually at that time my wife and I Weren't. We weren't getting the. At that time, it was the improvement era. We weren't getting it because that was just something, a cost we could save. But the cost of the church news was so reasonable that it was like, why wouldn't we want that to keep up? Well, that's one disappointment that would end any argument or excuse or justification for not reading or believing that this is the official view of the Church. Having said that, it's only a partial view of these problem areas, even though what is there is honestly written and carefully written by academics as approved by

D. Michael Quinn [00:11:11] members of the hierarchy. More could be said. And what I wish that would happen

D. Michael Quinn [00:11:19] in every seminary class throughout the world,

D. Michael Quinn [00:11:23] that on Thursday, the same day that the quorum of the 12 and First Presidency meet in the temples, that each teacher throughout the world seminary teacher would receive a paragraph to read about every one of these problem areas and then would receive a packet that would inform them about how to respond to questions that their students might ask. Maybe their students wouldn't ask anything, but I think that that should happen in every seminary through the world, because seminary students, teenagers, do not read the Ensign or the New Era to any extent, if at all. And despite the expectations and hopes and prayers of the headquarters of the church, that's a reality. And they only read what they want on the Internet. And I think if this were made available to every seminary student who is generally forced out of bed, half asleep to go to this class that they think is utterly boring in the mornings. For those who think it's boring, their ears would perk up if the teacher said, this is something that has been a problem area in the church. And I want to read to you.

D. Michael Quinn [00:12:43] So that is a disappointment.

D. Michael Quinn [00:12:44] The other disappointment is that this is 20 years too late. By the late 1990s, the church leadership, if they were aware of what was happening, should have recognized that the evangelicals were creating websites that would pop up as the first hit on any inquiry, a Google inquiry on Mormon or Mormonism or lds, to use problems in Mormon history and evidence, incontrovertible evidence in Mormon history, as sledgehammers to destroy the faith of anyone who did a Google search on lds, Mormon or Mormonism. Because there was nothing like these essays for the last 20 years.

D. Michael Quinn [00:13:40] We've lost a generation, and I say we because I still see myself as a believing Mormon in a community of believing Mormons and in a community of transitioning Mormons who at once believed and who may still have members of their family and close friends who are believers and because of this reluctance to deal honestly and openly with these problem areas in the past, we have lost, I'd say, at least hundreds of thousands of people who might not have been disturbed by the evangelical attacks on the Internet if they had had a resource that they knew was published or circulated to them verbally, wonderfully, even at general conference on these issues. And I have to fault the first Presidency for that. That was their choice. And they allowed hundreds of thousands of previously devout Mormons to be, I think, victimized by evangelical Protestants and ex Mormons and ex Mormons, but most of whom have become evangelical protest. I don't know about that, but have aligned themselves with evangelical Protestants in this effort to keep people from being deceived as both non Mormons who are no longer believers in anything and evangelical Protestants believe is true of the claims of Mormonism. And I think that you have to

D. Michael Quinn [00:15:31] give us responsibility where responsibility is due. And I believe that rests on the shoulders of all of the first presidents presidencies since 1996.

Pt 3: In the Elevator With the Excommunicated

John Dehlin [00:15:42] It must have been weird. It must have been weird to, for you and so many of your colleagues to have been excommunicated for sort of telling the truth about history, then to see 30 years later or 20 years later, whatever it was all, you know, the church being candid. Was that weird to see Bushmen and others and the essays themselves sort of acknowledging things that you and others were excommunicated for?

D. Michael Quinn [00:16:08] No, it wasn't weird for me. I was happy. I was happy.

John Dehlin [00:16:12] Angry a little bit.

D. Michael Quinn [00:16:13] No, I wasn't even a little bit angry. I was happy. And I've had a lot of people, including Peggy Fletcher Stack, who said, don't you feel disappointed that, you know, the, the essays have, have made available to the public what you got in trouble for talking about openly, your publications? And yes, it is a fair question, but my answer has been consistent. I just, you know, say glory, glory hallelujah that the leadership has finally caught up with the reality of what Mormons in the trenches have been dealing with and have addressed that need. And I say never, you know, better never than, I mean, better late than never. And I believe that. But the cost of 20 years waiting has been hundreds of thousands of disaffections. And some of those disaffected people are still participating in the temple, in sacrament meeting, in priesthood, and yet they are participating as quasi believers because they have been so unnerved, disturbed, devastated by this

D. Michael Quinn [00:17:31] assault on their faith, using history as a weapon.

John Dehlin [00:17:36] You say you still see them as prophetseers and revelators. You still believe in Mormonism. Yet I guess one would ask if they really are prophetseers or revelators, why didn't God tell them to be honest with the history? And why didn't they do that a lot earlier?

D. Michael Quinn [00:17:51] Well, Mormons don't believe in passive revelation, even though leaders of the church seem to expect that. They expect that God is going to just appear out of the clouds or send an angel to them, or speak to them in the whisperings of the

D. Michael Quinn [00:18:08] Spirit in specific ways that they not

D. Michael Quinn [00:18:10] only did not anticipate, they do not want to hear. So when I say that the prophet, the men who are sustained as prophets, seers and revelators, if I were a member of the church, I could raise my hand in a church meeting when asked or in a conference and say, I sustain them as prophets, seers and revelators. And what I mean by that is that I earnestly believe as a fundamental part of my faith, that they have that calling and they have that right to receive God's will. But because of. Of a kind of spiritual indifference, a kind of lack of will and willpower, they expect God to tell them what they are not interested in hearing. And I feel that's why it took, what, 120 years for blacks to receive the priesthood. Because these culturally defined policies were a part of the tradition of the church, and the church leaders did not want to consider anything other than the tradition of the church. And yet they condemn the papacy for not wanting to accept anything other than the tradition of its church. And yes, it's a much longer tradition, which should in one way make Mormons more open to altering the tradition of the church. And instead, whether it was Joseph F. Smith or Heber J. Grant or George Albert Smith OR David O. McKay, they expected God to tell them something that they really didn't want to hear.

John Dehlin [00:20:03] Right. Have you read the CES letter?

D. Michael Quinn [00:20:06] No. Like I say, I read only the things that I need to read and. And things that are brought to my attention. And this one hasn't been until you've mentioned it just now. When? What? You know, when did this come out?

John Dehlin [00:20:21] CES letter?

D. Michael Quinn [00:20:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:22] A few years ago.

D. Michael Quinn [00:20:23] Yeah. 21st century, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm 15, you know, 16, 17 years into the 21st century, and I'm still catching up.

John Dehlin [00:20:34] Okay, okay.

D. Michael Quinn [00:20:35] Because I'm living so much in the 19th century with writing books like this.

John Dehlin [00:20:39] Okay. So what was your reaction to the November 2015 policy that the church came out with about LGBT individuals that basically making same sex marriage an act of apostasy and making it so the children of same sex married couples weren't allowed to get baptized until they were 18 and until they denounced the marriages of their parents.

Pt 3: Ex-LDS Church member on the new policy about LGBT individuals

D. Michael Quinn [00:21:06] All right. It was a consistent policy with the policy that Spencer W. Kimball adopted in 1979. And I saw on his desk in his private office in his home the correspondence that led to that decision that

Guest [00:21:28] for

D. Michael Quinn [00:21:30] sub Saharan African polygamists who are joining the wanting to join the church, for them to be allowed to join the church, they had to abandon their polygamous families, denounce the practice of plural marriage, and remain monogamous for the rest of their lives, even though they were living a form of marriage that was, in some cases statute statutorily allowed in

D. Michael Quinn [00:21:59] these countries and certainly by tradition allowed, even if not statutorily allowed in these countries. And these women who were honored women in polygamous families in sub Saharan Africa, who were overwhelmingly black, were turned into abandoned women and became rejected within their villages as a price for their husband becoming a priesthood member and. A member baptized member of the LDS Church in sub Saharan Africa. And when I learned about that, it was a cross that I bore as

D. Michael Quinn [00:22:58] a member of the church from 1979 onward. Because what it did was that Spencer Kimball gave with one hand in June 1978 and took away from black people throughout the world something as precious family stability, legitimate children who by church decree had to become illegitimate in sub Saharan Africa. And I regarded the 2008 decision about children of gay couples.

John Dehlin [00:23:39] 2015. I thought it was 2008 was Prop 8.

D. Michael Quinn [00:23:43] Oh, yeah, 2015. Excuse me. No problem mixing up tragedies. I regarded that as I regarded that 1979 decision of Spencer W. Kimball, who I deeply loved as a person, who I admired as a person, and who I regarded as a prophet. But what he did in early 1979,

D. Michael Quinn [00:24:12] which is a church policy that has

D. Michael Quinn [00:24:14] followed throughout the polygamous world in every

D. Michael Quinn [00:24:17] culture, no matter where it is today.

D. Michael Quinn [00:24:21] That policy was anti Christian. That policy is anti family. And that is how I regarded the

D. Michael Quinn [00:24:30] announcement regarding GLBT parents and their children as anti Christian and anti family.

D. Michael Quinn [00:24:39] And something which I believe is one of the reasons that God weeps for

D. Michael Quinn [00:24:46] his people and his church.

D. Michael Quinn [00:24:49] So it is one of the policies

D. Michael Quinn [00:24:51] that many people have asked me, under what circumstances would you ever seek to rejoin the LDS Church?

John Dehlin [00:25:02] Because Maxine did it, right?

D. Michael Quinn [00:25:03] Yeah.

D. Michael Quinn [00:25:04] But my answer has been

D. Michael Quinn [00:25:08] that when they allow polygamous families to exist honorably as continued polygamous families and do not require their abandonment or their breakup as a price of either baptism in the church or ordination of those who should be ordained, then I would. I would consider returning to the church. And people have been surprised. You mean gay issues are not a part of that? And I say gay issues are, in my view, tangential to that. Because the position of the church regarding gay marriage and children being raised by gays either adopted or born because of the genetic parentage of these gay couples, those policies extend as an extension of what I regard as racist denial to polygamists who just happen to be black. I don't think so. I see that African decision that applied specifically to Africans when it was made and then extended throughout the world to all brown skinned people who enter into polygamous marriages. I see that as the origin of so much of the discrimination against the unconventional marriage hopes and realities of GLBT people. So I don't, I don't expect

D. Michael Quinn [00:26:55] ceilings in the temple of legally married gay couples. That is a privilege. But I see the recognition in family life of married gay couples and of polygamously married couples, whether they are blacks or whether they are whites or whether they are Asians or whether they are brown skinned Polynesians, as fundamental to the message of the church and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I will never consider joining the church again until those policies are changed. They are not revelations. They are policies which are defined just as the exclusion of priesthood was defined by personal prejudice and cultural prejudice and bias. And that's my view of those issues, both the one you asked about and what I think is its heir, its origin in the 1979 exclusion.

Pt 3: On the LGBT issue

John Dehlin [00:28:13] When regarding the LGBT stuff, if we draw from your first two books, there are a lot of reports that this was something Elder Nelson did once he became President of the quorum of the 12 when Boyd K. Packard died, that maybe he went straight to President Monson and bypassed the full quorum of the 12 and sort of making this policy in effect. Does that sound like something that could be done? Does that make sense?

D. Michael Quinn [00:28:43] No. My understanding, and again, I'm not, except through second and third hand or faith promoting rumors, aware of the internal operations of the church in the 21st century as I was for most of the 20th century, I do not have that knowledge. But my understanding is that this originated with Thomas S. Monson alone and that his counselors and the quorum of the 12 accepted it as the President's proclamation. And because of the Doctrine and Covenants

D. Michael Quinn [00:29:27] requirement for unanimity in all decisions, they fell in line despite misgivings.

D. Michael Quinn [00:29:35] And in those earlier books I gave examples of apostles in particular who had done that very thing with something that

D. Michael Quinn [00:29:47] they disagreed with, but they felt they had to acknowledge and support the president of the church and what he was asking them to do. And I see this as simply another example, but I see it having no other origin than Thomas S. Monson. And why that's a matter of speculation, but I think I am very secure in my conclusion that he alone was responsible for that and that others, either willingly or unwillingly or hesitantly or eagerly went along with it. But it did not originate with Russell, with Nelson. No, Bednar or whoever you were saying.

John Dehlin [00:30:34] Nelson.

D. Michael Quinn [00:30:35] Nelson. It did not originate with them. It originated with Thomas S. Monson. Why, that's a whole other issue.

John Dehlin [00:30:42] So Nelson came up a few months after and basically said it was doctrine absolute.

D. Michael Quinn [00:30:46] Absolutely wrong. I'm not dis. I'm not disputing the fact that that's what he believes. But it is not doctrine. It was not revelation. It was prejudice. Dressed in the garments of God's word.

John Dehlin [00:31:06] What does it mean for this to be God's true church? And yet such egregious violations can happen to people.

D. Michael Quinn [00:31:14] Well, I've said this before, and so

D. Michael Quinn [00:31:16] this is nothing new in the public arena from me saying this, but I believe that the LDS Church is a divine institution run by the damned human race. And so that invites the expectation on my part that there will be shocking, disturbing, damning occurrences within an organization that I nonetheless regard as divine in origin. I mean, Abraham, for example. Look at the Old Testament, Abraham. Who would regard Abraham as a exemplar of being a husband and a father. He tried to kill two of his sons, and he tried to kill one of his wives, one of his sons, by coming after him with a knife, the other son, and one of his wives by throwing them out into the desert to die. Who would look at him as an example of what fatherhood and a husbandhood should be? But I don't dispute that he spoke with God face to face.

D. Michael Quinn [00:32:26] I don't dispute that he was a prophet. I believe that to the core of my being. But was he somebody that I could admire?

D. Michael Quinn [00:32:37] No, I could not admire him. And I would only condemn those behaviors that I regard as condemnable. But that does not alter, in my view, the fact of his humanity and

D. Michael Quinn [00:32:53] his weakness and his sinfulness.

D. Michael Quinn [00:32:55] And all of us are sinners when we commit sins.

D. Michael Quinn [00:32:59] That doesn't make us any less good human beings. It makes us human. It allows us to do things that are, in some cases terrible. And we can trot out all the examples from every headline of every newspaper, no matter if it's published in Utah or in Bangladesh.

D. Michael Quinn [00:33:23] But

D. Michael Quinn [00:33:25] the horrible experiences that are a part of humanity does not mean, in my view, that we fail to be the children of God. We are just the damned human race. And this is what in Mormon view, in Mormon theology, we all accepted as a condition of existence and to make the best of it. So in my view, the members of the church who are called prophets, seers and revelators not only have that title, they have that obligation. And if they fail to be prophets, seers and revelators, that hurts those who are believers in them as prophets, seers and revelators. But it damages their relationship with God. But that is between them and God. It is not for me to judge them. I can report it. And I have reported consequences, and I have mentioned consequences here of African women returning to their village as pariahs when they had previously been, prior to the contact of their husbands with Mormonism, honored women, honored wives. That's a consequence, and I condemn that. But ultimately, even though I feel it was a anti Christian, anti family policy for Spencer W. Kimball and an anti

D. Michael Quinn [00:34:59] Christian and anti polis or anti family policy for Thomas S. Monson to announce these two prohibitive policies and procedures regarding people in their family lives, I can't judge them because, I mean, I feel these are better men than I have ever been. But that doesn't mean they are not sinners. We are all sinners.

D. Michael Quinn [00:35:30] And we all, like Paul, the Apostle

D. Michael Quinn [00:35:33] Paul said, we see through a glass darkly. And if I think they are willfully blind and willfully ignorant on certain matters, maybe that's a condemnation of me and my pride and my arrogance that I think I'm so well informed better than they. I see things in such a broad view that they don't see. Maybe that reflects on me more than them. But what I do know is that we are all trapped in this mortal life. We are all sinners.

D. Michael Quinn [00:36:08] We are all ignorant.

D. Michael Quinn [00:36:10] And we all act upon our sinful desires and our fearful desires and our selfishness and our cultural training. And as a part of that, we hurt people. We hurt people in our families and

D. Michael Quinn [00:36:28] we hurt longtime friends.

D. Michael Quinn [00:36:30] We hurt strangers. And are they any more responsible for

D. Michael Quinn [00:36:36] hurting people than I am for the people I've hurt? I don't know. I don't know.

D. Michael Quinn [00:36:41] But I do feel they bear responsibility. But that's between them and God.

Pt 3: Jonah Smith on His Reasons for Leaving the Mormon Church

D. Michael Quinn [00:36:47] Even though it may hurt me, even

D. Michael Quinn [00:36:49] though it may hurt you, even though it may hurt millions, I think of Teenage boys and girls who know that

D. Michael Quinn [00:37:00] they are attracted to their same kind,

D. Michael Quinn [00:37:03] those who have the same bodies, kind

D. Michael Quinn [00:37:06] of bodies that they have. It has deeply hurt them. And yet I still regard these men

D. Michael Quinn [00:37:15] as well intentioned, as good men, in

D. Michael Quinn [00:37:19] many ways better men than I have ever been. But I also regard them by my faith as prophets since seers and revelators. But in many cases they have turned a blind eye and expected passively to

D. Michael Quinn [00:37:36] receive revelations that they don't want to hear.

John Dehlin [00:37:42] Many, many of our listeners are just perplexed that you're able to still believe. And you addressed that really directly in our first interview where you talked about the spiritual experiences you had as a young kid that I think form at least important foundations for your faith. But I think it's safe to say that the church's growth is slowed. Some are starting to say the church is in decline in Europe and in Asia, that maybe the church's days of growth, even the United States, are coming to an end within the next 20 or 30 years. And then when you look at the, you know, the, the mistakes that Joseph Smith made with polygamy and polyandry, when you look at the Book of Abraham not sort of holding up to scientific scrutiny, you look at the, the problems of the Book of Mormon with DNA, with, with anachronisms, and all the other problems archaeologically and anthropologically with the Book of Mormon. When you look at the racism that's been there, the homophobia, the sexism, all the problems with the church's truth claims, there's just so many people now that are just, you know, they've reviewed the history that you and others helped bring to light and they just say there's no possible way into this church is what it claims to be. The scientific evidence is overwhelming against it, and now the church is starting to decline potentially. It's fair to just say, how could this be God's plan if every single claim seems to fall apart when facing, you know, true scientific or logical scrutiny? How can anyone these days maintain a belief that, that an angel delivered golden plates to Joseph, that God told Joseph to be a polygamist, that the Book of Abraham is scripture, that this church is led by God? How do you continue belief given all those problems? And why don't you encourage others to maintain belief given all those problems?

D. Michael Quinn [00:40:00] I look at my experience and my faith as a gift. And it was a gift that, as you say, began with metaphysical. However you want to write. Miraculous experiences I had as a child and onward. When I was a missionary, I was A branch president as well, for a period of time. And I was excommunicating boys who had been baptized by deception, by missionaries thinking that they were doing God's will, or

D. Michael Quinn [00:40:48] who knew they weren't doing God's will,

D. Michael Quinn [00:40:49] but wanted to keep the mission presidents

D. Michael Quinn [00:40:51] off their backs about baptism statistics.

D. Michael Quinn [00:40:57] And when I was in the midst of doing that, I became what I've called an atheist. It was not an atheist who could list all the reasons why I was an atheist. I just could no longer believe in

D. Michael Quinn [00:41:14] the church, could no longer believe in Joseph Smith, could no longer believe in

D. Michael Quinn [00:41:19] David O. McKay, who was then the

D. Michael Quinn [00:41:20] prophet of the church. And it wasn't that I had forgotten

D. Michael Quinn [00:41:26] all of these experiences that had given

D. Michael Quinn [00:41:28] me a testimony of everything I now disbelieved as a missionary, 20 years old, and who ultimately excommunicated three times the number of people I baptized as a missionary. But I think when I look back at that, it was easier to me

D. Michael Quinn [00:41:51] to believe that none of it mattered with regard to Mormonism than that all of it mattered. And so I lost my faith, the faith I had since childhood. And I had to pray. And I did pray multiple times a day without telling my companion what I was going through. Oh, God, if there is a God, help me to know it again. So I know what that sense, although the reasons are very different, but I know what that sense of nothingness feels like when you have gone from a situation of believing to a situation of whether you can define why or not you no longer believe. And I was going through hell during those weeks, and I was standing up in front of this branch every Sunday, and I felt, what am I doing here? And ultimately I decided I was going to resign as a missionary and resign from the church if that was possible. That really wasn't at the time. You. You would ask to be excommunicated. And that was the way of getting out of the church voluntarily. But I felt that I had a few weeks to resolve this, and if I didn't resolve it in a few weeks, I could not stay in the situation I was in.

D. Michael Quinn [00:43:27] And so I did pray earnestly as

D. Michael Quinn [00:43:30] I described, and eventually, in its way,

D. Michael Quinn [00:43:36] for reasons and a process I really

D. Michael Quinn [00:43:39] don't understand, although as an outsider and

D. Michael Quinn [00:43:43] in with my left brain, I could say, well, I talked myself back into testimony. But the presence of the Spirit that I had known since childhood returned, and the convictions of the church returned with me. It did not alter my conviction that a mission president and missionaries had violated the lives of young boys in particular, there Weren't very many young women who were baptized during this deceitful proselytizing program. But even though I certainly continued to believe and continue to learn about and ask about and research

D. Michael Quinn [00:44:36] what I saw as a disastrous demonic misuse of power and misuse of persuasion, I was asking about it and researching it and then eventually writing about it as a believer. And I can't really explain why. I think, in my view, you know, that there are gifts and I have the gift of faith, not just simply the gift to believe on the faith of others. And when missionaries later, when I was in 21, 22 or 21, because I was out of the mission by 22, but when I, a year later, when I was his own leader and assistant to the president, not the chief assistant, but one of his assistants, missionaries would come to me and say, I don't understand why I can't have a testimony and say, I know the church is true like you do, Elder Quinn. And they were in tears usually, and they felt horribly guilty that there was something wrong with them because they couldn't believe in the way or they didn't have, quote, this burning of the bosom or the burning of the spirit. And I just would say something that I couldn't have said to them before that horrible month when I was a branch president and missionary and doubted everything. I had empathy that I had never had prior to that because I didn't know what it was like to be a complete doubter. And I was grateful in retrospect for that experience. And so I told these young men that faith is a gift and that they may not have the gift of faith and they may not even have the gift to believe on others who do have that faith, but they have gifts. And their gift may be in music,

D. Michael Quinn [00:46:46] their gift may be in empathy, their gift may be in many different directions,

D. Michael Quinn [00:46:53] but it's a godly gift.

D. Michael Quinn [00:46:55] And that I cannot explain.

D. Michael Quinn [00:46:57] A testimony of why some who earnestly

D. Michael Quinn [00:47:02] seek for it never receive it, and why others who are blindsided by the testimony that comes to them.

D. Michael Quinn [00:47:10] And then likewise, I can't explain why

D. Michael Quinn [00:47:14] people doubt because in some cases it's not rational, it's not a. I examined this, this and this, and they disturbed me and they devastated me. And I can no longer believe. As you've just given me this litany. There are many people who no longer believe who cannot give you that litany. They just no longer believe and they can't give any kind of academic or intellectual reason for it. I see my belief as non rational. I'M a very rational person and I can trot out all the, and I can talk about the evidences for everything you've described. But, but for me that is secondary to this non rational faith I have. And whether you see that as a delusion or as a gift, those are probably the only options.

D. Michael Quinn [00:48:22] And

D. Michael Quinn [00:48:25] I can look at every one of my metaphysical experiences and give you a Freudian explanation for it or a post Freudian explanation or a brain chemical explanation, which I think in many ways is superior to Freud. The brain synapses. But having said that and knowing those realities, I still remain a believer. And I don't. You know, when I was speaking to the group in,

D. Michael Quinn [00:48:59] in San Francisco, somebody came upward and said, I wish I had your faith. And I said, you know, there's a little dirty secret about my faith that I need to acknowledge to you and that is that it's not rational. And so that's really the bottom line.

John Dehlin [00:49:19] And the fact that other people have had, in other religions have had similar types of experiences testifying to them that those other churches are true and all the churches can't be true. How do you make sense of that?

D. Michael Quinn [00:49:33] Well, I grew up in a church that did not claim to have all truth. I grew up in a church where I was taught from over the pulpit and I heard sermons by people like Hugh B. Brown, who was a member of the First Presidency, that we don't claim all truth, we seek all truth, but we

John Dehlin [00:49:54] claim to be God's one true church.

D. Michael Quinn [00:49:55] We claim to be a true church in my view. But I see all churches, even the Baptists, as having truth. And as much as I gnash my teeth about evangelical Protestants, they have truth and they have experiences that are true and they have experiences that are divine. And I feel this is true of every religious persuasion. You can find truth in Buddhism, you can find truth in Islam, you can find truth in Wicca, you can find truth in Santeria. There is no limit to where you can find truth. And for me, that's 19th century Mormonism. John Taylor, who was an apostle when he said this, not president of the church, but he says, he said, if Satan has truth, I want it.

D. Michael Quinn [00:51:03] There's no limit.

Pt 3: Cafeteria Mormonism and the Smorgasbord Mormonism

D. Michael Quinn [00:51:05] And so for me, Mormonism, the Mormonism I believe in, 19th century Mormonism in all its boasts and arrogance, was a

D. Michael Quinn [00:51:15] Mormonism that did not claim to be complete.

D. Michael Quinn [00:51:19] And it was like the outstretched arms in the Basilica of St. Paul, or

D. Michael Quinn [00:51:26] St. Peter, rather St. Peter's Basilica.

D. Michael Quinn [00:51:29] And the Catholic Church definitely hasn't lived up to that symbol of willing to embrace not only all the people in the world who might convert to Christianity or Catholicism, but in my view, the symbol is the willingness to embrace all

D. Michael Quinn [00:51:45] truth, whether it comes from Charles Darwin or George Freud or from Buddha or from Muhammad, to embrace all truth, no matter what its source. And for me, the ultimate expression of that was John Taylor saying, if Satan has truth, I want it. And so that's my Mormonism. And that's why I resist so much this claim that Mormons have the only truth or the only true church. What I think Mormons have is what Brigham Young taught. He said, there are prophets throughout the world and they give revelations and they are true revelations, but they are true revelations for their people. We have prophets who've given us revelations and they are for our benefit and that we proselytize and we send missionaries throughout the world to let them know about our prophets and our revelations. And that's what I think Mormonism is all about.

D. Michael Quinn [00:52:50] So many paths, basically, many paths.

D. Michael Quinn [00:52:54] And those who say they cannot believe in smorgasbord Mormonism, I don't think understand religion and do not understand Mormonism. There are things the prophets have preached that are false, either theologically false or scientifically false or faults in human behavior. And there are things they have preached that are true. And I think that you need to be a smorgasbord Mormonism to take that which is true and beneficial and upbuilding and ignore that. Not necessarily condemn it, but you just don't take it off the table. And it could be that you don't like, you don't like, like I don't like yellow vegetables. And so I avoid those. I don't condemn them or I don't condemn people who like them, but I don't myself indulge. And I think that's the way all Mormons should be about Mormonism and these claims by apostles themselves in the 20th century and before that, we do not want to be cafeteria Mormons or we do not want to be smorgasbord Mormons simply don't define reality. The reality of the church is that there are things about it that are, and it's about its past and its

D. Michael Quinn [00:54:18] history that are blood curdling. And there are things about it that are inspirational to the heavens. And it's a package, but you don't have to accept it as a package. And you can accept it as, yes, it is all, you know, it's all inclusive and it has these dark spots and the bright spots and the dull spots, but it's all part of what is Mormonism. And I think that each of us has not only a right but an obligation to make those kinds of decisions. And in that way we are cafeteria Mormons and we are smorgasbord Mormons. And I think that's what God wants us to be. And despite the comfort that comes to people in an organization to have lockstep beliefs and to follow lockstep policies, that I think is spiritually damaging. That's my view.

John Dehlin [00:55:25] It's time to wrap up. We have a quick question from the audience. Do you want to ask a.

Guest [00:55:32] Sure. I don't know how appropriate this question will be now, given the last hour of us discussing more soul searching topics which I appreciate.

D. Michael Quinn [00:55:45] I don't talk about my tax returns with anybody.

Guest [00:55:50] But to return to the topic of finances and I wrote down my questions so I can stay on point here. You're quoted in the Tribune article talking about faith promoting stories or a faith promoting story of the church and finances. And I wanted to bring up a recent transaction and to get your read of it. In August of this year, the LDS Church paid an undisclosed amount of an estimated minimum of $100 million for an office building in Richardson, Texas. The purchase is unremarkable, except that it came with a 10 year lease for 1700 Raytheon employees, 2.5% of Raytheon's total workforce. Raytheon is the third largest defense contractor in the United States after Lockheed Martin and Boeing. To give you a picture, in 2015, the federal government obligated to pay Raytheon $12.3 billion. Given the international backdrop that in 2016 the US dropped roughly 30,000 bombs in seven different countries and that the US military complex depends on suppliers like Raytheon in order to do this. Is it faith promoting to contemplate that the LDS Church profits directly from these war efforts?

Pt 3: LDS Church and the Military Industrial Complex

D. Michael Quinn [00:57:14] Well, it's a similar question that the LDS Church encourages young men to volunteer in these efforts, which the church has since 1898 as a part of its accommodation to the national environment. I don't claim to be somebody who's consistent. I'm a pacifist. Yet I volunteered to be in the U.S. army during the Vietnam War just a few months after the Tet Offensive demonstrated that it was a lost cause. I had friends who died in that war. I had friends who went to Canada to protest that war. I didn't either. I didn't never served in country as was the term during that time, for being in Vietnam. And I didn't become a War protester. I was quietly a pacifist even while I was a military intelligence officer reading top secret documents in southern Germany. I think that the benefit or the

D. Michael Quinn [00:58:36] profit from the military industrial complex is simply the other side of the coin from the LDS Church encouraging young men to volunteer for service in the military industrial complex. And there are ethical problems without question, the church absolves anyone who kills in war of murder. And yet dropping the second bomb on Nagasaki three days after the first, was

D. Michael Quinn [00:59:16] that a fair

D. Michael Quinn [00:59:19] time period to allow the Japanese government to accept unconditional surrender? And if not, it was a war crime of extraordinary, perhaps the most extraordinary kind of commission.

D. Michael Quinn [00:59:44] I don't object and I understand and

D. Michael Quinn [00:59:47] I think Hiroshima was a necessary action. I think Nagasaki was not. And yet there are people of good spirit Christians who disagree with me and would say that in that kind of

D. Michael Quinn [01:00:06] war, fighting those kinds of enemies, that

D. Michael Quinn [01:00:09] anything that could shorten the war, no

D. Michael Quinn [01:00:12] matter when or what

D. Michael Quinn [01:00:17] they were righteous, I can't resolve the ethical issues. Anytime you deal with war, there are huge ethical issues. Anytime you deal with government, there are huge ethical issues. Anytime you deal with money, lots of money. Even beyond a little kid stealing money from his parents or grandparents, when you deal with lots of money, there are huge ethical problems in use of that power.

D. Michael Quinn [01:00:50] I don't have any objection to power, any kind of power. Power is inevitable. That's like objecting to breathing. Power exists in families, parents over children, older siblings over younger children or younger siblings. And when there's large amounts of money

D. Michael Quinn [01:01:14] or large numbers of people who believe

D. Michael Quinn [01:01:17] that somebody is a prophet,

D. Michael Quinn [01:01:20] there is

D. Michael Quinn [01:01:21] the potential for abuse without question. So for me, it's not the existence of power.

D. Michael Quinn [01:01:31] Even as a socialist, I can say that about billionaires.

D. Michael Quinn [01:01:34] I don't have any problem with people who are billionaires. As a matter of fact, it's that spread the money around.

D. Michael Quinn [01:01:41] Nobody should be poor, Nobody should be

D. Michael Quinn [01:01:44] eating paint off the walls of their

D. Michael Quinn [01:01:48] of their room because they're hungry. Which children throughout the world do.

D. Michael Quinn [01:01:55] So it's a question of how does

D. Michael Quinn [01:01:57] the LDS Church use its power? And I can see certain within their world view rationales from profiting from the military industrial

D. Michael Quinn [01:02:12] system, the complex and seeing

D. Michael Quinn [01:02:16] it as simply no more participation in Babylon or in the world, which are Mormon phrases and concepts than encouraging young men to out of patriotism, no matter what country they're in, to serve in the militaries of those countries. And yet there are huge, huge consequences that are tragedy tragic out of that. So I can't answer, you know, in

D. Michael Quinn [01:02:43] any definitive way and one of the things that I expected to be to be criticized for in the book is that although I talk about lawsuits in the 19th century and early 20th century, I don't deal with all of the lawsuits that have been filed against the church over alleged business violations or

D. Michael Quinn [01:03:08] problems

D. Michael Quinn [01:03:09] of unfair competition or whatever in the late 20th century, in the 21st century. And the main reason I did not. I could have acknowledged that in a sentence, but what source would I use? And there is no source that I know of as an academic source that I could deal with that I could cite. And I could cite individual cases like that. Cherry

D. Michael Quinn [01:03:41] Farm.

D. Michael Quinn [01:03:42] Farmers maybe not the right word, but you owned a cherry orchard in Provo and filed suit against Zion's Saving, not Zion Savings bank, but Zion securities and the LDS Church over issues involved with the purchase and. And competition that he felt destroyed his livelihood. The problem is that if I cited any of those examples, I would have to get into the nitty gritty of were these justifiable lawsuits? And how did they end? Did they win? Did they not win? And I just couldn't deal with that. I just couldn't deal with that thicket. And so I chose not to acknowledge that there were lawsuits in the late 20th century with the rise of corporate

D. Michael Quinn [01:04:32] Mormonism to the degree that it arose.

D. Michael Quinn [01:04:36] And I'll acknowledge that as a weakness. It's just that I didn't know of a way to do it in a way that I could feel was academically honest, that I couldn't refer to that Cherry Grove man owner in Provo without

D. Michael Quinn [01:04:56] knowing whether this was a frivolous lawsuit

D. Michael Quinn [01:04:59] as judged by a jury or judged by a judge. How it turned out, and I really even don't know now how it turned out. I didn't follow it that closely in the newspaper reports. Well, that's why I left it out. And I can be faulted for not doing that. It wasn't an effort to whitewash the corporate church that I was describing in the 1990s and the 21st century. It was just simply that those were issues that were like. They were like a quagmire that I

D. Michael Quinn [01:05:33] just didn't think I'd ever be able

D. Michael Quinn [01:05:34] to get out of.

D. Michael Quinn [01:05:35] So that's my response to you, that

D. Michael Quinn [01:05:38] there are ethical problems and I acknowledge them and I really can't sort them out. And I know that even if I

D. Michael Quinn [01:05:47] did come up with an explanation, it

D. Michael Quinn [01:05:49] would be unsatisfactory to you or it

D. Michael Quinn [01:05:52] would be unsatisfactory to someone who disagrees

D. Michael Quinn [01:05:54] with you, because generally I see so

D. Michael Quinn [01:05:58] many sides of an issue. And I try to empathize with people on all sides of every issue where I see conflict, that

D. Michael Quinn [01:06:08] I could be

D. Michael Quinn [01:06:09] faulted for being on the fence or faulted for not taking a position when

D. Michael Quinn [01:06:15] I may have a position, but it

D. Michael Quinn [01:06:17] is not a yes or no, black or white, right or wrong kind of thing. That's, I'm sure, an unsatisfactory response and far longer than you deserve to hear, but that's, you know, that's where I am.

Guest [01:06:32] Any responses Satisfactory?

John Dehlin [01:06:36] So. So in some sense, we've had quite an interview and in some sense I still want more. But we do have to end. So I just want to thank everyone who's joined us who's made it through this full interview, either here in person or on audio or video. Michael, I want to thank you for your generosity and being willing to spend so much time with us and to give us such comprehensive and detailed answers.

Pt 3: Michael Quinn

D. Michael Quinn [01:07:07] No, thank you.

John Dehlin [01:07:08] It's been a real, it's a real treat. The Mormon hierarchy, wealth and corporate power. Please buy it. Thanks to Signature Books for making it possible. Thanks everyone for making this event possible. Sharon Price, Amy Grubbs, Cody Layton, everyone at the OPA Stories foundation, and we really wish you the best and really appreciate. Thank you all that you've done for us as a people. If you guys will just join me in giving Michael Quinn our thanks for all he's done for us. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

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