John Dehlin

Welcome and Introduction to the Speaker

[00:00:00] You. Let's welcome john delint. Well, hello and welcome, everyone. This is such a sincere honor to be asked to come speak in front of you today. I'm just really touched and moved to see all of you here. I'm joined here by my wife, Margi, and by three of my four children, Anna, Winston and Clara. Maya is in New York, but we're so happy to be here today. David, your performance was stunning, beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing your gifts with us. I'm so grateful my kids got a front row seat to your finger work.

[00:00:58] Reverend Harold, thank you. I'm so honored. It's just interesting. This is not my first time to speak at this pulpit. In 2011, as Mormon stories, my podcast was really starting to grow. We started thinking about how we could help non traditional, sort of progressive and post Mormons find a way to meet together.

[00:01:25] And so we actually held a few, what we called conferences in this very building where we brought people together and sang together and performed and spoke, and it was a really special time. It was back in about 2011. You can still see those videos on the Internet. But I remember at the time feeling so touched and just sort of confused that there would be a church that would allow people from another tradition or another religion to actually hold services in their church.

[00:02:02] That just seems so wrong. No, so inspiring at the time. That was really neat. And I just want to say that I've attended the UU Church in Cache Valley. One of my closest friends, David Christian, is now sort of the president, whatever the title is, of that church there.

[00:02:33] And I've also held a couple events at the South Valley UU Church. And I know a little bit about your values and I know a little bit about the caliber of people that you are, and I'm just so happy to see a church filled to capacity with people like you who share your values. So this is just a really happy day for me.

[00:02:57] I guess the purpose of my talk today, according to what Reverend Harold requested, was me just to tell you a bit about my story. And I'm really honored that that would be of interest. I don't have any sort of native inclination that that would be something that people would want to spend 40 minutes listening to. But I will do my best to make it interesting or at least meaningful.

[00:03:24] So here goes. I was born in Franklin, Idaho. I'm sorry? I was born in Boise, Idaho, but my mother was born in Franklin, Idaho. I'm definitely pioneer stock. I think my ancestors go all the way back to the very beginnings of the LDS Church, the Mormon Church.

[00:03:46] I was born in Boise, but I was raised in Texas. Six years in Dallas, but 12 years in Houston in a suburb called Katy. And I really do look back on that time as a really magical time for. For me, you know, some of my earliest childhood memories are attending what was called Katy Branch at the time. So it wasn't even a ward yet, which meant that it was like maybe 10 little families that met in a house across the railroad tracks from Katy High School.

[00:04:20] I remember when we'd arrive early at church branch, President Chudley, who is this red haired farmer with freckles, he would be cranking this, I think it was called a mimeograph machine, which was the way they used to make photocopies. It had these little purple ink, and you would have a template piece of paper, and you would have to crank this thing. And the pieces of paper would go through it and get the ink stamped on them. And they were printing the programs for those day services. And this was such a magical time for a young boy. Katy was a Baptist town, and there was a First Baptist Church of Katy.

[00:05:01] And the type of the climate, if you can imagine, this is Texas, it's hot, it's sweaty. And the type of the climate there. Religiously, most people are evangelical Christians. And this was right around the time that a really interesting movie called the God Makers came out, where a former Mormon sort of created this movie that sort of attempted to expose Mormonism as a cult.

[00:05:29] And so that movie was being passed around from congregation to congregation. And so we would drive by First Baptist Church of Katy, and on the big sign outside the church, it would say, you know, come this weekend, the topic will be Mormons and other cults.

[00:05:48] And that was the, you know, that was the environment that I was in. You know, there may have been 10 Mormons, maybe 15 Mormons in our whole high school, but strangely enough, I loved it. I loved it. My Mormonism gave me this sense of identity. It gave me a sense of meaning, gave me a sense of purpose. It taught me sort of, sort of who I was before I came to this earth as a spirit child of God. It taught me who I am now and what my purpose is in life. And it taught me where I was going. And honestly, the story about where I was going was a pretty good one, because even though all my peers and friends in Katy, Texas saw me as being a member of a cult, I knew that I was part of the true church.

[00:06:38] God's one and only true church. And I had, you know, enough Christianity in My heart to feel sorry for them, you know, But I also had some unrighteous pride that I knew that I would be coming, I would be inheriting the highest degree of heaven and would become a God someday, and they would, you know, be able to serve me and my wife in whatever capacity we needed.

[00:07:07] And that was okay. I could deal with a little inconvenience in high school, you know, for that solicitor reward. I remember there are so many beautiful things about growing up Mormon. The primary songs, you know, they would teach us these beautiful songs about Jesus. I'm going to turn on my timer so that I don't, I don't go. Over time, they would teach us these beautiful songs, you know, tell me the stories of Jesus and dare to do right and dare to be true. And, you know, Jesus loves the children. And I just remember loving those songs.

[00:07:50] I remember particularly one song that they. That they taught called it basically went. It shouldn't be hard to sit very still to think about Jesus his cross on the hill and all that he suffered and did for me.

[00:08:13] It shouldn't be hard to sit quietly. It shouldn't be hard, even though I am still small, to think about Jesus. Not hard at all. I wasn't planning on seeing that, but I really loved that song. And as a child, I really took my religion seriously.

[00:08:46] And that song was a song written to encourage young children during the sacrament, during the time where we would take the communion or the bread and the water, to be able to sit quiet and to think about Jesus as a little child. I just remember sitting there and I'm thinking, okay, we've got like 10 minutes, and I've got to be quiet for 10 minutes. I can't fidget and I can't. I just got to think about Jesus. And I would just sit there and I would just think, okay, there he is. I got him on my Jesus, you know, and then my mind would get distracted and I'd think about, like, an itch or a video game I wanted to play or a friend or, you know, and I would get really discouraged.

[00:09:24] But I would also just really, really try. And I remember trying so hard to be that good little Mormon boy. And I was a little frustrated that I couldn't, like, really couldn't really just sit those 10 minutes, just still and quiet and in the moment. But I tried. And that sort of represented, I think, most of my childhood as I was in high school. I had a seminary teacher, which was this early morning class that I went to religious class every morning. His name was Brother Lawrence Layton. And he was just this. We saw him as this spiritual giant.

Growing Up Mormon in Texas

[00:10:06] He knew many of the prophets, LDS prophets growing up, and he would tell us these amazing stories about how, you know, people would go to the LDS temple and while they were doing, you know, services there that angels would appear. So, like, you're doing baptisms for the dead, and the. The man who you're getting baptized in their name for would come down as a spirit and visit and visit, you know, you in the room, you know, And I remember being really touched by that, and I remember when I.

[00:10:39] He also told us a story of how he had these special spiritual powers where sometimes, for fun, he would sit in the back of the congregation where everyone's back was to him. And he would use his spiritual power to sort of tap people on the spiritual shoulder.

[00:10:56] And he would tell how sometimes he would do that. And he would see them kind of look around and. And, like, go, who's tapping me? And he would just kind of smile. And I was like, whoa, this guy's so powerful. This guy is so spiritual. I really want to be like him.

[00:11:16] And I tried really hard. So I, you know, I never, you know, even though this was a. You know, in spite of being Baptist, they liked their alcohol and their. So the parties were great and. But I was a good Mormon boy. I never tried alcohol.

[00:11:33] I had a very clear line of what I would do on my dates with young girls, and I kept to that, and I just really felt like my Mormonism gave me power and strength, and I was just really proud to be Mormon in every way.

[00:11:58] I think the neatest thing about being Mormon was honestly feeling like your job was to save the world. Have any of you seen the Book of Mormon musical? Yeah. Okay. Most of you have seen it. There's this part of the song where it's called Something Incredible, and the elder is singing about, you know, something incredible is about to happen. And there's this line in the musical where he says, I want to be the Mormon who changes all mankind.

[00:12:24] And the other one goes, my best Fred. You guys remember that? And that's how I felt. I felt like, like, yeah, there were billions of people on the earth, but, like, I was this Saturday's warrior. I was sent to. On the, you know, the earth, you know, had been existing for a little less than 6,000 years. And, you know, we were saved for, like, you know, the. The end of the sixth day is Saturday. We were saved till the last day. You know, the. The last times. The end times were Latter Day Saints and We're saved. We're saved to the last day. Heavenly Father's most special spirit children were saved to the very last day so that we could save humanity, right, and bring the gospel.

[00:13:05] And so that's kind of, that's kind of, you know, that gets you excited as a teenager, as a 16, as a 17 year old boy. And I really believed it. You know, they gave us doctrine and they helped us with spirituality. They gave us a code of morality again, how to live, how to eat, you know, how to treat your bodies and how to, you know, preserve your sexuality until you're married. You know, these are all the things that my Mormonism gave me, and I loved it. And I remember how excited I was to serve a mission for the church. Serving a mission was something that was so exciting.

[00:13:45] But in spite of all these beautiful things that I experienced, there were milestones along the way where things started falling apart for me. And I don't want this to be a sad story, but I think I do have to talk about kind of that journey because there were some difficult parts to it.

[00:14:09] I think it began when I was in sixth grade when my parents got divorced after 25 years of marriage. And you all know that Mormons believe that marriage in a temple lasts forever. I mean, your marriages end when you die.

[00:14:26] Sorry, but our marriages last into heaven and into eternity. And that's a really beautiful thing. But it's really confusing when that's like the pinner, that's the pillar of what Mormonism is. And then you're watching as a sixth grader, you're watching your parents get divorced, and you kind of go, whoa, that's awkward. Like now when they talk about all eternal families and they sing that song, you know, families can be together forever through Heavenly Father's plan.

[00:15:04] You're sitting there singing that song as a primary child, looking at your single mom in the congregation and knowing that your dad is with another woman, and you're thinking, what about us? You know, and that's one of the, that's one of the, that's one of the ways that sometimes this thing breaks down is what about the people who don't fit the mold? You know, what happens to them?

[00:15:32] So that was hard. That was a bit of a difficult thing. And honestly, my dad had to go through a church disciplinary council during that time. And I remember him telling me how ostracized and inhumane that disciplinary council process was and how he had served in the church for 25, 30, 40 years and how as soon as he made a Mistake. Instead of feeling genuinely loved, instead of feeling, you know, genuinely uplifted, he. He felt condemned by his congregation.

[00:16:06] The next thing that happened was there's an opportunity. We had this opportunity to do a temple trip as youth. And so there was not a temple in all of Texas, if you can believe that. Back in the mid-80s, there was no LDS temple in all of Texas.

[00:16:22] So we had to travel by bus as youth from Houston to Mesa, Arizona. There's some seats up here in front if you guys want to have a seat. Just a couple people just came up. We had to travel in buses all the way to Mesa, Arizona. And I was so excited to enter the Lord's holy house for the first time. Remember, Elder Layton had told me about these experiences he had had in the temple. And like that little boy sitting on that pew trying to think about Jesus. Well, I was going to try it again. I was going to go to this temple and I was going to have that spiritual experience where maybe I could even witness something incredible, right?

[00:17:02] Maybe an angel would appear to me. And so I fasted. I didn't eat for several meals before I read the scriptures. I prayed just the whole year up to that temple trip. We drove all the way to the Mesa Temple. And, you know, my Uncle David had recently died, so my mother's brother, who was a CES teacher, super righteous, right? He had just died of cancer. And I'm like, maybe Uncle David will visit me. Well, if I have enough faith, maybe Uncle David will visit me. And so I just remember. I just remember going into the baptismal font in the temple in my white clothes, and they're, you know, there to baptize me, and they're dipping me down and they bring me back up, and I'm just like.

[00:17:49] As I come out of the water, I want to see, you know, I want to see an angel. So I want to have a witness. Heavenly Father, I'm trying really hard. Give me a witness to know that this is true. And I come out of the water and I look up and there's nothing there.

[00:18:06] And I just think, you know, okay, I got a. I gotta do better. I gotta do harder. It's me. I'm gonna try harder. And I just. I'm not worthy yet or it's not the right time. So that was a bit of a crack for me, though, right? I'm like, heavenly Father, I'm really trying here.

[00:18:27] Couple other cracks along the way just to add a bit of levity and star power to this morning. It just so happens that I Went to high school with Renee Zellweger, who was a famous. Who became a famous actress, won an Academy Award. Well, we went to high school together, and I always thought Renee was wonderful. She was, you know, she was cute. She was athletic, she was smart.

[00:18:54] And we knew each other from our freshman year all the way to graduating. We graduated together in high school. And I remember one of the most exciting things I could think of was to help Renee join the church.

[00:19:07] Why are you laughing? What's funny about that? Yeah, I wanted Renee Zellweger to be a Mormon so that I could marry her in the temple. We make a pretty good pair as gods, right? Yeah. So. My junior year of high school, we had been friends.

[00:19:30] We had spent a lot of time together, and I made the goal to ask her to church dance. You know, I was like the King of the Stake dances back then. Just. Just 80s music and rock and roll and pop music. And these. These youth dances in the LDS Church back then were just spectacular. And so I was going to bring Renee to one of these dances. Everybody thought I was amazing. She would dance with me. We would be, like, have amazing experiences that would make her want to come to church. And eventually she'd get baptized. And so. And so I picked up Renee, and she was in this beautiful black.

[00:20:06] It was a New Year's Eve dance. She was in this beautiful black dress, and I was in my, you know, whatever white shirt and slacks. And we drove, like, 45 minutes to a chapel, and we, you know, I open the car, open the door for her, and we go inside, and we're all excited. And I'm like, ah, you know, the king and the queen have arrived, you know, and we enter the chapel, and immediately one of the women. One of the women chaperones notices that Renee has a dress that goes right off the shoulder.

[00:20:39] Now, she's a petite woman. She's not voluptuous in any way. Right. It was not immodest. Okay. And they said, oh, I'm sorry. Do you have a jacket or something she could wear? And I'm like, huh? They're like, yeah, her dress isn't modest. It's not appropriate, and she's either gonna need to wear a jacket or go home and change.

[00:21:11] And I'm like, well, I've got a jacket, but, you know, and I'm like, is there. You know, I'm starting to think. And all of a sudden, Renee just kind of breaks down in tears, and she says, take me home.

[00:21:25] And I'm like, you know, and so I'm like, okay. And she cries on the way home. And we drive 45 minutes home. And I was just like, how is it that this sort of seemingly arbit, I'm okay with morality and modesty, but how is it that this sort of arbitrary standard should be applied when a visitor is coming to our church for the first time?

[00:21:53] And how could that be more important than their feelings? And I was met with a very stern sort of resolute indifference. And it's just like the other girls are going to be jealous or envious or feel angry. The boys are going to be having inappropriate thoughts and she needs to go home. Sorry. You know, and so that, I don't mean to make too big of a deal about that, but that was really disappointing.

[00:22:22] And she didn't join the church, by the way. Just, She could have been our John Travolta, you know, she could have been our Tom Cruise. We blew it. We totally blew it. So another quick story. I, you know, we're taught as Mormons to read the Book of Mormon and, and that if we pray about it, that we'll receive a witness that it's true. And of course, my junior senior year of high school, I read the book from COVID to cover. It's not an easy book to read.

Doubts, History, and Leaving the Church

[00:22:59] I mean, not to make fun of it, but it's a hard book to read. You know the famous quote from Mark Twain that it's chloroform in print and it really is hard to stay awake as a 16 year old boy doing lots of things reading that book.

[00:23:16] But I did, I read it, I read it every night, I read the whole thing and I just remember that day where I'm like, you know, I'm a week away from finishing it and then I'm three days away from finishing it and then I finish it and I'm like, this is it, this is the time. This is the time I'm going to get that witness. And I remember kneeling down by my bed in Katy, Texas, second floor of my house on Fincastle street, and I knelt down and I asked Heavenly Father to testify to me through some type of undeniable witness that the church was true, that the Book of Mormon was true and the answer didn't come.

[00:23:59] And I tried again, I prayed a second time and the answer didn't come. And it was really heartbreaking for me. But again, as a good Mormon boy or girl does, they say it must be me, I must not be worthy, I need to try harder.

[00:24:17] And so I kept going. Ultimately, I was called to A mission in Guatemala. I didn't know where Guatemala was. When I got called to a mission in Guatemala, to me everything was Mexico, right? Anything south of Texas is all Mexico, all the way down.

[00:24:33] So look up where Guatemala is and a little south of Mexico and there's a couple just very brief stories I'll share for my mission. It was a beautiful experience, like going to the MTC and learning and getting excited about these missionaries. We really felt like we were soldiers of God in the army to, to kind of save the world, bring the world to repentance and truth. And at the time there was a sense that the church was growing and it was going to become tens of millions of members all over the world. And there was this real optimism about Mormonism.

[00:25:12] So the first thing I remember is again in the MTC trying to really study and pray and get that witness, and I never got it. And I remember that very, you know, and you practice giving the missionary discussions. But I remember that very first time as a missionary when we're going to give the first set of discussions to the first investigators that we find.

[00:25:35] And I remember sort of feeling, there's a problem here, John. And this is in my mind, you're about to testify that you know something is true, but you really don't know it's true. And I probably, I know I had lots of weaknesses, but I consider myself to be an honest person.

[00:25:58] And so I said to myself, what am I going to do? You know, how do I say I know this is true when I don't know it's true? And there's a teaching that they teach you in the MTC or anywhere else, which is that if you don't have a testimony, the way that you get a testimony is by what, by bearing your testimony.

[00:26:25] And so I can just remember that moment as a 19 year old boy saying, okay, I don't believe it, but I'm supposed to say I believe it. And by saying I believe it when I don't, I'll eventually come to believe it.

[00:26:41] And so I did. I started saying that I knew it was true when I really didn't know it was true. And I didn't think of it. The crazy thing is I didn't think of that as lying, right? I thought of that as having faith.

[00:26:57] And so that's a very subtle way where you begin to learn to maybe not be honest with yourself or with others, thinking that you're actually being righteous and moral. And I think that represents many people's Mormon story. And that goes in many different directions as soon as you make that decision.

[00:27:24] And I, you know, I don't want to make it sound as stark as a church teaches you to lie, but I think it may have that effect sometimes for people in their lived experience. And this. This was manifest in the most profound way that I'll never understand in terms of what I experience next on my mission.

[00:27:49] So, again, the LDS Church. There's a sociologist, Rodney Stark, who in the 80s, predicted that the LDS Church would expand to have tens, if not hundreds of millions of members all over the world, that it was poised to become the fastest growing church in the world and the biggest. One of the biggest churches in the world. And as missionaries, we were all part of that. And oddly enough, I was called to the second highest baptizing mission in the world in the Guatemala City North Mission. Okay, we baptized at the pinnacle of sort of our success. We were baptizing seven or 800 people a month with 200, 250 missionaries.

[00:28:33] Some companionships were baptizing up to 40 people in a month. So there's 30 days in a month. You got that? They're baptizing 40 people in a month. That's averaging more than one a day. And I'm like, this is awesome. You know, the Lord is blessing us and raining down blessings upon us. And.

[00:28:58] And this is like the early days of the church, where they would go to a town and show up and preach and an entire congregation would be converted. Like, that's what we're doing here. Except I found out that's not what we were doing there.

[00:29:12] What I found out is there were a couple missionaries who liked to have fun, like to kind of party. But they also knew that if they didn't have baptisms, their mission president was going to kind of be mad at them and make their lives miserable.

[00:29:26] So what they discovered was that if they would go to a soccer field in the poorest area on their little area and start playing soccer with the little boys there, the little barefoot, you know, little Guatemalan boys and girls, seven, eight, nine years old, and play soccer with them. That after, like, really building up this rapport and after getting really, really hot and sweaty, they can say, hey, go back and cool off to the church.

[00:30:01] And so they take five or 10 little kids at a time. No missionary discussions. Parents never heard that their kids were doing this, never had been to church before, and they would go baptized. And I have a friend of mine, I never got to see this personally, because I would never have ever allowed this to happen. But I had a Very close friend who's in a bishopric right now who tells me that he remembers one of these children doing a cannonball in the baptismal funds.

[00:30:44] And so these missionaries would baptize five, ten at a time, party the rest of the week, break all the mission rules, but then have 40 baptisms by the end of that month and get called as zone leaders and eventually assistance to the president for the mission.

[00:31:03] And so I'm not going to say that that was the whole mission, right? But that was the sentiment on the mission. It was get him in the water however you can. If you, if they were mentally ill, if they were drunk, it doesn't matter if you, if we don't. I had this conversation with my mission president. If we don't, Elder Delin, if we don't baptize them now, then we're gonna have to wait till they die and then we're gonna have to get baptized for them in the temple. So we may as well baptize them now.

[00:31:31] And even if they fall away, at least they have the gift of the Holy Ghost with them so that then later in their life it may spring forward and they'll be able to be active members. And that was the rationalization that he used.

[00:31:44] And so again, when I talk about like ignoring your light inside and saying things that aren't true, it has to be that sort of mentality that would allow something so incredibly egregious to happen, right? What's supposed to be God's true church? You know, in a mission like that with, with one of God's most sacred ordinances, which is baptism.

[00:32:12] And so that happened. And when I got home from my mission, I was sort of a dark, broken person because I tried to tell my mission president about what I was experiencing. And instead of like going, oh, Elder Dehlin, this is terrible, how do I fix it?

[00:32:29] What he said was, you should not be defying your priesthood authority. You should not be questioning me. And he even yelled at me. And he actually transferred me to this area, super remote, 5 hour drive to the nearest telephone, 11 hour drive to the mission center as a way to punish me for challenging the good thing that he had going. So when I got home from my mission, I had this love for the gospel that was in my brain, but this really dark part of my heart from what I was experiencing in the church.

[00:33:08] And so, and so I stayed at byu. I went back to byu, met my beautiful wife. She was a wonderful sort of spark of joy in an otherwise very dark and chaotic time. And I just Sort of shut my. You know, I Learned about the September 6th, getting excommunicated where I was there. I started getting exposed to this organization called Sunstone and Dialogue, which were these sort of progressive Mormon sort of forums for intellectual Mormons. But I only sort of dabbled in that enough to know that there was this sort of. This group and movement. But I had my life to get on, to live.

[00:33:49] So I. I got married to Margi, got married in the temple, started working and had four children. And this took us from, you know, from Bain Co. In Dallas to Arthur Anderson in Chicago, eventually to Microsoft in Seattle.

[00:34:08] And we would just kind of do our best to be good, faithful members. And I'd say we were active faithful members that whole time. Then I was called as a seminary teacher in Seattle while I was working for Microsoft to teach that same. To be that same seminary teacher that Lawrence Layton had been for me. Now, I had a very different sort of experience with the church than Elder Layton had had Brother Leighton. But I felt like, well, I'll teach the gospel in a way to where I won't set these kids up for disillusionment. And I know that we've got some spotty things in our history, but I'll teach the history in a faith promoting way that's still honest and will help these Mormon kids sort of avoid the disillusionment.

[00:34:51] And maybe I'll even tell them my missionary stories. And maybe I'll even tell them that sometimes when you pray, you don't get an answer. But I'll inoculate them and strengthen them and set them up so that they can be less disillusioned and more realistic but strong members of the church. And during that time, I was called to teach church history, Mormon church history.

[00:35:13] And I thought I knew church history, but I didn't know church history. And this really all began. And I think Margi will remember the story. I was teaching church history and we were thinking about the Doctrine and Covenants in the Book of Abraham. And I have this little sort of evening with my cousin who, who lives in Orem, and he said to me, john, I've got this crazy story. He's like, oh. I'm like, okay, yeah, tell me the story. He's like, this will. This will, you know, this will be important for you to know as a seminary teacher. So I'm like, okay. He said, did you know that Joseph Smith, when he was living in Kirtland, there's this guy that came through town with this, with this mummy or these mummies yeah, I've heard that story.

[00:36:05] And he's like, did you know that there were some scrolls in, you know, in the tomb of these mummies? I'm like, I think I've heard that. Yeah, I think I knew that. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's the Book of Abraham. That's how the Book of Abraham was created, right? He's like, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, there's more to the story. And I'm like, more to the story.

[00:36:24] I didn't know. There's more of the story. Yeah. So did you know that. That those scrolls kind of survived and that they were translated before the Rosetta Stone had been discovered? And so when Joseph Smith translated it, no one knew how to read Egyptian. I'm like, oh, wow. Well, he's a prophet, of course. You know, he can do that kind of thing.

[00:36:48] And so then. And so then he said, so these scrolls, they got lost, and then there's. They were in this museum, and there was the fire, and they got destroyed. So the scrolls weren't around anymore. I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense. I think I knew that. And he goes, did you know they found the scrolls around 1960 kind of time frame? I'm like, no, I didn't know that. Yeah, they found the scrolls. You know what they did? They took the scrolls to Egyptologists and they said, translate these scrolls. The church was really excited. They. They're like, oh, we found the scrolls. We're going to take them to an Egyptologist, and the Egyptologist is going to translate the scrolls.

[00:37:31] They're going to find that it translates into the text that's the Book of Abraham, and that's going to prove that the LDS Church is true. So they did. You know what happened? Turns out the scrolls had nothing to do with Abraham. Abraham's word even appear. Abraham's name didn't even appear anywhere in the scrolls. Nowhere.

[00:37:59] It was a funerary text that was buried with this priest guy from, like, thousands of years earlier than, like, when Abraham even lived. I was like, you know, I just, like, something like, snapped in me, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, is this can't be true, you know? So I went back home and I started reading about church history, and I started reading about Joseph Smith, and I learned that he had had 30 wives or more. And I'd learned that some of these wives were as old as my daughter sitting in front of you here today, or my daughter sitting in front of you here today.

[00:38:39] I learned that some of them were married to Other men. I learned that he lied about that. I learned all these crazy, crazy stories that I had never learned. And even though I thought I knew our history, I didn't know our history.

[00:38:55] And it was hard enough to deal with being a seminary teacher as I'm learning all these things. And just to make that story short, I ended up serving a year and a half and then resigning from that position.

[00:39:06] But what happened is I sort of fell. Fell into this really dark place in my soul. And my family will sort of testify that for many years, I was just in a really dark place. I was reading all the time, questioning, trying to talk to someone about all these things I was learning. Why didn't the church teach me this? I'm 30 years old. I never learned any of this. I taught the gospel. I. I didn't know these things.

[00:39:40] And I felt just really betrayed and I felt really lied to. I felt like I had trusted this organization with my full heart, and I felt like they had completely deceived me. So I want to sort of invoke a metaphor now that.

[00:40:03] That actually harkens a bit from the opening words of Reverend Harold. Sort of a church, when it's not functioning very healthily, can sort of act as a parent. You know, I'm a vulnerable kid. My parents are divorced. I'm in this land that's hostile towards people like me, and I don't know who I am and how to live. And life is confusing and scary, and people die. And what about the afterlife?

[00:40:34] What the church does is it says, hey, don't worry, little boy. Don't worry, little girl. You're safe with me. I will protect you, you know, I'll keep you safe. I will teach you fun songs that you can sing and that make you happy inside.

[00:40:54] I will read you stories. I will tell you these beautiful stories that are faithful and that are interesting and that inspire you. I'll help you have fun. I'll give you a whole group of friends that you can play with and get to know when your family's sick. We'll bring you casseroles, and we'll help you, and we'll serve you right. We'll love you and take care of you.

[00:41:16] And most importantly, I, the church, as your parent, will give you a sense of purpose and of meaning in your life so you can feel good about yourself and know where you're going and what you're doing. And feel like your life has this amazing direction and purpose. And I just want you to know, I don't think that they do this perniciously. I think they do this with full love and sincerity.

[00:41:41] They want to help and bless people's lives, and so that's how they operate. And it feels really good to a little boy whose parents got divorced and whose maybe siblings aren't doing great and who's scared about life. It makes you feel really good inside.

[00:41:59] And the only real catch about that sort of setup is that the church has a lot of resources and assets. It's got buildings like temples and chapels and missionary programs and all these programs. And those programs require money and they require people to serve, to keep those things. Things operating.

[00:42:22] And so they make a bargain with you. Once you're sort of older and you've made those commitments, you go to the temple for the first time and they make you covenant to give everything you have back to the church.

[00:42:39] And so they say, we're not asking for much. We're just asking for your total commitment for the rest of your life to the building up of the church and 10% of your income. And we want your children. And that's the deal. And you know what?

[00:43:00] It can be so beautiful and it can be such an amazing experience that there are millions of people in the world who say, deal, I'm in. And they have great experiences. So I'm not here today to make the church seem evil, and I'm not here to mock the people who make those choices.

[00:43:22] But what I will say is that for me, for me, there are a couple problems with this setup. The first, and I don't mean to be rude, the first is, is that it's not true. Maybe there are religious traditions that can't be disproven. Right?

[00:43:46] And I think if there's a church that can't be disproven, it's probably this one, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because you are careful not to assert things you don't know in this church. Right. And you're willing to sort of laugh at your reverend and make fun of him when his ringtone goes off. You're not.

[00:44:09] You're not, you know, you're not so wed to, like, authority and obedience and control. Right? I mean, so like. But unfortunately, my church can be proven false and it's just not true. The second thing is that it teaches damaging teachings to certain individuals. While Margi and I were at Microsoft, her beautiful cousin Scott moved from Vermont all the way to Washington to go to school, and he'd already had a bachelor's degree. And we're like, scott, why are you. That's weird. Why are you Moving to Washington from Vermont to go to college again.

[00:44:51] He's like, oh, you know, I just kind of want to learn some new stuff. And so we're fine. So he's there for a while, and then one day he comes to our home and he tells us that, you know, we kind of wondered. He's like, he never dated, you know, anybody, never had a girlfriend. We would always like, you know, think about who we might set him up with or what was going on. You know, he's a really sharp guy. And one day he comes to us and he says, margie and John, I don't even think I've told my family yet, but. But I want you to know that I'm gay.

[00:45:26] And as we talked to him about his story, we found out that he had gotten to such a dark and such a sad and such a lonely place that he had considered taking his life. And, you know, for the people that I. You know, when you're not an LGBT ally, that's like, oh, yeah, there's people that sometimes are sad and sometimes bad things happen, but, you know, life's hard and we're all got struggles. But when it's someone who you love, who's your family member, someone who you care about, and someone who you know is an amazing person, and then you think this beautiful person who, like, was an NCAA golfer, was sensitive, was brilliant, was a guitar player, was gentle, was kind, was loving.

[00:46:13] When. When you contemplate that level of a beautiful person feeling so desperate and so lonely that they get to the point where they want to end their own life, then you think there's something really wrong here. And that's one of the damaging teaches that my faith tradition sort of has held onto, that being gay or lesbian or bisexual is evil and it's a sin. And I don't have to tell you that Utah leads the nation in, you know, suicides of young men between the ages of 15 and 24. And that a third of the homeless youth in Utah are gay and lesbian bisexual youth who have been kicked out of their homes.

[00:46:57] That's just one example of many, many teachings that we found in a very well intentioned, awesome, beautiful church that we found to be damaging to people. The third challenge that we sort of. I have with religion. This comes out a little bit out of my training as a psychologist. I just finished my PhD in psychology.

[00:47:19] There's this. There's this researcher by the last name of Kohlberg who created these. These sort of Kohlberg stages of moral development. And I'm I'm rusty on talking about them, so don't expect eloquence here. But what he does is he traces these stages of one's own morality.

[00:47:37] And he basically talks about how when you're a child, you're obedient because you're scared of being punished, right? Because that's how your parents are going to, you know, get you to obey. And then, like, once you advance from that, you're obedient out of self interest. It's like, well, if I obey, I get the cookie, right? And that's like a little bit better than just obeying out of strict obedience and punishment and fear, Fear of punishment. It's a little bit better.

[00:48:03] Then you become obedient because, like, your friends are being obedient, right? And you don't want, you know, you don't want to look bad, and you don't want your friends to judge you. And you kind of want to fit into the social norms.

[00:48:14] He calls that sort of a higher level of obedience. And then, and then you kind of understand that in the world there needs to be laws and order and a system. And you sort of say, I value that there's order in the system. And so I want to be obedient because I value there being order and structure, right?

[00:48:35] And then if you really sort of work on developing yourself, you can develop to the highest levels of moral motivation where either you're moral because you feel like there's this social contract where we have to be good to each other, right? And I want to. It's kind of the golden rule, right? Do unto others as you would have others do to you. And I want. I want people to be good to me. I want to be good to you. I want us all to get along.

[00:49:02] And then, and then the highest form of morality is sort of wanting to be good because you buy into these universal ethical principles of goodness. And as I look through the UU sort of standards of truth, that's exactly what you guys do. And so.

[00:49:20] And the problem I have with my faith tradition is that as our parents, they want us to get to a certain level of moral development where you obey either out of fear or out of respect for authority. But they're very, very uncomfortable with you advancing to those higher stages because they want you paying attention and obeying the leaders.

[00:49:48] Because sometimes you may feel like the leaders have it wrong, but the church can't function with the prophet who talks to God if the members are receiving revelation that contradicts what the prophet says. And so you obey the prophet. And I believe that stunts your growth as a human where you can't develop to the final stages morality.

[00:50:12] So I love the LDS Church. I wish it well. I am not bitter. I'm not angry. I'm not out to hurt it. I'm very supportive of those who decide to remain members. I don't condescend to them and think I'm better than them, even though I just used a hierarchical sort of stage of morality and put them into an inferior category.

[00:50:32] Honestly, in my heart, I know that there are Mormons who. Who are far more advanced in their morality than I am. And I mean that sincerely. So. But I kind of look at my relationship with the church now as sort of the way that I would want a divorce to happen if I were ever to get into a divorce, which is, I love you over there.

[00:50:52] I wish you well. Honestly, I wish for your happiness and health. But I need boundaries now and I need to move on to something else. And that's the relationship that I want to have with my church. We can be friends. I have fond regards for you, but I need some difference.

[00:51:13] I haven't talked at all about the excommunication, and I see that the title of this talk was just about that. So that's what the Q and A is for, if that's how you want to spend it. But I do want to end with this. I hope. I have no idea whether any of this story is relevant in your lives at all. And I hope it was at least slightly interesting or entertaining.

Lessons and a Closing Reflection on Fear

[00:51:37] Higher aspiration would be that you actually found some meaning from it. But here's my attempt to kind of connect it to your life. Okay, no matter where you are in your life, my guess is that some of you feel stuck or feel unhappy or feel like there's you're lacking some meaning or you're just kind of in a rut and you think about wanting to try something different or bold or courageous or challenging. But you're worried about that, right?

[00:52:12] Maybe it could affect you financially in a negative way. Maybe your family might not like it. Maybe you're scared. Maybe you're scared of failure. Who knows what you know? But my guess is that there are some of you in this audience who are kind of feeling some of these things.

[00:52:28] And I wanted to end by sharing with you wisdom from an old sage, sort of a real pillar of wisdom and truth in our society today. It's the actor Jim Carrey. And regardless of his feelings on immunization, I hope you'll listen to some words that he shared in a graduation address that he gave recently or semi recently, he told a story about how his father was this beautifully funny comedian. He was brilliant, he was talented, he made everybody laugh. And he really wanted to be a comedian, okay? But he lived, let's just say, in the 40s and 50s or 60s. I don't know when, but he said, I don't know that I can make it.

[00:53:24] I don't know that I could be successful. I want to have a family. Could I support them, could I provide for them? And instead of becoming a comedian, he became an accountant. And. And these are sort of the words of Jim Carrey. He says, fear is going to be a player in your life, but you get to decide how much.

[00:53:47] You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about your pathway to the future. But all there will ever be is what's happening right here, right in this very moment. And the decisions we make in this moment are either based in love or in fear.

[00:54:18] So many of us choose our path out of fear disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach, ridiculous to expect, so we never dare to ask the universe for it. He says, my father could have been a great comedian, but he didn't believe that was possible for him, and so he made a conservative choice instead. He got a safe job as an accountant.

[00:54:56] And when I was 12 years old, he was let go from his safe job, and our family had to do whatever we could to survive. And he finishes with, I learned many great lessons from my father, not the least of which was that you can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance doing what you love.

[00:55:29] It's been a very difficult journey out of Mormonism for me and my family. As much as we love what we've come from. It was horrific to leave it in many, many ways. But I can tell you now, standing before you, that we are incredibly happy, a family.

[00:55:50] We love our Sundays. We love our time together. Margi and I are closer than ever before by orders of magnitude. Our children are healthy and thriving. At least I feel that way. That's not to set them up as models for perfection, right?

[00:56:14] We are all going to have hard times and struggle. They will. I will. You are. And all those Mormons are right. But what I can say is we were so scared. Can we raise our kids out of the church? Can we live healthy and immoral? Can we? Can we. Can you be moral and not Mormon? Like, can we be a moral person and not be Mormon?

[00:56:36] And What I'm here to tell you is that you can. You absolutely can. There's a big, beautiful, bright world out there and it inspires us every day. And I just want to say that as I think about all my other transitioning and post and ex Mormon brothers and sisters that are trying to find a new home, I'm so happy to know that there's a place like the Unitarian Universalist congregation in South Salt Lake City and in other places that is being that home for so many of my people.

[00:57:13] And I bless you for being who you are, for doing what you do, and for taking us in. Much like Christ took in the homeless stranger. Right? You are taking in my brothers and sisters and giving them a spiritual home so that they can have spiritual food and water.

[00:57:33] And I bless you for it. And I just want to. I just want to tell you, it's just such an honor to be able to be here today in front of you. I feel like you should be preaching to us. But regardless of that, I leave these things with you in the name of all that is good, Amen.

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.