Introducing the Episode and Guest

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Why in the world would a never Mormon, atheist or secular person from the Netherlands volunteer up to five or more years of their lives supporting Mormon Stories podcast and watching infinite hours of Mormon themed and ex Mormon themed videos? Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John delinquent. It is May 7, 2026 and today we're going to be nerding out. We're going to be doing an interview with someone who has really played a very important role in the Mormon Stories podcast community over the past five or more years. On YouTube, he's known as Trevor, but his actual name is Corey and he's never been Mormon and he lives in the Netherlands.

John Dehlin [00:00:53] And yeah, he's been our moderator of our Mormon Stories Podcast YouTube channel for a long, long time. He co moderated with Maven and then he took over for Maven when Maven started doing other types of things. But most importantly, he has studied Scientology in depth. And he was kind of a Scientology, I don't know, critic or activist in a way before he got interested in Mormonism. And then he started following Mormon Stories podcast and ended up as our moderator on our YouTube channel. And he's got his own story about what made him interested in cults generally. Not to say the Mormon Church is a cult, but that's how he would probably might frame his interests.

John Dehlin [00:01:45] So I'll represent the way he would frame it. So he was into Scientology before he was into Mormonism. Then he got into Mormonism. So we're going to be talking about his story. He also has done a comparison from his perspective of the Mormon Church and L. Ron Hubbard and David Miskovich. He's done an analysis of how the Mormon Church in his view is similar to and or different from Scientology. We're going to get to that. And then he also, maybe something he's most passionate about is as a citizen of the Netherlands, which is one of the top, consistently one of the top five happiest, you know, rated happiest countries in the world and also one of the most secular countries in the world.

John Dehlin [00:02:29] He wants to share a message with us Mormons and ex Mormons about how in his experience, the idea that you need a high demand religion to be healthy and happy is a tad bit ridiculous. So that's what we're in store for today.

John Dehlin [00:02:47] We hope you will enjoy it. I also think we will be touching on themes around autism maybe. And if that's not cool enough, we have Brooklyn here joining us today. So first I'll say Brooklyn, so fun. To have you.

Brooklyn Alden [00:03:05] Thanks. Nice to be on.

John Dehlin [00:03:06] Yeah, good to have you. Nice, nice. And you're joining us from the uk, right?

Brooklyn Alden [00:03:11] Yes, yeah, From Southwest England.

John Dehlin [00:03:14] From Mormon Stories offices. Uk, yes.

Brooklyn Alden [00:03:18] Yeah. But from Utah. So I'm a Utah Mormon at heart.

John Dehlin [00:03:22] All right, well, it's good to have you. And our guest of the hour or hours is Corey, or known on YouTube as Trevor. Hey, Corey, good evening.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:03:34] Thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [00:03:35] Our pleasure. Tell us, Corey, I didn't dare try to pronounce your last name. Tell us your last name.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:03:42] My last name is Ter Schlausen.

John Dehlin [00:03:44] Ter Schlausen.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:03:46] That's pretty good.

John Dehlin [00:03:47] Not bad. Well, you've been such a really important part of Mormon Stories behind the scenes for so many years. And I have to admit, Corey, for many, many years, I'm like, who is this guy? Like you and I have only talked on the phone, what, once or twice in six or seven years. I'm embarrassed to admit that.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:04:08] Only once. Yeah, it was five or six weeks ago.

John Dehlin [00:04:12] Yeah. And I'm like, who in the heck is this guy? Why is he so committed to Mormon Stories in spite of how unprofessional and neglectful I've been to actually reaching out to him and showing him gratitude and support. So you're a miracle to me. You're a modern day Mormon miracle, Corey.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:04:31] Well, I don't really believe in miracles, but I get your point, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:04:37] Well, Brooklyn and I do, so you'll just have to live with it. Brooklyn, remind us who you are just really quickly.

Brooklyn Alden [00:04:44] Yeah, yeah. I'm John's editor. I've been working for him for about five years and other miscellaneous tasks, primarily audio video editing. And I'm from Park City, Utah, but I currently live in southwest England like we said. And yeah, excited to also meet Corey for the first time today because we had also had communications kind of since I started at Mormon Stories when he was helping us put in time codes on the older episodes and always helping with the moderation. So, yeah, excited to meet you as well.

John Dehlin [00:05:21] And Brooklyn, you've got, you, you, you have a lot of interests. Obviously we've had you on before when we've talked pop culture and Secret Lives and Real Housewives kind of stuff. But you also have a real interest in high demand religions or cults, is that right?

Brooklyn Alden [00:05:36] Absolutely, yes. I can be, you know, a bit obsessive and nerdy about it, for sure. I left, left the church when I was 8, 17, 18, kind of my senior year of high school. My family left the church and I was extremely faithful Mormon. And so that, you know, I think just when you're in that mindset, you become fascinated of, I think probably the psychological effect, I don't know that a high demand religion can have. And so, yeah, I got super interested in all kinds of other, you know, cult, high demand religions and Scientology definitely being kind of the primary one. So I'm super excited to talk about that today as well.

John Dehlin [00:06:16] Yeah, it's hard to out cult Scientology.

Brooklyn Alden [00:06:19] It is, it's. It's almost got the gold model. Yeah, I feel like that. And Jehovah's.

John Dehlin [00:06:24] What?

Brooklyn Alden [00:06:25] Yeah, there's some scientologies up there, which I feel like we should just say right off the bat. My, probably my favorite ever Mormon Stories episode was with Claire and Mark Headley from Scientology. And that was what, two parts? I think that was probably my favorite episode just because of my love of Scientology and I knew them from the Leah Remini TV show in the book Going Clear. So that was a great episode. And anyone else who likes Scientology should look into that one.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] Yeah, that was for sure gripping. Well, fun. Well, it's good to have you, Brooklyn. Thanks for joining us. All right, well, Corey, before we dive in, do you even feel the desire need to kind of share an intention of why you would even be willing to share your story with us? You don't have to. I just want to give you a chance if you want to.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:07:17] Not really. I just would like the audience to know that obviously I'm not a native English speaker. I'm used to writing and listening to English. I don't really speak it though. And if for some reason. Sorry, you think I need a little help with my English, I don't mind you helping me out a little.

John Dehlin [00:07:44] What do you think, Brooklyn? I kind of think his English is fantastic. What do you think?

Brooklyn Alden [00:07:47] Yeah, I was just going to use the same word. It's going fantastic so far, so give yourself more credit.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:07:52] Yeah, I remember you had three years ago, this woman, Christina or something on, and her English was really excellent. I think she was raised bilingual. I never had that.

John Dehlin [00:08:08] That's amazing.

Brooklyn Alden [00:08:10] Well, yeah, your English sounds great.

Corey's Upbringing and Path to Skepticism

John Dehlin [00:08:12] Well, let's jump in. Let's jump in, Corey. So let's go back and tell us a bit about your upbringing and what led you to be interested in colts.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:08:23] I'm born 1968, as the sixth child. I have two sisters, two brothers and one fraternal twin brother. I was born 20 minutes later, so I'm technically the youngest. My dad was a maintenance mechanic. He worked in a factory. My mother was a Stay at home, Mom.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:08:48] They are both deceased now. I didn't really know my grandparents. Three of them died when I was like four or five years or something. One died when I was 13 or 14, maybe. Fun fact. The older sister does genealogy, which, as I understand it, is quite important in Mormonism.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:09:17] I was raised Catholic. Maybe it's important for people to understand that Catholicism in the Netherlands back in the 1970s and the 1980s, when I grew up, was rather progressive. I'll come back to that later. But it's kind of important to know. I was baptized when I was a few weeks old. Of course, I don't remember a lot of that or hardly anything at all, to be fair.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:09:48] I did First Communion at seven or eight, and I was. I think it's called confirmed when I was about 12 years old. My mother was very keen on us being raised in the Catholic faith. My dad, not so much. He used to only go to church on Christmas and for Easter and that kind of thing.

John Dehlin [00:10:16] Let me. Let me ask you, Corey, was. Was Catholicism important to your social or moral or spiritual life as a child and as a teenager?

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:10:32] I wouldn't say that myself. I will get to talk about it. But basically I started losing my faith. I do remember, for example, when I was in high school that the religion teacher would tell us to not take the Bible as a literal truth, which is 1981, 1982 or something. And in those years, during those years, I already was in the process of losing faith. I think that was a process that you also saw elsewhere in the Netherlands. Much of my classmates, my. Were also in the same process. It's. I wouldn't say it was very important to me.

John Dehlin [00:11:30] Okay. Kind of something that a lot of. A lot of kids did in the time. It was kind of cultural to be Catholic in the Netherlands. Okay.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:11:39] Now, the. The Netherlands traditionally has had several religions. We. I live in Naming, which is near the German border, and it's basically the most northern part where you still find a lot of Catholic people. More to the north in the country, you will find more people from Protestant denominations.

John Dehlin [00:12:07] Got it.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:12:08] I'm not. I'm not. I'm not sure if they are comparable to Lutheran or Episcopalian or whatever denominations you have in the United States. I'm not aware of the exact theological.

John Dehlin [00:12:26] Sure.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:12:30] How do I say that?

John Dehlin [00:12:31] Lineage or relationship?

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:12:34] If. If the. I'm not sure how the Protestant denominations here are comparable to whatever you guys. In the United States.

John Dehlin [00:12:44] You got it right. I think you got it right.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:12:49] I do remember from being from a large Family that there was some talk talking about Mormons. That's basically one of the few things that I knew about Mormons back in. When I was a child, they had large families. One kid in my primary school was also from a rather large family. I think she had eight siblings or something, and I had five. One of my brothers had a single, Crazy Horses by the Osmonds.

John Dehlin [00:13:23] I remember that song. I remember that song, Crazy Horses.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:13:33] I do remember down by the Lazy river, which was a big hit here back in the day. And I think at one moment in one of your episodes, you referred to one bad apple.

John Dehlin [00:13:49] One bad apple. Don't spoil a whole butts girl.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:13:52] Oh, I didn't remember it by the title, but I had to first listen to it and then I recognized the song. I think I looked it up recently. It was released in 1971, so I would have been three at the time.

John Dehlin [00:14:07] The Osmonds were the white Jackson 5 and Donny Osmond was the white Michael Jackson. 100%. We haven't talked about that enough on Mormon's Story.

Brooklyn Alden [00:14:18] I think that. Yeah, we did do some Osmond series.

John Dehlin [00:14:21] Honestly, we should. Yeah.

Brooklyn Alden [00:14:25] I mean, yeah. My mom grew up in an era where that was everything. So we listened to a lot of Osmonds in our house.

John Dehlin [00:14:30] Yeah, that's awesome.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:14:32] I also have some vague memory. I'm not sure if it's true that at the time, that must have been before 1978, when the priesthood ban for black people was gotten away with. When I think the Osmonds were on TV defending black people not having the priesthood. I'm not sure about that. There's. There's still a video about that on YouTube.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:15:02] For some reason, someone put it on there. It's quite cringe. Back in. Back in the day, even I. We as a family were like, this can't be real. That this is not good. As a teen, I thought church was boring, frankly. My mom was okay with me starting to volunteer at the local hospital, though, which my personal goal was to not have to go to church anymore.

Early Encounters with Scientology in the Netherlands

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:15:38] But I had to replace it with volunteering at the hospital. They had a church service on every Sunday. And of course, patients that during the weekend stayed over in the hospital would want to go to the religious service and we would get them from whatever department in the hospital they were from and bring them to the church service and we would serve coffee afterwards and then bring them back to the department in the hospital where they came from.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:16:16] I have to say that during this time I'll even have served as an altar boy in the religious services at the hospital. In a way, I guess my mom's strategy to not force me to go to church, but instead volunteer at the hospital did work to, well, at least get me in contact with religion as a subject, even in my teen years.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:16:49] And. Yes, and. And as I just said, and I remember very vividly actually, that in religion classes in high school, I was being taught not to take the Bible as a literal truth, which basically coincided with the period of time where I started losing faith. I wouldn't say that was the cause, though. It was more of a cultural thing where classmates also started losing faith.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:17:18] I think I was a few months shy of my 15th birthday when I, for the first time, heard about Scientology. One of my brothers talked about it. Well, I'm not sure about my age. At least I was a teenager. I was a good boy. I didn't go find out for myself if science Scientology actually was a cult.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:17:42] But my interest in Scientology kind of started back then. We didn't have the Internet, of course, but what I did was sometimes read articles in newspaper or every now and then, there would be a new show on the TV where they would have a story about it, and I would like to follow those. Those stories.

John Dehlin [00:18:12] Interesting. I. I did not have Scientology on my radar in the 80s, for sure, so it's interesting. You did.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:18:20] Well, to be fair, I just explained how Mormonism was virtually not a thing for me. So I guess it goes both ways.

John Dehlin [00:18:30] Oh, right, right. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:18:33] At 19, I told my parents I didn't want to go to church anymore. I wasn't the first to lose faith in my family, which kind of helped. Obviously, my parents were disappointed, but they never stopped loving and supporting me. That was never a problem. Around 21 1, I think I also stopped volunteering at the hospital. They had an age limit for their volunteers, so I had to stop there. I do remember back then that I at one moment found the book Dianetics in a secondhand store. I thought it was pretty unreadable garbage. I never got past the introduction. I guess Claire or Mark would say that I had a misunderstood word, as they call it, in Scientology.

Background on Dianetics and Scientology

John Dehlin [00:19:29] Tell our listeners that don't know the background or the connection between Dianetics and Scientology.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:19:34] Explain that Dianetics basically is the first book in Scientology. It's actually called Book one. And in Dianetics, which was written by Alron Hubbards, he explains how you can become clear in his fantasy. I. The. The book was quite a success, and after some period of time, from Dianetics, L. Ron Hubbard developed Scientology, which. Well, of course someone like Claire or Mark would be very much better at explaining how this, how the history went.

John Dehlin [00:20:24] And I looked it up. Dianetics first was published in the 1950s. So it. It's been around a long time. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:20:30] L. Ron Hubbard first wrote an article in a science fiction magazine, Astounding Science Fiction, I think it is called. And that gave apparently a pretty good response. So he developed the story into the Dianetics book later.

John Dehlin [00:20:51] Fascinating.

Intellectual Journey Toward Atheism

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:20:53] Okay, so somehow when in my early 20s, I'm still kind of a seeker, I want to know how we can know what is true, what is not. And at 22 or 23, I read the book Godel Escher Bachelor by Douglas Hofstadter and in which the writer explains the parallels there are between Godel's theorems, which are from math, the drawings that Escher has made, and Bach's fugues. It's been quite a while since I read the book, but if I explain it right, Goethe's theorems basically state that in mathematics the absolute truth is that if there is such a thing to begin with, we might not be able to prove it's the absolute truth.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:21:51] That's. Those are my words somehow. And mathematicians and philosophers base, I guess may not like it, but somehow that was the end of my search. I. I think I had the answer. I think I cannot. I found that we cannot have absolute truth and we also. We always have to explain our assumptions before we. Make a statement about something.

John Dehlin [00:22:32] The kind of lost your faith in anyone being able to obtain an absolute truth, including any religious system.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:22:41] Exactly, yes. The YouTube channel Veritasium has a very. Has a video about this which is math's fundamental flaw. I think it is very interesting and for people who want to learn more about that is is a simple as possible explanation of girls theorems. I, I really recommend that. So basically that led me to, as you said, losing interest in questions that maybe we cannot answer. I was like, why would I even bother thinking about this? Those. Those questions. So indeed this included faith.

John Dehlin [00:23:28] Why are you smiling? Brooklyn?

Brooklyn Alden [00:23:30] It's just a bit of a foreign concept to me, I think growing up Mormon. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:35] Oh, it's a totally different worldview, Is that what you're thinking?

Brooklyn Alden [00:23:38] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So it's really interesting.

John Dehlin [00:23:40] Just absolute truth's unknowable.

Brooklyn Alden [00:23:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:43] Doesn't exist.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:23:44] I don't think I've heard a lot of people talk on Mormon stories or elsewhere about losing their faith because of a mathematical statement.

John Dehlin [00:23:59] Yeah, that's pretty highbrow. That's pretty highbrow.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:24:07] So yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:08] Have you ever had Brooklyn? Do you remember anyone saying girdle? Girdle caused me to lose my testimony. Godel.

Brooklyn Alden [00:24:15] Definitely not Godel.

John Dehlin [00:24:17] Escher and Bach caused me. There's never been a thumbnail that said Godel, Escher and Bach caused me to lose by Mormon faith Moth make me lose my faith.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:24:27] Yeah, that's true. Okay, if I. My current thoughts about God is. Well, we. I don't see enough evidence for that to assume that there is a God. I'm not a historian. I don't know if Jesus existed. But from what I understand, most people, most historians go with the. Go with an actual Jesus existing. I don't believe in any of the, let's say, supernatural stuff such as the resurrection and that kind of thing. I also, I'm not sure about him flipping tables in the temple, but I do love the story because it tells me that there are values other than just money that are important. And well, I can relate to that story a lot even as. Even while I'm not a religious guy.

John Dehlin [00:25:35] Hey. Hey, Corey, I'm curious. What about the epistemology that some things you know by feeling and that God set it up so that we don't have a memory of the pre existence so that we can have faith and that there are different types of knowing and one form of knowing is feeling inspired by a divine being. What do you think about the epistemological implications of that paradigm?

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:26:02] I learned about that paradigm through watching your. Your podcast and I cannot really relate to it. It's. It's for. Kind of a foreign concept to me.

John Dehlin [00:26:15] Okay, so it's not compelling to say the least. To you?

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:26:19] No, I won't say that.

John Dehlin [00:26:20] No. Okay. Can you explain why? Just. It's probably obvious. But why. Why not?

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:26:27] I think it might be an idea to come back to that a little later in the story.

John Dehlin [00:26:34] Sure. Okay, we'll come back to it.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:26:36] So between 18 and 30, I of course focused on education. I have a background in IT systems development and management and a Master of Business in Business administration. I started my career in it of course. I also at one moment started living on my own, which religion as a subject pretty much out of the picture. I never got to find my eternal companion, as it's called. That's also a thing that maybe will be more understandable later. It just didn't work out. It's not for lack of trying that I have no. Have never found a partner. I did sense, and this is a bit strange, maybe a letter to the Catholic Church to Resign. By far. Most people in the Netherlands who lose their faith in Catholicism or the Protestant branches we have here just don't bother. Somehow for me, that didn't feel right. I wanted to actually resign, so I did that.

John Dehlin [00:27:56] I'm just googling quitcatholic.com and it doesn't exist.

Brooklyn Alden [00:28:00] Yeah, I was gonna say that is interesting. I don't know why I haven't quite thought about in other religions, people resigning, but I really only hear, I mean, my worldviews. Mormon. Mormonism. But I haven't like heard of a Catholic resigning.

John Dehlin [00:28:12] Yeah, I can't believe I've never thought of that. Brooklyn. That we might be one of the only churches.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:28:19] I guess the thing is, because if you don't resign, you risk the missionaries coming to you every five months or whatever it is. And I can imagine that you can get fed up with that.

John Dehlin [00:28:31] No, no. Actually, Corey, one of the main reasons I hear is people saying, I don't want the church to count me in their numbers.

Brooklyn Alden [00:28:39] Absolutely. That's what I was going to say. That was my reason as well. Yeah. So maybe just because other churches don't have this major issue of. I mean, well, Scientology does famously of lying about their membership. So. Yeah, but that's a major reason for me was that please don't count me.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:28:55] Yeah, which I have to say it wasn't the reason for me as well. I think that this was about the time when there were a few scandals here in the Netherlands about child abuse. So that may have been a reason back in the day.

John Dehlin [00:29:10] Makes sense.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:29:10] It's. It's quite. It's quite some time ago. So I don't know the exact reasoning anymore. We have general data protection regulation here in the UP European Union. This includes the right to be forgotten. So I'm frequent ex Mormon Reddit a lot and there's sometimes confusion about the question if the right to be forgotten also applies to being in the records of churches.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:29:48] Contrary to what a lot of people think is, it is the case that the churches currently have the right to keep your data on their records even when you resign. There is, however, currently a court case in Belgium which in which some members of the Catholic Church have asked the judge to force the church to delete, actually delete the records. And the Belgium court has now asked the European Union Court of Justice to advice on what to do there. And at the end of this year, so at the end of 2026 or maybe at the beginning of 2027, we will get a verdict and I guess we will know A little bit more. More about that.

John Dehlin [00:30:54] Fascinating.

Brooklyn Alden [00:30:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:56] Yeah. Because the church doesn't. Even when people resign, that just changes a field in a database.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:31:03] Exactly. Yeah. I know that. Even if the European Court of Justice will force the Catholic Church here to actually delete your records when you resign, another question would be if for members of the Mormon Church here who resigned, the LDS Church in Salt Lake City will actually do it, because there's. As far as I can tell, the database with members is in Salt Lake City. So this is not just EU law being applicable or not, but it also is. How are you going to enforce EU law for a database that's actually in the United States? And that's. That's a separate subject in itself, I guess. Maybe you could do a separate podcast about that with someone who's a lawyer or something.

John Dehlin [00:32:08] Fascinating.

Brooklyn Alden [00:32:09] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:32:11] In 2001, I had my first Internet connection, which was still a. You remember that John Dial in thing?

John Dehlin [00:32:20] I do. I do remember that.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:32:22] Yeah. And I. And I started reading about Scientology. Then every few months, I would read whatever news there was about Scientology. Back in the day, you had a website called xenu.net. it's still around.

John Dehlin [00:32:41] Wow.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:32:43] Zenu.net. yes. And there was also was a forum website that came with that, which was Operation Clambake. The forum website is now gone, but As I said, Zeno.net still exists. And, well, every few months I would read there was not so much news as there is about the subject today. So it. There were not a lot of changes in news. I'm going to fast forward now to January 2008, and I was once around again reading about Scientology on the Internet. And this was when a video that the Scientology Church has created with Tom Cruise got leaked onto the Internet. I see you smiling, Brooklyn. Maybe you remember that or you heard about it.

The Anonymous Movement and Scientology Protests

Brooklyn Alden [00:33:47] Yeah, I think I. If it's what I'm thinking of. Yes, but just the Tom Cruise of it all.

John Dehlin [00:33:51] It's like Scientology General Conference. It was like this highly produced event, right. With like Jumbo Jumbotrons. And

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:34:02] there is a video circulating of Tom Cruise accepting the. Some kind of a medal from David Miscavige. But I'm talking about another video which was only for internal purposes for the Church of Scientology. And. And in this video, Tom Cruise basically is ranting about how great Scientology is and how how as a Scientologist, you are the only one who can help when there's an accident and that kind of nonsense and it's. It got leaked onto the Internet.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:34:39] People started noticing it got. It went viral. And here I am at home reading about that and also finding out that at the time, of course, the Scientology Church tried to get rid of the video from the Internet.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:34:59] Welcome to the Streisand effect. So what happened is maybe interesting with. Because at a website called 4chan, people were aware, becoming aware of the fact that the church tried to get rid of the video. And they were like, not on our watch, because we value freedom of speech a lot. So a protest action technology was born, which was the anonymous protest against Scientology.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:35:39] And yes, they at first started out with doing all kinds of prank calls and. And ordering pizza for Scientology churches and whatnot. More or less. More or less comparable to the current speed runs that are not really effective.

Brooklyn Alden [00:36:01] If you want to fight about this, the speed run. John, have you heard of this?

John Dehlin [00:36:05] I did, but. But first, Brooklyn, tell me what you remember about the pizza deliveries. I never heard about that.

Brooklyn Alden [00:36:11] I just. Just him saying that just like, scratches this itch in the back of my brain. Or just, you know, of a memory of like, the. Is it like ordering pizzas to the.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:36:21] For the Scientology or without them even knowing?

John Dehlin [00:36:24] Yeah, yeah, like just a bunch of pizzas.

Brooklyn Alden [00:36:27] I don't remember the significance or why, but like, I.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:36:30] This. This was just. This was just to harass the Scientology orgs, which will. Like the speed runs isn't a very effective way to fight Scientology or the abuses that happen within.

John Dehlin [00:36:45] Explain the speed runs, because that's the

Brooklyn Alden [00:36:47] feeling I had when I heard about the speedruns recently. I was like, wait, what speed runs?

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:36:52] Speed runs are. Speedruns are a current thing. I'm not exactly up to speed on the subject.

Brooklyn Alden [00:37:00] Can you explain just your base knowledge on it for the audience of what, Sorry, can you explain.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:37:07] Speedruns is basically kids entering Scientology orcs, they're churches, more or less, and trying to get as far in as they can. So while filming. While filming themselves, while filming it and putting the video on Instagram or YouTube or wherever.

Brooklyn Alden [00:37:27] And the first time I heard it, I thought they were going through the steps of science, like, going, no, no, no, no. As fast as they could. And I was like, this is an expensive prank because you're paying a lot for.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:37:40] No, this. This is just.

Brooklyn Alden [00:37:42] And I was almost more confused.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:37:44] This is just. This is just kids running into Scientology building and filming it to put it on the Internet. It's basically trespassing, if you ask me. So. And it's not very effective if you want to protest Scientology. Back to 2008, a video journalist back in the day Mark Bunker Create, who has been a long time critic of Scientology, posted a video explaining to Anonymous how their way of protesting Scientology maybe wasn't very effective. And maybe they should instead focus on something which sounds very boring, like taking away the tax exemptions, because that is what is very much going to hurt Scientology.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:38:38] To I guess pretty much to anyone's surprise, the Anonymous people started refocusing and started protesting the actual abuse in Scientology and make it in a way, a. Well, first and foremost legal, but also a more productive thing. And here I was at home reading about that. I. I was like, what the hell is going on?

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:39:05] And in a way, they. I recognized at that moment that they had found a way to productively protest Scientology. And I was like, I felt cold maybe to see.

John Dehlin [00:39:24] We call that the Holy Ghost, Corey. That's what we call the Holy Ghost.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:39:26] Okay. I like to say that it's. I. I got the idea that I might be. Might be helpful in protesting Scientology. So on the 9th, on the. On May 19th of 2008, I created an account at the website and turbulation.org it was back in the day. The account was called Trev Anon. And that may sound familiar.

Brooklyn Alden [00:39:59] The name was born.

John Dehlin [00:40:01] Was born.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:40:02] So Arnold was me trying to be hip at the time. Trev is short for Trevor Horn, which is my favorite record producer. So that's the. Okay, that's the secret behind the name. And maybe, uh, the audience will know Trevor Horn because, for example, he produced Kiss from a Rose by Seal. He also did, uh, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the first album.

John Dehlin [00:40:29] Relax, don't do it when you want to go to it.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:40:35] And Grace Jones, slave to the rhythm. Okay. We can geek about. About his music some more.

John Dehlin [00:40:45] But no, my favorite. My favorite Seal. And we're never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy. Sorry.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:40:55] Trevor Horn is also known as the inventor of the 80s. That's a fun fact. Oh, his first. One of his first singles was Video Killed the Radio Star, which was. Which was the first and the last video to be broadcasted on the MTV channel.

John Dehlin [00:41:16] We're getting all sorts of trivia. We're getting all sorts of trivia of

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:41:21] the reason that I used an alias travel non was frankly because back in the day, I was afraid of Scientology. I. They were known for harassing critics. And during the Anonymous protests, there have been people dragged into court and whatnot by Scientology it. So I. I decided to use an alias to prevent them from coming after me.

Brooklyn Alden [00:41:54] Yeah, smart. They're still known for this.

John Dehlin [00:41:56] Yeah, the fair gaming stuff.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:41:58] Fair game, fair gaming stuff. I started out on translating German articles Scientology into English. Lots of members from Anonymous wanted to know what was going on in Germany. Especially members from Anonymous from the United States and other English speaking countries.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:42:23] Basically what's at stake here is that the Germans view Scientology as a commercial enterprise and most of all as a totalitarian movement. Well, Germany of course has a history with totalitarian systems and they basically say we don't want that anymore, so we're going to keep an eye on you.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:42:47] And it shows a very deep cultural difference between the United States on the one hand and on one hand and Germany on the other hand. Because I think to this day I'm not sure about that. The United States every year publishes a report about freedom worldwide. And every year Germany gets to some criticism for its so called lack of religious freedom for Scientologists. But the Germans of course will insist that they do not want a repetition of what happened during the. During the World War II.

Brooklyn Alden [00:43:34] Do you mind if I ask, would this be a good time? I was wondering about what the presence of Scientology is in the Netherlands or in Germany or. You know, I never really think of it very much.

The Decline of Scientology and Its Critics

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:43:48] Scientology in the Netherlands, as far as I can tell is very small. Maybe they have like 100 or 200 members, nothing more. It's really small. I don't know the numbers for Germany. Obviously Germany is a larger country, so they will have more members there. I'm. I don't know the numbers from those countries and other countries in, in Europe. Obviously it's very small. The best estimate that I know about the number of members Scientology has worldwide is from a journalist by the name of Tony Ortega. He has a blog, Tony ortega.org.com I'm not sure. And he also has a sub stack and in 2020 I think he published an article where he said that his best estimate of the number of scientologies world Scientologists worldwide was 20 000.

John Dehlin [00:44:51] But they claim, they claim a million or so, right? Yeah, they.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:44:56] They used to claim a million millions of members. That never was a thing. Actually I think at their hate they had at the beginning of the 90s, let's say 1990 to 1995, they maybe had 110 or 120000 or something like that. So ever since it has gone down very much.

John Dehlin [00:45:20] I was recently interviewed on Radio west about the Mormon Church suing me in Mormon Stories podcast and I really am wondering whether the presidency of Dallin H. Oaks, who's I think one of the first, if not the very first lawyer to ever become a Mormon prophet. We're seeing an increase in excommunications and possibly in lawsuits. It's making me wonder whether Oaks's administration is going to mark a turn of the Mormon Church more towards the types of behaviors that accelerated the demise of Scientology. Because we all remember the close of the Going Clear documentary where Scientology becomes a church with shrinking membership but with massive real estate and financial holdings. And if the Mormon Church isn't careful, it's going to follow that same path, which I'm sure we're going to get to. But I just had to call that out.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:46:32] David Miscavige would love to have the billions of dollars that the Mormon Church has. It's the best estimates that I'm aware of for Scientology are 2 or 3 billion.

John Dehlin [00:46:45] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:46:46] Which of course is a lot of money.

John Dehlin [00:46:48] Too much money.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:46:49] I sure would. Would like to have it, but it's nothing new.

John Dehlin [00:46:53] What

Brooklyn Alden [00:46:55] church as well. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:47:01] In July of 2009, a member of Anonymous on the website that I just referenced came up with the idea to create a list of people who have been members of Scientology and who were speaking out using their real name, which was and is a big thing. Scientology obviously has the disconnection policy. If you speak out about Scientology and you have families in the family that I that is still in will disconnect from you.

John Dehlin [00:47:38] So.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:47:40] But nonetheless, there had been a lot of people already spoken out about Scientology and about the abuse that was. That is going on within the church. So. But no one, I guess, made a list to find out how many people actually there were. So we started creating a list. I was one of the researchers, and within almost a year, I think it was, we had found a thousand names for Scientologists who had spoken up about Scientology. This is the former Church of Scientology members who spoke out. I hope you can see that.

John Dehlin [00:48:27] Yeah, we can see it.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:48:28] Okay. This is the list that Anonymous has created starting in 2009. As I said, I'm one of the researchers. There's one other guy I want to shout out to give a shout out to him. He goes by the name Incredulous Site Incredulous. And is sight, which is kind of a funny name. There are, as you can see here, 3307 people on the list. And basically it's just a list of people who. Names of people who have been speaking who have spoken out against Scientology.

John Dehlin [00:49:06] Wow. Chris. I'm sure Chris Shelton is on there. And.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:49:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:11] And Mike Rinder. And. Yeah. Oh, Mike Rinder.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:49:20] Claire, here you can see Claire Hadley and Mark Hadley. They both have several links behind their names of evidence where they have spoken out for some people, including Clara and Mark themselves. You also see a little heart, which is a reference to another list with stories of disconnection, as they told in their episode on your show. They. Their family members have disconnected from them. And yes, this is a. Well, it's actually called the big list of Scientologists who have spoken Out. I've been working on this for the past 18 years. Almost 17 years, I should say.

John Dehlin [00:50:14] So you maintain that document.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:50:17] The guy who goes by incredible incredulous side is the one who maintains the document. I do help with research, finding new names.

John Dehlin [00:50:29] Oh, wow, that's cool. So you're a legitimate anti Scientologist for real?

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:50:33] I think I. I think you could say that, yes.

Brooklyn Alden [00:50:36] Yeah, I would say that.

John Dehlin [00:50:39] Is that a term? Is that a term?

Brooklyn Alden [00:50:41] You're walking the walk.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:50:43] So this. This list was made back in. Started back in 2009. At the beginning, this was me just naively thinking, thinking that presenting members of whatever religion with facts about their belief system that you could get them to leave. That I have since, especially since watching your podcast, learned that it isn't that easy to do such a thing.

John Dehlin [00:51:15] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:51:15] But it also was important to let ex members who, until that moment had not spoken out about Scientology to get them to see how many people already have spoken out about. About the subject and trying to encourage them to take the first step as well. In. In meaning they encourage them to speak out themselves about what. Whatever happened to them. In a way, the big List, I guess, now has done its most important job. There is, well, I would say a thriving community of ex Scientology members. There are several chamber channels on YouTube and. And elsewhere with people discussing the subject more or less comparable to what is happening in Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:52:17] Is. Is the term ex science or anti Scientologist? Is that a thing? Is it suppressive people? Do the. Do the Scientology critics embrace the term suppressive people? Like, how do they identify?

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:52:35] Well, you would have to ask them, but I do know that a lot of people got a suppressive person declare from Scientology. Mark and Claire also talked about that in their episode. And they tend to show the actual golden rods. It's kind of a yellow paper where it says they have been declared as a badge of honor on the Internet. So it's. It's more or less. Maybe that's the reason that Scientology no longer, uh, provides these things to X members.

Brooklyn Alden [00:53:14] Oh, do they? Not anymore. Interesting.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:53:16] No, they don't anymore. I Guess they don't like it when people show those things on, on the Internet.

Brooklyn Alden [00:53:21] Yeah, that makes sense to me.

John Dehlin [00:53:24] I love it when people reclaim, you know, a term that's intended to be derogatory. I'll just say really quickly, Corey, that obviously in the Mormon context, the church and its leaders have created this culture where anyone who has a criticism is immediately labeled anti Mormon or the criticism is labeled anti Mormon. And that's a way of thought stopping to get members to immediately stop listening and stop trusting it. Even if it's a believing member that just had a bad experience or learned a piece of history, that's problematic. It's just, you know, the anti Mormon label is a way to just shut believing members minds off.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:54:10] It would. I would say it's pretty much the same for Scientology. I would say it's pretty much the same for Scientology. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:54:17] What were you gonna say, Brooklyn?

Brooklyn Alden [00:54:18] I was just thinking in terms of Mormonism as well, just the term apostate. You know, once you're labeled apostate, like you're, you're invalidated almost in the turn in the eyes of a faithful Mormon, they're not going to be listening to what you have to say because you're now under the influence of Satan or whatever. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:54:34] Scientology even has a, a separate course about the subject, the pts. SP course. PTS is for potential trouble source and SP is for suppressive person. And. Off the top of my head, a PTS is someone who is connected to a suppressive person and you can even be pts when you're for example, sick. So if I have a cold, I'm probably connected to a suppressive person, right?

Brooklyn Alden [00:55:05] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:55:06] Which is kind of weird.

Brooklyn Alden [00:55:07] They're also taught that your physical well being is a reflection of your actions. Yeah. So if you're sick, you've done something wrong.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:55:15] Yeah, yeah. They will say, what have you done to pull this in? Pretty much anything is your own fault.

Brooklyn Alden [00:55:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:27] Interesting. Okay, cool. So you're a legitimate anti Scientologist.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:55:31] I have no problem with that label.

Brooklyn Alden [00:55:33] No, I also agree with that label. Yeah, this is quite impressive. So are you doing this as like a hobby during all of those years or.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:55:44] Yeah, I, I just had a regular job and I pretty much was doing this as indeed kind of a hobby. And I did invest, as John said at the beginning, A lot of time into the subject, the anonymous protest pretty much stopped after a few years. I think by the end of 2012 or 2013, maybe 2014. I'm not sure most of that has stopped. The website that I referred to earlier, which was Interbulation.org has is is no longer around. The big list, as I said, mostly is a resource now for X members. I think it has accomplished its main goal. And yeah, that's pretty much.

John Dehlin [00:56:38] I mean, I have to ask what led. What what? I. I can imagine the bad press around Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah's sofa and acting super weird, all the David Miscavige bad press that came out. But I imagine the work that y' all did and Leah Remini and Mike Rinder speaking out and the documentary that Leah and Mike came out along with Lawrence Wright's Going Clear book and then the documentary. Did I just list most of the main things that. That really damaged Scientology or are there other ones? But I was also going to note you were a part of bringing down the church several notches. It sounds like.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:57:23] Well, I wouldn't take that that much credit, but I do like to think that the big list and another list that I also created, which was with disconnection stories, have been helpful in the protests, tests against Scientology. The main reason for the membership of Scientology going down, I would say, were the documentary Going Clear and the series that Leah Remini did. I also would like to mention a an email that was sent out on January 1, 2012. If I remember correctly, a faithful member of Scientology by the name of Debbie Cook at that moment did send an email critical of David Miscavige to. I've heard thousands of members.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:58:20] I'm not sure about the exact number. She didn't criticize Scientology itself or Elron Hobbit, but she did criticize policies that have been implemented by David Miscavige. And well, of course Miscavige didn't really like that and he immediately kicked her out. And he did at that moment sue her, which didn't help her lawyer put her on the stand.

TrevAnon (Corry) [00:58:51] There's a video about that on YouTube. It's on the YouTube channel by Amy Scobie, which is another ex member. She also provides some context with the video. Basically, Debbie Cook is telling about what she had to endure while she was in the hole and she had to deal with a lot of abuse. And Scientology never, I guess, never expected that because they wanted to get rid of the law case they lawsuit. They started themselves really fast back then. And I'm sure Debbie Cook and the lawyer got a nice amount of money to make it all go away, which I want to emphasize this. This was a webs. This was a lawsuit that Scientology itself started. I mean that's Kind of weird that they didn't expect this, this. This outcome.

John Dehlin [00:59:55] That's interesting because the Mormon Church just started a lawsuit against me and many of us are wondering whether they'll end up regretting that.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:00:03] Yeah, I did see a lot of people on Ash Mormon rather talking about how this was for them the final step to actually resign the church. I guess. I guess we'll see In April of 2026, 7 the new membership numbers in the United States and well, maybe they will go down. We'll see in 2014, at age 46, I found out that I'm on the autism spectrum.

Discovering Mormon Stories and the Ex-Mormon Community

Brooklyn Alden [01:00:39] There's a 46 you discovered.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:00:41] Wow, that's relatively late. Yes. There's a backstory that maybe for this episode isn't that interesting, but it did feel like solving a puzzle for me. All kinds of symptoms all fell on its place. And a lot of people with autism have what is called a special interest. And it's a subject that they are interested in working on, doing, on engaging with a lot. And one, this was one of the things that led me to realize how my special interests obviously was high demand religions, Scientology at the time. And well, frankly, also for me, this was a helpful thing to find out about myself. Since then, I've.

John Dehlin [01:01:44] So part of why we have. I mean, I know there's been a lot of talk in the, we'll say neuroatypical space and even in the autism space to not always talk about these diagnoses as illnesses, but sometimes as features or as blessings or opportunities or positive traits. And I can say the Mormon stories community, clearly, and we'll get to this, has benefited from the focus that possibly your autism brings your brain. Is that kind of what we're saying?

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:02:26] I think that's fair to say.

John Dehlin [01:02:27] Yeah. Yeah. So thank you. Autism is that bad?

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:02:32] I wouldn't say for myself that autism is necessarily bad. Obviously, I'm aware that a lot of people that have autism, maybe suffer from it, maybe even would want it to not be there. I'm not sure if there was some magical solution to not have so I could not have autism anymore would be even attractive to me. I'm not. I'm. I'm wondering what I would do if such a solution would be available. I think at the beginning of 2021. I'm going quite fast now. YouTube suggests the moment Stories episode with Chris Shelton. Oh, Chris Shelton, of course, is an ex Scientology member. And back in, I think it was 2019, you did an episode, a very long episode.

John Dehlin [01:03:36] Multi, multi parts.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:03:37] Yeah, I think it was total. A total of 16 hours or something. Yeah, about his. About the story of Scientology, meaning Alvaron, Robert and David Miscavige, but also with the story of Chris himself being in and later getting out and becoming an actor activist. So I watched that. I continued with a few weeks later, maybe the Mike Winner episode. I think you released that pretty much in during that time period. And then YouTube seems to think that I like your podcast. So he. So YouTube recommends me the episodes with Leah, Cody and Brinley Young.

John Dehlin [01:04:26] That was a classic.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:04:27] That's a. I decided. I decided to give it a chance. I was of course totally in the dark about what Mormonism actually was, but. Okay, let's watch this and well, frankly, that's where it all began. I got hooked at that moment and start watching a lot.

John Dehlin [01:04:47] Hey, tell us what I believe it or not, I'm texting Leah today because Leah's coming into town and wanted to hang out with me and Margi. So it's just a total serendipitous moment that you're mentioning Cody and Leah Young and they're in my text chat window. What was it about that story in particular, if you remember, that was moving to you or interesting to you? Do you even remember?

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:05:14] I guess, yeah, like the Legend of the Phoenix. A family going into a. My own words, rather dark place. Losing faith, not being sure of how to handle maybe even life anymore and then gradually finding out, finding the way to get out of that situation. That is, I guess for most, never Mormons. The are these, these stories are the easiest to relate to. We'll get to it. But for example, sometimes the episodes about Mormon history for me as a Nova mole, are a little harder

John Dehlin [01:06:04] fair.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:06:05] But the, the stories where people just, well, basically just tell their story and go through the process in most cases of a faith deconstruction and then finding out how to make sense of life again. Those are the easiest to relate to and that it always. They always tend to have a nice ending, a good ending. I guess maybe that's kind of a self selection. If, if I were a Mormon and I lose my faith and I end up in the gutter, then basically I don't think I would be on your show. But that's what attracted me, I guess.

John Dehlin [01:06:52] Yeah. Brooklyn, I mean we do this every week, but it's kind of these, these faith journeys that we do. I can see how from an outsider's perspective are kind of viewed as a story of hope, of redemption. Redemption and of hope.

Brooklyn Alden [01:07:11] Yeah, I was gonna say, I never think about it in terms of, oh, the happy ending, you know, I don't know why it hadn't. I hadn't looked at it in that light before, but they kind of all of happy endings, don't they? So as soon as you say that, I'm like, I can't think of one that ended on a sad note or something. And maybe if it ever did of like, oh, this is something going on in my life. I feel like the Mormon stories audience has even rallied to like help those people after sharing their success situation. And it's always a happy ending on this channel, isn't it?

John Dehlin [01:07:36] Yeah, almost always. Hopefully always. And even like the mixed faith couples or the father daughter, like those have happy endings because they show reconciliation even with belief differences. So it's not about people leaving the church, it's just about people improving their lives. It sounds like, I think just when

Brooklyn Alden [01:07:56] people find themselves in a happy place, whatever that may be or what that means for them, like, we're all happy for you. Happy ending all the way.

John Dehlin [01:08:03] Nice, Nice.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:08:05] Well, I tried to put into words my thoughts about the faith obviously as well. I don't have a problem identifying as an atheist, but I, I like the term. I think it was coined by Dan Vogel, P. S Fraud. Is that.

John Dehlin [01:08:25] Yeah. Pious fraud. Yep. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:08:29] Okay. I don't have a lot of patience with the behavior of Joseph Smith. I guess he was just a sexual

John Dehlin [01:08:42] predator in your opinion. I'm joking, but sort of.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:08:47] Okay. In my opinion. I'll add that.

Brooklyn Alden [01:08:51] Not another lawsuit charge for Johnny.

John Dehlin [01:08:55] I don't think he can sue me.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:08:59] Hey Dallas, come and get me. I never, I never read the Book of Mormon. I don't see a reason actually for books to be set apart just because there are, there is a Harry Potter book. I don't believe Harry Potter is real or Voldemort is real. That's for me, the story same basically.

Brooklyn Alden [01:09:24] So hey, that might be where I draw the line.

John Dehlin [01:09:26] I don't know.

Brooklyn Alden [01:09:27] I prefer Harry Potter to be real.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:09:29] Voldemort is real,

John Dehlin [01:09:32] is right here.

Brooklyn Alden [01:09:34] I'm. I'm just living in, you know, denial about it. But. Sorry,

John Dehlin [01:09:41] can I just say. Brooklyn, Can I just say this is a total segue or a side thing? Brooklyn. Have you ever been to the Gringotts bank at. At Universal Studios in Orlando?

Brooklyn Alden [01:09:55] I've been to the Florida one one time when it was all brand new. And then I've been to the Harry Potter Studios. But not in California.

John Dehlin [01:10:02] Why No, Margi and I recently went to the one in Florida. The Gringotts bank and the Hagrid ride. They're amazing.

Brooklyn Alden [01:10:12] Yeah, that Hagrid one is what I remember. That was fun.

John Dehlin [01:10:14] No, they've got a new ride where you go into the bank and then you do a ride with dragons and everything. It's. It's really amazing.

Brooklyn Alden [01:10:22] No, it's been so long, you have to go back.

John Dehlin [01:10:25] Okay, sorry. Sorry for the diversion.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:10:30] No problem. In 2021, I also created an account on Reddit, of course, with the travelnon username, and I started reading. Basically what happened in this time is that I started learning about Mormonism, history, stories of people and well, obviously learning about what you are doing in your podcast. And I remember at one time asking on Reddit how it's the teaching about eternal families being together forever, how that actually works. Because I was like, okay, if I'm going to be my. With my, with my parents, they have parents too, are they going to be with their parents? And they have parents too, are they going to be with their parents?

John Dehlin [01:11:22] Don't forget siblings. Don't forget children and siblings. And then all of them with their parent, with their.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:11:28] My siblings are married and have kids and some of those have kids themselves.

John Dehlin [01:11:34] This house and all the in laws going to be.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:11:37] How is that even going to work? And I remember asking that on Reddit because I was kind of confused and one person said, well, actually you're using simple logic to this teaching and yes, it's true, it doesn't make any sense.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:11:58] Which was kind of an interesting thing to hear. I do think ever this was in 2021, I think that I asked that. And ever since, there have been a few more people asking the very same question on ex Mormon Reddit, which I'm happy to refer to the answer that I was given back in the day, when such a thing happens.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:12:25] I think In August of 2021, I saw your first live episode. It's still on the YouTube channel. It was kind of a test. And in that episode you asked the general audience to help out with creating time codes.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:12:45] And what you wanted is to. For people to give the start and finish of any previous episodes that they thought was important so you could decide if to make a short off out of these older episodes. At first, I guess it didn't click for me, but you did another video, a short video where you repeated that request. And all of a sudden, again, such a. A similar moment as in 2008 happened, which was that I felt cold to say, I can do this, I can help this guy. And I wanted to Give something back for having consumed a lot of episodes back then. So at the end of August, I decided to create timecodes for.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:13:50] For the Chris Shelton episode, the full 16 hours. And I sent you an email, and I was like, okay, this guy's probably very busy, so I want to be really sure that he actually got my email because, well, it would be kind of a bummer if he didn't. So I reached out to you. Hey, did you get my email? And you were like, okay, I have them. Thank you. Thanks a lot.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:14:19] So that was, for me, kind of the signal to start creating time codes for all your other episodes. I want to say here that you never personally asked me to do this work. This was just me being a volunteer. I do remember at one moment that you asked me to prioritize the episodes that had a lot of views, which of course made all the sense to me. So I did follow up on. On that request.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:14:51] So in a way, that was kind of a similar moment as what I had in May of 2008. By the way, I created the TravelNon account on May 19th. I have no idea about your planning, but if you release this episode on the 19th of this month, I'll be 18 years old.

John Dehlin [01:15:16] Write that down. Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Alden [01:15:17] Yeah, I know. 19th. We got it.

John Dehlin [01:15:21] And tell us how many videos and how many hours you've dedicated just to time codes and show notes.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:15:28] I think I did about 870 episodes, and this was for a total of 1100 episodes hours. But of course, while listening, I cannot. I have to think of the time codes and. And what is important and what should be in the time codes and what should not. So I had to every now and then go back a little, think of what. To what the time code should be, and then type that and then continue. So I think probably in. In about a year time between the end of August and to 2021 and the beginning of December 2022, I've maybe 1400 hours worked for that. I mean, something like that.

John Dehlin [01:16:18] I just want to pause and just. I kind of alluded to this at the beginning of the episode, but we have a guy who's never been Mormon, who lives in the Netherlands, who is not getting paid. He's a volunteer, and he has personally volunteered, I'm going to say, thousands of hours between time codes and show notes. And now being our moderator on YouTube, he's personally decided to donate thousands of hours to support our community. And that's just. It's like touching. It's moving. It's humbling that someone would feel called, but then also follow through and be so committed to supporting us. It's. I mean, I'm just. It's kind of stunning.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:17:10] You can thank my autism for that, I guess.

John Dehlin [01:17:13] Or your character and your spirit.

Brooklyn Alden [01:17:16] There's something in there as well. Yeah. That. That's very kind kindness.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:17:22] I would still say that I didn't. I don't have spent as much time for Mormon stories as I did for researching the big list and all the other things that I did in. When I was more active in this anti Scientology.

What Drew a Never-Mormon to Support Ex-Mormons

John Dehlin [01:17:39] But can I also just say, because I think it's powerful. You've never been an actual cult member, so. Okay, I'm gonna. I just had this thought, like, if you had asked me before I started to try and understand autism better, one way I might have described autism would be as a lack of empathy. And I know that those words are probably offensive to a lot of people.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:18:08] I understand what you mean.

John Dehlin [01:18:10] But the fact that you've never been a member of a cult, and yet you feel drawn to not only having an interest in a cult, but some level of compassion or care or concern for cult members that you. You want to dedicate a huge portion of your life, thousands and thousands of hours of your life uncompensated, for free, to support current and former cult members. To me, that's the definition of empathy, and that's a inspiring example of deep, profound empathy. Now, maybe I'm misjudging your. Your motives or your character, but help me make sense of that relative to how people often. What assumptions people often make about autism.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:19:12] As far as I can tell, I'm not. Well, I have autism. I'm not especially specialized in the subject. As far as I can tell, people with autism lack the ability to. How do I explain that? To feel all the other people's feelings. When I see you cry, I understand that you're not happy about whatever it is, but when you're kind of sad, but you don't really show that, then I have a problem with recognizing that. While a neurotypical person probably will notice and will ask something like John or Brooklyn, what's going on? And I.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:20:07] The reason that I started my work in the anti Scientology community basically was because there was such a lot of abuse going on. The forced abortions that Claire talked about were already a known subject. I'm not sure if Claire herself, at that moment had spoken out about it, but they were. It was known that a lot of women had to go through that.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:20:41] So I basically was like, this is abuse. This is just plain wrong. And I want to do something to help to, well, at least try and make that go away. I guess the, the. The. How do I say that?

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:21:05] Fighting abuse was my main motivator. And. And to us, to maybe a somewhat lesser extent, that was also my motivation to start volunteering from Monster Stories. I think the Scientology Church and the Latter Day Saint movement actually don't have a lot of real differences. Of course there is vast difference in theology, but in the way the or organizations are led and how they exercise undue influence over their members is very much the same. Same. And that's, I guess, the main motivation for me to do this work.

John Dehlin [01:21:55] And do you feel the sadness or the concern or the empathy inside you? Is that part of what motivates you? Or is it. Is it a combination of feeling and intellect? Is it mostly logic or intellect? Is it.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:22:08] You know, it's hard to say. I. Not sure. I'm not sure what is. What it is that actually gets. Keeps me going. I guess it's more the intellectual side of things, understanding that people suffer and wanting that at least wanting to do a little bit to. To stop that or make that less.

Brooklyn Alden [01:22:37] Well, we're just lucky you chose our community to put that effort into.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:22:43] Yeah, you'll have to thank the YouTube algorithm for giving me the episode with Leah and Cody. John.

John Dehlin [01:22:52] No, I'm going to thank you for your compassion and your dedication.

Brooklyn Alden [01:22:57] Yeah, absolutely.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:22:59] Ever. Well, in 2021, as I already said, I started participating in. On ex Mormon Reddit. I like to give an outside perspective, maybe sometimes also a perspective from a country that is highly secular and. Well, I think a lot of people in that subreddit do like people giving such a perspective. It's basically the same as what I'm doing in the.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:23:33] In the chat when I'm participating, when a new, new episode is released. At one moment, I think Maven asked me if I would be interested in an interview with her on Letter Daily Digest. I still somehow at the time, was quite afraid of what Scientology maybe would do.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:24:01] I asked Mike Rinder for advice. I sent him an email. He was kind enough to send me an email back and basically say that I had, in his view, nothing really to worry about. It's. I guess it took me another half a year maybe to get comfortable with the idea of me being out in the open, using my real name. Well, here I am.

Brooklyn Alden [01:24:31] Yeah, congrats. That's amazing. You spoke to my Grinder as well?

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:24:36] Only for a bit, but he was back in the day. He was aware of my work on the big list. So I guess that played a role. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:46] And he passed away last year. Last January.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:24:49] Exactly. Yeah. So during the past 18 years, I've learned a lot about Scientology as well as Mormonism, and I thought it would be interesting to make a comparison between these two organizations. And so I've prepared a. A presentation about that.

John Dehlin [01:25:12] Absolutely. So this is. This is fantastic. So what we. We now have. So someone who has spent years and years and years studying Scientology, and now he's. He. In some ways, he knows Mormonism better than most active, faithful, orthodox Mormons, at least from an objective outsider's perspective. And you put together kind of a. A comparison of how you. How you compare the two religions. Yeah, I. I don't know, Brooklyn. I'm. I'm kind of fascinated. What do you think?

Brooklyn Alden [01:25:43] I enjoy. I'm excited. I think you're the perfect person to do this comparison.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:25:48] I guess I'll just go through the comparison I've made here. My first problem was that, of course, I need to have some kind of a framework to compare religions. Just making a list of similarities, I think, isn't quite helpful.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:26:14] I think it is more helpful to have a list of similarities starting from a viewpoint of how to compare religions. Of course, we have the bite model that is mostly focused, I guess, on comparing religions from the individual species perspective, the individual member. How does this religion try to control my behavior?

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:26:45] The information that I have access to? How does this religion try to control my thoughts and my emotions? I used a list of comparisons. A list of similarities. Sorry. That I made by re watching. And also, of course, using the time codes that I did for the Chris Shelton episodes. I also used the episode you did with Mark and Claire Headley the first two hours. Basically, you're talking about similarities between the two belief systems. And what I noticed is that when you are talking with someone else about their former religion, you're using more or less marketing or an organizational perspective.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:27:40] Scientology does this because they want to accomplish this or that goal. So I've. I had an education about organization business administration, and I have been taught about the 4Pmarketing mix model. I never used it in my career. I basically was more into IT systems. But a very common way to analyze organizations and how they present their products and their services to prospective customers is by analyzing what is the product characteristics, what are the promotion things, where do we deliver our products or services, and of course, what is the price. I also thought it would be helpful to analyze recent changes in the marketing mix. I'll get to that later.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:28:55] And I guess other business considerations are also helpful to compare religions. The model is not there yet. I don't think this is much more than a first concept. Maybe while we're going through these list of similarities, I guess it will become clear how I look at this.

Comparing Scientology and Mormonism: Core Products

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:29:24] So the current situation, what is our product? Both Scientology and Mormonism give you as a member a goal for Scientology that is realizing your full potential, becoming an operating Satan. For Mormonism, I guess that would be families being together forever and going to the celestial kingdom.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:29:52] Of course both religions have a lot of teachings. For Scientology, that is past lives. There are future lives for the seed orc people. That's the. The billion year contract that Clarence Mark explained. When you signed a billion year contract, you promise to come back for the next billion years of your future lives. The whole thing of past lives and future lives is called the whole track. And I guess more or less the comparable thing in Mormonism is the pre existence and life in the celestial kingdom.

John Dehlin [01:30:35] Exaltation or eternal life, eternal salvation.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:30:39] Feel free to correct me anything I say something wrong.

John Dehlin [01:30:42] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:30:45] Mark and explained about one's journal 67th and about the confidential levels that Scientology has. These are the operating thetan one through eight levels. That includes the xeno story as depicted on South Park. Of course, Mormonism also has rituals, the temple rituals that are confidential. Not everyone gets to experience them. And the second anointing is of course a ritual that only a few people get to have. Both or both belief systems threaten you will with all. All kinds of bad things. When you learn about the secret things for OT3, that's that you will get pneumonia and die. And I think in the episode with Mark and Claire, John, you said that seeing the plates will kill you. Is that true?

John Dehlin [01:31:56] That was. Yeah, that was what Joseph Smith. That was the justification. Joseph Smith used to tell people he couldn't show them the golden plates that they. That they were so filled with God's power that they would die if they beheld them.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:32:12] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:32:12] Yeah, I think. Is that right, Brooklyn? That's my memory.

Brooklyn Alden [01:32:17] Yeah. I mean that's what I would have said growing up too. Yeah. I feel like you never are taught some like super sophisticated story of it, but just that like if they were taught if they saw the plates it'd be too overwhelming and die. Or like. Yeah, that's what I would have thought.

John Dehlin [01:32:28] But also, also Christianity I think teaches that if you see God's face, you'll die. That if you, you know that that's having a divine encounter can be so powerful it can kill you, you know.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:32:44] Okay, So we also have a. The condition of the doubts. What it's called in Scientology where you basically get a list of steps that you have to take whenever you are in kind in some kind of a situation where you doubt.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:33:08] It's called the doubt formula. We in Mormonism you have to doubt your doubts. That's one of the things one of the Q12 members I think said Claire talked about. Never question source. And the moment equivalent for that will be that the prophet won't lead you astray in both belief systems in a way also claim that you can eventually become a God yourself.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:33:39] So that's. That's a short list of the teachings for both systems that I took from these episodes. I would like to add here that maybe it's. If you create a religion yourself. Don't try this at home kids. But.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:33:58] But if you create a religion then it maybe is an idea to put in some kind of a teaching about sex or masturbation or that kind of thing. Because as a. As an. As someone who maybe wants to lead a cult, you get recur members to screw up on whatever your exact teachings are. And so they will come back to you for the. To be healed from whatever sins they. They.

Brooklyn Alden [01:34:35] Yeah, they're creating the problem then offering the solution like we like.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:34:39] Exactly. Both systems have an explanation for why we do bad things in Scientology. These are engrams and body Satans. And I think this is again you John, in the episodes you did with Claire and Mark. Spirits in the pre existing distance being cast out, becoming followers of Satan and going to earth. So I thought that was kind of an. A parallel or a similarity. Both systems have maybe it's not really useful to go through the exact details, but they have both prescriptions for how to live.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:35:26] Erasing engrams is a thing in Scientology. Going to church is something in Mormonism. You have overts and withholds in Scientology, which is more like the sin concept in. In Mormonism. When I am reading this, I also think that maybe someone with a theology degree may have more to say about this on more formal systems on when you are comparing religions. So I'd be happy to learn about that from people. For example, in the comments I'll just

Sin, Control, and Spiritual Coercion in Both Churches

John Dehlin [01:36:06] say that the sin in Mormonism is very much associated with evil spirits tempting or influencing you. And that sounds very much like thetans to me. Or thetans. And then yeah, like taking the sacrament or praying or repenting. In effect you're casting out or trying to cast out from you the influence of these satanic or evil spirits.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:36:35] The Satan is what you actually are. I guess the concept of overton withholds is more like what is sin. Overts and withholds are things that you're not telling an auditing session to your auditor. And security checks are basically the same process as auditing, but they are there to find out what overs and whittles or bad things that you did. So they are kind of similar to confessions.

John Dehlin [01:37:08] Okay. So both groups. Both groups are tempted by external spirits. Both groups have sins that they commit where they hide. They do bad things and. Or they hide it. Both have to do some sort of form of confession with an approved church leader to repent and eventually, hopefully, be cleaned of the influence of these evil spirits.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:37:36] And in Scientology, the letter is called making amends. And in Mormonism, that is kind of the repentance process.

John Dehlin [01:37:44] Yeah, in.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:37:45] In. In both belief systems, you want orders to learn about the beautiful things of Scientology, respectively. Mormonism. And in Scientology, you do that through auditing other people. You do that. So there are two parts to the bridge of total, to total freedom. The one part is the auditing part, where you get auditing yourself, and the other is the training part, where you learn how to train how to audit someone else.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:38:21] I think Mark talked about that, how he was basically a guinea pig for Tom Cruise to learn how to audit. Of course, in modernism, you have more or less the same thing. You have missions where you go on a mission to convince other people of how beautiful the religion is. And I guess, in a way, you could also say that having a calling in the church is another way to help fellow members of the religion to be engaged in. In the religion.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:38:58] Maybe you could say more about that, but that. That was something that I took from that. In Scientology, you have what is called success stories. After you've finished a course, you're. You're expected to give a success story and tell what you learned from the course.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:39:20] I guess that's more or less comparable to a testimony meeting where you basically say that I know the church is true. Both religions have an emphasis on statistics. There are. I guess there are elementary courses in Scientology that are basically the cheese in the trap. They have a communication course that's basically the first course that you can do. It's about, I don't know, 50 bucks. And it teaches you basic ways to have better communication with family members and whoever. I. I would say that for Mormonism, the cheese in the trap is that families are forever. Mm.

Brooklyn Alden [01:40:13] I was thinking the same Thing. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:40:15] Okay.

Brooklyn Alden [01:40:16] That's not a thing in other religions as well. And like, it's special to us, but

John Dehlin [01:40:21] that only Mormons get to be with their families forever in heaven. Yeah, yeah, that's the.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:40:27] Another. Another interesting similarity is that Scientology is preserving Hubbard's speeches on gold records that are written words on titanium plates. And Mark talked about how they even have sun powered cassette and record players. I wasn't. I was not aware of that until he mentioned it. But in a way it makes sense because of course, after the earth has gone down in a nuclear apocalypse thing, then. Then we need Scientology to make things right again.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:41:04] Yeah, I guess that's more or less comparable to the genealogy effort by a lot of LDS members. So I think that was on my previous sheet. So genealogy helps at the bottom and so everyone will be baptized in the millennium after Jesus's return.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:41:27] Now we have basically more or less defined what our product is. It maybe sound a bit weird in the context of religion to just view it a as of product, but I hope I make sense here.

John Dehlin [01:41:39] Were you going to say something, Brooklyn?

Brooklyn Alden [01:41:42] Sorry, I mean, it was off topic. It just got me thinking, like, have you ever done any major series on genealogy? I feel like that's another topic.

John Dehlin [01:41:50] The only thing I've done. And just weirdly, I saw the guy at the gym this last week. I'm forgetting his name right now, but he worked in, you know, member records or he worked in the department. Actually, no, I'm thinking of somebody else, but. But several years ago, we interviewed someone who worked at church headquarters and he was Don Casayas. What's that?

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:42:17] Don Casayas. He worked at the temple. He talked about how there are different. How does the name. How the names for new names at the temple. At one moment, almost the list was. Almost.

John Dehlin [01:42:36] Yeah. How the church didn't track its people who's had their work done for them through work for the dead. They didn't track that very well. So that lots and lots and lots thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people had their work done multiple times. Whether it was their baptism or their sealing or their endowments. The church for many, many years allowed people's work to be done for them multiple times, which meant that all the members would go and spend an hour or two each week thinking that they were doing an important ordinance work for dead people. When in reality.

Brooklyn Alden [01:43:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:43:19] And that like Hitler had had his work done for him eight or ten times and he had been sealed to have a bronze. Want to make sure Hitler's really baptized well,

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:43:32] okay.

Brooklyn Alden [01:43:32] I mean, I just think genealogy would be fascinating almost to do a series on and like food storage. Like these funny, random like obsessions with Mormonism that probably never. Members don't realize the significance of. Because such a big part of my life is genealogy for some reason.

John Dehlin [01:43:49] Absolutely.

Brooklyn Alden [01:43:49] I mean, I think that was more important than food storage, but yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:43:53] Okay. Well now currently we're still defining what, what our products, what our religion.

John Dehlin [01:43:58] Can I just say really quick. I'm sorry, I just want to just add one thing, Corey, that talking about Mormonism as a business for me is the best way to explain Mormonism. Because, you know, just take child sex abuse cover ups. If Jesus is really your guide, there's no way on earth that you as a church would handle child sex abuse the way that the Mormon Church handles it. The only way to explain the way the Mormon Church acts with its lawyers, the fact that it uses lawyers as historians.

John Dehlin [01:44:35] The only way to explain that, the fact that the most prevalent profession in the quorum of the 12 and the first presidency is attorneys. Two thirds of the first presidency right now are attorneys. The only way to explain that is that the church operates first and foremost like a business and then secondly or distantly as a church.

John Dehlin [01:45:00] And the best testament of all is the fact that the Mormon Church is worth between 3 and $500 billion. How else can you describe the church and its motives and its behavior? As Jesus said, wherever your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

John Dehlin [01:45:19] So the fact that the church is suing Mormon stories over trademark and copyright legal justifications shows that the church's primary concern. It's like McDonald's or Nike or Sony. The Mormon Church is a corporation and a business first and I would say a religion as 10th or 20th in its list of priorities. So anyway, you don't have to apologize to us, Corey, for talking about Mormonism in terms of product and brand management.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:45:56] Maybe, just maybe if there is a believing member watching.

John Dehlin [01:46:00] No, I mean, I mean be a believer, but I mean it's literally called the corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That's the name. That's the official name of the church.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:46:12] I, I'll come back to that later, but I would like to point out that for a believing member, it may be.

John Dehlin [01:46:19] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:46:20] Kind of worrisome.

John Dehlin [01:46:21] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:46:21] To see how many similarities there are between Mormonisms and Scientology. Sure. I mean Scientology is obviously very totally bad. Why would the Mormon Church want to be compared. Compared to that.

John Dehlin [01:46:38] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:46:39] And see how many similarities there are.

John Dehlin [01:46:43] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:46:44] We I'm now on the third page.

John Dehlin [01:46:46] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:46:47] Of comparing the two products. So to say.

John Dehlin [01:46:50] Yes.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:46:51] Who do we worship? Well, obviously L. Ron Hubbard is very important. Scientology. David Miscavige more or less, I would say, tries to take over his place in Mormonism. Of course you have God and Jesus and mostly baby Joseph Smith. But also I would say that for example, in Scientology, the people who have done OT eight are more or less seen as gods or something. That's at least how an ex member of Scientology at one moment explained it to me. I guess that is more or less comparable to how the current prophet, first presidency and the apostles are seen. And sometimes in the case of someone like David Bednar, how they expect to be treated.

John Dehlin [01:47:43] Yeah. Where everyone has to stand up when they walk in the room. If that's not worship, what is? Right.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:47:49] That kind of thing. Of course, both religious systems have rituals, rites of passage. In Scientology that would be cause completions. I think I. I know they have a marriage procedure because on their channel, Mark and Claire at one moment did show their own marriage video. I guess in Mormonism you would have things like baby blessing, baptism, baptisms for the dead, the mission sealing and funeral and.

John Dehlin [01:48:25] And also priesthood. Priesthood ordination

Brooklyn Alden [01:48:29] for the women. You know, your young women's medallion. That felt like a progress point check. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:48:36] I'm sure when you were to analyze this table somewhat deeper than we maybe can.

John Dehlin [01:48:44] No, you're doing great. This is great.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:48:48] Both you as moments or ex moments, however you want to identify yourself. And Scientologists would be able to add all kinds of things. In Scientology there's all kinds of traditions. The LRH Birthday Dianetics Day in two days, which May 9 was the day that the Dianetics book was published in 1950. So they still have a Dianetics day for that. Maiden voyage is an important day in Scientology. The free winds ship did its maiden voyage in the past on June 6 and ever since they have almost every year I think. They have a special day for that. There are several others and of course in Mormonism, Pioneer deer Christmas and I think also Easter. Maybe things like Pentecostal and Ascension Day are things in Mormonism. I'm not sure about that.

John Dehlin [01:49:59] We definitely care about Christmas and Easter.

Brooklyn Alden [01:50:01] We have Pioneer Day and then of course we've got our Pioneer day, which I love that you got that down there. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:50:08] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:50:08] Yeah.

Brooklyn Alden [01:50:10] Statewide holiday for Mormons and non Mormons alike.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:50:14] And both religious systems in a way have all kinds of mythology. L. Ron Hobbits claims that he found Dianetics and he cured himself of several Nasty diseases or whatever it was. And in Mormonism, towards the end of his life. I understood you, John. To explain how Joseph Smith's claims were getting bolder and bolder and there is a condemnation of the natural man. The letter I don't really understand, but I guess in both systems you have stories about things that maybe aren't exactly real or are myths.

John Dehlin [01:51:05] Absolutely.

Shunning, Secrecy, and Us-Versus-Them Culture

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:51:07] This is the fourth slide where we compare the two products. I guess in a way you could say, especially in Scientology, there is an us versus them mentality within the system itself. Things like fair game and disconnection are pretty much part of Scientology scripture. I think I earlier mentioned the PTSSP course that Scientology has. It basically explains how BTS people, potential trouble sources are things that you should not be in contact with or.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:51:49] And especially suppressive people are people that you should not be in contact with, more or less. I guess Mormonism has the same things. Excommunication, obviously, is a thing. Russell Nelson has talked about how we are not supposed to take counsel from those who don't believe. I think he did a lot of damage with saying that. And there's a.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:52:20] A shunning culture. Culture. It's maybe not exactly in scripture for the Mormonism like it is in Scientology, but definitely both systems tend to teach their members to stay away from people who, who have left the faith.

John Dehlin [01:52:43] I'm just, I'm just gonna interject really quickly. Sometimes people like to see our faces and sometimes people like to see the actual words. What we're going to do is we're going to upload these PDFs and put them in the show notes. And instead of people wanting to read these words on the screen, we're going to invite them to just launch the PDF and follow along the PDF as we talk about it so that we don't have to, in the screen keep jumping back and forth. So I'm just going to warn people. That should be the way you. You visually view what. What. What Trevor or Corey is showing. Okay, keep going.

Promotion, Celebrities, and Recruitment Tactics

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:53:29] Okay, now the second P in the marketing mix model is how do we promote our religion? Scientology, of course, has personality tests, tests, stress tests. They also have book one or the Dianetics book. They used to have a. And they still have, I think the IMA Scientologist campaign.

John Dehlin [01:53:51] And that's important that they did that before Mormonism. So we think the I'm a Mormon

Brooklyn Alden [01:53:57] campaign, I believe, is the one who really championed that. Who, who in Scientology, Mike Render, I believe, came up with I'm a. More I'm a Scientologist and then we,

John Dehlin [01:54:06] we stole that campaign when we did. I'm a Mormon. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:54:11] And on the Mormonism side of the table that I'm showing here is of course when I, I am interested in becoming a member. I've. I basically start with the missionary discussions and missionaries will offer me the Book of Mormon.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:54:28] I deliberately did not mention the I am a Mon Mormon campaign here. That might change in the future because it will come up in a next. Next slide. Both religions tend to be proud of whoever they, whoever celebrities that are members for Scientology. That by the way is a very small number. We always mention Tom Cruise and John Trifold Malta. But when you make a list of any celebrity that is, well, let's say a list or maybe B list, then the total list is no longer than maybe 40 or 50 people.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:55:17] On his blog, Tony Ortega has made a list of people who would maybe seen as celebrities. And I think a few of those names I never heard of while I've been around this space in for 18 years now. So I guess, well, Tom Cruise obviously is, is, is very famous, but there are people who are called celebrities with that maybe aren't on the side of Mormonism. You have of course the Osmonds that we already talked about.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:55:58] I think there are other. I would say that there are other celebrities who are still members. There's also members, of course. Sorry. There's also X members of course, which will. I'll, which I will show in the next slide.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:56:18] The thing about Scientology is that they for years have not, not said anything real about their membership number. In the, in the past they used to say they had millions of members and again they never had that many. And their current PR is about the numbers of square feet for their Scientology orgs, which is basically their churches. Imagine the Mormon Church advertising the number of square feet for the churches that they open. It's kind of a ridiculous thing.

John Dehlin [01:56:54] Or acreage that they own.

Brooklyn Alden [01:56:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:56:57] As the second largest private landowner in the United States. Imagine if we, we bragged about our real estate ownership acreage.

Brooklyn Alden [01:57:08] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:57:11] For Mormonism we also, we only know kind of whitewashed membership statistics. We don't get to hear about for example, the number of tithe paying members or the number of members that are actually visiting church. And that I guess would be more helpful than just saying that mormonism has like 18 million members because frankly we don't. We do know that's not actually what is the current situation.

Brooklyn Alden [01:57:43] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:57:44] Okay. Both Scientology and Mormonism have things that we do not want you to know.

John Dehlin [01:57:53] Wait, really quick really quick. I just want to highlight. I don't know if we missed it, but the idea that L. Ron Hubbard's life is whitewashed to Scientologists is similar to how Joseph Smith's life has been whitewashed to Mormons and to the general public. I don't know if we missed that slide but. Or that part of the slide.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:58:17] I didn't read it out loud, but yes, it's on the slides.

John Dehlin [01:58:22] That's really important I think. And that's one of the main reasons we do Mormon stories is to help. The Joseph Smith podcast series or the LDS discussion series is just all about informed consent and letting Mormons know about their own founding prophet, honestly. So that's important.

Financial Practices and Hidden Information

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:58:40] Okay. Both organizations are do have a few things that they don't want you to know about. Both Scientology and Mormonism don't want you to know about church finances. I guess Mormonism also doesn't want you to know about Yasi Sissen scandal. As far as I'm aware, Scientology didn't have a similar thing.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:59:05] Both organizations do not want you to know about the real membership statistics, the real history of the church and the real history of the founder. And while Scientology likes it when you know about Tom Cruise and John Travolta and what who not to be members, they do not want you to know that to get celebrities in was a deliberate strategy from the beginning.

TrevAnon (Corry) [01:59:33] There's even I think a policy lab or something like that by L1 Hubbard that says that Scientologies, Scientologists need to do what's in their power to get celebrities in to get well more attention for. For the subject. Both organizations don't want you to know about their critics and about organizations such as in Scientology's case, the Michael J. Rinder, Aftermath Foundations and I guess Dallin Oaks is now meeting the Streisand effect when he sues the Open Storage foundation because I guess it has been helpful for a lot of members to learn about Mormon stories existence and we'll see how that goes in the future. If people are starting to watch your show, then maybe they.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:00:38] If they are, they maybe they will soon find out that you're sometimes very critical of the church, but maybe they'll learn some something about their religion that they were previously unaware of. I guess both cases, both Scientology and Mormonism, it is.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:01:00] It becomes a disadvantage when a celebrity decides to speak out. Leah Remini of In the Case of Scientology, of course is an obvious example because he did the documentary series. But a few others are Larry Anderson and Michael Fairman who have both since left and spoken out against Scientology. There were. They are both also on the big list.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:01:24] In a way, I guess Mormonism doesn't tell members about how people like Tyler, Glenn, Wayne Sherman, Benue Schwimmer, David Ara, how they left the church.

John Dehlin [02:01:41] Dan Reynolds. Dan Reynolds, Heather. Heather Gay and.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:01:46] And of course more people.

John Dehlin [02:01:48] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:01:49] An interesting fact of course is that both religions have a soft episode. I don't know if they really like it, but. Well, yeah, I. I'm not aware if of if the Jehovah's also have an episode.

John Dehlin [02:02:08] I don't know. It's a good question.

Brooklyn Alden [02:02:10] Yeah. Yeah. I wonder. There's got to be a few references throughout the years.

John Dehlin [02:02:14] The Masons do. The Masonic Lodge has an episode of this of the Simpsons.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:02:25] Mark explains in the episode that you did with him and Claire that Scientology has a different distorted view on ethics. Criticize Miscavige and Gerard. Debbie Cook, I mentioned her earlier, was one of the people who was kicked out before criticizing Miscavige. And being a pedophile when you're in Scientology is pretty much okay as long as you pay the bill.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:02:50] I guess more or less. This is the same for Mormonism. It's kind of sad to say that, but it is a similarity that I think is, well, real. Okay, where do we deliver our religion? Scientology has missions where you can basically get the introductory courses. They have ideal orcs where you can do auditing up to the level of clear. For me, I think the nearest org is in Amsterdam in 2008. I went there for a moment. I didn't give them my real name. I also didn't buy a book, but I got a tour of the. Of the Scientology org. It it's kind of helped me to understand why people fall for a religious system like Scientology or maybe even also modernism.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:03:55] The upper levels ot 1 through 5 you can do in advanced orgs. They there are I think five or six of them all over the world. For me the nearest would be in Copenhagen, Denmark. There's in Florida, there's the flag land base where you can do OT 6 and 7 and on the ship the free wins. You can do the last level that Scientology Office, which is the OT8 level.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:04:25] Mormonism more or less has comparable things that churches are for. Let's say regular services and temples are for the initiated into the people initiated into the having the endowment, having their downplay endowment taken out. Scientology also has a separate kind of organization for celebrities. They are called the celebrity centers. I'm not really sure. I think at Celebrity Centers you can like at orgs do Scientology up to the level of clear.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:05:10] Once as a celebrity, you start on your OT levels. I guess you would have to go to the advanced orgs and the other two.

John Dehlin [02:05:21] Let me, let me just jump in just because I googled it just to give an update. The Jehovah's Witnesses apparently do have assigned a South park episode.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:05:30] That's great.

John Dehlin [02:05:30] According to Google. Yeah, it's season 17, episode one, let go. Let Go. So.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:05:38] Okay, that's. That's really nice to hear.

John Dehlin [02:05:43] You know, you've arrived as a high demand religion or cult if you've got your own south park episode.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:05:48] That's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah. Mormonism has a thing, well, as had a thing, I should say, which is the announcement of new temples on pretty much every general conference. And the Scientology equivalent for that would be the ideal program. Ideal or program Scientology has, I don't know, maybe a hundred or something orcs around the world. A lot of them are rather small. And when the Scientology members in a given area are able to collect enough money and give that to Scientology, then Scientology will buy some building at a fancy place, renovate it so it's all glitzy and whatnot and they will then use that as the new org for that given country or area.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:06:59] It's a very expensive program and sometimes it takes decades for from the very start of trying to get an ideal orc in a certain area to the actual opening. Of course, for every opening, David Miscavige is going to show up and it's going to be a lot of fun far and hoopla and whatever.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:07:22] But after he has gone, in most cases, the ideal orcs tend to to be quite empty. Which if I remember correctly was a reason for Chris Shelton to start questioning Scientology. When he was still in. He moved through several Scientology churches, ideal orcs and he always saw how they were basically empty. And every orc seemed to to think that they are the only one that is in big trouble if and not getting the statistics they are supposed to get. But when you visit several orcs and you see they are all empty, then I get that is maybe a first step in start to doubt your faith.

Brooklyn Alden [02:08:18] Mark Headley spoke about that as well. Of that being an issue for them too. Of the empty centers.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:08:24] Yes, he. I think he spoke about how he had to install all kind of audio visual systems in different. Basically all we were empty. Yeah, I remember.

Brooklyn Alden [02:08:36] I think he got the perspective where you're saying that they kind of probably think oh, we're the only ones that's empty. But he got the perspective of going around to all of them and seeing this is their pervasive problem. No one's attending our buildings empty. Yeah.

Pricing, Costs, and Key Differences Between the Two

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:08:49] Okay, last P in the marketing mix is what price do we charge? And of course Scientology has course donations. Donations for the ias, which is their association for Scientology members. They have donations for buildings, but they also have non monetary price to pay for money members because you have to invest a lot of time to be audited yourself or to learn how to audit others. Mormonism, I guess more or less has similar things. The 10 tithing thing, the mission, one or one and a half year or two years for a total of time that you have to invest to get other people to join the religion.

John Dehlin [02:09:37] I was say missions are the closest thing Mormons have to Sea Org.

Brooklyn Alden [02:09:42] Oh, that's interesting.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:09:44] Okay, that's a good point.

Brooklyn Alden [02:09:46] The list, I was like, what are we going to compare to Sea Org? Because that is kind of its own thing within Scientology. But that is a really good comparison.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:09:53] Yeah, I could have maybe added here on the Scientology side that you can be a Scientology member and be public, which means that you just pay for any courses that you do. But you can also become a volunteer at a Scientology Org where you have a 2.5 or 5 year contract and the most dedicated members are the. The Sea Org members as you mentioned. Yeah, I think, I think it's interesting

Brooklyn Alden [02:10:25] for

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:10:28] both Scientology to look at what recent changes they had in their marketing mix. So in the slides before I explained about similarities on the face of. On the circuit of products or the promotion or the place or the price. And I guess for Mormonism there are quite a lot of changes for in the past few years. Maybe the I am a moment campaign will come back again.

John Dehlin [02:11:05] I guess too soon, too soon.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:11:15] For Scientology they had all kinds of repackaging of old books. I think Mark also talked about that. The golden age of tech one and two. There are other campaigns where they have where they basically just repackage old books and try to sell them again. And don't get me wrong, because when you have the old books, they. You will be pressured into buying the new books. Even if the differences between the, the different. The. The prints are no more than small things or anything.

Brooklyn Alden [02:11:56] They might change commas or something and call it a new edition. And now everyone has to get this new edition. And I think people don't recognize that within Scientology you're not just buying those courses once. You already continue to buy those books over and over. Again, and they just.

John Dehlin [02:12:09] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:12:09] And they even have a library campaign where you buy books, but they don't. But you don't get the books yourself. They are then gifted to libraries in your neighborhood. And I think in a lot of cases, those libraries are just like, what is this nonsense? We don't need that. And they throw them in the bin or whatever. It's an enormous waste of money. And of course, Scientology itself is the

Brooklyn Alden [02:12:42] only

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:12:44] organization that gets any money out of it. The place where Scientology is delivered to you, as I mentioned, these are orcs. There have been stories of merging orcs, which is a big no, no. As I understand it, every org also has a. What's called a Day and a Night foundation, which basically is a day shift and a night shift. And in some cases, I think I heard about Scientology merging the Day and Night foundation, making it one orc.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:13:26] That's, as I said, a big no, no. In. In Scientology, the ideal org strategy, it is about focusing on new buildings instead of auditing. I think there is an remark by Elrond Hubbard where he says that if Scientology becomes about buildings and stuff, then he wants his own members to blow up headquarters or something like that. It's really ridiculous.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:14:03] What we see now is that Miscavige is implementing a policy that is in direct contrast to what L. Ron Hubbard himself said, as this is how I understand it. And yeah, like I said, L. Ron Hubbard wanted Scientology members to focus on auditing. And what David Miscavige just found out was that just asking for donations was a lot easier giving your wife polygamy. That's also a price in a way that you could say that in the distant past that Mormonism asked, Joseph Smith would try to convince couples, married couples, to be sealed to the. The woman. And of course, I can imagine that for a believing member who is the husband in the situation, that is a very high price to pay.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:15:18] I am aware that this is something from the beginning of the previous century, so it's not a recent change. But I do think it is a way to get your members to pay a price to be a member of the. Of the religion.

John Dehlin [02:15:35] We. We kind of jumped past it. But I just want to really slow down and note that again, the way I remember the going Clear documentary ending is Scientology. Lots of money, lots of buildings, less and less members. And the. It's interesting because here in Utah, which is supposed to be Mormon central kind of Mormon Vatican, they're shutting down and selling and closing chapels and stake centers monthly.

John Dehlin [02:16:10] Monthly. You hear about in Salt Lake County LDS stakes being shut down or merged with other stakes. And in Washington and in California and in Utah, you're seeing buildings being sold off. So on the one hand, it seems like the church is trying to close, merge stakes and wards and shut down and sell buildings. But the exception to that is just this crazy building of temples that Russell M. Nelson started to the point where people are going to start wondering why some random Texas town like Plano has a temple when there's just a handful of members there. And so in some ways, the church is trying to sell off its buildings while it grows its commercial real estate.

John Dehlin [02:17:02] It's selling its religious real estate at a frantic pace, but then it's actually purchasing more temples and more real estate for temples, at least in part because I think the church believes that temples are good for branding and marketing because there's such auspicious, loud, bright, gaudy buildings that really make a statement.

John Dehlin [02:17:32] And I also think they found that members tend to pay more tithing if there's a temple built locally. So the church has gotten weird with real estates and building. That's kind of just something I wanted

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:17:47] to note that is interesting, I think, at the moment. At a previous episode, you talked about how they were planning maybe a new temple here in the Netherlands. I'm not sure about that.

John Dehlin [02:18:03] I wouldn't be surprised.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:18:03] I want to know that there are 10,000 people on the records here in the. In the Netherlands, and with a. With an activity rate of, say, something like 22 or 25%.

John Dehlin [02:18:17] So 2000, 2000 active Mormons in the Netherlands.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:18:22] That would mean that we have 2,200 to two and a half thousand active members here. I have no idea if building a new temple for that low of a number of members would be in any way sensible.

John Dehlin [02:18:39] Well, interestingly, I made this point to Rebecca Biblioteca the other day. The church stopped building temples when there was a justification of active membership to justify it. They've changed to sort of the field of dreams. If we build it, they will come model. They're not building temples as a manifestation of membership growth. They're building temples in hopes of strengthening current membership devotion and of hopefully driving future membership growth. So my question to you is, if the church builds another massively gaudy, expensive, bright, shiny Mormon temple in the Netherlands, do you think that will converts convince more Dutch to join the church?

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:19:32] Oh, absolutely not.

John Dehlin [02:19:34] No. No. Why not?

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:19:38] The Netherlands will come back to that later, maybe in the next episode or later in this episode is very secular. I don't think you The Mormon Church will find a lot of new members here even with, Even with the 20 system members to become more engaged with the religion.

John Dehlin [02:19:59] Even if they build a 20 million dollar temple?

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:20:06] I don't think so. I do want to note something else and which is I'm not familiar with the laws regarding 501C3s in the United States, but from what I understand, these organizations have to spend at least some part of the money that they get from their members. And I guess building temples, especially if they are very expensive, is kind of a way to actually spend some money to comply with tax law. Maybe it's an idea to get someone who is specialized in United States tax laws on your podcast to talk about how Mormon church and maybe other churches as well have to spend part of their income.

John Dehlin [02:21:01] Well, the, the one problem there is just enforcement. There's so many nonprofits, they're hard to regulate. And if you add to that how, how pro religion and pro Christianity the United States is, they're just, they just don't do anything that would ever make any religion mad. That's my impression. Brooklyn, I don't know if you have a different impression.

Brooklyn Alden [02:21:29] I mean you're gonna be the expert on it. I mean, I will say slightly off what you're saying, but just my thoughts when you're thinking all of this because my brain immediately goes to how, what I have thought of all this as a Mormon, as an LDS member, I would say we need all of these temples for the restoration because of the, the.

John Dehlin [02:21:50] I mean, and this you're saying the millennium.

Brooklyn Alden [02:21:53] Yes, right. Where it's like, I, I don't know specifically how they would rephrase all of it. But I was taught, you know, that for Jesus to return you. Jesus won't turn return until you can stand on the steeple of one LDS temple and see the next steeple.

John Dehlin [02:22:12] Oh my God.

Brooklyn Alden [02:22:15] Yeah. And then if you stood on that steeple, you should be able to see the next temple. And I was taught that Jesus won't return until that has happened. So as a Mormon I would be like, get these temples up.

John Dehlin [02:22:26] I want Jesus coming back.

Brooklyn Alden [02:22:27] You know, I don't know if that is an actual motivation or if it is more a business mindset from them. It would be really.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:22:36] I learned something new every day.

Brooklyn Alden [02:22:43] It's one of those funny things where it's like, I don't know this specific. I don't know, you're just taught that one thing. So then I believe that as a Mormon that Jesus isn't coming back till we have all those temples, you know.

John Dehlin [02:22:55] Yeah, that's awesome.

Similarities, Science Fiction Founders, and Legal Tactics

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:22:57] Okay, I'll continue with some more similarities between the two belief systems. In both cases, I think it is interesting there is a science fiction writer at the beginning. I guess it's fair to say that Joseph Smith wrote science fiction but also that L. Ron Hubbard and I wasn't exactly aware of it, but Mark mentioned it. It's in his episode that one Miscavige senior David Miscavige his dad found 11 books where LR LRH as he is called took his ideas from. I wasn't aware of that. So basically what Elron Hubbard did was plagiarizing other people's stories or ideas which is more or less what Joseph Smith maybe also did.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:23:54] The OT3 story talks about volcanoes that didn't exist. For example, I think in OT3 there is a volcano on Hawaii. I'm not sure about that. But from what I understand that never existed in the first place to begin with. So yeah, obviously the Book of Mormon has plenty of anachronisms.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:24:21] Another similarity would be if our leaders and management sincere and both Chris Shelton is his episode as well as Mark and Claire in their episodes said that at L. Ron Hubbard at the end believed his own. Well, I've shortened it. He adhere to bs.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:24:45] I already mentioned how Joseph Smith is sometimes maybe seen as a pious fraud. The Mike Rinder has I guess understood observation about it. How. How relevant is it if your product your religion is faulty, it is faulty. Do so what do I care if Elron Hubbard believed his own teachings?

John Dehlin [02:25:08] I mean the. The I guess that there's people that want that find social or community or moral or familial value in their membership and if they can find a way to say yeah, Joseph deceived people, but he wasn't intentionally knowingly deceiving people. He believed his own press, he believed his own visions. And so even though he was involved in deception, his heart was in the right place and he wanted to bring people to Christ and he just felt like sometimes deception. And I think there's decent evidence to show that God and God in the old in the Book of God in the Bible is okay with deception and even murder sometimes to achieve his purposes. And so it's a way to salvage Joseph Smith and Mormon affiliation by saying okay, yeah, there was fraud, but he meant well and he was still inspired by God. That's why.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:26:16] Yeah, I have a problem with that. I compare that to murder in the first degree versus involuntary manslaughter. In both cases someone dies. It's really bad. Yeah, that's how I would say it.

John Dehlin [02:26:31] Sure. Okay.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:26:34] This is maybe a less convincing thing. I'm trying to look at both belief systems from a business perspective. And both belief systems have stories about seeking treasure. Now that may be a fun similarity between the two systems, but I do not necessarily think that it is from a business perspective. An interesting thing, but I just wanted to include all the similarities that I found. So here they are.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:27:15] Both belief systems have the church as being a part of an ecosystem in Scientology, that is the World Institute, the Chris Shelton talked about. What was it, Mark? I don't remember. Talked about three, which was, I guess what we did when we still have a lot use a lot of paper.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:27:46] Scientology has an ethics systems in place as. And well, maybe like the Mormon Church, the Scientology Church tries to outsource tasks to companies that are being run by Scientologists and maybe vice versa. I guess more or less in the same way. This is the case for Mormonism as well.

John Dehlin [02:28:20] Got it.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:28:21] Okay. Both organizations had to deal with several financial issues. L. Ron Hubbard had to deal with people like Campbell and Winter, who at one moment turned against him. L. Ron Hubbard at one moment got bankrupt. That this was the financial collapse of Dianetics.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:28:51] And after that, I think Chris Shelton, if I understood that right, started a movement called Theta for a very short time. But in the end, Alvin Hubble of course, starts Scientology. In the 60s, I think Scientology lost its tax exempt status, but they regained it in 1993 when they basically forced the. The IRS and the people working there through hundreds of court cases to eventually go give in. It's, if you ask me, one of one of the big scandals that the US sadly has had to deal with back then. It's really bad.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:29:46] For Mormonism. I guess it's fair to say that early co founders of the church decided to start their own movement movements or whatever or just leave. When Smith, Joseph Smith went off the rails. There was the Kirtland time period in of Joseph Smith, if I remember correctly, he opened a bank that went bankrupt. Is that true?

John Dehlin [02:30:13] Yeah. The Kirtland Bank. Yep.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:30:17] In more recent times, the Mormonisms had to deal with the SEC scandal. So both organizations had to deal with financial issues through their history.

John Dehlin [02:30:31] Yeah. So really quickly, just to summarize, this is really key. And I remember realizing this talking to Chris Shelton and others. Both founders, L. Ron Hubbard and Joseph Smith started out by writing fiction. Both

Brooklyn Alden [02:30:51] so.

John Dehlin [02:30:51] So they both started out as fiction writers. Both have been involved in treasure digging. Right. Both both have. Have experienced significant fraud in you know, in their histories and significant, you know, financial distress and turmoil and legal. Legal problems. Right, exactly. And then major, major revolts of. Of high level leaders in the church. Right, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. And whitewashing history and you know, whitewashing membership statistics. I'm kind of some, I'm kind of recapping and summarizing. But when you place all that together and we're going to be talking about more, those are a lot of parallels.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:31:44] Yes, exactly. And well, as I said, I guess the LDS Church is not going to like to see this comparison. It's pretty bad.

John Dehlin [02:31:55] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:31:57] Both organizations did not really have a succession plan. So there were power struggles when the founder died.

John Dehlin [02:32:04] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:32:05] And what you already mentioned is the legal structure, as you said, the cooperation of the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I had, I think I previously heard about International Reserve or what's the name that holds the copyrights.

John Dehlin [02:32:23] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:32:26] Scientology in Scientology Author Services Incorporated holds the copyrights of the fiction books that signed that Hubbard wrote. And I think that the Church of Spiritual Technology holds the copyrights of the so called religious scripture as I understand it.

John Dehlin [02:32:50] So both rely heavily on copyright.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:32:53] Exactly.

John Dehlin [02:32:54] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:32:55] It's. I think, I guess it's also interesting to know how that both have a publications branch. The Scientology has Bridge Publications and New Era Publications. Bridge Publications, if I remember correctly is in California. New Era Publications is the publisher which is based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:33:25] Scientology has a rack, basically that is Freedom Magazine. They use that mostly to smear X members. I think you could as a parallel talk about how Desert Industries is the commercial part of the Mormon Church. I'm not sure how to explain that in English, but the. I, I guess these, there's. There's another parallel there. And here's a question that I have because Scientology has several front organizations. Nargonnon, which is about helping people who are addicted to drugs, actually not helping them a criminal, which is to get people who have committed crimes to get their life together again. The way to happen is, is a very simple, let's say kind of 10 commandment thing.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:34:32] I, when I visited the Amsterdam Org, I got a leaflet with the actual commands, for lack of a better word that L. Ron Hubbard advices people to live a good life, don't lie, don't murder people, that kind of thing.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:34:53] Scientology also has Youth for Human Rights and the Citizens Commissions for Human Rights. And they also have a thing called volunteer ministers who do not actually volunteer a lot for to help. Actually help people. But they must mostly are used to create PR material for publishing how Scientology is doing a lot of good around the world.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:35:24] So their volunteer efforts are not very, very, very great. There's not a lot of people who are participating in that. I am not aware, though, of any Mormonism equivalents of these organizations.

John Dehlin [02:35:43] Well, so just to kind of recap this slide. Yeah, lots. You know, there's land reserve, there's intellectual reserve, there's Ensign Peak, all these. All these secret, you know, corporate entities. There. There's. There. There's so many billions and billions of dollar, kind of shell companies and corporations that manage the church's assets.

John Dehlin [02:36:16] The Deseret Trust Company was the one that I was thinking about that Roger Hendricks used to be a board member of. So what Scientology and the Mormon Church share are these massive bureaucratic corporate structures to protect and preserve and grow its massive corporate wealth.

John Dehlin [02:36:35] The publishing arms. They both have massive publishing arms to do. Some would say news and education. Others would say indoctrination. Clearly, the Deseret News is not a respectable newspaper by any stretch. It's become a propaganda army for the church. And I don't say that in a gleeful way. And then I think what you're calling attention to is that Scientology. It's. Humanitarian efforts are there for good public relations, actually, but they're. But they're actually funnels. Well, they're sort of attempts to manage their image, and they're also attempts to funnel people into membership. And the best example I have of that is, like, Mormons helping hands. And I think that's, you know, where the Mormons would all wear yellow vests, and they would go during a hurricane and clean up during a hurricane, but they would all wear their yellow vests. John? Yes.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:37:41] Can you guess what the color of the volunteer minister's shirts is?

John Dehlin [02:37:46] Don't say yellow.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:37:48] It's yellow.

John Dehlin [02:37:49] Oh, my goodness. It's like we share the same consultants, the same lawyers, the same accountants, and the same consultants. We've got to share. Right.

Brooklyn Alden [02:38:01] Who did it first? One of them surely copied off the other because they love to share the success.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:38:06] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:38:06] That's wild. Brooklyn. Can you think of any other humanitarian. I know that missionaries. In recent years, Mormon missionaries have been encouraged to do more humanitarian work as a way to gain more converts. So I know there's been a trend there. Are you aware of other humanitarian. I mean, obviously, the church has tried to step up its humanitarian efforts in the past several years.

Charity, Volunteer Work, and Closing Reflections

Brooklyn Alden [02:38:32] Formal organizations. I feel like we mostly hit them all. But, I mean, I think volunteer work is just a big part of. I Think that is one of the beautiful parts of Mormonism. It's very encouraged all the time, even just in ways that like I wasn't particularly doing things throughout with through the church, but I was volunteering all the time growing up. Just it felt like the right thing to do, you know, volunteering at the hospital. So I think more just like in the daily lives of people, but then also things like half of the mutual events you do, which is, you know, the young men and young women coming together is like some volun volunteer thing that you're doing, which is great.

Brooklyn Alden [02:39:12] Or you know, the number of times that we as a mutual event went and picked up trash down the side of the highway, you know, for the event. So I think that's a good part. And then, I mean you have like, it's not a thing anymore. But I would have said like the Boy Scouts, you know, in getting your eagle project, you've got to do a lot of volunteer work. But that's I guess not as much of a thing anymore. But in my era, that's what I would have thought. Thought of as the main, like, yeah, and when you're getting your young women's medallion, you've got to do certain amount of volunteer work. But.

John Dehlin [02:39:44] And I don't think it. And I don't think, you know, I think that when Mormons do service, and even when Mormon leaders encourage service, we have to just grant there's a sincere effort to help the world. So we're not. I don't think our message here is that all Mormon service projects are fake and bad and self serving. What I do think Mormons have a long.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:40:06] I would want to add that I have no doubt that by far most Scientology members do want to help make life better on, yeah, the whole planet in that case.

Brooklyn Alden [02:40:17] Yeah. I think that's what gets a lot of Scientologists especially really locked in is because that's the message of Scientology of like, we are changing the world, we're doing something bigger, we're doing something different. If you want to be a part of science, something bringing more to the world than you're doing now, then you get these people that are drawn to those values that get locked into that system because of their desire to do good 100%.

John Dehlin [02:40:41] The two caveats I would give that I think are fair criticisms. Well, maybe three. One is that historically Mormon service has been largely self directed. So when you did, when I used to volunteer at the cannery growing up in the peanut butter cannery in Houston, that was to make peanut butter that would go to Mormons who were poor and needed peanut butter. So a lot of Mormon service historically has been geared towards helping other Mormons. The second thing is the Mormon Church was on record as doing very little humanitarian efforts until the Ensign Peak scandal when it was uncovered just how much wealth the church had, that it was in the hundreds of billions.

John Dehlin [02:41:27] And the church would admit, you could just see the level of service the church did and that it spikes only after it was exposed about how incredibly wealthy the church was. And then the final criticism I've heard is that if you factor in just how wealthy the church is right now, the percentage of humanitarian efforts it does, the amount of humanitarian efforts that the Mormon Church does as a percentage of its wealth compared to like Walmart or McDonald's or whatever, if we're going to do corporate comparisons, is actually abysmally small.

Brooklyn Alden [02:42:07] Yeah. And I mean, even I didn't even think about that in terms of like, okay, what could they be doing? Yeah. Even though it's funny, I didn't even think about that. When I've been the one, I'll joke around with my friends for years and years and say, I want the Mormon Church to solve world hunger. You know, like they're on the path. They could be the ones to start and like set up a world hunger fund. Like they could do so much. And I also feel like they have an entire army of people through, especially missionaries, but even just their normal members. But I'm like, you have these missionaries that will do anything you tell them to do and we can't put them to slightly better use than like door to door tracting. You know, let's have them building schools or something. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:42:46] A lot of underutilized resources, literacy, like hunger, war, famine, housing, homeless people, like disease, you know, immunizations, like just imagine if the Mormon Church's wealth and missionary force were unleashed on humanitarian efforts. So.

Brooklyn Alden [02:43:10] Absolutely. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:43:11] Yeah. Anyway, that's my support.

Brooklyn Alden [02:43:14] Your first argument that it is a lot self serving. And I thought of this when we were talking about as well, like, yeah, a lot of the service events would be like tying together blankets to send to missionaries or like writing. A lot of it's missionaries writing letters to missionaries. And at the time you feel like, oh yeah, that was a service act. When it's like these kids from Utah that are fine, but they're self service. Yeah, whatever. They need a blank. Yeah, yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:43:38] In relation to its wealth. The Melbourne Church may not do a lot, but I would say that Scientology does virtually nothing. Scientology is not about Helping the poor needy. Scientology is about making the able more able. That's one of the key in the system. And is it true though that giving something to someone in exchange for nothing is out exchange? That's against the teachings in Scientology?

Brooklyn Alden [02:44:13] Yes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:44:14] What about. That's very interesting and thank you for sharing that. Let me just ask you. I was told at one point 30 or 40 years ago that Scientology was very successful at helping people recover from drug addiction. Is that propaganda or is that true?

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:44:34] That's propaganda.

John Dehlin [02:44:35] Interesting. Okay.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:44:37] I think there was an ex member who started out at a Norcanon facility and she has talked about the percentages that she basically just had to made up makeup.

John Dehlin [02:44:51] Interesting. Okay.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:44:52] And she. She talked about knocking being for 90 or whatever. It was successful in getting people off drugs. That's not true. They never had that success rate.

John Dehlin [02:45:06] Got it.

Brooklyn Alden [02:45:06] Yeah. They're very famous for inflating their statistics really dramatically. I think they talk about that in going Clear and I think some of the Leah Remini episodes really break down. Okay, here's what the real number was. Now how did they get to justify that? It was. We've helped this many people this year. You know, they have a way that they just really inflate all of these numbers.

John Dehlin [02:45:28] So number inflation is common between the two organizations.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:45:32] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I would also say that the us versus them mentality within the belief system itself or within the culture is also used towards people outside of the religion and critics. The current slide that I'm showing is about P for protection. I guess there's a water worrying L. Ron Hubbard quote. The purpose of the lawsuit is to harass and discourage rather than to win. Ouch.

John Dehlin [02:46:12] Ouch. That feels that, that that touches me in a special place today.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:46:18] Yeah, I can. I can understand that, Corey. In the past Scientology did. Scientology has a reputation of using lawsuits a lot. They have in. At the beginning of the 1990s I think it was they sued Time magazine at one moment they sued an organization called the Advanced Ability Center. This was.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:46:50] These were a few ex members practicing Scientology outside of the the official church. And what Scientology did is they bankrupted them. The can is another thing. C A N N. The Cult Awareness Network. I think it should be with one and not two.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:47:12] That was in the 90s. Scientology sued the can into bankruptcy. And what they then did was especially devious because they bought the name and they continued to the. The Cult Awareness Network as a. As an organization. Imagine that at one moment you had the Cult Awareness Network and when you were a member from Whatever cult and you wanted help and you wanted to get out.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:47:46] You maybe would call the cult awareness network and who would pick up the phone? A Scientologist. They had that too. It didn't operate for very long. I think it is now dissolved. I already talked about Debbie Cook, how she was sued in 2012, how that went for Scientology. Scientology creates hate websites for important critics. I hope as a result of this episode to get my own hate website

John Dehlin [02:48:24] and the badge of honor.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:48:31] And Claire Hadley in our episode talked about how at one moment she got a CPS visit with bogus claims and CPS basically telling her that she needed to watch her back in the. The other way around. It's of course also true that Scientology has been been sued by other people X members or whatever and they had to defend themselves for Mormonism. I'm only aware of the James Hunt Huntsman case where James Huntsman sued the LDS Church to try and get his tithing back. You did a separate episode about that, of course. Maybe a kind of a special case is the Danny Masterson criminal case. Danny Masterson was accused of raping several women. And because of the important role that Scientology played these cases, Claire Hadley was asked to testify about how Scientology worked. And in the end, Danny Masterson was convicted to, I don't know, a lot of years in prison.

John Dehlin [02:49:53] Yeah, I am a little bit concerned that with, with Dallin H. Oaks and Todd Christofferson, the church's future might be to become more litigious. I'm hoping that's not what happens, but the tea leaves I'm reading is that that might be a new approach. So I hope that's not true.

John Dehlin [02:50:13] But I mean, the more desperate a church becomes, how embarrassing is it for a billion dollar church or a hundreds of billions of dollars church to be shrinking in the United States like it has to be. Like literally the past 12 months, the Mormon Church is in decline in the United States. And that's in spite of, according to the church, record breaking missionary baptism numbers.

John Dehlin [02:50:38] And that's in spite of its, its birth rate being higher than average in the United States. The Mormon Church is still in decline overall in the United States. And all they can do is blame it on critics and on YouTube channels and websites and then think, how do we get after them? Let's smear them, which the church is doing more and more. They smeared Bo Euler, they smeared me. Let's smear people with lots of paid apologists and let's sue them into oblivion so that we can silence the voices that are clearly Weakening us when we should be the most powerful, biggest church in the United States. We're shrinking instead of growing. It's got to be terrible from their perspective, right?

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:51:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:51:31] Poor guys.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:51:34] Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:51:38] Can you imagine Brooklyn? Can you imagine what we could do with a billion dollars for Mormon stories? We would take over the Internet.

Brooklyn Alden [02:51:47] You can't imagine. I know. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:51:51] I don't know if I would like that.

Brooklyn Alden [02:51:53] I don't think anyone should have that much power. Sure.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:51:56] Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [02:51:58] We would use it righteously. Come on.

Brooklyn Alden [02:52:03] Okay. It is amazing. They actually haven't made more of an impact than they do with the amount of wealth that they.

John Dehlin [02:52:07] No, Alyssa Grenfell gets like, I'm making this up. But five times the views that Russell M. Nelson or Donate jokes gets like Alyssa Grenfell's channel alone, my understanding is trashes the Mormon Church's entire website and that's with hundreds of billions of dollars in a 200 year head start. Again, I'm exaggerating, but I think my point is pretty valid.

Brooklyn Alden [02:52:32] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:52:34] Oh man, I feel sorry for those guys. I really do.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:52:39] And that's not the only thing. But because both Scientology and Mormonism have had to deal in their past and partly also currently with a government pressure on the leader as well as government pressure on the church itself. I'm giving a few examples here. And especially Scientology, I guess, has had to deal with pressure from the general public because of the rise of the Internet. I already talked about the anonymous protest, the chronology thing and. Yeah, and more in general, of course, in both. For both religious systems, ex members are very simple, able to organize themselves through foreign websites, social media or whatever. I guess that's the last page of similarities.

John Dehlin [02:53:36] I'll just say historically, the Mormon Church has, has faced a lot of government opposition. You know, whether it's Missouri or Ohio or Illinois or later federal government with the polygamy stuff. But once, you know, with the 20th century, the United States has become so religion friendly and with the rise of evangelical Christianity and kind of the merging of the Republican Party and evangelical Christianity, this idea of religious freedom has. And the Supreme Court being dominated by conservative religious Supreme Court justices, the, the Mormonism has more of a. A free pass, a blank check and you know, support from the, the United States government than it ever has.

John Dehlin [02:54:31] And I think I read that recently. Tell me if you, either of you have seen this. The Downey jokes is encouraging on the fifth Sunday of every month for Mormons to study the teachings or the, or the principles of religious freedom as it relates to the United States government so that we can fight for even as if tax exempt status and total freedom isn't enough, Dallin H. Oaks wants the Mormon Church to have even more religious freedom.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:55:04] That's, that's new for me. I wasn't aware of that.

John Dehlin [02:55:07] I think I saw that in Reddit, just like yesterday. So our viewers and listeners can correct us or inform us if that's right or wrong, but I think I read that already yesterday.

Brooklyn Alden [02:55:18] Yeah, and just, I mean, part of just mentioning, you know, the government, I guess, allowances of Mormonism, I also have always thought it just probably came around at kind of the perfect time where, you know, then you have when the government's kind of starting to fight against the church or maybe thinking about it, then you have the Civil War come around.

Brooklyn Alden [02:55:39] And that, I believe was just a complete distraction from President Lincoln. I'm just like not worrying about the Mormons right now. We have entirely other things to focus on. I just think that's just, you know, one of a billion reasons. It just allowed them to kind of like fester and grow and be kind of untouched over there.

Brooklyn Alden [02:55:58] And I mean, I just always remember this quote and, you know, maybe listeners correct me if I'm wrong, but I was taught literally in my history class in Park City High School that Lincoln said, when asked, what are you going to do about the Mormons? You know, because it was pretty fresh then, that he said, I'm going to do what I did with the stump in my lawn that I couldn't get rid of and I'm going to go around it, work around it.

John Dehlin [02:56:21] Whoa. Yeah.

Brooklyn Alden [02:56:23] So I just, I don't know, I just think of that quote a lot of, I just think it was kind of like allowed to fester in a way that allowed it to become as big as it is. I don't know. That's just kind of my own personal thoughts I've always had.

John Dehlin [02:56:34] But no, that's wild. Let me just add this, this article, and I wasn't making stuff up. This is from the church News, published May 5, so two days ago. Church provides discussion guide resources for fifth Sunday lesson on religious freedom. Now, maybe it's not every fifth Sunday, maybe it's just 1 5th Sunday. But it says instruction focuses on moral agency and how the U.S. constitution and Declaration of Independence support religious liberty. So, I mean, I guess none of us are against, I don't know, I guess we're all against religious bigotry, right? Like, that's not good. But I have to ask, why should a 3 to $500 billion organization that's basically a corporation masquerading as a church. Why should they get tax exempt status? Can anybody explain that to me? Why shouldn't. Why shouldn't some of those.

Brooklyn Alden [02:57:37] Because it's baffling to me.

John Dehlin [02:57:39] Well, what's.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:57:39] I think in. I think in Australia, at one moment, they tried to get something like a test for tax exempt organizations into law, meaning that tax exempt organizations have to prove that they actually do something good for the community.

John Dehlin [02:58:02] Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:58:03] And I don't think it went anywhere, but I do remember that at the time, Scientology was very critical about that, because they basically don't want to do anything good for society, I guess. And I would.

John Dehlin [02:58:18] I would say our church would do anything they could to meet criteria for helping society, because I think our church would want to be viewed as helpful to society.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:58:29] Yes, Scientology would very much like to be viewed as helpful society, but they don't actually want to do it.

John Dehlin [02:58:36] Oh, yeah. No. I think our church believes people need to help themselves. I do think the church has kind of a bias that way.

Brooklyn Alden [02:58:45] It's very Americanized in a lot of ways. So I feel like that's one that plays into it. You know, kind of pull your laws, a fair attitude. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:58:53] Pull your. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of thing.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:58:58] Okay. This basically was my comparison of the two religious systems. I would welcome criticism in the. The comments.

Brooklyn Alden [02:59:07] No, that was such a fantastic job. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:59:11] If anyone wants to use this for their own purposes, they're free to do so. I would be interested in seeing an analysis of especially the Jehovah's Witnesses in let's. Let's say a third column along with this, along to Scientology and the LDS Church.

TrevAnon (Corry) [02:59:34] I guess there's enough material on the Internet that to use to analyze other religions through this lens. I guess Go to Consciousness has, of course, done a lot of videos talking with all kinds people from all kinds of different belief systems that might be helpful when you try to apply this to a secular worldview.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:00:07] I don't think it really fits secular worldview. I don't. As I understand secular life, I don't think it prescribes a goal that you, for example, need to try to try to accomplish. And I guess also it could be said that from a secular worldview, we tend to think science is very important, and this science learns us that things like masturbation are not normal. Being in the LGBT community is okay. It's very fine.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:00:55] So this. I guess this means for me, and I'm pretty sure a lot of Dutch People would agree to that, that. Well, basically what we say is that I we don't need your product, we don't need your religion.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:01:11] In a way, I think you could say that especially here in the Netherlands, that religions looks like a product that is trying to fight a need to fulfill. But the marketing mix doesn't work anymore. At least it doesn't work as good as it did in the past.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:01:33] Both the United States as well as the Netherlands have to deal with less and less people being religious. So from the perspective of the religious organization, if you try to be a positive influence in your community, I think we need to go back to the drawing board. What are the needs that must be fulfilled? What do people actually need so we can provide for whatever is needed?

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:02:08] And so the next part of this episode, or maybe the next it will be that we are going to look at the Netherlands as an example of a secular country to look for an alternative.

John Dehlin [03:02:21] Yeah, so I definitely want to cover that. I don't think we should add it to the end of this episode because we're already at three hours and I think it deserves its own discussion. So I want to say, first of all, thank you, Corey, for what we've already discussed. I think sort of the framing of from anti Scientologists to quote, anti Mormon.

John Dehlin [03:02:45] I think that is a perfect wrapping for today's episode. Before we end today and promise that we'll cover the living the happy secular life in another episode because I know that's near and dear to your heart. I want to end by pushing back a little bit.

Final Thoughts on the Mormon Church and Closing Remarks

John Dehlin [03:03:03] Corey, I want to hear what you would say. And Brooklyn, I want to hear you too. Like Corrie, one of the things that's really confusing to faithful church members and apologists is they think that I, John Dehlin and Mormon stories that our motives are to tear the church down, that we hate the church, that we're trying to get people to leave, that we're trying to get people to lose their faith, and that we believe that the world would be better off if there was no Mormon church. And I just want to say I've been doing this 21 years and I remain unconvinced that the world would be better off without the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [03:03:50] I know that probably sounds strange, shocking, and I'm just going to say what I think I've said many, many times before. I grew up in a divorced home. I grew up lower middle class. Lots of bad things could have happened to me, I think, in my life.

John Dehlin [03:04:06] But because the Mormon Church had Boy Scouts and Young men's and young women's and youth conference and temple trips and Sunday meetings. I felt like I got a moral upbringing, a spiritual upbringing, a friend group, a group of leaders that cared, an identity, a sense of morals and purpose that I think, you know, made me graduate with honors of my high school. I went on to graduate summa cum laude of my university.

John Dehlin [03:04:38] I went on to work at Bain and Microsoft. Like, I feel like. And even though the church kicked in me out, I feel like I'm in the 1% of the most privileged in the world, and I'm proud of the life I've lived. And I do think that my ethics and my morals and my values and even my socioeconomic status are at least in some ways, associated with my LDS and Mormon upbringing. And the fact that there's so many wealthy Mormons and influential Mormons and CEOs and influencers and happy Mormon families all across the world shows that certainly Mormonism isn't the only way, and certainly there's a lot of harm in the church.

John Dehlin [03:05:24] But you could also argue that there's so much good and that every other way of life has harm and problems. And so I'm not even convinced after all of today that I think the Mormon Church is bad and should. Should be done away with. So I want to hear y' all respond to whether you agree with me or disagree with me. And, and Trevor, you, you or Corey, you go first, and then Brooklyn, I want to hear you as well.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:05:56] I think the Mormon Church could do better.

John Dehlin [03:05:59] Agreed.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:06:00] Be open about finances, be open about membership, that kind of thing. And it's. I, I surely think it could be a force for good in the world. I am not against religion, although from the previous comparison between Scientology and Mormonism, it might look that I'm very much against religion. I don't.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:06:28] If people want to have. Believe in a God or a higher cause or whatever it is, they're of course free to do so. If people in, in groups want to experience being a church, being together, that's of course, fine. I don't care.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:06:50] It's abuse. It's when abuse is at the table that I'm, well, getting angry. It's, it's, it's. It's. When I learned about how Scientology operates and how it's tries to get rid of critics and how they, How they treat their own members, then I was like, this is just bad, that that can be good. And I would agree that the Mormon Church is in a way better than Scientology. It's not as bad Maybe it's the other way around to say that, but I guess it is helpful for the Mormon Church to become aware of their own blind spots. I guess.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:07:55] What is it in the teachings that is not helpful? What is it in the behavior of members that is not helpful? And I guess in your podcast and maybe me in this episode, have we have shown some of the things that could be be done better.

John Dehlin [03:08:17] I love it. Love it. Thank you. Brooklyn, what's your response?

Brooklyn Alden [03:08:23] Yeah, I mean, I love both of what everything both of you guys said. I feel like I, I mean, 100. I don't want them. I don't. It sounds odd. I don't want the morbid church to go anywhere. Maybe because I'm still like, attached. It's such a big part of my life. I have so much respect for it. I think it can be such a big, beautiful organization in so many ways. It's. I think Corey just said it perfectly of like, we just want you to do better. I want it to be its absolute best because exactly when it comes down to things like abuse happening and just like that's the thing where it becomes an excuse on a wall and it could just be easier to say do away with the entire thing if we can't solve this problem.

Brooklyn Alden [03:09:01] But there's so much beauty in it and so many just good qualities it gives you, you know, even just some specific examples, like my family would always talk about that. We're so grateful that Mormonism, like teaches kids how to be public speakers and like, give them confidence because Mormon kids are up talking in sacrament meetings since, you know, since they can talk, you're up there bearing your testimony. Even if your mom's like whispering in your ear, you're up there in front of people giving experience like that, having confidence.

Brooklyn Alden [03:09:31] I, I just think that's been a major thing that's helped being my siblings, I don't know. And just so many other good things of just good ways to live your life. There's so much good that comes from it. I think that I know it's very unique and special religion. There is also the phrase of, you know, all that's good about Mormonism isn't unique. All that's unique isn't good. I think that can definitely be true to an extent. But like, I want it to be around. I want it to, to do so well. I think in a similar vein of that thought of like, unique versus good, I, When I was leaving the church and going down rabbit holes of lots of religions and listen all sorts of podcasts There was a podcast I was like addicted to called Dogma Debate.

Brooklyn Alden [03:10:16] I don't think it's still around, but I really, really loved it. It was just this host named David Smalley. He would just have very healthy debates with religious members. And it wasn't specific supposed to be, you know, mean spirited at all. It was just debating. And one thing he said that really stuck with me all the time was so I'm just saying that is that this was his philosophy that he came up with was that religion can be like when you're going through the desert and you're so thirsty and you need some water, but you come across say like a soda, you can, and religion's a soda and you can drink that soda and it will give you some life saving benefits.

Brooklyn Alden [03:10:54] It has hydration in there, but that there's also all this other bad stuff in there that isn't necessarily serving you. And I think actually his specific comparison was then like humanism, which he was always talking about, like humanism could be the water where it has all of those good parts but doesn't have a lot of the negative traits as well.

Brooklyn Alden [03:11:14] So I don't know. That's something I think about a lot. And I'm just trying to always think about how can I take, take those good parts and still represent them in my life without Mormonism. But I don't know the answer. I, I don't have kids yet. I am married, I want to have kids. I still don't know. I'm like, do I want them in a religion? Do I not? What's the right thing? I'm still figuring all of that out because it's not as simple as like, oh, I hate it. Absolutely not. Like I could see myself almost bringing kids to a Mormon space and getting all the benefits that I had.

Brooklyn Alden [03:11:44] And yeah, to be honest, I just don't know yet. But it's not a conclusive. I do not hate the church. There's so much I love about the church and like so much of who I am is because of the Mormon Church. So I can't hate it.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:11:57] I want to add something which is that I don't think I would want religion to go away because while I'm myself and very comfortable as an atheist in a secular country, I do recognize there are a lot of people that still have, for example, need to deal with the fact that we're all going to die and what happens. And while I am very comfortable not knowing the answer to that question, there are a lot of people for whom that maybe isn't enough. And having a religion with a story of about what happens after you die or maybe even before you were born or whatever it is, is maybe very helpful to them.

Brooklyn Alden [03:12:47] Yeah, absolutely agree. Yeah, I think that's another thing that I always think too, they're just space, but that, yeah, I totally recognize there's people out there that really need it and would be completely lost in their lives without it. And I feel like I'm kind of blessed that I don't feel like that's necessarily me, that I feel like I can live a secular life and can still take what I learned from religion. But there are 100% people, I think, that need religion in this world, and I don't want it to go away for those people.

John Dehlin [03:13:11] Yeah, I'll do my dual rant, one critical and one affirming. Like when we talk about abuse, there's child sexual abuse cover ups, there's financial fraud and deception, there's hiding the history, there's treating women as second class citizens, there's racism in treating people of color as second class citizens, there's the LGBT suicide epidemic, and again the financial fraud, and then the punishing of honest critics and truth tellers. All of that's super abusive. And in the Mormon Church, it's just gotta stop, Right? And it's real and it's harmful and it's gotta stop. So I think even members can agree that that's all bad stuff that needs to go away.

John Dehlin [03:14:04] And so that's our argument that the church needs desperately to do better because lives are at stake. And I always like to say, you know, part of me wanted to make a book called Nice Cult and basically say how Mormonism is actually, you could argue it's more harmful than. Than Scientology because while it may not cause as much harm per member, that's a good point. It causes more collective harm to more people because it's viewed as nice instead of as horrible.

John Dehlin [03:14:38] So it can have thousands of LGBT deaths, or tens of thousands of LGBT deaths, or tens of thousands of divorces, or tens or hundreds of thousands of instances of child abuse, because it's not demonized and marginalized to the extent that Scientology is, which allows it to be more popular and to be more socially acceptable. So in some ways you could argue the Mormon Church is more dangerous because it's perceived as being nicer. And so those are my arguments critical of the church. But I agree with what you just said, Brooklyn. I think there's this idea of a believing brain. I think a good 70 to 80% of humans just need to believe, want to believe.

John Dehlin [03:15:29] And so if religion isn't going away and if loneliness is one of the most. If we talk about deadly things, cigarettes are deadly, alcohol's deadly, drugs are deadly, you know what's deadly is loneliness. And you know what? The number one behavior associated with longevity, it's social groups and healthy friendships. And of course, Mormonism or religion is the only way to. Is it not the only way to get that? But it is a very valid way to get that, along with community and meaning and purpose and morality. And so if 80% of our culture needs religion or religious belief, and if community and service and spirituality and friendships and morality and identity and purpose and resolution of the afterlife, if those are all necessary for many, many people for healing and growth, then we just need lots of religions to be healthier and healthier.

John Dehlin [03:16:34] And that's my vision for the world. Not a religion without religion, not a world without religion, and not a world without Mormonism. It's a world with healthier religions and a world with healthier Mormonism. And that's why I get so mad when people call me anti Mormon or say the Mormon stories is trying to destroy the Mormon Church or take people out of it. Because that's not how I felt. And it's never how I felt. That's my rant.

Brooklyn Alden [03:17:00] I agree. Yeah.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:17:04] I never got the impression from you that you wanted the church to be destroyed.

Brooklyn Alden [03:17:08] I agree.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:17:09] Yeah.

Brooklyn Alden [03:17:09] I'm so glad you say that, because I think that anyone that says that hasn't even watched one episode, because I think you watch one episode and you understand, oh, this isn't what I thought it was, you know. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:17:22] Well, make sure Julia makes a short of these closing comments. I want Curtin McConkie and the church's law firms to hear me loud and clear. Not that they care. And I want Jasmine Rapali. What's that?

Brooklyn Alden [03:17:40] They seem very. They care a lot about what you do.

John Dehlin [03:17:43] Well, I want Jasmine Rapely and all the Mormon apologists to get this video loud and clear. And I want my viewers and listeners to send that rant to every Mormon apologist and believing Mormon out there that wants to claim Mormon stories is trying to destroy the church. We just want the church to be better, full stop. And that note. Corey Trevor TrevAnon, what an amazing three hours. What a gift. You've already given us thousands of hours of your service. Thank you for these three and a half hours, plus all your prep, because what a great story and a great analysis you've shared with us today. So thank you.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:18:28] You're welcome.

John Dehlin [03:18:29] Yeah. And we'll have you back to talk about living the secular life. How does that sound?

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:18:34] That sounds great.

John Dehlin [03:18:36] Any final words, Corey or Trevor? Anon. TrevAnon.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:18:42] I'm good. I'm looking forward to recording the next episode.

John Dehlin [03:18:45] All right, well, thanks for all you've done for the Mormon Stories community. We really appreciate it.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:18:49] You're welcome.

John Dehlin [03:18:50] And Brooklyn, thanks for all you've done for the. You're my longest. You're my longest serving employee at this point. Or contractor.

Brooklyn Alden [03:19:00] No, I really love you, John. I think it's been great working for you. And yeah, thanks for having me on. Really great to talk to you, Corey. I always want to call you Trevor first too, because that's in my mind.

TrevAnon (Corry) [03:19:12] I don't care. I don't care.

Brooklyn Alden [03:19:14] So, yeah, this was wonderful. And I'm so grateful that you're going to upload this slides for everyone to use in lots of different ways. Like, I just think it can go to a lot of cookies.

John Dehlin [03:19:24] Amen. Amen. Great work. All right, thanks, Corey. Thanks, Brooklyn.

Brooklyn Alden [03:19:30] Thank you, guys.

John Dehlin [03:19:31] All right, and thanks everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Please email us with your feedback@mormonstoriesmail.com please leave comments and questions. Trevor's in all the YouTube comments. TrevAnon. Corey is in all the YouTube comments. So we'll definitely respond to your comments there if you've got them. If you disagree, if you have compliments or criticisms, we want to hear it in the comments.

John Dehlin [03:19:58] We appreciate your. Please subscribe to this channel. Please like and comment and share all our channels. Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, etc. We're grateful to our donors that make all this possible. Thank you. We couldn't do it without you. And if you want to be a donor, if you want to support Mormon Stories in the Open Stories foundation, you also can become a monthly donor@mormonstories.org donate. You can become a monthly donor and all your donations are tax deductible in the US and they'll go towards our mission of informed consent in Mormonism. Less harm, less abuse and supporting Mormons in faith transition.

John Dehlin [03:20:44] Check out future episodes. We appreciate Julia and Brooklyn for all they do in post production. And that's it for today. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Thanks, everyone. Y' all take care.

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