Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today, John Dehlin. It is August 28, 2023, and today we have Bible scholar Dan McClellan back to answer a really crucial, important question. How do informed or thoughtful or educated, fully aware Mormons stay active in the Mormon Church? And this is something that I love to do. I've done it with Patrick Mason in the past to Terrell and Fiona Givens, Richard Bushman and many others. Basically just to give a tiny bit of context, one of the most important questions, or most frequent questions I get largely from ex Mormons, is how in the world can someone as intelligent and as thoughtful and as informed as Dan McClellan or Richard Bushman or Jana Reese or whoever still believe in the Mormon Church? It's crazy, and sometimes it veers into it's unethical, like they must be lying, they must be hiding, they must be afraid. So part of my MOT motivation for wanting to do this episode is just to answer that question as many times as is needed for those who just don't get it. And it's always weird because many of these people were believers before they weren't. So you'd think they could just reflect back on how they believed before they didn't believe. And that's how belief happens. A second motivation I have which is going to be controversial for some of my viewers and listeners, is I believe that religions, often, the reason why they've existed for so long, is because they add value. And even though religions do harm, it's very easy to make the argument that all organizations do harm, all podcasts do harm, everyone does harm and good. And I'm not at a point in my life where I believe that humanity all of a sudden gets better when all religions and churches disappear. I don't think secular society and humankind in general has figured out things like community and other types of things, morality, spirituality sufficiently that, you know, we could just destroy faith and churches and have humanity do as, at least as well or better than what it's been doing. And so I still see value for any organization, frankly, that's trying to promote good behavior, positive behavior and community, and churches are included. So I have no problem providing healthy models of belief and engagement within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or within other religious institutions and that's fully aware of the warts and the problems and even the violence that can be done within these organizations. So that's my motivation for why we're doing this episode. We hope that if you are an ex Mormon or a never Mormon, or even a believing Mormon. With these questions, you'll find value today. And if you're struggling to figure out how to stay in the Mormon Church or in Christianity or in religious belief, just more broadly, we hope that you might find some value. And again, I'm super excited to have back with us today Bible scholar Dan McClellan for part three of his series.

Dan McClellan [00:03:15] Hey Dan, thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to chat again.

John Dehlin [00:03:19] Yeah.

Dan McClellan [00:03:20] And I thought I might offer just a brief disclaimer before we start, just to kind of frame the discussion here. As I've noted many times the last couple of times I talked with you as well on social media, I don't discuss my own personal faith, my own personal beliefs in any way, shape or form whatsoever. And so I'm not discussing how I have navigated these questions personally. I'm sharing what I have seen from other folks. And this is not an attempt to just put a proxy in front of my own approaches either. This is going to. I'm going to talk about a variety of different ways that people can think about this. And so folks who want to infer that this is me sharing my own positions, that would be inaccurate. So with that caveat, I'm happy to talk about this. And unless you wanted to get into something right away, I did want to comment on what you were saying about religions and value and stuff like that. One of my specializations is the cognitive science of religion, which leverages all of the different disciplines and methods and approaches from the cognitive sciences to try to better understand this thing that we have organized under this label, religion. And if we kind of reduce it down to a very basic idea, religion, what we label religion anyway is a combination of features of human cognition that are largely side effects of human evolution and evolutionary psychology. We have evolved in order to think about ourselves and perceive ourselves and the world around us in certain ways to try to maximize our chances of certain survival. And some of those things produce side effects that make certain relationships, certain behaviors, more or less conducive to that survival. And it creates things like concepts of deity and rituals, which I'm sure we'll get to some degree later on in the discussion. But things that are causally opaque but. But that still serve pro social functions, meaning they contribute to greater social cohesion and the ability of a group to grow in size and complexity without falling apart while maintaining their integrity. And so throughout the history of human evolution, the features of what we have grouped under this label, religion, have contributed to A lot of our progress. And even today, they are features that spring a lot of meaning, a lot of fulfillment, a lot of community, a lot of support, a lot of resources to people who might otherwise not have them. And it's complex. There are other features of human cognition that can point in the same direction in certain circumstances. And these features also flow well beyond the boundaries of what we would label religion into the secular world. There are many different ways that the side effects of human cognition that contribute to religion contribute to how we engage on a secular level every day. And so the idea that we could get rid of religion or get rid of faith is laughable. It's not happening. It could never happen as long as human beings are human beings. It would be like saying we can get rid of getting angry. It's just not something that's going to happen. But I think a better understanding of what's going on in those features of human cognition that we tend to group under the rubric of religion can help us kind of navigate how to make it more commonly productive and less commonly corrosive. So if, if that is something that we can get to today, or if a better understanding of that helps others think in a more productive, productive way about religion, then I will consider that a job well done. So we will see.

Cognitive Science of Religion and Scripture Origins

John Dehlin [00:07:35] So, I mean, so much of your biblical scholarship does talk about, like, stories that predated the Old Testament and then stories that were either contemporary to the named authors of the Bible, and then stories that evolved later that were kind of written back in almost after the fact. But all of that sort of implies this ongoing story of the human experience, but also the ongoing struggle of humans trying to make sense, trying to deal with fear, deal with death, deal with natural disaster and calamity and famine and war and cohesion and survival. And I do want to just right off the bat, recommend the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari that does a really good job talking about how religion develops, at least his theories on how religion develops and the importance of story and the importance of myth, and how story and myth help tribes survive and grow and trust at larger and larger levels. Do you have, like, a simplified narrative of how religion unfolds across time and humanity that if you were going to try to explain to, like, eighth graders, like a two to three minute. This is kind of how religion evolves, which is a separate question from whether it's true?

Dan McClellan [00:09:04] Yeah. Before I do that, Sapiens is a great book. Another book that I would recommend by a scholar named Ara Noran Saiyan it's called Big Gods, which talks about how the concept of large scale national deities developed within, within human evolution. So there's a lot of overlap in the content. But Noren Syen is a cognitive scientist of religion, and so it's a little more in his wheelhouse that discussion. But yeah, I would say there are two different ways that what we label religion develop. And first, I want to point out that I keep talking about what we label religion because religion is not something that exists outside of discourse. Religion is like. And I think even in sapiens, they talk about this. Religion is like McDonald's. It is something that we agree to think about as a thing that exists in the world, but it does not exist in the world. It exists only in our discourse and in our imagination. You can have buildings, you can have paperwork, you can have food, you can have employees. But the concept of McDonald's as a thing is a figment of our imagination. It's an imaginary entity. And so religion is very much the same way. You cannot find religion in nature. You can find different constituent elements of religion that we have kind of arbitrarily drawn a line around and said, this is religion. But those elements are found outside of that line. And there are other elements that are inside that we generally don't include in our idea of religion. And so that, that's separate from the 8th grade discussion, but 8th grade discussion. There are two different levels on which religion operates, and one of them is related to how scary movies work. So if anyone has ever watched a scary movie and had the sensation that there's someone in the room with them, or have been coming up out of the darkened basement and been like, hurrying a little fast to get the door shut behind them because of that sense that there's something there. This is one of those side effects of human evolution. Long, long, long time ago, even before there were such things as humans, and still today, in many different members of the animal kingdom, your ability to detect agents in the world around you, mental agents, things with minds, had a lot to do with your ability to survive long enough to pass on your genes. And so the, the primate who was the quickest to interpret the rustling in the bushes as something that might have a mind that might be focused on them, was more likely to pass on their genes than the primate who more quickly assumed that it was just the wind. And so immediately there was an evolutionary and adaptive advantage to being very sensitive to the presence of agents in the world around us. And because the penalty for false positives was relatively low, like if you are overly sensitive to that, maybe you get made fun of. Not a big deal. False positives. The consequence of a high degree of false positives is you die a lot quicker. And so there was not really a ceiling to this evolutionary adaptation. False negatives, false negatives. So if there is something in the bushes, that's in the bushes and we. It's the wind, then we die.

John Dehlin [00:12:43] Because if we say, oh, there's something in the bushes that could be Satan and we run, even if we're wrong about what it is, if it's a lion, we're protected by that belief. Is that right? And that's a false positive, potentially, in terms of what the content of your thought was.

Dan McClellan [00:13:01] So if we have two primates and there's wrestling in the bushes, the one who gets freaked out and runs whatever it is, whether it's Satan or a lion or whatever, lives to run another day. And yeah, maybe they get made fun of, but compared to dying, that is an entirely negligible consequence. And the point of that is to say that there was no adaptive pressure to hold down our sensitivity. And so our human minds adapted to an incredibly high degree of sensitivity. In fact, there's an acronym that's for a theoretical framework that they call Hyperactive Agency Detection. And there's even for those who have a more modular theory of how the brain works, they would call that the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device. And Justin Baritz is the one who came up with this had HR acronym. I think most scholars would say. Most of the scholars that I think know what they're talking about would not refer to this as some kind of modular device, but just would say humans have a hyperactive sensitivity to the presence of agents in the world around us. And so when we watch a scary movie, there are a lot of things in a scary movie that can trigger, can cue that hypersensitivity. And then we might sense that there is an agent or agency in the room around us. And this is one of the two elements that contribute to our interpersonal relationships. So we have concepts of other people, we have concepts of loved ones, people we know. Recognizing someone by their face is one feature of our mind's attempt to identify and detect agents in the world around us. And sometimes that can misfire. And you have people who don't recognize somebody they've known their whole life, they may not look at their face and be like, bing, oh, that's so and so. But as we as humans evolved and we developed a higher and higher sensitivity to the presence of agency in the world around us. And as we began to develop social relationships, we began to share stories about these things. And around the campfire, we might talk about, oh, I felt the presence of something or something is out there watching us. And then another contributor to these stories is deceased loved ones, People we spend our entire lives around who then where we develop sensitivity to their specific presence. Whether it's through smells or clothing, or their voice or their face or things like that, Our brain has deeply embedded in it all these cues for the presence of someone who means a lot to us. And when they pass away, the brain does not just shut off those things, they are still active. And so the perception of presence is not just a one way thing. We're not just taking in stimuli. Our brain is also projecting kind of expectations and anticipations of what's going to happen next. And so our experience of interaction with people we love is a combination of stimuli plus a projection of that experience. And you take away the stimuli, our brain will still project that experience when we are in the presence of those cues. So if we hear the voice, if we smell the perfume or the cologne, or we see the clothing or a ring or something that is very closely connected with them, Our brain can project that sense of presence. And it can literally be just as real as what we experienced when they were in our presence. And so this is why you have stories of. In every single culture that has ever existed, you have stories of deceased kin being there in some sense. And so around the campfire, we share stories about this kind of stuff, and we get these concepts of what I have labeled unseen agents and what other scholars have labeled imagined agents. But whether they are deceased kin or some kind of gigantic animal that we've never seen, but have posited is out there, or some other kind of entity, we tell stories about these things. And because of our also heightened capacity for imagination, we start to craft narratives and backstories and settings and all these things for these agents that we imagine are out there but cannot see. And this contributes to the next level of the development of religion, which happens on the social level. So on the individual level, our minds are predisposed to perceive the presence of unseen agents in the world around us. So every single society that has ever existed has concepts of spirits, ghosts, jinn, deceased kin, all those kinds of things. But once it rises up to a social level, we start sharing stories about these things. If we perceive that there is something important about our relationship or our interaction with those agents, then conventions arise regarding how to interact with them. What we can get from them and what they expect from us. And now we have ritual. And so rituals are ways to interact with these entities, but they contribute something else to society. They give us what's called costly signaling. If a society organizes around this, understanding that there's a specific unseen agent out there, and we have specific ways of interacting with that agent, then the rituals that we use to engage in those interactions become ways to signal to other members of the group that we know the rules, that we are going to follow the rules because we. Because the success of the social group is important to us. And so it can get pretty complex. But in short, a lot of these rituals serve not just the interests of our relationships with these agents, but they also serve the interests of whoever is a decision maker within the social group. And if institutions develop around all these interactions, now we have people who are in charge of those institutions, and those rituals also serve the interests of the institutions. It helps us determine where the boundaries are, who's in, who's out, who's being faithful, who's not being faithful enough. And then it gives members of the group an opportunity to amplify the costs of the costly signaling in order to engage in what are called credibility enhancing displays. So, and a good contemporary example of this is things like tithing and offering. Have you, as many people have heard people boast about, oh, I give, you know, the 10%, but I go above and beyond with the offerings. And this is a way to increase the cost that you're willing to incur, to signal to others that you are a faithful member of the group who can be trusted and in that way, increase your own credibility. And so there are ways that these interactions with these unseen agents serve the interests of institutional leaders, serve the interests of members of the institution, serve the interests of boundary maintenance, serve the interests of structuring power. And so, in short, we have, on the individual level, some cognitive predispositions that make the production of deity concepts more likely. And then on the social level, those interactions with those deity concepts can then be used to increase social cohesion, what cognitive scientists call pro sociality. And that helps the social group to grow in size and in complexity without losing the ability to cooperate. Because the big thing is we need to know who we can cooperate and who we can't, Particularly if we're a part of a social group that is so large that we may rely on cooperation with people we don't know or have never met before. And, you know, in today's world, that's everybody, everybody has had to rely on the cooperative or cooperation from someone we've never met before. And the only reason we can do that is because we live in a society where we have all these pro social cues and all these ways to see signal that we're a member of society. Eye contact, shaking hands, saying the right things, when you meet somebody, introducing yourself, these are all ways that we signal I belong, I know the rules, I'm going to follow the rules. Therefore you can trust me, even though you don't know me. And so religion, what we label religion is not the only thing that contributes to increased pro sociality. But in the absence of democratic governments that have, you know, a lot of power and things like that, religion was one of the most widespread and one of the most effective means of generating those pro social mechanisms. So I probably should have thought about how that, that little narrative before spitting all that out. But that was great. Speaking extemporaneously, that's, that's what I would say. Yeah.

How Religion Promotes Social Cohesion

John Dehlin [00:23:06] So now maybe we'll switch back and forth from academic discussions and explanations to kind of faithful ones. Okay, so even as you're starting, as we start this discussion of kind of how religions unfold, how beliefs unfold, how the human brain works, it's a very secular discussion that immediately calls the question, well, so we're just secularizing everything. If it's just what our brain does, if it's just psychology, if it's just human dynamics, where's the space for number one, genuine interactions with spirits or the divine and a credible belief that isn't just purely reduced to psychological and sociological explanations. So putting your understanding of authentic belief hat on then, how does somebody who understands these concepts still hold space for. So I don't imagine you're just going to say that thoughtful, informed believers know it's all malarkey, but, but just standing away for the social benefits. So talk about an informed belief that involves metaphysics.

Dan McClellan [00:24:27] So yeah, the I mentioned Justin Barrett, who is the innovator of or one of the main contributors to the idea of hyperactive agency detection. From what I recall, and if my knowledge is up to date, he's a faithful Christian. And so he's written books on theology and the cognitive science of religion and how people believe. And I think what I have seen in folks who have been on that side of this debate, because this does produce, within the relevant academic discussions, debates about does this mean all belief just comes down to chemical reactions or does this, is there something else going on here? And what many have have argued who want to maintain the, the belief side of things is one these discussions are. Or the cognitive science of religion and academic approach to this is limited by a lot of methodological decisions that we make. And so our methodologies can't really account for something that is supposed to be supernatural. We deal with the natural. And so many would point out these claims are claims that are not falsifiable by the standard methodologies of things like the cognitive science of religion, sociology, evolutionary psychology, all of those kinds of things. And so. So because it functions outside the boundaries of that field, it's not really reducible to, or it's not really subordinated to that field in its entirety. And there are others who would point out that, well, isn't that convenient that humans are kind of designed to orient themselves towards the idea of deity? And so the idea would be that this is intentional. This is something for which humans were very carefully designed. So folks who would take a creationist route that incorporates human evolution and things like that would say, well, that's exactly what a God would do, is have us be cognitively, evolutionarily, biologically predisposed to believe in that kind of thing. And there have been experiments that have been run that show that even natural scientists, even hardcore militant atheists, when they're not given time to cognitively process things, when we try to peel back the reflective side of things. And I think I need to pause here and explain that one of the most important principles of cognitive science is that our cognition fits on a spectrum that runs from intuitive or subconscious cognition all the way to reflective or conscious cognition. So there's a lot of cognition, things that processing that goes on in our brain about which we are entirely unaware and over which we have zero control. So that's the intuitive side of things. And some people say they're two completely separate types of cognition. I think the best science now suggests it's more of a spectrum that runs from the intuitive to the reflective, which is where we have control over things, and that's more governed by things like reason and logic and authority and things like that. So anyway, getting back to what I was saying, if I can recall precisely what I was saying. Oh, yes, there have been experiments that have been run that showed that when you deprived atheists and natural scientists and things like that of proper time to cognitively process things. In other words, if you have not given the reflective side of the spectrum enough time, you're just looking at what's going on on the intuitive side, which is what much more rapid you see the attribution of Intention and agency in things like the creation of the earth and other things that come about through natural processes. In other words, the mind seems predisposed to attribute agency to the creation of things like the earth and other things that on the reflective side, we would attribute to natural processes. So even people who are atheists in every sense of the word still have within them this little spark of God did it, even though usually their reflective cognition comes in to overrule that intuitive cognition. At the same time, however, there are also a lot of experiments that have been run, and Justin Barrett is one of the original ones who conducted many of these experiments that show that orthodox belief is also something that is on the reflective side of the spectrum. And that when you try to isolate the intuitive side of the spectrum when it comes to deity concepts, that you get a much different picture of what a deity is like. And this is where a lot of Mormons get their spider senses to start tingling on the intuitive side of things. So, kind of the evolutionarily installed concepts of deity are anthropomorphic, corporeal, limited in time and in space, and basically very human in form and in function. And so a lot of what is considered orthodox or correct theological belief is just like atheistic belief is something that we produce on the reflective side of things because of reason, because of logic, because of authority, because of all those other things that are that function independently of our intuition. So it's a mixed bag when we try to look at what things like the cognitive science of religion tell us about deity concepts and about belief. But you have scholars who are operating within that discipline on both sides of this question who suggest that these findings indicate that belief is just an accident, an evolutionary accident, and others who would say these findings suggest that belief in deity is. Was put there, and that makes more sense to them, that it was put there by something that had a mind and intention. So you will see both sides of that case being made in the literature.

John Dehlin [00:31:15] And then taking this out of the scholarly discussion and just from a personal perspective of the Christian and LDS scholars, or really informed believers that you're aware of, when they think about their personal theophanies, their prayers being answered, their ability to receive promptings or witness, spiritual witness that there is a God, how have you heard them describe that or make sense of it from a personal standpoint,

Dan McClellan [00:31:58] usually folks who will talk about that will point out that even if there are ways to naturalistically explain spiritual experiences that they have had, whether it's dreams, visions, voices, impressions, things like that, there can be. There usually are perfectly natural explanations for those things. But people find more meaning and more fulfillment and more joy in understanding this as something that is a product of something else. And as I pointed out previously, as long as this is not moving in the direction of causing harm to oneself, to one's community, to vulnerable members of the community and stuff like that, I don't see a need to tell somebody they're wrong about that if it brings more meaning and more direction and more fulfillment. And you know, in my own life, I would say that things I have attributed to spiritual experiences have improved my life immeasurably because I thought of them that way. I don't see a reason to have to shout down somebody's belief that something that they experienced wasn't entirely reducible to scientific explanation. I don't think that that's one of the goals of all of this kind of research, is to tell people they have to understand their own experiences a specific way. In fact, I think that is a harmful thing to tell someone. They're not allowed to think about their experiences in a way that's more meaningful to them. Again, provided this is not contributing to harm. I say let them have their explanation and their understanding, particularly if it makes them a better person.

John Dehlin [00:33:55] And many in our audience are going to say, especially if they've left Mormonism or Christianity, they're going to say, well, it's that very harm to marginalized communities that was in many ways the impetus to my leaving. I don't want to address that right now. Just know viewers and listeners. I will be coming back because one of the things that my viewers and listeners love about Dan is he's very much sensitive to human suffering and marginalized communities and issues of social justice. So we're going to pause on it because I've got kind of a linear thought process in my mind. But we will be coming back to it. Also, I didn't mention, for those who are joining us here who didn't check out Dan's first two episodes that we have two episodes that Dan's already recorded. The first is his own mortal Mormon story, how he converted to Christianity, Mormonism in his late teens, early 20s, and how the church really helped him in his life. Kind of a college dropout, burnout, kind of lots of substances, maybe rudderless, and Mormonism and Christianity really was helpful to you in your life. And so we would get into that today, but we've already covered it in five hours in Part one. So I'll refer people to go back and watch that to hear Dan's biography. But I think that's one example of the types of things you're talking about. And so I think it's important. Okay. And so when we talk about spiritual experiences now, really quickly, one of the issues that's really, really classic for thoughtful people is the question of theodicy. And I'm sure you've thought a lot about it. Can you explain what theodicy is or the Theodora, whatever theodicy is, and then how a thought, your perception of how thoughtful, faithful Christians, Mormons, believers, reconcile that and still come down on the side of belief.

Theodicy and the Problem of Suffering

Dan McClellan [00:35:57] So theodicy is the problem of evil, like in its most classical form. This is why do you bad things happen to good people and also good things happen to bad people. And this is something that we see taken up in the Hebrew Bible beginning in the probably Babylonian, Persian period. We see it discussed in some of the literature produced in that time period. Job, Ecclesiastes, other texts are worried about this. And we actually see kind of an answer developing around this time period as well. And this answer, although it's been nuanced a little bit since then, the idea of the eternal perspective is basically 21st century take on the answer that was come up with back in the second half of the first millennium bce. And so I think when you see it talked about today, it's this idea that why would God need to have evil be a part of the human experience? God would be able, an all powerful deity would be able to just skip that part of the whole problem. And I think I can't remember if it was the book Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons, but I know even Dan Brown addresses it where he has a priest talking about somebody riding a skateboard and falling. And that helps the person get better at skateboarding. And so think about God as a, as a loving father who is, you know, doesn't please them to see their child falling and getting hurt, but they know it will be instructive and it will be productive on their path to greater competence. The classical response to the problem of evil is that there is another world where the accounts will be made square, where the bad things that happen to good people will contribute to greater joy, greater blessings in the afterlife, where the good things that have happened to bad people will turn into punishment in the afterlife. And so I would attribute the development of concepts of heaven and hell around this time period to contemplating wrestling with the problem of evil, with theodicy. And so now we refer to that, at least within the Latter Day Saint tradition, as the eternal perspective, when we think about bad things happening to good people, well, you need to have the eternal perspective. You need to look at everything that will happen after this life and see that all the rewards that are waiting are on that side of the veil. And the same with how bad people seem to get away with so much and have so many resources and blessings and things like that. Well, no, they're to going, going to experience, they're going to get what's coming to them on the other side of the veil. So the eternal perspective is, is kind of the, the lowest hanging fruit, the easiest way to account for the problem of evil. Although I don't think it entirely accounts for the concern about the notion that an all powerful deity would need for their creation to go through this entire process in the first place. That's something that I think is. I've never seen a satisfactory answer to that. But at the same time that's not my area of expertise. I don't spend all my time in philosophy of religion and dealing with the Odyssey. So there could be answers out there that I would find very fascinating and fulfilling that I've just not been exposed to. But from what I have seen, I think that's, that's the classical way to handle the problem of evil.

John Dehlin [00:39:51] So when, and, and this is where it gets really intense when you think about, and I'm going to use some graphic language here just as a, as a heads up if you want to pause or turn down the volume for any kids or vulnerable people or yourself that might be listening. When we talk about child rape, when we talk about genocide, when we talk about natural disasters that kill tens of thousands of people, hunger, famine, really major, significant, intense suffering, torture of children, you know, whatever it is, then all of a sudden it's just like, nope, can't be a God. No living God's going to allow that. There can't be a God. How have you seen people who, faithful people who have considered that thoughtfully make sense of it in their own lives?

Dan McClellan [00:40:41] Well, I think the, the answer that is most common is that if there is no God, then that's even worse. That's the end of someone's life. A child's life might be abuse, even sexual abuse followed by their murder. If there's nothing on the other side, then that's just horrific and intolerable. And how could that worldview be the best worldview? And so they would say that the only, the only tolerable, the only loving, the only compassionate way to understand how that experience is by understanding that there's got to be something on the other side. Unfortunately, I think it also contributes to the idea that those things are tolerable because we have this eternal perspective that allows for recompense, that allows for the account to be squared in the afterlife, which contributes to in some cases, less concern for trying to mitigate the occurrence of those events right now in our temporal existence. And so I think like so many answers to these questions, on all sides of these questions, it's a double edged sword. Every solution that we arrive at often brings up additional problems. And so folks who do take the eternal perspective side of things, I would suggest also need to take seriously the fact that this temporal existence is important even with the eternal perspective. God calls for their people to reduce suffering and to do what is possible to strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy and the oppressed and the widow and reduce the occurrence of those kinds of things. So that answer brings comfort to some people. I think the absence of that answer suggesting that that really is all there is to folks who experience those things, I think that is intolerable for a lot of folks. But, but the answer also has, has its own issues that comes along with it. So it's, it's a, it's a sticky issue.

John Dehlin [00:43:16] Yeah, it's a tough one. How thinking about just the belief in, in God. You wrote a lot about anthropomorphism. There's, there was a lot, let's just say in Mormon ritual, about God having body parts and passions versus not there's, you know, theologies pre Christianity about God. And then there's this very corporeal anthropomorphic emergence of not only a humanoid God coming out of Mormonism and Joseph Smith, but one that possibly was even once a man who was exalted. This theosis idea I think is called so how have you seen thoughtful, informed believers, number one, develop a sense of belief in the divine? And then if it's something different than what Joseph Smith came up with, which was 10 fingers, 10 toes, beard, possibly a former human, likely a former human with a wife or wives, how have you seen believing Mormons and Christians shape a tolerable view of God and then square that with, with Joseph Smith's God?

Mormon and Early Christian Views on God

Dan McClellan [00:44:58] I think the, and this is something, I think in one of the previous interviews I mentioned a paper that was written by a couple of evangelical scholars. Masser was one of them. I don't remember who the other was, but one of the things they acknowledged was that the growing consensus among scholars is that the concept of deity that was normative during the periods of the composition of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament was one of corporate reality and anthropomorphism, and that the idea of the rejection of both is a later development that arises within the context of Greek philosophical frameworks. And I would argue the development of the Trinity is the same. This is the intellectualization of the Gospel and of concepts of God so that they are reconcilable with the leading philosophical outlooks of the day. And even today we have that a lot of people would mock an anthropomorphic corporeal concept of deity because that would limit deity. And philosophically deity is supposed to be without limits in a lot of ways. Joseph Smith and here's where I'm going to suggest that that the academic consensus does on a superficial level overlap with what is unique about Latter Day Saint ideology. What Joseph Smith restored is what I would say the majority of scholars agreed was normative in the earliest years of Judaism and Christianity. The concept of a deity who was corporeal, who had body parts and passion, who had genitals and who used them. That is the consensus view that such a deity was normative in periods of particularly pre exilic periods of ancient Israelite ideology, but to some degree within early Christianity as well, but for a shorter period of time.

John Dehlin [00:47:01] Really it was really so the Joseph, the Mormon view of God on the surface.

Dan McClellan [00:47:07] On the surface, not when you drill down into the. The lengthy discussions that go on in some of the literature, but on the surface, the notion of an anthropomorphic corporeal deity that had a body of flesh and bone, so to speak. Yeah. Is something that scholars agree was normative, particularly in the earliest periods of ancient Israel, but down into probably the 2nd 3rd century CE within Christianity. And you can. And there's actually a. It was a BYU scholar, I think his name was David Paulson, published a wonderful paper in the Harvard Theological Review about Origen and Augustine as. What did he call him? Reluctant witnesses to an anthropomorphic deity. How Origen talks about how the simple Christians think that God has a body, but we don't because the philosophers despise it. Like this is a debate within early Christianity. And there are wonderful books that have been written by this Benjamin Sommers book, the Bodies of God in the World of Ancient Israel. Christoph Markschees also wrote a book on God's body. Wagner wrote one called God's Body in the Old Testament, I think it was called. Brittany Wilson wrote a wonderful book on. It wasn't called God's body, but it was about the visibility, the corporeality of God in the New Testament. So this is a growing. It's already a consensus view, but it is something that is growing even stronger. However, having said that, again, once you drill down into the deeper discussion and how this is all fit within the broader macro narrative of Mormonism and its understanding of the development of Judaism and Christianity, that's where it departs significantly from the consensus view.

John Dehlin [00:49:04] Yeah, yeah. What I've noticed is that is that many sort of progressive or informed Mormon believers, they tend to move towards what I call what I think others have called a small G God versus a large G God. So a large G God would be an all powerful, all knowing, anthropomorphic figure. But that becomes untenable when you factor in theodicy and even concerns about gender and patriarchy. And for many, just a lack of any sort of communication, human like communication. It's just like, that's too much. And so what many believing Mormons that I'm aware of do is they go to the small G God where they start defining God as nature, as some divine essence, some sense of spirituality. Or they even just say nature and nature's order is the divine. But you know, by doing that, they. It's just like it's less personal when there's rape or genocide or murder or natural disasters. There's no one to blame. It's just, this is the way existence is. And then there's. There's clearly some sort of order or power that's driving it all forward that we can tap into with presence or with mindfulness or meditation. Do you have anything to say about that move? I'll call it a move, but perspective?

Dan McClellan [00:50:37] Yeah. I think it's a perfectly natural attempt to try to bring not just order, but meaning and significance to our experience of the world around us. And for a lot of people, the world cannot be faced if it cannot be made meaningful, whether that is by attributing things to the universe or to karma or to whatever. An anthropomorphic corporeal concept of deity is increasingly kind of mocked today. And so that is a pressure on how people want to understand and talk about whatever's going on. And I think you're exactly right that it makes it a little less personal. It makes it a little less relatable for folks who are seeking a meaning and fulfillment and a sense of justice and things like that from something like them. And this is another feature of human cognition. We like things that feel familiar. We like things that are like Us. And so this is why most societies that have produced anthropomorphic concepts of deities depict their deity, like them, ethnically, in terms of dress, in terms of hairstyle and all that kind of stuff, because it presents this deity in a way that's going to be easier to understand, to relate to, to resonate with. But, yeah, obviously that has. That has issues. And. And today there are a lot of philosophical frameworks that render the more anthropomorphic corporeal concepts less, let's see, with less circulation, with less. I can't think of a great word for it, but it's a less popular concept today, which is going to make people shy away from it a little bit. Because within all of this, a big contributor to what people decide to latch onto is how much they're seeing it in the discourse around them. And so if something's going to be very popular, more people are going to find it reasonable and rational because of that spectrum of cognition. No human is unilaterally rational. That's just a physical impossibility. Every human is driven by both sides of that spectrum. And so we are all fundamentally irrational creatures. We all do irrational things absolutely every single day. And there's just no way out of that vicious cycle. And a lot of times what that means is we are going to find a lot more rationality and we're going to find a lot more sense in the things that we are seeing a lot more frequently around us, things that we are seeing treated more favorably around us. And this can account for all different kinds of aesthetic as well as moral kind of trends and ebbs and flows. Things pop up and people go, yeah, I like that. That makes sense to me. That resonates with me. And it becomes more popular. And then a generation down the road, something else is going to pop up whether. And it's going to aesthetically or morally or rationally just resonate with more people. And so it's going to change. And so the notion that we are kind of taken taking an evolutionary trajectory to a better and a more empirically or objectively good notion of these ideas is a fallacy, because evolution is not about some kind of objective standard of good. It's about fit within an environment. And environments change, which means whatever is the best fit is going to change as well. And we are all deeply embedded in those environments. So what one person finds attractive in a deity today is going to be different for the people tomorrow. And so nature, the universe, karma, whatever, might feel a little more defensible to people who are engaging Broader society in a generation, what society accepts as. As reasonable in a deity concept is going to be different. And I don't know how much of that made any sense at all.

John Dehlin [00:55:08] When an orthodox believer who's just like, nope, it's got to be literalistic, anthropomorphic, interventionalist, interventionalistic Mormon God, that one true church and exclusive authority and blah, blah, blah, patriarchy. When an orthodox, almost fundamentalist believing Mormon hears progressive Mormons and Christians sort of try to restructure a God that is more palatable to their, let's just say, intellectual sensibilities. The orthodox person might just say, you're creating God in your own image. You're. You're just, you know, that's not the way it works. God is. And we obey and follow and God tells us who God is, and then we believe that and then we follow it, and then prophets make it really clear, and then it's just our job to follow. You've got no business trying to, like, figure out for yourself what God is or what God wants or what God said. Just like, listen to the Scriptures and follow the prophets and that's end of story. I know this is one of your favorite topics, but what do you say to an orthodox believer that's like, that's the way it is.

Orthodoxy, Joseph Smith, and Evolving Mormon Doctrine

Dan McClellan [00:56:33] Yeah, well, orthodoxy changes with every generation as well. And again, if we go back to Joseph Smith's discussions about God, that's a different God from what is orthodox today.

John Dehlin [00:56:44] How so?

Dan McClellan [00:56:44] Within Mormonism, lots of ways. The Adam God doctrine, for instance, was something that was supposed to be orthodox for a while, but that was ultimately rejected, which was the teaching that. What the idea that. And this goes into the temple ceremony and other things, but basically that the God of the earth was Adam, and that is the only God with which we have had to do, according to Brigham Young. But there are other ways that Joseph Smith represented God. And this gets like everything. It's negotiable. For instance, a lot of people will talk about President Hinckley's interview with. It was Larry King, wasn't it? Where talked about as God now is, man may become as man now as God once was. And President Hinckley said, I don't know that we teach that. And first I see a lot of people misunderstand what President Hinckley was saying. I don't know that we teach. That does not mean. I am unaware of that teaching. It is to say it does not. I don't believe that we teach that. Now that teaching is in. At one point, it was something that was formalized and I think could be considered doctrine, even though that's a fuzzy category. When I joined the church, for those

John Dehlin [00:58:09] who don't know the context, especially for the never Mormons, there was a couplet that was taught, I think, by Lorenzo Snow, a Mormon prophet.

Dan McClellan [00:58:16] That's where it originates. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:17] Where he says, as man is God once was, and as God is man may become so God was once a man, and men, if they're righteous and are exalted Mormon, exalted beings can become God. And then I don't know if it was Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes or Time magazine, I always forget. Or Larry King once when Gordon B. Hinckley was asked about that, because evangelical Christians hate this idea that God was once a man and that man could become gods, it's considered blasphemous. It appeared as though Gordon B. Hinckley was trying to downplay and dismiss it, saying, that's just a couplet. I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it. I think was what Gordon B. Hinckley said.

Dan McClellan [00:59:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:03] So I just wanted to give a little background for that.

Dan McClellan [00:59:05] Now, when that is in active circulation and being promoted by the institution, folks are going to be widely aware of that, and folks are going to treat that as doctrine. If the institution stops promoting that, it's only going to be in circulation to the degree that people are seeking it out in that older literature. Somebody who joins the church today is not going to be taught that as doctrine and is probably not going to run into a situation where someone who has any kind of ecclesiastical authority over them is going to teach that they are obligated to accept that doctrine. It's certainly not in any of the formal ways that we interrogate someone's orthodoxy or fidelity to the church. And so it's only in circulation in that literature. And to the degree somebody goes and seeks it out. And so that's a concept of deity that I would suggest is probably not normative within Mormonism today. And so it's phenomenally complex to talk about what exactly the institution holds as doctrine and what is not. Because if they take a book out of print, does that mean that whatever was in print is now rejected as doctrine? If you can still find it on the Internet or something like that, does that mean this is something that is actively being taught by the church and promoted by leadership? I think there are a lot of questions that people are going to answer in ways that serve their own ideologies about where the church is or where they think it ought to be. But the concept of God that is taught within any religious tradition is always going to be negotiable and changes. And so when you, I think the original question was about orthodox believers who are saying no, this is all literal, you have to accept it all that is the institution's costly signaling assignments. And those ideas are really only function to allow people to try to tighten the belt of their boundary maintenance. Because nobody's temple recommend is ever going to depend upon very minute specific details about their concept of God. Temple recommend questions are incredibly broad and allow for all kinds of interpretive space within them. And so no member of the church is obligated to accept specific ideas that someone might just arbitrarily insist are authoritative, even though, you know, nobody has actively taught it since some manual from 75 years ago or something like that. And we have manuals that teach that socialism is a wonderful program that provides, that has a lot of promise for helping out the underprivileged and the vulnerable in society. But those things have been negotiated away by the majority of members. And so something that I say frequently on my channel is there's nothing that's non negotiable in this. And when folks insist that no, this is non negotiable, they're participating in the negotiation, they're just saying, well, here's my version of this, here's my pitch for this negotiation. And the more detailed you get about what is required, the more you're just engaged in that process of boundary maintenance, the more you're just engaged in credibility enhancing displays and costly signaling and in the living of a religion on the institutional level rather than on the more individual personal level. And that's one of the paradoxes I see in the way most religions try to try to compel their, their, their members to live is that within Christianity particularly, there's an awful lot of talk about our personal relationship with God and a lot less talk about our relationships with each other. I refer to a vertical relationship and a horizontal relationship. A lot of it is about that vertical relationship which shouldn't really involve the institution. But the institutions always, well, reverse that. The institutions almost never are willing to step out of that vertical relationship because their survival and their structuring of power and their control and things like that are so important to keeping the institution together. So it's a bit of a contradiction. We emphasize the relationship between God and the person, but at the same time don't want to let go of the control of the institution which is something that's operating on the horizontal level. And this is not just within Mormonism. This is within most Christianity, and particularly I'm thinking of conservative American Christianity and evangelical Christianity, although within Mormonism, the hierarchy is a lot clearer and a lot smaller, a lot clearer, a lot more powerful.

John Dehlin [01:04:40] Is it your understanding when you hear that Joseph Smith. When you hear the position that Joseph Smith believed in a trinitarian God, you know, pre1830, while he was, what some would say, authoring the Book of Mormon, that he believed God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost were one, the more classical trinitarian view. Is it your understanding that that's true and that over time, his. Joseph Smith's own view of the Godhead evolves to viewing them as three separate beings and that the various first vision accounts actually chronicle and show Joseph Smith's own evolution of his understanding about the Godhead? Number one. Is that your understanding of the history as well? Do you see it that way? That Joseph Smith in 1830 saw God and the Trinity and Jesus in terms of their corporeality very differently than 10 or 14 years later? And then if you're going to say yes to that, which I think the history just sort of pretty clearly demonstrates, then how do you reconcile that with his, you know, 1832 version of the first vision? Or not you or people, you know, scholars that, you know, how is that reconciled in a way that doesn't make it look like Joseph Smith was just making it up as he went along and. Or misleading people?

Dan McClellan [01:06:14] Yeah, I think that I would say the Book of Mormon, certainly in its earliest iterations, promotes a very trinitarian view of God. I don't know that I would be confident in saying that is the work of Joseph Smith's own mind. And that's not to say that he swiped this from Solomon Spaulding or from somebody else. But it's also not to say that this was all a divine revelation. It's just to say, I don't know. But I'm not convinced that the theology of the Book of Mormon came entirely from Joseph Smith's mind. I see Joseph Smith developing on a trajectory not just of his concept of God, but I see Joseph Smith kind of deciding to take seriously the concept of God. That's not a great way to put it. The earliest we see Joseph Smith, he does not seem to have a very deep and a very comprehensive concept of God. It seems to be more just what is out there in the. In the zeitgeist. And that as Joseph Smith adopts this and runs with it. He starts to ask questions and to dig deeper and to think more,

John Dehlin [01:07:40] more

Dan McClellan [01:07:40] theologically and to come up with new and different perspectives. So just based on the data that I see, I think Joseph Smith is not thinking very hard or very thoroughly about who God was in the earliest periods, but as he is developing an idea of God, it is veering off the path of. Of the traditional trinitarian God. And I think that is aided by his developing authority and sense of inspiration. And so he's probably thinking that wherever he's taking, this is where it's supposed to go, which gives him a little more confidence and gives him a little more leeway to go further off the beaten path than anybody else at the time went, or most other people at the the time went. However, there was kind of an anti trinitarian push going on within that second great awakening. And so I think that he's not the only one doing this. There are others who are pushing back against Trinitarianism as well, but in. In very different ways now. Yeah, reconciling that. I don't. I. And when Joseph is. Is getting into the. The first vision and the different accounts that are there. Yeah, I think this is. The data suggests that this is someone

John Dehlin [01:09:05] who

Dan McClellan [01:09:08] had some kind of experience that they're trying to represent, but is also developing that narrative as they go. And so I don't know that we could get to any kind of actual historical event behind that. The data certainly don't allow us to do that unless we just take the very first account. But the idea that people would shape the way they tell personal stories.

John Dehlin [01:09:39] Could someone ascribe malice or deception to the fact that the story, Joseph's first vision, story changes over time?

Dan McClellan [01:09:46] Yeah, yeah, I think that's plausible. But I think just as plausible is the idea that he really believed something happened and was trying to remember these ideas in ways that made them meaningful and useful to him in his changing circumstances. And this is something that is simply a fact of life in all oral cultures. Stories will develop even as they're being told by the same person to resonate with a given audience, with a given circumstance, with a given rhetorical goal. And so we don't attribute malice to this when it goes on and other things. And so it could have been what we would label fraud. I mean, I'm not saying that's impossible or even implausible, but I think it's. I would find it more plausible that this was someone sincerely trying to make sense of. Make sense of what they had in their head as an experience, whether it's based on something historical or not. And so, yeah, I'm not willing to say fraud, but it's obviously something that is being revised and is being changed as the story is growing. And yeah, we can. There are countless examples of that kind of thing going on with people telling their own personal stories in ways that are not fraudulent, are not intentionally trying to take advantage of people or manipulate or mislead, but are attempts to make these stories more meaningful, more useful. And memories are imperfect as well. I can't remember if I recommended it last time, but there's a wonderful book by Bart Ehrman called Jesus before the Gospels, which incorporates the discipline of social memory into discussing how the stories of Jesus could have changed. And just like I don't think Ehrman attributes malice or fraud to the development of those stories, I wouldn't do that with Joseph Smith either.

John Dehlin [01:11:58] And for me, the way the modern Mormon Church has seemed to want to explain the nine or so accounts of the first vision reminds me of how I was taught to understand the New Testament, which is the New Testament. I was like, wait, why are there different accounts in the New Testament, different people saying different things? It's like look at it as four books that tell a full story and they're all harmonizing together to tell a story. My understanding of biblical criticism is that's not the way to look at the New Testament. You should line them up sequentially and come to understand how the story grows over time. And that helps you get to the truth of it, of the matter, or a better understanding of it. Likewise, there are modern apologists and even church produced videos. That's like, well, all the accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision are true. They just need to be harmonized. So yes, Satan came and yes, Joseph fought with the spirit, Spirit and his tongue was bound. And yes, it was the Lord who spoke to him, but it was also God and Jesus and they want to just kind of munge it all together. Do you have feelings about that approach to harmonizing the conflicting, some would say clearly conflicting accounts of Joseph Smith's first vision. How do you feel about harmonizing them as being all true?

Dan McClellan [01:13:22] I think from an academic point of view, that's obviously wildly problematic. The notion that these different accounts all came from a source that was sincere is not a huge problem for me. But all coming from a single event that happened in a time and place in history, yeah, that's wildly problematic. And so there's cognitive dissonance going on in trying to come up with a way to make them all true. And that's not to say everything is therefore invalid and needs to be thrown out because everybody experiences cognitive dissonance all the time. And I've had discussions with atheists about what an, what the word atheist means that has cognitive dissonance coming out loud and hard from atheists as well. So nobody is free from cognitive dissonance. But yes, folks who try to make these stories all true are struggling with cognitive dissonance only. Obviously I don't remember all the details enough to say that only one could be true. I mean, obviously there could be details from, from a few of them that could have been something that Joseph Smith at a point in time felt he experienced. But yeah, there are just flat contradictions between the accounts as well. And so that's an issue where I would take, if I wanted to preserve a sense of faithfulness to the, the tradition that is holding those accounts. I think a Jewish approach is probably the best one, that the issue is not historicity. The issue is that these accounts are giving us an opportunity to wrestle with them and wrestle with their contradictions and find lessons to derive from them without having to prioritize historicity. I think that's going to be an issue every time if it all has to be reducible to historicity, which I think is only the most important within a modernist perspective, which is something that is, that's kind of the circumstance in which Joseph Smith and the LDS Church originated, the kind of post enlightenment, not yet postmodern perspective. So yeah, it's problematic. And that's one where I would say rather than resolving it, just wrestle with it and see what value you can derive from it and not worry about historicity. Because if you make historicity the priority, it's going to frustrate you an awful lot.

The Complexity of Joseph Smith's Legacy

John Dehlin [01:16:39] So one area where I think orthodox or fundamentalist Mormons and, and ex Mormons might agree is just basically trying to say, well, it should be really simple. It should be that Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus in 1820 and he basically from then on had a very clear theology around the Godhead. The God and Jesus were separate and there shouldn't be multiple versions and there should be no confusion and there should be no evolution on Joseph Smith's part. Because once you've sat at the feet of in theory, God and Jesus or just the Lord, whichever one it was or wasn't, then it should be really clear from then on. And so either it's all true, it was God and Jesus now is the official account and the accounts are fake or they're forged, or ex Mormons are just trying to take the church down, you know, or Joseph Smith was a fraud. What would you say to those who want to have it either one way or the other?

Dan McClellan [01:17:48] I would say the desire for that kind of dichotomy is usually driven by some attempt to defend or attack a given social identity or a given power structure. I mean, the world doesn't operate in black and white and in strict dichotomies. Very frequently it operates in shades of gray. And when people set those up, it's one or the other. It's either 100% true or it's this malicious fraud that's just trying to draw lines so that we can structure power in our favor or engage in boundary maintenance or things like that again.

John Dehlin [01:18:31] Or defend. Yeah, yeah, Defend or destroy.

Dan McClellan [01:18:35] Yeah, but also not as binary, binaurally as defender, destroy. There can be lots of, lots of things in between. But, but I would suggest that the impulse to reduce it to that is not a concern for understanding the world around us as much as it is trying to curate our place within it. And so it's doing in some ways the same kind of thing that apologetics is doing. And so I am an advocate for suspending judgment in a lot of cases and just saying if, if we are operating from a position of faith that this is something that we need to find a way to make useful or faith promoting, then we're going to have to set aside these binaries of this is absolutely true or it's absolutely false and find somewhere in between. And I've talked about this on my channel as well. I don't think there's value to this notion that if Joseph Smith saw God, then immediately everything was crystal clear. Even if Joseph Smith did see God, it would not have been crystal clear. And the data don't suggest it's crystal clear. The data show Joseph Smith's concept of God evolving over time as well, and developing and coming up with new ideas and abandoning old ideas. And that's not incompatible with an actual real experience, because when we have experiences, we do not achieve just instant clarity about all of the details and all of the significance and all of the background of everything all at once. It's something that we're contemplating over time. And human memory is such that we remember things in separate in later contexts, and we remember them in ways that help us inform our current context. And so even for the most sincere people who had the most historical and real things happen to them, those memories evolve over time, as their significance evolves and as we contemplate them and consider implications and apply them and have to deal with consequences. And one thing that I've discussed on my channel a lot is that the reason religious ideologies and dogmas evolve is because they're always, they're never operating in a vacuum. They're being brought into existing circumstances and contexts, and then that is creating new circumstances and context. And now we have implications that we have to deal with, and we're going to deal with them by introducing more ideas. And so every time we introduce an idea, things are going to change and we're going to have to respond to things that we did not anticipate. And that means introducing more ideas, which then changes everything all over again. And the process of the evolution of religious dogma is a process of just over and over and over again without end, having to respond to unintended consequences and having to deal with implications of our responses. And that is just an inevitability. Nobody can exempt themselves from that. And that process can never stop. There will always be new circumstances, there will always be questions for which we do not have ready answers. So we will have to come up with answers. And those answers will always create new contributions to those new settings. And so the process will just continue over and over and over again. And so even if Joseph Smith did see God, that does not suddenly exempt him from that entire never ending process. It's going to change whether it's historical or not. And that's just an inevitability. So I don't see that as a falsification of anything, but I do see most of the details of what's going on here as calling into question the historicity of the events, at least that according to the authoritative accounts. So again, it gets incredibly complex, but I don't think it's easily reducible to 100% true. 100% fraud.

John Dehlin [01:23:12] Yeah. Do you want to say anything about whether you've contemplated either atheism or agnosticism or both? And regardless, do you have anything to share on? How thoughtful believing Mormons sort of look at atheism and agnosticism as kind of identities or worldviews?

Atheism, Agnosticism, and Personal Belief

Dan McClellan [01:23:38] I think atheism and agnosticism are identities, and that is to say they are different from person to person. People have different concepts of what they mean and what it means to identify as such. And so I, I would say it's not a specific, clear set of doctrines so much as it is a club. And this is not to denigrate it, it's, you know, it's the same with being Christian or being any other religion. It's a social identity, and social identities, just like I just talked about, change. So if you look in the ancient world, atheism didn't mean you didn't believe in gods. Atheism meant you, you rejected or you blasphemed or you condemned a specific God or specific gods. And so it wasn't just in a rejection of all deities. And what atheism has been used to refer to has evolved over time and again, not free from the consideration of the rhetorical and the social value of how it is understood. And even today, when people talk about atheism, a definition that I've seen grow in popularity over the last 20 years has been that atheism is just absence of a belief in God, which is not how it has been used for the vast majority of the existence of that term in any language, but has a specific rhetorical utility. Because if atheism is just absence of a belief in God rather than a conscious rejection of the existence of, of gods, then you can attribute atheism to infants, and you can basically significantly expand the membership in the club of atheism and also say this is the default human position. It does not require an understanding of deity concepts and a conscious rejection of them. It just means whenever there is absence of that belief. And so that belief or that conceptualization of what atheism is is phenomenally useful from a rhetorical point of view, which is why it has become so popular. And this is one of the ways that atheists. Atheist cognitive dissonance roils to the surface whenever I bring this up, because I've seen that upset many folks who I identify as atheists. But if you look at the Pew religious landscape surveys, a not insignificant percentage of atheists say they're absolutely certain a God exists. And so it is a social identity. And not every member who claims identity with that social identity agrees on what it means. So now that I've angered all the atheists, I think that agnosticism is similar in that, I mean, if you want to commit the etymological fallacy, you can come up with a way to describe it. But again, it's something that people are going to treat as a social identity. Be like, oh, I'm not really atheist, I'm more agnostic atheist, but with this little caveat over here and this little sub membership and this other group over here. And it really is frequently it operates as a social identity. And now I've Forgotten your original question?

John Dehlin [01:27:12] Well, how have you contemplated. Has there ever been a point. Do you want to talk about whether there's ever been a point where you've contemplated either agnosticism and. Or atheism? And do you have anything to say about how thoughtful believing Mormons look at atheism and agnosticism?

Dan McClellan [01:27:33] Yeah, I. Well, so two, thank you for reminding me of what the question was because I had two responses that I was going to give before I went off on my little rant. One is, and I think I discussed it in our, in our first interview I was raised what I would say was agnostic. But it was.

John Dehlin [01:27:53] Let's define that.

Dan McClellan [01:27:54] I don't like defining conceptual categories.

John Dehlin [01:27:57] I can. If you don't want to.

Dan McClellan [01:27:58] Okay, go ahead and define it.

John Dehlin [01:27:59] So my understanding of, you know, people like to say, well, I'm a. I'm not atheist, I'm agnostic. But they're almost different axes in my mind.

Dan McClellan [01:28:08] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:28:08] So I do. I look at agnosticism as whether or not you believe that a belief in the divine is knowable. So is it something someone can know or is it just something that everybody's kind of guessing about or having feelings about? If you're an agnostic, many people who have that identity basically say it's not knowable whether or not there's a God. So you can be. You can be an agnostic theist. So theism would be believing in some sort of divine being. Atheism, I would say, and maybe I'm succumbing to the modern proclivities in this regard. I would define atheism as just saying I don't have a proactive belief in a divine being. You could just be ambivalent about it, which some call apatheism. You can just not care. Or you could just say, yeah, I don't see the evidence that impels me to maintain an active belief. So that's how I would define atheism. For the record, I've never identified. I never once in my life have identified as an atheist or as an agnostic, but that's how I understand atheism. So theism would be believing in a divine being. So you can be an agnostic theist in the sense that you can say, I have an active belief in a divine being, but I am agnostic in the sense that I know that I don't know for sure, and I don't believe anybody can really know for sure. So agnosticism is whether or not you believe it's knowable and you know, atheist would be not having a proactive belief in a divine being.

Dan McClellan [01:29:47] So I would say I'm a lexical agnostic in that I don't believe that definitions capture what's actually going on in, in reality, I, I am. The definitions that, that you've suggested are, are absolutely things I've seen in common circulation. That doesn't depart from my knowledge, but it's also, it's not how I've always seen those words being used. But I would describe my upbringing as an agnostic one. Not in the sense that I said we can't know, but in the sense that I just didn't care and didn't have a belief, didn't again, kind of suspended judgment. I was just like, I don't know, don't care. I've got more important things going on in my life. Yeah. And so I have, I have contemplated agnosticism and atheism and I, I think there are times in my life when I would have identified with, with either one or the other. And because I think that. And here I'm going to get back into the cognitive science. Belief is not something that we are. Belief is not something that we consistently maintain. Beliefs are active things that we generate in our mind. They're like memories. They are not there even if we're not thinking of them. They are only there when we're actively thinking of them. And so for that reason, in light of that, that I would say that the definition that atheism is just a lack of belief that would also include every last religious person on earth for the 95% of their waking hours that they are not actively thinking about their beliefs. And beliefs change from context to context as well. There's a great book, and I am not remembering the name of the author, unfortunately, but the title is the Matter of Belief. And it's kind of a philosophic, philosophical, and also cognitive discussion of what belief is.

John Dehlin [01:32:03] David Morgan.

Dan McClellan [01:32:04] David Morgan, yes. And I believe that's an edited volume. But yeah, belief is another conceptual category that we've created to kind of group some things under, but does not align with reality. And so when people talk about beliefs, they're usually, they're talking about it in the way that we've kind of just conventionally accepted to think about these things. But in reality, beliefs are things that come and go. And most religious beliefs, cognitive science would say, are not actually deeply held, but are what are probably better labeled credences or things that we have signed on to in order to be a part of the group. So it's kind of like being a member of a. A political party. You don't have anybody who knows nothing about political parties and develops a very clear kind of platform of what they think politics should be and then runs across the Republican Party and goes, what? Perfect match. What a coincidence. Political parties are things you join because you have a few ideas here and there that you. That align with and you're just like, yeah, sure, whatever, when it comes to everything else. Yeah, I'll sign onto that. I'll agree to that. Those are credences. So those are not deeply, deeply held, deeply embedded convictions. Those are things that you are signing onto, and they could become more deeply held the more that your social identity demands. So, but again, when I mentioned theologically correct beliefs over and against our intuitive beliefs, the theologically correct beliefs are over here. They're credences because they're things that we're dealing with in order to maintain our social identity and promote our social identity, our standing within those social identities. So, so agnosticism, atheism, theism, I think those are social identities, and I don't think they can be reduced to the. I don't think they align one to one. They're not isometric with the way that humans understand themselves and the world around them and what might be going on beyond that world. I think it's, again, a lot more complex than that.

John Dehlin [01:34:37] Would you say the same thing about theism?

Dan McClellan [01:34:39] I think so, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Because again, you know, we're. We're signing on to credences primarily because of the value to us in our social interactions and our social identities and our access to power and resources, not because we independently came up with precisely the exact same conclusion and happened to stumble upon the group that just happens to present the exact same deity we came up with all by ourselves. We have ideas, the institution will produce ideas, and then we will approximate those ideas to one degree or another so that we can benefit from the. The privileges of inclusion in the group. And. And then for those who are like, no, I deeply believe this. This is, you know, fundamentally from the bottom of my heart, I've always believed that the president should be able to commit adultery and still be elected. Those beliefs are generated within contexts and for rhetorical reasons, not because we deeply hold those beliefs.

John Dehlin [01:35:46] Yeah. So there's really quickly getting to Jesus. We talked a bit about that. You've talked a lot about in our episode two with Dan. He goes into five hours of ten things Everyone Should Know about the Bible. And I think it's fair to say if I were to summarize, and there's a lot of questions that are going to come out of this, but if I were to summarize my understanding of what you're saying about the Bible, it's that many of the books that bear a certain human's name weren't likely written by the person, person whose name is on the book. That many of the early historical figures, probably there's no evidence that they existed, that, you know, the Bible is full of contradictions. And, you know, even when we got to the topic of Jesus, you know, there was a lot of discussion about whether or not Jesus, even when he was, whether or not Jesus existed, first of all as an actual historical figure. But then if he existed, there were even questions about whether or not he was actively contemplating his own resurrection, saw himself as the literal Son of God and as the person who would die and then within three days resurrect and begin the morning of the first resurrection and ultimately come back in a couple thousand years, you know, to usher in the end of times. There were even questions about that. So given all of that that we've talked about extensively in part two, you already shared your view on what's the scholarly consensus of whether a historical Jesus actually existed. But beyond that, how so if you want to reiterate that for those who didn't watch part one or part two, please do. But also how do believing, how do informed believing Mormons and or Christians look at Jesus in terms of like, is he son of God? Did he resurrect? Is he going to be coming back soon to usher in the millennium? Did he literally have to die for all our sins? And did he suffer from every pore for every sin that's ever been committed? Kind of the whole Christology thing, how do you experience believers conceptualizing Jesus once they understand all the complexities of the Holy Bible?

How Truth Functions in Religious Thinking

Dan McClellan [01:38:28] That's something that I see that being carried out in a lot of different ways. There's a whole spectrum of ways that people approach that from. You know, this is on my short list of non negotiables. I'm willing to let go of everything else. And even though resurrection is a physical impossibility, that's the miracle that I don't want to let go of. Therefore, I'm going to suggest that I believe that that is the one aspect of this story that is still true.

John Dehlin [01:39:00] You're saying for you personally.

Dan McClellan [01:39:02] No, none of this is for me personally. This is all okay. I'm going to describe a lot of different approaches.

John Dehlin [01:39:08] Okay, okay.

Dan McClellan [01:39:08] And so that's one thing where some people will say, look, just because it's not plausible or probable, it's. And really not even possible because it represents something that would be miraculous. Someone might say, I still believe that's. I still believe in miracles. I believe there's something beyond the natural. I see. I believe there's something beyond the reach of the scientific process. And so I'm willing to accept that for myself just because that's so important to me and so meaningful to me. Excuse me. I've seen other folks who would say they're not sure that they're going to suspend judgment. This is something where. Because it sits outside and beyond the grasp of. Of the natural sciences, it's something we can empirically demonstrate and not sure if it's happened or not, but they still sign on to the agreement because that's what brings them meaning, that's what brings them fulfillment, that's what gives them hope for the future or for an afterlife or something like that. I've seen folks who have said, yeah, that's also didn't happen whether or not

John Dehlin [01:40:30] or probably didn't happen. Right?

Dan McClellan [01:40:32] Yeah, both of them probably didn't happen or definitely didn't happen because it's physically impossible. And someone might suggest I am not going to accept as possible anything that sits beyond the reach of what we can understand about the physical world around us. And so because it would be something supernatural and supernatural is not real, then it obviously didn't happen. But even folks in that camp will also say, but I'm still willing to sign on to the agreement because it gives meaning to my life, it gives me fulfillment, it gives me hope, even if that hope is little more than a hope in something. And one of the things that I think is important to. To add, to kind of give. Give context to the folks who are on the latter end of that spectrum that I just described is that today a lot of people tend to think of religion as a question of truth claims about the. The world around us and a supernatural world beyond that. That is a decidedly modern innovation. While truth claims have always been a part of, particularly Christianity, but of most traditions that we would label religious. It's really only since the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment that those truth claims became the entirety of religion. In fact, the whole concept of religion, the word religion as we understand it today is something that was developed. Probably the earliest development of it is medieval Islam. But then when we get into the Renaissance, the Reformation and Enlightenment, we have the crystallization of the concept that we understand, understand today, which is generally a set of beliefs and practices related to deity. That's if I'm going to be forced to endorse a definition, I would say that is how the concept of religion is understood today. But that concept did not exist prior to that process. And because in the Reformation, the reformers moved away from a Catholic approach that included rituals and priesthood and all these other kinds of things, toward a faith alone, scripture alone kind of set of truth propositions. I've said before on my channel, the central theme of religion changed from is your love of God genuine? To are your truth propositions real? Or are your truth proposition is true? So the Reformation turned religion into that. And so now today, that's what a lot of people reduce religion down to. If the truth claims aren't true, the religion is phony, it's a fraud, it has no value, it must be gotten rid of. And that is not how the human mind and human society has. That's not how religion has functioned within human society. There are so many different dimensions to religion. There are individual dimensions, there are social dimensions, there are moral dimensions, there are economic dimensions, there are all different kinds of dimensions. And when we reduce it down to just a set of truth propositions, that's one, a decidedly Protestant, decidedly reformer conceptualization of religion. Two, it ignores the other dimensions of religion and it can even have an ethnic dimension. And so I know a lot of folks who are Jewish who will dress in the requisite clothing in the requisite time periods, who will light the candles, who will say the prayers, who do hardcore atheists, but still engage in all of the features of Judaism. And some people call it an ethno religion as a way to try to straddle those two categories. But in reality, that's what all religion is. We've just taken to kind of curating how they're going to function in society. Diff. Excuse me, differently since the Reformation. And so I know people who. And Mormonism is a much younger religion. It has not become anything remotely like the way that Judaism or even Catholicism functions. I remember as a missionary in Uruguay talking with people who were like, you know, we've been talking to them for a while. They're like, I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and I only stepped foot in a church twice in my life when I was baptized and when I was married. But my grandparents were Catholics, my parents were Catholics, my children are Catholic, and I will be Catholic until. Until I die. Not because it's a question of truth claims. But it's because this is a social identity and that is a manifestation of that dimension of religion that many modernists tend to just entirely overlook. And so Mormonism has not matured to that degree, but we already see those dimensions popping up with a lot of people who left Mormonism long ago, have no use for it, but still identify as Mormon because it's not really an ethnicity, but it's a social identity, it's a culture. And there will come a time when Mormonism, however it chooses to be named, functions more like how we see Judaism and Catholicism and other traditions functioning today. Where for many of the adherents, if not most, the most important dimension is not the one of truth claims, but the one of social identity, the one of history, the one of community, the one of shared memory. And so the deeper one looks into religion, the more complex a lot of the binaries and the dichotomies and the boundaries that we've drawn around us, it become today.

Ex-Mormon Perspectives and Country Club Mormonism

John Dehlin [01:46:42] So what I'm, I'm noticing for the first time in my episode with you After 18 years of Mormon stories and almost more than 2,000 hours of interviews, that the ex Mormon, the, the uncharitable ex Mormon view and sort of the angry, judgmental hyper orthodox views are actually very similar.

Dan McClellan [01:47:04] Oh yeah? Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:47:05] And I'm just not really realizing that because in my, I'm, I'm thinking about even some current desnat hyper orthodox youtubers. What I'm hearing them, I'm hearing in my mind what they might say in parallel with ex Mormon comments I, I received as soon as I brought you on today, which are things like sounds like a social club. Like it sounds like you're just saying Mormonism is my country club social club. So there's the disparaging view either from ex Mormons or orthodox members, that you're encouraging a social club or a buffet approach, picking and choosing behaviors or beliefs, and that that's either from an ex moment perspective, cowardly or deceptive or disingenuous, or from kind of a hyper orthodox believing perspective, that's heretical, that's dangerous, that's weak sauce, that's an inferior version of belief. So how would you respond to either side saying buffet country club Mormonism is harmful, disingenuous, and you know, not a good thing.

Dan McClellan [01:48:28] Well, it's the way it is whether somebody likes it or not. All Mormonism is cafeteria Mormonism. What do you mean? I mean that everyone is picking and choosing and it is not possible for it to be any other way.

John Dehlin [01:48:39] Okay, Devil's advocate. I obey the word of wisdom. I don't drink, I don't smoke. I go to church every week, I pay my tithing, I go to the temple. It's not picking and choosing. I'm obeying everything that I'm told.

Dan McClellan [01:48:50] You're picking and choosing because you see the value in picking that way because you have social benefits that you receive from that. But at the same time, the institution picks and chooses as well. The temple recommend questions have changed. The what is prioritized has changed. President Hinckley said, I don't know that we emphasize that this is. There are obviously people who.

John Dehlin [01:49:17] He also said polygamy is indoctrinal. Right? Right.

Dan McClellan [01:49:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:21] Even though it's in DNC 132.

Dan McClellan [01:49:23] Right. In 1978, we chose in a very important way. There is nothing but cafeteria Mormonism. It's just that some people wield a larger soup spoon in the kitchen than others, and some people have a larger a la carte selection than others.

John Dehlin [01:49:43] What do you mean by soup spoon?

Dan McClellan [01:49:45] That the authorities can be more coercive and more persuasive in parts of the cafeteria than other parts.

John Dehlin [01:49:55] This could be church leaders or apologists, right?

Dan McClellan [01:49:57] Yeah, it is. And as I've tried to probably very incoherently explain, all religious traditions evolve and change because they are all embedded within historical circumstances and context and have need and have exigencies and have goals and so are always picking and choosing. It's just that some people's menus are larger than others. And you are absolutely correct that the mindset that leads to a certain kind of apologetic approach, if that shelf breaks, if that rickety foundation falls, the mindset's still going to be there. Somebody's just going to be on the other side of the fence. And a lot of critics of religion will adopt the most brittle and the most rickety mindsets from within the religion in order to critique it in the way that is the easiest to get away with. Which is why you have folks like Sam Harris and others who insist that the fundamentalist approaches are the most pious is because that makes for an easier target, that makes for lower hanging fruit. And it's not that they're the most pious. It's just that they're the most eager to take on the costly signaling because they want to get the most out of it socially. But yes, it is a social club. It can be nothing other than a social club. We can add more stuff onto it, but it will never not be a social club, because fundamentally that is what created religion at the roots of human evolution is that it is a social club, that it allows social groups to increase in size and complexity and maintain cooperation even as they grow beyond the capacity for one person to personally know every other person in the group. That will never go away. It will always be a social club. For many people it is a social club, and for other people it is a social club. But the social club aspect of all religion will never go away. That's just the reality of the situation.

Prophetic Authority and Demanding Orthodoxy

John Dehlin [01:52:12] And what does it mean if, and I think we're going to transition now into the teaching around prophets. What does it mean? It's one thing if the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had Dan McClelland's mentality, which is, hey, it's changing all the time and we don't know what we're doing half the time, and prophets do the best they can and there's no one true church. It's all social construction and it's all buffet. But that's not how the leaders of the Mormon Church, or pretty much of any orthodox higher demand religion, has ever governed. The leaders at the top are like, this is the way, this is the doctrine, these are the commandments, and you follow it or else. And so what does it mean that the leaders don't have the mindset, either the awareness or the mindset, or they're just not being open about the reality. And so they're demanding orthodoxy and orthopraxy, in other words, obedience and literalistic orthodox belief, even though a lot of the members are rolling their eyes or ignoring them or compartmentalized. What does that mean?

Dan McClellan [01:53:26] Well, it means they're the leader of an institution that I'm not the leader of. I don't have. I am not burdened by the responsibilities that they are. I do not see everything that they are seeing and worrying about and are tasked with improving or changing or maintaining. I think if I were put into a position like that, suddenly having responsibility over a worldwide corporation with untold billions in assets and a responsibility to try to keep millions of members happy or faithful or whatever it is, tithe paying and attending whatever their priorities are, I'm sure my perspectives would change as well. I have the luxury of not having to care about any of that right now because I'm not in that position. I'm someone who's basically unemployed but still managing to make social media work for him. And so I can say a lot of things that because I'm prioritizing my curiosity, I'm Prioritizing what the data indicate. And there are not a lot of stakes for me to share what the data indicates from the perspective of a cognitive scientist of religion and a biblical scholar. So I think positionality has a lot to do with it. And so I cannot climb inside the minds of these men. I have spoken with many of them in the past and have come away usually with more respect for them as a result of those conversations. But yeah, that's a burden that I would not wish on my worst enemy because I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to try to prioritize concern for the 1 over the 99, but also be in the position that they are. So I don't think I'm in a position to criticize too much.

John Dehlin [01:55:39] Do you have a sense for, if you were called as a bishop or a mission president, whether you would be inclined to accept or not accept a calling like that? Or do you. And you don't have to comment if you'd rather not.

Dan McClellan [01:55:49] I think somebody will have dropped the ball somewhere if I ever receive a calling like that. But I have never turned down a calling in the church in my life. And I have tried to. That's been a priority of mine to serve where I am asked to serve and in whatever capacity I'm asked to serve. So. But that's something. When I was a kid there was a. What's the song? Used to be a big fan. Well, still a big fan of Sawyer Brown country music band, but they had a song and I'm trying to remember the title of the song where a guy catches his wife cheating on him all these years. Phenomenal song. Used to be able to play it on the guitar, but I had a friend who. We were listening to that song in the car one time when I was a teenager and he asked what I would do in a situation like that. And I said I've never been near a situation like that. I don't think my brain would operate in the way it normally operates in a situation like that. So I have absolutely no idea. So that will be my answer. I've never been in a situation where I have been given any such responsibility and I don't know how my brain would operate.

John Dehlin [01:56:58] Right.

Dan McClellan [01:56:59] Right now I have a principle that I accept callings that I'm given in the church, but don't know what about

John Dehlin [01:57:08] just the ethic of being a representative for the church or even teaching Sunday school or priesthood within the church or seminary, knowing that your paradigm within it, which I don't know if you would. I Don't know if you would describe the progressive Mormon paradigm as unorthodox, but if someone, if someone holds these views that we're exploring today. Scriptures are contradictory and problematic, prophets are, are flawed, humans bring meaning. Everybody's a buffet Mormon. A bunch of it maybe is literal or. Sorry, a bunch of it is either myth or fable or moral instruction, but may or may not have actually literally happened. There's kind of a moral or an ethical question about if you stay in it, if you take on its name, if you identify as a member, and then if you teach it or encourage either joining or fellowship in it, but you're not really signing up for the current way that it's taught or the orthodox view or the way the current leaders are teaching about it, then you're kind of best case, really a member of a different church than the one that is really presenting itself to the world. But worst case, you're complicit in either deception or you're hiding, or you're misleading or you're setting people up to failure. There are all sorts of moral or ethical problems with you having a progressive worldview that's very different than the official view. And I don't think we can argue there isn't an official view. It may change over time, but at any given time, there's a pretty clear sense of what the official view is. And so what about the ethics of that?

Dan McClellan [01:59:18] I can absolutely sympathize with the idea that I've seen expressed a number of times and to me as well, on social media, that there's no ethical way to be a part of this organization because of a number of different factors, but it's not. I don't think that everybody's circumstances and lived experiences are so easily reducible to such a binary. Again, it's more complex than a binary that is almost always just asserted because it makes things easier for us to put in boxes and to think about so that we can rationalize our own ethical framework or our own morality. And I think that works on both sides of the discussion. And so it is. It's messy. And I would say that engaging, acknowledging the mess and engaging the mess on its own terms, I think is going to be more productive than trying to reduce and simplify for the sake of putting in boxes that are easy to move around and are easy to get rid of. And yeah, there is obviously an authority structure that allows an official position to be asserted, to be reified in any given moment, but I think you'll see that that is also contextual and that frequently what is reified is a response to specific things rather than something that is absolutely consistent across all the different contexts and all the, all the different situations. And so I think it is whichever side of the equation is trying to reduce it to a simple binary, is doing so to aid their own structuring of power, their own sense of self image, their own boundary maintenance, whether that is trying to boundary maintain from the outside or from the inside. People want, it's just a. We all have a proclivity, a natural inclination to try to reduce things to simple black and white and binaries. And we all live such different lives and we all have such different experiences, and we all, our relationships with whatever we consider divine are all so different that I think it does more harm than good to try to assert such binaries whichever side of things we're on. But having said that, I think it's important to take seriously the perspectives and the experiences of those who have been hurt, whether they're on the inside or the outside, and allow them to dictate terms for their own understanding rather than try to impose our understandings on others. So I tend to be more willing to give the benefit of the doubt again to folks who are minoritized, marginalized, oppressed, whether they're speaking for or against the organization. But yeah, I am still an active member of the church and I wrestle with what that means for me, for my family, for the folks around me all the time. But that wrestle is my own.

What the Bible Reveals About Prophets

John Dehlin [02:02:45] The Bible. When you really take the Bible seriously, the idea of prophets becomes really interesting. Because whether it's Noah getting drunk or David having Uriah killed, or Moses killing, what a slave master or Peter denying Christ, there's this idea that man, what's a prophet? If prophets can make huge mistakes or lose their faith or, or kill people or command genocide. And then if you take it to the modern interpretation, which is these men are just doing their best and they're teaching out of their own changing conceptualization and they're just as flawed as the rest of us, it sort of does lead to the question of what's the value of a prophet at all? If they could be just as wrong or if they're just kind of making it up as the rest of us. So what would be an informed, maybe a progressive view of the value of a prophet? Especially when they might teach anti LGBT things or racist things or uphold a patriarchy? What's the value of a prophet if prophets have feet of clay, as the Bible would suggest?

Dan McClellan [02:04:05] I think that's a great question. And that's something where I, I would say I think a position of suspending judgment would probably be the most productive for someone who is within the church and trying to find a place to fit. I think officially infallibility is not a part of Latter Day Saint ideology, which means that fallibility is. And so perfection is not something inerrancy is not something that Latter Day Saints are required to accept of prophets. And Joseph Smith said a prophet is a prophet only when they are acting as such. And so I think I have seen lots of folks approach this in different ways, but the ones who I think have the most have been the most productive in how they think and talk about that is to, you know, and it's something that every mission, I don't know if the mission calls are still the same, but at least when I was called as a missionary there was an invitation to pray to know whether or not this was of God. And so I have seen progressive members of the church treat that as the criterion that they use, that the guidance of the Spirit is going to help them determine when what they're seeing is something that's going to be helpful versus something that's not. And I have seen folks who've done that but have decided that that fails them in certain times. So I don't think there's one simple answer. But it is something that I wish more folks would wrestle with because the reduction to of the prophet to an infallible source of God's word Again D&C1,38 whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same. The reduction of the role of the prophet to that I would suggest is problematic and is frequently harmful because it does take away the nuance, it does take away to some degree agency and it does try to reduce everything to a binary that again I would suggest is being prioritized for the sake of structuring power and values and for the sake of boundary maintenance rather than for the sake of advancing the cause of the church which is ostensibly to achieve exaltation and eternal life of humanity, which is I would suggest is a complex multifaceted goal.

John Dehlin [02:07:02] So the plain faced Mormon teaching is that the whole value of the restoration, the Mormon proposition is that God calls men to serve as prophets. God tells the prophets what God wants and what God believes and what men should do, the prophets tell us, and then we believe and do what the prophets say. That's my understanding of how the Mormon Church teaches what a prophet is and what a prophet does do you have an enhanced or an expanded view of what you would say a prophet, Another way of looking at what a prophet is that might, I don't know, encompass that, but add to it, or are you comfortable even going there?

Dan McClellan [02:07:47] I would say from a historical perspective, prophets were a long, long time ago were people who were trained in the different divinatory arts. And so even back then they were not considered infallible. They were just the people who knew better than others how to read the flight path of birds, or the texture, the color and the shape of a liver that you just cut out of a sheet deep.

John Dehlin [02:08:11] To do what?

Dan McClellan [02:08:12] To divine the, the will of the gods, the future. Within the cognitive science of religion, we talk about strategic information, information that helps people make decisions about, about actions, how to act. And prophecy was always a question of extracting strategic information from the world around them, whether directly from the deities, through,

John Dehlin [02:08:39] through

Dan McClellan [02:08:41] listening in on the divine council, or being fed information from the divine council by one of the deities, or trying to read the flight paths of birds. It was about trying to extract the necessary strategic information so that you could make decisions about going to war, about planting the crops, about moving the city, about all these different kinds of things. And deities were what we refer to as full access, strategic agents or agents who had full access to strategic information. And so that function of deities and of prophets, I would suggest has remained consistent down to today. These are folks who are supposed to try, supposed to have special access to strategic information, which again, doesn't necessarily mean infallibility or inerrancy. But I think it fits within what cognitive scientists of religion have determined helps the group feel a relationship to a deity, special access to a deity, and feel like they're being guided, even if that guidance is not always successful. And even in the Hebrew Bible we have stories of prophecy that has failed. And

John Dehlin [02:10:08] yeah, so what? So if prophets can get it wrong, if they can perpetuate harmful teachings or even discriminatory teachings, We can rely on kind of promptings or feelings that we ascribe or associate with the Holy Ghost, but that's potentially flawed. And then if we look at Oprah or Dr. Phil or Eckhart Tolle or Maya Angelo, there are many wisdom teachers, Buddha, Thich Nhat, Hanh, like pick your modern wisdom teacher. They've got lots of good things to say as well. So if, if I'll just say it plainly, if the Mormon Church got it wrong about black people, if the Mormon Church got it wrong about polygamy, if the Book of Mormon may not may be a 19th century document. If it's a patriarchy that marginalizes women, and if prophets are telling us that that's the way God wants it, then how can we still see that they have number one? What do we do with the problems? And then how do we see that there's still value there?

Dan McClellan [02:11:32] Well, I think the question kind of presumes that value is only found in inerrancy or infallibility because there is immense value in all of those other people and institutions that you rattled off, even if they are not perfect. And this is something that people ask me frequently on social media when I'm pointing out problems in the Bible. They will say, well, what good is the Bible? Well, if you're looking for perfection, one, you're never going to find it. But two, yeah, the Bible is not that. And similarly, if you're looking for inerrancy, infallibility, and anything less is garbage, then I think that's a problematic approach to things. I think there's still immense value to be found in things that are imperfect. I think there is guidance that can be found in individuals who are fallible. And I think there is, there's no way we're going to find an institution or a worldview that is going to be inerrant for all people in all times and in all places. And I think it's the desire for that that sits at the root of any despair that might result from the observation that we don't have access. Inerrant, infallible, access to the mind of God.

John Dehlin [02:13:04] So then what is a prophet

Dan McClellan [02:13:07] right now? The president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the other leadership that has that title. Again, so it's just like

John Dehlin [02:13:18] corporate board of directors, like board of trustees of a corporation. Can there be a spiritual theological component that is, that is added to the legalities and the power and the structure of it for a, for a thinking but informed, faithful Mormon.

Dan McClellan [02:13:45] Yeah, I think they're absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:13:47] What would that be? What would it be?

Dan McClellan [02:13:48] I, I think there are folks who find, who find inspiration and value in a lot of things that the prophets have said in the past and in the present. That doesn't necessarily mean that they attribute or feel the need to attribute inerrancy to them or that they particularly find them to be particularly upstanding ethicists or moralists. I think we can find inspiration and guidance or at least I have seen people insist they have found inspiration and guidance in, in surprising places and in imperfect people. And yeah, again, I, I think that that does not necessarily require inerrancy or infallibility.

John Dehlin [02:14:39] So if somebody's just like, look, they got it wrong about polygamy, they got it wrong about black people, they got it wrong about LGBT people. I, I don't see a value. Could you make a case from a, from an informed, faithful Mormon's perspective on why they modern day Mormon prophets still have value to provide for someone who's inclined to believe that they're just old men making it up with adding a lot of bigotry, doing too much harm, getting it wrong even more often than they're getting it right. Could you make a case on behalf of informed, believing Mormons that prophets actually have value to add? And if so, what would that value be?

Dan McClellan [02:15:27] I don't think I would try to convince someone that their experience is incorrect and that my experience ought to overrule theirs.

John Dehlin [02:15:35] No, no, there's another way to think about it. So like, if people get stuck in a, let's just say they fall to this sort of like, oh, I'm disillusioned, I feel betrayed. And then they hear, look, it's either all or nothing. So I'm going to go with the nothing. It's not so much you're trying to persuade, it's trying to lay out another possibility. That's what I'm saying. Just so that they could like be open to another possibility versus trying to persuade.

Dan McClellan [02:16:02] And I think I've laid that out for the most part by explaining that people who recognize the fallibility of prophets can still find value and things that resonate with, with them on a spiritual, on an individual level. And folks also feel they have the prerogative to seek the guidance of the spirit, whether that means to accept or reject what they're hearing from the leaders of the church. And so there's, I think many people have modeled middle ways of approaching the problem of the fallibility of prophecy. But do you have any names of

John Dehlin [02:16:41] like, books or Mormon thinkers that people can look to?

Dan McClellan [02:16:46] I try not to be a counselor in that regard because as I think I talked about in one of the interviews, I have a unique background and a unique perspective instead of experiences. And I have found that my own

John Dehlin [02:17:01] approach

Dan McClellan [02:17:03] has not been incredibly utilitarian for folks who, who have grown up in the church. But I think folks like Patrick Mason and people who are working in that area are doing a wonderful job. But that area is not a priority of my research. And so, no, I wouldn't try to step into that lane. I would leave it to those Folks. And yeah, I think they're doing a wonderful job. I think there's a long way to go, and I think we'll have people in the future that hopefully will advance the ball even further down the field for us.

John Dehlin [02:17:46] I'll just say there's a podcast called Faith Matters, I believe, and I think the foundation's called Faith Again. And I know they have a conference coming up in October over the weekend of the 13th called Restore.

Dan McClellan [02:17:58] Restore, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:59] And whether it's Patrick Mason or Terrell and Fiona Givens or Richard. Richard Bushman or Thomas McConkey or Rosalind Welch, they're even having Brandon Flowers from the Killers perform. I went last year.

Dan McClellan [02:18:14] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:18:15] And I'm super excited about it. And I would say look to the Faith Matters podcast, the Faith A Good Faith Again foundation, and join me and a lot of other great people at the restore conference this October 2023. And I think you'll find people that are trying to carve out this new path of progressivism. That would be my answer to my question.

Dan McClellan [02:18:42] Yeah, well, give me the plug notification and I'll make sure to include it next time. Yeah, I would agree with that. I was on the Faith Matters podcast a while ago. I thought that was a wonderfully insightful discussion. And to my knowledge, they do. They do really good work. And I've had some. I've had a handful of people ask me if I was speaking at Restore. Like, I have not received an invitation, but that's. And, and that's probably for the best, but. But yeah, I would agree with that.

John Dehlin [02:19:14] Okay. Okay. So turning really quickly, you. There is a. I understand the perspective that science and faith are like totally different realms and there are things that aren't disprovable. And in that sense, that often is the realm that faith can thrive or should thrive or provides the most value is in the non disprovable areas.

Faith, Disprovability, and Core Mormon Claims

Dan McClellan [02:19:45] God of the gaps, so to speak.

John Dehlin [02:19:47] Yeah, but there are, you know, the more recent a claim, a supernatural or a religious or a faith claim occurs, sometimes the more disprovable it becomes. So whether or not there's a God or whether or not Moses saw God, or whether or not God part of the Red Sea or whatever that means, you know, four, 6,000 years ago or however long, like, yeah, it's hard to really know what really happened there or even whether Joseph Smith saw a God or the Godhead or whatever, hard to prove whether that. Impossible to prove whether that did or didn't happen. But when it comes to Mormonism, you've got Claims that are pretty disprovable at this point, at least beyond a reasonable doubt. So examples might be, you know, you yourself have, have, have said on Mormon stories and elsewhere that the Book of Mormon seems to be much more a 19th century document than a historical one, that there isn't the evidence for a historical Book of Mormon or even for half of the Old Testament in terms of it really occurring. The Book of Abraham is clearly not a translation of Egyptian papyrus, and Native Americans are clearly not likely to be descendants of Israelites or Jews. They're more likely to come from Mongolia or via the Bering Strait. There's a lot of truth claims within Mormonism that appear to be disprovable. The Book of Mormon itself has so many, some would say plagiarisms or borrowings, many of them completely anachronistic, not to mention the animals and the flora and the faun in the Book of Mormon that have no place being there, that someone could argue that there's a lot of core Mormon doctrine and theology in Scripture that is disprovable. And so, while holding a more nebulous, okay, I believe in some type of divine being and maybe Jesus has some meaning because God and Jesus are relatively undisprovable, it almost seems like that can be a lot more tenable than holding beliefs to kind of core Mormon truth claims. What would you say to that concern? And what would thoughtful, faithful believing Mormons say to the clear disprovability of so many core Mormon doctrines or teachings?

Dan McClellan [02:22:34] Well, I don't know that it's significantly different from the historical problems that we find in the Bible and elsewhere. I mean, we have greater access to a lot of the data when it comes to particularly things that happened in the 19th century. And if we're talking about alignment with our historical reconstruction of the past, yeah, it's absolutely true that the Bible, at least in parts, comes closer to what we can reconstruct, even though it is also in many places at an almost infinite distance. But, yeah, I don't know that there's a solution for those issues. I mean, I don't think there's a way to say that we can change our theoretical mindset to try to make claims that are not supported by the data, suddenly supported by the data. I think there are still gaps in our knowledge. There's still a lot of information that we don't have. And it's possible and even plausible, even likely, that in the future we will discover some data that will overturn some of the conventional thinking in ways that may bring things into closer alignment with what's in the Book of Mormon or less likely, the Book of Abraham. But, yeah, I think there was a statement made by a scholar, I can't remember if it was too Hugh Nibley, but Hugh Nibley somehow was involved, that the. The salvation of the Book of Abraham was not to be found in the Egyptian text. It had to be found in the English. In other words, if that's going to be preserved and salvaged, it's going to have to be on the side of the meaning and the value of the English text rather than in the establishment of its historicity. And again, going back to discussions that we had, I think, in the first episode about what faith is, the idea that these faith claims are or should be reconcilable with historical data is kind of, in many ways a violation of what we're being asked to do, because we're not being asked to historically prove anything. We're being asked to have a testimony. And even Brigham Young has said that a testimony is not about the data or the facts. A testimony is something different from that. So I certainly can't resolve those historical concerns, but I think I.

John Dehlin [02:25:23] Have you struggled with them, or do you have concerns about them? Or is that beyond the scope of.

Dan McClellan [02:25:31] I would say I acknowledge the issues professionally, but, yeah, my personal take is. I would say beyond the scope of this interview. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:25:41] Yeah. Okay. So. So my. There's a couple things that my Christian believing friends would say. The first is that faith isn't about believing in clearly demonstrably false things. So if the Book of Mormon can be demonstrated to be not what it claims to be, or the Book of Abraham can be demonstrated to be not what it claims to be. God doesn't want you to have. Have faith in false things, in demonstrably false things. He wants you to have faith in true things that you know are not disprovable, that are good. Right. What would you say about that?

Dan McClellan [02:26:21] Well, if we go back to the Bible and the period when the Bible was written, the word that we translate, faith, really just meant trust. And

John Dehlin [02:26:32] is that really. Can you talk the etymology of that?

Dan McClellan [02:26:37] Yeah, Pistis faith comes from pisteuo, which or pistevo, which means to believe or to trust, to believe in someone or something, and it was overwhelmingly used to refer to just trust that someone placed in someone else. And, oh, I guess I have not done a word study on this. I cannot say for sure. But from what I recall, the majority, if not the overwhelming majority, and if not all of the discussions about faith in at least the New Testament have to do with trust in God's promises for the future. In other words, it is looking forward. And so if we want to think about the New Testament framing of faith, it is not about faith in what has happened in the past. It's about faith and what God can do for us moving forward. So I've seen people take that approach and say, my faith is in what's going to happen in the future. I have faith that God is going to save. I have faith that God is going to, that there is an afterlife, that there is a resurrection, that there are all these kinds of things. And, and so the question of whether or not A, B or C actually happened historically is a different question from the question of faith according to that approach. So that's something I've seen people talk about. And these days when we talk about faith, we tend to look in the opposite direction. We're talking about faith that the Bible is inerrant or that Jesus resurrected or that Moses part of the Red Sea

John Dehlin [02:28:22] or those, or that the Book of Mormon happened as it says it happened. Right?

Dan McClellan [02:28:25] Yeah. So the question of what faith is, I think is relevant to that discussion. But again, these discussions are happening because the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment happened. And now our biggest concern is whether or not truth propositions are true rather than whether or not someone should trust that God is going to save or resurrect or deliver them in the future. So things have changed quite a bit now. The Book of Mormon was produced on our side of that pivot. So I think the discussion is a little different there. But I think it's probably of some value to consider how we talk about faith today as opposed to how it was discussed anciently. Particularly if one thinks the Book of Mormon is an ancient text. How is the translation of the Book of Mormon or our interpretation of it influenced by our post Enlightenment frameworks versus the frameworks that were in circulation when we may believe the Book of Mormon was originally composed. But yeah, I don't know that I would endorse any one of those perspectives, but those at least give people things to think about.

John Dehlin [02:29:52] So there's sort of like a point of faith informed, a faith based in ignorance, which is like not even knowing the problems, let's just say with the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham. And then there's sort of like a conscious decision to suspend a decision or to spend suspend questions and just to say, I don't know, I don't want to get into it or I value my Faith. And so I'm just going to ignore or suspend or consciously decide not to feed that wolf or invest in those questions or concerns. And I'm just going to go with it because it adds value to my life or it feels good. Is there a perspective you're aware of amongst faithful, participating Mormons that says, I do not believe that it's historical. I believe it's a 19th century work of Joseph Smith's imagination or some sort of cooperation. Book of Abraham is not scripture, not the one true church per se, but I still believe in God. I still believe in the Savior, and I still believe that this is what God wants me to do. And this is where I'm going to express and wrestle with and pursue. And if so, how can someone choose to pursue Mormonism, having reached the conclusion that the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham aren't what they say they are? Because that would imply that Joseph Smith deceived or perpetuated fraud for some. And so how could someone pursue a church path with a belief in God and with faith if that church is rooted in Scripture that they conclude to not be what it claims to be? Do you have an understanding of how some people might do that?

Dan McClellan [02:31:53] I think the folks that I've seen who approach it that way are one, finding value for themselves and maybe for their families or hope for the future in engaging it on a social level. And maybe they see it as a force for good in the world or perhaps something that could become a force for greater good in the world and would like to be a part of that or would like to try to bring that to pass. So I think there are folks who see it that way. I don't know that I would say it's a question of being pot committed, but that would be one way to frame how I think some people approach it, that they're too committed to their investment and to the project to just abandon it. The. Which, you know, could be. Could be called a sunk cost fallacy to some degree. And. And I think there are folks who just hold out hope that, you know, it looks one way right now. I. They cannot be. And it's not a Freudian slip. That was me.

John Dehlin [02:33:13] Yeah.

Dan McClellan [02:33:13] Having some imaginary quotation marks putting their

John Dehlin [02:33:16] words in your mouth.

Dan McClellan [02:33:18] Folks who would say that the data don't support the things as they see them right now, but they still want to hold out hope because they have found so much value in the past. And within the LDS tradition, there is a big emphasis put on using past experiences and past feelings of Faith to help reinforce contemporary feelings. And so I think that's another way that folks would go about that. And again, if people recognize many different dimensions to the operation of their faith, maybe the truth proposition dimension can take a little more heat before the other dimensions that they value begin to fall apart.

John Dehlin [02:34:08] Does the Bible provide, like, there's the Pious fraud view of Dan Vogel, which is that Joseph Smith, maybe he was conscious that he was engaging in pseudepigrapha, whether with the Book of Abraham, the Book of Moses, or with the Book of Mormon, but that he still believed in Jesus and he still believed in God. And he even believed that God and Jesus wanted him to create fiction, Bible fiction, some say fan fiction in a derogatory way, but that somehow that was still divinely sanctioned. As you read the Bible, is there a way to conceptualize of a God that would be okay with that act?

Dan McClellan [02:34:53] Oh, yeah, absolutely. The Bible is full of a lot of different representations of deity. A deity that lies, a deity that kills, a deity that manipulates. It's a deity that loses battles against other deities. There are innumerable different divine profiles that we find in the Bible. And the notion that there would be a deity who would use kind of a bumbling actor who doesn't always get it right, but who manages to in one way, shape or form, advance the cause. Yeah, that deity could absolutely be consonant with what we find in the Bible.

John Dehlin [02:35:31] And then obviously, secular people might call that a trickster God and say, that's not a God I want anything to do with.

Dan McClellan [02:35:37] Yeah, absolutely. And the trickster deity is in the Bible as well. A good friend of mine wrote a book called Jacob and the Divine Trickster that is all about that divine profile. And, yeah, that is an ideal that is isolated to particular parts of the world and sometimes particular times in history. And it is unpalatable to a lot of people today. And I'm not going to fault anybody for saying that's not a God with which I want to have anything to do.

Comparing the Bible and Book of Mormon Historically

John Dehlin [02:36:08] Okay, settle. One common claim I get from some of my Christian friends, and sometimes they're ex Mormons, sometimes they're not. I think of Sandra Tanner or Grant Palmer or my good friend Randy Bell. Some of them might say, look, yes, they're, you know, okay, the critique of someone like Cassandra Tanner or a Grant Palmer or Randy Bell might be, look, they're willing to apply all this intellectual rigor and critique against the Book of Mormon, but they don't turn around and apply that same rigor on the Bible. And most ex Mormons that I've come across with. As soon as the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham and the Book of Moses fall, the Bible falls pretty soon after that, as does Jesus. The critique I get back from many of my still believing Christian friends is no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The Bible has a veracity, an authenticity, a historicity that, as problematic or as fraught as it may be, is orders of magnitude more viable and historical than the Book of Mormon. And I think what they would often say is, as far as the New Testament goes, we've got scrolls and we've got. These are historical figures, people that lived, Paul lived, Peter lived, like Jesus probably lived. And then it's actual cities, Jerusalem, Nazareth, whatever, Rome, emperors that are mentioned, that have, are mentioned in other secular histories. And then even with the Old Testament, the Jewish people exist and they carried records and it talks about civilizations and cities and geographies that exist. And so there's kind of just this argument that. And then there's the argument of numbers. Billions of people believe in the Bible, Whereas it's only 4 million or 5 million that believe in Book of Mormon these days. So what can you speak to about that argument? That the Bible is orders of magnitude more historical and more credible than the

Dan McClellan [02:38:19] Book of Mormon, that it's false? What you have, I would say the Bible covers a broader spectrum of alignment with what we can reconstruct about historical accuracy. There are parts of it that are historical. Absolutely. There are also parts of it that are misaligned with historical accuracy as profoundly as the Book of Mormon is. Now, the Book of Mormon does not occupy the one side of that spectrum the way the Bible does, except for the old world beginning of the Book of Mormon. But it's a difference of. I forgot the word. Excuse me. It's a difference of degrees, not of kind. And if you lay out all of the Bible on a spectrum from perfectly historical to ludicrously ahistorical, the Book of Mormon does not extend beyond the part of that spectrum that the Bible occupies. It occupies similar parts of the spectrum, at least on the one side. So that's an apologetic fallacy that because the Bible is so many percent accurate more than the Book of Mormon, that it's a difference of kind. It's just a difference of degrees. And I've seen atheists point that out as well. Somebody who believes in a book with a talking snake and a talking donkey does not really have a leg to stand on when it comes to saying ha. Jewish people in America. What a laughable. Claim. So yeah, I would say the Book of Mormon has less to commend its historicity, but overall. But it is not more ahistorical than any than parts of the Bible are.

John Dehlin [02:40:25] But why not? If you believe that a historical Jesus existed, that the cities in the Bible exist, that Jews exist, that the civilizations surround, you know, like with the Book of Mormon, the DNA, the anachronisms, it's just all the 19th century Ness of the Book of Mormon just seems to, to put it in a category of its own. What is it about the veracity or the. No, what is it about the problems with the Bible that allow you to put it in the same category as the Book of Mormon?

Dan McClellan [02:41:02] Well, we have the same. We have texts that were composed in one century that were, that were purporting to be from centuries before and that were telling stories about the people from centuries before in a way that just informed their own experiences and their own communities in that much later century. So again, it's a difference of degrees and not of kind. In many ways, even the Joseph Smith translation, the Book of Abraham, are doing very similar things that were done in early Judaism with the Targumim and things like that, where they're taking these ancient stories and then they're paraphrasing them and retelling them and adding to them and harmonizing them and, and doing all this stuff. And you know, we have texts like the Book of Enoch and others that were considered authoritative in the earliest periods of Christianity that if you want to see odd, the Book of Enoch is, is a lot odder than the Book of Mormon is and makes a lot more claims that don't align with what we know about the historical data. And the Book of Enoch is directly quoted in the Bible in the New Testament it was considered authoritative for the earliest Christians and the earliest Jewish communities. And so this is an attempt to try to disentangle these texts and say this is uniquely bad and this other is, you know, has its issues, but is of a different kind and that's just not the case. Well, one is modern. I mean in, in that sense you could say one has all the makings of a modern production and one, even with all of the claims, is an ancient production that that would be the only way. I would say it's different in kind. But when it comes to the alignment with historicity, I don't think there's much of a case to make that the Bible is unique or is in some way distinguishable from the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:43:11] So just to summarize Did I just hear you say that the Book of Mormon is in the same category of a historicity or an historicity as the Holy Bible?

Dan McClellan [02:43:24] I would say as parts of the Bible, yes. The Bible as a whole contains passages and stories and books that are in the same category as the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:43:37] Like a significant number or a small number in the Bible?

Dan McClellan [02:43:42] Not the majority, but yeah, the primeval history, I think Genesis 1 through 11, none of that has a greater claim to historicity than any part of the Book of Mormon. I would say you had even said

John Dehlin [02:43:55] last episode that the 12 tribes of Israel were probably written back into history versus actually being a thing.

Dan McClellan [02:44:02] Yeah, I think that's one example where the scholarly consensus is that this is something that people centuries later wrote into their own past in order to try to generate a social memory that would serve their interests in that day. Which is what? What the data would say about the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:44:21] Okay, okay, so let's flip that now. And from a faith positive perspective, what's a view of Scripture for people who are informed believers that sort of says you're missing the point of Scripture. So if the point of scripture isn't, number one, to establish historicity such that you then decide whether or not to take serious the behavioral rules and the theology, some would say the myth and the fable and the moral value is the point. So if we're going to be less concerned about or confident about the historicity, if you were to make a case for why the Bible and the Book of Mormon still have a ton of value, make that case for someone who's like, ah, the historicity, I'm just struggling with it, so I'm going to throw it all out, make an argument for the scriptural baby in a bathwater of ahistoricity. Does that make sense?

Dan McClellan [02:45:32] I think I've heard church leadership say in the past, and I don't remember exactly where it came from, that the purpose of the Scriptures or studying the Scriptures is to learn doctrine that changes behavior. And if that's the purpose, then historicity isn't even an element. And one of the most powerful teachings in the New Testament, the parable of the Good Samaritan, is explicitly ahistorical. It's not true at all. It never happened, but it still has power, has inspired millions for 2,000 years. And so if Scripture is teaching doctrine that changes behavior, it does not have to be historical. And we've got examples in the New Testament of stories that are not historical that do precisely that. And so again, we get caught up in the question of historicity, because of our positionality in this period in history and because that's become the way we understand true religion. But the Scripture itself, and James 2 says that true religion isn't about believing, but is. And I forget exactly how the KJV frames it, but clothing the naked, visiting the fatherless and the widow and the prisoner. And so it is about, again, doctrine that changes behavior. And to the degree that progressive Latter Day Saints want their religion to inspire change and inspire people to live better lives and to create a better world for the people who are in it, I would suggest that that is a more valuable approach to the text than to spend all your time trying to defend its historicity.

John Dehlin [02:47:32] Yeah. And is there a case to be made that the authors of the scripture, like themselves, weren't intending it to be viewed as historical?

Dan McClellan [02:47:50] I would suggest that there's a case to be made that many of the authors did not understand a. Let me put it this way. Our understanding of a historical or an accurate text today, excuse me, is not the understanding they had anciently. And this is another thing that Bart Ehrman discusses in his book Jesus before the Gospels. We've done a lot of research on oral cultures and on storytelling and how those stories evolve and change as they're told and retold throughout time. And one of the things that they will point out is that they may recite a story and the same storyteller may recite it a day, a month, 10 years later, and it's wildly different. And they may confront them with the differences, and they would be like, it's the same story. It's exactly the same. It is historical, not because the words are the same, but because the message or the impact of the story is the same. And so when we think about text being the same, text being historical, we are thinking of that in a different way than they did anciently. And they. I think most people understood that these stories were being told not because they expected the audience to understand this as a verbatim kind of recorded account of history, but because they probably understood these as communicating a message. And if the message got across, that's what was the most important part. So that's not. That's not to say that that's everywhere in the. In the Scriptures, that every text can be considered that way. But I think most of the more informed readers understood that these texts were being shaped so as to achieve a rhetorical goal. And as long as that rhetorical goal was achieved, then the text succeeded. And that relationship to Actual historical fact was secondary or tertiary, if at all

John Dehlin [02:50:00] is it. Can you. Would you agree with the statement that the historicity of the Scriptures don't matter at all, that it only matters whether it makes you a kinder person, a better parent, a better spouse, a better citizen, and that the historicity of Scripture is kind of irrelevant in a red herring?

Dan McClellan [02:50:24] I don't think I would say anybody should take that approach. I think there is a legitimate, I think that is a legitimate approach, particularly from an academic point of view, which is the approach I'm taking. But from a position of faith, I think there are a lot of different approaches that are legitimate. And so I would say if someone wants to take that approach, I would not have a problem with that, but I would also not say that is the only approach or necessarily the right approach.

John Dehlin [02:50:56] Okay. Speaking about Joseph Smith, particularly so, there are a couple things about his behavior that people find really problematic. The first that often comes out is his involvement in treasure digging and folk magic and the peep stone and the fact that he led people on treasure expeditions but never found treasure. And that implies that he was intentionally deceiving people. But then the fact that he would be using a peep stone in a hat to find buried treasure, that he, that it was illegal and that at some point, you know, he started getting into legal trouble, and then when he pivots and apparently uses that same stone in a hat to then claim to translate scripture, that that's just a really shady start to what would, you know, what, what he would later claim to be a prophetic journey. How do you, how, how is your understanding of how faithful, informed Mormons are able to kind of like not let that, you know, bother them too much?

Dan McClellan [02:52:13] I, I think there are informed, faithful members for whom that is a, an issue, something that does bother them. And among the things that bothered them about Joseph Smith is probably one of the least bothersome things. And I think others would argue that things that Joseph Smith went through periods of growth and change, and that doesn't necessarily mean that this was some revolutionary change where everything was abandoned from his past and he started over fresh, but that thing were brought into his new and improved future from the past, and even those things would be later done away with. I don't know. I don't recall all the timelines right off the top of my head, because Mormon history is not my area of expertise. So I can't say the degree to which that's historically accurate. There are folks who would point out that there are similar shady things going on in a lot of the stories and a lot of the heroes of the Hebrew Bible and even that there's a case to make that some of the disciples in the New Testament were problematic in different ways. And so if the Bible is any example that Joseph Smith is not departing from the tradition that is found therein. And I don't know, I think there is some truth to that. And at the same time, it's a bit of a. It's a bit of a dodge. But yeah, I think there's a spectrum from folks who allow it to be something problematic and are bothered by it all the way to folks who find ways to make it less problematic.

John Dehlin [02:54:11] I mean, I guess as I hear you describe the early prophets or shaman or whatever, tribesmen who like, look at the color of a liver and then try and discern what, what God's wanting or looking at what migrant patterns or whatever crystals like, I don't know, like it, it sounds like you're saying there's a long human tradition of shamans or whatever emerging or prophets emerging out of what many would call folk magic. And so, so if that's true about prophets emerging from those sort of folk magic traditions, in some sense, Joseph Smith fits right along with that tradition.

Dan McClellan [02:54:55] Well, yeah, and that's one of the examples that people go to the Bible as the template for what Joseph Smith is doing. And you find folk magic in the Bible, even in the New Testament.

John Dehlin [02:55:05] I mean, they, even with biblical prophets,

Dan McClellan [02:55:08] when they needed to replace Judas in the, in the quorum of the 12, they rolled dice to see who it would be. That's an example of folk magic. And you have the. What is it? People who, when Peter was walking by, people would just try to have his shadow cross over them and they would be healed and things like that. There's all kinds of folk magic. The line that distinguishes magic from true religion is a pretty arbitrary one that is usually drawn for the purpose of authorization. And so, yeah, I think the folk magic side of things is appealing to a conservative Christian sensibility. It's not appealing to any kind of objective reality about what a true and a false prophet is.

John Dehlin [02:55:58] But critics of Joseph Smith and the stone in the hat, but who maintain some sort of belief in the Bible have to reconcile what's the difference between a urimum thummim and a stone and a hat. Is one set of artifacts for divination objectively more credible than another? Right.

Dan McClellan [02:56:22] There's not a great case to make for that, particularly when you have divinatory objects that involved rocks that involved dark spaces in for instance, the breastplate of the high priest. And you know, that's where the concept of the urim beturim tumim comes from. So it's not a significant departure. It is the application of a modern conservative Christian sensitivity to the question.

Joseph Smith's Polygamy and Faithful Responses

John Dehlin [02:57:01] Okay, so taking going to kind of a bit more serious Joseph Smith's polygamy. And again, I'm just going to warn people, this is kind of a bit of a rough question. Feel free to pause or turn it off or turn it down or ask people to leave the room before I ask it. But you know, there's a reading of Joseph Smith's polygamy that's like, hey, Abraham did it, Isaac, Jacob, Isaac did it, Jacob did it, Solomon did it, David did it. Polygamy and concubinage, it's a restoration of all things. It's very biblical, totally legitimate, thumbs up to polygamy. God inspired it. Joseph Smith's polygamy is not a problem. That's kind of one perspective that I think modern Mormon apologists advance. There's another that's like really just trying to look at the evidence, to look at the accounts of Joseph Smith's wives, of the other women that Joseph Smith apparently propositioned or tried to recruit into polygamy, where Joseph Smith's communications with not just them but their parents, whether it's orphans that were in Joseph's home, domestic servants, whether it's young 14, 15 year old girls, sister pairs, mother, daughter pairs. There's a reading of Joseph Smith's practice of polygamy that charitably Patrick Mason on this podcast described as looking a lot like sin. But if you're like really comparing it, by modern standards, some could say looks a lot like the behaviors of a sexual predator because not only did he end up with 30 plus wives, many of them teenage girls, many of them married other men, which makes no sense. But when you look at, number one, how he used his power to promise, either promise or threaten, promise eternal salvation not just to them, but to their parents and their, you know, that's a huge, some would say abuse of his power and prophetic mantle to the threats of damnation are being cut off if these women weren't willing to sign up for it. And then we have a few instances of women just saying, I'm not interested, and potentially talking about it publicly. And they're called sluts, they're called harlots. They're completely maligned and defamed by Joseph and by the people around him. And then you've got Joseph Smith lying about it and hiding it from Emma and denying it. Like, you could make a pretty easy case that that's not just bad behavior that might even exceed the worst examples in the Bible of prophetic misbehavior. So, and maybe I'm wrong there because I love it that you kind of looked away to think about it right there.

Dan McClellan [03:00:09] There's murder and other things like that by prophets in the Bible. So I wouldn't say it exceeds everything, but it comes close.

John Dehlin [03:00:17] So for faithful, believing, informed Latter Day Saints, how are you seeing them digest and either be okay or affirming to Joseph Smith's polygamy or finding a way to stay faithful and believe in spite of it?

Dan McClellan [03:00:38] That's an area where, for the most part, the people that I know who are more academically minded, more thoughtful about this have not found a way or have not cared to look for a way to make it okay, that this is something that they don't understand and do not accept. And that's frequently something that's first on the list of the things that are big concerns of mine. So I'm, I don't, I don't know of a way. I'm not a. I'm not. Again, I'm not an expert on, on Mormon history. So Joseph Smith's polygamy is not something that I have spent an awful lot of time looking at and is not something that I've talked at great length with. I think there are others who have spent a lot more time with that. And I don't know that I would say any apologetic attempts to make it okay have been successful. Hopefully the harm that is, that has caused for the women involved and the children involved is acknowledged and is not swept under the rug and is not denied. But, yeah, I don't think I would say I see thoughtful Latter Day Saints making it okay. I would say I see many struggling with that. And it's not something that I think that I think has an easy resolution. And when it comes to not making it okay but staying anyway, I don't know that there's a. I'm not going to endorse any particular argument. And the arguments that I've seen most frequently are arguments that I'm not going to dignify by repeating here. So it's a big issue, and I know a lot of people who struggle with it and who are not happy about it.

John Dehlin [03:02:46] Well, I appreciate that. And when you say you don't see a lot of people trying to make it sound okay, there are Plenty of apologists that, number one are trying to,

Dan McClellan [03:02:55] people whose opinions I respect and people that I would consider like minded. Latter Day Saints. Yeah, I see people trying to make it okay, but not folks whose opinions I find particularly compelling.

John Dehlin [03:03:10] So when apologists try and like for example, say that Joseph never practiced polygamy but that it was Brigham that started it, that's one common modern apologetic that's

Dan McClellan [03:03:19] not supported by any data.

John Dehlin [03:03:21] Okay. And then another is that, well, it was all spiritual wifery. He, there wasn't any sex involved and especially that with the teenage girls, you know, no sex.

Dan McClellan [03:03:32] I, I, I think for some of the relationships that's probably true. I, I don't think that that is plausible for every last one. Although I will acknowledge that it does seem peculiar that there, I don't know that there are any confirmed pregnancies. I think there have been people have been sought out and there have been claims that somebody has DNA maybe, but I don't know that there have ever been any children that have been conclusively demonstrated to be Joseph Smith's, which is peculiar, but I don't think, I don't think is enough to overturn the data that indicates there was absolutely sex going on.

John Dehlin [03:04:15] Yeah, okay. Yeah. And then what about the idea that it's biblical that Joseph Smith was just restoring what God commanded in the Old Testament and maybe even Jesus was a polygamist. Yeah, Joseph's just restoring all things because he had to do it, because it's a restoration. Is that biblical that polygamy was a restoration of God's commandments to his children?

Dan McClellan [03:04:43] Well, it's certainly biblical that Polygamy was normative I.e. from COVID to cover, but same is true of slavery. So I don't see a mandate anywhere to one any recognition that it would someday go away or too that it needs to return. So yeah, I don't think that is that case only works for those who would consider the Bible inerrant or something that is an infallible moral guide, in which case that's on them to grapple with the fact that polygamy is normative throughout the Bible. But outside of those folks, I don't think that's an argument worth making making.

Priesthood Authority and Women in the Church

John Dehlin [03:05:29] Okay, let's talk quickly about authority. So just biblically, I was kind of taught that, you know, Jesus, you know that like Adam had priesthood authority and he passed it down through the prophets in different dispensations through the laying on of hands. And there was a Melchizedek priesthood because there was a Melchizedek in the Old Testament and an Aaronic priesthood because Moses had what, a helper named Aaron. And so there's a higher and a lower priesthood all through the Old Testament. And Jesus restored the priesthood. And there needs to be this unending chain of priesthood authority. And Jesus gave his authority to his prophets and apostles. But then the apostasy happened and the Catholic Church claimed authority, but they had lost it. And so there needed to be a restoration of a Melchizedek and an Aaronic priesthood because you need that authority to then perform the sacred ordinances. What do you make of that?

Dan McClellan [03:06:34] From a biblical scholar perspective, the priesthood authority in the Bible is rather inconsistent. You have a few different ways that it is presented. And the idea of the Melchizedek priesthood is something that's a little. Is pretty unclear in the Bible. I mean, the name shows up. I think you have it once. Well, you have it twice in Genesis 14, you have once in Psalm 110, and then you have it like eight times in Hebrews five through seven, and that's it. And each reference is building on the previous references. And so it really goes back to Abraham's encounter with the priest of El elyon in Genesis 14:18 through 22, which, as I've discussed in a video recently, is a complicated text. But I think the data support the conclusion that the text originally referred to Melchizedek as the priest or the king of Sodom. And it is later because you have the text saying they killed the king of Sodom. Abraham's going after these people. Abraham defeats the kings. He's coming back and says the king of Sodom came out to meet him. And most scholars would say this is now the son who has now taken over was back in the city of Sodom. And now Abraham is coming back with the spoils of war from having defeated the folks who killed the king. And it says the king of Sodom came out to meet him. Abraham spoke with Melchizedek, the king of Salem, who was the priest of El Elyon. He gave him a tenth of everything. And then the king of Sodom said, give me the people, you keep the goods. And Abraham swore by the God El Elyon that he would not keep the goods. And basically it's conflating the identities of the king of Sodom with Melchizedek, who. And it's likely because they changed his role from king of Sodom to king of. Of Salem. And a great book on that is by Robert Cargill called Melchizedek King of Sodom. So the root of all of this is this notion that there's something special about Melchizedek and that Abraham recognized what was special about him and so paid tithes to him as if he was an authority. The reality is Abraham was returning some of the goods that these other kings had taken. And because Abraham was the one who conquered them, Abraham was maintaining most of it for himself, but was saying, hey, here's some of your stuff back that these bad guys took from you. And then the king says, give us the people, you keep the goods. And he says, no, no, I'm not. I'm going to give you everything that is owed to you. And so it's not tithes in the way that we think about tithes today. It's something quite different. It's basically returning spoils of war to the king of Sodom. And that's probably the earliest tradition that we have that is at all associated with Sodom. And later on we get this idea that Sodom is this wicked place. Psalm 110, we have this messianic comment, you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. So the idea that Melchizedek was a priest to El Elyon. And so this psalm is trying to say the same thing about the king. And then in the Book of Hebrews, it's even further expanded. Melchizedek in Greco Roman period Jewish literature is a shadowy figure who's represented as a God. In 11q Melchizedek, Psalm 82 is quoted and it says, God stood in the council of the gods and Melchizedek is that God. And so by the time of the composition of Hebrews, Jesus is coming in and kind of taking up this mantle of this priest who's without beginning and without end. This is a special priesthood. And so the Latter Day Saint conceptualization is further building on those earlier ideas. And so it's different, it's evolving, it's changing. We then try to retroject a consistency back into the early story in order to make it sound like it was the way it is now the whole time. And there are really no data, at least not in the Bible, that supports that retrojection of our understanding of these priesthoods. And the Levitical priesthood was probably just one other type of priesthood. And there were probably struggles for power and the Levites won out in the end. The Book of Chronicles is one of the main players in that struggle for power. Regarding the Levites, there's even a theory that the story of the Exodus originated as a story of the Levites leaving, escaping Slavery from Egypt, and then it just accreting more and more details and mythological splendor over the centuries, and then it being woven in with the Aaronic priesthood. So it's complex, it's messy, it's inconsistent. And so we, I think we do a disservice to the biblical text when we just try to just shellack a layer of, of Mormonism on top of everything and say, turns out they were doing it just like us the entire time.

John Dehlin [03:12:03] Are, Are you familiar with David Whitmer's pamphlet and address to all Believers in Christ? Is that something you've stumbled on?

Dan McClellan [03:12:10] I read maybe 20 years ago. I don't, I don't recall the details of it, though.

John Dehlin [03:12:14] Like, I, I didn't start really immersing myself in this until the LDS discussion series just this year with Mike. But, you know, David Whitmer is one of the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon. The Whitmer family was crucial to the early years of the Mormon Church. And at some point, David Whitmer has a falling out with Joseph Smith. I believe he's excommunicated, but he writes this pamphlet called An Address to All Believers in Christ, where it basically says all those claims about, like, Peter, James and John and the Melchizedek priesthood that didn't exist, that wasn't a thing like, not in 1829, not in 1830, not in 1831, not in 1832, like Joseph introduced that much later by like, 33, 34, 35, and then added that whole Melchizedek priesthood narrative, higher priesthood narrative back in and actually changed Book of Commandments, doctrine and Covenants, passages in Revelation to write in a higher priesthood, a Melchizedek priesthood, even the Peter, James and John story, when it did not exist. Now, on the one hand, that sounds very biblical, right?

Dan McClellan [03:13:30] Yeah, yeah, that sounds. That's absolutely how they.

John Dehlin [03:13:32] That's exactly how the Bible worked. On the other hand, that would conform with what you just said about this whole idea that a lower and a higher priesthood being biblical and then being restored, that would match people who would kind of look at that skeptically and say, number one, that's not biblical. Higher and lower priesthood, Melchizedek priesthood. But number two, it wasn't even a part of the Mormon Church until Joseph Smith invented it and then wrote it back retroactively into doctrine and scripture later. Are those ideas things you're familiar with? And if so, how do you see thoughtful Mormons working through that?

Dan McClellan [03:14:22] I'm not familiar with the, the historical data regarding that pamphlet. So I can't really comment on the significance of that, but it doesn't sound immensely out of place. And yeah, I don't know that there's a way to make those historical problems go away. I think folks, hopefully, I think if folks have trouble acknowledging that, that there were revisions and there were innovations and there were elaborations going on in the early church or major changes, yeah, I think that's inescapable, that's undoubtable. And so I think if folks have not made peace with that, I don't know that there's a lot that I can say to make the priesthood issue okay with them. That's just something that the data pretty clearly support provided. Again, that this pamphlet is, that's something that aligns with the consensus view. But again, I don't remember the details of the pamphlet or its background.

John Dehlin [03:15:37] Well, okay, I want to shine a light on something I think really useful because like there are some people where they learn something like that. They learn about the book of Abraham, they learn about the problems with Peter, James and John and the Melchizedek priesthood or polygamy or whatever, it shocks them and it becomes the impetus to their crisis of faith. But there's probably a way to construct a religious worldview where Even you, Dan McClellan in 2023 can become aware of something that for many just is the beginning of like an eight hour study session that ends in them completely leaving their church. Whereas a democlen can go, maybe. Oh yeah, I would expect that to be. I would expect things like that to be there. And that's in a sense, it's almost like you have a religious worldview that's inoculated from many of the things that would take people out because of the foundation of how you come conceive, how it all works. So can you talk about how learning something like the Peter, James and John Melchizedek thing is a later invention that gets written back in, how your religious and church and scriptural mindset and worldview would expect that to happen, not be destroyed by learning that it happened?

Dan McClellan [03:17:03] Well, and as we discussed in the first interview, I joined the church as an adult. I came into the church with eyes wide open. I did not know everything about the church, but I approached it as a product of fallible humans and recognized a lot of these things from the beginning. So I was not raised with a lot of the black and white thinking with a lot of those binaries instilled in my worldview. And so, so when more evidence came up that oh These were fallible humans who were doing the best, and sometimes not quite the best they could to try to advance their community's interests and goals. It was not devastating for me. And I think that the church would do well to. I mention it also, that. But church history has come a long way to being a lot more transparent. And I think there's a long way to go still. But if folks can be raised with that understanding, I wouldn't call it inoculation because that treats historical data like a virus, but I think it would do a lot to help people have a more accurate, a more historical understanding of the church and would make a lot of these revelations from history a lot less damaging because I think that binary kind of black and white, every last thing is word for word. How we find it in the Scriptures and in the teachings, teachings of Joseph Smith and in the Journal of Discourses makes for a phenomenally rickety and frail foundation, or shelf, if you want to call it that. It's just something that's set up to fail. And so I think there are ways to raise people in the church. I think there are ways to engage in scripture study and engage in

John Dehlin [03:19:20] the,

Dan McClellan [03:19:21] you know, the, the living of this religion in a way that is a lot less fragile.

John Dehlin [03:19:28] Yeah. And on the one hand, there's a part of me that would want to figure out how to package Dave McClellan Mormonism and have that be part of the CES curriculum, you know what I mean? Or Patrick Mason Mormonism or Terry Lynn Field Givens Mormonism. But I also have a sense that that might not be good for the church, you know, that somehow the church maybe needs a spectrum of types of belief to stay healthy, that maybe the church needs its super orthodox believers and its fundamentalist believers and its nuanced believers, that it somehow all different types of faith are like a salad or like an orchestra, are useful for the whole body of Christ. Does that, does that make sense?

Dan McClellan [03:20:19] I think it. It certainly makes for. Well, it makes for a larger church in some ways, and for some ways I think it makes for a more fragile church. But yeah, there's. There's a degree to which variety makes, Makes the church a lot more dynamic. And yeah, that gets in a whole bunch of other messy topics. But I think the institution certainly values the many different types of Latter Day Saints, although I would suggest that it is defaulting toward a more traditional, more conservative member. If it had a Persona in mind, a target audience for a lot of its communications, it would be the more conservative end of the spectrum.

John Dehlin [03:21:12] Yeah. This is a micro question. There are many of these scripture mastery scriptures that we learn that the church interprets, teaches us to interpret in a certain way. One that comes to mind that Gerardo just asked me to ask you. There's the scripture where Jesus. Jesus says, other sheep I have that are not of this fold, they shall also hear my voice, and there shall be one voice and one shepherd. And we were all taught to believe that that's Jesus telling his followers that there's a group of Christians on the other side of the world in North, Central and South America. They're Native Americans, but I'm going to go preach to them, and they're going to be Christians too. Is there evidence that that's what Jesus meant when he was talking about other sheep I have that are not of this fold?

Dan McClellan [03:22:02] I wouldn't say there's evidence that specifically identifies people in the Western hemisphere as those other sheep. And I don't know that I've looked at much scholarly commentary on that verse, but I imagine that the consensus view is probably that this is a reference to taking the Gospel to the Gentiles, wherever they may be. And certainly by the time of the writing of the Gospel of John, the scope of Christianity had expanded well beyond Syria, Palestine, into different parts of the world. So it's probably referring to further flung reaches of the world than Syria, Palestine, but not the Western hemisphere.

John Dehlin [03:22:49] Okay, okay. I think. Let's see. You know, I think, you know, I think it was Boyd K. Packer who once said, the great threats to the church are gays, feminists and intellectuals. And, you know, we've talked a bit about the problems with history, and there's a way to associate intellectuals with people who care about history. There's the question of misogyny and patriarchy and male dominance versus women's submissiveness within Mormonism and disempowerment. And then there's also the issue of LGBT rights. And we've already talked about your advocacy, your wristwatch, rainbow, and how you. You present as very LGBT affirming. There are many who don't care a wit about historicity or truth claims, but they, for them, whether it's, you know, the polygamy or the way women are treated, the racist teachings, whether it's the priesthood ban or just the racism in the Book of Mormon and in the Bible and in the Book of Moses and the Book of Abraham, it's just like, we'll take them one at a time. How can someone who is, who. Who maybe identifies as a feminist. Do you identify As a feminist.

Dan McClellan [03:24:19] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:24:20] Okay. How can someone who identifies as a feminist maintain. Okay, let me back up. You said early on in today's episode that, like something about faith. Yes. A belief in things you can't know unless it's really doing harm. Right. That you, you do you want to restate what you said about the stipulation of unless it's doing harm as it relates to religious commitment or adherence?

Dan McClellan [03:24:52] Yeah, I think, I think I was saying that, that going beyond what the data can show and deploying faith as a means of interpreting the text and understanding the nature of God and things like that, as long as that's not being done to contribute to or further harm to others, I don't have any concern with people doing that. And so I think it was a way to suggest that, that people need not rely solely on what the data evince when it comes to religious belief. But I think that once we stumble into causing harm, that that's where it becomes problematic and we need to probably recalibrate and reorient ourselves to the data.

How Mormonism Has Affected Women and LGBTQ Members

John Dehlin [03:25:49] Okay, so. So when you think about, I mean, how would you articulate the challenges, the ways that the Mormonism has harmed women or demeaned women or devalued women, how would you characterize that? And then how would you, how would you. Or would you. And then how would you say that sort of feminist faithful Mormons are able to continue their participation in and, or allegiance to the church in spite of that devaluing and. Or harm.

Dan McClellan [03:26:33] Yeah, I think I've said in a TikTok video previously that. Inequality in. Oh, I forget exactly how I said it, but inequality in position is inequality in value. And yeah, the LDS Church has a history of being a very patriarchal church and obviously the priesthood is not held by women at this point. When we get into early church history, that becomes more complex. And so there's a case to make that the current situation is more an institutional kind of leveling off and stabilizing than it is the furtherance of any revelation or anything like that. I cannot speak for any women on that. I have never experienced being a Latter Day Saint as a woman, and I never will. And so I can't step into that lane and try to represent how women feel about that or how they should feel or what they should do about that. But it is an issue. And it's another situation where, as with polygamy, I don't think that there's a. I don't think there's a good, good case to make for why it is the way it is. And I, you know, I don't organize groups to protest or anything like that, but if I will share anything about what I pray for, I pray for a day when that will no longer be the case, as people prayed for many generations for an end to the priesthood band and generations before.

John Dehlin [03:28:31] Yeah. So it bothers you?

Dan McClellan [03:28:36] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:28:37] Okay. And is that same with the racism?

Dan McClellan [03:28:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:28:42] Okay.

Dan McClellan [03:28:42] Oh, yeah, absolutely. I. I think the. The end to the. The priesthood ban was obviously a welcome change. I. I think it's obviously better late than never, but it. It could have been sooner as well. And unfortunately, we are still a church that aligns a lot more closely with the conservative end of American Christianity, of evangelical Christianity, which has itself been committed to a brand of white supremacy since before the priesthood band ended. And I think that we still perpetuate a lot of racism, a lot of systemic power asymmetries within the church because of the decision to hitch our wagon to evangelical Christianity, and a lot of social issues, and I think that includes social issues that have to do with race. Although I think there have been some strides made in recent years, I still think there's a long way to go. And Latter Day Saints who deny or defend or perpetuate those systemic power asymmetries and the structural racism that we see in our broader society and within the church are causing a lot of harm.

John Dehlin [03:30:06] Yeah. And so, obviously, I don't know how much we've talked about kind of the LGBTQ suicide epidemic within Mormonism, but there's a question that one could ask, which is, where would a dividing line be where a certain amount of misogyny and sexism is okay to maintain affiliation and belief? A certain amount of racism and exclusion based on race is okay, and a certain amount of LGBTQ deaths and suicides are okay, or just systemic exclusion from things like access to the temple and temple marriage. Like, how does one who's an informed believer sort of say the. The. The. The amount of racism, sexism, and homophobia and misogynism up until August 28th of 2023, it's still okay. It's still a. An acceptable amount versus, like, oh, wait, at some point, if the church were to cross. If the Mormon church were to cross these boundaries, well, then that's. Now that's too much. And I'm leaving. Like, how does someone. How does an informed believer navigate that? And let me just ask it a different way. What might it take for an informed believer to say, nope, that's. That's too much? What would those Things be. Would it be genocide? Would it be, I don't know, Jim Jones, like, behaviors, David Koresh, you know, Keith Ranieri, like an actual, like, here's the date and everybody sell everything and, you know, Heaven's Gate, sort of like mass suicide kind of things. What would it take to say it's too much? Where's the line?

Dan McClellan [03:32:08] Well, I think a lot of thoughtful and informed Latter Day Saints have left because the line was too much delay in improving, in bending that arc of justice. And I don't think any of them can or should be blamed for that. But again, this is a situation where people approach this differently. People have different experiences, different sensitivities, and different ideas about what's ethical and what's not. And so I have seen members who suggest that there needs to be significant change in a given time period or they have decided that that's the last straw. I think that there's a difference between saying it's not okay and leaving. And there are a lot of folks who are still in who emphatically insist that it is not okay. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to jump ship. They want to try to affect some change from within. There are others who say that that's unethical or inappropriate and that the best move is to. To jump ship. And I think there are questions about how that, you know, turning the church into more of an echo chamber by having everyone leave. And there are also concern or there's a hope among some people that change will be affected by seeing enough people jumping ship. So I think there are a lot of different perspectives on this, but we are looking at the history of the church writ large. Most of our lives are only a tiny little piece of that, and so we're only experiencing a little part of it. And I think most folks probably want to see some kind of change affected within their lifetimes or something that is perceptible to them. But yeah, I think, I think most of the thoughtful Latter Day Saints I know would probably say that the current course is unsustainable for them for too much longer. And I think the largest group of departures from the church are probably folks who have grown tired of waiting for change when it comes to questions of gender, sexuality and race. And so it's an issue that I hope will be faced more directly and more critically sooner rather than later. But I don't want to endorse any position over any other because I think it's up to people's own experiences and sensitivities and feelings about this and people they've seen get hurt or people they've seen helped.

Activism, Faith Crisis, and the Future of Mormonism

John Dehlin [03:35:08] So recently Elder Corbett, I believe is his name, has spoken out against activism in the church, basically saying it's inappropriate, it shouldn't happen. And, you know, the Lord is at the helm. And so, you know, take your activism to your civics duties, your relationship with your country, but don't bring your activism here into the church. Any thoughts you can share about how that might be viewed from someone who's faithful but also a big advocate for civil rights?

Dan McClellan [03:35:51] When I was a new member of the church, I remember the Word of Wisdom being introduced as something that was brought about by the activism of Emma Smith, complaining to Joseph Smith. And that was an illustration, at least in the lesson that I remember, of why it is important to express concerns. And there was even, I want to say it was a general conference talk a while ago that someone gave where they talked about a ship being built in a harbor and there were structural issues with the ship, but nobody wanted to take the concerns to the king. I think it was because they didn't want to be seen as trying to steady the ark. And then the ship immediately sank. And I think the point of that entire general conference talk was to express concerns. And the church has been running surveys and polls that it sends out to the general membership for many years. And that's how they get a lot of the data that help them make a lot of decisions that they do. And 1978 Revelation was a response to activism, people speaking out in largely constructive respective ways, not having marches in the street or, or anything like that. But there has always, historically in the church been a place for it. And it has always been an element of the church's progress when it has introduced big changes. So I don't. I can see leadership wanting people to stop complaining about lots of stuff. But the notion that activism is. Is a problem would be quite the innovation would be something that is not historically what has helped the church along

John Dehlin [03:37:57] for informed believers that you've interacted with. How have they conceptualized this idea of one true church? This is the exclusive one true church with exclusive authority. And all the other religions and churches are in some way either inferior or maybe they've got good things and bad things, but they lack the authority so their ordinances are illegitimate.

Dan McClellan [03:38:23] Yeah, I think most thoughtful Latter Day Saints would say to the degree that's something we want to endorse, it's primarily about the authority. However, I've seen people talk about, I think it was President Hinckley's statement. If you've got about finding truth in a lot of different places and so bring your truth and let's see if we can improve upon it, I think that's an important thing to keep in mind that it's not a black and white question of all truth versus no truth, but at least for an active Latter Day Saint, important truth to which or an important truth that does not have a corner on the truth. But again, there are different positions to take on that. There's a whole spectrum running from. From that to people who might suggest there's not really that much truth at all. But it's a good social club.

John Dehlin [03:39:36] Yeah. So if somebody were to talk down to, to your position and try to summarize your position as some of the following, I'll say unfair characteristics, I would just like to hear whatever you would respond. So if somebody says people, people like Patrick Mason and Dan McClellan and others, it's just a social club to them and that's why they're still in, what would you say?

Dan McClellan [03:40:06] Well, I, I would say, I'm sure that is the case for a lot of people, but I'm explaining the scholarship. Again, I'm not talking about my own personal, my own personal position.

John Dehlin [03:40:17] But would you say, like, if somebody is like there's something wrong with a strong sense of social valuing, social commitment and community engagement to one's decision to remain engaged, you would say what

Dan McClellan [03:40:38] I think that position is, I would argue, more informed by a concern for boundary maintenance than a concern for either loving God or loving one's neighbor. And that's. There's. I think if we get rid of all the people who care about social concerns, the only people we have left are the people who care about the institution to the exclusion of the neighbor. And so I think that's a dangerous position for people to take. I understand where it comes from and I understand how convicted people can feel about it. But it's a good thing that such people are not making the decisions for the church.

John Dehlin [03:41:21] And if somebody were to say these people are afraid, they're afraid that their spouse or their parents or their community are going to cut them off or they'll lose money, or they'll lose their jobs, or they'll lose their reputation. So a lot of these people that stay are doing it out of fear or a lack of courage, what would you say?

Dan McClellan [03:41:43] I'm sure that's true for a lot of people, but I don't know that that means much to them. I mean, that's another instance, I would argue, of trying to rationalize why one's position is right rather than trying to find a way to improve circumstances for everybody. It's a way to. There are a lot of people who've made the decision to leave who want to feel like that was the best decision. And one way to do that is to find ways to rationalize why staying is wrong. And then there are other people who want to stay and rationalize why that's the best decision by coming up with ways to explain why leaving is wrong. And in both cases, what we're doing is, is finding a way to make ourselves feel better about our own decisions. And that's another one of those just universal features of being a human being is we want to feel good about ourselves and our decisions and our social identities. And we will frequently come up with whatever rationalization works for us to feel better. And so people on all sides of this question are going to rationalize it in ways that make them the good guys. And sometimes that means saying, oh, well, they're just afraid. Well, so what? Maybe they have things to be afraid of. Does that mean they're a bad person? Does that mean there's anything wrong with them protecting themselves or their family? I just. I don't think there's a lot to commend kind of the public assertion of these criticisms.

John Dehlin [03:43:25] Okay, and what would you say? That there was a. There was an apostle, a prominent apostle, who was quoted as saying, not all things that are true are useful. I can see a lot of orthodox, informed Mormons who are like, okay, yes, historical criticism, yes, anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, yes, polygamy is unsavory. But, like, stop talking about it. Like, stop talking about problems with the Bible or that Moses may not have existed, or the twelve tribes may not have existed, or that the genocide was written back into history versus it being God's will. Like, stop talking about that damn McClellan or all these things that we've talked about today. Because when you do, it weakens the faith of the orthodox members and they're the backbone of the church. So not all things that are true are useful. Social criticisms, historical criticisms, a nuanced set of beliefs about scripture and prophets make you want to take the scriptures less seriously, make you want to take prophetic utterances less seriously, and ultimately, best case, make you take your faith less seriously. Worst case, they lead you out because it's this thread that you start pulling on, and soon it all starts unraveling. And what if Dan McClellan becomes the jumping or Mormon stories or CES letter or just accurate Mormon history. What if that becomes a jumping off point for a complete loss of faith? Not all these things, things are useful even if they're true. What would, what would people that you've worked with say in response to that?

Dan McClellan [03:45:15] That's, that makes for again, what I've mentioned a few times, a quite brittle and fragile foundation, which means rather than raising a new generation to understand these things from the get go and, and have a stronger foundation on which to engage their Mormonism, this leaves everything very brittle and fragile, which is going to. The data are not going to go away. The Internet's not going to go away. People's access to these data are not going to go away. There's not really a way to prevent folks from accessing these things. And so the more you try to obscure that and prevent that, the more fragile and brittle the foundation of those people's faiths, the more binary and dichotomous, which means easy come, easy go. They're going to. The loss of faith is not going to go away. It's just going to make the boundaries a little clearer and a little sharper while people stay in the church, which I would suggest does not make for an incredibly healthy membership. And so it's an artificial security that people are seeking by saying stop, stop letting us see the data, stop letting us see the truth. I think I know at least my own personal experiences that there are. There's a lot more respect and cooperation out there in the world for Latter Day Saints who can engage with these nuances and these problems and these shades of gray than there are for folks who want to just paint themselves into a corner and be there with their, with their glass jaw of faith that is clear and sharp but will break very, very easily. So, yeah, my, in my experience, the, the folks who are concerned for that are more about boundary maintenance than they are about loving God and loving one's neighbor and loving truth and, and loving truth, which is a very complex, very difficult thing to grasp. I think that's, it's not as binary or as simple as we like to talk about it.

John Dehlin [03:47:54] Yeah. And then some would say that, you know, whether it's, whether it's, whether it's the New York Times publishing problems of the Book of Abraham in 1910 or BH Roberts realizing challenges to the Book of mormon historicity in 1922, or Fawn Brodie coming out with no Man Knows my history in 1945, or Juanita Brooks and the Mountain Meadows Massacre or the Tanners. There are multiple moments in history where Mormon church leaders were clearly put on notice about problems with historicity, problems with truth claims, problems with the culture, the civil rights movement of the 60s. It took them another 18 years before they made changes regarding the priesthood ban. Like there would be some that say the leaders could have been improving this stuff for a century or more and they knew, but they intentionally were either ignoring the problems or worst case, they were silencing, hiding and even punishing the truth tellers. How does a faithful, informed Mormon sort of look at the church and its leaders? With charity and with a desire to continue knowing that the leaders maybe could have, should have known better and could have, should have done better and chose not to?

Dan McClellan [03:49:31] That's a difficult question. I think they're a lot of

John Dehlin [03:49:38] more

Dan McClellan [03:49:38] thoughtful, informed Latter Day Saints have some negative opinions about some leadership in the past. And it's not like it's been the same leadership over the last century. There have been different leaders, some of them a little more open to input and feedback than others. And I think a lot of them just hope that the openness will increase in the future rather than decrease. But I think with the Internet and with a lot greater access to information, there is also a lot. There's a larger channel of communication that is open upstream as well, and so members can get in touch with church headquarters and, and there's a long history of people reaching out. And now that the church is also conducting surveys quite frequently and polls of members, I think members have the opportunity to make their voice heard now more than ever. And I think that'll be a big part of the winds of change blowing in a new direction in the future. So I think, I think there are members who are cautiously hopeful for the future, but we'll see

John Dehlin [03:51:04] really quickly. I know we're about to wrap up because I know you had to go and thank you for your generosity. How serious is the problem of people, Mormons in 2023, losing their faith and leaving the church? By your estimation, by your experience now as kind of a social media voice within Mormonism, how serious is the problem?

Dan McClellan [03:51:32] Do you think it's serious? I get messages every single day from people who ask me to solve their faith crisis.

John Dehlin [03:51:40] A lot of people. Do you get the sense it's a lot of people?

Dan McClellan [03:51:45] Well, it's a little complex. It's a lot more people I have ever had before reaching out to me online, but it's also a brand new audience that I've never had before online. But yeah, it's rare a day goes by where I don't get a message from somebody. If I respond, I can't respond to the overwhelming majority of the messages that I get. But if I respond, I generally let them know I'm not the one. I don't know how much help I'm going to be, but I direct them to books like Planted and folks like Adam Miller and others who have very thoughtful approaches to issues that Mormons are struggling with today. But my sense is that, yeah, it's a serious issue and it's not going away anytime soon.

John Dehlin [03:52:37] How does it make you feel to see the church having sort of a modern faith crisis that's statistically significant. How does it make you feel?

Dan McClellan [03:52:53] It's troubling in a lot of ways, but I think there's a part of me that is hopeful that it will catalyze more attention and more voices and more change. So hopefully, or cautiously optimistic is how I would say makes me feel, but at the same time empathetic to the people who are going through this. Because I can't imagine how much of an upheaval it is for a lot of people's lives and how catastrophic it is for their worldview and for just their trust and their faith and. And their understanding of the world around them. I imagine it's gotta be devastating. And so on that end, it always stings to hear from people who are going through struggles like that.

John Dehlin [03:53:51] Have you experienced feelings of anger at whether it's the racism, the sexism, the homophobia, the way marriages and families can sometimes be harmed or destroyed by trying to negotiate all these dynamics. Have you ever reached the point of feeling anger about the situation that we're in?

Dan McClellan [03:54:13] Oh, I've never stopped being angry about the situation.

John Dehlin [03:54:16] Sounds like Hulk. That's Bruce Banner.

Dan McClellan [03:54:19] Yeah, to some degree. No. I think I have been angry about the world that we've been living in since I came home from my mission and spent two years living in a very different world, coming back and seeing how things were not the way they could be. And I don't think I will stop being angry about that. And, yeah, that's one of the things that drives my social media activity. I don't argue about religion, religion on the Internet with people, because it's fun. I think it's. It's therapeutic, fundamentally.

John Dehlin [03:55:00] Well, and in terms of, like, coming back to how we started, like, 12, 13 hours ago. I don't know how many hours we've done now. Like, one of the things you say is that you just want to educate People. Right. That you just want people to know the data and then they can make whatever decisions they want. But what I think I may have just heard is you do experience anger at whether it's misinformation or people losing their faith or the social injustices. And while you come down on the side of being pro faith and even pro LDS Church or pro Christianity, you do experience anger. And part of the motive of your social media is maybe to help move things in a positive direction over time, institutionally.

Dan McClellan [03:55:55] Well, my motivation is broader than the LDS Church as an institution. It's broader society, which is why I ran for office in 2018. And in 2020.

John Dehlin [03:56:07] What'd you run for?

Dan McClellan [03:56:09] 2018, I ran for the state House. And in 2020, I ran for the state Senate.

John Dehlin [03:56:13] In which seats? Or do you want to say?

Dan McClellan [03:56:15] I ran against John Notwell for the House and I ran against Lincoln Fillmore for the Senate.

John Dehlin [03:56:21] This is Utah House and Utah Senate.

Dan McClellan [03:56:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:56:23] Okay. And under what?

Dan McClellan [03:56:25] General geographic area in Harriman, so. Southwest corner of the Salt Lake County, Deep, deep red. I had a 50 and then a 40% deficit to make up, and I think I took 16 to 17 points off of each of them.

John Dehlin [03:56:40] Those are percentage points.

Dan McClellan [03:56:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:56:41] In terms of support. And did you. Do you want to say your political party affiliation?

Dan McClellan [03:56:47] I ran as a Democrat, but I have always maintained that I did that because that was the way to get on the ticket in a realistic way, not because the Democratic Party tags all of my bases. It does not. And being on the inside even further solidified my position that the party system is fundamentally broken and that it's more about structuring power for party bosses than it is about trying to advance the interests of the people. And so I joined the Democratic Party in 2016 only because I wanted to be a part of an organization and try to make a difference. But, yeah, ran as a Democrat. Upset a lot of my neighbors, but,

John Dehlin [03:57:38] you know, like believing a church, fellow ward members.

Dan McClellan [03:57:43] I'm sure I upset a lot of them, but my Black Lives Matter sign and my pride flag in my front yard are doing it anyway, so.

John Dehlin [03:57:54] And is that another thing that maybe discouraged you or maybe not just how it seems like there's some correlation between orthodox, faithful Mormonism and more conservative political ideologies.

Dan McClellan [03:58:09] It's absolutely a source of frustration. And I've attended church in dozens of different countries around the world, and I've seen the just unimaginable kaleidoscope of people and political ideologies and experiences and positions of faith in Those different places. And so I have an international perspective on the church which makes it a little easier to stomach what goes on in the United States. But yeah, it is frustrating to see how given to right wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation many Mormons allow themselves to be. And I wish they could get better informed about what they're signing on to and also their own what's going on in their own heads, why it's attractive to them. I get accused a lot of trying to be a mind reader, but I'm only a specialist in the cognitive science of religion, which might seem like mind reading to some people. But I'm following the data

John Dehlin [03:59:16] and I guess maybe I'll. Other than wanting you to plug your things, maybe I'll ask this final question, like let's just say the current attrition rates within the church continue. Can you see that drain ever possibly impacting, either wearing you down or affecting you in terms of your relationship with the church? Or do you see your relationship with the church being independent of the broader social dynamics that are occurring?

Dan McClellan [03:59:57] I probably won't comment on my own personal position on that.

John Dehlin [04:00:02] Okay, I wasn't trying to ask your beliefs per se. I mean, I guess I, I do wonder about like the Faith Matters crowd, whether they ever get start feeling lonely or start feeling worn down or frustrated, you know what I mean? So maybe I'll broaden it and say, well, I don't even know. But I guess I'll say this. Thank you and others who are engaged in the fight of being thoughtful. I mean, I'll just. Okay, let me end by just saying thank you. Like the number of people, historically, the number of people that are willing to go with the data, speak truth openly but also stated from a position of faith and of, and of some level of commitment to the church. In my view that's a very small number of people historically within Mormonism and maybe within broader Christianity, I don't know. But it is the reason why so many of my viewers and listeners love you in or out of the church is because they love that, that integrity, that courage and that integrity and that devotion to data and that devotion to evidence and truth. And so I just want to say thank you, Dan McClellan on behalf of me, on behalf of the Mormon people whom I love believing Mormons, progressive Mormons, ex Mormons, thank you for what you're doing. I hope that you're treated well. I hope you're left alone or supported within the church and I hope your popularity and impact multiplies by a thousand because I think it's only good so far what I've seen coming from what you do. So I hope you're able to, I hope you're able to do this for a long, long time. That's what I hope.

Dan McClellan [04:02:03] Well, thank you very much for the very kind and very humbling words. I appreciate it very much and I hope the same things and I hope that more folks come forward as well who are like minded and who would like to see, see a lot more people have a firmer place in the church rather than feel like they're being pushed out from the inside.

John Dehlin [04:02:28] Yeah. Okay. This is just a 10 second question.

Dan McClellan [04:02:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:02:32] Somebody asked if there's any evidence that Joseph Smith and I know that's not your wheelhouse, but let's just say biblical prophets being influenced by entheogens or hallucinogenics like, like mushrooms or LSD or any of that. This is JC who asked the question. He's been very patient. So I'm just going to ask it. Any history or evidence that you're aware of that would suggest that any prophets, modern or ancient, were influenced by psychedelics of any kind.

Dan McClellan [04:03:03] I don't know about psychedelics. They were definitely going on in the societies surrounding a lot of these prophets. It's certainly plausible that was going on. I think the closest we get to any direct evidence would be a couple of findings in Israel. The Arad Temple, which was late 8th century BCE Judahite fortress that had a temple in it. We found the holy of holies. We found two incense altars and a standing stone. They tested the substances that were the burnt remains that were on top of the incense altar. And there were three different types of THC that were in the burnt substances on top of the incense altar. So at the very least, cannabis was being burnt as a part of worship in ancient Israel. Additionally, we have the remains of a young girl who died in childbirth, probably around 14 years old, who was buried in another part of Israel. And there was THC foundation found in the area that correspond to where her lungs would have been. And that was interpreted by scientists as an indication that they use cannabis to try to manage her pain while she was going through the childbirth that eventually killed her. So there are indications of cannabis use there. I have no doubt that there were folks who were using psychedelics, but I don't think we have any direct evidence of, of prophetic use. The ecstatic prophet, that is probably the idea that that gets closest to psychedelic use. But there were many different ways that they brought about an ecstatic state. So but yeah, I got fasting being one of them.

John Dehlin [04:04:53] Right.

Dan McClellan [04:04:54] Yeah, that was was one of them but there were, there were others. And so yeah, it certainly plausible plausible, but but I don't know the data well enough to say we can say for sure.

John Dehlin [04:05:04] Okay. And so Joseph Smith.

Dan McClellan [04:05:06] Well, I have no idea about evidence regarding Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [04:05:10] Really quickly, huge thanks to Beck for her super chat. Thank you, Beck. Thank you for Carol. Carol writes. Carol Bernard writes. It's so refreshing and interesting to hear those layered conversations. Glad you enjoyed. Carol, thanks for donating through the super chat feature on YouTube and also JC of course, thanks for your question. And I'll just say, anyone who wants to support us now through the super chat feature of YouTube, we really appreciate that that's how we do a lot that we do through your financial contributions. We really hope those of you who value these sorts of conversations with Dan will consider consider donating@mormonstories.org, clicking on the donate button, becoming a monthly donor. Your donations are the backbone of what makes all of this possible. And so thank you for your Super Chat donations now or your ongoing recurring donations@mormonstories.org and then really quickly, Dan, I want to end as I've tried to begin and end on every episode. I want people to support you financially so that you can do what you do for a long, long time. So please talk about your online courses, other ways people can donate your upcoming book, and just ways people can morally or financially support you.

Closing Thoughts and Where to Follow Dan McClellan

Dan McClellan [04:06:35] I appreciate that. I am on TikTok. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitter and YouTube as Clelland M A K L E L A N and I'm monetized across many of those. And so supporting my content is one way to do that. I teach online courses. The next one that's coming up is on Wednesday, September 20th. I'm teaching a class on the different creation accounts that are found in the Bible. So you can go to dadascaloy.com and sorry about the awful name, that's D I D a s d K-A-L-O-I.com and that's a Greek word that means teachers. But I've collaborated with a couple other scholars to take turns offering online courses. So you can go there if you're interested in signing up for a course. And then I have a patreon patreon.com McClellan which is where I have a discord and I have other incentives for folks who, who want to subscribe. And then also the data over dogma podcast is where I'm going to be committing a lot more time going forward. We are going to get connected with a podcast network, so our work is going to be shared a lot more widely. But we're looking forward to that. And we have a Patreon as well. And folks who are interested in supporting that can, can check out the Patreon or as usual, just listen. We have episodes every, every Monday and the, the one today, we're, we're talking about the historicity of the Exodus and whether or not Exodus 22:29 commanded the earliest Israelites to sacrifice their firstborn children. So light stuff. It is light fair on the, on the podcast.

John Dehlin [04:08:29] And you do you want to talk about book contracts or not? Because I think there might be of a change in status just between part two and part three of your series here.

Dan McClellan [04:08:40] Yeah, I still got to talk with my agent about when to start promoting stuff. But yeah, I'm going to be working on a trade book that will discuss misconceptions about what the Bible does and does not say. So that something that will come out in probably spring of 2025.

John Dehlin [04:08:57] That's little less than two years away.

Dan McClellan [04:09:00] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:09:01] So that's too far.

Dan McClellan [04:09:02] It's just starting. I'm just starting.

John Dehlin [04:09:03] That's too far.

Dan McClellan [04:09:04] I haven't written the first word yet. I don't even have chapter one written.

John Dehlin [04:09:08] So I want to say get, get moving, but then I'm here.

Dan McClellan [04:09:12] So.

John Dehlin [04:09:13] Okay, awesome. Well, super, super good wishes to you. Thank you again. Super grateful for your generosity and all you do. And for coming on Mormon Stories, I hope the feedback has been more positive than negative for coming on Mormon Stories.

Dan McClellan [04:09:31] Overwhelmingly more positive than negative. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:09:33] Good. Okay, good. Well, all the best to you, Dan. Thank you so much and good luck with everything you do.

Dan McClellan [04:09:40] Thank you. I appreciate it.

John Dehlin [04:09:41] And just really quickly, one last thing. If you are a doubting Mormon, a questioning Mormon, if you're a believing Mormon, but if you are trying to find a community of people who are trying to make Mormonism work as informed, committed believers, I'm going to do an unsponsored, unsanctioned shout out for the Faith Matters podcast for the Faith Again foundation and for this conference called Restore, which is coming up in October, the weekend of October 13th in 2023, Brandon Flowers from the Killers is going to be performing. Patrick Mason speaking. A bunch of really top notch thinkers and Thomas McConkey and the Givenses and just all the bunch of cool people who are thoughtful, progressive Mormon believers and many, many more. I think Rosalind Welch is going to be there. So many other cool people. So please check out the Restore Conference and if you find value. And I'm just going to go to support it because I think the bigger the tent within Mormonism, the more space that's made for all different shades of belief and participation just is only good for everybody in the end. So check out Faith Matters, Faith Again and the RESTORE Conference that I hope to see many of you there. Anyway, huge thanks to Gerardo for his thumbnails and for his support and all that he does in producing. Thanks to Julia for the time codes and show notes and the shorts that she manages. Thanks to Maven for moderating the comments and all the production she does. Thanks to our board of directors. Thanks to Brooklyn for her audio and video editing and everyone who makes the Open Stories foundation possible, including Clint Martin and Kerry Whitbeck who run the board with me and all the other people that behind the scenes are making good things happen. And finally, thanks to everyone who donates and supports what we do. We couldn't do it without you, so thanks and please become a monthly donor if you aren't already and you want to see this kind of content. Continue. Take care, everybody. Be kind to each other. Be good to each other. Follow Dan McClelland anywhere you can and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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