Hosts Introduce the Episode and Guest

John Dehlin [00:00:03] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your hosts for today, John Dehlin. I am here with the amazing Gerardo Simano. Hey, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:11] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:12] Thanks for joining us. Yeah, we have a super exciting episode planned for today. We've got a couple titles in the works for it. One is a glimpse of the operational side of the LDS Church. I was thinking something like an insider view or an insider take on. On LDS Church operations. But the point is, we recently discovered an amazing podcast called Ramyuptum Ruminations.

John Dehlin [00:00:38] And you know, I've been around a long time and it's. It's hard for, believe it or not, even though I do Mormon stuff all the time, it's hard for Mormon stuff to catch my attention and actually draw me in. I don't listen to or view a lot of podcasts, but when I saw what this one was about, I got interested and I listened to many hours of a Mormon themed podcast, which I'm ashamed to say is rare. Again, the podcast is Remy up to Ruminations, and we're going to have Scott on in a second, but he writes that his goal is to create a space for critical analysis of Mormonism and its teachings that is approachable for both believers and non believers.

John Dehlin [00:01:16] But the main thing I want to focus on is just the fact that in this episode that we're going to be reviewing today, from Rami up to Moon Nations, Scott brings on an insider who works at the deepest and in some cases highest levels of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, specifically around kind of customer analysis, market analysis, member analysis, surveys.

John Dehlin [00:01:42] And it's really a fascinating insider look at how the Church gathers data on its members, on its marketing, on its status, how it thinks about its health, how it thinks about the Internet, how it thinks about social justice issues like LGBT and pornography. There's even a segment around, you know, the prevalence of masturbation and pornography use among missionaries. This was for me, a mind blowing episode. Was it for you, Gerardo? It was for sure, yeah. And I was immediately like, how do I get this. This guy on my podcast? And, and anyway, so we are really thrilled. What I did is I reached out to Scott, who runs Reminations, and I just said, hey, Scott, any chance you could come on?

John Dehlin [00:02:27] And maybe what we do is we would play excerpts from your interview because it didn't make sense to just play the full interview on Mormon stories. But I just want as many people as possible, number one, to. To hear this interview, but number two, to check out the good work of Scott at Remy Uptim Ruminations. And I should add that Remy Uptown Ruminations is part of Bill Real's network of podcasts. And we're huge fans of Bill Real and Ready Free Mormon marriage on a tightrope and all the, you know, kind of. What are they called? What's the, what's the family network called, Scott?

Gerardo Sumano [00:03:01] Mormon Discussions.

John Dehlin [00:03:02] Mormon discussions, yeah.

Scott Dyer [00:03:03] Mormon discussions.

John Dehlin [00:03:04] Anyway, Scott, welcome. Welcome to Mormon Stories podcast. It's great to have you.

Scott Dyer [00:03:10] Hey, thanks for inviting me on, John. It's a pleasure to be here. Just to start off, I'd like to say that when I did this interview and when I do my episodes, I try to interject as little as possible. I try to just state the facts, put it out as plainly and as clearly as I can, and let the listeners come to their own conclusions on whatever subject it is that I'm discussing. This discussion will be a bit more analysis and breakdown of what is said in those interviews that I conducted, where during the interviews I let Brian say his piece and talk about his experience, and I didn't do a point by point breakdown of everything that he presented. So this is, this is a completely separate idea or presentation that we're doing here in this episode.

John Dehlin [00:03:52] Yeah, yeah. And we definitely want people just to become subscribers to your podcast as well. I love your interviewing format, but it's also fun to be able to do a little bit of analysis as well. So. And, and I love it that your tone is all. All about making making a Mormon themed podcast feel safe to view and listen to by, you know, by believing church members. And we started out that way. We still try and do that. Bill Real started out that way. I'm not sure how much he's still trying to do that, but it's always a fine line to walk, isn't it?

Scott Dyer [00:04:29] Yeah, yeah, it is. And, and when I describe a little bit of my background that we'll do in a second here, it's motivated. There's definitely some reasoning behind it for me to keep a tone like that.

John Dehlin [00:04:39] Yeah, well, let's do that. Let's jump to. There's a little slide just introducing people to you. Let's. Let's go there.

Scott Dyer [00:04:46] Yeah, I just wanted to introduce myself real quick. And for many of my listeners, they don't know a whole lot about me because the episodes I do, they're usually short format. When it's just myself, 20, 30 minutes tops, I break down a brief idea and I very rarely have spoken in, in with much length about myself. So I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest to a prominent LDS family in the area. Some of the. The first stake president in our city was my grandpa. And so we were kind of like local LDs, like royalty or local LDs, like a name that a lot of people knew and on both sides of my family too.

Scott Dyer [00:05:26] So I, I grew up in an area that was outside of the bubble, but felt very much similar to the bubble in the Northwest. There's a high concentration of LDS folks. And so it's. It was a lot different in many ways from the Utah experience, but very similar in other ways.

Scott Dyer [00:05:45] So I, Right now I am in a mixed faith marriage. My wife is a. An active believing member. She takes our kids to church with her. Well, I keep our youngest at home with me because she's a little too small to be running around during sacrament anyway.

Scott Dyer [00:06:03] So she is believing. She and I encountered a lot of the troubling issues we went through. You know, that. That dark night of the soul and that religious deconstruction. And we came out of it on different ends of the spectrum where my faith completely eroded away, where hers, it vanished in a lot of areas and it changed dramatically, but it didn't completely eliminate her faith in God and in some other things. And so she, she found herself on a completely different belief realm than I did after religious deconstruction. And so that has motivated greatly the tone that I set in my podcast. I oftentimes, even though she doesn't listen, I will imagine that she's in the room with me and think to myself, how would my wife respond to me saying it this way?

Scott Dyer [00:06:51] Am I being just a little bit too harsh? Would she be upset at me after I recorded this episode? So I try and keep my tone in a way where I know that she would be maybe pushed a little bit on some of the things that I'm saying, but also able to handle it.

Scott Dyer [00:07:06] So that's kind of the motive for the tone. I served a mission in concepcion, Chile, early 2000s. That was really where my religious deconstruction started, but I didn't know that yet. It's a process for a lot of people.

Scott Dyer [00:07:19] For the majority of my life, I have struggled with mental health issues, severe depression, suicidal ideation, you know, a lot of really hard things.

John Dehlin [00:07:33] The.

Scott Dyer [00:07:34] The majority of my adult life has been very challenging, but it was, it was one of those things where learning my mental, learning to cope with my mental health problems allowed me to see the problems in the systems around me. And so me deconstructing and trying to better my mental health created the space for me to deconstruct Mormonism. And so my improving my mental health, which is still with. I am medicated, and I'm very open about that because I want to destigmatize it. Anyway, my mental health improved as my belief in the church vanished. And they kind of happened at the same time, kind of at the same pace. But depression isn't something that just goes away. It's something that I will battle the rest of my life.

Scott Dyer's Background and Podcast Origins

John Dehlin [00:08:30] Thanks for sharing.

Scott Dyer [00:08:31] Yeah. So one of the impetus really for me to start my podcast, there's a couple of things while I was doing the research. You know, a lot of people go through those phases where they're just poring over books, you know, reading. No man knows my history. They're, you know, diving as deep as you can into the history of the church. I would come home from work after listening to podcasts, and I would talk my wife's ear off for months and months. And it came to a point where she just. She looked at me, she said, scott, I'm done talking about the church. I just want to live my life.

Scott Dyer [00:09:05] And I had. I needed an outlet. I needed something. I needed somewhere to express myself and to think critically about these things and continue breaking them down. And that was part of the impetus for starting the podcast. I actually run another podcast, and I already had all of the podcasting gear for that, and so it was just an easy choice to make because I already had everything.

Scott Dyer [00:09:33] So I just started a new podcast. And so I actually produce two episodes a week. One for my Dungeons and dragons podcast called 12 sided guys, and then another episode for Ramyemton ruminations. So I'm doing two episodes every single week, and it takes up most of my free time.

John Dehlin [00:09:50] That's awesome. That's so fun. Well, you know, Dungeons and Dragons is all the rage now that Stranger Things featured it, latest season. Right?

Scott Dyer [00:10:01] Yeah, yeah. I've been playing since I was a kid, you know, through the satanic panic and everything. So it's been a hobby that I've enjoyed since I was a young man.

John Dehlin [00:10:11] How have you escaped Satan's grasp? That's what I want to know. Or the Demogorgon. I forget who it is.

Scott Dyer [00:10:16] The Demogorgon. Oh, yeah, there's. There's lots of different creatures in D and D. It's just like reading fantasy. You know, a lot of fantasy novels create different gods and, and pantheons of deities. And so even as a believer, I just looked at it as. As made up stories all Right.

John Dehlin [00:10:33] So two podcasts.

Scott Dyer [00:10:35] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:37] All right.

John Dehlin [00:10:37] What else you got in your introduction?

Scott Dyer [00:10:40] You know, that's about it for me. Most of my hobbies, I mean, if you're watching the video, I've got a lot of my nerdy stuff. My hobby. Table paint, miniatures, lots of board games, lots of reading. I'm a pretty nerdy guy outside of this. So this is the first glimpse for a lot of my listeners to see that side of me.

John Dehlin [00:10:57] So the Ramiumtum ruminations. Nerds get to nerd out on this interview with a nerd. It's like.

Scott Dyer [00:11:03] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:11:04] Lots of nerds. Lots of nerd. Like, caving in on itself, huh?

Scott Dyer [00:11:09] Exactly. There's a few listeners that might comment. They might notice some of the paraphernalia about. I've got a tall neck. I've got a vault boy. There's just little things around the office.

John Dehlin [00:11:19] Beautiful. Okay, well, let's jump into this interview. You did, I guess. I guess we have a slide to begin with that says the Brian Harris interview. This is episodes 56, 57, and 58. And you call it a peek behind the curtain at LDS church headquarters. You know, it's definitely worth checking out the entire thing. But we are going to be doing excerpts from all three parts. Is that right? Okay.

Scott Dyer [00:11:50] Yeah, we've got clips from all three parts. The first episode is kind of an overview of what the position is, and then Brian goes into a bit of detail about his personal religious deconstruction. And I. I skipped most of that, so to focus solely on, like, an insider's look at the church operations.

John Dehlin [00:12:08] Okay, so why don't you, like, how did you get. Do you want to tell us about how this interview came to be?

Scott Dyer [00:12:14] So a mutual friend, she reached out to me, and she said she put me in contact with Brian, and Brian was interested in interviewing on my podcast because of the neutral tone that I set. He should. I feel.

John Dehlin [00:12:26] Should we feel shame about that? Should we feel.

Scott Dyer [00:12:29] No, no. We're doing bad.

John Dehlin [00:12:30] I'm just joking. Okay.

Scott Dyer [00:12:32] And I really don't want it to come off as tone policing, because I think there's a space for anger. I think there's a space for frustration. There's a space to be. To demystify everything. I. I don't.

John Dehlin [00:12:43] He just called us angry Gerardo.

Scott Dyer [00:12:46] That's not what I said.

John Dehlin [00:12:47] That's not what I said.

Scott Dyer [00:12:48] I said there's a space for all those things. There's a space for the dark humor about the temple. There's a space.

John Dehlin [00:12:52] He just called us dark.

Scott Dyer [00:12:53] All of These places.

John Dehlin [00:12:54] He just called us dark. I'm joking. I'm joking. Keep going. Keep going. Brian Harris. I'm joking. I'm totally kidding. Kidding.

Scott Dyer [00:13:01] I just feel like. I feel like there was a niche that wasn't being met and that was a neutral ground. And that's not neutral.

John Dehlin [00:13:09] No, I'm kidding. Keep going. I'll stop. I'll stop.

Scott Dyer [00:13:14] No, no, you're fine.

John Dehlin [00:13:15] You're fine.

Scott Dyer [00:13:15] So. So Brian comes on. So I reached out to him after this mutual friend put us in contact, and I just was fascinated by everything that he had experienced because it was a completely different take on the LDS church than I had ever been exposed to.

John Dehlin [00:13:31] Yeah, yeah. He's so brilliant and so fascinating, and it's great. It's great that. It's great that you are providing a place where he feels comfortable sharing, because what's most important is, is that this information gets out. So.

Scott Dyer [00:13:46] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:48] All right, so what do you want to. What do you want to say as a final setup before we jump into the substance of your interview with him?

Scott Dyer [00:13:58] I am just excited to get this out to more people. I think that wherever someone falls on a belief spectrum, whether they're going to take this information and look at revelation as, like, a smaller thing, or whether they're going to take this information and say everything is fake and there's no revelation in the church, I think it's important for people on either end of the spectrum to be able to look at this information and then make their conclusions afterward. Wherever someone finds themselves, they need to know this so that they can make informed decisions.

John Dehlin [00:14:29] Absolutely. All right, so we'll jump to. We'll jump to the first slide. We'll get right into it. Do you want to set up what this first clip is about?

Scott Dyer [00:14:37] Yeah, so we're just. I'm. I'm talking to Brian and getting to know a little bit more about the work that he did. He describes working in the correlation department, which previously I had only ever related to, like, the correlated materials. But he expands on on that and explains that there's a lot more that goes on within the correlation department and at church headquarters.

John Dehlin [00:15:02] All right, let's jump right in.

Brian's Role in the Correlation Department

Scott Dyer [00:15:06] So our guest today, Brian, he worked in the church headquarters. He has a fascinating story to tell. Brian, tell us a little bit about what you did for church headquarters, and then we'll rewind and we'll talk a little bit about your life leading up to that.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:15:21] Yeah. So I spent about six and a half years in the correlation research division when I first started it was known as the research information division and that's a part of the correlation department, but specifically focused on all things research.

Scott Dyer [00:15:37] When people typically hear the word correlation, they're going to think the correlated materials, the handbooks, the lesson manuals and such. What was in like the scope of this correlation department that you worked in, Was it, was it that or was it more than that?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:15:52] Yeah, so. So there definitely is a sizable group in correlation that takes care of making sure that the Church manuals and things all align with what is officially recognized as Church doctrine. But it's a kind of a varied group. So there are people also that work on data privacy and intellectual property kind of legal things. And then there was our research group and we handled everything from membership trends and, and just keeping track of membership data and what are the trends in like birth rates or how many people are getting ordained to the priesthood at the appropriate age, as well as looking into current issues and helping to develop and iterate on different kind of products that were being produced. Everything from website to apps and in person programs like the new youth stuff that came out in the last couple of years.

Scott Dyer [00:16:43] Within the correlation department, there's a team that you were part of that was focused primarily on information and how to use that to implement better tools for the Church. Am I understanding that properly?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:16:55] Yep. And some of it was very product focused. I think a lot of people underestimate just how many products the Church manages and owns and keeps up to date. And then there was also a very strategic side where we were looking at bigger issues and generational trends and just trying to see what are the problems that the Church might encounter in the next few years.

Scott Dyer [00:17:17] When you say products, that's not going to be a term that many of the listeners are going to be familiar with as it relates to the Church. What specifically do you mean by that?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:17:27] So a lot of the products are what you might recognize in just web design industry. There's a lot of digital products. So every, every page, every department that has their own content, like the Priesthood and Family Department managed all the pages like Mormon and Gay.org or Overcoming Pornography. And each of those pages and all of their sub pages had to be managed by somebody who tried, I think they did try their best to listen to the needs of the members and figure out who's coming to the site, why are they coming here, what can we do to better meet those needs. But there's a lot of research that goes on into really understanding those groups.

Scott Dyer [00:18:07] The products that you're referring to that you were you were gathering this information for? The products are like the LDS tools app, the Mormon and gay website, anything that the Church is putting out. That's what you're referring to as products.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:18:18] Exactly. So, so all of the seminary curricula, all of the missionary area book planner and all of the videos that are produced for missionary training, all of that kind of stuff. Stuff. Okay.

How the Church Uses Research and Surveys

Scott Dyer [00:18:29] Fits into that, your particular part in correlation, you were gathering surveys and information to help influence and guide these, these products. How did the interplay of what you were doing with surveys correlate with these products that you're talking about?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:18:45] We would do surveys, we had website intercept surveys for people that came to lds.org that's what it was at the time. They've since changed all of the domains to align with the true name of the Church and all of that.

Scott Dyer [00:18:59] We don't want any victories for Satan.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:19:01] That's right. Not on our watch. Yeah, a lot of surveys through the website, but we also had access to all of the membership records and so we would pull samples of different types of members, just filtering based on the data that we had available and trying to kind of reach a good sample, trying to make it representative, scientifically valid. Everyone in our research group had some kind of postgraduate degree, typically in the social sciences. We were all experienced researchers and so there really was a lot of scientific rigor that went into that process. But we also did spend quite a bit of time traveling and doing focus groups and in depth interviews and ethnographies and all kinds of other research methods.

John Dehlin [00:19:47] Yeah, so there's so much there. We've covered correlation a lot on the podcast and Scott, I, I had the exact same impression that you, that you mentioned that, that you know, correlation just meant like all the manuals. Can't, can't quote from the Journal of Discourses anymore, that oh, maybe a general authority talk is reviewed before it's, it's approved and that it's kind of editing content. I had no idea that correlation included things like data privacy, products, research. You know, we, we've covered a little bit on Mormon stories, these semi annual surveys that go out and people are always like, when they, you know, when, when non believing but still active, you know, members of record get these surveys.

John Dehlin [00:20:35] They're always keen to screenshot them and send them to us. But it's like what podcast do you listen to? You know, how strong's your testimony? Hoff. And you read the Book of Mormon, like how, how, how fondly do you think of gay people? You know, are you A feminist, you know, it's asking all these questions to kind of take the pulse of the membership and to help the church get. I'll say it, kindly help the church get revelation.

John Dehlin [00:21:04] But, but really, it almost is like market research drives revelation and decisions. But anyway, I just, I just didn't know that, that that was all under correlation.

Scott Dyer [00:21:14] Yeah, yeah, I had no idea either. It was very eye opening. And as you said, I think this whole thing is going to butt up right against the idea of continuing revelation because the, the subjects that we discuss and the interviews that he conducted or the surveys that he conducted, they heavily influence the revelation that happens. And, and then the question becomes, is there still space for revelation if these surveys are how they're gathering information to make their decisions?

John Dehlin [00:21:46] Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, it's almost like, what Madison Avenue, you know, PR firm would Jesus hire? You know, it's like, what, what law firm would Jesus. We know what law firm Jesus would hire. But, but, but now we're learning kind of what, what, you know, Madison Avenue recruits would Jesus hire to help them tell Jesus make decisions? Anyway. Yeah, I'm not trying to be cynical. I'm just saying, like, wow, this is. And they're hiring, like cutting edge social science researchers that are, that are really skilled in survey design and instrumentation and statistics analysis. Like, I don't know how Jesus did it without all this. You know what I mean?

Gerardo Sumano [00:22:25] That's what I was thinking right now. How did Jesus run the church and the apostles?

John Dehlin [00:22:30] Right?

Scott Dyer [00:22:31] It was just Jesus and a couple of his buddies. He didn't have, you know, millions of followers yet.

John Dehlin [00:22:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to be cynical, but it is.

Scott Dyer [00:22:42] No, no, that was a joke.

John Dehlin [00:22:43] Yeah, it's mind blowing. It's kind of mind blowing.

Scott Dyer [00:22:46] Yeah. I do want to make a quick disclaimer. The audio quality on Brian's end, he was recording at home, did not have all the studio equipment. And so a couple of points throughout, you might hear some tapping with or some piano playing in the background that's on his end. Just wanted to throw that out there.

John Dehlin [00:23:03] Yeah. Okay, so let's go to the next. Let's go to the next clip. Do you want to set this one up?

Scott Dyer [00:23:09] Yeah. So this, this clip is, is directly after the prior one. And it shows how every single program, every implementation of, of almost everything churchwide has to have approval from the survey group. So the survey group has to do a survey regarding whatever they're discussing before anything can come forward.

John Dehlin [00:23:35] Yeah, all Right, let's take a listen

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:23:40] before I get into some of those surveys and the questions and all of that. Still kind of focusing on like higher level of this organization. How many people worked, worked in the correlation department and then in your specific branch of the correlation department.

Social Scientists Within Correlation

Video Clip 1 [00:23:56] Within the correlation department, we were the biggest group, not necessarily the most well liked.

Video Clip 1 [00:24:04] Now why not?

Video Clip 1 [00:24:05] I don't know. There's something about just a group of very smart, very talented researchers seeing the world in a very different way than the rest of the organization. So we were kind of black sheep, but we were also a necessary part of every process. Nobody could get a product approved without getting our stamp of approval. So interesting. We had to play nice, but it made for some very interesting and deep conversations with people that came from a variety of backgrounds. And I think we did have a positive impact throughout the organization, just sharing our perspective and our insights.

Video Clip 1 [00:24:45] Your group was how many people within the correlation?

Video Clip 1 [00:24:48] When I first started, I think there were about 25 full time employees and by the time I left I think there were closer to 40. So we had grown pretty considerably. And that's a very large research group. I've never seen a group that size anywhere outside of academia.

Video Clip 1 [00:25:05] Now we.

John Dehlin [00:25:06] The first thing that comes to my mind there. So you imagine this group of 40 PhDs who are social scientists and, and why are they needed? I. The only way I can think of it is, is that the people leading the church are kind of out of touch in many ways with kind of how the world works and what the members are really thinking and feeling because they all are kind of living in the bubble, let's just say the Utah bubble. And they really don't, you know, whether it's Mormons and gays or Mormon and gay or you know, missionary training or whatever the products are, they would have all these inclinations from a Utah Mormon bubble perspective to do all these sorts of projects.

John Dehlin [00:25:46] And it's like, no, we need to have this little group of actually really smart, plugged in people run these surveys so that we don't implement programs that are going to be disastrous. But why would they be needed is kind of the first question I have.

Gerardo Sumano [00:26:01] Yeah. And then I think it's a little bit frustrating to think about how the church lately has been trying to paint the picture of revelation. When, you know, see Wendy Nelson talking in a devotional about how Russell M. Nelson receives revelation and how he wakes up in the middle of the night and the Lord's talking to him and she has to leave the room and he writes down what he's receiving from God, and that's how changes happen in the church. And, you know, we're seeing all these changes happening because now he's able to be the prophet and do the things that the God has been revealing to him for years.

Gerardo Sumano [00:26:41] It's very different from this group of 40 social scientists who have. He just said, a very different view of the world than most members of the church, including most church employees, and them being the ones that actually give the stamp of approval for, you know, stuff that go out to the members.

John Dehlin [00:27:01] Yeah. What do you think, Scott?

Scott Dyer [00:27:03] Yeah. One of the things that's fascinating about this is they're social scientists. And what that means is that they go and they talk about the lived experiences of people from a broad spectrum of lives or, you know, gender identities, sexual orientations. They're talking with people that have a vastly different worldview than them. And in my own personal experience, anytime that I've talked with someone who disagrees with me or has lived a completely different life than me, my world expands and the way I see the world changes. And so here you have these social scientists that have had very similar experiences to that, having their. Their view of the world expand.

Scott Dyer [00:27:45] They come back to church headquarters, they're working for the church, and they're discussing these programs or the results of these surveys. And they have a fundamentally different view of the world than your typical orthodox believer. And I think that's kind of what he was alluding to there, also, based on some of the comments that he makes a little bit later on in the interview. And so you have these people with. With a completely different view of the world conducting these surveys that are required in order to pass any sort of program that the orthodox members are pushing through.

John Dehlin [00:28:16] I love it that, like, the really educated, intelligent ones are the black sheep. And obviously they're. They're at risk of defecting. Like. Like this dude, right? Like.

Scott Dyer [00:28:26] Yeah, like, we'll talk about that a little bit later with. With segmentation.

John Dehlin [00:28:30] Yeah, Like. Like Brian Bales. So, I mean, it makes sense that they're viewed as black sheeps. Why? Because knowledge and information and science and evidence, I mean, culturally, within an orthodox Mormon worldview, they're all viewed with skepticism, and rightly so. Yeah.

Scott Dyer [00:28:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:50] Oh, man. Yeah. Okay, so let's go. Let's go ahead and go to the next slide. You want to set this up, Scott?

Correlation's Relationship with Church Leadership

Scott Dyer [00:28:58] Yeah. So part of this, I. I was fascinated by both the. The correlation department working with members of the 70, but I was curious if there was any sort of interaction if they would perform these surveys and then they would give them to, like, the. The Quorum of the twelve Apostles or even the Prophet themselves, and to see if there was any sort of interaction between revelation, like, directly with these surveys being passed off to the general authorities. And that's. That's kind of the. The route that this.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:29:28] This section goes.

John Dehlin [00:29:29] All right, let's roll it.

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 [00:29:32] Yeah. So we didn't initiate very much work at all on our own. Just the way that it was structured. We were a service organization that other departments would come to out of necessity or out of a lack of information that they needed to be able to make some kind of decision. Because of just bandwidth issues, we weren't always able to address the small kinds of questions that might come from the staff. But if there was ever a pressing concern that a member of the 70 from some particular committee came to us and said, I really need to know this so that I can give direction to the entire department, then that's the kind of stuff where we would dive in and say, okay, who are the right people to give us perspective?

Video Clip 2 [00:30:15] You know, maybe we need to interview mission presidents and we can do that, or maybe we need to talk to parents of young children, or maybe we need to talk to single parents or whatever the right group is. Bishops might have some unique perspective on an issue that you can't get from others.

Video Clip 2 [00:30:31] And so that really went into a lot of that planning is just identifying who's going to help us to really see through all of the clutter and the noise and the. Just the massive amount of data that we could potentially get. What's going to be the clearest picture of what to do next?

Video Clip 2 [00:30:48] You do all these surveys, who are you reporting directly to? And not just like you, as your boss, within correlation. But who is correlation? This. This branch within Correlation Department. Who are you guys working for and who are you presenting this information to?

Video Clip 2 [00:31:03] That was usually at the managing director level or above. So we were working really with the top leadership of each department or above that level. So a lot of times the general auxiliary presidencies, a lot of times with members of the quorum of the 12 that were serving on a particular committee

Video Clip 2 [00:31:20] or council, you do this survey, and then you're presenting it to these auxiliaries. How often were you presenting this information to the quorum of the 12 or to some. The presidency of the 70, was this something that you guys were doing regularly?

Video Clip 2 [00:31:34] Yeah. So me personally, or like, the teams that I was working on, it might be every couple of months, but somebody in the department, pretty much once a week at least, was presenting to one of those kinds of groups. And so we had a lot of interface and FaceTime with some of the leadership.

Video Clip 2 [00:31:50] How did those interactions typically go? So you come in, you present the information, you talk about whatever your survey results are. Do you just kind of like quietly leave the room and let them discuss? How does this sort of an interaction play out?

Video Clip 2 [00:32:06] That really depends on who is sitting at the head of the table in the meeting. So some of the times we'd be sitting out in the foyer waiting for our turn to even enter the room because there's some other group presenting their stuff and discussing whatever they needed to. And sometimes the secretary would come out and say, actually you're off the agenda for today, Sorry, come back next time in two weeks.

Video Clip 2 [00:32:30] And typically we'd go in and present our piece and there might be five or ten minutes of discussion and questions and answers and. And then they dismiss us from the room just explicitly like, thank you, you can go. Occasionally they would want us in the room and say like, okay, well I think your perspective here is actually going to help us with the next thing on the agenda. So go ahead and stick around. Regular staff level was mostly there to present and listen. And then all the question and answer was handled by our boss or our boss's boss or whoever was seen as that kind of authority. It's a very hierarchical kind of organization

Video Clip 2 [00:33:05] to be in within the church HQ. So the top is obviously the quorum of the 12 and then the 70. At what point in the chain does it transition to your boss or to you presenting to them? No longer called into the church, but more hired to do the job?

Video Clip 2 [00:33:23] Yeah, that's a good question. So there are different councils and committees and those are always headed by a. Called general authority.

Scott Dyer [00:33:33] Okay.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:33:33] Anything lower than that level is typically handled by a managing director and that would be the, the head of an entire department. So the, the head of all things church history or the head of all things Correlation.

Scott Dyer [00:33:48] And those are not general authorities. Those are.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:33:50] Yep, yep. So those are hired positions. But it, there's definitely kind of a sense that they are still your superior kind of. It's. It's hard to know which line you're going up. At some point it all ends up at the same first presidency.

Scott Dyer [00:34:05] The thing I'm trying to highlight here is that there's kind of this blending of, of both job, but then also like religious hierarchy kind of lining up in a, an interesting way that you don't get with most positions.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:34:17] Yeah. And those managing director positions are usually former CEOs of some company or a prominent stick president in the area that they managed to, you know, hold on to. They are very well paid and deservedly so. They have a lot of responsibility. They work crazy hours taking on call kind of requests every day of the week, all night, just depending on who they're working with. And there could be a lot going on even globally where they have to field stuff from the West Africa area office or things like that. So.

John Dehlin [00:34:55] All right, Scott, so any, any reflections on that? I've got a couple, but let's have you go first.

Scott Dyer [00:35:00] Yeah, I, I just think it's so fascinating that there's this, this strange blending of both the operational side or those that are hired into the position and the ecclesiastical side, those that are called into the position. And there's this, this strange interplay between the hierarchy where it all feels like it's part of the church, but it's not. I just think that's so fascinating. But the, to the, to the point that I wanted to touch on, they were handing this information directly off to members of the quorum of the 12 or anybody that was, was over a committee of a certain aspect within church headquarters. So this, these survey results were directly influencing the decisions being made at the highest level. And that was kind of what I was trying to, to ascertain with those questions.

John Dehlin [00:35:52] What comes to my mind are these, these videos leaked by Mormon League several years ago, where it's like Garrett Gong or Senator, whatever, Gordon Smith from Oregon, who are just like weekly presenting to like, Packer and, and, you know, El Tom Perry and all these. And you can just see them, like, doing these kind of Bain or McKinsey, like, management consultant presentations where they're, where they're basically talking about trends and you've got the apostles, you know, you know, trying to interpret the, the data into their worldview. And it's, it's, it, you know, it. And you could hear them saying things like, it's Hollywood, the Hollywood menace, the gays are coming to get us. You know, and it's, it was so weird to see that interface of data and evidence in the world trying to fit into Dallin H. Oaks's kind of worldview.

Gerardo Sumano [00:36:54] And I think a lot of people wondered when they saw those videos, well, how frequent are these type of meetings? And he's confirming that they happen every couple, at least every couple weeks. If not, you know.

Scott Dyer [00:37:06] Well, he was saying every couple weeks for himself.

Gerardo Sumano [00:37:08] Right.

Scott Dyer [00:37:09] And then at least weekly for other committees.

John Dehlin [00:37:12] Yeah, yeah. One, one, one thing that touches me a little bit closely is just that my brother was a managing director. So when he talks about managing directors, my brother Joel was the head of all the computer systems as a managing director for the church. So my brother was in these meetings and was a part of it. And, and on the one hand, it, I, I think it's awesome and it makes perfect sense that the church would get the best and the brightest and use the, the latest cutting edge social science techniques to understand its audience, to understand its customers, and to make decisions based on all that data and analytics and input.

John Dehlin [00:37:49] So on the one hand, like, it makes all the sense in the world and congratulations. On the other hand, it, you know, you look at the church now and it's worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And it's, it, you know, it makes you wonder like, what's the difference between McDonald's and Exxon and Walmart and Amazon and the Mormon Church? You know, the only difference is that maybe that the church doesn't have to pay taxes, but it's certainly operating like all the corporations would.

John Dehlin [00:38:18] And then you think about the fact that all these leaders get up in general conference and they present to the membership like ecclesiastical leaders, they're spiritual leaders. But then you look at their pedigree, their job pedigrees and they're all lawyers and they're all CEOs of businesses and advertising execs and marketing people and there's a few educators thrown in there. But you just realize we, we kind of really are in so many ways a corporation.

Scott Dyer [00:38:45] Oh yeah, it, it gives me the impression that this is what I should have expected with the size of the church. Reflecting on these interviews afterwards, I just thought to myself, how else would it work? Did I expect them to have, you know, all 12 of them with their own little rock and a hat? No, they have a team of surveyors to provide them that information that they maybe could have gotten from that rock and a hat.

Gerardo Sumano [00:39:11] But that's not the story when missionaries go out and preach to people, you know that at least when I was a missionary, that was not the story that I, that I was telling people or that even thought in my mind that that's how things were working in church headquarters.

John Dehlin [00:39:25] Our church is led by, of a group of 40 PhD, PhD social science researchers. It's our churches led by God. Right? What's the difference? Does that mean Walmart's led by God? If they have social science researchers, you know, like, where does God come in? Why is this even needed? I Guess we're gonna, I think we're probably gonna end up coming back to this theme over and over, like you warned us.

Scott Dyer [00:39:44] Yeah, yeah, that's, that's really the central idea. At least that's this concept butts itself right up against revelation. And I think any believer needs to be able to reconcile this in order to have faith in the prophet.

John Dehlin [00:40:00] Yeah, yeah. All right, well, let's go to the next, let's go to the next clip. How are survey candidates chosen? Anything you want to say ahead of time?

Scott Dyer [00:40:08] You know, no, it's, I mean, the question is pretty self explanatory. I wanted to get an idea of where they were, where they were getting these pools of candidates for the surveys. So.

John Dehlin [00:40:17] All right, and when you say candidates, what do you mean?

Scott Dyer [00:40:20] Well, so he'll, he'll explain a little bit in this. But they always had a lot more people that they could have sent surveys to, but they didn't because they didn't want to. They didn't want to over tax the people. So for example, you know, you have a thousand people, you know, all thousand of them would take the survey once, you know, if you ask everybody that first time, then you're only going to get one batch of survey results. And so he talks about a little bit about that.

John Dehlin [00:40:46] All right, let's roll the tape.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:40:49] Yeah. So for a lot of our surveys, we would use a panel that had been specifically recruited. So this is a panel that we would refresh about every 12 or 18 months. And these are people that would volunteer to take multiple surveys.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:41:05] And so we'd say we're going to be coming back to you maybe five or six times over the next year or so. Are you willing to answer some questions and stay on the panel and try and be responsive when we send out the, the email most of those are sampling was they had to attend church at least three out of four weeks in a month. For that recurring panel, I think we also required a temple recommend. Okay. It was a little bit tricky. Some of the questions that we asked could be very sensitive for the church. If this information gets out into the public, there could be backlash or there could be, you know, rumblings on the ex Mormon Reddit pages or wherever.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:41:48] And so we didn't want to, to, you know, release this too widely. But as a result, we did end up with a very, very active sample, a little bit abnormally active. And so we always had to kind of weigh that in our minds and say we recognize that's a limitation and not everyone in the church is going to feel this way.

Scott Dyer [00:42:06] How are you finding these people, then, that are going to be part of these samples? And even if it's like a rotating or revolving door of people that are within these samples, how are you finding them? Because, I mean, even within every ward, there's going to be a range of beliefs and a range of activity levels. And how are you vetting them?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:42:24] With the church membership records. We had access to, I don't know, probably 8 or 10 million email addresses, and you could just spam that list, but you don't need to send a message to all 8 million names that you have. So typically, it was a very, very small percentage of church membership.

Scott Dyer [00:42:40] Okay.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:42:41] But we'd end up with a panel of somewhere between 1 to 2000 members. And typically we'd see that broken out kind of geographically across the US and these were largely us only. I think the main consideration is you want to make sure that your confidence interval on the statistical results at the end is something that you're comfortable with. So if we get a result that's true within about a percent and a half, that's great. You know, that's very comfortable to work with. And sampling more than that doesn't give you very much bang for your buck. And it. It kind of burns out more people that you could use potentially in the

Scott Dyer [00:43:15] future, what you're saying. And just to make sure that I'm understanding it, doing a dramatically larger sample size is going to give you the exact same results. And so it's not necessary to. To compile a much larger sample group.

Gerardo Sumano [00:43:27] Right.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:43:27] So. So typically we'd get a couple hundred people in Utah, a couple hundred people from the rest of the western US And a couple hundred people from everywhere else east of, like, Colorado. And you'd see those pockets, you know, where membership is really strong. Utah, Idaho, Arizona. You definitely see that density, and it

Scott Dyer [00:43:45] matches with what we would expect in this department. You're doing these surveys, you have access to accurate, updated membership records and numbers.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:43:54] Yep. And there was a very limited number of people in the department that actually had that access. So we would have to go to them and say, I'm doing a survey. Here's the kind of sample I'm looking for. And so there would be maybe two people in the whole research group that would have that access and be able to pull the data. So they tried to be careful and protect that personal information.

Scott Dyer [00:44:14] You guys in this department, you had access to accurate, like, statistic numbers about the membership and their activity, even going in before you're grabbing These samples. These samples. These membership samples.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:44:27] Yeah. So those were typically where we would get the data, where we would filter to try and target the right kinds of units. And so for like the, the youth curriculum study that we did, we particularly targeted areas with very few youth per capita and areas with a ton of youth per capita. So we end up in Lehigh and Highland in Utah or Layton, Kaysville. And so we could definitely go in and say, like, what is the percentage of priesthood holders relative to the total congregation numbers?

John Dehlin [00:44:58] Wow. So, Scott, what are your reactions there?

Why the Church Conducts Member Research

Scott Dyer [00:45:01] So there was, there was a lot in that one and, and I clarified it a little bit later and I think there's a clip of it, but I wanted to know. So it was fascinating that they had accurate, up to date information about membership activity rates and statistics. And I mean, it's one of those things that you always speculate or, you know, I always like wonder, oh, you know, do they really know? What do they keep? What do they not keep? And it's there. It's all there.

John Dehlin [00:45:26] Yeah, yeah, that's. I wrote that just like we all want to know what the current activity rates are of the membership. And they know and they know that and a lot more. But then they just choose not to make it public. And that's kind of weird because just like with the financial information, they're not transparent. Well, the members are paying for this market research. You could make an argument that they deserve to know. You know, they deserve to see the results of the research they're funding about their own church. But the church keeps all that secret and private.

Gerardo Sumano [00:45:59] Yeah. Pretty interesting too, that there's, they have to pick the samples so that they are like the most active members for some of the most sensitive topics because they don't want them to go out like, you know, what kind of questions I wonder, would they be asking that could cause scandal? Do you have any insights on that, Scott?

Scott Dyer [00:46:23] Yeah, we do cover a couple of the subjects down the road. They talked about one of the, one of the surveys that he put on. The questions that they were concerned about were specifically Kate Kelly and John De Lynn and whether or not active believing members with current Temple recommends knew who John was and what they thought of John.

John Dehlin [00:46:45] Yeah, what, what I thought was interesting about that, that they can survey, number one, that they can survey a thousand people and basically figure out all they really need to know about the active, devout membership in the U.S. and so, Gerard, I was wondering if you caught that they don't really bother probably usually surveying people outside the U.S. do you have a theory about why that might be, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [00:47:10] I think we get a lot of insight on your second interview with the second person where he says, you know, the Brethren really care about this being an American church. And, you know, everyone else has to accommodate to that. And I think they're going by, you know, the mid-1900s perception in the world about America, you know, and how even Europe saw America as, you know, this great country and everything. You know, my husband talks all the time how, you know, when he served in Germany, the perception of the people in. In Germany, of. Of America has dramatically changed. And I don't know if the Brethren are really in tune to that, you know, to that new view of how other countries might perceive the United States nowadays.

John Dehlin [00:48:02] They're certainly seeing the church decline in Western Europe and, you know, in developed Asia, but I just think they kind of think, well, where's all the money coming from? It's predominantly coming from the U.S. yep. Where. Where's all the power? It's. It's here in the U.S. especially in California, along the Wasatch front, and in the kind of Book of Mormon belt in Arizona and Idaho, etc. So they're basically surveying the people they care about most, and also they care about. They care a lot less about bringing people back who have fallen away. And what their biggest focus is, is in retention, keeping the people that are still devout.

John Dehlin [00:48:42] And that's interesting because Jesus, you know, Jesus teaches, you know, leave the 99 and go after the 1. And basically what they're saying is, well, we've lost a bunch, so how can we. How can we research. Focus our research on the 99 and not lose any more? And that seems to be what their. Their focus is not on the. Not on the poor, not on the disenfranchised, not on the people of color, not on the people outside the United States, not on the people who have left, but on the wealthy, white, connected, devout people, you know, basically in our. In the power centers. Yeah, that's what it. That's what it seems like to me.

Scott Dyer [00:49:19] When you have a church that's run by nonagenarians and octogenarians, they don't live the world that they're from. The world that they think they're living in doesn't exist anymore. When they were becoming adults, you know, buying houses first, starting their careers.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:49:36] Right.

Scott Dyer [00:49:37] The world that they come from.

John Dehlin [00:49:39] Right.

Scott Dyer [00:49:39] Does not exist, but they're running the church, they're leading the church and making decisions based on this world that they're from.

Gerardo Sumano [00:49:45] Yep.

Scott Dyer [00:49:46] That Isn't around anymore.

Gerardo Sumano [00:49:47] Yeah, that's, that's what I was trying to say.

John Dehlin [00:49:49] Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, yeah. And that's why, you know, they always ask, why is the church 20 to 30 years behind the times on any important social justice issue? Part of it is, is because the. It's run by nonagenarians who grew up post Cold war kind of cold warriors. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, let's jump to the next slide, which is why does the church need research at all? This is good. I'm glad you asked this.

Scott Dyer [00:50:15] Yeah. So it, I mean, like, like we've said a couple times, what is the point of research when the prophet has direct access to God?

John Dehlin [00:50:23] Yeah. Well, let's find out. Here we go.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:50:28] Yeah. I think one thing that was really, really interesting when I was managing those kind of semi annual surveys out to the members, the feedback that we would get was really interesting because people would write back in and say like, you know, two different versions of why does the church need research? And one was kind of a, maybe a more liberal or ex Mormon or, you know, kind of, I don't know what the right word is, but people would say, see, he's not a real prophet. If you're just doing research to make these decisions, then it proves the church isn't true. But then you'd have the other side saying, the church doesn't need you. You're a wolf in sheep's clothing. You are mingling the philosophies of men with scripture and kind of both sides of that.

Scott Dyer [00:51:15] These are comments that are being left at the end of surveys when it would say something along the lines of, is there anything else you'd want to say?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:51:22] Yeah, that or just replying to the email and saying, I will not take your survey. I'm morally opposed to what you're doing for whatever reason.

Scott Dyer [00:51:29] Wow, fascinating. So you would get it from both sides of the spectrum.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:51:33] Yeah. So it's church policy and it's actually written in the handbook of instructions that anytime the church does research, they're going to provide a name and a phone number for contact. And so the times that my name and phone number made it into these kind of public spaces and the private Facebook groups, oh, no, I would get bombarded with calls and emails and people just saying, hey, I heard about this survey. I have an opinion and you're going to hear it. Those could be really interesting.

Scott Dyer [00:52:02] So how would they reach out to you? Would they look you up on Facebook or Instagram and then like reach out to you there or Would they just like email you or call this work number? I'm assuming that they would put on there?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:52:11] Yeah. So typically somebody would screenshot a page of the survey where it says, if you have any questions, contact briandschurch.org

Scott Dyer [00:52:21] so

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:52:22] my work inbox and my work phone would typically be the. The sources that would blow up there.

Scott Dyer [00:52:28] What was the craziest message that you got from that sort of an interaction?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:52:32] So right after we fielded a survey asking members opinions and have you heard of John de Lin and Kate Kelly asking by name, do you know who these people are? And have you paid attention to their excommunication media exposure? That one really got shared. It actually got shared in the Mormon feminist housewives Facebook group that I was a part of. And so I was seeing all of those messages like, hey guys, we need to rally the troops and contact this Brian guy.

Scott Dyer [00:53:05] You're watching it happen real time and

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:53:07] just try to say like, hey, I'm here. I. You just comment on this thread. It's all good.

John Dehlin [00:53:16] All right. You had an audible response.

Gerardo Sumano [00:53:20] Yeah, just really interesting. Right. Like how the more conservative members would respond to the survey. So the backlash or, you know, pushback won't only come from ex members or members who are questioning, but also some of the more conservative members, even though, I mean, the survey would. Would have the churches logo on it. Right. And pretty interesting.

John Dehlin [00:53:49] Well, because, because concern, like, let's just say people who favor Republican politics and conservatism, they're sensitive to kind of like big state, you know, intervention. They're kind of more libertarian. Don't tread on me. So if they start feeling like the church is gathering and collecting data and information on them, it's going to make some of them uncomfortable.

Gerardo Sumano [00:54:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:12] Scott, what do you. What do you think?

Scott Dyer [00:54:14] Yeah, so when he was talking about this, it was something I related to really well. On a couple of the first episodes that I put out under Rami Umtum ruminations, I received one of two comments. It was either a believer who was condemning me to hell for trying to tear down the church and they were frustrated about what I was doing. And then I also had a bunch of ex Mormons saying, hey, Scott, you are not critical enough on the church. When you said X, Y and Z, you didn't push it further. You really need to be. And so I, when he was talking about this, it totally resonated with me because I have had that same sort of experience because of the more nuanced and neutral tone that I try and keep.

John Dehlin [00:54:51] Yeah, yeah. I also think if you think I didn't make this point before? But if they're only surveying a thousand people and I'm getting three, four or five people sending me their screenshots of each survey, that gives us a pretty decent penetration within the church amongst. Amongst the most devout. Yeah, right. So that's kind of interesting because I do. I get these every single time they put out a survey. Yeah.

Scott Dyer [00:55:22] Yeah.

Membership Segmentation and Retention Indicators

John Dehlin [00:55:22] All right, so the next slide. Do you want to set it up, Scott?

Scott Dyer [00:55:28] So this, this episode, episode 56, I was focusing a bit more on Brian's personal experience, and he mentioned something that relates to a subject that we're going to talk about in just a minute here, which is membership segmentation. And so to, to bridge these two slides, he, prior to this, he talked about how their department was a little bit more left leaning, a little bit more understanding of a wide variety of views. He said that he was on that Facebook page of the Mormon Feminist Housewives, and he saw the people talking about him and saying, hey, we need to reach out to this Brian guy.

Scott Dyer [00:56:07] So he definitely relates to a lot of the content that he's. That he's providing for the church, where he might be the target demographic for the gospel topics essays or something along those lines. And so he did a survey, and again, like I said, we'll talk about this in just a minute here. That was membership segmentation, where it took all of the members of the church and broke them into different categories. And he mentioned something as we were talking that would put him into the category of spiritually independent. And those members of the church, those that are spiritually independent, do not stay. They typically leave the church very fast.

Scott Dyer [00:56:46] And so he, he mentions it, and I said, oh, you know, what was it like? You know, you're asking these questions, but you are definitely the target demographic for these survey questions that you're putting out. And so it's a little bit of his personal experience while conducting these surveys,

John Dehlin [00:57:02] you know, it's reminding me of already, is the Harry Potter, remember the teacher, the defender of the dark, Dark arts, or teacher about the dark arts professor that always, like, got replaced every single new book because they were always corrupted in some way. It's. It, you know, it's got to be that those researchers are all, like, flagged for potential apostasy. Right? Because, you know, because, because, yeah, just because of their background that they pull from and then the work that they do, there's probably high turnover or high cognitive dissonance within this group. All right, well, let's hear, let's Hear what he thought.

Scott Dyer [00:57:38] You had a fulfilling experience at work and unfulfilling on Sunday when you're worshiping.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:57:44] Right. And for a lot of my colleagues, they would explain it the opposite. They'd say, I love, you know, that feeling when I take the sacrament with my wife and my kids, and when I come to work, I'm seeing the sausage being made, and I see all the bureaucracy and the politics, and it ruins it for me. And I felt very much the opposite.

Scott Dyer [00:58:03] Well, you mentioned the sausage being made, and one of the questions I had, and this will bring up this in more in detail in a later chat that I have with you, but you said that there were some key indicators for those that will most likely leave the church. You're doing these surveys, and again, we'll touch on those in another chat. But you do these surveys. Did you realize that you fit these key indicators for someone that would eventually leave the church as you're doing these surveys?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:58:32] Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It was very clear.

Scott Dyer [00:58:37] What's that experience like?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [00:58:39] It's crazy. Like, we had these surveys that would kind of identify what type of member someone was likely to be. Kind of a general indicator of all of their values and attitudes and behaviors, and kind of taking all of that together, putting them in a cluster or a segment. And consistently when I would take that survey, I would land in the 1% of active members that were kind of independent spiritually. And part of me kind of took pride in that. Like, I've always felt a little bit different from the people I've been around at byu, at work, in my wards. You know, I. I kind of felt a pride in being part of that 1% that was on the outside edge.

John Dehlin [00:59:22] What do you think about that, Scott?

Scott Dyer [00:59:24] Yeah, I just think it's so fascinating so here, I mean, I'm trying to put myself into Brian's shoes. You're conducting these interviews. You're talking with people who are leaving the church or who. Who have said to him, hey, you know, I'm not sure if I can do this anymore.

John Dehlin [00:59:37] And.

Scott Dyer [00:59:38] And they're meeting every key indicator that he also meets. I mean, it has to be such a surreal experience, and I think it's just fascinating. It makes me wonder what other surveyors that are still working for the church might find themselves in that position and for whatever reason, can't talk about it.

Gerardo Sumano [00:59:56] What do you think he means by spiritual independent? He mentions that 1% of active members are. Fall into that category, which is pretty

Scott Dyer [01:00:07] low, but so spiritually independent. And. And we'll cover this Just in a little bit here. Those are those. It's people who don't solely rely on the church for their spirituality. Someone who might seek to literature or who might go to, you know, a, a Sufi coach or Sufi, you know, instructor, or someone who might go, you know, listen to, you know, some of a Buddhist podcast or something, you know, it's someone who doesn't solely find their spiritual enlightenment within the walls of the LDS church.

Gerardo Sumano [01:00:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:42] And that's an indication of being liberal or progressive. Right. Like, it's Brene Brown, it's. It's Eckhart Tolle, it's Noah Rochetta. Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:00:50] But what does he tell you about a group that. Where only 1% of those in that group are actually independent in their thinking when it comes to spiritual or maybe even intellectual stuff.

John Dehlin [01:01:04] It tells you it's a high demand religion.

Gerardo Sumano [01:01:06] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:01:08] Is it really 1%? I mean, I know we're going to get to it. Scott. Is it really one?

Scott Dyer [01:01:11] Yeah, it's, it's really low. I think he had said one through five when. One to five when we were talking. But the, the larger categories, and I'll say them here, they're the socially LDs, culturally LDs, and the entrenched evangelicals, and those are kind of the categories. And then the spiritually independent.

Gerardo Sumano [01:01:31] The reason I'm bringing it up is because more, you know, liberal apologists like Patrick Mason and others, you know, even Kwaku and friends, try to make the case that this is not a high demand religion, that it is harmful. We can't really call it cult. That when he goes to church every Sunday, he's not seeing, you know, indicators of a high demand religion.

John Dehlin [01:01:57] I wonder, I do wonder about whether Patrick would deny that it's a high demand religion. I do think he doesn't think the term cult is productive and that it's offensive and insulting. I don't know how he feels about the term high demand religion, but I get, I think I get what you're saying.

Gerardo Sumano [01:02:12] Yeah. Yeah. Just something to think about.

John Dehlin [01:02:15] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there is the thing. If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck. But I mean, I, I don't want to put words in Patrick's mouth.

Gerardo Sumano [01:02:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:25] Okay. All right, so I like this next, this next slide. What information does church headquarters keep on individual attendance records?

Data the Church Keeps on Individual Members

Scott Dyer [01:02:35] Yeah. So this was so that. That would end the episode 56 and episode 57. We jump into a lot more detail of the things that we're discussing. And if I'm not mistaken, this was a correction to the previous Episode's chat about membership records, and I just had a couple more questions about it before we dug further into the rest of his time there.

John Dehlin [01:02:58] All right, let's roll the tape.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:03:00] Yeah. So you were asking about, like, how we identify people for the surveys that the church sends out, and I had mentioned, like, we definitely look for people that are active. I think I specifically mentioned we want people that are attending church three out of four weeks typically. So we. We don't have any direct records of that in church membership records. So what we have there is like, ward level aggregate, or stake level aggregates.

Scott Dyer [01:03:27] Okay.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:03:27] We never had access to any kind of individual attendance reports. Those. Those things don't ever make it past, like, the Sunday school president or the elders quorum president. So in our surveys, we would have a separate screener that would ask people, how often are you attending church?

John Dehlin [01:03:45] And so what I'm hearing there is they don't. They don't know if Billy Jones attends each week. They just know the aggregate of his stake.

Scott Dyer [01:03:57] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:03:58] Yeah.

Scott Dyer [01:03:58] Yeah. It was a little bit unclear in the previous chat, and so I wanted to, you know, follow up with it and make sure that I understood exactly what he was trying to express. And so they don't. They, you know, they don't know that, you know, I don't go to church anymore, but my name is still on, on the records. So they would see me as a member, you know, non temple recommend holding, but not active.

John Dehlin [01:04:18] Right. I mean, before. We're about to jump into some specific

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:24] topics, but temple recommend and tithing do are pretty good indicators of. Of the level of activity of a member. And they. They would have that information for sure.

Scott Dyer [01:04:34] Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:04:35] On. On an individual level, you're saying and. Okay.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:38] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:04:38] Yeah. The one thing that I just wanted to note before we start digging into specific issues, you know, a lot of the late 2010s, 2000 teens, we'll say, was a discussion around LGBTQ youth suicides. I mean, that's the stuff that led to Tyler Glenn, you know, coming out and Dan Reynolds and the movie Believer. And, you know, and there were reports that.

John Dehlin [01:05:04] That Utah had triple the national average of death, death by suicide. And the apologetic was always, well, we don't know for sure. We don't have the data because when people, you know, when people die in the state of Utah, they don't ask, were you gay?

John Dehlin [01:05:21] What. What I just think is really important is once you see this level of data capturing and analysis, you know, that the church could probably get pretty close to figuring out that number. How Many deaths, How many youth deaths, how many youth deaths by suicide? And if they wanted to, they can find out, you know, they could ask these youth and survey them. How many of you identify with, have same sex attraction or whatever? My point is, is they could, they could get the data that we need to find out how prevalent LGBTQ youth suicides are within Mormonism. But I don't think maybe they don't want the answer.

Gerardo Sumano [01:06:01] Well, Elder Oaks is on record saying that they don't really care about that and that they really believe that God is going to be the judge of that. And, and then that they, you know, this was on the Universe at the University of Virginia when Elder Oaks was asked if he or his church took any kind of responsibility for LGBTQ suicides. And he pretty much said, you know, I'm going to let God be the judge of, of that.

John Dehlin [01:06:30] And I'm just going to say where your data, where your data are, there's your heart. Also, you know, to kind of quote Jesus. I get, I guess the, the questions that they ask, the, the research studies that they do show what they really care about.

Scott Dyer [01:06:46] Yeah. So Brian does mention, and I don't know if I put a, I put this clip in there, but he wasn't involved with this. But they did do a survey around this subject of the suicide rates among LGBTQ youth. And the, what they found was inconclusive, basically that there, they didn't have enough information or that there wasn't enough pointing to a direct correlation to LDS church. But he wasn't directly involved in that survey. So this is, this was him just saying what some of his peers were working on.

John Dehlin [01:07:20] Yeah. And I just wonder if they found a really tight correlation, would that ever get out or would they say, oh yeah, we ran the data, but it's inconclusive. You know what I mean? Like, I can't think of anything more explosive than those findings. Yeah, yeah. And more risky legally. Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:07:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:40] Yeah. Okay, so the next, the next question we're diving into, I guess the second episode 57. So the second part of this interview and we're going to dive right in to talk about did the church conduct any survey after releasing the Gospel topics essays? Anything you want to say to set this up, Scott?

Research Behind the Gospel Topics Essays

Scott Dyer [01:07:59] No, it's pretty self explanatory. He worked in the correlation department during the implementation of these survey of the Gospel Topics essays. And so I was just curious, you know, what hand did your correlation department have in this implementation?

John Dehlin [01:08:14] All right, let's roll. Roll the audio.

▶ Video Clip 3

Video Clip 3 [01:08:18] There were two projects or Kind of clusters of projects that I think really made my time there enjoyable. So a lot of the work that I did with the public relations department and Public affairs, that was really interesting to me personally, just because they were kind of targeting my same demographic and trying to understand people. And so for me to be a part of that project, kind of felt like I understand these people. I can relate with them. They're opening up to me and telling me things because they know that I'm kind of one of them in a way, and then I can be that mouthpiece and kind of translate that back to the church.

Video Clip 3 [01:08:58] So for the listeners, what demographic is that specifically that you're talking about?

Video Clip 3 [01:09:04] So that was back in 2013, 2014. It was around the time that all those Gospel topics essays started coming out. The church, specifically Public affairs, wanted a better read on how are millennials and young people and people who are still kind of right in the middle of their education, how are they responding to this? And is it making any difference for their testimony, for the things they understand about the church, how they're relating to their friends, kind of tying it into their experience with institute and things like that.

Video Clip 3 [01:09:39] So these surveys, were they specifically asking about the Gospel topics essays?

Video Clip 3 [01:09:43] A little bit. And, and these were in person interviews. So some of them were one on one interviews. Some of them were focus groups in the larger areas that we went to. But I actually did kind of a, a research road trip for this project. And I started in Manhattan, Kansas, and I drove all the way up to Chicago, just stopping at every college along the way where there was an LDS institute.

Video Clip 3 [01:10:10] And so then in each town, you know, different town each day, then I would just meet with a group of institute students. Some of them had very serious questions about the church. Some of them were history PhD students and their, you know, kind of grappling with what is the history of the church in a broader context and things like that. And, and you know, some of them were just undergrads, barely 18, coming out to college for the first time away from their parents and kind of being exposed to some of these things, another on their own. And they don't have that same kind of social support that they might have had with a youth leader or something like that.

Video Clip 3 [01:10:48] So you're asking these questions, you compile all the statistics. Were they trying to, just to measure the reception of these essays, or were they trying to gauge activity rates for millennials?

Video Clip 3 [01:10:59] So this is a very qualitative project. So there's not a lot of specific numbers that went into the Reporting.

Video Clip 3 [01:11:07] Yeah, because it's not yes or no questions. These are open ended discussions.

Video Clip 3 [01:11:11] Yeah, it's a very general kind of, you know, in general, when people read these essays, are they understanding it in the way that the church intended? Are they drawing the conclusions that the church wants them. Them to draw? Does it lead to further questions? Does it lead to maybe more dissatisfaction? And, and at the time, there was still kind of a debate at church headquarters in terms of do we hide this information or do we share it and inoculate the youth in a way against some of the bigger questions that they're going to come across later.

Video Clip 3 [01:11:44] So was this something discussed in, you know, in the halls of HQ or is this something that you guys talked about, these gospel topics essays?

Video Clip 3 [01:11:50] Yeah, so this, the essays made a really big splash. I think generally there was a lot of reporting about them in the local newspapers around Utah, you know, a little bit of chatter just in different online spaces with like, hey, have you seen this? Like, my mind is kind of blown. Check this out. And then a lot of people just kind of talking about like, well, that's an apologist's view. Or no, that's really good history. Or trying to kind of understand how much can we trust these essays? How complete are they? So those are all things that we kind of at headquarters were all aware of. We knew that the essays had come out. We knew that there was web traffic to those pages. We just didn't know exactly what happens after that. So after somebody reads it, then what, what type of person is going there to read it?

Video Clip 3 [01:12:38] Wow.

Video Clip 3 [01:12:39] I.

John Dehlin [01:12:39] Something big hit me right there. But, but Scott, let's have you go first.

Scott Dyer [01:12:44] And Gerardo, I just think it's fascinating that they are aware of the problem. They're aware of the, maybe the highest demographic that's going to encounter these and make a decision to leave the church. And they know all of this and they have done surveys, they know what the response is, they know how people understand it, they know the questions that people have about it. But they've largely continued the same. They haven't made changes to them. They haven't, they haven't fixed some of the problems that people have with these essays.

John Dehlin [01:13:15] Yeah, for me, what jumped out is like the first for sure, tick tock clip from this episode. He admits basically that they were asking the question, do we hide this information or not? Yeah, do we hide this information or do we be open and honest? And there we have it. We have someone working for church headquarters admitting that they knew the accurate, factual history and they were asking themselves as. As late as the 2010s, should we keep hiding this or should we finally come clean? And to me, that's very damning. I don't know, am I over overblowing that? Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [01:13:57] No. What's interesting is, you know, they were trying to figure out how to go about it with the youth too, which at the end they're gonna be the future of the church. And the church is seeing that, you know, youth are haranging. So, yeah, kind of like, do we inoculate them with this or, or do we keep. Keep it quiet and just a few clicks deep in the website where most youth will never find about it.

Gerardo Sumano [01:14:30] I mean, I think we've seen that they've decided for the inoculation part, at least in a, in a soft way. But, but we're also getting reports, you know, from, like, someone sent you an email about missionaries in the Utah area not being allowed to read the book. Saint per the General authority, who's in charge of this area. Because a lot of missionaries were losing their faith by reading the book, so. Or the books. So. Yeah, kind of interesting.

John Dehlin [01:15:04] Yeah. The dilemma that I remember talking to Marlon Jensen a little bit about this, they basically, on the one hand, when somebody is deceived, feels deceived at having, you know, having had the church factual church history been hid from them, they feel betrayed and the church pretty much never gets them back. So they, they know that, that deceiving in the long term isn't sustainable. But they also know that the factual history takes people out en masse. And so they kind of did. They decided a couple things. They pretty much decided that people in their 30s and beyond, they're kind of just lost. And they're like, if you, if you've lost your faith over, you know, church history issues and you're 30 or older, we're not even going to try and get you back.

John Dehlin [01:15:52] It's like all we can do is try and create a bunch of, like you say, inoculating, soft apologetic stuff that dribbles out just enough history. Mention the word Peepstone, mention polygamy and Joseph Smith in the same lesson. You know, mention stone and hat or whatever it is, mention Kinderhook and then give a bunch of apologetics and just cross your fingers in hope that, that, that the youth can hear this stuff, say, oh, I was taught about Kinderhook. I remember it in seminary. Oh, I was taught about Kirtland Bank. I was taught about in seminary. But then, but then never actually take that next step. And actually process the implications.

John Dehlin [01:16:33] And that's the bet they made. And like you said, Gerardo, was it Elder Pearson, who's the head of kind of one of the main Utah areas, who has now forbidden the missionaries within his area from reading the church, edited the church, produced history books, Saints, volumes, whatever, one, two, and whatever. And I, I think they're losing. I think they're losing the youth, but I don't think they, they had an idea of what else they could do.

Gerardo Sumano [01:17:01] Yeah.

Scott Dyer [01:17:01] You know, there's a general trend, and it's not unique to Mormonism, that youth are less and less likely to be Christians or even.

John Dehlin [01:17:11] That's right.

Scott Dyer [01:17:12] Devout of any, of any faith. And I think that their response is too little, too late. They. They needed to evolve as a church at a rate that they can't do at this point. You know, if they wait until they have a millennial as the Prophet in 60 years, the Church is going to be too far gone for them to do anything about it.

John Dehlin [01:17:35] Yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:17:36] And we've covered, you know, in other episodes how the church is trying to, you know, the new youth pamphlet, you know, softening the rules for the youth, trying to make it easier to be Mormon and young. But like you're saying, Scott, it seems like these changes are coming too late. And then when you have older generation, who are the ones that are the leaders today enforcing these rules, who grew up with a different worldview of what Mormonism is, it just causes this conflict. And that's the only way I can really explain what could have been happening, what's really happening with missionaries losing their faith while reading the book Saints is like the leaders are either too conservative and spouting a worldview of church history that's not the correct one.

Gerardo Sumano [01:18:23] And then the missionaries trying to grapple with what the church is putting out officially. And, and those two not really matching, you know, very similar to maybe what's going to happen with the new youth pamphlet. But.

John Dehlin [01:18:37] Yeah. All right. Well, Scott, the next, the next slide we have is, you know, and this is something that's was super conspicuous to me, not just what topics were covered in the gospel topics essays, and when we did our analysis with Marlon Jensen, Hans Mattson, Travis Stratford, Greg Prince, when we did our study, we gave them a list of topics that were most problematic for people. And I know that that helped drive what essays they ended up using. But what I was paying attention to wasn't just what essays they did do, it was what they didn't do. And the one that's always been Most conspicuous for me is Book of Mormon historicity. There was never any essay that addressed anachronisms, um, and that sort of thing. And that's, for me, one of the biggest issues. Um, but. But, yeah. So anything you want to say to set up this slide, Scott?

Tailoring Church History Messaging by Demographics

Scott Dyer [01:19:28] Well, I think this is fascinating because he presents an idea, and we dig into it a little bit. But men and women, typically, not always, but they have different concerns with the problems within the church. You know, men, when they come to the problem, polygamy, typically say, oh, yeah, you know, the church has moved away from it. We're not doing that anymore. It's okay. But when a woman is confronted with that information, typically, they're. They still respond to it in a very, very critical way. And that's just one way to highlight these differences in a male target audience to a female target audience. And so we talk a little bit about, if there ever was any discussion, to write these essays with different target audiences in mind.

John Dehlin [01:20:11] All right, let's roll the tape.

▶ Video Clip 4

Video Clip 4 [01:20:15] So the purpose of this survey that you're talking about, this road trip that you went on, was to assess the people that had encountered these essays and figure out what the reception was of them.

Video Clip 4 [01:20:24] Yep. So that was part of it. The other big part was, are we even hitting the right topics? So are there questions that are bubbling up from among millennials that haven't been addressed, or are there questions that should be addressed at some point, point?

Video Clip 4 [01:20:39] Were there any questions that came up that. That haven't been addressed yet that were coming up regularly, or was this something you feel like they covered most of what people were asking you?

Video Clip 4 [01:20:48] I. I think they. They started with probably the most important and relevant ones. I think when they first came out, there were, like, five big ones that were really creating waves. It was like the Book of Abraham. It was the history of polygamy. It was multiple versions of the first vision. A couple of those. I think those really were the biggest historical issues. I think maybe something that was missing early on was current issues or, like, not ancient history issues like 1800s, but what about, like, 1930s issues or 1960s

Video Clip 4 [01:21:27] issues like civil rights and things like that?

Video Clip 4 [01:21:30] What about the McCarthyism that, you know, kind of ripped through BYU campus for a while? Like, there were some other questions like that that sort of came up, but I think, in general, most people were really pretty satisfied that the church had at least talked about the Book of Abraham and some of those big issues.

Video Clip 4 [01:21:48] I think it's a great step in the right direction, you know, wherever you. Wherever A listener finds themselves on a spectrum of belief. I think addressing the issues is an excellent step in the right direction.

Video Clip 4 [01:21:59] And I think the debate now about, like, do we hide this information or do we share more of it? I think has largely been settled. Kind of leaning toward the more transparency approach. There's. There's just no way to keep this information from people. Whether it's on our site or somewhere else, they're going to find it. And I think the consensus at church headquarters was we may as well at least give it to them in this environment where we can control a little bit of what's being said, how it's being taught.

John Dehlin [01:22:30] Oh, my gosh, that's triggering for me, because what he basically just said is that the church was like, do we be open and honest or do we not? And then it's like, well, okay, we'll be honest, but only because we can't control the narrative anymore.

John Dehlin [01:22:46] And. And so we'll do it, but if we do it, let's find our best way to spin it so that we can control as much as possible how people interpret the information. And that's just what he said. Like, I didn't just make that up. That's what a former church employee said was their thought process. It wasn't driven by, like, values of, like, oh, let's see, we value honesty, we value truth. So we're going to teach the truth because that's the right thing to do, and we teach our members to be perfectly honest, and we want to emulate that. It's this kind of almost Machiavellian calculation of, like, what's in our best interest. And we're only going to be honest if we're. If we're forced to be. Did I get that wrong?

Scott Dyer [01:23:27] No, I think you hit it right on. Right on there. It's. It's interesting because you have a Turning Point, early 19th, early 20th century, where B.H. roberts finds out all this information, presents it to the quorum of the 12. And this is, in my mind, one of the biggest turning points in the church. Their decision right there, to obfuscate is what led the next hundred years of decisions within the church to hide information. And now, 100 years later, we're at a point where they can no longer do that. These decisions from 100 years ago to obfuscate everything that was damning are now finally coming to light.

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:07] Yeah. And yes, when you compare that to what their narrative is, is, you know, and you see Ballard in a youth whatever, like, conference or whatever, like, saying, we've never tried to hide anything from anyone. And Elder Oaks kind of laughing about it like, and making jokes about it about how ex members or, or the critics say that, that the church has been hiding this information. They make fun of it and say we've never done that.

John Dehlin [01:24:44] Or they say we, we. We're as honest as we know how to be. Right. We're as transparent as we know how to be.

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:49] Right. Yeah.

Scott Dyer [01:24:50] Very lawyer answer.

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:51] Yeah. Very different from, from, from what we hearing right now.

John Dehlin [01:24:58] Yeah. Because I was taught do it is right. Let the consequence follow.

Gerardo Sumano [01:25:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:01] Dare to do right. Dare to be true. You know that that's the Mormonism I was raised in. So it's hard when you see the leaders not living by that.

Gerardo Sumano [01:25:09] There's also this admission. Sorry Scott, go ahead. That his admission that the church is controlling the narrative.

John Dehlin [01:25:16] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:25:17] So what the members are hearing about whatever church history topic that's being controlled, it's being put in a, in a purpose spin to. For what? So you can come out of it with the conclusion that the church wants you to come out of, of reading and. Yeah. Kind of interesting.

John Dehlin [01:25:41] I mean it. I guess, I guess something that's kind of formulating in my mind is you've got religions that have always had a lot of power because they, they help answer really important questions about death in the afterlife and meaning and purpose. And then they also provide community. Like that's, that's a lot of power and they've had that for millennia. But then you've got science and corporations and all the, in academia and all the ways that, that research and statistics and computers and data can help make corporations really rich and successful. What's dangerous is when you can combine those as a religion and use all those superpower tools.

John Dehlin [01:26:29] It, it, it's like it's not just undue influence. It's undue influence on a massive scale. And it's, it's kind of terrifying. And then the only other thing that my other, the other side of my brain says is but the church is kind of losing anyway.

John Dehlin [01:26:44] Right. But I mean it's a lot. It's, it explains why the church is worth half a trillion dollars is because you, you, you know, it's using these tools, these corporate science based tools as much as it can to its advantage to, to manipulate and to wield undo influence. That's scary, but it's also just a reality that, that they're, that they're in some ways losing, but not totally right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:27:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:27:08] I think the hemorrhaging is less than I would Expect.

Gerardo Sumano [01:27:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:27:12] Do you ever think that, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [01:27:13] Yeah, I would say so.

John Dehlin [01:27:14] Scott, what do you think?

Scott Dyer [01:27:16] Oh, I. I completely agree. I mean, the statistic is like, 1 in 4 in. In, like, LDS families that leave the church, at least if our millennials. And it's a lot less than I would expect in my own family. Six kids. I'm the only one that's out in.

John Dehlin [01:27:32] Yeah.

Scott Dyer [01:27:33] In my. My. Yeah, it's. It's pretty crazy.

John Dehlin [01:27:36] Yeah. When you think about Mormon stories and. And YouTube and the CES letter and Mormonism Live and Fawn Brody.

Gerardo Sumano [01:27:43] Netflix and Hulu.

John Dehlin [01:27:45] Netflix and Hulu. You think about all these ways that people could learn the truth about the church and way the church is harming people. It's like, how is the church not dead already? It's because it's using all these superpowered techniques to still wield influence. And that's. I don't mean to belabor this point, but I'm always stunned. It'll be 2022, and somebody will be like, hey, John, I want to come on Mormon Stories. I just lost my faith. I'll bring them on Mormon Stories. And I'm like, so when did you first hear about the CBS letter? And it's like, oh, last month.

John Dehlin [01:28:16] It's like, oh, when did you, you know, when did you first hear about Mormon stories? Oh, three weeks ago. It's like, oh, wait, we've been around 18 years. And, oh, when. When did you hear about. No man knows my History? And they're like, what's that? You know? Yeah, like, the way the church can use its power and influence to shield people from truth is stunning.

Scott Dyer [01:28:37] Yeah. In 2022, I deconstructed my faith and for a. A year or so, didn't know about any podcast. It was like, 2018. A very close friend of mine was like, hey, I know you're going through this. Have you ever listened to Mormon Stories? And I'm like, what's that? You've been going on for years at this point.

John Dehlin [01:28:54] Yeah. That's fascinating. All right, all right, so the next slide is asked the question, what did you learn from the surveys about the gospel topics essays? Anything you want to say to set this up, Scott?

Scott Dyer [01:29:06] No, I think my last setup was actually about this one. So let's just jump right in.

John Dehlin [01:29:09] All right, let's jump in.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:29:12] One of the big things that came out of this research was just understanding that depending on your own personal demographic characteristics or your position within the church and its structures, different issues are going to bother you in different ways.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:29:29] For Men typically kind of a more privileged group within the church. Men aren't as concerned with certain things that really bother women. Like, is polygamy still part of our doctrine, even if we're not practicing it? You know, that's a concern that women have to deal with and say, if I get divorced or if my husband dies and I remarry, like, what does that mean for me? And so that's very much a current issue for women where in the minds of most men, that ended in 1900, 1905, and we don't deal with that anymore, and it's irrelevant.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:30:06] And so just understanding that a faith crisis doesn't hit somebody truly at random, you know, there are. There are ways that we can predict which issues are going to bother people in that way, and. And maybe they need a different response to it. Maybe a gospel topics essay about polygamy works fine for men, but it really doesn't address the root of those questions that women have.

Scott Dyer [01:30:32] Was this something that was discussed, like, having essays directed more towards different demographics?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:30:38] Kind of. And there's not a good way to publish an essay and say, like, hey, this one's for men. You know, that's awkward. So finding the right balance, like, are we at least addressing the concerns of everyone rather than having maybe a group of male historian scholars writing for men? You know, is there a way that we can kind of bring that perspective and make it accessible and relevant for everyone else?

John Dehlin [01:31:06] I just want to say this Brian Harris guy sounds really smart, you know, and. Oh, yeah, just super thoughtful. I would love to just be friends with this guy.

Scott Dyer [01:31:15] Yeah, he's. He's a nice guy. He's a really nice guy.

John Dehlin [01:31:18] Yeah. Yeah, but that may. You know, this is where patriarchy comes to bite you, because if you're run by men for men, you're not having women. And. And if you're run by white people, you're. You're not having minorities and international people. You're just not. You're not equipped with the staff to be asking all the right questions. And you can leave out big groups. And I think Carolyn Pearson, with her book the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, was trying to fill this need of, like, yeah, your. Your essays aren't. Aren't really addressing some of the core problems. Right. And, you know, because they're leaving women, you know, I'm. You know, he says 40 of these researchers, you know, are in the correlation department. How many of them are white men? Do we want to take a guess? Like, I'm guessing, but I'm guessing it's 80, you know, or more. Right?

Gerardo Sumano [01:32:08] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:32:09] Did you have a reaction?

Gerardo Sumano [01:32:12] Yeah, just how it, it is interesting how the same information are, you know, I've heard, I think I've told this story of a friend whose family was really active in the church and they were in sacrament meeting and you know, during sacrament meeting, his dad was just looking at his phone and looking on the gospel library and found the gospel topic essays. And when the first one he read was the one about the first vision and he was mid through reading it and he told all his family to stand up and they left the church

John Dehlin [01:32:49] and never came back.

Gerardo Sumano [01:32:50] So it's really interesting how the same information can affect people. Like, I have a sister who, you know, I've told her all about what I knew about church history before she served a mission and I mean, she's still active. You know, her perspective I think has changed, changed dramatically from what we grew up. And I don't know how the church is reacting to that. You know, people who learn how really the sausage is made, how the church history really went through, start changing their views on, you know, what revelation really means, what, you know, whatever, what the prophet says, how much weight should I put on it, you know, if it changes or has changed in the past.

Gerardo Sumano [01:33:37] So even if, if they remain with their faith in the church, those things kind of change. And I, I don't know how the church is trying to control that or, or if, if they're worrying about those kind of things.

Scott Dyer [01:33:52] But.

Gerardo Sumano [01:33:52] Yeah, pretty interesting.

John Dehlin [01:33:54] Yeah. All right, Anything else on that one, Scott?

Scott Dyer [01:33:59] Just the only way the church can go is forward is if they accept these things. But then there are some really uncomfortable conclusions that they have to make about them. You know, if we're going to accept that, you know, polygamy was harmful and that it might not have been called of God, what implications does that have about Joseph Smith as a prophet for a believer? So if someone comes to the table says, hey, look, I believe the first vision, but you know, this polygamy thing probably wasn't a revelation from God. How can the church exist and how can the church confront that sort of a problem that they will face in the very new near future?

John Dehlin [01:34:41] Yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:34:42] Especially with one of. When one of the top apologists, you know, is, believes this kind of thing, that Joseph Smith made a mistake and committed, possibly committed sin by, you know, the way he handle polygamy and all that stuff.

John Dehlin [01:34:57] Did you hear that interview, Scott, with Patrick Mason?

Scott Dyer [01:35:00] Yes, I did. That was such an excellent interview. Excellent interview. And Yeah, a lot of these, like what I was saying is, is those are the conclusions that someone like Patrick Basin has to make. Has to make. It's a concession he has to make about his faith in Joseph Smith, which I think is a logical conclusion to make. If you're still going to believe in him, but you recognize that there are problems, it makes it a lot more gray. And honestly, I think it makes. If you can create the church like this, if you can establish a community that looks at sin and revelation like this, it's a much more mature organization.

John Dehlin [01:35:36] But that's a. That's a difficult nuance to make, to say Joseph's. All that polygamy stuff that Joseph Smith did was sin, but somehow he's still a prophet like, Patrick can do it, and I can get how people can do it, but it's. Man, that's. That's a hard thing for many people to do. And I don't know if. If that's adopted worldwide. I don't know if the church remains anything like it has been historically. You know what I mean?

Scott Dyer [01:36:04] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:36:05] Yeah. Because it's what I was saying. The weight that you put into whatever the prophet says today or demands of you today is going to be affected by the way you see. You start seeing prophets.

John Dehlin [01:36:17] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:36:17] Especially the founder of the religion.

John Dehlin [01:36:20] Yeah. If they're just a little bit better than the average guy. Are you going to pay 10%? Are you going to go every week for two hours? Are you going to give two years of your life? Or is it just like, oh, it's kind of like Eckhart Tolle, you know, it's a little bit like Brene Brown, wise guy. You know, these are wise guys that are trying to do. It's like Grandpa, basically. Grandpa trying to give me some wisdom. Grandpa's dumb and old and doesn't know a lot, but every once in a while he says a wise thing.

Scott Dyer [01:36:46] But that's my problem with them, and this is maybe me giving more opinion than I do on my own podcast, is that they don't have any more wisdom than anybody else. In fact, I don't think that they have much extra to give than any other religion offers currently.

John Dehlin [01:37:02] Yeah.

Scott Dyer [01:37:03] As far as wisdom and. And helping someone lead a fulfilling life,

John Dehlin [01:37:07] they really do need to step it up. They need to step up the quality of. Of their teachings and. And their content or they're going to be in trouble. All right, well, they. Yeah, they're going to be even more trouble, I should say. All right, so the next question is, what did the church do with the results of the surveys on the gospel topics essays? Anything you want to say to set this up, Scott?

Scott Dyer [01:37:27] No, I mean, self explanatory. We're going to get to, to what happened.

John Dehlin [01:37:30] All right, let's launch in.

Scott Dyer [01:37:34] So you go and compile this information from these surveys about the gospel topics essays and these other questions that you were asking. What did they do with this information?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:37:46] That's a good question. So we came back, we put together some presentations, spent probably 45 minutes with the public affairs, just general leadership, managing director and some of the senior staff in that group. And they were all terrific to work with. I think they were all very empathetic.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:38:07] When we bring in quotes from the people that we interviewed, you know, you see a lot of head nods around the table, like, yeah, I totally get where they're coming from. And at that point we sort of just handed it off and it becomes someone else's job to fix it. And you know, maybe that happens in subtle ways. I think a lot of the times that research just kind of sits on a shelf, like, man, I don't know how to address something that big. But you know, someday when the time is right, we'll know and pieces of that can fit in.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:38:38] And, and I think we did see a little bit of it, like when the church had a big push for like the equality for all kind of language and, and the balance between religious freedom and the lack of ability to discriminate against people. I think some of those issues do kind of creep into that discussion.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:39:01] You know, how do our members feel about it if we take an approach that is so strongly this way or that way and are fairness for all.

Gerardo Sumano [01:39:10] That's, that's the, that's the word, not equality. The church doesn't want equality. They want fair for whatever they believe it's fair for, for them to remain, to keep their privilege, to, to discriminate.

John Dehlin [01:39:25] What, yeah, what struck me about that little excerpt is I, I've told the story before on Mormon stories that I, that I met twice with Elder Holland for lunch. And in the second lunch I explained the mixed orientation, the mixed faith marriage problem that, that you have, Scott, if you, I mean, maybe you don't think of it as a problem, but a lot of the people that I talk to do think of it as a problem. It's a real stressor on a marriage. And I talked about all the marriages that were being blown up by the believing spouse, basically divorcing the non believing spouse. And Elder Holland's response was very much you know, like Scott indicated, it was like, wow, that's really hard to hear.

John Dehlin [01:40:06] I'm sad that that's happening. And then almost immediately, Elder Holland was like, maybe someday when we're a more mature church, you know, we'll be able to do something about that. But right now, there's really not a lot we can do about that, you know, And I think at the time what he meant was, is like, wow, Boyd K. Packer is never gonna allow us to talk about that.

John Dehlin [01:40:26] So we're just gonna have to like, shelve it. And sucks. Sucks for you, who are all in mixed faith marriages. Sorry, we're not mature enough to deal with that right now, you know. Scott.

Scott Dyer [01:40:37] Yeah, it's tough. My. My mother asked my wife if she was going to divorce me when I told my parents that I was leaving the church. So it's definitely a real problem for mixed faith marriages. Now my marriage is probably an outlier. Both my wife and I have struggled with some pretty heavy mental health issues, and we've come out of the other end as just the best support for each other. That when this came along, my wife, her reaction was just like, great. Another thing for us to go through together. And there was never a question of the relationship should end. For us, it was okay. We've, we've struggled with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation. Now it's this next thing, let's just do it together. And for us, we're just making it work.

John Dehlin [01:41:30] I love it. I'm happy for you guys.

Scott Dyer [01:41:34] Thank you.

Church Member Segmentation Categories Explained

John Dehlin [01:41:35] All right, well, here we get into what I think is going to be really interesting. This question that we alluded to earlier in the episode. What is church segmentation?

Scott Dyer [01:41:44] Yeah, we've already given enough prep on

John Dehlin [01:41:46] it, so, yeah, let's run it

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:41:49] with segmentation. There were a couple of different segmentation projects that the church was involved in. One of those was handled kind of directly through the church's research division. There was also another one that was handled through one of the creative agencies that the church owns and manages.

Scott Dyer [01:42:07] What do you mean by creative agency?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:42:09] Bonneville Communications creates a lot of the media marketing materials for the church. And they had a small research arm years ago. They don't anymore. So there was kind of another segmentation that came through that group. And that group is also very closely tied in with Deseret Book and some of the other kind of for profit subsidiaries of the church.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:42:36] So they wanted to know, for their own kind of marketing and sales purposes, who are we selling to and how do we make sure that we're giving the right assortment of products and materials. So that's kind of at the same time almost as what's happening internally within the church for segmentation.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:42:53] In a lot of ways, they do line up really nicely, but there's a, you know, kind of in the end of that segmentation process, what you end up with are like typing tools where you have a simplified kind of five or six question version of a survey that you can, with a certain amount of accuracy, start to estimate other things about that person, their personality and their, their worldview and perspective on things.

John Dehlin [01:43:21] I mean, I just have to say right off the bat, like, you know, I remember 30 years ago, somebody comparing the church to, like, McDonald's and what they were saying was, you know, just like in McDonald's, everyone wears the same uniform across the world, you know, at least 30 years ago, and everybody. The pickle is a pickle and a Big Mac is a Big Mac. Whether you're in Guatemala or Hong Kong, a Big Mac is a Big Mac. They've changed. But 30 years ago, that was kind of the idea. The idea. And, you know, but, but this idea of market segmentation, you know, again, just like we said, what, you know, what law firm would Jesus use?

John Dehlin [01:44:02] Like, how would Jesus segment his market? You know, the fact that they're literally saying they're, they're, they're thinking of Mormonism, they're thinking of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as a product that they market and they sell to segmented customer groups. It's just, it's just a level of corporate strategy and techniques that really, for me to hear this from an insider, you kind of know what's going on. But when you hear from an insider that they're literally doing market segmentation on members to figure out how to package the gospel of Jesus Christ optimally with the right wrapper and the right, you know, Styrofoam clamshell on the Big Mac so that, so that it can be most palatable to the right market segments. It's just a whole nother level of. I don't know what. Yeah, yeah. Scott, what do you think?

Scott Dyer [01:45:04] Well, it's, it's interesting to me because we get this idea that these ecclesiastical leaders, they're called by God, you know, he's the prophet, or the apostles of the 70, whatever the position is, they're called by God. And so their daily tasks must be to receive revelation and inspiration for their position. But when we get down to just seems like they're operating as any other business, any Other large corporation would operate. And so the question, where is the revelation? Where is this inspiration from God coming in order to lead the church? Like, what part of this process involves God?

John Dehlin [01:45:43] Yeah. All right, so now we go to the next. Now we go to the next slide, which I think is one of the coolest parts of this whole presentation. We've already alluded to it. Go ahead.

Scott Dyer [01:45:53] It shifted the way I look at anyone within the church. And I. I mean, in my head, I kind of categorize people based on what I think they might fit within these segments.

John Dehlin [01:46:04] Yeah. And I'm just going to. I'm going to call them out ahead of time because it's easy. It's a lot to store in your. In your brain's memory. The categories are spiritually. We should. We almost should do it. We should. We should have ordered them from most orthodox to most liberal. Right?

Scott Dyer [01:46:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:46:22] Maybe I'll read them. Maybe I'll read them in reverse. Entrenched evangelicals. I'm thinking that's the most orthodox probably. Right. Entrenched evangelicals. Then there's kind of practical, which is. Which I'm going to be guessing is more just like. It works for me. It makes me happy. But they're still believers. Cultural. That. That makes it sound like it's almost like, ah, you know, it's. I'm Catholic, I'm Jewish. I go because that's my tribe.

Scott Dyer [01:46:52] Yeah. The Relief Society. The gatherings are more important than the Sunday casserole.

John Dehlin [01:46:57] Casserole. Mormons. Right. And then spiritually independent. Those are the progressives that are literally getting their spiritual nourishment. Nourishment externally. And that's got to be, I'm guessing, the most at risk group for the church. But I could be wrong. Well, let's go ahead and. Let's go ahead and play. Play it and learn about these segments.

Scott Dyer [01:47:18] What were the categories that this segmentation broke members into?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:47:22] I'm a little fuzzy on the specifics, but, you know, in general, there's like five groups. Most segmentations kind of end up that way. There was a group, and this is a little bit different for each group. So the internal church headquarters version had cultural members and practical members that in some ways were very similar. Those are kind of. They are faithful, but they may be a little bit more laid back. The intensity to which they engage in the behaviors.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:47:55] So those are people that typically are reading their scriptures pretty frequently, but they're not going to hate themselves if they miss a day. They don't. They're not prone to that. Kind of scrupulosity that other groups may have. There was also a group of people who are more spiritually independent, who are more likely to go kind of looking at their own sources. They're not going to stick to only church approved materials when they want to know something.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:48:20] And they're more likely to talk with family and friends that are not members of the church and ask questions about someone else's religion. So members that are cultural and practical, kind of in that segmentation are more likely to just be very content with where they are. They're not seeking anything new or they're not wanting to rock the boat.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:48:43] And it's just kind of a comfortable. This is, this is what we've always done. It's working. I feel good about it. I feel the spirit doing it.

Scott Dyer [01:48:50] I would assume that would be most of the members. Or am I, am I totally off on that?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:48:55] And that is a pretty good section. It's probably, you know, combined 30ish percent, 30 to 50% of members that fall into that.

Scott Dyer [01:49:03] So then what percentage would be the spiritually independent then?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:49:06] That's very small. Definitely under 5%.

Scott Dyer [01:49:10] Under 5. So then the vast majority are these

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:49:13] entrenched and there are a lot of members that are more entrenched and there's kind of two distinct levels of that entrenchment. So the spiritually independent, that number I think is low for a couple of reasons. People who are in that sort of category don't opt into the church as converts very often. And people who are born into the church that find themselves in that category are likely to leave the church in short order.

Scott Dyer [01:49:43] Now this was a question I'd asked you last week that we talked about briefly is that you found yourself in this spiritually independent category as you're doing the research.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:49:53] Yeah. And I think there's a lot of life circumstances that can kind of take somebody out of a cultural or practical or the more entrenched style of Mormonism and almost force you into that smaller bucket. So, you know, discovering something about your sexuality that doesn't fit with what you've been taught from the church can definitely kind of put you on that or

Scott Dyer [01:50:16] maybe addressing it for the first time.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:50:18] Yeah, you know, finding yourself in a mixed faith relationship can definitely put you there. Having a faith crisis and then never quite being the same afterward, you know, that's a door that you've gone through. You can never go back to the way things were before.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:50:34] And so now you find yourself kind of reevaluating and, and maybe you find yourself in that smaller group. So that group is interesting to me personally. And like I said, that's, you know, when I took the survey testing out the segmentation tool, you know, that's where I landed. And I felt like that really does describe kind of where I'm at. And, and, and the way that you get that result is by answering survey questions like do you believe that there is only one true religion that applies to everyone on the planet? And if you say no to that, you know, that's, that's pretty far to the outside of mainstream Mormonism.

Scott Dyer [01:51:12] You're not going to be an entrenched at all

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:51:16] and see you kind of end up in that category. You know, if there's anything less than, you know, like 90% certainty that where you're at is the right place or

Scott Dyer [01:51:25] even, even just those, because I know, I know members that would say that there isn't a one true church, but they do believe in the LDS church.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:51:35] Yeah. Or this is a true church and that's a very different thing than it's the true church. Yeah, yeah. And so sometimes people with that attitude can also end up as kind of that practical or cultural mindset where, you know, I'm not worried about it. This is working for me. And maybe it's not the only true one, but it's working.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:51:55] The other end of that segmentation is really where we see a lot of the church leadership, both general authority level and local leaders, especially Stake President Bishop Rick. We also see a lot of CES people in that group. So the people that opt into teaching seminary as a full time profession in places where they, that's an option.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:52:19] We see a lot of those people kind of ending up in those positions. These are people that are very rigid. They have their minds made up. Nothing will ever change it. They're very entrenched. And, and so this is an interesting group because it's not who missionaries target.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:52:38] You know, if you find, if you find a non member who is very entrenched in their belief, your odds of swaying them or bringing them over are very small. And so most of the converts are fundamentally dissimilar to most of our leadership, which can create some dynamics that I think the church still has to wrestle with. But if you bring in a lot of people that are very spiritually independent, wanting to do their own thing, that's really going to butt up against local church leaders and, and their perspective and practice.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:53:11] It is interesting also that those leaders tend to select other leaders. Who's responsible for calling a new bishop? Well, it's coordination between the stake president and high council members and maybe a general authority that visits. And, and those people are going to be looking for someone that fits their image. You know, they're, they're one of us. He's one of the most righteous. And we can tell because he's like us.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [01:53:38] And, and so you have a lot of people that are kind of never really in the running for those leadership positions. And, and I think people know that instinctively and intuitively.

John Dehlin [01:53:49] Well, there's a lot there. Hart, you got, you got something.

Gerardo Sumano [01:53:52] Yeah, just from the very last part, I think something I've noticed in, in my own experience in Mexico and you know, my dad being in leadership for a long time, There has been an effort, it seemed for a little bit to put a little bit more progressive or more of this culture and practical members in the leadership positions in Mexico, at least in the area where I live.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:23] And what ended up happening was the actual numbers of activity in the church would decrease dramatically. You know, we, we had stake presidents or bishops where like, you know, membership went down, activity numbers went down like 50% during their.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:47] Whatever, you know, numbers they serve, number, number of years they served. So it is, it is interesting to see, you know, you there, there can be an explanation for sure that the leaders are being called this way to be because, you know, they fit their own image. You know, the most entrenched and more conservative members are going to call very conservative members. Very dogmatic.

Gerardo Sumano [01:55:17] But there's, there's also this fact that I, I've seen that, you know, the more progressive ones for some reason tend to have, in my experience, have tended to, you know, decrease the. The members of activity in wherever they're serving. So kind of interesting perspective.

John Dehlin [01:55:37] My reaction to that. One of the first things I learned as I was trying to study, you know, religious activity from an academic perspective is you might think that the more relaxed the church get with. Church gets with its membership, the more active. Mm. The members would be or the, you know, the more they would like the church because it was more relaxed. But all the data that I'm aware of shows that the more strict you are, the more harsh you are, the more demanding you are of your membership, the more committed they are to the church.

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:08] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:56:09] So that, yeah, so that, that explains why. Why the church tends to lean towards entrenched evangelicals, both for leadership and for church education.

Scott Dyer [01:56:20] Scott, it's such a fascinating juxtaposition. So you have all of the leadership fitting into the trend. Entrenched evangelicals. I think if I'm not mistaken. He says like one in five would find themselves as either cultural or practical, but the majority are these entrenched evangelicals. But none of the converts fit into that category. Yeah, the whole, the entire missionary effort is solely for people that would not align with leadership. And that's just such a strange contradiction.

John Dehlin [01:56:55] Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. But, but a lot of people who convert to the church, they don't come from other high demand religions. They're just kind of lost. Maybe they were raised in a secular way. Maybe they were raised in a mambi pambi, Protestant, Christian kind of scenario and they just weren't getting enough juice. So it makes sense that we predominantly recruit people that are just, that are not hardcore, but we turn them into hardcore people. Once they get on that shame treadmill and we make them feeling, make them feel bad about themselves and don't drink coffee and don't smoke and don't masturbate and, you know, read your scriptures and come to church, you get them on that shame wheel and you can turn them into evangelicals over time and definitely turn their kids into evangelicals over time.

Gerardo Sumano [01:57:46] Takes time.

John Dehlin [01:57:47] Yeah, it takes time. I, I, oh, go ahead. Were you gonna say something, Scott?

Scott Dyer [01:57:51] No, no.

John Dehlin [01:57:51] Oh, I had a couple reactions that I think, you know, they hit me really hard when I was hearing about a segmentation. The first of all, when he's, you know, earlier, either you, Gerardo, or you, Scott, had said 1% for, for the, for which group, for the spiritually independent. That's not my, my experiences. It would have been about 5%. I, for many years of Mormon stories, I was trying to figure out what percentage of the active membership listened to Mormon stories or paid attention or were leaving each year. And I always came up with the number 5%. So I was, that, that felt more right to me to hear him say 5% versus 1%.

John Dehlin [01:58:32] And if you think about it, 5% a lot. Because let's just say award has two or 300 members. We're talking about 20, you know, 30 people. Right. In a ward now that not all of them are open about, well, what they really think and feel.

Gerardo Sumano [01:58:47] 200 members, that would be 10 members. Right?

John Dehlin [01:58:50] Right. But then if it's 300.

Gerardo Sumano [01:58:52] Right.

John Dehlin [01:58:53] I don't know.

Scott Dyer [01:58:53] 315. 15.

John Dehlin [01:58:55] 10 to 15. Okay. 10 to 15. That seems about right. As I think about the wards that I attended, you know, there'd be, there'd be 10 to 15 men and women that were either just silent whenever anything, you know, controversial that was being talked about, or they would be kind of pushing the envelope a little bit. Another thing I was going to say is that I think those, those numbers are old. I think that if that guy was still at church headquarters and he was producing the results in 2022, I bet that number's climbed to 10 or even 15.

John Dehlin [01:59:29] And what it made me think of was this conference that I attended with my dad just a few weeks ago. I went to this kind of Faith Matters conference. And if you think about it, 10, 15 years ago, where was the progressive arm of the church? It was like John de Lynn Stale, DS Dan Witherspoon, the Mormon Matters podcast, and then later a Thoughtful Faith and Gina Colvin. Right. But then, like, all of that got shut down. The church was really worried about out.

John Dehlin [01:59:57] You know, they called them New Order Mormons or, or Middle Way Buffet Mormons. But what, what we've seen in the past five years or so is the emergence of, like, Patrick Mason, you know, Terrell and Fiona Givens, Thomas McConkey, Jennifer Finlayson Fife, Julie Diazevedo Hanks. And, you know, when I was at this conference, this Faith Matters conference that I attended a few weeks ago, the room was packed, it was sold out. And they were cheering for Patrick Mason and, and Thomas McConkey and tarot givens and Jennifer Finlayson Fife. They were cheering for them like they were rock stars.

John Dehlin [02:00:37] And, you know, I thought about, like, you know, and a lot of these progressive Mormons that were there, their reaction was this, this is Mormonism that gets me excited. It's not the Mormonism of General Conference. It's certainly not the Mormonism of the Sunday experience, but like the Mormonism of, of, of the Faith Matters event, that's what excites me. And what, what's, what's alarming to me on behalf of the church about that reality is that here, you know, what's, what's, what's Brian saying? He's saying that that's, that's one foot out of the church, that once you become spiritually independent and you're looking for spirituality outside of the brethren, you've got one and a half feet out of the church.

John Dehlin [02:01:24] And so I wonder whether this Faith Matters thing is something that the church ultimately has to crack down on because it seems like they're incubating, they're allowing to incubate within the walls of the fortress. What, what in the future becomes a mass hemorrhaging for the church.

John Dehlin [02:01:44] But then again, like, what are they going to do? Like, excommunicate Julie Hanks? Are they going to excommunicate Patrick Mason or. Or Thomas McConkey or Terrell Givens. And so, like, I'm. That's like, if anything, I'm on the edge of. I want them to succeed because when I attended the Faith Matters conference, I'm like, I would join this church. Like, I love what Patrick Mason's saying. I, I love Julie Hanks and General Jennifer Finlayson. Fife is teaching, teaching all about taking your power intrinsically, like taking your power back and, And. And developing your own sense of power. What's not to love about those messages?

John Dehlin [02:02:22] But that seems like it's. It's toxic to ultimate obedience and faithfulness and loyalty to the church. Do you, either of you have thoughts on that, or is that just something you're not really paying attention to?

Scott Dyer [02:02:34] No, I think it's fascinating because if. If the church were to officially endorse an organization like this, that would be them accepting that there are uncomfortable truths. That would be. They would have to confront ideas like we were talking about earlier about polygamy. You know, if they're going to go and say, look, Patrick Mason is right when he says that, you know, Joseph Smith might have been a fallen prophet. You know, that's. Those are concessions that they're not willing to make. That if they publicly endorsed an organization like Faith Matters, they, they would have to.

Gerardo Sumano [02:03:08] Yeah, I just want to say that. Just a little correction. I don't think he said fallen prophet. I. I think he refers specifically to polygamy and maybe even specifically to some of the things.

John Dehlin [02:03:21] No, no, no. Patrick Mason doesn't call Joseph Smith the fallen prophet.

Scott Dyer [02:03:24] Right, Sorry, I was quoting William Law.

John Dehlin [02:03:26] Oh, okay.

Gerardo Sumano [02:03:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:03:27] No, no, no. Patrick Mason says he's a prophet. Yeah, but the, but the polygamy was a sin.

Gerardo Sumano [02:03:34] Right? That's what I was.

John Dehlin [02:03:35] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:03:35] Trying to say.

John Dehlin [02:03:36] But that he's still. But he's still. Joe Smith was still a prophet. Right? Yeah, absolutely.

Gerardo Sumano [02:03:40] And, yeah, very interesting. And I don't know what. Because we're not. You know, I think I remember the church recently published an article or something where they had several links and this was one of the first time where a church article would have links outside of the church's own website.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:02] And you know, when you look at the list is like, fair. Mormon Book of Mormon central. There's nothing about Cheryl Givens or Fiona Givens or, you know, Julie Hanks. So, yeah, while this group seems to be growing, in my opinion, I don't think they have the support of the brethren. You know, I once heard from an insider that Charlie Bird, who a lot of people in the Mormon Church respect. He tried to meet with one of the Brethren for a long time and they would, they wouldn't meet with him. So, yeah, I don't think the Brethren are really excited about this movement. I don't think it's going to become mainstream anytime soon, but I'm glad it's happening.

John Dehlin [02:04:50] But I mean, it's catching fire.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:52] And it's catching fire within the walls of, of faithfulness. And so I, I hope they're left alone and they're allowed to grow. I'm just saying. Yeah, it's kind of like that. What, what the risk is is that like every generation before this group ends up being tagged as an apostate group and, and cast out. But I don't, but it's, but, but the church has to be very careful because I think it's growing very fast. I think it's getting a lot of energy. This is way more professional than anything I, or Dan Witherspoon or, you know, this. There's a lot of money. These Turnbull, these two Turnbull brothers that run Faith Matters, they've got a lot of money.

John Dehlin [02:05:34] So this is like, this is well run, well financed. They've got a non profit, they've called a non profit CEO to be running it. A guy with like a Harvard Divinity degree and they've got a successful podcast. So like I, I again, I hope they're just successful. I hope they become the church.

John Dehlin [02:05:54] And I'm just dying to see whether the church is smart enough to, to let them carry the day versus do what I think would be the dumbest thing ever, which would be to, to lash out and, and, and start cutting these people off like they have in every previous generation.

Gerardo Sumano [02:06:11] Yeah, yeah, we'll see what happens.

John Dehlin [02:06:13] We'll see, we'll see.

Gerardo Sumano [02:06:14] Because also, Rodney. Would you say that Rodney Meldrum's group is also growing?

John Dehlin [02:06:19] Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. And the preppers are growing and the church is just getting hit by all the sides. Yeah, yeah.

Scott Dyer [02:06:26] Well, it creates sort of a trolley problem for the church. And if you're familiar with it, it's, you know, you have a track that splits and you have people on both lines and how do you choose which one for the train to run over and kill? If they made this choice to go and be progressive, then that would be them switching the track and running over all of these older generational members of the church that are not progressive. And in order for them to cater for one, they almost have to eliminate the other.

John Dehlin [02:06:53] Yeah, yeah, that's great. And I was. The other. Only other thought I wanted to mention was just that when. When they talk about the entrenched evangelicals running Cesar or being the backbone of ces, it makes total sense why a Mark Osland or Laura Schnell would find. Would find themselves outside of ces.

Gerardo Sumano [02:07:12] Right?

Scott Dyer [02:07:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:13] And we've done those interviews. All right, all right, let's go to the next slide, which is what role did surveys play in some of the recent changes? So this is answering the question, to what extent are the surveys driving prophetic change? Right?

Survey Research Behind Recent Program Changes

Scott Dyer [02:07:30] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:07:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:31] All right, well, let's take a listen.

▶ Video Clip 5

Video Clip 5 [02:07:35] These surveys, one of the questions that I have, and you mentioned something similar in these notes, but what research went into some of these changes that they made both in shortening from a three hour to two hour block, or combining the elders quorum and the high priest quorum, Was there any sort of research along these lines? Was there information from these surveys that you gathered that went into that decision making process?

Video Clip 5 [02:08:00] Okay, so that's a fascinating question and I have a fascinating answer. So with shortening church from a three hour block to two hours, there have been rumors of that for a long, long time.

Video Clip 5 [02:08:16] Anecdotally, when I served my mission in Chile, this is 2006 to 2008, they were doing a pilot program and we had two hour church for the entirety of my service in Chile.

Video Clip 5 [02:08:28] Interesting. Yeah. And anecdotally I've heard other people say, hey, my friend's cousin's roommate's brother is doing a pilot study of two hour church. And they're not allowed to talk about it. You hear these stories all the time. There had been a pilot study, I want to say maybe in the 80s or 90s that the research division was involved in. And since then the research group hadn't done any research on shortening the block. And so we kept hearing these rumors, you know, so, so and so's stake is doing a pilot or this, this one ward is doing a pilot. And we didn't know anything about it in research, but I think maybe somebody else somewhere in the organization was doing a pilot and we were just kind of not in the loop.

Video Clip 5 [02:09:18] Chile had been going through, you know, always have had a, like huge baptism numbers, but retention was really bad. Elder Holland came and actually personally presided over the country for a time and while he was there, that's when this started and they were testing it out to see if it had any sort of impact on membership retention was what I was told. By the leadership there. But I, again, I, I don't know.

Video Clip 5 [02:09:44] Yeah, and that would have made sense. That would be a reasonable speculation in the context of what was happening in that area. Yeah, so there had been pilot studies, but not for the past 30 years. And then when they announced that change kind of took everybody off guard in the research group. We didn't know about it. They made the announcement, guess it's happening. And maybe somebody did some kind of top secret research outside of of our group. And I guess that's their prerogative if it comes down through their priesthood line of authority rather than through the headquarters and staff managing something like that. And we wouldn't have heard about it if it went straight from a general authority to the stake president.

Video Clip 5 [02:10:27] So then related to this, there have been a number of changes in the youth programs. Stepping away from the Boy Scouts of America to developing a whole different program for the young men. What research went into this or what was that process like?

Video Clip 5 [02:10:44] Yeah, so I was involved in all of those. So when I first joined the division in 2013, they had just launched the come follow me manuals for the youth. And so I was involved in the kind of follow up post test phase. So they'd done kind of a big survey across the Philippines and Nigeria and the US and several different places where they had piloted this and kind of taken some survey pulse measurements before this change went live. And then we followed up and did the big survey after to see does, does anything change, you know, by changing all of the curriculum? Do they have more faith in God? Do they trust the Book of Mormon to be true? More or less or the same. I think any new product launch goes through a process like that. Does it accomplish what we designed it to accomplish?

Gerardo Sumano [02:11:37] I thought it was really interesting about your experience in Chile because I had a similar. Well, I've talked about my experience in Mexico in the EFY being tested there. Like my city was the first city, as far as I know, where the church tested by EFY from BYU and put it in and giving it pretty much for free to the youth so they could attend and make it this huge event that's super accessible to the youth and make as much youth if every youth that's active and maybe even non active to come to this program.

Gerardo Sumano [02:12:21] And that was tested in my city when I was a youth there. And then we just recently found out a couple years ago that that has now been implemented in the US where the church has bought the rights from BYU and now the church is subsidizing most if not all of the costs for the youth to attend this program.

Gerardo Sumano [02:12:42] So. Yeah, just really interesting how they're piloting programs like this in, in developing countries or Latin America and, and then bringing them to the US if they find them successful. And I think once they are implemented here, we can know the rate of success that they probably saw, you know, on this pilot programs.

John Dehlin [02:13:05] I mean, it is important for the church to do more and more work outside of the US because the future of the church is certainly not in the U.S. so it, you know, it. On the one hand, our, let's say our progressive values would, would congratulate the church for, for conducting a pilot program in Mexico. But in reality it might not necessarily be progressive values that drives it.

Gerardo Sumano [02:13:30] Oh, for sure.

John Dehlin [02:13:31] It's more just seeing the writing on the wall that they're not gonna have a lot of white US members in 10 to 30 years. Yeah, right.

Gerardo Sumano [02:13:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:39] I, I was just befuddled. And Scott, you served your mission in Chile, Right? I was just befuddled. You know, I, I've talked a lot about the baseball baptisms and the soccer baptisms in Guatemala and I've talked a lot about the beach baptisms in Chile. It was mind blowing to me that they, their, their answer to the retention problem in Latin America that they were toying with was shortening the, the three hour block to two. That was not the problem that I saw. What did you see, Scott?

Scott Dyer [02:14:10] Yeah, it's. We had the exact same problem you did. I'd go into a ward and there would be 1200 to 1500 members on records in the ward with maybe 70 people attending.

John Dehlin [02:14:21] Yeah.

Scott Dyer [02:14:22] And this was their response. They sent in a general authority to preside over the nation for a couple of years and they piloted this program and there largely wasn't any change in retention rates.

John Dehlin [02:14:37] Yeah. Because the problem isn't that they didn't want to attend a three hour block. The problem was they never had testimonies to begin with, you know, and they were baptized without their parents consent when they were nine, you know, and never even came to church to begin with. Right. But it's weird that the church. I tried to. I told Elder Oaks about all this pre 1993. Like the church had the information. I just think they didn't want to make the changes they needed to.

Gerardo Sumano [02:15:08] Oh no, because the numbers look great. You know, you have to.

John Dehlin [02:15:11] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:15:12] They were coming up every year and announced into being announcement of how much the membership grew. So they don't want to stop that.

John Dehlin [02:15:19] But Holland himself admitted to me that it became a disaster for the church in Chile. Once, once you've got 1500 people on the rolls in a given ward, how do you home teach them all? Yeah, you've got 30 members home teaching 1500 on the rolls, or not even home teaching them, just trying to find them because a lot of these people would move or didn't exist or were on gravestones. And so a lot of these members would have to go try and find these people in fake addresses. Then they never existed. It just, it became a disaster for the church.

Scott Dyer [02:15:54] You know, so serving, you know, a couple of years after, after you the. I was dealing with a lot of the fallout from that. So we would track, we would find somebody, you know, in their 30s, their 40s, and they would say, oh yeah, I got baptized when I was 9 or when I was 10. I'm on, you know, I'm a member of the church, but I've never been. And then we would use that as a way to get in the door. But it was definitely a problem that, that we were still dealing with in the early 2000s.

John Dehlin [02:16:22] Yeah, yeah. The only other thing I'd say is that, like that we know that the temple ceremony changes that happened in 1990 were a result of research surveys done in the 80s, especially after the God makers came out and evangelicals were beating us over the head over all the weird Masonic satanic, kind of like things that were happening in the temple ceremony. And you know, and so. But this idea that these survey results can sit on the shelves for decades, you hear every, every six months on Reddit, it's like, oh, I hear that the church is gonna allow coffee. I hear they're going to change the word of wisdom, you know, and how, how many decades did we hear the church is going to reduce the three hour block?

John Dehlin [02:17:08] I mean, some of this stuff is stuff they've known they need to do for decades. They just wait for the right time or the right leaders to die to be able to make the change. Right. And it's like Nelson had a bunch of these things he was ready to do, but he needed Monson to die to be able to do them.

John Dehlin [02:17:25] Like, like make the word Mormon forbidden again. You know what I mean? So that's kind of funny to say that the Boy Scouts, the changes in the Boy Scouts was the result of surveys. I, you know, I'm not sure that's what was going on there. Right, right.

Scott Dyer [02:17:44] Yeah, yeah, no, there's, there's a lot more there. The lawsuits that are pending and everything.

John Dehlin [02:17:48] Yeah, yeah. All right. Let's go to the next slide, which is how where's the church that their stance on sexuality differs from leading psychology? This is where it gets really fascinating for me.

Church Research on Sexuality and Pornography

Scott Dyer [02:18:01] Yeah, a lot of these surveys now he conducted these he worked for at headquarters for about six years. And so these were conducted to early 2010s to late 2010s is when a lot of these were being implemented. So, yeah, yeah, this is fascinating.

John Dehlin [02:18:16] This is the one I like. I immediately texted Natasha Helfer and I'm like, Natasha, you got to hear this stuff. So this is. This is valuable. All right, let's check it out.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:18:27] So one of the other projects, and it's not a specific project, but there were a whole bunch of projects that involved sexuality and pornography. And I think anyone who's spent any time around the church or in the church knows that that's a heavy focus. And especially for youth, especially for young adults.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:18:47] But, you know, even with missionaries, they're kind of in that spot where they're between dating and trying to marry, living a very different style of life. But the church has always been on the anti pornography side. All pornography is bad.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:19:05] Any use of pornography, any amount of masturbating is bad, kind of regardless of whether you're married or single or anything else. And so trying to push that message forward, understandably, you come across a lot of barriers, including just biological facts that this is a natural urge for almost everyone at some point.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:19:29] And just there was a lot of research around those areas, a lot of discussion about how to combat pornography, how to talk about it with adults, how to talk about it with youth, how to talk about it with spouses and partners, how to talk about it with missionaries. Because even in an environment where they have almost no access to technology, they're going to find a way or they're going to do something that they feel incredibly guilty about, that for most professionals in this field is not a big deal. Or, you know, maybe some of them, it really is. And the mission presidents don't always have the tools to know the difference.

Scott Dyer [02:20:07] So you say there's a lot of different research that they're going into this. Were they aware that their stance dramatically differed from like, the leading psychology on this issue?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:20:18] Yeah, and I think they're proud of that. I think they view the field of psychology and counseling as too liberal, too open to suggestions of things that are spiritually harmful. So. So they might be right about everything that they're saying, except they don't have the spiritual knowledge that we have, and that trumps everything else.

Scott Dyer [02:20:43] Even though we can't hammer down what doctrine and policy means, Right? Well, yeah, and that's just where my mind goes.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:20:53] And there is some speculation like in the people that we talked to, we heard people say, I'm fairly confident that the church is not talking about masturbation as much as they used to. And you can kind of go back and look at conference talks over a 30 year span and tally up who's talking about masturbation when. And they've kind of just silently quit talking about it as much as they used to.

John Dehlin [02:21:21] Man, I mean that, that's kind of mind blowing. Her. What was your response to that?

Gerardo Sumano [02:21:27] Well, I did have the question if this is being done on purpose. I don't know if he would have known, but because definitely I've seen a change in, in the amount of how the litter, you know, the amount of times masturbation is being brought up and you know, journal conference and stuff. It's basically none. And, and also I've seen a change in the, when the church is talking about pornography on the Church Handbook of Instructions. The language has changed. Now the problem is not pornography, but pornography compulsion or you know, a compulsion to watch pornography. And that's the kind of language that now, that's the kind of language that's now on the Handbook of Instructions. And I wonder how much that's driven by research or if at all. Do you know, Scott?

Scott Dyer [02:22:24] Yeah. I think the verbiage is interesting that they, that they use. It's like intense use of pornography is kind of what condemns.

Gerardo Sumano [02:22:34] Yeah.

Scott Dyer [02:22:34] Which the language is, is way different than it used to be. I, There are some subtle changes and just with most of the other changes that have happened within, within the church, they just change it slowly. They stop talking about something. They wait for the older generation, generation to pass away from and then they can officially announce a change.

Gerardo Sumano [02:22:52] Right.

John Dehlin [02:22:53] Yeah, there's a, there's an episode we're releasing this Monday and Tuesday that really drives this home for me. There's this, this young woman we interview who grew up masturbating occasionally. But more importantly, she grew up, you know, under the, under the typical Mormon church emphasis for young women of like, of modesty standards and purity and how she showed her shoulders, she was responsible for, you know, men sinning and if she showed her knee and just all this guilt and shame that she carried, both for how she dressed, but also for secretly masturbating and hiding and lying about it. So she goes on a mission and you know, it's in Florida and it's really hot.

John Dehlin [02:23:39] So she. Sometimes on P day, she wears, like, yoga pants or whatever. And one time she talks about trying on a bikini. Not no one saw it, but she, like, went into a. On P day, she went into, like, a swimsuit store and tried on a bikini. And, like, the mission president found out and how much he grilled her over, like, wearing the wrong type of exercise pants or like to dare to try on a bikini that no one saw.

John Dehlin [02:24:08] So she has all this shame and guilt and wants to die by the end of her mission and comes home early, literally suicidal. Then she finds out later that. That the mission president had a policy with the elders, that if.

John Dehlin [02:24:24] That. That if the mission president found out the. That the elders were masturbating, he. He would. He. He developed a policy where he would say, look, as long as you don't do it more than once a week, you're fine.

John Dehlin [02:24:36] And the disparity between how awful all the missionaries or the sister missionaries were feeling about what the standards were that they thought were the standards versus kind of these secret, newly emerging standards that you only get, you know, if you don't kill yourself or if you don't suffer in silence, but you happen to, you know, you happen to kind of get caught, and then you get the secret, or you're a guy, and then you kind of get the secret. More liberal teachings. Like. I guess what I'm saying is, to some degree, it feels really irresponsible for me to know that the church knows that their teachings around sexuality are outdated and even super harmful.

John Dehlin [02:25:20] And instead of just like, changing it and owning it and really, you know, owning their mistakes and stopping it, they're just going to let a trickle change over several decades. And. And what's the carnage? To mental health, to deaths by suicide, to depression, to anxiety as they allow the change to happen just through this, trickling out of a change without ever owning it and announcing the truth that they now know. Does. Does all that make sense?

Gerardo Sumano [02:25:52] Yeah, yeah.

Scott Dyer [02:25:54] There's a real human cost to the policies of the church.

John Dehlin [02:25:59] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I think sexuality, whether it's LGBT individuals or just this porn, masturbation, shame, just. It's. It's almost. It's almost like. I don't want to use the term holocaust, but it's. It's a real problem that that is means life and death to thousands and tens of thousands of people. Yeah, it's real. And the church, without trying to be hyperbolic, I think the church has blood on its hands in the way that it tries to Manage its vitality at the expense of the health and well being of its members.

Scott Dyer [02:26:37] So they have these survey numbers. They know what person is more or less likely to struggle with. With issues along these, the spectrum that we're talking about masturbation and whatnot, or even those that, that, that there might be a higher likelihood of suicidal ideation among the LGBTQ youth of the church. Like, they're aware of this. They've done surveys. They have the information. They're just doing nothing about it.

John Dehlin [02:27:03] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:27:04] Or doing it softly. Right. And quietly and expecting change to come just over time and, you know, through progressive leaders instead of from top down.

John Dehlin [02:27:20] Yeah, but like, we know they're not choosing progressive leaders. They're choosing the hardline evangelicals.

Scott Dyer [02:27:25] Yeah.

Surveys on Missionary Device Activity

John Dehlin [02:27:26] All right, let's go to the next slide. The church conducted surveys on activity on missionary devices. This was mind blowing.

Scott Dyer [02:27:33] Yeah. So Elder Perry was overseeing the implementation of devices for the missionaries. And so with that came a lot of programs. They gave them devices. They were tracking to see what they were and weren't doing, if it had an impact on their ability to teach. And, and, but they were also worried whether or not the missionaries would be able to access pornography on the devices. And so this is surveys into that.

John Dehlin [02:27:57] And I remember, I remember when the church missionaries started using iPads, getting iPads, getting smartphones and, and using Facebook. And the church was super excited about it at first, so. But then I wondered whether they were going to regret that later. Right.

Scott Dyer [02:28:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:28:15] So here we go. Here's what happened.

Scott Dyer [02:28:18] Were you digging into the activities of these missionaries on the devices?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:28:22] Yep.

Scott Dyer [02:28:24] So.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:28:24] So we had a lot of kind of infield work where specifically around the Salt Lake City area. We would go out and watch them during their study sessions. Because it, because it wasn't just the anti pornography thing. It was. Does the device actually add value commensurate to the damage that it might cause? And so we had to kind of prove, is it, is it actually helping them study better? Is it actually helping them to teach better?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:28:51] So there was a lot of kind of qualitative and in person observation that way. And then when it comes to misuse of the device, we would talk to mission presidents and just say, kind of from your perspective and with the people coming in at interview time every six weeks, how big of an issue is this? And the mission president's wife would sometimes sit in those conversations and have some valuable input, and sometimes she would be more likely to hear the confessions from sisters in the mission.

Scott Dyer [02:29:21] So this was not monitoring the actual devices. Where you're getting the statistics on this or was this was just from the mission presidents reporting on their missionaries?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:29:30] Yeah, so we didn't do any monitoring of the devices that way. It's actually very difficult to set up the devices to do that. And especially in the earliest tests they were using Apple products and there's almost nothing you can customize on an Apple product and it's signed into a specific Apple ID and nobody else can see what's going on with it. So we tested with those and missionaries thought, you know, this is really great, I can airdrop stuff to my investigators, I can airdrop to my district meeting.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:30:00] But ultimately the Apple products were discontinued in favor of that kind of being able to put on a custom skin for the whole device that locks it down into a church owned OS basically. So they ended up using Samsung tablets, but then it would kind of override the Android operating system and put it in a church environment.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:30:25] But as far as like quantitative stuff, we did have an annual survey just went out once a year right around April or May of each year. And it would just ask missionaries like hey, this is totally anonymous. We have no idea who you are. There's no way for us to identify you. How often in the past six months have you looked at pornography using your missionary device?

Scott Dyer [02:30:54] It's specifically using your missionary device is what you said.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:30:57] Yes, specifically on the device.

Scott Dyer [02:30:59] Okay.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:31:01] And the results to that were pretty interesting. Very sensitive to the church. Nobody knew that this study was happening even within church headquarters. Like this isn't something he talked about on the elevator because it was just so tight lipped and, and there's obviously going to be some kind of fuzz and noise in the data because not everyone even promised anonymity. They're not going to feel totally safe or want to admit it. And that, that's true with any kind of sensitive survey, but I think it's especially heightened with the missionary population.

John Dehlin [02:31:36] What do you think about that, Scott?

Scott Dyer [02:31:39] It's fascinating. I, I was aware of the devices. I mean as a missionary, you and I, we didn't have any, we didn't have any sort of devices like that. We had just barely gotten cell phones down in Chile when I was there. So it's, I assume that there would be some sort of tracking. But yeah, it's, it's wild that the church is aware of the problem, but again they just, they don't do much about it.

John Dehlin [02:32:08] Yeah, I was listening in this interview that's airing on Monday. The, the, the woman that we interviewed who, who served A mission in Florida during COVID said that they had to use Android devices because they were able to install apps where the church could monitor all the missionary behavior. So there was no Mac OS kind of phones were allowed, right?

Scott Dyer [02:32:32] Yeah. He talked about that shift where they started with Mac, but then they shifted over to Android where they could install their own operating systems onto the devices.

John Dehlin [02:32:40] Yeah. Which allows them to monitor every single. And so this woman in Gerardo, I think you'll really value this interview, all of you will. But she talks about how like she was losing her faith and thinking about leaving the mission and like she went to a website she wasn't supposed to and how these things are set up to immediately notify her leaders. If you ever open up a browser window or look at a file you're not supposed to, it's just like immediate notification.

Gerardo Sumano [02:33:10] Wow.

John Dehlin [02:33:10] So it's kind of crazy.

Gerardo Sumano [02:33:12] It's become more sophisticated because this, this interviewee, he was, he was saying that. No, that. Right. Like the, the church, when he was working at church headquarters, the church was not tracking that kind of data. Is that right, Scott?

Scott Dyer [02:33:28] Yeah. So he was. This survey was right when the devices were first implemented. So this would have been 2014, 2015, kind of in that ballpark, if I'm not mistaken.

Gerardo Sumano [02:33:37] Right.

John Dehlin [02:33:39] All right, well, let's go to the next slide, which is one of the, again, the most shocking parts of this interview. Did the devices have an impact on the self reported pornography use? This one's pretty big, right?

Scott Dyer [02:33:50] Yeah. So he talks about doing some surveys to get a baseline and then using that information to gauge what impact it had on the devices.

John Dehlin [02:33:59] Yeah. All right, let's roll the tape.

▶ Video Clip 6

Video Clip 6 [02:34:05] As you are implementing these programs and I'm assuming continuing to do these annual surveys where people are self reporting, was there a noticeable decline or incline or was it. Was that.

Video Clip 6 [02:34:18] Were the numbers.

Video Clip 6 [02:34:19] Did they maintain about the same?

Video Clip 6 [02:34:21] Yeah. So the first year that we did the survey was a baseline before anybody had any access to mobile devices. At that time it was something like 25% of elders in some missions would report. That was kind of the highest level. The average was lower than that. Some missions had, you know, 0 to 2% of elders reporting that they had looked at pornography.

Video Clip 6 [02:34:44] Wow.

Video Clip 6 [02:34:45] And that may have been partly true, may have been response bias or things like that. But I think there are missions and we saw this pretty clearly. Some missions have a culture of openness and transparency and it's not a shameful thing to go talk to your mission president about it.

Video Clip 6 [02:35:03] And we did see maybe higher Levels there among sisters, it was always consistently below 2% of all sisters. And there was never any kind of spike in that data or even much room to drop. So I think they kind of started at the lowest baseline they could have.

Video Clip 6 [02:35:23] So even with all the trainings, those numbers obviously didn't change for elders. We did see a significant drop after implementing these programs. Yep. After we started kind of beefing up the trainings and providing additional resources, we did see those levels of pornography use drop, especially in that first year.

Video Clip 6 [02:35:44] And then as we continued doing this, especially in those missions where maybe the mission had had mobile devices for longer, maybe the trainings had worn off a little bit, you definitely start to see that trend go back up a little bit. After the end of about four or five years, or probably four years, the average pornography use levels on the mobile devices was at or above what it had been in the baseline prior to even launching.

Video Clip 6 [02:36:14] So no noticeable difference overall.

Video Clip 6 [02:36:17] Yeah. So it's a temporary impact. Right. When you first launch all of these resources and safeguards, people are very conscious of it. They're trying to do it right. But after two years, you have a fresh group of missionaries.

Video Clip 6 [02:36:32] Yeah, they've never had those programs and

Video Clip 6 [02:36:34] none of them were there when it was first unveiled and they had a general authority visit to come announce it. And so that kind of big impact, high visibility training no longer exists for anyone who's still there. And so that's really the point where you kind of start to see it just becoming just like before.

Scott Dyer [02:36:53] Was there any plan?

John Dehlin [02:36:56] Wow. So what rates did he endorse for some of these missions in terms of masturbation and pornography use of missionaries?

Scott Dyer [02:37:03] I think it was like one in four. He said like 25% was kind of the average between most missions, some higher, some lower.

John Dehlin [02:37:09] But if I remember right, some missions got as high as 40% like that. That information right there needs to get out to the entire world Church headquarters. That one. Somewhere between one and four. Somewhere between one and two in five of Mormon missionaries report looking at porn and. Or masturbating. And that's just the ones that are honest. Because how many kids feel so tormented, feel so broken, maybe even are kept from going on a mission or keep themselves from going on a mission because they think that you certainly can't be a missionary and masturbate or look at porn when it looks like somewhere between, you know, one and two out of five missionaries are doing that?

Gerardo Sumano [02:37:56] Yeah, right, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:38:00] That that news needs to get out there.

Scott Dyer [02:38:02] I think definitely it's. It's one of those things where they're trying to project a different image than what's really happening within the organization. And you could. You could probably pull a similar statistics on bishops, stake presidents. You know, people. People do this.

John Dehlin [02:38:21] Yeah, that's right. Yeah, they sure do. They sure do. All right, so the next slide is who is interested in these surveys on missionaries and pornography use? This is my favorite part. All the. All the. All the people at church headquarters that want. Wanted the data, right? Yeah, yeah.

Scott Dyer [02:38:40] So he said that this survey, they didn't talk about it much, so it was only a select few that even knew about it. But those that knew were very interested.

John Dehlin [02:38:48] I mean, imagine if it got out into the world, that 1 to 2 out of 5 Mormon missionaries looked at porn and masturbated. Like, just imagine that. I mean, that would be significant, right? Yeah, yeah. But now we know. So let's make a TikTok of this, Gerardo. All right, so who is interested? Let's. Let's roll that tape.

▶ Video Clip 7

Video Clip 7 [02:39:10] Can what department or who was. Who was having you guys do these surveys and who was looking at this information? Like, who was. Who was interested in it?

Video Clip 7 [02:39:18] That survey went directly to a member of the quorum of the 12, kind of bypassing most of even the top missionary department leadership. Like, maybe one person in missionary department at the very top would see it. And at that level, it was higher. For a lot of the qualitative work or the interviews that we did, or general practices that weren't specific to pornography, those were much more widely shared. But we always had people asking, can I get the results? Like, I heard that there's something. Can I see? Can I see which missions need help, or can I see? And we always just had to say no because of the privacy of the missionaries we promised them. There's no way that we can identify who you are individually. But if your mission only has 120 people in it, and we reveal that your mission has a rate of pornography use of 35% among elders, you know

Video Clip 7 [02:40:18] that it's going to narrow down the number.

Video Clip 7 [02:40:20] That narrows it down. And then people might assume things about the missionaries. And so we always just had to say, no, you can't have any of that data. Even if it would help you do your job, the answer is no.

Scott Dyer [02:40:32] This has been fascinating. I just want to keep picking your brain. I know there's areas that we haven't continued to dive into that we talked about.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:40:40] I'd love to do another round.

Scott Dyer [02:40:42] Okay.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:40:43] I think the only thing I'll say right now, while we're still on this topic is that we also had mission presidents asking for specific information. So we'd visit the missions and they'd say, hey, I know that you're doing this kind of work. Is there any way that you could let me know which missionaries I need to work with?

Scott Dyer [02:41:00] Fascinating. So they're, they're trying to find out who to. To focus on.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:41:05] Yeah. And I don't think it was who to send home. I think it was honestly, like, I have a spiritual responsibility for this person and I want to help. But that was another case. Just very clearly we had to say, no, that's not something we can do. If they feel comfortable talking to you, they will, but that's their responsibility, not mine.

John Dehlin [02:41:26] That made me have a lot of respect for these guys. The fact that, like, mission presidents are wanting to be able to ferret out the masturbators and the pornography viewers on their mission, and these guys are like, no, you can't have the data. Yeah, that was inspiring to me for sure.

Scott Dyer [02:41:42] Well, these people are trained. I mean, this is their profession. You know, Brian has gone on. He's still working in this field just for a different organization now. I mean, this is like standard practices for anyone conducting surveys. If you tell someone it's anonymous, you're supposed to keep it anonymous.

John Dehlin [02:42:00] Yeah. Well, much respect to. To Brian. Much, much respect to Brian. Yeah, absolutely. Brian, let's have lunch one of these days. Available. All right, so we know the church is hemorrhaging millennials and gen zers, and we know that the LGBTQ+ issues are. Are central to that hemorrhage. So the next, the next question is around how millennials responded to the survey questions about LGBTQ issues. Anything you want to say, Gerardo or Scott, before we jump into this?

Church Research and Strategy on LGBTQ Members

Scott Dyer [02:42:35] I think this is one of the most defining problems the church is facing right now.

John Dehlin [02:42:40] Yeah.

Scott Dyer [02:42:41] Their response to this issue will determine if they continue on as a. An organization.

John Dehlin [02:42:48] Wow, you're saying there's an existential threat here. I think that's true. All right, let's roll the tape.

Scott Dyer [02:42:56] They're doing now. This is going back to the one you did, like, in 2013. What were they trying to figure out to gauge the interest or the response of the millennials and younger generation to these topics, or what were they after?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:43:09] Yeah, I think they were trying to understand is our messaging ever going to convince these people that the church really does care about our gay and queer or gender fluid members, is what we're saying when we say we care about them is that enough to kind of satisfy those urges to lash out when the Church isn't doing enough.

Scott Dyer [02:43:32] And what was the consensus like? What did you gather from these surveys?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:43:38] So the consensus that I think came out a lot in these qualitative interviews was people fully expect the Church to reverse course. It's a question of when more than if. You know, maybe it's 25 years from now, but at some point it's just going to be strategically impossible for the Church to hang on to this tradition and policy that we've had for so long. And so I think at that point you see millennials saying, maybe I can ride this wave. Maybe I can stay in the church long enough until they come around or I'm out and kind of not seeing a way where their mind is going to change.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:44:21] You know, people who are wrestling with this issue don't ever think, well, maybe someday I will be convinced to go along with the Church's policy on this. It's usually the Church will eventually see what I've already had personal revelation about, which is a very, very complex kind of a thing to talk through.

Scott Dyer [02:44:41] So you go, you gather, you compile this information and you get that most of those in our age group, the millennials and younger, they fully expect a course correction at some point in the future. You present that information to whoever it was that you were reporting this to. What, what's the response? What did they say and like, what was the feedback that you got? Or were you part of those discussions?

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:45:02] Yeah, so these reports went back through the public affairs department and up through their lines of authority, but really there's, there's only so much they can do without getting way out ahead of the brethren. And that's something that they never are willing to do. That's a, that's a major risk and liability for the Church to say something on behalf of the Church that then the, the top leadership comes back and says, no, actually we don't mean that. And that looks even worse in terms

Scott Dyer [02:45:31] of the pr when they have this logic and this reasoning that they're saying. We have countless examples of them doing that exact thing where they come out really strong on a subject, a decade, two decades later, they have course corrected. So it's, it's just fascinating that they almost have no self awareness of, at least from the way you're presenting it, like they're not self aware enough to see what they're doing.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:45:59] Yeah, it's, it's really difficult with church leadership to really get a sense for what is their five year Plan. What are they hoping this church will look like in 5 years or 10 years or 20 years? Almost all the time it's focused on what did this leader say at the last general conference? And how can we make sure that all of our messaging now uses that catchphrase? Or how can we make sure that all of our programs are now incorporating this new thing? And it's always kind of like, what is the next new thing right now? And just jumping from one issue to another. This year it's light the world. Next year it's hasten the work. The year after that it's whatever, yeah, the covenant path. And you know, after some years, those are going to kind of fade away and they'll be replaced by the next new thing.

Scott Dyer [02:46:47] None of those are substantive.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:46:49] Not very. So those are, those are all kind of reiterations of things that have already been taught or preached or practiced in some way. And now we're just changing it a little and we're doing it a different way for this year.

John Dehlin [02:47:03] Wow, that was brilliant, Scott. Just, just your observation that those aren't substantive changes. Like, I never, I never grew up. The word covenant path didn't exist when I was growing up in the Mormon Church. You know what I mean, Scott? Yeah, go ahead.

Scott Dyer [02:47:17] Oh, is it the same thing with ongoing revelation? You know, it's. Or ongoing restoration? Pardon me? It's something that, that phraseology did not exist until the last five or so years. And now almost every talk that talks about the re. The restoration of the church says the ongoing restoration.

Gerardo Sumano [02:47:34] Right. There's actual talks denying that there was a. That the restoration was not complete.

Scott Dyer [02:47:40] You know, Exactly.

Gerardo Sumano [02:47:41] We have prophets, quotes from prophets saying that the restoration was complete.

John Dehlin [02:47:46] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:47:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:47:48] I found out that Patrick Mason has been able to study Joseph Smith's usage of the word restoration, and he's not been able to find one instance where Joseph Smith used the word restoration in terms of the church. He, he only used the term restoration as it relates to, like, the, the blood of Israel, the children of Israel. But, but in Joseph's mind, the restoration of the church wasn't even a thing on his radar. Isn't that weird?

Scott Dyer [02:48:20] Yeah, but it's like, fascinating.

John Dehlin [02:48:23] Yeah, but it's like what's implied from this clip is that the Brethren just kind of, they rebrand, they, they get new little marketing taglines that last for three to five years. Covenant path, light the world.

Gerardo Sumano [02:48:36] And by the way, do you know, I've said this before, but do you know who used the word, the words covenant path. Was it Enough for the first time.

John Dehlin [02:48:43] Nelson.

Gerardo Sumano [02:48:44] No, it was. She was a young woman's president.

John Dehlin [02:48:48] Oh, okay.

Gerardo Sumano [02:48:49] What's her name? She was very. She's very well known. My goodness.

John Dehlin [02:48:52] Judy Beck. Julie Beck. No, I don't know.

Gerardo Sumano [02:48:55] But Dalton.

John Dehlin [02:48:57] Elaine Dalton.

Gerardo Sumano [02:48:58] Yeah, she was the first one to use that phrase in General Conference. Then Christopherson used it a conference later and then took off. Yeah, it took off from there.

Brian (LDS Church Headquarters/Correlation Research Division) [02:49:07] Fascinating.

John Dehlin [02:49:08] But so, so much was fascinating out of this little clip that. That the Brethren know that it's strategically impossible to maintain its LGBTQ+ strategy in the long run. You know that they know, but they just. They're doing. They. They knew that. They knew that. That it was strategically impossible to maintain the. The priesthood ban and the temple ban on. On black Mormons, but they just had to do that calculus of, like, all right, well, when. When can we make the change where we'll lose the least amount of people? Because for every hap. Every person that we please by making a change for LGBT people or people of color, we're going to lose a bunch.

John Dehlin [02:49:49] And how long do we have to wait for enough of the old people to die off such that when we make a change, we minimize the losses? Like, that type of calculation just really bothers me along with this idea of don't get ahead of the Brethren. It's like they're supposed to be prophetseers and revelators. They're supposed to be ahead of us.

John Dehlin [02:50:09] And so it's like, oh, we know what's right, but. But we got to hold it back because we don't want to appear like we're getting ahead of them. And then the idea that there's just no plan, there's just, like, rebranding, new slogans, but no actual strategy. This idea of the next new thing right now, that was really powerful.

Scott Dyer [02:50:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:50:30] What'd you think, Scott?

Scott Dyer [02:50:31] Well, they get presented with this information, you know, they find out, hey, we've got a problem. All of the millennials, they have a decision whether to wait it out for us to change or they just leave. I mean, that's. That's a pretty harsh reality. And then they just stick this information, put it on a shelf somewhere, and they don't touch.

Scott Dyer [02:50:48] That seems to be their MO But I wonder if. And this is pure speculation. I wonder if they couldn't even present it to the. To the quorum of the 12, because you have someone like Elder Oaks on there who was on the record as saying so many harmful anti LGBTQ comments in General Conference. I mean, we couldn't even Possibly imagine, at least I couldn't imagine him ever hearing this information and saying, okay, now it's time to change. Yeah, he comes from a world where it was very black and white, and he still lives in that world that doesn't exist anymore.

Gerardo Sumano [02:51:26] Yeah, that's what I was going to point out. It was interesting that he said that these types of survey would go to the PR department and see instead of kind of like the masturbation survey that went directly to someone from the quorum of the 12. And the main reason that they wanted to know, or the main thing that they wanted to know with this survey was if the message of fairness for all or we really care about LGBT people was getting through the members, was helping members feel more at peace with, you know, whatever the doctrine is or whatever the teaching is of the church, rather than knowing, okay, is this. Should this thing change? It's more like, oh, let's, you know, let's put a band aid on this. Or is the band aid that we put working?

John Dehlin [02:52:20] Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. And again, would be like, funny or humorous or something else or just silly if it weren't like real lives being impacted. Like when it's, when it's. When there's. We know there's an LGBTQ suicide epidemic, when we know the suicidality in Utah is like three times the national average. The fact, you know, that that gives me a lot less patience for their. Their antics, you know.

Scott Dyer [02:52:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:52:55] Yeah. All right, so the next slide is around. And again, this, this. This wasn't something that I asked you to prepare. People get mad whenever Mormon stories or John de Lind get mentioned on Mormon stories. As if I'm like, being intentionally self referential.

Church Monitoring of Outside Critics and Experts

Scott Dyer [02:53:11] But no, this is purely third party. I did this interview. These questions came up without any idea in my mind that John would listen to my episode.

John Dehlin [02:53:22] So the question is, why is the church interested in John de Lynn and other vocal dissenters? Let's roll the tape.

▶ Video Clip 8

Video Clip 8 [02:53:31] Speaking of looking to other sources or other resources for information, one of the other subjects that you mentioned, the surveys that you were doing, and this might be back to some of those earlier ones that we me that we talked about prior to segmentation. You talked about. You were gauging the knowledge and reception of people such as John de Lynn, Kate Kelly, or Denver snuffer. I think the problem that we're talking about with these outside apps aligns really closely to their problem with, with people such as John de Lin or, you know, a Denver snuffer who would usurp the church's authority as a spiritual leader in one aspect or another, even though a guy like John Delinde isn't, isn't proclaiming to be a prophet or anything like that, but he is coming as a resource and as a guide for people that are struggling with a lot of these same issues.

Video Clip 8 [02:54:22] Yeah. And even later, even later, with Sam Young and people seeing him as a leader of a particular movement, even though he wasn't trying to speak for the church or start his own church or anything like that, it was a pretty simple reform movement within the church. But the church really is uncomfortable with anybody claiming that they know better than the leaders or that they're ahead of the leaders.

Video Clip 8 [02:54:49] For these surveys that you were doing around these individuals or other individuals, what was the church interested in finding out about them?

Video Clip 8 [02:54:59] I think it was in a lot of ways damage control. The church knows that these people are out there. And no matter how often they deny that there is a strengthening the Church Members committee, they have people at church headquarters that are keeping tabs on individuals and groups within or adjacent to the church that might be leading people out of it or challenging the church's claims in some.

John Dehlin [02:55:28] That cut out a little bit earlier than I was hoping.

Scott Dyer [02:55:32] Oh, we can keep going.

John Dehlin [02:55:33] No, no, it, no, the slide just, the SL just ended. But, oh, but I, I, I, you know, obviously, I, I, I know you guys could pro, hopefully feel my discomfort with the idea that I'm at least elevating myself as a spiritual leader because I try intentionally to not even come close to that. Right.

Scott Dyer [02:55:52] Yeah, no, that, that wasn't my intent. I didn't, didn't intend to, to make a claim like you were a prophet of ex Mormons or anything like that. I think their problem is that you, the way, and we've talked about like, the same way just recently about the last slide. We have said this is a problem the church has to, has to confront if they want to keep, you know, existing. This is an existential crisis or the church will make these changes down the road. When we're making claims like this, that's us saying we know more than the prophet. And that's, that's the key that makes them uncomfortable.

John Dehlin [02:56:30] And that's the point I was trying to make with Patrick Mason and Jennifer Finlayson Fife and I mean, that's why they excommunicated Natasha Helfer as well. Is, is there, there are matters that really impact people, like matters of sexuality, church history, truth claims. And so when Patrick Mason says Joseph Smith's polygamy looks a lot like sin and maybe DNC132. He doesn't see a scripture. I respect that.

John Dehlin [02:56:58] I don't want him to get in trouble over that. But, like, that's why I'm worried about the, you know, even with. With Fiona Givens, right. Like, Fiona Givens was working for the Maxwell Institute, and then she starts talking about Mother in Heaven and maybe, maybe the Holy Ghost, his Mother in Heaven. And all of a sudden she's removed from the Maxwell Institute. Like, I love these progressive. This. This new crop of progressive Mormons, and I, because of the Church's past, I fear that they're ultimately going to be. They're going to be cut off like previous generations. But again, I just don't know if the Church could withstand cutting off people like Thomas McConkey and Terrell Givens and the rest. So that's going to be fascinating.

Scott Dyer [02:57:42] Yeah, well, it's. It's always sad when you have someone like Fiona Givens talking about a subject that has some really interesting religious spirituality to it, you know, whether you're a believer or not. Incorporating deity as like a family unit is a really interesting idea. And she's trying to develop this theology, you know, making these speculations, and I think that's really cool. And it's very sad to me that the church had to put, you know, their foot down and say, don't talk about Mother in Heaven. Because there's some. There's actually some really interesting ancient ties to a wife of Yahweh in ancient Judaic beliefs. I mean, there's some really cool parallels that they could draw.

Gerardo Sumano [02:58:27] Right.

Scott Dyer [02:58:27] But anyway, it's always sad to me.

Gerardo Sumano [02:58:31] They're pretty smart people. I think I was a couple months ago, I was listening to one of their firesides at a state center, and they were talking about this idea of Jesus not being the Savior, but being a healer. And, you know, this kind of like new ideas that you've never heard coming from prophets, but they're coming from this new crop of Mormon apologists, intellectuals, and they're speaking at stake centers. You know, that's a pretty big deal. Like Jesus not because they talk about not being the Savior, because they're not saving you from any. He's not saving you from anything, from sin. Right. Like, it's more like he.

John Dehlin [02:59:16] He's here to heal the Christ who heals.

Gerardo Sumano [02:59:18] Right? Right.

Scott Dyer [02:59:19] Yeah. So it's a cool concept. Well, it's also sad because there's been no new theology, no new developments in the belief system basically since Brigham Young. It's all been retractions, redactions, and, we don't know, shifting more towards just basic evangelical Christian Christianity.

John Dehlin [02:59:40] And you could argue the Mother in Heaven stuff is some of the coolest theology we have. We should be leading with that. We should be developing it. We should be nurturing it, not denying it and hiding it and punishing people who talk about it.

Scott Dyer [02:59:53] For the listeners, go look up Asherah. She's an ancient Semitic deity and was the wife of Yahweh. There's lots of interesting iconography around her and little tiny statues that people had in their home of the wife of God. Like, there's. There's some really cool stuff out there if someone wants to explore this side of spirituality.

John Dehlin [03:00:14] Absolutely. All right, so. So in the next slide, you ask, what did the. Or you answer, what did the church want to know from members about John DeLane and K. Kelly? So we'll. Did you have something, Scott?

Scott Dyer [03:00:30] Nope. Nope. Yeah, so this is just the next bit about. About their interest in you.

John Dehlin [03:00:35] All right,

▶ Video Clip 9

Video Clip 9 [03:00:37] so what, what sorts of questions were you asking about John Dehlin or Kate Kelly, for example?

Video Clip 9 [03:00:43] Yeah, so those are. Those are really the two biggest names that were popping up around 2013, 2014, when we did these surveys. And, and we included those names on one of those semiannual member panels. And I think at the time, the main idea of this research was we know that these people, John De Lynn, Kate Kelly, and some of the ordained women leadership and, you know, even names like Lindsay Hansen park were starting to pop up.

Video Clip 9 [03:01:10] And even though at the time, I don't believe she had left the church.

Video Clip 9 [03:01:14] Right, right. No.

Video Clip 9 [03:01:15] And.

Video Clip 9 [03:01:15] And most of these people were active members of the church at the time, right up until the moment they were excommunicated in some cases. And I think the church knew these people have a strong influence among people who are on the fringes or who are outside of the church or who are, you know, wavering or maybe less faithful. We know that there's an impact there, but how deep into the church's core audience are they reaching? You know, is this something that's actually getting to be a household name in the wards across the US So they

Video Clip 9 [03:01:51] weren't interested so much in those members that would be, like, spiritually independent. They were more focused on the core membership of the. What was it, social and practical that you had talked about?

Video Clip 9 [03:02:02] Yeah. So are these people and their messages, are they reaching like the Sunday school presidencies? You know, do we need to start being worried about these people that are maybe holding these leadership positions within a ward, Are they at risk of being maybe tainted by those ideas, the radical ideas of giving the priesthood to women?

John Dehlin [03:02:24] And I'll just say my, my, you know, as I try and think about what they're trying to say there, that for, for many, many years I was convinced that maybe only one or two people in any given ward in the United States had ever heard of me or Kate Kelly like, or the CES letter. I was convinced for a long, long time that those numbers remained really small.

John Dehlin [03:02:45] I do have to say that kind of since COVID and afterwards, there's been a bit of a tipping point where I kind of, in my case, I can't pretty much go anywhere in Utah without being recognized. And I, I think, I think that, I think we've moved, I said this before, but I think we've moved from like the 5% penetration of your average active ward membership in terms of their awareness of CES letter. Bill Real Me or Radio Free Mormon, I think we're seeing that grow to the point where missionaries, on almost a weekly basis, actively serving missionaries are reaching out to me, bishops are reaching out to me, saying they no longer believe, actively serving bishops, members of stake presidencies are reaching out to me.

John Dehlin [03:03:31] And I think not for any necessarily anything we've done, but just how maybe tipping points work over time and the way social media works. I do think the church is reaching a tipping point where I'm not saying that 10 to 15 to 20 to 30% are fans or like what I do. I think most of the people that might know some of these names, I think most of them still think we're evil and bad and dark and dangerous. But there's something probably risky for the church to just have that name recognition more widespread because I think, you know, hearing the name, learning about the existence of a CES letter, learning about the existence of Radio Free Mormon or Mormon Stories podcast, that is the first step, right?

John Dehlin [03:04:23] It is the first step. And it may take another year or two or six for them to actually dare to listen to or look into those things. But, but now for more and more and more active church members, they've already taken that first step. Does that make sense? And I'm not sure what, what the long term implications are going to be, but I do think there's the, the more LGBT members that come out, and we now know that at BYU, what is it, 20%, 20 to 30% of the students identify along the LGBTQ or gender spectrum, some super large number, the more LGBT youth and adults that come out and the more people that lose their faith, the more people lose their faith.

John Dehlin [03:05:08] And so this, I think the church is reaching a tipping point that's going to be felt more saliently in the next 10 years than has been felt in the past 10 years. I could be wrong. What do you think, Scott?

Scott Dyer [03:05:20] No, I, I think there's an interesting statistic that I would love to get a hold of, but the rate of those leaving the church in comparison to those dying and being born to see if there's any sort of net shift in either direction, I think that would be fascinating to know, but those are statistics that just won't ever get out.

John Dehlin [03:05:41] What do you think, Ryder?

Gerardo Sumano [03:05:43] Yeah, I would agree. I think it's hard to tell, but we've definitely seen because of COVID an increase of, I've seen an increase of people either leaving or, you know, questioning the church. So.

John Dehlin [03:05:57] And TikTok is big because TikTok is like social media on crack because it's one, you know, a good, a really good podcast historically, you know, gets 30,000 views, 40,000 views. Like, you know, Mormon Stories historically,

Scott Dyer [03:06:15] you

John Dehlin [03:06:15] know, really good YouTube video might get a hundred thousand views. It's hard for any Mormon themed video on YouTube to get over a hundred thousand views. With TikTok, you can make a one minute silly video of a woman roller skating in her temple clothes and it'll get a million views. And it took, and it took three minutes to make. You know what I mean? And that's just, I just wonder how deadly that is for the church.

Scott Dyer [03:06:44] One of the interesting things about Tick Tock is it's hitting demographics that aren't all members of the church. So it's gonna, it's gonna reach out to people that have left, it's gonna reach out to people that are still in and also people that are just saliently interested in Mormonism. If they've watched a video about the LDS Church, that might pop up on their feed too. So it's, it's hitting an audience that wouldn't ever go and download a Mormon Stories podcast or wouldn't ever, you know, put any effort into researching the LDS Church. So it's, it's expanding the audience in a way that podcasts just can't do.

John Dehlin [03:07:21] Yeah, yeah, it is. And you know, it's only, it's only going to get worse. Instagram to and, and I, I, I say this a lot now, Mormon Stories, but half of my YouTube viewership has never been Mormon. And all these Mormon no more on Hulu. The you Know, the Warren Jeffs documentaries on Netflix, all of these Mormon, you know, the Mark Hoffman, you know, documentary on Netflix, all of the. There's just like this fascination with cults in general and with Mormonism in particular that's just seemingly to drive more and more and more people to. To the Mormon themed podcasts and YouTube channels. So it's. The church is. The church is. It's, it's. It's facing more heat now in 2022, I think, than it ever has. Is that fair to say? Yeah, it's only getting worse. It's not getting better.

Scott Dyer [03:08:24] I would love for a drama about early church history that doesn't leave out any details, like an hbo, like an

John Dehlin [03:08:33] HBO dramatization of the life of Joseph Smith over like five seasons. You know, like a season on his early years and then a season on his, you know, founding of the church in New York and then a season on Kirtland and a season season on Missouri and a season on Nauvoo. Like. Oh my gosh.

Scott Dyer [03:08:54] Right. It would be a very compelling story.

John Dehlin [03:08:59] Yeah. Yeah, fascinating. Well, viewers and listeners, this. This took a little longer than I thought, but I think we are. We're at the end of this episode and I just want to give you a couple slides, Scott, to go ahead and, and plug both this series on your podcast, but also some of your other favorite episodes on Ramyuptum Ruminations.

Closing Reflections and Where to Find the Podcast

Scott Dyer [03:09:21] I appreciate that. Thanks, John. So this, these particular episodes are episodes 56, 57 and 58. And we covered most of the big items in. In this episode. It actually took just about as long as both of those episodes combined. Oops or no, No, I think it might have been up to three hours anyway, so those were. Those are some great ones. If you want to hear the full audio, you can find it there.

Scott Dyer [03:09:48] Again, there was some piano playing in the background on Brian's end, so please forgive any of the distractions and in the audio for there. So, yeah, other than that, I've got. I've got some other ones that I really enjoy, some that I think the listeners to this podcast might find value in as well.

Scott Dyer [03:10:09] So I'll just give brief descriptions of a couple of these. The. The first episode I put out is the Good ship Zion and I talk about. I compare the Ship of Theseus thought experiment to the LDS Church in an effort to explain that changes always happen and every offshoot of the LDS Church has just as much right to the original brand of Mormonism as every other. Using the Ship of Theseus as a way to examine the changes in an organization over time.

Scott Dyer [03:10:43] The, the next one, the trolley problem, this one, I, I talked briefly about the core concept of that in our discussion here, but I talk more specifically about lg LGBTQ plus issues as being this trolley problem for the LDS Church, whether they make this a choice to be more accepting, how they're going to alienate some of their entrenched evangelical members.

Scott Dyer [03:11:08] The episode 39 Church assigned friendship, this one, it was a blast to make. I talk about Aristotelian friendship, the different, like, degrees of friendship, and how when people leave the church, they always feel like, typically feel like, hey, you know, was I even friends with these people? Nobody's talking to me anymore. And using this Aristotelian model to help understand that these were just friendships of convenience. You saw these people often you weren't true friends with them and that's why you don't talk to them anymore after you leave.

Scott Dyer [03:11:41] And then 47. One of these things is exactly the same as the other. It's similarities between ex Mormons and entrenched members of the church in the way that they talk to each other, how they oftentimes don't realize that their arguments are exactly the same, just from a different perspective. And, you know, I mean, I've enjoyed all the episodes I put out, but those are some of my favorites that I've done.

John Dehlin [03:12:04] Yeah. Well, as we end, first of all, we're so grateful you came on Scott. If people want to financially support you, do you take donations? And if so, how do they, how do they support you financially?

Scott Dyer [03:12:16] So I'm under the Mormon Discussions podcast brand. You can go to ramiamptom ruminations.org and there's a donate button on the side. If you go to the Mormon Discussions website, there's also a donate button there and you can click the dropdown and delineate which podcast you'd like to donate to. If you go to the general fund, it just gets spread among everybody. But if you'd like to support me individually, just head over to my website, ramyuptomruminations.org yeah, and I'm just going to

John Dehlin [03:12:43] call on everybody to right now. If you value this episode, if you value this type of content, please go support Scott and Rami Amptum Ruminations. If you pay your content creators in the post Mormon and ex Mormon spaces, they'll do better work and they'll be around longer. So give them your money, support them.

Scott Dyer [03:13:07] I'm trying to have a niche or I'm trying to create episodes that are very different to what other people are talking about within the LDS and both post and ex Mormon podcasts. So I try and have a wide variety of subjects and a unique perspective on them, and I try to be pretty nuanced and accepting so that a listener could share this with a believing family member or friend without worrying too much that I'm gonna push them a little too far.

John Dehlin [03:13:37] So you're trying to give me heartburn that I don't get the good guests. No, you're trying to. You're trying to make me extreme by. By. By making yourselves look moderate so that we look hardcore. No, I'm just kidding.

Scott Dyer [03:13:53] You brought Patrick Mason on, and that was an amazing episode. So.

John Dehlin [03:13:56] So I gave you Harbard. I gave you Harbor.

Scott Dyer [03:13:59] Like, I wanted Patrick, I have reached out to him. I'm hoping to bring him onto my show down the road, too.

John Dehlin [03:14:05] Dude, I told you that. He reached out to me and said, should I go on? Should I go on Remy M to Ruminations?

Scott Dyer [03:14:09] Yeah, what do you think I told him?

John Dehlin [03:14:11] What do you think I told him? I said, no, don't do it. Just come back on more stories. No, I told him for sure he should go on. Ramy up to rumination. So I put in a good word for you.

Scott Dyer [03:14:20] Yeah, I appreciate that. I've got a whole list of questions I want to ask him.

John Dehlin [03:14:25] All right, well, Scott, thank you so much for your amazing work. If people just literally got two minutes into this episode and then switched over to your episodes and listened to them without our commentary, I'll be thrilled. I just was trying to figure out a creative way to. To highlight you that wasn't the same as just rebroadcasting your own episode. So listeners and viewers, if this was just a waste of time, please let us know and next time, we'll just. If we have to ever do something like this again, we'll just try and just rebroadcast the originals and maybe, Scott, you would have been cool with that. But if there's any of you that valued this analysis, then let us know as well.

Scott Dyer [03:15:05] Yeah, because there's another one that we could potentially do an episode like this about a guy who worked in welfare and self reliance services, and he worked for the church full time overseas. And so if there's interest, we could do an episode about that as well.

John Dehlin [03:15:22] Yeah. Yeah. So, viewers and listeners, let us know if you just want to switch all your contributions and your viewing time to rammy up to Ruminations. We're cool with that. Or if you want us to occasionally bring Scott on and do some analysis of his content. We'll do that too.

Scott Dyer [03:15:37] You can listen to both. My episodes are 30 minutes long, usually 20 to 30 minutes. So you can listen to those. While you're getting ready to listen to

John Dehlin [03:15:45] Mormon Stories as pre gaming, you can pregame with Remy. I'm rumination. Gerardo, any final thoughts?

Gerardo Sumano [03:15:54] No. This was great. Yeah, I was fascinated by this interview, Scott, and I think you're a great interviewer. I love your podcast. And yeah, thanks for coming.

John Dehlin [03:16:05] Yeah. All right. Well, Scott, thanks again. And Gerardo, it's always great to have you. So thanks for producing this one and helping make it happen.

Gerardo Sumano [03:16:12] Thanks.

John Dehlin [03:16:13] All right. All right, everyone. You guys take care. Thanks for joining us. Support Remy Amped Ruminations Mormonism Live Bill Real Ready Free Mormon. And if you can support Mormon Stories podcast by going to MormonStories.org and clicking on the donate button. Thanks, everybody. Take care of. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Bye, everybody.

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