Introduction and Welcome

Carah Burrell [00:00:00] Foreign.

John Dehlin [00:00:04] And welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. It is November 2, 2021, and today we have for you yet another much anticipated episode with the one, the only, the John Larsen. What's your middle initial? John H. John H. What does the H stand for?

John Larsen [00:00:29] My mom named me after Jesus Hamila.

John Dehlin [00:00:33] What on.

John Larsen [00:00:34] Think about it. John, Come on.

John Dehlin [00:00:36] Jesus.

John Larsen [00:00:36] Jesus H. Christ,

John Dehlin [00:00:39] I'm slow. We just did a five hour interview. I'm kind of wasted. What does the H stand for?

John Larsen [00:00:44] Nothing.

John Dehlin [00:00:45] Really?

John Larsen [00:00:46] Yeah, I think my mom wanted me to be a general authority.

John Dehlin [00:00:48] Okay. So literally the H stands for nothing.

John Larsen [00:00:53] Well, it's. Well, my. My legal name is John H. Larsen. The H stands for Hillary, who is my. My great grandfather.

John Dehlin [00:01:02] Okay. All right. Well, welcome. We're so glad to have you here today. My listeners in general, 90 plus percent are over the moon about. About you being on Mormon Stories podcasts. I would say the number of people who have become donors outweigh the number who have stopped because of your appearances on Mormon Stories. How's that feel that you're a net positive, basically, overall?

John Larsen [00:01:28] Well, I think if your goal in life is to donate money in order to try to control the content of what you're donating money to, take your money.

John Dehlin [00:01:39] I love it.

John Larsen [00:01:41] No, I'm glad I can be helpful. I think this is important.

John Dehlin [00:01:45] Yeah, it is. So I'm. I'm. In all seriousness, I'm really honored that you are a part of Mormon Stories these days, and we're loving your content. Last episode was really epic. But before we jump into that, I also have to welcome as our sidekick, the one, the only, Care Burrell. Hey.

Carah Burrell [00:02:04] Hey. Hello, John's Pleasure to see you both again.

John Dehlin [00:02:08] You told me that you've been waiting a month for today.

Carah Burrell [00:02:11] Everyone is. This is just the way that it goes. Now, Mormon Stories, it's John or John Dehlin. It's John Dehlin Day is every day, but it's John Larsen Day.

John Dehlin [00:02:18] Today, it's John Larsen Day.

John Larsen [00:02:20] I. I take umbrage with the sidekick. If you take the number of words that it takes the three of us to get a point across, she wins by far. I mean, her point. Yes, you did. Her word to point ratio is about 10 words, and mine's about 138.

John Dehlin [00:02:36] All right, my boss. I'll say, hey, everyone, welcome my boss, Care Burrell, my superior.

Carah Burrell [00:02:42] And all I have to say to that is, let's get started.

John Dehlin [00:02:44] Okay. All right. Well, so, John, today the episode is about James Strang.

John Larsen [00:02:55] Yeah. Jesse James.

John Dehlin [00:02:56] Who Some would say was supposed to be Joseph Smith's successor. But there are all sorts of reasons why James Strang is super interesting and important. But you titled today's episode what?

John Larsen [00:03:08] The King of Beaver Island, And I'm

John Dehlin [00:03:11] sure there are all sorts of meanings in there.

John Larsen [00:03:13] Well, yeah, we'll get there.

John Dehlin [00:03:14] Okay. Okay. But before we dive into talking about James, is it James J. Strang?

John Larsen [00:03:21] Well, there's some controversy. It seems that his. Because, and I'm not going to get this point later, but he had some revelations that identified that James would be the, you know, the successor or whatever. But it seems that his birth name was Jesse James Strang and he switched the names. But, you know, at the time, people would switch their names and change the spelling all the time. So I, I'm. I'm not gonna definitively say his birth certificate was James Jesse or Jesse James. But Jesse James sounds better, right?

John Dehlin [00:03:50] It's. Yeah, it sounds great. Sounds very American Western frontier.

John Larsen [00:03:54] Yes, very outlaws.

John Dehlin [00:03:55] But before.

Carah Burrell [00:03:56] Oh, Carah, I was just gonna say, I think Jesse James, he's quite the ladies man, right?

John Dehlin [00:04:00] I don't know.

Carah Burrell [00:04:01] I think he was the King of Beaver Island.

John Dehlin [00:04:03] Okay, you mean the.

John Larsen [00:04:04] The og Jesse James.

John Dehlin [00:04:06] Sounds like we're going to be giving a PG13 rating today to Stories podcast. So, like, if you have sensitive ears, if you don't like language or occasional sexual innuendo. Not on my. On the part of me, of course. But.

John Larsen [00:04:23] Wait, if you don't like language or sexual. Anyway, you're lame. What kind of person doesn't like sexual innuendo?

Carah Burrell [00:04:29] You've wandered onto a John Larsen podcast and you are in for some treats.

John Dehlin [00:04:35] Yeah, just Buyer beware. So today's. Today's episode will range from a PG13 to an R rating, depending on how spicy John is feeling. Although, John, you said you think I'm feeling spicy.

John Larsen [00:04:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah. John's a little bit pissy tonight, so everyone be cautious.

John Dehlin [00:04:51] All right.

John Larsen [00:04:52] Sometimes I think I got you going last time laughing. Or either way, either either to get you all riled up or get you laughing is my goal in life.

John Dehlin [00:05:01] One of these days we have to do live episodes where, like, we have a studio audience. You used to do that, right?

John Larsen [00:05:05] Yeah, yeah. I'm waiting for the plague to end, basically. But yeah, I think spring, summer, we definitely should get a live show in.

Listener Feedback and Recent Episodes

John Dehlin [00:05:15] All right, well, one of the things you like to do as we kick off is kind of talk about feedback and comments from previous episodes. So should we jump in there or where do you want to begin?

John Larsen [00:05:26] Yeah, yeah. First of all, because the rumors are out, I thought I'd take the opportunity to confirm. I have left the state of Utah. I have moved out of Utah. I now live in Oregon, and I'm going. Well, some people might be happy about it, some people may not. But. So it shouldn't interrupt our show here. We plan on keep doing it. Matter of fact, when John approached me, I told him that I was interviewing for a job in Oregon. But, yeah, my family's moving to Oregon for various reasons that maybe we'll get to in the future. But I wish you all well, and I. I say a fond adieu to Salt Lake City, my. My former home.

John Dehlin [00:06:09] We're gonna miss you, and we hope to see you as frequently or more as always.

John Larsen [00:06:14] Well, the Mormon verse goes from, you know, Canada all the way down to the colonies in Mexico, that. That. You can't just leave Mormon. No. No.

John Dehlin [00:06:27] Okay, so that's announcement one.

John Larsen [00:06:29] Oh, that's announcement two. So the last episode, which we did on the handcart companies, there was a lot of. A lot of visceral reaction to that episode, obviously, on my part, too. And I have a few principles that I live by now.

John Larsen [00:06:49] One, of course, is that we talked about a few episodes ago, which is, you know, do a little bit better, do less harm. And another one that I espouse is clean up your messes. One of the reasons that I kind of drifted away or ended the podcast, there were several reasons back in 2014, was we deal with a lot of anger and outrage here. And anger is. And so I have to do some cleaning up because I released. And I am actively releasing a lot of anger into the universe here.

John Larsen [00:07:24] And anger and outrage. The. It's a. It's a scalpel. It's a. It's a. It's an important tool, and it's a. An evolutionary key element of what it means to be human, to be. To be angry, to be outraged at things that. That shouldn't have happened. To. To have.

John Larsen [00:07:47] To have these feelings is good and proper, but they are toxic and you can't carry them. You have to. You have to shed the anger. And it's. It's just like the scalpel. The scalpel can help heal, but it won't heal itself. Healing takes place elsewhere. So I implore those of you who are engaging with me on. On these short journeys into outrage in. Because it was outrageous what happened. It is outrageous what's still happening, and. And your anger is justified. But you have to promise me, if you're going to listen, that you're going to work on working through the anger. And we were. We were chatting a week or so ago that I think soon here we want to do an episode on.

John Larsen [00:08:30] On. On dealing. On dealing with the anger. I know we've had a lot of, you know, psychologists and psychiatrists over the years talk about these things, but it's not something to be neglected as you're dealing with your transition wherever, wherever you land, wherever you end, you have to deal with the anger. And you can't stay here. This is a spot to visit. This is a spot to walk through. It is not a spot to live. It'll eat you up.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] Yeah. Yeah. So we confront the hard stuff, but we also do our self care, mental health processing and healing and growth.

John Larsen [00:09:06] We have to.

John Dehlin [00:09:07] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:09:07] It's not optional.

John Dehlin [00:09:08] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:09:09] And staying in this space too long will. Will. Will. Will poison you.

John Dehlin [00:09:13] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:09:14] Yeah. And, and, and you. You. I know from talking to John many times over the years that, that you guys do a lot of. A lot of dealing with this, that probably John's biggest job, frankly, I'm guessing, is to get himself into a healthy place when he's not dealing with this. And it's something that, you know, like EMS workers and, and, and psychologists, psychiatrists, people have to deal with all the time. And so, so it's important that it not take over.

John Dehlin [00:09:48] Carah, I think you feel that sometimes too, right?

Carah Burrell [00:09:51] Yeah. I mean, that combined with. We've been talking about how just this job is hard, like people accuse us of. You know, this is your only personality trait, being an ex Mormon or being a podcaster. And sometimes you have to take on a lot of other people's emotions doing this job. So generally it's just. It's good to work through it and have your own separate hobbies and interests. Or else. Yeah, it can't. Can't go anywhere good. So for sure, all of that, but use it.

John Larsen [00:10:17] The anger is righteous and it's healthy. Just in small doses.

John Dehlin [00:10:23] Totally. All right. Thank you, John.

John Larsen [00:10:26] All right. I think those are all I had on my introduction. I don't think we had any.

John Dehlin [00:10:29] I'll just say one last thing and that's that I'm. Well, first of all, thank you for Kimo Lewis for their super chat on YouTube. Those donations mean a lot. So thank you so much for anyone who throws us a bone over YouTube. I was just. Just to talk quickly about the William Martin handcart episode. I was really surprised at how visceral that was. And I know I'm being slightly repetitive, but I think There was a lot of people whose family, and I'm talking about people who've been ex Mormon 5 or 10 or 20 years. I think there are people whose identity, their family lore, their family honor, their family narrative has been tied up in that story. And so I've been surprised at how many people, once they heard kind of a more factual recounting of what happened, just how disturbing it was to people.

John Larsen [00:11:21] It was. And I don't think it diminishes the sacrifice and the pioneer spirit or whatever the people tap into in their families. If anything, it should help you reverence your ancestors more. What they really, what they really sacrificed, what they really went for, went through for sincere held beliefs, for a real attempt to find and build heaven on earth, for a real attempt to change their lives and change the world. And we can't in the, in the, in the addressing the mistakes and the incompetence of the leadership, we can't let that dim the light of those people.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] Yeah, yeah. I remember it being said that making idols out of our historical figures does them a disservice and does us a disservice. It puts them on a pedestal that they could never reach realistically up to. So it sets them up for a fall in our eyes and then it does us a disservice because we fail to realize what our potential is, because we feel like, how can I compare to Superman, right? Really, there is no Superman.

John Larsen [00:12:32] I, historically, I really am fascinated by, you know, cathedrals and castles and bridges and viaducts and all these, these old structures that, that just. That I have a reverence when I have the opportunity to go into those places. A few years ago I started because, you know, the castles were really built on the backs of, you know, taking advantage of the, of the poor and of, of greed and violence and all that kind of stuff. And it made me sort of feel bad about the admiration I had for those until I was reading something about stonemasons, actually. And then I realized, well, not a single one of those rich built one of these buildings, one of those cathedrals.

John Larsen [00:13:14] And when you go into a European cathedral, you're honoring the hundreds and thousands who sacrifice the artisans, the skilled, everyday people whose names are completely lost. They're the ones who built the cathedrals. We, the people, are the ones who built the United States, who built Europe, who built China, who built all the, the things we have. And, and, and we unfortunately have this great man theory of history where we like to talk about the, the, the idols at the top. But I, I think that the, the joy of Mormonism, of the history of Mormonism for me is the people, they were salty, they were weird, but. But they were interesting. It's the, it's the leaders at the top who need a spanking.

John Dehlin [00:13:55] Yeah. Love it. Amen. Can I get an amen?

John Larsen [00:13:59] Amen.

Sources and First Impressions of James Strang

John Dehlin [00:14:01] All right. All right, John. Well, let's see. Let me pull up our photo. Here is a, here's a photo of the man, the myth, the legend. Take it away.

John Larsen [00:14:11] Jesse Strang. James Strang. Okay, so we talked about our sources. My primary source for this evening is a book called the King of Beaver island by Ro. Roger Van Nord from the University of Illinois Press. It was published in 1988. It's an interesting read. I would recommend it. Fairly, fairly even handed approach and then various Internet sources to pull documents and review things.

John Dehlin [00:14:38] Okay.

John Larsen [00:14:41] This, there's, there's something I want to ask you. All right now as we're about to go through this story, I want everybody who's listening, whether they're in the church or out of the church or anywhere along, I want you to pay close attention to the feelings that you have when we talk about James Strang's experience.

John Larsen [00:15:02] Just, just. There's no, there's going to be no, you know, we'll talk about it again at the end. So there's going to be kind of a little quiz, but there's no right answers because it's about what, what you feel. But I think this is an interesting chance for both people inside and outside the church to interrogate how they're reacting to this story. Do they think it's ridiculous? Do they think it's moving? Do they think. And, and we're going to come back to that. But I just want to plant that seed for everyone to sort of pay attention to what they're feeling about James's story here.

John Dehlin [00:15:29] Yeah. And if listeners and viewers want that are joining us live, they can actually comment.

Carah Burrell [00:15:34] Sure.

John Larsen [00:15:34] Please.

John Dehlin [00:15:35] And maybe Carah and I will monitor those comments and share them from time to time. Because that'll be fun. I think it's an important exercise just to develop emotional awareness. I think sometimes raised in a high demand religion, we're nurtured to tamp down and ignore and suppress what we feel. And I think that's a good exercise.

John Larsen [00:15:55] Just generally, I think you're right. I wouldn't use the word nurtured myself. We were conditioned to have certain, certain emotional reactions. And I know for a lot of people, once they, they kind of discover, decide that the church is not true at Least as the church defines itself, they have to deal with a lot of unpacking of feelings. And that goes for things like relationships, family, sexuality, engaging the world, alcohol, all sorts of things that they have to really confront these feelings. For a lot of people it's too much work and they just, they either don't deal with it or they run back into the church or whatever.

John Larsen [00:16:29] But it's, it's, it's really important to interrogate these feelings because leaving the church takes a long time. You know, I would say usually about, I would say maybe a year or two for every decade you were in. It's going to be tough.

John Larsen [00:16:43] And, and part of that work is really trying to understand the feeling. Say, huh, I wonder why I'm feeling that way in the United States. Oftentimes are we're always trying to steer our feelings so if we're feeling unhappy, we don't want to feel unhappy anymore as opposed to saying, huh, I feel unhappy. I wonder why that is. And I think this story is a good chance to interrogate someone. Feelings.

John Dehlin [00:17:04] Love it. All right, okay.

Strang's Early Life and the Death of Joseph Smith

John Larsen [00:17:07] James Jesse James Strang was born on March 21, 1813 in upper state New York. He had 1813. Okay, so he was, he was younger than Joseph, eight years younger than Joseph Smith. And he came from that same burned over district, a district that was within, you know, a generation or two had been taken from the, the Iroquois.

John Larsen [00:17:33] And so you're talking about new invaders into former broken people's land. And it was a time of, of speculation and just, it was, it was the Wild west, right. Really, that, that, that, that place up there in that time. And it led to a lot of religious speculation both because the two twin ideas at the time, you know, the idea that Christianity could be re engaged directly, you know, that you could get to God directly by using the Bible and of course American exceptionalism. That somehow with this whole, this whole American experiment was a gift from God and this land was, was God's gift. And the people who came here were led here by the hand of God.

John Larsen [00:18:18] I mean that shows up over and over again. Well, that, that affected people's psychology. They really started to believe that stuff still do, most of them Americans. And, and, but you're saying the Book

John Dehlin [00:18:28] of Mormon didn't originate that idea?

John Larsen [00:18:30] No, no, no. The, the, you know, it, the. Look at the Pilgrims looking for their religious exceptionalism. You know, the Pilgrims didn't come here to practice religious freedom. That's a, that's a lie you've been told. They came here to practice their Religion and because they have the true and right religion and, and God help you if you didn't follow along the, the punishments were of the utmost right. Yeah, okay. He had become, I, I think I, I read that he had practiced an attorney and he become a Baptist minister not too long before he went rolling into Nauvoo. He's described as a slight man. He was, he was tiny.

John Larsen [00:19:05] He was, he was small and he was not really a vain man. As a matter of fact, we talked about his coronation. His crown was made of tin and he was described often as having like worn out or dilapidated clothing. And even, even when he had more money, he still kind of was, was, was, was dressed shabbily. He's described generally as being very intelligent. And you know, it's clear that he picked up on a lot of the, the same language and other stuff either Joseph Smith was tapping into or that he, he mimicked from Smith himself.

John Larsen [00:19:43] He. So he wandered into Nauvoo, February 1844 to see what all the hubbub was about and found himself baptized by Joseph Smith in the temple on February 25 and ordained an elder on March 2 of 1844 by Hiram.

John Dehlin [00:19:59] 44.

John Larsen [00:20:00] 44. Okay, so, and that's a good segue to the next point. Let's talk about Nauvoo. Late winter, 1844. This place was hot. And I mean that in every sense of, of the word where at this time we're probably pushing a population about 25, 000 people in and around Nauvoo. And at the time the, the scholars say the, the, the population exceeded Chicago.

John Larsen [00:20:27] So we have a lot, a lot of people coming in at, by this time Joseph Smith had had himself secretly crowned king of, of of the world basically. And he had had himself bestowed with the rank of lieutenant general, um, which is like a very rare, like Napoleon I think was a lieutenant general or something. But, but, and Joseph smith in the 1840s tended to wear his parade dress uniform all the time.

John Larsen [00:21:00] So, and he would walk around with a sword on and William Law and Miller and those guys, the stake president and, and some other high level people in the church were starting to openly question Smith. By this time Smith had married well over 30 women, most of them in secret. Some of them were married to Smith and they had kept it secret from their husbands and the. At the time of his assassination in June, June 27th of 1844, the 12 had all been sent out there. They weren't in Nauvoo at the time and they had been sent out to campaign for Joseph Smith's presidency. So Joseph Smith had at this time given himself the highest rank, no one's ever achieved that rank in the military in the United States.

John Larsen [00:21:50] And he had an actual military, which is one of the reason the, the Carthage Grays and other people were really concerned. So there was a lot of secret stuff going on and speculation. When we talk about speculation, I know this word gets thrown around by scholars talking about Nauvoo all the time. What this means is, is rather than actually building the city, what a lot of people were doing is trying to acquire land to hold it for a couple months, to flip it and make money. The problem is when a city is in a great, a big mode of speculation, building actually slows down in Nauvoo, which is one of the problems, because why would you take time to build a mill when if you just sit here for six months, you can get rich by reselling your property?

John Larsen [00:22:34] And there were competitions between the lower award of Nauvoo in the upper ward, and there were just financial entanglements, military entanglements, sexual entanglements. And, and Joseph was running to the, to the end of the line. I mean, it was, it was pretty clear that it was not going to end well for him, right?

John Larsen [00:22:56] So String walks in and he. At the time, because of, because of the building of Nauvoo, the Mormons were looking for inexpensive building materials, really, because that was one of the problems on the frontier was trying to get lumber and nails and all that stuff out towards them. So they had started setting up these kind of missions around that were like timber missions or so. So a little colony would be established to provide for, for, for a resource.

John Larsen [00:23:29] Strang kind of looked around a little bit and, and he saw a need. So he came to Joseph Smith and said, hey, look, I want to head up to. Up north of Europe to Wisconsin and start, start a, a colony, you know, to help us get some, some resources and all of that.

John Larsen [00:23:48] And Joseph said to him, oh, sounds like a great idea. Why don't you give me a written proposal on, on what, what this would look like? And Strang did, and he, and he, he, he wrote this whole thing up and he completed on May 24. So the reason I'm really tracking these dates is, is things, things go really nuts here this summer. So, so may 24, by this time, the, the Whistling Deacons are hanging out in the streets. Now this is a story I was told as a kid that what, that they would have the deacons stand on the corners Whitland, they would say, watching for the apostates.

John Larsen [00:24:31] Now at the time, the, the. The Aaronic priesthood was not a youth program of the church. So the deacons were all grown men and when they were whittling, they were doing it with bowie knives. It was a definite threat. So you have Joseph Smith thugs standing on the corner with knives, you know, and then they would whistle to each other when the people they thought were confederate with William Law and, and those other guys would walk by. So, so violence was heating up and. But it was really tense at this moment.

John Dehlin [00:25:06] And I don't know if you've already said this, but had the Navu Expositor first edition dropped yet or not quite yet? So you're saying William Law had apostatized? Maybe hadn't yet.

John Larsen [00:25:16] Well, William Law never really apostatized. And I'm. I. You'll forgive me because I don't have th. That those elements right in front. I think the Expositor dropped in June, but I'm not certain. Maybe somebody can look it up and put it in the chat. Okay, but, but the, the, the, the battle lines had been drawn, okay? Like people knew where the alliances were and it was about really not just the polygamy, but it was about. Because the, the polygamy. Also, it would be unfair to call polygamy from the, the point of view of most people. They just knew that illicit sex was going on. And when we say illicit, you know, we're talking about the church authorities sleeping with women who are married to other men.

John Larsen [00:25:57] Now, please, this is my reminder to ex Mormons. Please, please, please stop saying that Joseph Smith slept with other men's wives. It is a sexist construction. Stop it. Because, because these women were agents unto themselves and human beings who could make their own choices within the construction of, of their time. But it erases the agency of the, of the women. And there's a reason for that. We're going to turn back to it in a minute here, unfortunately.

John Larsen [00:26:27] So, so, so, so my only point is that, is that Joseph Smith knows things are, things are going crazy here and he's starting to look for some outs. They're starting to scout out about heading west. They're looking for, for different places to go and they're just, they just have a lot of people. This movement has become, become extremely successful at this, at this point in time.

John Larsen [00:26:50] Okay, so, so he proposes, Strang proposes on May 24 that they set up a colony in the Burlington area. And, and they eventually make a, A, um, colony named Vori, I think is how it's pronounced, it doesn't exist anymore. It is in Burlington, Wisconsin. Is, is, is where the site of the city is. But Burlington is about 35 miles south of Milwaukee, 35 miles south west of Milwaukee, about 80 miles south, south or, or north northwest of Chicago. So if that, if that gets in your mind, it is a little bit inland. But we're on the, we're on the kind of shores of Lake Michigan.

John Dehlin [00:27:33] Okay.

John Larsen [00:27:34] Very timber rich country. A lot of still, you know, Indian artifacts and, and that sort of stuff that hadn't been long removed from the land. So, so the, the, the Joseph Smith pens a letter to, to Jesse James Strang making his appointment. And it is called the appointment letter. And I will send those of you carry down a rabbit hole. There's been a lot of discussion and controversy on this particular letter. We, I will say this. The letter was authenticated by Emma.

John Larsen [00:28:16] Emma said that was Joseph Smith's handwriting. There is some question about the signature, but that becomes a really difficult issue in, for those who track these things because Joseph tended to have things written by scribes and Joseph had a strange habit of also having scribes sign his name. So we have a lot of authentic signatures of Joseph Smith that were signed by other people.

John Larsen [00:28:38] But by all accounts, there are some active Brighamites who this day still claim the letter was a forgery. There is no indication that the letter was a forgery. It matches Joseph Smith's style. It's been authenticated. It was postmarked June 19 from Nauvoo, and that postmark has been authenticated and it showed up in.

John Larsen [00:29:03] It showed up Jesse or Strang got it on September 1, 1845, which would have been three days after Joseph Smith was murdered. So, so the letter was in transit to that time. So we're talking about the appointment letter. This was again the letter that Joseph Smith wrote to James Strang dated Nauvoo, June 18, 1844. I'm going to jump to the, to the second paragraph here because it's a fascinating paragraph. This is the words of Joseph Smith. I have long felt that my present work was almost done and that I should be called to rule a mighty host. But something whispers me. It will be in the land of spirits where the wicked cease from troubling and the bands of the prison prisoner fall off.

Strang's Appointment Letter and Claim to Leadership

John Larsen [00:29:53] My heart yearns for my little ones, but I know God will be a father to them. And I can claim to face the fulfillment of promises from him who is a covenant keeping God and who sweareth and performeth and Faileth not to the uttermost for believers and, but there still are people who believe in the Strang faction.

John Larsen [00:30:15] This one of this is that Joseph Smith prophesied his own death a week and a half before it happened to them. Speaks to the prophetic nature of this letter. To me it speaks to the, the idea that Joseph knew he was in a lot of hot water.

John Larsen [00:30:33] You know, the things, things weren't, weren't going so well. And by the way, I'm going to make a footnote here on construction. It gets cumbersome to say alleged and supposed and that he contended that. So we're just going to talk the angels wisdom and all that kind of stuff. I, I, I'm not making a comment on whether these things are true or not in my grammar on that. Okay. The wolves are upon my scent and I'm waiting to be offered up. He continues. And you know, he goes on like that. What's funny is he code switches in this letter from first person to second person and he drops into a revelation.

John Larsen [00:31:09] That's where we're going to pick it up. And now behold my servant James J. Strang hath come to thee from far for truth, where he know not and hath not rejected it. But have faith in thee the shepherd and stone of Israel. And to him shall the gathering the people be. For he shall plant a stake of Zion in Wisconsin, and I will establish it. And there shall my people have peace and rest and shall not be moved. For it shall be established on the prairie, on White river, in the lands of Racine and Walworth. And behold, my servant James and Aaron shall plant it, for I have given them wisdom.

John Larsen [00:31:46] And Daniel shall still stand in his lot on the hill beside the river, looking down on the prairie and shall instruct my people and shall plead with them face to face. So this is very Joseph Smith here where he switches directly into speaking directly for God. And whenever Joseph Smith speaks in the voice of God, God always gives Joseph a little pat on the back, a little bit. This is my boy here who I'm father really loved. Yes, right, right. You know, because we, when you are dictating the voice of the divine, the first thing the divine wants to know is that the dictator is really a good guy.

John Larsen [00:32:19] Right? So, so, so, but, but what this does establish is that for, for, for the Strangites, that, that God is appointing this place by revelation. This is God's will. And God even speaks of the plains of Racine. I've been to Racing, Wisconsin. I don't know how much But. But God thinks they're great, right? The plains of Racine. Okay. And then God goes on. But again, I will stretch out my arm over the rivers of water and the banks thereof shall the house of my choice be. But now the city of Voree. And I think it's pronounced Vori, it's spelled V O R E E. And it was named by Joseph Smith.

John Larsen [00:33:02] And he, somewhere along the line in red down here gave some kind of cockamamie definition of it, like Deseret or something like that. But now the city of Vori shall be a stronghold of safety to my people. And they that are faithful and obey me, I will there give them great prosperity and such as they have not had before. And unto vory shall be the gathering of my people.

John Larsen [00:33:24] And there shall the oppressed flee for safety, and none shall hurt or molest them. This is very important. This is going to become pivotal in about a week from these guys timeline because things are going south really after Joseph Smith dies, things in Nauvoo go from worse to worse.

John Larsen [00:33:42] So. So here is God saying he appointed Vore e Wisconsin as the gathering place for safety. I'm going to skip ahead, for great calamities are coming on the church and such as have never been. And if they scatter, the ungodly of the world shall swallow them up. But if they gather to my city of Voree, there will I keep them under the shadow of my wings. And the city from whence my people have been driven shall be purged with a high hand. For I will do it. And my people shall again restored to their possessions. But dark clouds are gathering, for the church is not yet wholly purged.

John Larsen [00:34:18] And now I command my servants. This is. This is a key paragraph here. And now I command my servants, the apostles and priests and elders of the church of the Saints, that they communicate and proclaim this my word to all the saints of God in all the world, that they may be gathered unto and round about the city of Vory and be saved from their enemies, for I will have a people to serve them.

John Larsen [00:34:43] So those, those paragraphs really establish the. The contention point here. So remember, by the time Strang is reading this, Joseph Smith is dead. Although he won't find that out for a couple more days. So he gets this, you can imagine from Strang's perspective. He gets in his hand a letter from Joseph predicting his own death. And by the time he has the letter, Joseph Smith is dead. And Joseph Smith not only says the Voree will be a gathering place for the saints, it'll be a gathering place because of the tumult that's just about to come to the saints. And he says that the apostles and priests and elders of the church are to proclaim to the world that they should gather to voree.

John Larsen [00:35:24] That's what the letter clearly says. So for, for Strang, this letter was the first in his. In his series of claims to say that the mantle of the prophet had fallen upon him. Now, you know, let's talk a little bit about mystics. Religions are always started by mystics and perpetuated by priests.

John Larsen [00:35:47] So priests are always concerned about obedience and orthodoxy, what's in and what's out. Mystics are not ever really concerned about that as much. You know, those who study Joseph Smith or people like him, they're not necessarily rule followers themselves, and they like to bend and, and break rules some.

John Larsen [00:36:07] So what we have, and I'm kind of previewing is for the members of the church. They're going to be presented with a stark choice pretty soon here. Do we go and follow another mystic or do we follow Brigham Young, who was a calculated company man and who in the beginning claimed he was not the prophet, that there was only one prophet. And in the beginning, in the Nauvoo days, Young merely said he was sort of the guardian of the church and the 12 were in charge of it, but they weren't prophetic in the same way Joseph was. Young modified and changed that message over time.

John Larsen [00:36:46] But, but here you have Joseph Smith appointing string to set up the stake. Now, the word stake in Mormonism has changed quite a bit. So we should probably define the original term for, for a stake is, is a steak, like a tent pole stake. That's, that's what they, they meant when they devised the word stake. And I think the word is used in the Bible somewhere in the Old Testament in a similar fashion. But when you have stakes, you have a center pole in the tent. And then this tent is pulled taunt, and then you hammer the stake in. But the center pole is what keeps the.

John Larsen [00:37:25] Keeps the tent up. For Joseph Smith's analogy, the center pole is and always was only one thing. Jackson County, Missouri it was Zion. It was the center gathering place. And then all the stakes of Zion were these elements that radiated out from. So that's one of the counter arguments to the people saying this letter appointed Strang to be the new president or new leader of the church because he also identifies it as being one of the stakes of Zion. However, at the time, nobody was. Was in Jackson County. So every single place was a Stake of Zion which the church has continued that, that mode to this day.

John Larsen [00:38:07] Right. So, so, so by appointing him to be the, the sake. And, and what's interesting is Joseph didn't always have a lot of, of following his own rules because in this letter he clearly says that he, that Strang is going to be the stake president. We kind of skipped that section and he appointed somebody to be his counselor but they didn't really kind of, kind of follow through. But we should have to. We should remember that these positions were not well defined at this time at all. The stake presidents that didn't really come about for quite some time. The bishops had had a lot more power.

John Larsen [00:38:43] So when Joseph Smith was writing this letter it wasn't really well defined what a stake put president or what a stake was. He doesn't even identify him as a stake president. That's a, that's a more modern construction. So the appointment letter is, is the first big piece of evidence for, for the those who choose to follow Strang.

John Dehlin [00:39:02] Does this mean that. That Joseph just was super impressed with Strang? Was Joseph writing these letters to everybody? Like, you know, I don't remember. Of course I don't remember hearing about Strang growing up because the church would want a deep six anything about him, I'm sure. But I, you know, to what extent did they really have a meaningful relationship or a deep connection or was Joseph really liking the guy? I mean we know that he made William Law like co president pretty quickly. Relatively quickly at some point. Right.

John Larsen [00:39:31] Well Joe, this was a, this was Joseph's M.O. you know, he would, he would glom onto somebody who could give him something.

John Dehlin [00:39:37] Sydney rigged in.

John Larsen [00:39:38] First one is Martin Harris. Then, then Martin Harris had the money and then it was Oliver Cowdery who acted as a scribe and there was the second elder. And then when they went to Kur Portland it was Sidney Rigdon who became the, the, the, the. The co president of the church. And, and the. It happened. William Bennett happened in Nauvoo. Where, where John C. Bennett. Yeah, John Bennett. I'm sorry, John Bennett. You know. You know and he rose to, he rose right up to the top of the church. So it is not. Joseph Smith would meet somebody, be impressed with them and immediately elevate them and bestow them with all sorts of power and authority.

John Dehlin [00:40:18] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:40:19] So it is not out of the question given especially John what he did with John Bennett and what he did with Sidney Rigdon that Joseph might have been appointing him to be. And Joseph was not trusting anybody at this time, you know, there are those who argue that him sending the, the 12 out of the city was not just about his presidential campaign. It was about getting them away.

John Larsen [00:40:41] You know, because some of the 12 had become involved in, in plural marriage. And of course they were council of 50 and the council of the Anointed. So, so in Nauvoo there were secret societies on secret societies on secret societies.

John Larsen [00:40:57] And, and so, and so it's not weird that Joseph Smith would do this. If you want to say no, that's not at all what he would do is the point this guy who came rolling in. Well, then I present the case of John C. Bennett, which we'll, we'll go through John C. Bennett in a future episode. He's a, he's a man that deserves a lot of discussion.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] Episode.

John Larsen [00:41:18] Yes, yes, indeed.

John Dehlin [00:41:19] Absolutely.

Gathering Followers and Founding a Community

John Larsen [00:41:20] Okay, so. All right, let's talk about. So that, that's his appointment. So, so, so strain gets up there and, and people do start gathering up up to him. As a matter of fact, there is a mission sent. There are two missions back and forth. So, so in, in, in Nauvoo over the next year before, before the Saints leave, there are houses burned, there are skirmishes, there are murders, there's violence, killing of cattle like, like going back and forth. And it's not just like the Grays against the Mormons. It was Mormon on Mormon violence just like it always had been. That the, that these movements, these kind of high intensity cults that, that form around, they, they, they always fall apart spectacularly.

John Larsen [00:42:15] So things were getting really kind of crappy in Nauvoo and of course Voree was just up, up, up the road. So at one point, like the, the, the Vori Saints send four missionaries down to Nauvoo and they get out by the skin of their teeth.

John Larsen [00:42:33] They were, they were preaching at the preaching rock or whatever it was, and all these Mormons come up with, with pistols and knives and these guys kind of like hightail it out in their head. So the, the Brigham sends two missionaries up, a guy named Reuben Smith who's there to go correct the Vori Saints. And Strang converts Reuben Smith and shortly thereafter converts John E. Page, who is a sitting member of the 12. So there was a big feather in Strang's hat. Suddenly he's got a sitting member of the 12 in his camp.

John Larsen [00:43:10] Okay, so, so now we'll fast forward a little bit to the next year. September 1, 1845. On September 1, 1845, an angel appears. Now, now we, we should, we should I think I wrote this down, but I'm not seeing it here. Oh. Oh, I've got it. My notes were a little bit out of order. I apologize for my chaos.

John Larsen [00:43:38] Strang claims that at 5:30pm on June 27, 1844, an angel appeared to him and said, thou shalt save his people from their enemies and. And prepare a refuge for the oppressed and for the poor and the needy. That is Strang's first recorded angelic visitation, which he said happened basically at the simultaneous with the death of Joseph Smith. I don't remember exactly what the time of death is, but it was in the afternoon. Now, of course, this is what he says later. Color me skeptical, because, you know, he still hadn't even got the letter or whatever.

John Dehlin [00:44:12] Well, I mean, this is. This is probably putting too fine a point on it. And I think you're wanting people to kind of draw their own conclusions. Conclusions. But now it's time to kind of start turning on the brain about in what ways does James Strang kind of parallel Joseph Smith's behaviors, his actions, his approaches, his techniques? And number one, believing listeners, or listeners have to ask themselves, what does it mean that Joseph Smith gave his prophetic endorsement to James Strang in the letter, which basically says, hey, whatever Strang does, Joseph is a prophet.

John Larsen [00:44:47] Not just Joseph. God.

John Dehlin [00:44:48] He's a revelator. Right. God. Exactly. That's even better. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, God has now sanctioned James Strang through Joseph Smith through that revelation. So that's parallel one. So believers theoretically should be going, whoa, I need to care about James Strang, even though I never did before. But then, secondly, now that James Strang is going to start producing revelations and other things, obviously believers and listeners have to start saying, what's the difference between what Strang starts doing and what Joseph Smith was doing all along?

John Larsen [00:45:20] If God has a pattern to select prophets. Well, that's an interesting. That's an interesting theory. And let's see how well Strang follows that pattern. Because, you know, one of Joseph's first thing was to say that an angel visited him and appointed him to this role. And take my word for it. Yeah, right. But there's no evidence anything happened. There's no witnesses, no nothing. Joseph just says, this is what happened to me. And as does String. Right? Yeah, but it's gonna get. It's gonna get kookier here in a minute. I'm. I'm telling you, hold out. Okay, so. So. So he does that. An angel. Then an angel appears to Strang on September 1, 1840, 5. And Strang never identifies the angel by name. But the angel gives him the Urim and Thummim and tells him that because

John Dehlin [00:46:13] the angel had taken it back from

John Larsen [00:46:14] Joseph, the angel had taken it back.

John Dehlin [00:46:15] It was available.

John Larsen [00:46:16] It was available. So the angel gives Strang the Urim and Thummim and he gives him a vision and shows him a hill where there are plates hidden near White River. Vori more place. More plates.

John Dehlin [00:46:30] Awesome.

John Larsen [00:46:31] Okay, so. So Strang sees this in a vision. And Strang gathers together four witnesses, one of which who later invented the typewriter, actually. And by the way, these four witnesses never recounted their account of what is about to happen.

John Larsen [00:46:48] So four witnesses extra credibility. Four witnesses. And they all wrote this down. And some of them apostatized. I've heard. I've heard apologists make the argument that the witnesses for Joseph Smith are more unbelievable because they left the church. And if they really hated Joe Smith, this wasn't true, then they would have denied what. What. What they said happened. So Strang leads them over to the hill where there is a tree.

John Larsen [00:47:17] And this tree is said to be 1 foot in diameter of that big around. So we're talking a tree that's 20 or 30 years old. And he invites them to look around to see if the. If the ground had been disturbed at all.

John Larsen [00:47:34] Strangle goes and sits on a rock and eats an apple or something. He does not touch the tree. The four men knock the tree down and take shovels and start digging. And by their account, they dig through the topsoil and into the clay again. They all say the land was completely undisturbed and this was under a tree.

John Larsen [00:47:55] The problem with being a prophet is there's always another prophet who's going to one up you down the line. I'm just saying that if you considering this a career, just know that whatever you say, somebody's going to one up. It's okay. They dig down the clay and then they hit what they said was a rock that was about one foot square. They lift the rock up off and they find a clay box. They said that it had been baked clay. And they lift out three plates of brass.

John Larsen [00:48:25] By their. Their account, they were small and about, I think, one and a half inches by one inch. We do not have pictures of these plates. They went missing in about 19. But we do have drawings of them. And I think I asked you to queue up. If you are at home while John is fiddling around with his computer, you can go to a computer and type in vore e v o R R V O R E E plates on Google or my preferred browser, DuckDuckGo. And you can see images of what the plates look like, the drawings. I have mine here, but I dropped it on the floor, so forgive me, I'm gonna dive here. Second

John Dehlin [00:49:08] and, and viewers in this. Viewers on Both Facebook and YouTube can see at least a couple of the plates.

John Larsen [00:49:13] Yeah. So. So there are, there are six images, three plates.

John Dehlin [00:49:18] Were these like lithographs? Like what?

John Larsen [00:49:20] These photographs, they are carved or etched in. In the, the brass.

John Dehlin [00:49:25] Okay.

John Larsen [00:49:26] A later observer of the plate. So we had. They, they were around for about 60 years.

The Plates of Laban and Strang's Scripture Claims

John Dehlin [00:49:32] Oh, they were, they were for lots of people. So no angel took them back up.

John Larsen [00:49:35] No angel took him back up. They were observed by people. And we have drawings. These, these drawings are scale drawings of them. And Strang translated them.

John Dehlin [00:49:43] I mean, that's even more credible than the gold plates. Because they stayed around.

John Larsen [00:49:47] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:49:47] There was no sort of angel took them away before you got to see him kind of thing.

John Larsen [00:49:51] Correct.

Carah Burrell [00:49:51] That's how you know that it wasn't from God. Because God's MO is to take them away.

John Dehlin [00:49:55] God wouldn't want to give you the ability to not have.

John Larsen [00:49:59] But God did take them away in 1900, before the Internets came around. So we could get faith. Check, make Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:50:07] God was busier that time.

John Larsen [00:50:09] Right.

Carah Burrell [00:50:10] Things to do.

John Larsen [00:50:11] So the plates, there's six images. One of them has a picture of, of some rolling hills that are supposed to be this place that, that they, they, they buried him. And four of them have a squiggly sort of Hebrew kind of looking text. It is not the same text we see on the.

John Larsen [00:50:33] What the Anton script. Is that what it's called? But the same sort of gibberidoo, lots of dots and things. I would say, as I'm not an expert. My undergraduate degree was in linguistics. I've looked at a lot of languages, especially Sanskrit based languages, Bali and stuff. This does not look like a natural language to me for various reasons. Like a natural language, the more strokes that you have on a character, the less likely you are to write the character. So if you're looking at Japanese kanji or whatever, if it has one stroke or two strokes or three strokes, those are really common. So when you look at text in writing, be it Greek or Roman or, you know, Japanese or whatever, the more complicated a character is, the less likely you'll see it in frequency because human beings are lazy.

John Larsen [00:51:25] And so. But this, this doesn't seem. And they are also the. You can tell by the language how they actually produced. So old Roman script is very structured because you would chisel it right. And the same way with cuneiform, it was pushed into.

Carah Burrell [00:51:41] So.

John Larsen [00:51:41] So there's things we know about language. These angiosis do not conform. They don't look like natural language to me. Think of what it is. Okay, so let's see. They. They. They pull them out. They find the thing. They. They're. They're made of brass. And he tells them, this is the. This is the writings of Raja Manchu of Orito. Raja Manchu of Vorito.

John Dehlin [00:52:10] I mean, why not, right? Why not?

John Larsen [00:52:12] How is that any crazier than Moroni? The Raja.

John Dehlin [00:52:17] It's like Raja Ghoul from. From Batman.

John Larsen [00:52:20] Right?

Carah Burrell [00:52:22] Sounds like a guy that I met at a commune once.

John Larsen [00:52:26] There's a lot to unpack there.

John Dehlin [00:52:29] It sounds like. It sounds like part two of Mormon stories with terrible.

John Larsen [00:52:33] Was he a magic man? Did you write home to mom about him?

Carah Burrell [00:52:36] He had his own off brand of Doritos called Rajitos.

John Larsen [00:52:40] Okay, I. You are blessed tonight because I am going to read you the translation of these plates.

John Dehlin [00:52:47] Did you make this translation or was this James Strings?

John Larsen [00:52:50] This is strings translation.

John Dehlin [00:52:52] So it's a prophet's translation.

John Larsen [00:52:53] Yes. My people are no more. This is in the voice, just to make sure. This is in the voice of Raja Manchu of Vorito.

John Dehlin [00:53:04] Okay.

Carah Burrell [00:53:05] Why are you laughing, John?

John Larsen [00:53:06] Yeah, I mean.

John Dehlin [00:53:07] I mean, you are a Mormon.

Carah Burrell [00:53:08] How dare you?

John Larsen [00:53:09] How dare you?

Carah Burrell [00:53:10] Hey, this is actual scripture of a real religious group right now.

John Dehlin [00:53:14] Or it's someone's sacred beliefs.

John Larsen [00:53:16] This is someone's sacred beliefs that you are laughing at.

John Dehlin [00:53:19] You're laughing, too. You're laughing.

John Larsen [00:53:20] So I'm laughing at you laughing at them because my heart's broken, all right? My people are no more. The mighty are fallen, and the young slain in battle. Their bones bleached on the plain by the noonday shadow. The houses are leveled to the dust, and in the moat are the walls. They shall be inhabited. I have in the burial served them. And their bones in the death shade towards the sun's rising are covered. They sleep with the mighty dead, and they rest with their fathers. They have fallen in transgression or not. But the elect and faithful there shall dwell. The Word hath revealed it. God hath sworn to give an inheritance to his people where transgressors perished. The word of God came to me. I'm reading Holy Word. Will you just. Oh, you're okay. You're praying. All right.

John Dehlin [00:54:12] Okay.

John Larsen [00:54:13] The word of God came to me while I mourned to the death shade saying I will avenge me on their dis on the destroyer he shall be driven out. Other strangers shall inhabit the land. Okay, now we're getting into Mr. Delin.

John Larsen [00:54:30] Don't maybe come over there. Wait, we're getting to the money shot here. Don't lose it early. Okay. The. The. The escape of my people there shall dwell. Let's see. He shall be driven out. Other strangers shall inhabit the land. Now he's talking about Vori, right?

John Larsen [00:54:48] I am an ensign there will set up. That's what it says here on my page. I don't know if it's a sick or whatever. The escaped of my people there shall dwell. Where the flock disowned the shepherd and built not on the rock. The forerunner man shall kill. The forerunner man shall be killed. But a mighty prophet there shall dwell. I will be his strength. And he shall bring forth thy record. Record my words and bury it in the hill of promise.

John Dehlin [00:55:17] Is there any chance his name is James.

John Larsen [00:55:19] So. So.

Carah Burrell [00:55:19] Yes.

John Larsen [00:55:20] So. So the Raja.

Carah Burrell [00:55:26] Mr. Delin, we just talked about big tent Mormonism earlier.

John Larsen [00:55:33] There are.

John Dehlin [00:55:33] We're so cold hearted.

John Larsen [00:55:35] There are a few left and. And they. This is. This is their other claim of victory. They actually have the copyright on the name the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Salt Lake Brighamites are latter Dash, small D, small D A D a Y. But these guys are ladder full stop. Capital D day. Right?

John Dehlin [00:56:00] They're the big D's. Basically.

John Larsen [00:56:02] They're the big. The big D's. Yes. And they. The.

John Dehlin [00:56:05] Why are you laughing?

John Larsen [00:56:05] So the.

Carah Burrell [00:56:07] The Raja Beaver Island.

John Larsen [00:56:08] The Rajah himself appoints. Predicts from the grave that Joseph Smith will die and that another will come in his place. Right. You know, and. And for. For Mormons again, that is the. The Joseph's ascent to leadership is predicted in the Book of Mormon. The book that he translated from records that he found in the ground. But Joseph didn't move a trio. And there was nobody there.

John Dehlin [00:56:40] Yo. Yeah.

John Larsen [00:56:41] There was nobody there to observe him. Dig it up. He just showed him the plates later.

John Dehlin [00:56:45] Right? None of this. None of this like spiritual eyes garbage.

John Larsen [00:56:50] Let's review this because you've all been through Sunday school. Four witnesses. Never.

John Dehlin [00:56:55] Not just three.

John Larsen [00:56:56] Not just three. Four.

Carah Burrell [00:56:59] I just. Can I just. I want everyone if. You know, sometimes they take comedy and they make it into like a cartoon. I would do that and I would draw you arguing with like a missionary and pretending to be a strangite or something. Being like, hey, Listen, Mormons, I've got to tell you about my prophet.

John Larsen [00:57:14] They're out there. You can go to Burlington and. And the. The Strangites are still out there.

Carah Burrell [00:57:18] Yeah. Okay. Make your case.

John Larsen [00:57:20] And before anybody, I want to know, I. I equally disrespect everybody. You notice I am saying Strangite, but I also say Brighamite.

John Dehlin [00:57:27] So he's an equal opportunity offender.

John Larsen [00:57:29] Yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:57:31] Okay, so not three witnesses, but four.

John Larsen [00:57:33] Not three. Underneath the tree. Strang just sits there eating a Ding Dong, yo. He's like, hey, go over there.

John Dehlin [00:57:40] And it's not just that Joseph dug it up by himself. So he could have created them.

John Larsen [00:57:44] He could have.

John Dehlin [00:57:45] But in their case, it's four witnesses watching the dude dig up the plates,

John Larsen [00:57:49] which they showed openly to people with

John Dehlin [00:57:52] their physical hands and eyes, not their spiritual eyes.

John Larsen [00:57:54] Experience.

Carah Burrell [00:57:55] Right.

John Larsen [00:57:56] And I. I want anybody to explain to me how he pulled this trick off. How in the world did he bury those things under a tree? Because I can give you lots of ways Joseph Smith pulled his tricks off. Matter of fact, one time he kept him in a box buried underneath the hearth. Right. And so they knew that. Right? So this gang breaks into Joseph Smith's house, pulls up the hearth, gets out the box, breaks it open, and it's full of what? Sand. Oh, well, jokes on you. I had removed the plates beforehand, and it was really just sand in there the whole time. Neener, neener.

John Dehlin [00:58:34] Right.

John Larsen [00:58:35] But Strang does not need to reduce himself to such street magic tricks. He's full. Chris Angel. Right.

John Dehlin [00:58:42] Okay.

John Larsen [00:58:45] I'm just gonna let that sink in for a minute while I find my place.

John Dehlin [00:58:48] Who's Chris Angel?

Carah Burrell [00:58:50] I was gonna say David Blaine is entering.

John Larsen [00:58:52] Joseph street magician guy.

Carah Burrell [00:58:56] You know, somebody who's got big reveals. I was thinking more of a David Blaine kind of. Or just somebody who's like something that they have been in the works for years. Somebody who is a. Like how method actors take on a role. Maybe. James Strang has been planning this since he was like 10 years old. You never know.

John Larsen [00:59:11] I don't know. I. I honestly, I don't have an explanation for this.

John Dehlin [00:59:16] No, I mean, there's no explanation.

John Larsen [00:59:18] I don't find it convincing. I mean. But I don't have an explanation.

Carah Burrell [00:59:22] I'm getting there, though.

John Larsen [00:59:22] So Raja Manchu of Orito was not the only ancient source.

John Dehlin [00:59:28] What?

John Larsen [00:59:29] Later the string was said that he had found the plates of Laban, which are not those plates of Laban. He called them the plates of Laban, but he said they dated to the pre Babylonian era and that there are seven.

John Larsen [00:59:47] Seven saints who were all apostles of Strang who claim to have seen the plates of Laban. We don't have any, any record of them. And I do believe in the book of the Law of the Lord, which is the scriptures that Strang wrote. He quotes from the book of Laban sometimes, but it's been a while. When I first studied These guys, like 20 years ago, when I cared more about stuff like this, I did actually read some of the book of the Law of the Lord and it's just like you would think it would be. Okay. All right, let's. Let's move on. We still got to Beaver island, right? We're just getting rolling here.

John Dehlin [01:00:22] Okay.

Carah Burrell [01:00:23] Oh, quick question, Kathleen. Let's. Did the witnesses sign their own name like Oliver Cowdery signing for all eight witnesses?

John Larsen [01:00:32] I don't know. I did not review their witness statement. So. So I'm reading a lot of second hand material. I. I am not a first hand researcher.

John Dehlin [01:00:40] If they sign their name another one up, right?

John Larsen [01:00:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah. But as far as I know they, the witnesses stayed true. They never, they never recant it all for four. All four of them. Yeah. And then seven later and then if you add string to the four, that gets five. Five plus seven is 12. And we know that 12 means something in Mormonism. All right. Okay. So. So, so let's go back to Nauvoo a little bit. Succession and, and talking about the succession crisis. You've probably done several episodes on Mormon stories over the years. It was really complicated. If not we need to do one in the future and, and we have actually the victor. Oh well, the succession crisis was really kind of a.

The Succession Crisis and Move to Beaver Island

John Dehlin [01:01:23] Is there Mormon expression episode about the succession crisis?

John Larsen [01:01:26] I don't remember.

John Dehlin [01:01:27] I guess our listeners can go search right now and tell us.

John Larsen [01:01:29] I know that we talked a lot about it when we did the Navu Expositor and when I would refer people to go find the old Expositor episodes where we go through and talk about a lot what was going on at the time.

John Larsen [01:01:40] The. The. The succession was not clear. Joseph did not lay out a succession plan at all. And he left several ambiguous things. This being one of them. The. The Vori letter. Also Joseph Smith implied more than once that his son would be take up the church. There are others who say it was the 12. But as. And if you really want to read about the succession crisis, then I recommend D. Michael Quinn's book Mormonism Origins of Power or whatever. He really goes through the succession crisis because the, the 12 and the 70 were of equal were equal in the original. In the Nauvoo period, they didn't exercise more power than the 70 did collectively.

John Larsen [01:02:30] So they all start excommunicating each other around about now. And Strang was excommunicated on the 20 by the 12 on August 26th. Sidney Rigdon was excommunicated by the 12 on September 8th. So, so things, things getting out of control. Brigham Young lost control of Nauvoo pretty damn quick. And which is why they, they, they headed out to winter quarters in the winter of, of. In late 45, 46.

John Dehlin [01:02:55] And there was still Joseph Smith III who was a baby, but. But in line.

John Larsen [01:03:00] Right. Emma did not like Brigham Young at all. Not one, not one bit. And Brigham was really trying to get capture the Smith family. Not capture like chains, but. But that led to some of the succession crisis because it was not clear at all if the, if the. If they should follow the 12. So, so I just want to make the point briefly here. And it's a. It's a whole rabbit hole to go down. But the 12 did not have the power and authority in the church in the Nauvoo period that they later built in. In Utah.

John Larsen [01:03:36] Okay. So. So Mormons were forbidden to either listen to any Vori missionaries, any Strikenite missionaries, or to read the Vori Herald. So I mean that, that gives a indication, you know, they weren't even. They weren't even allowed to look at that stuff.

John Larsen [01:03:54] All right, let's talk about Beaver Island. So off in, In Lake Michigan, I don't know where it is. Beaver island is the largest of the islands. And their beaver were extinct from the island that the trappers had killed them all.

John Larsen [01:04:08] But it is 58 square miles. So it's not. It's not an insignificant place. Beaver Island. And at the time it was mostly not populated. The. The author writes of a strange construction. Construction in the book. He says something like the island was not populated except for the two villages there. And I didn't. Couldn't figure out what the hell he was trying to say. So there were some trading posts, some fishing villages. I think people would come on the island and stay there for a short time and then get off.

John Larsen [01:04:40] So, so he goes out to Beaver island and declares that this is going to be the new home, which creates some controversy because there was just all this revolution revelation about Voree. And they never completely abandoned Voree. But Strang does leave or E and move to Beaver island to start setting up. Setting up the church. There's a lot of intrigue and stuff that goes along and we don't necessarily want to get into all of it as it gets more violent.

John Larsen [01:05:07] But of note, so, so, so, so Strang starts making some doctrinal decisions and a lot of what he makes were also ideas that were floated around by Young. So they're likely things that Smith was proposed proposing. One of the key teachings of the church, and again, Brigham Young taught the same thing, was that Jesus was not born of virgin birth and that Jesus was not, was not sired by God.

John Larsen [01:05:40] Now, now that, that belief bounces around quite a bit, but there's actually some biblical reason for saying that, because I think in Luke, well, I'm not a biblical scholar, but in Matthew and Luke there's two different genealogies given. And in, in one of them, I think, I think the, the one that's in Mark, it establishes that Jesus is a descendant of David, so that he holds inheritance to the, the, the throne of, of Israel. Basically. The problem with that is that the Israelis or the Jews practiced patrilinear succession.

John Larsen [01:06:20] So it would matter not one wit that he was um, related to David through his mother. It would have to be through his father. But so, so Strang taught that there wasn't a virgin birth, that Jesus was actually a descendant of David. And then strength started teaching that he himself was a descendant of the same line. So implying that he was a descendant of Jesus, which again was not an unheard of belief in early Mormonism. I would care, say if you got him drunk, about 25% of conservative Mormons would tell you that Jesus had children. So, so it's, it's not a strange belief because early church leaders believed that, that they were descendants from Jesus Christ himself.

John Dehlin [01:07:03] Totally.

John Larsen [01:07:06] So String condemns polygamy and because that was part of what, what blew everything up until he meets Elvira.

John Dehlin [01:07:20] All the prophets condemn polygamy at first.

John Larsen [01:07:22] At first, Elvira, including Joseph, AKA Charlie.

John Dehlin [01:07:27] Well, I mean this is another parallel. Joseph in the Book of Mormon kind of prohibits polygamy. And then in the, in the first version of the Book of Commandments is a section 111 or whatever it's saying polygamy is a no no.

John Larsen [01:07:38] Right, Right.

John Dehlin [01:07:38] So it's a no no before it's a yes yes before it's a no no.

John Larsen [01:07:41] Right.

John Dehlin [01:07:41] Basically.

Carah Burrell [01:07:42] Or it's an oh yes.

John Larsen [01:07:44] So her name was Elvira Field. I'm not making that up. And she comes rolling in to vori when she's 17 years old. And that's when Mr. Strang meets her and he officially marries her as his second polygamous wife on July 13, 1849, just so you can see how long it took him to turn that around. Yeah. For reference, the. The. The Brighamites came out of the closet with polygamy in 1852 to the General world, even though in Salt Lake City it was openly practiced before that. But 1852 was the official coming out, so. So Strang takes Elvira on as his second wife. I think his first wife's name was Mary.

John Larsen [01:08:29] Forgive me for not writing that down. She had three children with Strang, but by all accounts, she kind of thought he was a jerk. And there's. Their relationship fell apart once he took on Elvira. Now, what's funny about Elvira is at the same time that he starts jocking around with Elvira in secret, he gets a new secretary named Charlie who travels around with him who people say had suspicious curves.

John Larsen [01:08:57] So. So. And later there's people who identified that Elvira was indeed Charlie, but Strang had the. Had the balls to. With his plural, like she. You know, she. When she got married in 1849, she was 20. So just. So she's. She's this young woman. By all accounts, she was very intelligent, and he was really attracted to that element. And he. She became his kind of companion in. In running the church while he left Mary at home with the kids.

John Dehlin [01:09:29] But it reminds me of the Life of Brian episode.

John Larsen [01:09:31] Yes, yes. So you can see you're wearing a fedor and having a mustache painted on, and everyone, you know, it's. It's. It's full on Shakespearean. I mean, does. Does that really work? Can. Does it. Does it ever really happen? But. But Charlie. Charlie. Elvira was a second polygamist wife.

Polygamy, Kingship, and Life on Beaver Island

John Larsen [01:09:51] So why polygamy? We should pause to ask that question here. Well, quite frankly, at the time, in Mormon, um, theology, women were a commodity that women were just another thing to be traded and owned. And so I think why. Why, in my view, Strang eventually ended up practicing polygamy is the same reason they go after land, the same reason they go after money, the same reason they go after power. It is just another element of control. And when you're sitting at the top, if you can have eight wives, have eight wives because it's a sign of authority. There's also a doctrinal reason for it. Joseph Smith taught quite a bit, and.

John Larsen [01:10:32] And Young and those others picked it up that your kingdom was your progeny, your offspring. So it was very important for these men to have as many children as they could have, because that's how they were building their own kingdoms that they would use to populate their own worlds as gods in the future. So, so it kind of was a natural outgrowth of the Mormon faiths. Just utter disregard for the feminine. I, I, you know, there's, to me, there's nothing redeeming about the way polygamy was practiced. Matter of fact, in my belief. And maybe we'll do an episode. Why I think this, I think Joseph and William and, and Bennett and those guys were basically just swinging, right?

John Larsen [01:11:13] They were just like having a good time. That, that I can get down with that, that makes sense. Right? Like human beings like to screw each other. Okay, so, so, so do it. But it's when they start codifying and say for me, but not for thee. And, and that, that's when of course, and then the, the misfortune is really to the women, the, the fall.

John Dehlin [01:11:34] It isn't that pretty much what primates do. Like if you look at gorillas, there's the alpha male, the grayback or whatever, and he gets as many female companions as he wants. And that's kind of what alpha males do as primates, depending.

John Larsen [01:11:47] Well, from what I, from what I've read is some, some primatologists have said a little bit too. Like for example, chimpanzees do that, but they're extremely cheaty. So, so it's, it's true that like the, the, the alphas have control of, of, of the, the, the ladies, but the ladies don't mind sneaking around behind their, their back. So, So a lot of adultery among the chimpanzees, from what I understand. Of course the bonobos, ex Mormons love talking about the bonobos, who they, they with everybody.

John Larsen [01:12:22] So, so our, our primate ancestors are rather randy, just like, just like us. So, so I mean, I mean when you get sex involved, it's not that surprising. Okay. So by July 8, 1850, Strang, who has a fascination, if you read the book, the author keeps coming back to this theme over and over again. To me, it's not as interesting of a point that the author argues that Strang was always obsessed with the idea of being a king and that sort of power. So on, on July 8, 1850, he is crowned king. And it's important to note what he means by that.

John Larsen [01:13:03] He meant that he was king of the church because they call him King of Beaver Island. I call him the same thing. It's kind of derogatory. Just because he anointed himself king on Beaver Island. King of Beaver Island. Right. But, but I don't think Strang would say I'm king of the United States or I'm king of the world. But he would have believed, and he did believe that they were building the literal kingdom of God and everybody would come and, and be assumed. By the way, for those of you who aren't Mormons, the 12 apostles, which there's 15 of, still believe that this day they believe that they are the rightful heirs of the entire government of the United States and everyone will succumb to their leadership.

John Larsen [01:13:43] Can you imagine what an awful place that would be? All right, enough commentary. So, so he, he, he. He has himself coronated and he uses a lot of, a lot of the, the same stuff that even drew in his little thing. We, we. We put up the, his, his little Manchu Raja Mancha. If you're looking on your screen, the picture on the right, it shows, it shows the raja, I guess. Or maybe it's Strang, I don't know. But there's a guy who looks like he's holding a sword.

John Dehlin [01:14:18] I got a mohawk going on.

John Larsen [01:14:20] A mohawk or some kind of crown.

Carah Burrell [01:14:23] Definitely baked.

John Larsen [01:14:24] And he's got nice lashes. Those are definitely not extensions. There's an eye and it looks like a scepter up above. And then there's a stylized version of the sun and a stylized version of the moon. But that moon is very like 19th century European moon. It has a face on it. It is not. That is not.

John Dehlin [01:14:46] I've.

John Larsen [01:14:47] Yeah. And then there are very.

John Dehlin [01:14:49] Harry Connick Jr. Man in the moon.

John Larsen [01:14:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:14:51] Smiling.

John Larsen [01:14:52] Each of those, the sun and the moon have six crosses or six stars around them each. And then there are 10 bigger star or 12 bigger stars, of which three have like long hats or something on them. Now the. How many spires are on the Salt Lake Temple? There's.

John Larsen [01:15:11] Oh, it's complicated. Like there's the ones representing the Aaronic priesthood, the ones representing. There's. There's like six of them on each side. There's like 12 spires or something like that. But when he has himself crowned, he has his crown made of tin. And the author argues that that's because Strang thought it was shiny. I thought that was a little bit of a low blow. I thought that it was. Strang oftentimes issued the, the wealth, but he had on robes and they had actually got some Masonic regalia and some other things. And, you know, he literally sat on a throne with a scepter. As far as I know, Brigham never like donned the ermine, like, like a cape or anything.

John Dehlin [01:15:51] Like that.

John Larsen [01:15:51] I don't, I don't know that the church ever really had king regalia. But Strang did. God bless him. So he, he points himself king of the King of the Church, king of the Kingdom of God. And things go south from there on, on the, the island gets pretty raucous. The. That there are like kind of like the, the. The. The main city.

John Dehlin [01:16:17] So I bet it's Lord of the Flies. I'm predicting kind of Lord of the Flies.

John Larsen [01:16:20] Well, well you've got the, the fishermen and different people. They actually started creating their economy. The paddle boats or the steamships would stop there to refuel with wood. It ended up being a good place on there. And that's how they, that's how they made their money on the church in, in the early days and then. But in the early 1850s string like is buying things for like a thousand dollars parcel of the land. So he's actually getting money and things coming in. They, they have a lot of disputes with the Gentiles around, a lot of it about control of that bay and who comes in and out and, and what's happening.

John Larsen [01:16:56] And they eventually buy a cannon. So they have this 4 inch cannon that they have sitting in front of their temple or whatever that they. They point at the Gentiles when they're, when they're pissing them off or whatever.

John Larsen [01:17:08] So like. And by the way, the, the. All the people who were there at the coronation were the, were the Fraternal Order of the Illuminati is what they were called. So. So the Strang had his council of 50 called the Illuminati and Joseph was of course the council of 50.

John Larsen [01:17:27] I didn't mention this, but it is worth mentioning during the, during his early days before he went to Beaver island, before he coordinated himself. That kind of scared a lot of people away. He did get several notables. The. William Smith, Joseph Smith's little brother joined up with the Stringites for a while.

John Larsen [01:17:49] Martin Harris is said to have communed with them. But Martin Harris never left Kirtland. I think that's a stretch to say that Martin Harris And Martin Harris famously said I didn't leave the church, the church left me. Got a point.

John Larsen [01:18:05] Let's see. William Marks joined with them. Johnny Page, we remember Trusty and Trust the Church. George Miller, Lucy Mac Smith, Joseph's mother. Joined, joined up with them. John C. Bennett did. So he pulled in a lot of illuminaries. Most of these guys, if not all of them eventually became disillusioned and left. And it was their disillusionment. And when they came back to Nauvoo, that really kick started the reorganized church.

John Dehlin [01:18:33] Did you already say Martin Harris?

John Larsen [01:18:36] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:18:36] Okay. Okay. Yeah. So Martin Harris and Lucy Mack. That's a pretty big deal, I think.

John Larsen [01:18:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. And. And William Bennett was not, you know, he. He was. He was a leader. And Johnny Page of the.

John Dehlin [01:18:48] John C. Bennett or William.

John Larsen [01:18:50] William or. Sorry, I keep saying that wrong. John C. Bennett joined with them for a while.

John Dehlin [01:18:54] He was a scalawag. I'm not sure that's too.

John Larsen [01:18:57] John, how do you take all these people and point that this one. I. I want to know your favorite.

John Dehlin [01:19:04] As opposed to spiritual wife.

John Larsen [01:19:05] As opposed to bringing.

John Dehlin [01:19:06] There is a clear difference between spiritual wifery, which John C. Bennett was involved in, and celestial eternal marriage, which Joseph Smith was involved in. There's a huge difference.

John Larsen [01:19:16] You're just trying to cover the fact that you have drunk the Kool Aid. Why do you believe John Bennett was a scoundrel and the rest of these guys weren't?

John Dehlin [01:19:23] Because have you ever heard of the new and everlasting covenant? Have you ever read Brian C. Hales? Ever? Are you paying attention? Are you paying attention, Johnny?

John Larsen [01:19:31] To the good parts? It's like when you buy a romance novel from a secondhand store. You kind of like drop it on the ground and see where the sea. Which part is the most read. And that's the exciting part. Sorry kids, I don't mean to give him. Introduce you to the vice of the world.

Carah Burrell [01:19:48] All right, wrap this up. I need to go to the romance section. Need to go test this theory.

Strang's Assassination and Legacy

John Larsen [01:19:53] Okay. Like all great men of this. Of this ilk, he was murdered in 1856 by. By four of his followers. Almost always these men are killed by their followers. Let's see. I. I pulled this paragraph actually from Wikipedia, so. Forgive me. On Monday, June 16, 1856, Strang was waylaid around 7pm on the dock in the harbor of St. James, the chief city on Beaver island. By. I think it was originally called Whiskey Flats or something like that, but by Wentworth and Bedford who shot him in the back. All this was carried out in full view of several officers and men who were stationed at USS Michigan, US Naval vessel which was docked in the harbor.

John Larsen [01:20:36] Now the. The president at the time. I don't care. Remember who had actually sent federal troops to go and investigate what was going on there like earlier in 1831. So during this whole period. I don't want to go into a full history of this that things just like Joseph Smith Things start getting bigger, they start getting out of control. There's violence, there's control, there's all that stuff. And eventually he is murdered, ending his reign. The church stays.

John Dehlin [01:21:03] Real quick.

John Larsen [01:21:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:21:04] Do we know what the total membership was at the peak of its popularity?

John Larsen [01:21:09] I don't. I wish I did.

John Dehlin [01:21:11] All right, dear listeners, if any of you want to Google or if any of you happen to know that, please comment in the comment section. Because I'm curious, was it dozens, was it hundreds, was it thousands?

John Larsen [01:21:21] It's, it's still there, you know, like still there now. Yeah, they're, they're still around and there are, there's like the Vori Wisconsin Visitor center that you can go to. They did leave Beaver island and they just went back to Vori where they've, they've stayed and been in continuous operation. They prefer they're the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and they see the term Strangite as a slight, kind of like Mormon. Stay. See the word Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:21:47] Yeah. As a victory for Satan.

John Larsen [01:21:50] As a victory for Satan. Yeah. Well, I, I actually don't know if they, if that's what they think or not, but I know they don't advertise themselves as Stringites, so I'm just giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Why Brigham Young's Story Overshadowed Strang's

John Larsen [01:21:59] Okay, so let's kind of recap. You know, I told you at the, at the beginning and, and we've, we've paused a couple times to belabor this point for you to kind of think about your feelings as, as I, you saw what we did is we laughed. We, we thought this was funny. Right.

John Larsen [01:22:16] But, but he has an angelic visitation by an angel that visits him and says to him, you're selected, you're the one. He has a follow up angelic visit that gives him a gift of the Urim and Thummim. He goes to a place that's designated and he finds ancient records which he digs up and has witnesses who validate that they are ancient records. He translates those records by the power of God and produces scripture. And that scripture itself again validates that he was chosen as, as the prophet to, to lead in the time more so than Joseph Smith. He is appointed by a previous prophet. Joseph Smith did not have a John the Baptist string did and the letter has been authenticated. He was able to convert apostles. So if you believe in the Mormon

John Dehlin [01:23:10] Church and a member of the, one of the first witnesses.

John Larsen [01:23:13] Yeah, yeah, you would believe these guys had the power of discernment. If you do not believe the 12 have powers of discernment, then you just as well join Carah's church, right? Maybe your church would be better. Church of Carah, Right? Like if you're going to be a Mormon, a part of the Mormon verse, then you're going to believe that being a special witness of Christ and a prophet, seer and revelator means something and not nothing.

John Larsen [01:23:35] So, so he's able to convince even the very elect, right? He's able to keep his church together. Joseph Smith bragged that no man, not even Jesus Christ, could keep his church together. This church is still functioning in 2021, right?

John Larsen [01:23:50] And they say, well, they dwindled in numbers. There's plenty of accounts in the Bible suggesting that there were not very many people, you know, a lot. And his wife, and she didn't even make it that harpy. So, so you know me, that's for me in my house, you know, the idea that the very righteous will dwindle in numbers is, is established by, by scriptural preference.

John Larsen [01:24:14] So, so he was able to convince people. He was able to find artifacts. He was able to create and translate scripture. He was able to reproduce everything that Joseph did. Now the question, why would anybody find Joseph's compelling and this one not compelling?

John Larsen [01:24:34] Because my, my, my, my, my contention is you probably found at least some part, if you were a believing member of the church, of the series of events that correspond with Joseph Smith. The first vision, you know, his visitation from Moroni, the translation of the Book of Mormon, all that probably tickled your feelings at some point and made you feel like this, the spirit was talking to you. So, so why is the one story compelling and not the other?

John Dehlin [01:25:04] Is that a rhetorical question?

John Larsen [01:25:06] Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a real question for real believers of the Mormon Church, because Strang seems more like a prophet than Young. And it's a future podcast. Everything Young ever predicted came wrong. He didn't get anything right.

John Dehlin [01:25:20] So Young didn't even call himself a prophet, really.

John Larsen [01:25:23] Not in the beginning. Yeah, but he, he, he did, he did later, and he made prophecies and they were wrong. So, so, you know, what does this mean for, for, for the, the movement? Well, I think what it means to me and, and again, I wish we could have a call in, show right here what people have to say.

John Larsen [01:25:47] For, for me, it really should show Mormons that their, their foundational story is not very compelling at all. Like, people go out to the Hill, Cumorah Visitor center, and there'll be these, these elderly, really strong, believing, super nice docents out there walking people around walking into this, this forest, you know, this sacred grove. And for Mormons who have already believed, who've already given over their belief to this system, it's, it's, it's produces religious experience.

John Larsen [01:26:21] It is meaningful like that this 14 year old boy in upstate New York says an angel visit him. But what I'm, what I'm trying to tell you is that story is not compelling to anybody. And when you see somebody else tell those kind of stories, you're not convinced. These things that are, speak spiritual, spiritual meaning and purpose to Mormons don't have meaning outside of that context. And I don't think unless people are being manipulated, which oftentimes. As a former missionary, I was unsuccessful missionary, but I was a missionary, I know what I was trained to do. We were trained to look for emotionally psychologically vulnerable people and prey upon their vulnerabilities, to separate them from their family, introduce them to a new family.

John Larsen [01:27:08] And then we would tell them. It literally said in the discussions, we, what you're feeling is the spirit. We would coach their feelings. That's a good feeling, that's a bad feeling. When you feel this, you're feeling the right thing. When you're feeling this, you're feeling the wrong thing.

John Larsen [01:27:21] And what strength should teach you is that the tricks that Joseph Smith employed are easy to reproduce, at least for experts. Right? And they're easy to one up. I watch magicians today and I can't tell you how they do some of their tricks. I don't know how they saw people in half. Well, I kind of do, but not really.

John Larsen [01:27:42] But I know that they're, I know that they're tricking me because I can tell by the way they're standing. I can tell by the way they're holding their hands. When I watch a magic show, magicians are not acting like normal people do. They act weird. So I take that as a red flag. Prophets, quote, unquote, do not act like real people. They act weird. And that should be a warning sign to you that you are being manipulated, that you are being lied to.

John Larsen [01:28:07] I don't think that God, if there is a God, needs to have us rely on secondhand needs to talk to 14 year old kids and have 14 year old kids tell us what that story is. I don't think God needs, you know, itinerant Baptist ministers who, who go and declare themselves to be king to tell, to tell us what, what to do. I think that, that, that God can find better methods. And I think what this story really does, it lays bare that the foundation of Mormonism is a bunch of horseshit. Well, there's your, there's your, there's your PG13.

John Dehlin [01:28:44] Tell us what you really think, Brother John.

John Larsen [01:28:46] Come on, John.

John Dehlin [01:28:48] You know, can I add just a tiny bit as well? Just that, just that the Mormon Church wants it two ways. They want us to respect the three witnesses and, and Lucy, the mother of Joseph Smith. And we need to. Well, Lucy's a valid witness of Joseph's divinity or divine sanction, and Martin Harris is one of the three witnesses. So. And they're super credible. In fact, the, you know, Daniel Peterson and the Interpreter foundation or whatever just released a, a movie, a cinematic Hollywood style movie on the amazingness of the three witnesses. I'm guessing that James Strang was left out of the script on that celebratory movie.

John Dehlin [01:29:28] But, but the, the apologists have wanted it and the church have wanted it both ways for a long time that, that on the one hand we need to celebrate, you know, the, the mother of Joseph and the three witnesses and the eight witnesses. And on the other hand, forget anything that they did or believed or followed afterwards. Yeah. And that, I think that, that should be concerning to, to fair minded people reviewing the evidence.

John Larsen [01:29:56] I think it's a really good point. I also think that there is this issue that showed up when, when, when the Brighamites, when the Salt Lake Corporation announced that we were no longer allowed to use the word Mormon.

John Larsen [01:30:10] There is such hubris coming out of Salt Lake City because there are hundreds and hundreds of denominations still today who trace themselves back to Joseph Smith. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the United States in the world today, if not into the millions, if you start counting like the, the community of Christ who are part of this whole network. And the, the Mormons, the Salt Lake City Mormons like to paint the, the, the, the other denominations. Notice I use the word denomination, they use the word schism.

John Larsen [01:30:46] Right. The schismatics, the, the apostates, you know, and, and they, they look at all of these people like these branches of a tree and they like, push, push this branch. Look at how ridiculous this branch is. They are claiming to be prophets, they're marrying multiple women, they're moving to, you know, like the, the colonies and all this stuff. But they all do exactly the same things.

John Larsen [01:31:13] You know, there, there's, there's really not any material difference other than one has become extremely financially successful. But as somebody who's, you know, who's marginally interested in actual Mormon doctrine or Mormon theology, which doesn't come up, but we're bringing it up pretty soon. We'll tease that for a minute. Actual Mormon theology, the, the theological underpinnings of these different movements aren't significantly different.

John Larsen [01:31:40] Somebody, a scholar reading about Mormonism 500 years from now would have a hard time identifying that this was a Strangite writing. This was a, a writing from, you know, from, from Short Creek. This was a writing from the Nauvoo, you know, reorganized period. This was a writing from Salt Lake. It would all just be a mishmash of the same.

John Larsen [01:32:04] Yeah, so, so, so the, the thing, the, the message there, I'm. I want to give the, the Salt Lake people who think they can control the word Mormon. You're not that special. And when you look at these other guys and see there's a bunch of weirdos, that's how the rest of us see you.

John Larsen [01:32:22] I believed it too. So I'm just being, I'm just being a dick. But, but you know, I was full in, fully believed it and all that kind of stuff. And I fully believe when I would read about the, the, the, the reorganized church and celebrate every failure they had and take pride in every hardship that they ran into, you know, that, that in, in 1856, Strang wasn't the only Mormon who was assassinated. Parley P. Pratt was assassinated that year also by the estranged husband of a woman he absconded with.

John Larsen [01:32:57] So it's easy to look and say, oh yeah, well, clearly the Strangites was a false church because he was murdered. But I drive up Parley's Canyon all the time.

John Dehlin [01:33:10] Right.

Carah Burrell [01:33:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:33:12] And I think when you're in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints small D mindset, it's like, well, we have numbers, so we won and we've got the money and the power, so we won. But you just. Well, that makes, that means the Catholic Church is true. You know what I mean?

John Larsen [01:33:27] Like, right.

John Dehlin [01:33:28] We're compared to however many billion people on the earth, we're still teeny and we're shrinking. You know, relatively speaking.

John Larsen [01:33:35] Look at we will be the growth of the Pentecostal movement. What was it in 1918 when the, when the founder predicted the earthquake and then. And that movement has grown to hundreds of millions of people in, in 100 years. So if you want to use which Mormons do. The fact of quick growing religions, you know, you know, they're, they're, they're not even in contention for the top spots. Right. So. So I think what happens is, is Brighamites tend to have this list of. They have this Big long list of items that prove that they're the true church. And I contend that everything on their list you can find in another.

John Larsen [01:34:13] But they'll just scoff and mock and, and dismiss. Yeah, so, so I understand the mocking. I mean, I get that part of it. But it just, I mean all of it just seems so weird today. That's what as somebody I, I was talking to, to a new friend and I realized it'd been 16 years for me since I, I went to the church as a, as a member. Right.

John Dehlin [01:34:38] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:34:40] And it just all seems so bizarre now. It just seems so, like it's not compelling at all. When you have this book like the Book of Mormon that has all this stuff and that's demonstrably unscientific, that's demonstrably not true. And it has this like regurgitated half assed theology that you can find in the Bible and, and everything that defines Mormonism is not really in there. Like why, what, what, what is the driver? Well, when you pull it away, it's like because I've been tripping. Trained to believe. Why would a 14 year old boy claiming he saw an angel in bed be a compelling story for anybody? Because you were told it was over and over and over in many ways. In songs, in prayers, in whispers, in

John Dehlin [01:35:30] since you're a baby status every week at church for three hours or two hours for your entire life.

John Larsen [01:35:38] So, so if you found restrain ridiculous. Well, Mormon Joseph was ridiculous because they really are tied together and you say one was just copying the other, but one could say that about the Mormon Church in entirety. You know, where did they get their idea for how to build? How to build. You go to the Kirtland Temple. It sure looks like every other country church.

John Dehlin [01:36:02] Yeah. And even if you go to the copycat thing, I was reading Fawn Brody's no Man Knows My History. There was Lumen Walters running around claiming sacred texts and claiming to find treasure before Joseph Smith was doing it. Or Sally Chase. Like if you want to say Joseph was the original, he wasn't the original. He was basically copying a whole lot of things.

John Larsen [01:36:22] Right.

John Dehlin [01:36:22] That he was swimming. And that was his talent was sort of as Terrell Givens would like to frame it now. He was an inspired syncretist. Well, I don't.

John Larsen [01:36:30] Look at, look at like the, the Shakers and Mother. What was Mother. Mother Mary. Mother.

John Dehlin [01:36:36] The one Mary Baker Eddie or White or.

John Larsen [01:36:39] Yeah, the Millerites. The, the. Even, even within a stone's throw of Joseph Smith. There were prophets, were a dime a dozen. At the time.

John Dehlin [01:36:46] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:36:47] And it's to the winners go the spoils, you know, and this story can be compelling because. Because they won.

John Dehlin [01:36:54] Yeah. Winners get to write the history.

John Larsen [01:36:57] Winners get to write the history.

John Dehlin [01:36:58] And you've already touched on this, but I just. I had to bring up this analogy because it helped, really help drive it home for me. You made the point that, well, the last refuge of Mormons, of faithful Latter Day Saints, is their feelings. Well, but I feel yucky when you tell the story of James Strang, but I feel warm, fuzzy, you know, cold tinglings down my back when I think about Joseph Smith or hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. And then I thought about, like, how much I loved Rush's 2112 album growing up.

John Dehlin [01:37:30] Like, I loved Rush. All their albums were great. But 2112 was super special. And so I would listen to it over and over and over again. At first I heard my. My siblings listening to it. I'd hear it on, you know, 96X rock station. I would listen to it over and over again. And before I knew it, I knew that. That Rush 21:12 was the Lord's one true LP. It was. It was. I've even got some people nodding here. And then I would share it with other people who didn't have that same history with it. And they would just look at me and go, this is weird.

John Dehlin [01:38:04] This is loud. This sounds dumb. And I'd be like, how can you not feel the Holy Spirit of 2112 descend upon you like an angel or a dove, sending tingling down your spine? The difference is they didn't have their older siblings listening to it. They didn't listen to it for years and years and years. They didn't have all the memories associated with listening to it. Driving down the car with your buddies with the windows down, rocking out to Neil Peart and Geddy Lee and Alex Lives, and. And then you just realize all those emotions. It turns out that the Holy Ghost within Mormonism feels a lot like social approval.

John Larsen [01:38:41] There is a book I'm going to recommend called the Manipulated Mind by Dennis Winn. W I N n the Manipulated Mind, subtitled Brainwashing, Conditioning and Indoctrination. He focuses mostly on what happens to prisoners of war, but it was a really important book that I read when I was deconstructing Mormonism for myself. There's a couple of points that they come away with, which is, you know, you've seen lots of movies where people resist torture. You can't. No one can. It can't be done. They will change your psychology if you, if, if it's the CIA or the, or the, or whatever, they, they will win. They will beat you. And he does talk about how they, they not only can get you to spill whatever secrets you have, they'll get you to love them like real, like you'll have real feelings of affection for, for your torturers when they come into

John Dehlin [01:39:35] like Elizabeth Smart eventually did for Brian David Mitchell.

John Larsen [01:39:38] Right. Elizabeth Smart is a great example of that. And it happens over and over and over again. And how we can Hearst with, you

John Dehlin [01:39:44] know, her, her killer.

John Larsen [01:39:45] Yes.

Carah Burrell [01:39:46] At Mormon Stories.

John Larsen [01:39:47] What it's, it's the, the. Unfortunately, the road map for how to manipulate the psychology of human beings has been discovered and it is a playbook that the church uses. And, and unfortunately it is so effective that you'll have grown educated adults who have been taught, who've been conditioned to have certain emotional responses to certain things and they full on believe that, that that's what. When I, you know, you talk about Terrell Givens and Fiona. I really, really enjoy Terrell's book by his own hand. I would recommend that. And we're gonna do a podcast here of what I recommend the Faithful Faithful books that I, I recommend to read. And that's one of them I would stay clear of. The rest of his stuff, but that, that one's good.

John Dehlin [01:40:31] The rest of his.

John Larsen [01:40:33] Well, it's just because it doesn't, it's. I, he's, he's a, he's a, he's a beautiful man. He's a natural person. It's just what he's peddling now has nothing to do with Mormonism. Right, but, but, but you have these people who are very, very intelligent and understand the way the world works, but cannot see the operant conditioning that has been installed in their own self. Which is why ridicule and the stuff that I engage in is not by accident because what I'm doing, dear reader, is I'm breaking your operant conditioning by engaging in taboo.

John Dehlin [01:41:08] So it's not just as simple as you're an ass. It's not that simple.

John Larsen [01:41:11] Well, I mean that helps. It's like for that it's like becoming the President United States. You have to have lots of money and a big mouth. Right? So. So, so I don't have either. Well, I have one of those. Yeah, just the assholery helps. No, no, it, it's, it's. It's an important. Breaking taboos and, and those sort of things. An important part because you're you. This conditioning is really super strong. You do not have to take my word for it. I could give you a list of 25 books by renowned psychologists. This is John. You're a renowned psychologist. Am I making this up?

How High-Demand Religions Exploit Human Psychology

John Dehlin [01:41:49] No, you're not. Check out Luna Corbden's recovering agency. We have a. Like a 12 hour series on all the ways that high demand religions or cults use undue influence. But this is absolutely central.

John Larsen [01:42:04] Yeah, so I. I think. I think Strings story is interesting. It's. It's a tragedy. I don't. You know, this poor guy. I don't whatever. And the people who followed him, that they're. There's victims on victims on victims on victims. We're all.

John Larsen [01:42:18] Religion, in my view, exploits weakness in human psychology. And it's an unmoved mover. It's these systems that get in place, you know? No. What's the saying? No one drop thinks it's responsible for the flood. No one drop of water thinks it's responsible. And that's why the Mormon Church and these other things are so successful, because they're really hard to unwind. You think if. If Dallin Oaks got up today and said, I think it's all a fraud, it would fall apart? No, they. Everyone's been conditioned to. To take that. He would be destroyed. He would be ruined. He would. He would lose. He would lose things.

John Larsen [01:42:50] And people like you and I, you know, we. We. We who come up here, we suffer a little bit of blows. Not anything major, but we. We are going against. We are swimming upstream in this culture here. And people are conditioned not to hear what they don't want to hear. All of us. And I don't think this is because a lot of you listening have deconstructed Mormonism. Be careful. There are other movements that are pulling people in.

John Dehlin [01:43:15] What was that?

John Larsen [01:43:16] Oh, I said maga. Yeah, maga. I'm talking to you guys. Your cult. So there's a. There's. It has to happen one time in the episode. There are others.

John Dehlin [01:43:25] These views are not necessarily representative of the Open Stories Foundation.

John Larsen [01:43:29] I'm gonna call your. Are you really defending maga?

John Dehlin [01:43:32] No, I'm not.

Carah Burrell [01:43:32] Okay, but look like I look like I'd be. Maga. Is that good enough?

John Larsen [01:43:37] There are movements on the left that are equally. I. I don't want to sound like I'm just. Again, there are movements on the right, there are movements on the left. We are susceptible to false information. And we're susceptible to false information such a degree that when it is demonstrated to be false, I'll use QAnon. I was watching a little interview with a QAnon adherent who believes, as some QAnon adherents believe now, that, that, that. Who believes that Donald Trump is still the President of the United States. Because one of QAnon's big beliefs was that he was going to be reinstated, that there was this big movement against the pedophiles and all that kind of stuff and that he was going to be reinstated. And there was an interview with one of these guys and they, they presented the question, well then, was Donald Trump responsible for the pull out in Afghanistan?

John Dehlin [01:44:30] Oops.

John Larsen [01:44:31] He literally just couldn't answer it.

John Dehlin [01:44:34] Broke his firmware or the vaccine mandates or whatever.

John Larsen [01:44:37] He just, he couldn't. You could see his eye. It's like, like a cartoon. His eyes start spinning around. I'm not making fun of this person. We are all that person. There are, there are truths that we have been conditioned not to, not to want to confront. There's lies we tell ourselves and we all have to. And it's really easy to point fingers at maga. It's really easy to point fingers at the Mormons. It's, it's, it's. But, but the real trick is to look inside.

John Dehlin [01:45:01] Yeah, I see it all the time. I see, I see so many ex Mormons leave Mormonism and then acquire just new magic worldviews that are sometimes just as disturbing, if not more disturbing. I have a couple friends that are ER docs here in Utah and in Nevada, and they're telling these stories now of these patients coming in. They come into the ER room, although they come into the emergency or emergency room. They say, I'm dying. Help me. The doctor says, okay, let me figure out what's going on.

John Dehlin [01:45:31] Does a test, got Covid. They didn't get vaccinated. They're in the intensive care unit getting intubated and they're arguing with the doctor, saying, I don't have Covid. You're lying. This is a conspiracy. Somebody's paying you to diagnose me with COVID when I don't really have it. I refuse to believe that I have Covid. And they come to the ER dying, and many of them die arguing with the doctor as they take their last breath.

John Larsen [01:45:57] Weird. Yeah, it's, it's, it's really, it's really sad because Covid is a terrible way to die. It really is. They suffocate to death and it's miserable. It's misery. And it gives me so much pain to see the amount of suffering that's happening. That doesn't have to, but it also helps us understand just how susceptible and vulnerable humankind is to misinformation, how cautious we have to be and, and just committed to being, to, to really being careful.

John Larsen [01:46:34] Yeah, and, and the. What, Maybe we should address the do your own research thing. You've got to be careful when you do research. You've got to know, understand what you're looking at. You know, one of the reasons I've been successful in learning Mormon history is I pay very close attention to, to who the author is, what's their bias, where are they writing from? Where does this fit in with everything? How does this, how does this affect the other things? Which is why whenever I tell these stories from Mormonism, I always like to plug it into everything else that's going on. Because we tend to pull these things out of context.

John Larsen [01:47:10] Just like people who are leaving the military because they're required to get a vaccine, even though they've already been required to get 30 vaccines. They just, it just makes your head scratch and say, what, what are you talking about? I read recently that I think it was the state of, it was a southern state, maybe Tennessee. They had their first death from rabies in 70 years because the person refused to get the vaccine.

John Larsen [01:47:41] Like, I mean that shows the level of. Again, I'm not trying to make this political. I'm trying to say that's weird, right? Because they had taken this, this thing that became political and then turned it into something else. Anti vaccine. And then, then they refused a life saving treatment. There's no reason.

John Dehlin [01:48:03] It's like an antidote. Right. You get rabies, you get bitten, you're starting to die and they can give you an antidote to cure the rabies.

John Larsen [01:48:11] And if they had said we'll give you the antidote, the person probably would have taken.

John Dehlin [01:48:14] But they used the word vaccine because that have been.

John Larsen [01:48:17] They use the word vaccine and they died of rabies. What a terrible way to die.

John Dehlin [01:48:21] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:48:22] You know, so we have to be careful.

John Dehlin [01:48:25] Yeah. Yep. Critical thinking skills. And we all need to be aware it's not just orthodox Mormons, it's, it's all of us.

John Larsen [01:48:33] Right.

John Dehlin [01:48:34] Ex Mormons included.

John Larsen [01:48:35] Ex Mormons included. And, and whenever you're an ex Mormon, this, I'll say this controversial thing, I've said it many times. Ex Mormons are just Mormons. You have to understand that when you're first leaving the church, all those constructions, excuse me, all those constructions, all those way of thinking, all the emotional response is still there. And a lot of ex Mormons deal with that by inverting it, which is not necessarily a bad strategy, but it is still a strategy. It takes a while to land on your feet. That's okay. First of all, Mormons successfully navigate this world. You know, we. We talk as if they're.

John Dehlin [01:49:12] They.

John Larsen [01:49:13] People wander out of the church and they don't know how to, like, tie their shoes or anything like that. That's not the case. But it is extremely disorienting in a disorientation that lasts for years and a disorientation you oftentimes can't recognize you. You, you know, as if you talk to old salty ex Mormons. You know, they can tell, they laugh at themselves as they went through these stages, but hopefully they arrive in a healthy place, saying, well, the asshole I became as next Mormon for that first year was still a function of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:49:41] Yeah, right.

John Larsen [01:49:43] Mormonism produces ex Mormons. Right. So, so, so ex Mormons. Mormonism, just like Mormonism, is a contributing cause of juvenile suicide. That's clear in the state of Utah. Even though you can't find a causal, direct connection. Well, you can some places. It's in miracle forgiveness. Right. Where. Where it says that they said it's better to die than lose your virtue.

John Dehlin [01:50:08] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:50:09] So it's, it's heady stuff, but you're doing okay. Take it at your own speed.

John Dehlin [01:50:16] I mean, if you're listening to John Larsen, chances are you're doing better than

John Larsen [01:50:20] a lot of people if you made it this far.

John Dehlin [01:50:22] If you made it this far.

Closing Reflections and Community Announcements

John Larsen [01:50:23] So exciting news. I've been packing. I've been telling you I'm moving. I've been packing all my books. So I've been pulling aside some gems, some things that are not talked about very often, some interesting segments from the world of Mormonism. So I'm excited about this next year and the things and topics we're going to talk about.

John Dehlin [01:50:39] Are you saying there's more to come? There's more. John Larsen. To come.

John Larsen [01:50:42] There is more to come. And. And some really fascinating things. We're going to take some time going through what other people said about the Mormons. I think, you know, again, we always take it out of context, but. But the Mormons were around and there were people who came to Salt Lake to see what was going on, including Mark Twain. And I think it's interesting to look at some of what they said about the Mormons and, and their culture. I think that there have been some really brilliant people who've written inside and outside Mormonism about theological underpinnings and some of the more interesting things Joseph said, which we tend to ignore. So I, I think we've got some, some interesting podcasts coming up.

John Dehlin [01:51:26] I love it. As I'm looking at, as I'm looking at the Mormon Expression app on anchor. Mormon Expression is available in at least seven different platforms now, thanks to you, our listeners who support the Mormon Expression project. And 76, 000 total plays so far of your podcast. Some of the episodes have over a thousand, almost 2,000 listens. So that's a, that's amazing progress for a, for a podcast that was kind of only recently relaunched. So, yeah, that's super fun. You're gonna reach. I bet by the next time you're in front of us, you'll hit a hundred thousand plays.

John Larsen [01:52:13] I hope it's helpful. You know, it was a. Yeah, it is.

John Dehlin [01:52:17] It is. So thanks to everyone who has supported the Mormon Expression Initiative on Mormon Stories podcast. If you either value John Larsen coming on Mormon Stories or you really value the Mormon Expression Library now being made available, Please go to MormonStories.org Mormon expression. Your donations go to support John and the Mormon Expression Project.

John Dehlin [01:52:41] We are paying John for his time. We're happy to be doing that, John. I hope you got paid this month. If you didn't, we'll, we'll get right on that. But I, but, but just thank you so much for everyone who has supported or will support the Mormon Expression Project. Again, you just go to warmerstories.org Mormon expression, click on the donate button, become a monthly donor and we'll just keep having John back. We're actually, because John's moving, we're going to use some of your money to buy a high quality camera, high quality microphone and mixer and set John up so that maybe John could even appear more than once a month sometimes. Is that exceeding your contract? Will the Workers Rights Administration or the Union Screen Actors Guild, are they gonna.

John Larsen [01:53:23] You know, I don't have my SAG card yet. No, I think, I think that'll be fine. I do it as, as often as I want. And we'll go full circle to the back, to the front of what I was talking about. I titrate how much I do this to preserve my own mental health.

John Dehlin [01:53:39] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:53:39] And I would suggest, I mean, there's stages when you, dear listener, dear viewer, want to binge this stuff. I get it. I binged for a lot of years. But it's, it's, it's, it's good to, it's good to go. The, the world is a beautiful place. Still, it's good to put down the computer sometimes.

John Dehlin [01:53:56] I keep trying to tell Carah we're putting out too much content, and she just says, no, we got to keep going.

Carah Burrell [01:54:01] Yeah, I'm not feeling Stockholm syndrome right now at all.

John Dehlin [01:54:08] I am curious, listeners, do we put out too much content on Mormon Stories podcast? I want to know right now. Comment and let us know because we're torn, because it seems like sometimes the more content, the more happy people are and then we start to wear out. So anyway, let us know, listeners, if you want less content and you'll still support us. I'd be thrilled to ramp it down, to ratchet it down a little bit, but Carah, she's just. She won't stop.

Carah Burrell [01:54:33] I won't stop. I wish we had a pre show, post show commercial break in the middle of just chit chat. I just want to chat all day long.

John Dehlin [01:54:40] It's true. All right, Brother John, anything else you want to say before we close?

John Larsen [01:54:45] No. I appreciate all the kindness for everyone out there, you know, and just take care of each other. That's all we got.

John Dehlin [01:54:55] Be kind to each other, be good to each other. I love it. And listeners, thanks to everyone who the chat comments today were off the charts. So many good chats on both YouTube and Facebook. Thanks to everyone who joins us live. We had an audience of over 500 people simultaneous. It's a great audience. So many good chats. I wish we could show all your chats. And so many people were generous on YouTube donating through the super Chat feature. We really appreciate when you do that. It just helps keep the lights on, frankly, and the broadband on and everything else. So anyway, more awesome John Larsen to come. Be kind and good to each other. Carah, any final words?

Carah Burrell [01:55:33] Oh, can I just do one quick summary of what I think this episode was about?

John Dehlin [01:55:37] Oh, we got to plug thrive too,

Carah Burrell [01:55:38] but yeah, we gotta plug thrive too. Yeah, everyone come out to thrive. November 14th. One of my favorite quotes is the idea of why would God create creatures capable of reason and then demand that they act in a manner contrary to their creation? And it just reminded me when John Larsen was going through all the different denominations of Mormonism and the things that we can see as an outsider to their tribe. We can see things that look fallacious and look silly. And we can say that, okay, God created us to look at this, and we know that we're not going to be defrauded by another Bernie Madoff or whoever coming along, but then God asks for us to put that on a shelf for this particular brand of Mormonism and there's again a couple thousand different brands of this type of religion.

Carah Burrell [01:56:19] Anyway, so, so it does beg the question how, how we know what we know when we, when we are Mormon or we're Mormon. So that's what it comes down to me, that's the baseline. That's the summary that I think this podcast is much about. So. And then, anyway, yeah, go ahead and plug Thrive, guys. Go on to Thrive.

John Larsen [01:56:36] Great thoughts.

John Dehlin [01:56:38] Yeah, so Thrive, we're, we're having a, a conference. The whole purpose of Thrive, Thrive is a four loss organization. In other words, not only is it not for profit, we are guaranteed we're going to be losing tens of thousands of dollars at this Thrive coming up at the Salt palace in a week and a half. But that's how much our current underwriters believe in providing you with friends and community and tools and tricks and tips to support you in your journey. So if you guys feel interested, we have an amazing Lineup of speakers November 14th includes Lance Allred, former NBA basketball player, first legally deaf NBA basketball player.

John Dehlin [01:57:21] Sarah Edmondson, a former Nexium cult survivor, I guess. Nexium cult survivor actress on the HBO's the Vow. She's also co host with her husband Nippy. I think that's how you say his name for a little bit Culty podcast. But she's coming out. We've got RFM ready Free Mormon Bill Real Natasha Helfer, Me, Luna Corbden, Alan and Katie Mount for marriage on a tightrope.

John Dehlin [01:57:49] I know that I'm oh, Latter day Lesbians. Like I know I'm forgetting. Plus a bunch of cool Tick Tockers. Do you want to rifle off their names?

Carah Burrell [01:57:54] Carah, ex Mormon, Mindy, Kyleen, me, Jordan and McKay who are also YouTubers as well. They have a really great YouTube account and channel where they make content almost every week. They're competing with us now. They're doing some good stuff. Jack Mormon who makes hilarious tick tock videos, XML X and Devil Trout. So lots of different other people that are popular on the Tick Tock platform as well. And then there's also going to be a little party the night before Thrive, which we'll give more details about. But if you go to the Mormon Stories Instagram page, you will see some more details there. But yeah, we're gonna have a party. There's gonna be a cash bar that you can buy drinks at, you can dance and karaoke. So it's like a whole Saturday night and all of Sunday just like friends.

John Dehlin [01:58:37] So wait, people can karaoke with you Care Burrell.

Carah Burrell [01:58:40] Yeah, with you, John De Lin.

John Larsen [01:58:41] Does the whole world know that John de Lynn loves karaoke?

John Dehlin [01:58:44] I think it's probably obnoxiously well known at this point.

John Larsen [01:58:50] Sober karaoke, which is sort of.

John Dehlin [01:58:51] It's like I fear the world come

Carah Burrell [01:58:53] out for sober karaoke from John De Lin. I think it's an oxymoron, but it's.

John Larsen [01:58:57] Sober karaoke is like going to a nudist colony. A snow suit. What's the point?

Carah Burrell [01:59:03] It's fascinating. It's like a psychology study.

John Dehlin [01:59:06] It's almost like visiting Beaver Island.

John Larsen [01:59:08] Yes, the beaver were all gone. Hey, you teased it the last podcast. Who's going to take over and do thrive Portland. I commit that I will help, but I ain't gonna lead that thing.

John Dehlin [01:59:20] Yeah. So we're actually. So we are coming. If you're an Alpine, Lehigh or Highland, we're coming. We're at a Traverse mountain this Sunday, November 7th. We're going to hold a little get together at 11am brunch. There's going to be a food truck there, coffee and the whole purpose. It's free. The only reason we're doing that is because I am sick of so many families from Alpine, Lehigh or Highland coming to me saying we're the only people that have lost their faith in Alpine, Lehigh or Highland. We're alone here. We don't know anybody. And there are hundreds of of families in that area that have all left the church and they all think they're the only ones.

John Dehlin [02:00:01] So I literally just said I'm sick of it. Gosh dang it. I'm not taking this anymore. We scheduled an event at traverse Mountain clubhouse 11am Sunday, November 7th. And we're just going to show up and I'll say a few words only because that might help. A few more people come and you all can meet each other, become friends, form book clubs, form playgroups, form swinger. No, don't do swinger. And you can just find friends and community so that you can have a healthy, happy emergence from orthodox Mormonism. And the reason why I'm saying that is I want to do that wherever, wherever there's a need.

John Dehlin [02:00:37] So if Tooele wants John Larsen to come out and just say hi, we'll have John Larsen come out. Or Carah Burrell will come to freaking Ogden or Utah County, I don't know where. And we just want to have these mini events that are free where just you guys can all meet, start a Facebook group, meet each other, start friends and build community. And we want to do it in Portland and Seattle and SoCal. And because we just, I think the number one thing people want are just friends and community to do life with. Kind of like the living community.

John Larsen [02:01:10] Well, after being around here for 15, 16, 20 years, whatever it's been these, these groups, the, the, the ex Mormonism goes through these waves where there will be a strong community and oftentimes a strong community network across the United States. And the problem is this is very healthy. They break down for good reasons, which is people move on with their lives. And we could go through the genealogy of these people who have. And you can probably think, picture them in your mind. And I can too. John. People have put their heart and soul into these things. And then after four or five years, they, they move, they move on.

John Larsen [02:01:44] And we need new generations of people. These. Meeting other people in real life is really important and it's really healthy. And it's going to be even more important and more healthy in the coming months as hopefully we get Covid a little bit under control and we emerge not only from our cocoons. I am really honestly concerned about the number of people who left the church during the last year and a half, two years and not had that kind of support. It is critical, but it's not going to be done by people sitting in their throne like John de Lynn. It's going to be done by local people who are making things happen and who can know which coffee shop can have 20 people sit in it.

John Larsen [02:02:24] It's not hard. It's just, it's just somebody has got to take the first arrow. And you know what? There's going to be people who don't show up. I have hosted events where nobody came. No, I have hosted events where 300 people came. Why? But, but it's not you. You're gonna think people, you know, oh, they don't like me. I'm not.

Carah Burrell [02:02:45] It's.

John Larsen [02:02:45] It just. It needs to be somebody. Somebody has got to put their, their, put their plate down. And that's what John's saying. And not. It's not like a celebrity worship sort of thing. It's that there are those of us who know that they'll come out to see because I'm your friend in the radio, I'm the voice in the box. So at least there's a little bit of novelty to see is he really is goofy in real life. And, and I'm, I'm happy to do that, to help people find those relationships and friendships that are going to help them cross the threshold and eventually you're going to leave those and you're going to take some friends with you and you're going to make new friends and it's going to be great. Mormonism taught you to be isolated. You don't need to be isolated.

John Dehlin [02:03:22] I was talking to Alan Mount this morning and it's this idea of finding your pod. So often we've created these secular communities thinking that they would last and they all die. But what often happens is the people that come, if there's enough people come, you meet three or four families that you really like and you end up breaking off, stopping your participation in these communities. And that's all you need is three or four or five couples that you can hang out with. Kids are relatively similar age sometimes, and you can do decades of a really high quality of life with just a small pod of three or four families. I think.

John Larsen [02:03:56] I think so. I mean, that's what. But psychologically, we. If you're in a healthy place, you tend to have a very few number of close friends and then a bigger circle of acquaintances. And this is how you, you find those by. And. And it takes sitting in the parking lot getting the courage to go in. It is, it is, it is, it is hard. I've actually some of these things gone. I've been to the. I've gone out in the parking lot and knocked on the windows to bring people in from time to time. It's scary.

John Dehlin [02:04:25] I did. We did a retreat just a couple weeks ago and we asked people two questions at the beginning. How many of you almost turned around and went home? And there were like 15 hands that went up out of 40 people.

John Dehlin [02:04:37] And I'm sure there were people that, that paid but just didn't show. But the other thing is, we asked how many people had to lie to somebody to come and like half the hands go up, you know, because that's when you meet with Mormon Voldemort, you gotta lie to your parents to get them to babysit your kids, basically.

Remembering Shannon Flynn and Final Thoughts

John Dehlin [02:04:53] Anyway, we've belabored this enough. I do want to make a call. Call out. Shannon Flynn did pass away. We have some listeners who are writing in and, you know, condolences to the Flynn family, to his surviving spouse and to all the, the Flynn family and friends. We had Shannon Flynn on earlier this year.

John Dehlin [02:05:15] He was wonderful and an important figure in Mormon history and a really complex, tortured soul in many ways. But shout out to Shannon Flynn wherever you are or aren't, and condolences to your, your friends and family and, and

John Larsen [02:05:31] that does remind me. Also, we had another great passway. You probably already addressed it. The end of September, Will Bagley unpassed.

John Dehlin [02:05:37] You had him on Mormon Expression.

John Larsen [02:05:38] I did. He was. He was. He was a brilliant, fascinating, lovely human being. And he was one of the good ones. And his work is way more influential than his name. And. And he'll be sorely missed.

John Dehlin [02:05:58] Yeah. All right, all right. I think we've belabored this enough. Hey, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us. Be good to each other. Stay away from Beaver island if you can, and we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

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