Welcome and Listener Comments

Carah Burrell [00:00:00] Foreign.

John Dehlin [00:00:04] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's October 5, 2021, and I don't have the right camera angle pointing to me because why is care laughing?

Carah Burrell [00:00:20] Start over.

John Dehlin [00:00:21] Hello, everyone. No, it's fine. Hi, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John delinquent. It's October 5, 2021, and today we are super excited to be hosting back in our Mormon Stories podcast studios, the one, the only, the John Larsen. Hey, John Larsen.

John Larsen [00:00:42] Hey. Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:00:44] Welcome back.

John Larsen [00:00:45] It's always good to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:47] Yeah. And we're joined by the Carah Burrell. Hey, Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:00:50] Hey. John's. This is going to be another great live stream. Second one of the day.

John Dehlin [00:00:56] We're stoked.

Carah Burrell [00:00:57] We're so stoked.

John Dehlin [00:00:58] Yeah. So, as you guys know, we are. We, we are so thrilled that John Larsen has ex. You know, come out of retirement, so to speak, and has expressed a willingness, and indeed has acted upon that willingness to come here at least once a month to share with us his wit, his wisdom, his analysis of all sorts of things related to Mormonism. We've done many cool episodes in the past. I do want to say that we are up to like, 99% of the Mormon Expression Podcast episodes now being available on like, six different platforms.

John Larsen [00:01:36] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:01:36] We've got a few lost episodes that, that I need to add, but it's like literally like 6 or 7. And we've got 100% of your library. We're so grateful for everyone who is supporting the Mormon Expression Project. That's John Larsen's old podcast that we've helped, along with John, to bring out of retirement. So we're thrilled about that and, but also we're thrilled to have John back to be sharing with us some more cool stuff. And today we are going to be talking about pioneers, we're going to be talking about hand card companies, and John has prepared an analysis of what we're calling. Here's the official title. September 12, 1856, the worst regional Conference Ever. That is the title that John has for us. John, you're laughing. Why are you laughing?

John Larsen [00:02:28] It's because it's a silly title.

John Dehlin [00:02:33] Well, that's what we're going to be talking about today. So we've, we're all, we're all excited on the edges of our seats to hear what you've got for us, John. So sometimes you like to do a little bit of an intro and maybe even to talk about comments and past episodes so is there anything you've got for us?

John Larsen [00:02:51] Yeah, we always do a kind of a step back. There were the two comments that I read over the last couple weeks in particular, and they're ones that I've seen over and over again. The first one was something to the effect of that the writer and I didn't write down her name. She said, I'm so embarrassed because she was talking about, sorry, this is too, too early to start this stuff. This is not going to be an easy episode. She's. She said she. She's so embarrassed because she believed all this.

John Dehlin [00:03:24] She believed in Mormonism.

John Larsen [00:03:25] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:03:26] She was embarrassed your episode made.

John Larsen [00:03:27] She was listening to the episode and she was expressing embarrassment that she. That she believed it. I believed it all. We all did. And religion exploits some holes in our psychology. So there's things that we can prove wrong and there's things that we can't prove wrong because they're just not provable. Like the famous example of the teacup circling the moon.

John Larsen [00:03:55] You can't prove that there's not a teacup circling the moon. It is very unlikely, statistically, very unprobable, but you can't prove it. And that is a gap in our thinking. It comes from. In psychology and in statistics and other things, we talk about type 1 and type 2 errors. A type 1 error is that you see the grass kind of shuffle a little bit and you think, oh, my God, there's a tiger. And you run away and you do that over and over again and there's no tiger there. That's a type one error. You. You have a false positive, you misidentify something. A type 2 error is when you do not identify something that's dangerous to you.

John Larsen [00:04:38] The people who are prone to commit type 2 errors do not survive. If I. Every time I see the grass rustle, I think, there's a tiger in the grass. And I'm really anxious and scared and depressed about it. I still live, which is one of the reasons human beings are anxious, scared and depressed. If I do not see the tiger, I become dinner. I die, my genetic line drops out.

John Larsen [00:05:02] That's also mixed in with the fact that we evolved to be group animals. Human beings can't survive on their own, so it's important for group cohesion. So religion evolves to fill in those gaps that we can't dislodge it from our psychology.

John Larsen [00:05:20] If it wasn't there, then we would dislodge it. For example, if the Mormon Church were making a lot of claims that were easily falsifiable for everybody, then people would easily falsify it. But it doesn't. So the whole story, the whole mechanism, the whole thing wedges in our minds.

John Larsen [00:05:41] It is a defect that we evolved. And there's no shame in having believed it and believed it ardently. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. It is part of the human condition. It's like being embarrassed because you got your period.

John Larsen [00:05:59] It's nothing that isn't just normal and beautiful and part of living, even being wrong about things. It's what we do with it once we know that it's wrong, that it's the embarrassing thing. But no, there's no shame whatsoever in having believed all of this.

John Dehlin [00:06:16] So you want this person who made the comment to not beat themselves up to feel shame?

John Larsen [00:06:24] Yeah, there's no. Yeah. That. That even. No matter how long it takes you to pull this stuff apart, it's really hard to deconstruct this thing. That's why we have to do little piece by little piece. All right, another one that I see all the time. Don't you guys have anything better to do with your time than pull down something that people love? Well, tonight we're going to talk about some people who joined the church in England and Scandinavia and in. In. In France, even sold everything they had, came across the plains, starved to death and died. And we don't know who their names are. They're lost.

John Larsen [00:07:02] They're gone. So. So we do these things to honor those people. I don't want their deaths to be in vain. That. That there's some real people who really, really suffered. What we're going to talk about tonight, and I think that their identities and their persons should be honored.

John Dehlin [00:07:24] And just this claim that we have nothing better to do than to just kind of like criticize the church and attack the church and fight the church.

John Larsen [00:07:34] You know, we got better things to do, but it's important. This is important for a lot of people. Detangling this and figuring going through the identity crisis that necessary follows the faith crisis is hard and we need people to help. And I realize that there's a lot of people who are in the church in a positive way, and then it's a positive influence on their lives and family. God bless those people there. There's a lot of other people who are suffering, and it's those people I care about more.

John Dehlin [00:08:03] I love it.

John Larsen [00:08:04] The last thing is kind of an intro. The Gloria Steinem said, the truth will set you free, but first it'll piss you off. I. I'm apologizing in advance. Usually I try to keep things kind of light and funny. I'll say this right now, there's nothing funny we're talking about tonight.

John Dehlin [00:08:22] Okay. Yeah, yeah.

John Larsen [00:08:25] But. But I think it's. It's very important that everybody know this stuff. This is. This is rough stuff.

John Dehlin [00:08:34] Thank you, John. Thanks for the warning. And if I know anything, Carah's going to do her best to defy that seriousness and still throw some jokes in.

John Larsen [00:08:41] Anyways, we'll try. We'.

John Dehlin [00:08:44] She's zipping her.

Carah Burrell [00:08:44] I lost my voice again.

John Dehlin [00:08:47] Carah, I. I just want to say, I just. The super chats are lighting up, so I just. Yeah, I think we just need to thank some people really quick. Do you just want to do a couple shout outs?

Carah Burrell [00:08:57] Sure, Daniel. Thanks, Daniel. I'm gonna try to highlight them, except for I have to click on them this way. Yeah. Thanks for the 20 bucks. If anyone wants to donate either to Mormon stories or you can donate through YouTube through the super chats. And if you have questions or comments, you can throw some money towards us and we will be able to highlight them. Sydney says thanks for the Taco Bell, Carah. And so close to spelling my name right. But that's okay because the sentiment still comes across and. Yeah. So anyone who's donating, thank you so much. I'm trying to highlight as many as I can real quick just so you know that you're appreciated, in love.

John Dehlin [00:09:37] Thanks, Doug.

Carah Burrell [00:09:38] Thanks, Doug.

John Dehlin [00:09:39] Yeah, and we're just. We just want to say that we.

John Larsen [00:09:41] We.

John Dehlin [00:09:42] We feel like it's really important to compensate people for their contributions. And so we're paying care. We pay Gerardo and we're paying John monthly for his study and his analysis and his thoughts. And so we never want this to be about the money. We don't do this for the money, but we. To make this sustainable. Your. Your support means the world. So again, just thanks to everyone who is supporting us in whatever way you can support us. Thank you so much. All right, so, John, now let's dig in.

Introduction to the Handcart Companies

John Larsen [00:10:14] All right, we're going to talk about the handcart companies tonight. Given church history and that's. And. And the way the church handles and treats the handcart companies today will be kind of our last. Our last big point of this thing that we want to return to. But in the meantime, we want to tell their story.

John Larsen [00:10:33] The handcart companies happened for only two years. 1856 and 1857. I believe there were a total of 10 of them. There were five the first year and five the second. Year. And after that, the program was thrown away because it didn't work. It didn't work in many ways that we are going to go over tonight. But I really like to give context.

John Larsen [00:10:54] So let's go back. So 1844, June, I do believe Joseph Smith is assassinated in Nauvoo. And there is internal conflict in Nauvoo. Nauvoo, just like Kirtland, was a schism in the church. Now, there were outside forces agitating. You have to remember that in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith, declaring himself to be the president, declared himself to be the king of the world.

John Larsen [00:11:23] Set up, you know, shadow governments and all sorts of things. Things were getting rough. So fast forward about a year and a half, winter, 1846. Brigham Young leads the Saints out of Nauvoo, crossing the Mississippi as it was frozen in that winter. And they head over into Iowa and Indian Territory, and that's when this migration begins. And they settle into a town called Florence, which is in the suburbs of Omaha right now.

John Larsen [00:11:55] And in the church, we always called it winter quarters, but even when it was winter quarters, it was Florence. So when you read, if you go and read this sort of stuff, then you'll find a lot of references to Florence. Oh, and by the way, I did skip out. Let me say people have asked for the sources. So my primary source for tonight's discussion is the book Devil's Brigham Young and the Great Mormon Handcart Tragedy by Simon Schuster was published in 2008. Who's the author? It was.

John Dehlin [00:12:27] Oh, is that Bagley?

John Larsen [00:12:28] No, no, he's a. He's a guy. I don't. I didn't look it up. I thought I wrote it down, but I guess I. I skipped it.

John Dehlin [00:12:34] No, we'll, we'll get that.

John Larsen [00:12:36] He's a historian who, who tends not to write about Mormon stuff. So. So his other works have been outside of the Mormon dumb. I tried to track him down years ago with a. With Mormon expression, and we never could get a hold of him. So.

Carah Burrell [00:12:51] David Roberts.

John Larsen [00:12:52] David Roberts, thank you so much. My other sources are the primary online sources. I used a Wikipedia to verify some facts, and I use the church's sites, too. Okay, so 1846, they're. They're in winter quarters. They start. They start getting ready to head out across the plains.

John Larsen [00:13:11] And contrary to popular myth, they knew where they were going. They knew how much materials they needed to have. They knew all that stuff. So they set out. And I believe the first trek, by the way, was if I'm pulling this out of my memory. So was 148 individuals.

John Larsen [00:13:27] And they crossed the plains in 101 days, I do believe, from. From winter quarters to Salt Lake City. And 1 days. 101 days. And interestingly enough, the most of them turned around and went back three days later. They never talk about that, but they, they, they. They set a forward party there to start building forts and planting.

John Larsen [00:13:48] The first field they planted is on the corner of State street and I think third south, because city creek ran down the east side. You can look over there. And they. The first thing they planted was potatoes. So any more trivia you want? I don't know if they ever harvested those potatoes. You. Potatoes on July 24th in Salt Lake Valley. You're pushing it. Okay, so 1847, they arrive in the valley. They set up the forward team. They start moving the. The immigrations in 1848. 1848 is also the year when we had the first seagull. The. The seagulls come in, where the miracles happen. Now, the problem with the miracles, and I know I'm diverging, is we don't have any contemporary accounts of that. Those accounts all come later.

John Dehlin [00:14:34] Wait, the seagull stories are also not necessarily true.

John Larsen [00:14:37] I'm sorry, John.

John Dehlin [00:14:42] So next you're going to tell me there's no Santa.

John Larsen [00:14:44] 1848, they're. They're. They're starting to put that there's no Santa, John.

John Dehlin [00:14:47] Oh, my gosh. I'm out.

John Larsen [00:14:50] 1849, the Mormons. The Mormons are really raggedy. They are in terrible shape. They had actually stopped migration at this point, trying to figure out what to do. And then gold was discovered in California. The fastest route to the. You. The. To the gold fields in southern California was through Salt Lake City. And that became the main refueling station. And the Mormons re. Got a lot of treasure that. That way they were able to sell goods, trade for horses, do all that kind of stuff. There's an apocryphal tale that Brigham Young saw a guy heading out to California just pushing a wheelbarrow. He had everything he owned in a wheelbarrow.

John Larsen [00:15:32] And that is supposed to be the inspiration for the handcarts. 1852, immigration's happening again. That's when the church publicly acknowledges and comes out of the closet with polygamy. So after that, there gets to be increasing pressure on the church. And we Fast forward to 1855, and there is another disastrous year and another crop failure and another seagull attack. But there's nobody who ever talks about miracles during this one. So seagulls decimate the crops.

John Larsen [00:16:09] They're kind of, in a hard way, they're looking for. They're looking at a threat coming from the east because the Mormons were agitators. Of course, the Utah War began the year later in 1857 is when we get Mountain Meadows and Johnston's army coming into the Salt Lake Valley. So we're a year off from that. But the Brethren are starting to feel pressure to bring Everybody in. Now 1852 is when a whole bunch of men were sent off to the British missions and they, the British and the Scandinavian missions and at this time with the handcart companies, those Saints are starting to come in because we still have the concept of gathering.

John Larsen [00:16:47] There wasn't a stay where you are. These were all temporary things. If you joined the church and you were a Mormon, you were going to Salt Lake because they were building the City of God. There was no metaphor about it. It was absolutely real. When they said Zion, it's not like us today who use that term kind of tongue in cheek. They were saying it real. They were building the City of God in Salt Lake City as a temporary measure till they got back to Jackson County.

John Larsen [00:17:13] So, so because that, that's, that's where the actual Zion would be. But everybody had to, had to gather in. So the 1855, also, because of these elements of the kind of starvation and other things, starts the Reformation, which is an interesting topic you can read about. The rhetoric starts heating up. And of course that rhetoric ultimately leads, if you connect the dots, to Mountain Meadows, Brigham Young's rhetoric, Brigham Young and especially Jedediah Grant and, and there were others. But if you read the Journal of discourses from 1855, 1856, 1857, that's when they reinstituted. They excommunicate a bunch of people. They made everybody in the church get re baptized. That's when they reinstituted the, the Word of Wisdom and, and some other elements.

John Dehlin [00:18:00] And what's the sense of the rhetoric? Why, why are they feeling all heated

John Larsen [00:18:03] up and emotional there? The, the leaders tended to be very verbally abusive to the members. The best way to say it, you read the talks and, and we'll get this with the, with the companies that when things weren't going well, they would blame the, the lack of faith and laziness of the Saints.

John Dehlin [00:18:20] So basically the leaders were getting frustrated and so they were turning up the heat on the members. It's kind of like the blame reversal.

John Larsen [00:18:26] Yes. Right. Yeah. When it's not working, you know, who's to blame it's not. It's not the leadership. They're divinely inspired, right? So they called. They call the British mission in, and Brigham Young has this great idea in the fall of 1855 to start the handcarts. And he writes an epistle, and he sends it out to the British missions. And I have a quote from it.

John Larsen [00:18:52] He's talking about his new idea of doing hand carts. And he says, if it is once tried, you will find it will become the favorite method of crossing the plains. They will have nothing to do but come along. And I should not be surprised if a company of this kind should make the trip in 60 or 70 days. I do know they can be ox trains crossing the plains.

John Larsen [00:19:14] So then he says that. He goes on. He says that 15 miles. That they should make 15 miles a day. Well, the problem is, if you go 15 miles a day, you will get there in 70 days. Covering 10, 50 miles from Florence to Salt Lake City was actually 1300 miles.

John Larsen [00:19:37] So when Brigham Young was talking about the rhetoric, he kept using numbers that were wrong from the beginning. Now, Brigham Young himself crossed the plains, I think, twice. William Clayton, his personal secretary, the guy who wrote not come, come. Yeah, he wrote, come, come, ye saints. He crossed the plain 17 times. So it was common for the brethren to go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. The reason that I bring this up is by this time, I was looking at population estimates in Salt Lake. Reliably, we're looking at about 17,000 people.

Recruitment, Emigration, and Early Preparations

John Larsen [00:20:10] Brigham Young claimed at this time, there were 77,000 people in Salt Lake City. There's no way there were 77,000 people in Salt Lake City in 1856. But let's say there were or even 17,000 people. These people had all crossed the plains. We knew how much food it would take. We knew how many. How much fodder it would take. We knew exactly the route. We knew the refilling stations. We had this down. We knew how to get from Florence to Salt Lake City. So when Brigham Young gets up in the beginning, and basically, if you do the math, claims that they can get there in 60 days, that.

John Larsen [00:20:43] That I don't know what's going on there. They're dropping their. They're dropping the 300 miles. Now, my oldest is a through hiker. Through hiker. He goes backpacking for like six weeks at a time. And they just go as far and fast as they can go. So I asked him for. So for some distances.

John Larsen [00:21:01] So I said, well, a good, solid, trained. You know, these are. These are like extreme athletes on the trail. And these guys who are hiking every single day for months on end, and they use ultralight backpacks. So they use backpacks that are less than £30 that they're carrying. And he said on a groomed trail, he said you can make 20 miles a day for a while, but that means you're not stopping for meals.

John Larsen [00:21:28] So Brigham Young was really planning on anticipating these guys with the carts, making 20 to 30 miles a day, pushing carts. So I want to establish that from the get go, this wouldn't work. The math just wasn't there. And it'll get worse from there. So. But Brigham Young writes that letter out, and Franklin D. Richards, a member of the 12 prophet, Syrian revelator, is the president of the European or the British mission. And he takes this thing and he just runs with it. So he gathers all the saints, they book passage, they get them to the United States. And the reason they stopped in Florence is that was the end of the rail line.

John Larsen [00:22:08] So they could take the rail from the east coast to Florence. Some people went all the way down to Mississippi and took the Mississippi up, and then they head over to Iowa City. Actually, I'm saying it wrong. The jump off point was Iowa City, and that's where the rail line ended. From Iowa City, they had to cross over to get to Omaha, to get to Florence. So there was about 300 or so miles in that first route. So the first LDS outpost in the United States, therefore, for all the people crossing the plains, was in Iowa City.

John Larsen [00:22:44] And then from there they would go to winter quarters to fuel up. And then from there they really didn't have any fuel up opportunities till Fort Laramie, which is basically in the site of present day Laramie, Wyoming.

John Dehlin [00:22:54] Okay. That's a brutal trip.

John Larsen [00:22:56] It is a brutal trip.

John Dehlin [00:22:58] It sucks driving it. Mm. I hate driving that trip. So handcarts. Unbelievable.

John Larsen [00:23:04] So Franklin Richards writes epistles to the Saints, publishes Brigham Young things as this is the divinely inspired thing. Handcarts are the way God wants us to go across the plains. So, so, so they, they head over. So the, the, the, the first group of saints. We're going to talk about William Martin. Now, let's be clear. There are three companies that took off before Willie and Martin, Handcart company. And they all had fatalities, a lot of fatalities. And we really don't know how many fatalities. I think it was the third company, but might have been the second. It's not really salient here, but there was a group of saints who joined them right before they jumped off.

John Larsen [00:23:52] And the leaders refer to them as the Italian Saints for some reason. All their names are French and the ones who made it to Salt Lake City were all French, but nobody spoke either French or Italian. And the reason this is important is we think there were about 30 of them. They were never recorded in the official logs, even though we have journal entries of members of that, of that group dying. So I'm just laying the groundwork. I'm not going to go through all of the nuanced discussions about how many people died on the plains. It is pretty clear the church is under counting because we know that they're under counting.

John Larsen [00:24:28] The head count for the groups. And also there were people we'll get back into this abandoned along the way that we don't know what happened to. The church does not count them as fatalities. So grandma collapses on the side of the route. This was a forced march. They did not stop for anybody ever.

John Larsen [00:24:50] Then they just left her there. So. So we don't really know exactly how many people died, more so than the church claims. That's pretty clear. Okay. So they arrived, the first party that would become the Willie Handcart Company, which is the one that left the fourth one out. And. And they left. They're about a month in front of the Martin Handcar Company the whole way.

John Larsen [00:25:16] Willie himself had been a missionary. He'd been called in 52 these poor guys. And he had a wife and three kids at home. And he was sent out and did four year mission in Britain. And they told him the only way he could go home is if he commanded one of these handcart companies. So he was sequestered into this. Now these guys, a lot of them had crossed the plains multiple times. So they were experienced on these sort of treks and journeys. So he was one of those.

John Larsen [00:25:44] When they got there, they ran into the same problem that the three previous companies had. There were no handcarts. Even though they had been commissioned. Nobody had actually done it. And it was worse than that. They had not purchased any lumber.

John Larsen [00:26:00] So they had to buy green wood. If anybody's worked with green. Matter of fact, if you go to Home Depot and buy a two by four that is not a green wood, that has been aged for about two years I think is how long they age them if they don't kill them. So they let them sit, and they let them sit under pressure to keep them straight. But if you go buy a 2x4 and set it up in your garage and watch that sucker, it will start to warp. It will start to bend. And that is a piece of wood that has been dried and aged and cut by modern standards.

John Larsen [00:26:32] These guys did not have. They had green wood. They were not wagon builders. There were a couple, Chauncey Webb and Levi Savage, we'll talk about, who kind of knew what they were doing, but they were few and far between.

John Larsen [00:26:46] So these European saints and the manifests of these guys, just like the church now, when we send missionaries out, we tend to not baptize the movers and shakers of society. So you look at these. I was reading one account. The woman is talking about the 20 people in her tent. She had two blind men, one guy who had lost his leg before they ever started, a widow who had like five kids.

John Larsen [00:27:13] So the handcart companies weren't these stout men. There were stout men, but the men died at a much higher rate than women. And we'll talk about that more in a minute. So the first problem they had is they had to build these handcarts. And everything you know about the handcarts is wrong. They didn't have any metal, so the axle was made of wood, as was the gearbox, as were the elements of the wheel. Now, normally those wheels would have been shod in iron, but they decided to not iron shod the wheels on the hand carts to save money. And they thought, oh, the trip is.

John Dehlin [00:27:49] Does that mean just cover the rims of the wheels?

John Larsen [00:27:51] So normally what you do, you take a. You. You take this hoop of iron and you heat it up and then you drop the wheel in there. And then as it shrinks, it comes on tight and then they'll nail it. That's how it was done.

John Dehlin [00:28:02] That makes the wheel stronger, makes it last longer.

John Larsen [00:28:04] Yeah, it's literally an iron wheel. As opposed to. Well, theirs were only now, I can't say only. There probably were some handcarts that. Because some of the people had money, others didn't. And some of them didn't have money because they made them donate everything to the church. There's a sad tale of a rich Scandinavian who got caught up in the Martin Company and they basically lost everything they had and they had to cross the plains, just destitute, absolutely poor.

John Larsen [00:28:29] But this was, and I want to be clear, this was an administrative decision by the church to save money, and it was an administrative decision by the church to. They could have stayed in. They could have stayed in Iowa City, they could have stayed in Florence. They didn't have to come across. They had provisions to stay that people had stayed there before. There were lots of times you read people who were in winter quarters for two years, three years, waiting for their chance to go across. Because. Because they didn't just go willy nilly. They had actual companies that were organized to make sure everyone's safe and that they had enough provisions to get to the destination.

John Larsen [00:29:05] So these were all administrative decisions. No iron was a decision by the church. To save money. Brigham Young built the Beehive House in 1852. Brigham Young finished the Lion House in 1856. Will Bagley estimates that by 1856, Brigham Young was worth $150,000. That'd make him a vast multi millionaire by this time. Brigham Young had. Had enriched himself in these 10 years to be one of the richest men in the western United States. And he would get more and more and more money. The money was there. They decided not to spend it on these saints. Okay, so. So would they. The, The. The boxes. Let's see.

Carah Burrell [00:29:54] Can I ask a quick, quick question?

John Larsen [00:29:55] Sure.

Carah Burrell [00:29:56] Were they. So when you go into a little bit more about what you mean by they came across to donate all their money to the church, like they were living the law of concentration. Concentration, consecration. Sorry. When they got to America.

John Larsen [00:30:07] Yeah, so, so, so at different stages, they would. They would ask them. But, but for this, this story I'm referring to, and I wish I had more detail, but I'm sorry, there's a lot of facts here tonight, but when they got to Iowa, Iowa City, they implored upon them to give all of their riches to the church, basically. But the church didn't give them. I want to be clear here. The church did not give them these wagons. It loaned them the money for it using the perpetual immigration fund, which they sent the interest rate at 10% per year. So Brigham Young for these people we're talking about. So some of these guys came in, donated everything they had to the church. Then the church sold them the green lumber to build the handcart which they had built themselves. And then the church charged them interest year by year by year afterwards.

John Dehlin [00:30:59] And it was effectively bad wood. Because it was green.

John Larsen [00:31:01] It was. It was. Yes, it was. It was. It was bad wood. And, and, and it caused them endless problems.

Carah Burrell [00:31:08] Did they know that they would have to do that when they. Before they got on the ship to come to America?

John Larsen [00:31:13] You know, the question keeps coming up. When I talk to people about this stuff, they're always like, why didn't they. Why didn't they just turn back? Well, a lot did. We'll talk about that in a second. But where would you Go. You were. You. You oftentimes the, the. The people who joined the church were destitute and poor already.

John Larsen [00:31:29] That you, you had to be the type person who would sell everything you have, pick up and board a ship to the new world to head to some Zion in the middle of nowhere. That, that these were not people who had a lot of money in the bank. Right?

John Larsen [00:31:43] So the, the church was still asking for people to give things. And the church's tithing schemes change from time to time, like for a while. And this happened more than once. When you joined the church, you had to give 10 of everything you owned at that moment. And then you had to pay 10, you know, yearly. And it was constantly shifting around, okay, axles made of wood, and then they were not given.

John Larsen [00:32:09] Now, on top of that, each pioneer, each person was allotted 17 pounds of goods. This is one of the first heartbreaks you have. These people who sold their homes and they gathered up their prized possessions from Scandinavia or from England and they carried them across, crossing the boat, riding the trains out, getting out to Iowa City.

John Larsen [00:32:34] And then the church was like, yeah, yeah, you gotta scrap all that stuff. And so you tell these stories of these guys going and desperately trying to sell things that were worth money, but, you know, the market was saturated in Iowa cities. They'd get pennies for. But they were. They were trying to sell everything. 17 pounds of gear is not much.

John Larsen [00:32:53] I implore you, dear reader, or listener or whoever you are, put on a pair of pants, put on a shirt, put on your pair of shoes, put your winter coat on, grab your favorite blanket, and then stand on the scale and you're going to be at about 17 pounds.

John Larsen [00:33:07] They unfortunately, were unloading a lot of bedding because they wouldn't let them bring it. So 17 pounds per adult and 10 pounds per child, that's everything. They didn't. It's not like you could bring another 50 pounds of bacon. All the, all the food was kept on the wagons. So they didn't. They didn't really have any food in. In the hand carts. There were some exceptions when they threw it in there because they were getting bogged down. But the people didn't have their own food. All that was kept in common, if that makes sense.

John Larsen [00:33:43] Okay, so they, they. The Willie Company arrives there on the 12th from. They all came over on the same boats and they spend the next four weeks trying to build these handcarts. Now, remember, in Iowa City, there had already been three companies who had done the same exercise in the weeks prior and had already hit the planes as well as the regular wagon building and stuff that was going on, there were still full wagon trains going. In fact, there were two that left right after Martin Handcart company. But for various reasons, they never caught up to the Martin and Willie companies.

John Larsen [00:34:18] They didn't. They no longer appearing in this story. They just, they take off and, and there's, there's going to be several disappearances in this whole story. So. Let's see. The, the, the, the Martin, the, The Willy Handcart Company ended up being 500 people, 100 handcarts and five wagons. Now one of the things, when you read Brigham Young's justification of the hand carts and they still say this in the church, if you go get the old church manual, they'll say, well, the handcarts could move faster than the wagons, which is true. You could drive a team of oxen at about three miles an hour, which is a fast trot.

John Larsen [00:34:58] If you're mall walking, you're walking about three miles an hour. But oftentimes the wagons would lumber on at about one mile an hour. Which is why you hear when you read like the pioneers who are in the regular wagon trains, they would talk about wandering off and go sitting in a. In the field of flowers and coming back and that sort of stuff because

John Dehlin [00:35:17] the wagons were so slow.

John Larsen [00:35:18] The wagons were so slow. And so they touted this as being a quick thing. But they couldn't carry enough baggage to actually get across the plains with just their handcarts. So they had to have wagons. And these wagons were reoked with six oxen each.

John Larsen [00:35:35] So five wagons. Six oxen. Willie Handcart Co. On July 30th. We're talking this, this time frame. This is very important. Brigham Young claims that he didn't know that the Willie and Martin hand carton, William Martin hand cart companies existed.

John Larsen [00:35:56] He claimed he had no idea. He would have never sent a group across. However, there was a wagon train I think in 52 that was sent across across this late and they got caught up in winter storm. Now they survived just fine because they had wagons. So they'd climb up in the, in the wagons. So the church had actually screwed this one up before. Sent a late wagon train that got caught in winter storms in Wyoming and had to be rescued. Had already happened once. So, so let's, let's keep a running toll of our dumbassery. Brigham Young is talking, talks as if it's a thousand miles, but it's 1300 miles.

John Larsen [00:36:30] Brigham Young talks about the moving 15 miles a day, which would Be a forced march by soldiers moving fast. Right. And they never achieved that speed. Actually, the early companies achieved 13 miles an hour, which was not bad.

John Larsen [00:36:45] But they never got anywhere close to what Brigham Young planned for. And Brigham Young, if they had done that, they would still been 300 miles short of Salt Lake City. It wouldn't have got them all the way there anyway.

John Larsen [00:36:57] Okay. July 30th, Salt Lake City receives a letter from John Taylor that is frantically pointing out, these guys are heading to Iowa City right now, and there's a whole bunch of them, and we're going to need to take care of them. Brigham Young claims he never saw the letter, but we have the letter, and it is stamped received Salt Lake City clerk's office.

John Larsen [00:37:20] So. So that letter was actually received by Salt Lake City, even though they claim not knowing anything. Now, Brigham Young would do this again the next year with. With Mountain Meadows claiming to know nothing. Brigham Young ruled the place with an iron hand, but he never knew anything that was going on.

The Willie Handcart Company Departs

John Larsen [00:37:34] All right, so they take off, and they arrive. They take off out of there. We're talking about the Willie Handcart Company. They take off out of Iowa City, and they arrive in Florence winter quarters 28 days later on August 11th.

John Larsen [00:37:49] So we're kind of keeping track of the time. They arrived in Iowa city on the 12th. They had to build their own wagons, and then they head out to Florence, which is about 300 miles or so away. When they get there, their wagons are for shit. They have to spend a couple weeks just putting them back together and cobbling them together any way they can. They were falling apart.

John Larsen [00:38:11] And Iowa, that territory was populated, so they could still trade with people all the way up until winter quarters. And they. They write about getting made fun of. You know, people would mock them as they were running through town, which is unfortunate.

John Larsen [00:38:27] So they get together. They arrive on. On. On 11th of August, and they. They get a conference together on August 13th. And this is key, and this is pivotal. They. They. They're. They're talking about, what should we do right now, guys? Work. We're past the season. We got this long journey now. Remember the. The. The. The companies were usually making it in 101. 101. 110 days. That was the. The norm.

John Larsen [00:38:54] So if you think about that being mid August, you're talking about. Well, one month would be mid September, mid October, mid December. Best choice, best chance they were gonna make it in January, February, if everything went right. Right. Just out the door. But these guys.

John Larsen [00:39:13] These guys wanted to believe or were. Were kind of bullying in their. In their. In their. In their speaking. Our hero that we're going to run into a couple times was Levi Savage. And Levi was. Was an experienced man. He was part of the organization. So. So they're getting together all. All the. The. The company leaders and what are talking. And Levi recorded in his journal this.

John Larsen [00:39:37] I then related to the Saints the hardships that we should have to endure. I said that we were liable to have to wade in snow up to our knees and should at night wrap ourselves in thin blankets and lie on the frozen ground without a bed. This was not like having a wagon that we could get into and wrap ourselves as much as we would like and lie down. They launched into him and matter of fact, William Kimball, the son of. The son of Kimball, was traveling with

John Dehlin [00:40:04] Hebrew C. Son of Heber C. Son

John Larsen [00:40:06] of Heber C. Kimball. He was a general authority coming back from the mission, and he was with Richards, who's here now in this conference. So. So they're. They're all there. And William says that he would stuff into his mouth all the snow they would ever get to see on their journey to the valley. As far as I know, William never did it. Never suffered any repercussions for any of this stuff. Nobody did. They hung around for three more days. Savage offered to quit. He said, well, that. But his captain was smart enough to say, no, you stay on. And this noble man said, well, I'm going with you. I'm not going to send you out there alone. The same thing happened with the Martin company. So they leave Florence on the 16th

John Dehlin [00:40:56] of August with a promise from a general authority that they're going to be

John Larsen [00:40:58] fine with multiple promises by now. And they promises keep coming.

John Dehlin [00:41:02] Yeah. Kind of blind trust in your priesthood leadership.

John Larsen [00:41:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:06] And they actually have the power to see the future. And they're assuring you you're going to be safe.

John Larsen [00:41:13] They are. And they're. They're. They're doing it with rather intense rhetoric, like condemning people who have the. Have the audacity. And that attitude follows throughout that. You read the journals. It's. It's really heartbreaking. They'll be like, Sister Smith, age 62, gave out on the planes. She was a grumbler and never had faith. I might say gave out. I mean, she died. So. So they oftentimes had attitudes that the people who died were the ones who deserved it because they were low in faith.

Carah Burrell [00:41:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:45] It's the blame reversal again, right? Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:41:47] And Gerardo was just asking, is this the story of 17 Miracles. Is that the same LDS movie?

John Larsen [00:41:55] Probably. Yes. Yes it is. I've never seen 17 Miracles, but you got a lot of propaganda in there. So is it the same story? No, absolutely not. Is it the same story? Yes, it is.

Carah Burrell [00:42:07] We laugh so we don't cry. Right. I was just highlighting a few comments on screen how this is quite white washed, not just for church history, but people's family history. They grow up on these stories, putting a lot of faith not only in the church, but you know, you want to be buoyed up by your ancestors, but it's just better to actually honor what actually happened to them than the church's whitewashed history that has been handed to you.

John Larsen [00:42:29] Absolutely. These are real people who really suffered in, in, in, in real sorts of ways. Okay. There was a conference on August 24th. This was to the Martin Company because the, the Willie Car Company had left on the 16th and Richards.

John Dehlin [00:42:44] Wait, I have a question.

John Larsen [00:42:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:46] So I, I, and this is going to reflect my lack of being able to fully follow you. If it's August, why is Levi Savage talking about walking in the snow when it's summer? What am I missing there?

John Larsen [00:42:58] Because they have to walk from, from.

John Dehlin [00:43:00] He's talking about what's going to happen

John Larsen [00:43:02] Omaha all the way to Salt Lake City. He's saying if we dumb, if we leave now, we should leave now. We shouldn't leave now. If we leave now, we're going to be walking through snow and we don't have wagons. There's going to be no place for us to go. And we don't have enough. And they really didn't. As a matter of fact, there were some saints who, they tried to cheat the system by wearing multiple layers of clothes. When they were discovered, they were beaten. We're going to talk a lot more about that. More.

John Dehlin [00:43:28] Yeah. So the, so basically Levi Savage was the truth teller and the general authorities said, shut up and know your place.

John Larsen [00:43:34] Yes. We've got the prophecies and they're going to chase him down and tell him again before we're done here.

John Dehlin [00:43:39] Okay. Okay, got it.

John Larsen [00:43:40] So, but, but, but, but Levi stays with them the, the whole way. He, he, he. And, and he's important in the end.

John Dehlin [00:43:47] And, and we won't give that away.

Franklin D. Richards and the Prophetic Claims

John Larsen [00:43:51] So. August 24th, Richards I prophesied. This is Franklin D. Richards. Now just to be clear, he didn't die until 1899. In full fellowship of the church. He sired his son, became a member of the 12, and his grandson became a member of the 12. This the Richards family. I don't know. Let's see if we can name them. Marion D. No, Marion D. That's Hanks. They were around. Right.

John Dehlin [00:44:15] Stephen Richards, I think.

John Larsen [00:44:16] Yeah. So they're a prominent family. At least three members of the 12. And he is the highest authority all these people have ever met. They've never met Brigham Young. They joined in Britain. So these are his people. Right. So on August 24, Richards gets up and says, I prophesy in the name of Israel, God, through the storms.

John Larsen [00:44:37] Through the storms we may come from the east, the west, the north, or the south. God will keep the way open to the faithful at heart. And we'll arrive in the valleys and in the safety and hopes that the saints would be blessed with health and strength to pursue until their journey's end. And there to meet with the Lord's anointed be saved with a just and eternal world.

John Larsen [00:45:00] Okay, so he prophesies again that they won't have anything come upon them. Remember, one general authority said he's going to eat everything of every bit of snow that comes up on these guys. And he says the way will stay open and you're going to be healthy. So the. The Martin Handcart company leaves on August 24th.

John Dehlin [00:45:22] Oh,

John Larsen [00:45:25] with how many miles they have at that point? They have a little over a thousand miles to go.

Carah Burrell [00:45:30] And it starts snowing in, like, mid September, probably.

John Larsen [00:45:33] It starts snowing on October 20, about when you'd expect. Okay, months.

John Dehlin [00:45:38] Yeah, we got a couple of months before the storm.

John Larsen [00:45:39] We got it. We got a long ways. The storms. It was a. It was a rough year, but the storms were not unheard of for Wyoming. It wasn't a freak storm. It was. It was a big storm, but it wasn't unexpected. You know, sometimes we talk about it like. Like this. This thing is the buffetings of Satan. No, if you've ever been to Wyoming, you'll see there's these big gates, like, because the blowing snow and storms are real up there, right?

John Dehlin [00:46:05] Yeah. And they're predictable. They happen every year pretty much.

Life on the Trail and Deteriorating Conditions

John Larsen [00:46:07] Okay, let's talk about life on the trail a little bit. Generally speaking, the captains of the. Of the handcart companies would ride up and down the line with a cat o' nine tails or whatever they were, and they would whip people on. It was either the second or the third one. They had the bright idea that the kids were causing them problems. So they took every kid under 8 and they herded them before with switches like you would run sheep. So they would take the kids away from their parents. And they would just whip those kids to keep them moving. It was an absolute forced march. I cannot emphasize this enough. If you fell, you got left behind.

John Dehlin [00:46:45] It's like the Bataan Death March came in.

Carah Burrell [00:46:46] I was about to say, I was like, this sounds like a concentration camp.

John Larsen [00:46:48] It was absolutely the Bataan Death March. And these guys. There was one story I was reading where I think the man's wife was sick and laying. If they got really sick, they would, they would lay the. They would lay him in the wagons and they were stopped or whatever. And this man crawled up to like snuggle his wife or something. And the handcart company leader, I can't remember which one, just savagely beat him. These guys were absolutely violent.

John Larsen [00:47:20] Two stories that stuck out to me. One, there was a 10 year old boy in one of the companies. And this would be the early companies too, like the Martin and matter of fact, the Martin Company. Martin is thought to be the most gentle, most kind of all these drivers. The rest of them were dicks by a long shot.

John Larsen [00:47:40] And they did, they whipped people. This one story, the boy was delusional and walking and fell in the ruts and passed out. And the company leader came and just started beating that kid with a switch until he woke up.

John Larsen [00:47:58] And then one of my least favorite stories, there was a man who had. He had a rheumatoid. Rheumatoid arthritis. An old man. And he was, he was. They kicked him out of the wagon and so he, he, he, he was holding.

John Larsen [00:48:21] I'm sorry, he was, he was holding onto the end of the wagon so he could walk. And the teamster saw him back there and took his whip and smacked him with it. And his wife wrote that that was the last time he ever stood up. The man crawled behind the camp into camp where he died.

John Larsen [00:48:43] Rheumatoid arthritis. These were people in their 60s, in their 70s. These were small children. These were pregnant women. And they were dying. And we're going to talk about why they were dying. When they planned the whole thing. The general.

John Larsen [00:49:02] The goal out the gate was they would have a ration. And that ration was one pound of flour a day. Most often it was three quarters a pound. Now I unfortunately left my visual aid. Three quarters of a pound of flour is 12 ounces, which is basically two cups of flour. Now this flour is not like ours. The calories in a cup of flour from the time, like if you grind whole wheat flour is about 400.

John Larsen [00:49:32] So let's give them, let's give Them a little bit of kicker. So the planned, this is what was planned for the handcart company. Not out of desperation, not out of necessity, not out of need. The planned ration for everybody on these handcart companies was about 1200 calories a day.

John Larsen [00:49:51] If the skies had stayed sunny, the road had stayed clear, if the handcarts were not made of green wood with wooden chassis, there would have still been a large number of people would have starved to death. The accounts of these saints as they were walking into Salt Lake match the accounts of Dachau.

John Larsen [00:50:15] They were starved. They should have had 4,000 calories a day to do this march. And they were all starving to death. And they kept getting the rations cut and their rations cut and their rations cut.

John Dehlin [00:50:30] You're talking about Holocaust. You're comparing this to the Holocaust?

John Larsen [00:50:32] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:50:33] World War II.

John Larsen [00:50:34] Absolutely. That's the level of food that they had planned by the church who had been running these, these wagon trains for nine years. The church that had 17,000 people in the valley, they planned first of all for only a thousand miles on a journey that was 1300 miles.

John Larsen [00:50:54] And they planned for them to starve. Now their ration consisted of, they say, a little bit of sugar. In one of the, one of the pre camps, they wrote it down in their journals. Our rations consisted of 10 ounces of flour. That's a little bit under 2 cups.

John Larsen [00:51:11] Now keep in mind that's without baking soda or baking powder or oil or sugar, eggs or any of that stuff. Right. He said besides our flour, we occasionally had a little rice, sugar, coffee and bacon. But these items, especially the last, were so small and infrequent they scarcely observed mentioning.

John Larsen [00:51:33] And unfortunately, even though they, when the Willie car, when the Willie handcart company Left, they had 40 head of cattle. And by the way, on Wikipedia it says that they were raided by Indians. They were never raided by Indians. No Indians ever took their cattle. But, but they, they, they wouldn't eat their cattle until the cattle either died or about to die. But you can imagine if you divided a single cow, especially if it's a heifer, it's not really, you know, big, huge meat. Steer amongst 500 people, you're getting nothing. You're getting 200 calories. It's underfed too, and it's underfed, it's dying. That's why, that's why, that's why they were eating them. Right?

John Dehlin [00:52:13] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:52:15] We don't know what was in the minds of, of, of the church leadership. They didn't do this with the previous companies. They didn't do it with the companies that came after. Why they decided to starve these guys to death, I will never know. And I contend that the majority of death and pain and suffering that came out came because of this decision to starve these guys to death. And it was a decision to save money because you needed wagons, but Brigham Young needed mansions. I'll remind you that the second house that he built, the lion house I referred to, had 27 bedrooms in it. Brigham Young was building an opulent structure out there, and these people were left to starve to death on the plains. It is a crime of. Of crimes. It is a tragedy of tragedies. There is no excuse for it. And we're just getting going. All right.

Carah Burrell [00:53:09] Can I ask. I always kind of heard that the difference between the first pioneer tracks that like Brigham Young and the first saints were people who had grown up on the frontier in the plains versus more like city folk, Europeans who didn't know how to cross the plains. They were not used to living that type of lifestyle. And that's another reason they were just kind of also set up for failure. They didn't know how to even begin to cross the plains.

John Larsen [00:53:34] That sounds like an apologist argument. They, the forward party, the first 148 or 152 or whatever they were, they went. They were all experienced like pioneers. They were. They were teamsters and people who knew what they were doing. You know, they took the best of the best to. To forge the trail. The, the. The companies were never just sent. They always had company commander and they had people who, who knew, you know, you couldn't take a. Somebody who was just, I don't know, a shoe Smith or whatever in Manchester and then give them a team of 6oX and expect them to do anything in the middle of Wyoming.

Carah Burrell [00:54:07] So they had leaders that were experienced.

John Larsen [00:54:09] Right, okay. And. And the experience. The leaders on these handcar companies were experienced, too. They. They weren't experienced with handcarts. And that's probably one of the reasons they got so violence, violent with the folks. They knew they were falling behind. They were there, too. They were watching the sun get darker. And they knew what was coming. They knew what was on the plains. Some of them exercised blind faith. Matter of fact, we have one of them who got up in conference afterward. In fact, after the first two companies got into Salt Lake, I think they took 110 days or so each to do it. They got up in conference and reported that it took 63 days and 62 days. So these guys were Lying for the Lord in ways that were really harming people. They were covering up the true story of what was actually happening.

Carah Burrell [00:55:01] Wow.

Leadership Failures and the Approaching Disaster

John Larsen [00:55:04] Okay, so. So rations. We were talking about rations. Yeah. Richards leaves Florence with the general authorities on. On September 4th. But they are in fast wagons, they're in buggies, they're. They're in there, they're running hard, they're running light. And so they're going to catch up with the Willie company in about two weeks.

John Larsen [00:55:29] A tragedy. And I'm not exactly sure what day it happened. It happened to the Willie company sometime before Richards and folks show up to the Willie Company during the night a stampede of bison actually came near or through the camp. And in the morning they had lost 30 of their 40 cows. And they searched and looked all. And they couldn't find them.

John Larsen [00:55:54] The bison took them. So they were only left with 10 cows. Now they did have milk cows that they took along with them. And so they lost. From what I read, they lost all their milk cows. So they didn't have that supplement anymore for food. So they were down to. They were down to 10 cows.

John Larsen [00:56:16] So. Oh, I have that written as September 4th as being the same day at the North Bluff fork of the platform were about 320 miles west of Florence at this time. And Richard's. Franklin D. Richard's party comes rolling into camp, into the Willie camp.

John Larsen [00:56:36] And so they, they caught them on the September 12th. So the Willie camp's been on the. On the. They left the 16th. They've been about four weeks on. On the, on the plains. And they're describing themselves at this stage as already people have lost their shoes, their clothing is ragged. This is hard. I remember in one journal because they're still in the middle of the summer. And I think this is one of the earlier camps but they'd recorded a temperature of 108 degrees out there. And so they were toiling through the heat. And if any of you have ever been to Nebraska or Wyoming, the wind never stops ever out there.

John Larsen [00:57:18] It just keeps blowing. So the parting crews, Richard William Kimball, Joseph Young, son of Brigham Young and George Grant, son of Jedediah Grant. So these guys were all 70s and church authorities at the time. So Richard calls them into camp and they have this the worst conference ever. So the Willie Handcart company is about 600 miles into this journey. They're already suffering. They've already had people die and fact and, and Richards brings them up and he says they would have power in God that neither laymanite nor heat nor cold nor Any other thing would have power to seriously harm and the camp. They should arrive with strong and healthy bodies in Zion.

John Larsen [00:58:06] And then they get on and they, they berate Savage or whatever, but the next morning they call him out again and again, they pick on him for his lack of faith. And then they commit this unpardonable sin. They demand that the Willie Handcart Company find their fattest calf.

John Larsen [00:58:27] And they have the company slaughter the calf. And they don't eat the calf, they take it with them. So let's, let's, let's pause here for a second. A prophet, Syrian Revelator, one of the 12, was on the planes at the exact time of the Willie and Martin Handcart Company. In fact, he was in charge of the Willie and Martin Hancock Company.

John Larsen [00:58:58] And at this stage, we're about four weeks before all hell breaks loose. Well, with the weather, the only thing they can do is think to bring up this grudge against Levi Savage, who simply told them the truth, who simply told him, it's going to be hot out there, it's going to be cold out there, the snow is going to come, and we won't have any place to go. So these assholes just take him up in front of the camp and berate him again.

John Dehlin [00:59:27] By the way, he's the real prophet. He is actually prophesying and seeing and revealing what's about to happen. Right, right. And the actual, well, the title prophets, see and revelators are all false, prophesying that everything's going to be peachy and rosy.

John Larsen [00:59:42] They not only false prophesy, they tell them that there will be provisions waiting for them in Fort Laramie. So they just need to get to Fort Laramie and they'll get resupplied as they had resupplied the previous three companies. The previous three companies had been resupplied in Fort Laramie and then they'd been resupplied again after that. Okay, so it wasn't that much of a stretch of a promise for Richard to say, hey, you guys, who I'm taking your calf from you. You're gonna have, you're gonna have a reef refilling station at Fort Laramie, John.

John Dehlin [01:00:13] So wait, he takes the calf?

John Larsen [01:00:14] He takes the calf.

John Dehlin [01:00:16] And were you gonna get to what they do with the calf? In theory.

John Larsen [01:00:20] Well, I'm going to read you what John Chislett, who, who was there, said who. He later left the church, as did most of these people. These brethren told Captain Willie they wanted some fresh meat and he had our fattest calf Killed for them. I am ashamed. For humanity's sake, they took it. While we, for 400 in number, traveling so slow and so far from home, without mixed company of men, women, children age 6, or with our wix company of men, women, children, age sick and firm people, had no provisions to spare, had not enough for ourselves. In fact, those elders in Israel. This is his quotes.

John Larsen [01:00:59] These servants of God, his quotes took from us what we ourselves so greatly needed and went on in style with their splendid outfit after preaching to us faith, patience, prayerfulness and obedience to the priesthood. The Willie Handcart Company suffering immensely on the plains, starving to death, these wagons falling apart, the infirm dying on the side of the road being left. And we have the burial record. Sometimes, sometimes we have no records on one of the early ones. The guy who made all the coffins kept record. And that's how we know who died, because the church sure as hell didn't keep track.

John Larsen [01:01:37] So these guys are there and not only do they roll in and berate them for this thing that they're doing that is actually killing people, they take the little bit that they have. You want a metaphor for the church? There it is. This is a prophet, seer and revelator. Never defrocked. He went on for another 50 years. 18. 90. 90. This guy died, Richard. 1899, Franklin D. Richards. He went on and he ordained people and he did this. He took their cow and he ate it.

John Larsen [01:02:15] Right? You want proof the church is not true? There it is. They did nothing to this man ever. He was honored his whole life. He never. And he's going to make more mistakes. So what mistakes we already have him making. He ordered all the saints out. He had them build these wagons out of no good wood. When the people who knew what the fuck they were talking about would tell him, he would just insult and berate them.

John Dehlin [01:02:38] Levi Savage.

John Larsen [01:02:39] Levi Savage. And, and. And there were a couple others. But Levi. Levi is. Is. Is key here, right?

John Dehlin [01:02:44] And then he eats their cow, and

John Larsen [01:02:46] then he eats their cow to contribute to the struggle. Meanwhile, they're in a big buggy, right? They have, I think I read they had all horses and mules. So that means they had expensive oxen, were cheaper than having a horse or train. Mules. Mules were the best you could move fastest. And with that. And so they have this Ultra Lightning company and they arrive in Salt Lake City on October 4th.

John Dehlin [01:03:12] October.

John Larsen [01:03:13] October 4th.

John Dehlin [01:03:14] They'd be winter.

John Larsen [01:03:15] They did be winter. But interestingly enough, they tell them that those guys are out there stuck on the planes they knew, they knew they never saw a snowflake. They knew they knew what was coming. They knew what they had done. They couldn't see it and not understand it. There is no apologetics for this. It oftentimes like Leonard Arrington, bless his heart, he just doesn't talk about it. That's how he deals with it.

John Dehlin [01:03:41] You mentioned a 7, a 7% dropout rate.

John Larsen [01:03:44] Yes. So there are accounts of people just saying fuck this and turning around and going back. And every time they went to a fort, there were always people who didn't go forward. So they estimate, again, we don't know because oftentimes there weren't really good records between they say like 50 to 100 of each company or five, whatever left and didn't go on. And again, most of the information we have is from the journals of people. And luckily they were preserved and they weren't destroyed because they were around. And that was just the main story. But if you read this book, you can read a lot of the excerpts from the journals. And this wasn't so faith promoting for, for the individuals involved.

Carah Burrell [01:04:31] And the book you were referencing is the Devil's Gate book, right?

John Larsen [01:04:34] Devil's Gate.

Carah Burrell [01:04:34] That's where your sources are mostly pulled from. People in the comments were just kind of curious.

John Larsen [01:04:37] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:04:38] So it's from that. And then I'm sure Robert Roberts is his name something. Steve Roberts something. Yeah.

John Larsen [01:04:43] And he quotes, he, he quotes other, other folks there. So he has a lot of Roberts material.

Carah Burrell [01:04:47] So if people are more interested in your sources, they can go to that book.

John Larsen [01:04:51] They can, yes. I would suggest to do so. There are some apologetic sources too that discuss this, but they tend to focus in on little minor things, you know, like somebody who was deathly ill then gets better and walks on, which does happen. I mean, the majority of people survived. It's like Covid, the majority of people are surviving. But that doesn't undermine the fact that there's 600,000 or more Americans who have died and millions of people worldwide. The people who died on the plains, they died on the plains. That was their experience. They, they got to winter quarters, they walked across the plains and they starved to death and they died. And that was, that was how their life ended. So the fact that some people made it to Salt Lake is great. It's not that faith promoting to me, you know.

John Dehlin [01:05:40] Yeah, absolutely.

John Larsen [01:05:42] You know, if, if, if a, if, if, if a, if, if a shooter walks into a school and kills 12 students and you weren't one of them, I don't want to Hear about how your God blessed you, I don't want to hear that. And if that's what you believe, fuck you. I don't care. If you believe that your God is doing things like that for you and letting kids die of cancer and whatever, then take your God and run. We don't, we don't care. This, this is what the church did. The miracle that some people. And if you notice that the stories the church tells, the faith promoting ones, like the three young men who carried people across the, the, the, the river, that was them.

John Larsen [01:06:22] This is the church jumping their story, right? Because I'm jumping ahead of myself just a tiny bit. But it was conference right as Richards got there. And on the, on the 6th, they get up and then Brigham Young gives his famous talk and says, we've got people out there who are in trouble.

John Larsen [01:06:41] And they did, they, they, they, they, they got their wagons together, but that wasn't the fucking church. That was the people. That was the people who had crossed the plains. They threw together their blankets, they got together their food, they got together their wagons, they sacrificed their teams and they took off. On Monday, when they found out there was a problem on the 6th, they took off the next day.

John Larsen [01:07:03] The church had sent three supply wagons before, before Richards got into Salt Lake. We know this because Richards talks about meeting them. Not one of the three ever made it to the. To. To where they went. Where they. To. To. To the, to the Willie or Martin handcar company. Where they went we have no idea because it was probably expunged from the church records. So, so the first supply train never went there. There was never any supplies sent to Fort Laramie, even though they had sent, they'd sent supplies for the first three car handcar companies. They did not refuel William Martin. These guys were just left to die.

John Larsen [01:07:48] There were supposed to be supply trains that were coming later. It gets worse than that. So this is the church that's being led by God. So they have all these guys who are heading out to resupply. So what the guy in charge named Grant does is he takes the first wagon and about four or about 100 miles, and he says, dump your stuff here because this is where the company's going to go and head back.

John Larsen [01:08:15] And then he takes the next one. He says, dump your stuff here. So by the time they actually get to Willie Co. There's a forward group that has hardly any provisions. And the first thing they do is they feed them. And then the Willie Company, God bless them, say the Martin Company's behind us. So they take off at a camp and hightail it out there to get to them. But the church decision to not bring the provisions to the William Martin Handcart Company. Let's go through this again. They didn't send them with enough food in the first place. They didn't send the supply chain to Fort Laramie.

John Larsen [01:08:53] They didn't send the backup supply chains that they did with the other. The rescue part. The first rescue party was dismissed and sent to God knows where. The next rescue party was divided up and they left the provision so those guys could go back home. When what happened is those people needed the goods. So the Willie and Martin handcart companies had to keep walking.

John Larsen [01:09:14] And that was from sheer fucking incompetence on the part of the church. They could have run all that stuff out. And you know what, if God ever wants to give a revelation, it would be like, hey, I want to take a couple more blankets with you. Then it might be a little bit. I'm in trouble out there.

John Larsen [01:09:31] And we read over and over and over again these people who, the saints sitting in that conference who, who jumped those wagons on October 7th. They knew. They knew. Where was God? Where was his leadership? Where was his prophet? His prophet was marrying another 14 year old girl and living in his fucking mansion in Salt Lake City. Right where they still are. They still sit on their hundred billion dollars. There's still those voices cry out from the planes and, and they will. And their blood has not been served by the church's shenanigans that follow. But I digress. I'm sorry. I told you at the beginning. This pisses me off. It's, it's just disgusting. It's, it's beyond words, you know, the gross incompetence and the blame on, on the people.

Carah Burrell [01:10:29] All right, in summation, it just sounds like you're saying that the church, this entire speech, like I think episode, is kind of about the church setting people up for failure. And then when they are able to band together and help one another, that the church isn't pitching in to do with either resources or money. It's the people who are doing the right thing and helping one another and sacrificing. While the church leaders are taking their cows from them and still taking 10%. What's the word? Tax. When they, you said the 10, 10, 10% tithing. 10% when you give money and then they take back 10%. What's that word?

John Dehlin [01:11:09] I don't know what you're talking about.

Carah Burrell [01:11:10] Interest. There we go.

John Larsen [01:11:10] Interest.

Carah Burrell [01:11:11] Interest that the church is taking so much from them. But then the church today is now using the faith promoting stories that they didn't even. The church had nothing to do with the faith promoting stories in the first place. That was people.

John Larsen [01:11:24] Well, the church absolutely created the conflict.

Carah Burrell [01:11:27] The conflict that needed to be resolved. But they' credit for it today where they'll print it in the ensign.

John Larsen [01:11:32] Correct.

Carah Burrell [01:11:32] And use this as a faith building testimony experience, while it's actually just people who are put in terrible contexts.

John Larsen [01:11:40] Yep. All right, so let's pick up. When Willie gets to. Gets to Fort Laramie, he scrapes together what money he can and he buys 400 pounds of basically soda crackers. They tally their provisions, and at that point they had enough provisions for 18 days.

The Blizzard Hits and the Death Toll Rises

John Larsen [01:11:57] The. The blizzard that the Willy Handcart Company pushes through was on their last day of food. They had used up all their food, and so they really hadn't. They. They really couldn't do anything. I would beg you to read in the book or in other sources, the, the. The accounts of the people starving to death.

John Larsen [01:12:16] They talk about, you know, just like you've heard everything else. They ate their shoes. They ate the. They ate the leather. They cut the leather off of the. Off of the handcarts. The, the. The leather that it was shod on the wheel and they ate it.

John Larsen [01:12:34] You can imagine how hungry you'd have to be. The, the one guy in one journal I read, the man said he contemplated eating nails. They were just. They were starving. That was not due to the snow. That was due to planning. The church planned for them to starve to death.

John Larsen [01:12:56] All right, I'm sorry I keep yelling at you guys. You guys don't deserve it. Sorry. Sorry out there. You're. I love you. I'm not yelling at you. Okay, so Franklin D. Richards shows up at the conference October 6, which we already referenced, and this is what he says.

John Larsen [01:13:12] The saints that are now upon the plains, about 1,000 with handcarts, feel it is late in the season and they expect to get cold fingers and toes. But they have this faith and confidence towards God that he will overrule the storms, that they may have the season thereof and turn them away. And their path may be free from suffering more than they can bear. They have confidence to believe that this will be an open fall. About sometime after.

John Dehlin [01:13:43] What's he saying? What's he basically saying there?

John Larsen [01:13:45] He's saying that there'll be an open fall that he says. He says that they'll have cold toes and fingers. He's minimizing. Oh, they're going to get a little bit. They're going to get a little bit chilly, you know, and. But they're going to be strong and they're going to be healthy. He keeps insisting this. He has no choice but to insist this because he's the architect of this. He and Brigham Young.

John Dehlin [01:14:03] Of course, it's confirmation bias, basically.

John Larsen [01:14:07] It's worse.

John Dehlin [01:14:08] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:14:08] I mean, this, this, this man is a. Is as terrible as they come. Right. Sometime after, after Fort Laramie, Willie actually receives a letter saying that there'd be a resupply train in, in South Pass. Somebody kicked off a letter to him. There was never a supply train in South Pass. There was never any indication that anybody had sent a supply train to South Pass. There was never, never anything done. October 19, Willie Handcart Company sets out. One day's provision left. They head straight into a blizzard. One foot of snow. 20th is when they hunker down. October 20th, both the companies come to a complete stop. Now, we've talked mostly about the Willie Company. I want to point out a couple things about the Martin Handcart Company. There should be faith promoting.

John Dehlin [01:14:55] Wait, when did the Willys Company arrive in Salt Lake?

John Larsen [01:15:00] Later. I didn't write that down.

John Dehlin [01:15:01] Okay. The weeks, months.

John Larsen [01:15:02] It's QED after, after this, before December. So the Forward company arrives on October 25th to the Willey Company. And they press through and they get to the Martin Company a couple days later. These guys start moving things forward with wagons and they start trying to unscrew up where they had cached the goods because they get out there and these people are immediately in need of bedding, of coats of food, of boots, of everything. Multiple journals describe them as being nearly naked. And, and by the way we talk about deaths, there are a lot of deaths that occur later in Salt Lake City, even for years. And, and some of these, These, these people suffered just, just immensely.

Carah Burrell [01:15:45] And Google says that Willie Co. Arrived November 9th to Salt Lake.

John Dehlin [01:15:49] Okay.

Carah Burrell [01:15:50] And that Martin Co. Arrived November 30th.

John Dehlin [01:15:53] Thank you.

Carah Burrell [01:15:54] Well, like you said, probably no. Almost no clothes.

John Larsen [01:15:57] Right. Well, at this point, they were, they were brought in on wagons because they, they were rescue. The, the, the, the, the rescue. The rescue brought the, brought them into town.

Carah Burrell [01:16:04] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:16:04] Does this have any total deaths? Maybe you're going to talk about that.

John Larsen [01:16:08] There are the numbers, the church. They're all just lies. And, and most of the deaths came during. From the five companies and especially the two.

John Dehlin [01:16:18] But I guess I should say known deaths.

John Larsen [01:16:20] Known deaths.

John Dehlin [01:16:21] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:16:22] And let me just highlight George's comment really Quick that says I'm a descendant of Jackson in the Martin Handcart Company. I a whole new light. John Larsen is mirroring my emotions.

Why More Men Died and Martin's Cove

John Larsen [01:16:33] Okay, so the question has been risen by people who don't pay attention. Why did more men die than women? Well, the men had another unfortunate thing we talk about. They had to pull night watch every other night. So in addition to having a thousand calories or less a day and walking 15 miles in the heat and in the cold, they were sleep deprived.

John Larsen [01:16:57] There should be a faith promoting story in the Martin Handcart Company. Three quarters of the Martin Handcart Company were women. Of course the church doesn't emphasize this point even though it could be faith promoting. Look at all these women. Because it breaks their narrative. When we think about people pushing carts. You have this man up there with a little kid eating a lollipop on top with his son next to him. And there's another guy who, who's in the back pushing. And then maybe you have a cartoon angel like helping push. We don't like the idea of two 15 year old girls who are barefoot, bleeding, suffering from frostbite, just doing the thing till they collapsed.

John Larsen [01:17:40] And they did collapse. Even though I told you they didn't pick up. Both the Martin and Willie Handcart Company people would get into camp and then they would immediately turn around the strongest and just go back and pick up people and throw them into the, throw them into the carts. That's not the storm that we celebrate in Martin's Cove. That's before the storm. That's, that's, that's the real tragedy of Martin's Cove as we focus on this little event. But they were already just emancipated at that point.

John Larsen [01:18:12] So I took a little list of the known fuck ups. There weren't enough rations. The, the, the handcarts weren't well constructed, were falling apart.

John Dehlin [01:18:22] Greenwood.

John Larsen [01:18:23] They, they made the axle out of wood. The axles were breaking constantly. They knew the trail was 300 miles longer than they advertised. They knew 15 miles a day couldn't be done. Never had been done and never would be done. They didn't send the big three, the big resupply wagons like they did with the first three. They didn't send the supply wagon to South Pass like they promised. They diverted the three early supply wagons that came. They cash the stuff with the, with the others. They knew that 17 pounds of material was not enough to keep people warm in the, in the winter. And everything they planned and everything they prophesied was wrong. And they took their cow and they took their cow. The people died because they took their cow.

John Dehlin [01:19:13] Yeah. And they nurtured a mindset of blind faith and obedience. This naive, you know, precious faith and confidence in prophetic leadership. That was what enabled the people to blindly follow them into disaster. And they silenced and punished any of the naysayers. Right, that sounds familiar.

John Larsen [01:19:37] One of my favorite stories is I think Will Bagley estimates that as half the saints who came to Salt Lake went back, there was a party in the spring of 300, mostly, mostly people from this company and others that left Salt Lake in April. The armed to the teeth. They. They didn't want the Danites to come murder them, which is pretty good evidence that there's at least one wagon train that had left that were murdered by, by, by the Danites because Hickman said he did.

Carah Burrell [01:20:07] If anyone doesn't know what the Danites are, can you give like a.

John Larsen [01:20:11] The Danites were Brigham Young's bodyguards and assassins, basically. So when the. The in. In Nauvoo, it basically started with the, the whistling elders, which. The story they used to tell in Sunday school manuals. Well, the whistling deacons, because we envisioned deacons as 12 year old boys and that the whittling and whistle, they. What they would do is they would stand on the street corner whittling with their big Bowie knives. These weren't children, these were grown men. And then when, when they're, when the people of the William Laws group, the dissidents of the church would come by, they would, they would whistle and signal to each other.

John Larsen [01:20:49] Very menacing, very threatening. So, so Brigham Young took that group that Joseph Smith kind of started. We're talking about Porter Rockwell, Wild Bill Hickman, those, those guys. And, and they, by their own accounts, they became assassins. So when, when Brigham Young would have problems with different people around the valley, they would send these guys to kill them.

John Larsen [01:21:16] I, I can't. That's the, the easiest way to put it. And to, to terrorize. And. And they, they also stole horses from the Paiutes and stuff like that. You know, just your regular bad guy shenanigans. Brigham Young was not a good person at all, even in a little bit. Like he was. He was as bad as they come.

Modern Youth Treks and the Handcart Legacy

John Larsen [01:21:36] Okay, let's talk about today. In the book, in the classic, the Joseph Heller book, Catch 22, there is a. There is an element. This is about bomber squadrons who keep getting sent in to bomb Germany even though they're getting, they're getting killed. And this is a true story. The. At first they had to do 15 missions and then they didn't have to do any more. And then they made it 25, then they made it 50, then they made it 100. And these guys had to keep getting on these bombers and flying into the flak when they knew the survival rate, you know, the shoot down rate after like 15 missions was up basically 100%.

John Larsen [01:22:14] So, so our hero, guy named Yo Sarian in the book is Flying Point. He's, he's, he's, he's at the front and they start getting flak and there's weather and it's, it's. So he turns the whole squadron around. He wasn't supposed to do that. They're supposed to just hold the line and run the bombing. Run and die is what their orders were. So he turns around, so the generals get together and they're like, what are we going to do with this guy? And they say we either have to court martial him or we have to give him a medal. But we can't afford to lose a plan, we can't afford to lose the pilots.

John Larsen [01:22:44] They give him a medal. So the aftermath of this, this was written about widely and the people who had been on this trip, most of them, they didn't find this faith promoting act at all. And there were plenty of people who thought this was just horseshit this whole trip. And especially with, with the handcarts again, the armed group of 300 who left salt Lake City and you know, turned around or went on to California, whatever they did.

John Larsen [01:23:11] So, so the church has a problem now because like I say, there is nothing faith promoting about this story at all. It was done through sheer either incompetence or maliciousness. Those are the only two possible explanations. And the incompetent one doesn't hold water.

John Larsen [01:23:27] The malicious one is hard to believe. It's hard for me to believe. But there seems to be very other explanations for what happened. You know, we can see in some talks that the lack of faith that you should be able to cross the plains and not ask the church for food, you know, we, we, there's plenty of you out there have seen this before. Giving hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of dollars to church, losing your job, and having the bishop berate you for trying to get some food out of the.

John Larsen [01:23:52] That story is so common, I mean, and it dates way back. So what do you do with the gross incompetence and tragedy of the William Martin Hancar Company? You celebrate it. If you want to know how propaganda works, there it is.

John Larsen [01:24:12] You're you, my friends have Been subjected to it, probably. If you haven't read up until now, for most of you, this is the first negative thing you've ever heard about the William Martin Handcart Company. Well, the rest of them, because we don't speak ill of the dead. Why would we say anything negative about those guys?

John Larsen [01:24:29] So the church just celebrates it. Give them all medals. Right. There's no reason any of those people had to die, let alone die in the horrific, terrible ways they died. One of the women talks about her husband dying early in the night and she screamed out and called for help, but there was no help. She laid next to her dead husband for nine hours.

John Larsen [01:24:55] That didn't have to happen. This does not promote faith at all. This does not suggest that there was anything happening that was good or praiseworthy. This suggests greed and avarice and raw grabs for power. Right?

John Dehlin [01:25:15] Yeah. The lessons here are don't trust the brethren, don't follow the brethren, don't follow blindly. Don't believe their revelations. Don't trust the people that they denounce or criticize because they're probably the truth tellers and they're, they're kind of greedy, amassing wealth and they really don't care about the members, even to the point of the members dying with, with pain and suffering. They don't care. Collateral damage is just part of the deal. That's kind of. Those are the lessons of this experience.

John Larsen [01:25:47] They use it.

John Dehlin [01:25:49] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:25:49] They would send the youth out there and they wouldn't tell them what was really going on. I mean, I would love them to send the youth out there with, you know, a five pound bat of flour and say, that's what you got, whatever else you can find.

John Dehlin [01:26:03] Right, right. Yeah. You're saying Draper, Draper. Pioneer Trek, you know, in 2021 isn't. Isn't anything. It's, it's, it's almost a mockery.

John Larsen [01:26:13] Right? It's a mockery. They, the, the, the, the tents, they slept 20, 20 people in those tents just cheek to jowl. Right. They were just, just right in there. And the, this one, when one of the accounts, the, this, this, this, this girl, I think she was 16, she expressed with shame her brother had died in the night and they'd come around the next day, were passing out rations, and for a second the guy passing out forgot that her brother was dead and gave them the ration. And then he remembered and said, oh, he died. So he took it back. And she writes in her journal how ashamed she felt because all she could feel at that moment was that she Wanted that ration.

John Larsen [01:27:09] I implore. I don't know if the church still does this. I implore anybody, please, please do not go out there with anything but reverence for the people who died. And please don't play the church's game. It's sick that the church sends kids out there to do what they do these things. It's sick.

John Dehlin [01:27:28] You're talking about youth treks for the, for the non Mormon children.

John Larsen [01:27:31] I'm talking about the tricks. Yes, please, for non Mormons who don't

John Dehlin [01:27:34] know what John's talking about. It's now common in, across, you know, Mormon youth groups all throughout the United States for, for, you know, every four years or so for a trek to be planned, which I don't know is like a week long kind of activity where a bunch of suburb white Mormon youth who are largely affluent go to somewhere in Wyoming and there's a bunch of wagons and there's a bunch of hand carts and there's adult supervision and tents and rations and food. And they basically try and recreate a small part of, of this journey that you're talking about.

John Larsen [01:28:11] I would push back on the word recreate. I don't think there's anything in that about recreation.

Carah Burrell [01:28:14] There's. Remember when Kelly Truss was on and she went to Sandy? I didn't, I purposely didn't go. I'm smart. But do you remember when Kelly Truss was on and she said she grew up in that really affluent neighborhood in Sandy and that trek was catered by Cafe Rio? And that's where I think a lot of the frustration John's feeling is that like it is a, it is a spitting in their face to act like you're doing anything close to this recreation that they went on.

John Larsen [01:28:40] The church pushed these people into this terrible nightmarish situation. If someone were to make an accurate movie about what happened, when you read about the horrific deaths people were going through, I was reading one of the guys, he had a, he had a wooden leg. And just the sheer agony they would talk about of every day, him taking off that, that, that leg and the, and the, this is a horror movie on par with the worst horror movies you've seen.

John Dehlin [01:29:10] Like, it was really, it's like recreating the Holocaust, right? It's a Mormon version of the Holocaust.

John Larsen [01:29:16] Children, they beat everybody with, with, with whips, with sticks that they, they, they punished people for getting sick. They, they forced the elderly, sick elderly to just walk. They left them to die on the plains. They underfed. You read the humanity story. He talks in the Book if you want to read about the problem they were having with theft. And just imagine yourself as a father or mother of these children. You're just watching them starve to death. And so this terrible thing that led to Martin's Cove, that the church has taken that to serve itself instead of,

John Dehlin [01:30:02] instead of owning up to it. Apollo, you know, atoning for it, apologizing for it, trying to do some type of restitution. Again, all of the steps of repentance that they impose upon us, that's what should have done. Their reparations to their families and the descendants. Apologies instead of that. Go ahead.

John Larsen [01:30:23] Oh yeah. Or markers honoring the dead. I mean, the 17 miracles, which I have to say I'm, I've never seen, but okay. Were there 17 miraculous sort of things? Sure. I mean, I don't believe they're miracles, but people get sick and get better. What do they say? 1 out of every 20 cases of cancer spontaneously goes into remission. So you're gonna have some faith promoting stories. Just statistically, that's.

John Dehlin [01:30:44] I just create, like you say, courageous humans that did courageous things.

John Larsen [01:30:47] Courageous humans doing courageous things. But those 17 miracle stories are ignoring the 3, 4, 5, 600 stories of people who died horrific deaths and suffered horrific deaths, want to have their children die in their arms, their, their, their, their, their spouses there. The, the just, just to sit and, and be a young woman who has five children and watch her husband die on the plains, you know, pursuing this, this miracle of Zion.

John Larsen [01:31:19] And when they got there, they were fed, they were taken care of in the least thing. But these people were oftentimes saddled with debts, sent out to other podunk places. It was, it was a hard life. And talking to my dear wife about this, she's like, why didn't they leave?

John Larsen [01:31:36] My answer is always. And go where you know, you're from, you're from Manchester. Here you are on the high plains of Wyoming with nothing. Where do you go? What do you do? These people had no choice to keep walking. Every day is not a matter of faith. It's a matter of what else can you possibly do?

John Larsen [01:32:04] And I think the church is. I can't overemphasize enough is disgusting for trying to profiteer off this thing by using it as a faith promoting story for getting the youth in the church

John Dehlin [01:32:15] and to get more tithing.

John Larsen [01:32:16] And you get more tithing.

John Dehlin [01:32:17] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:32:18] And, and I've been out to Martin's Cove once. I don't remember a lot, but it was a lot of faith promoting stuff. I made the Same complaint about the, the, the, the, the, the mass. The Mountain Meadows massacre site. If you go onto the church site and, and I think somebody said they fix this a little bit. But the, it used to be there was a big monument. And if you read the plaque, it talked about how Gordon B. Hinckley made this monument in 1990. It was a monument to a monument. You had to go. If you go up to a bluff there, that land is not owned by the church.

John Larsen [01:32:52] And that's where it has the names of every person who died. That's where it has the story of what actually happened at Mountain Meadows. Same thing with Willie and Martin. It's complete lies. It's complete fabrication. It is there just to trick you emotionally. The church had no place to bury this story. It was an abject and utter failure. That absolutely demonstrates that Brigham Young and Franklin D. Richards were uninspired and in fact, probably the worst. So what they did is they put it right in plain sight.

John Dehlin [01:33:22] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:33:23] And we, including myself, were all taken in.

John Dehlin [01:33:28] So every July 24th in Utah, there's Pioneer Day, where, where Utah Mormons all take off their jobs and their school and they all get in the streets and make handcarts and they march down the streets to celebrate pioneers, which really is celebrating the church.

John Larsen [01:33:48] Celebrating the pioneers would be a noble thing to do. There were great sacrifices. A whole bunch of my ancestors came across on the plains.

John Dehlin [01:33:55] Mine too.

John Larsen [01:33:56] And they made sacrifices and that sort of stuff. And I don't want to denigrate the sacrifices they made. I'm saying that for the hand car companies, they made sacrifices. They didn't have to. And they were built in. They were planned. They would have starved to death anyway.

Drawing Parallels to Present-Day Church Issues

John Dehlin [01:34:14] For me. So I'll just, I'll just, you know, so we can take this story and go, wow, 100, 150 years ago, the church did a really bad thing. Right. That's one way to kind of like, that's one conclusion to draw from the story. For me, it, it gets a little bit more serious. And I observe that this type of callous profiteering behavior has continued. And I'll just tell you in my lifetime. So I, I, you know, it's 2000, I'm working at Microsoft, and I learned about this guy named Stuart Mattis.

John Dehlin [01:34:53] He's this young gay Mormon returned missionary who, who goes up to his California ward or state building, pins a note to his chest that says do not resuscitate, and he shoots himself on the steps of the church building. Now this is on the heels of Prop 22, this is eight years prob. This is on the heels of Prop 22 before Prop 8. This is eight years before Prop 8. And I may get the years tiny bit wrong, but like, you know, how many decades, whether it's the electroshock therapy at BYU in the 70s or whatever, for how many decades up until this point had LGBT Mormons been, been dying by suicide?

John Dehlin [01:35:37] We don't know. But we do know that kind of like with Stuart Mattis in 2000, like, whoa, that's a wake up call. And I learned, you know, if I know about this, living in, you know, Isaqua, Washington, working for Microsoft, the brethren know about the story, right?

John Dehlin [01:35:52] Fast forward another eight years. The Brethren start Prop 8 and we see deaths by suicide in Utah just spike that. You literally look at suicides prior to 2008, and then you see this hockey stick of an inflection in 2008 where youth and young adult suicides just double and triple the national average.

John Dehlin [01:36:16] And by, by 2008, 2009, I'm, you know, there's even a Deseret News article about, wow, for some reason, our youth suicides are just super high. We don't totally understand why, you know, and I'm, I'm like, whoa, this is serious. And then you just see from 2008 to now, you've got this steady stream of, of deaths by suicide that are two to three times the national average. Now there, you know, there are other factors at play, the accessibility of handguns being one of them, because they're, you know, Colorado and Idaho and Wyoming all have higher accessibility to guns maybe than the national average, but they've also got a lot of Mormons.

John Dehlin [01:36:59] And, and, and what I have just kind of like, you know, and I remember meeting with Elder Holland and I'm like, elder Holland, you know, it's not just the LGBT deaths by suicide. How many Mormon marriages have been dissolved when somebody just stumbles on factual church history? Elder Holland, you're losing thousands and thousands and thousands of families every year are being dissolved, right? You've got, you've got 12 and 13 year old kids struggling with scrupulosity, deep anxiety or depression, and sometimes suicidality because of the guilt and shame around masturbation, right? You've got this epidemic of problems that the Church has known about for decades across all sorts of different measures.

John Dehlin [01:37:49] What has the Church done? What has the Church done about the LGBT crisis? Like, only after they were beaten into submission by movies like, you know, Believer by Dan Reynolds and HBO by Tyler Glenn, like venting his spleen on, on the global stage to try and call attention to the deaths and the carnage.

John Dehlin [01:38:10] And even in. In 2021, you still see the church doing the same thing it did 150 years ago, just kind of like, ah, yeah. And the members, too. Like, the members join in. It's just this, this mass indifference and callousness to. To deaths and to the dissolution of families, to the destruction of marriages and to the, you know, mass defection of members from the church records. And what's the church's response? It's like, send more money to Ensign peak. First it's 100 billion. Now it's 120 billion. Now it's 150 billion. And let's build more temples. Oh, let's announce another 20 or 25 temples. This, this general conference.

John Dehlin [01:38:57] It's just like Brigham Young building more rooms to his mansion. Nero fiddling while Rome burns. The brethren are raking in the dough. And the carnage continues. The indifference, the callous indifference. And profiteering continues. Am I wrong?

John Larsen [01:39:17] Suppose there was an institution that was a church that selected its leadership based on business acumen and loyalty to the institution. Suppose this thing existed. Okay, it would look exactly like the church looks today.

John Dehlin [01:39:33] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:39:34] That's the epiphany that a lot of people have with. When they, when they're struggling with the church is true. It's the realization that the church looks exactly how it would look if it were not true. By the. When I say not true, it's of course, by their own definition. These guys, I mean, you listen to conference. They, they, they, they. They don't even know what they're talking about anymore.

John Dehlin [01:39:56] They're like, go to church more. Go to the temple more. Like that's going to solve the societal ills of today.

John Larsen [01:40:01] Right?

John Dehlin [01:40:01] Pay more tithing. Like they need it. Right?

John Larsen [01:40:04] Right. Well, yeah. They. They don't. They don't know. They have no inspiration. They don't. They don't know. They don't know what else to do. Like, they're. They're institutional men. It's like, it's like Facebook or, Or Amazon. They just get. Keep getting more money and more money and more money. They don't know what to do with it. Now we'll go be billionaire space cowboys. It's. The church is another billionaire space cowboy. They're not gonna give any of it back. They don't. But they don't know what to do with it.

John Dehlin [01:40:29] That's why they keep asking for more. That's the thing. They keep asking for more. They steal the cow and they eat it and they ask for more.

John Larsen [01:40:36] Right. I think they've announced something like 200 and something temples and a hundred of them haven't even been built at all. Like there's this huge backlog. It's like a game they're playing now. They just announced all these temples and they may or may not be built. There's places that they announced years ago that there's no sign there's any temple coming, you know. And what does it even mean?

John Dehlin [01:40:57] Because they're not going to say the church is growing in leaps and bounds because it's shrinking to a halt. Except what are they going to announce?

John Larsen [01:41:04] It's growing the way they want it to because they're, they're, they're, they're. You know the criteria they used to select general authorities?

John Dehlin [01:41:12] Yeah, it's like, are you my son in law? Basically?

John Larsen [01:41:15] Well, there's, there's that wealthy.

John Dehlin [01:41:16] Are you an attorney?

John Larsen [01:41:17] Are you connected? Are you.

John Dehlin [01:41:18] But also, can you fix big problems without them leaking out into the press?

John Larsen [01:41:22] Are you an institutional person?

John Dehlin [01:41:23] These are fixers. General authorities are the people that have been determined, loyal corporate fixers who have been determined to be loyal, who know how to fix stuff to minimize the, the embarrassment, you know, in the press.

John Larsen [01:41:35] You, dear listener, probably know more about the church than they do for sure.

John Dehlin [01:41:39] Oh, I didn't even mention the mass epidemic of sexual abuse of, of children, of young men, of young women. You know, we have. They knew about the Boy Scouts.

John Larsen [01:41:55] Everybody knew what was going on in the boy Scouts.

John Dehlin [01:41:57] Yeah, we just got news that that 80,000, you know, former boy Scouts have now complained and, and joined on to these class action lawsuits. It's got to be at least 20,000 of them that were Mormon. And the church has known about these abuses forever. And Curtin McConkey just pays off the victims, silences them and continued investing in the Boy Scouts until the class action lawsuits got so bad they had to shut it down. And even then they didn't say, oops, we had too much abuse, we're shutting down the Boy Scouts. They're like, hmm, we need to expand our programs into international realms and we need to include the women.

John Dehlin [01:42:34] So instead of just like with the, just like with the story you just told, instead of owning the carnage that was self inflicted and even planned, they turn it into a positive spin and say we love our international brethren and sister and we now love our women. So we have to get rid of the Boy Scouts because we love girls and we love our international members and that's how they spin the carnage that is over 20,000 cases of sexual abuse. Mormons sexually abused by Mormons supported and covered up by bishops.

John Larsen [01:43:07] And those are only. This lawsuit is only people who are sexually abused by. By, like, Scout Masters and others in authority. The real epidemic of the Boy Scouts was youth on youth sexual abuse and violence. Meaning I'm not trying to undermine the fact that if you get abused by a leader, that is enormous, but the reason I say this other one was bigger. Like, sure. Like, the number of. If you. If you. The number of people who can tell you stories about being abused by Scout Masters is paltry compared to the number who talk about sexual shaming and humiliation and. And all those things that were done to them in the Boy Scouts.

John Dehlin [01:43:45] But also. But also, yes, that. And if one out of every 100 cases of sexual abuse is actually reported, is that number, you know, a hundred thousand? Is it 500,000? Like, we don't know how massive the sexual abuse has been in the church. And I'm just saying that. That all of that.

John Larsen [01:44:04] And in part because Curtin McConkey would swoop in and. NDAs, NDAs, NDAs buy off people. Buy off people.

John Dehlin [01:44:10] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:44:10] Yeah. Hey, if you don't have any morals, I got. I got a $30,000 scheme for you. All you have to do is accuse a church leader that they. They wiggled your diggle. And. And the curtain conkey will zoom out and give you $30,000 to shut up.

John Dehlin [01:44:25] Yeah. And so I asked myself how. How do we live in a world where all of this pain and suffering and carnage is acceptable and there's not moral outrage? And the truth is, the church has been doing this for 200 years. This is the culture. This is our culture.

John Larsen [01:44:42] They know how to clean up the messes. Yeah, right.

John Dehlin [01:44:45] And to get richer and richer. I mean, this sounds really angry, Carah. You're probably feeling like we're unhinged Now.

Carah Burrell [01:44:52] I'm thinking in metaphors. You want to hear my metaphor?

John Dehlin [01:44:54] Yeah. What's your metaphor?

Carah Burrell [01:44:55] My metaphor is, like, human beings, we come from evolution. And just think about. I'm thinking about, like, dinosaurs right now. And the way, like, in Jurassic park, that, like, if you make too much motion, they can snap. Like, the T. Rex can go and snap you. Right. And eat you. So. So the members are like a T. Rex, and they're looking for motion. And if the church, it can make motions, it can get rid of Boy Scouts. It can allow, like, black people to go into the temple, but if it makes too much motion, they know they're gonna be snapped up by the church. The members are gonna start like actually looking out what's going on.

Carah Burrell [01:45:31] We're just like evolved, like little reptilian brains who, if the church knows it makes too much noise or too much motion, people are gonna get angry and start asking questions. But they can do these things. They can obfuscate. They can say the different reasons why they're doing them. They can do it only when pushed. So that's what they're going to do. Like they're, they're, they don't want to make too much noise. That we're not really profits.

John Dehlin [01:45:52] And also, I mean, Levi Hancock, right? Levi Hancock.

John Larsen [01:45:56] Savage.

John Dehlin [01:45:56] Levi Savage. Perfect metaphor for, you know, Eugene England, Lowell Bennion, Leonard Arrington, Paul Toscano, Margaret Toscano, Jeremy Runnels, Bill Real, you know, pick your, you know, pick your public. Vocal dissident. The church for over 150 years has been silencing and shaming and humiliating its critics and lying like. And lying and giving false prophecies like. It is. This story that you brought to us, John Larsen, is a perfect type in a shadow and metaphor that explains the, the corporate church, of the corporation, of the president of the church, Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And it's inexplicable behavior. Inexplicable behavior for 200 years. This is the perfect metaphor that you brought to us today. Well, that explains it all.

John Larsen [01:46:46] That question, why don't, don't you guys have anything better to do with your time? The answer is no, because the, the story of these people, the real people and their real experience deserves not to be lost and forgotten, deserves not to be turned into a propaganda item by the church as it has.

John Larsen [01:47:04] They dishonor the dead people who sacrificed everything to the last measure, to use the Church's terms. And what have we done? We've erased them. And it's shameful. And their story needs to be told. It deserves to be told. It's a part of the American experience and it's a part of what built Utah, which was hard work and tenacity and grit and avarice and violence and corruption. And when we realize that we're all bathing in that stuff that. I love the United States. We've done some great things. It's a wonderful country and we've done some terrible things. And if we can't recognize that we have benefited from slavery, that we have benefited from the mass genocide of the indigenous people, that we've benefited from immigrants, that we, we chewed up and used up to build Our empires.

John Larsen [01:48:01] Our empires are not worth anything. It's garbage. And the church, well, the church is not redeemable. It never will. It can't. It doesn't know how. It doesn't know how to not lie. And the problem is that the members have been trained to not be able to detect a lie from the church. And it takes a lot of this sort of undoing to do that. You think I like that I choose to read this book?

John Dehlin [01:48:29] Yeah. It's not fun.

John Larsen [01:48:31] These stories do not. I had to. You saw my book everywhere here with my friend Brent, and he was joking beforehand that, I mean, Bruce.

John Dehlin [01:48:38] Right.

John Larsen [01:48:39] Just, he kept seeing my book laying around as I've been reading it the last couple weeks, and it's like, because I have to put it down, I have to walk away and go, and go. It's just, it's terrible, you know?

John Dehlin [01:48:51] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:48:52] And, and you know, what's the. Be the first reaction from, from the faithful people? They won't read it. They won't look at it. They'll say, oh, John, he said I don't have to read that book. But like I said in previous podcasts, what happened out there is way worse than anything I can bring to you. I'm sorry, this isn't fun stuff.

John Dehlin [01:49:14] And the pain and the carnage continues. That's the, the, that's the whole point again, if this is just 150 years ago. Yeah, that's hard. Let's learn from it. The carnage continues to this day. Whether it's sexual abuse of, of children, sexual abuse of teenage girls and teenage boys, marriages being destroyed, lives being destroyed, LGBT deaths by suicide. The carnage continues. People being ostracized from their family just for losing their faith, people being excommunicated for speaking the truth about the church. The carnage continues. While the church gets not just super wealthy, it's becoming a trillion dollar church.

John Larsen [01:49:56] So you have to ask yourself, are they incompetent or they evil?

John Dehlin [01:50:02] And it's, and it's, you know, we always like to say care of systems, not people. Right, right. Like I was thinking about the Obedience to Authority experiment by Stanley Milgram. It's one of the most famous psychological experiments of all time where they, they, they, you know, have these confederates in white lab coats standing over the, the subjects of the study telling them shock, you know, administer a lethal voltage to somebody over the wall that they can't see who's shouting. As the lethal dosage of electricity is being administered, Two thirds of the participants administered lethal levels of shock in the, in, you know, as far as they knew.

John Dehlin [01:50:46] Just because some white dude in a lab jacket with the clipboard was saying, you must complete the experiment. You must complete the experiment. We are wired to obey authority. And the hardest part about this, John, is that these leaders, maybe even this Richard's guy, but the leaders today, they're obeying authority. They're kind of all obeying Joseph Smith's authority, even though he's long dead. And so in some sense, we can direct our anger at, at the church leaders, including the, the first presidency, the quorum of the 12, but they are, they're victims, too. I know. I, I know it probably it kills the buzz a little bit to sort of say it's the system more than the people, but there's kind of some

John Larsen [01:51:31] truth to that today. I, if you try to argue either Brigham Young or Joe Smith was a victim, I, I won't. Not on any.

John Dehlin [01:51:39] No, I'm talking about today.

John Larsen [01:51:41] Today. Yeah, they were. They were part of a system, but they also are in a position where they can see and they can fix it.

John Dehlin [01:51:47] Yeah, they can fix it.

John Larsen [01:51:48] So, so they don't get. They don't. They. They get a moral pass up to a point, and then they don't get one anymore.

John Dehlin [01:51:54] Well, they can't fix it and keep raking in, you know, tens of billions of dollars a year in tithing.

John Larsen [01:52:01] Right.

John Dehlin [01:52:02] And that's. And without hemorrhaging the membership even more. And that's the thing. We did an episode on Chad Dabel and Lori Valo and the Prepper movement, because that stuff comes right out of the prepper movement. The church could stop the prepper movement, but it would lose a huge percentage of its. Of its members in the process.

John Larsen [01:52:18] I would say the church could have stopped the prepper movement. I think they lost control during COVID And if, if you read the pages of the Deseret News, you'll see it. They're trying to steer the, The Utah. Utah is a MAGA state, and they're trying to steer it back to the Romney, you know, like neo. Neo. Neo what? Neoconservatives that's the, that they like the rich. The. The Republicans get us rich, but they're struggling and it's their own damn fault. Yeah, it's going to get worse here before it gets better, and the church is going to have to have. They don't have any. Who in the Quorum is. Is somebody who can make change

John Dehlin [01:52:58] and no one can. I've talked to Holland. I talked to him. He's like, I'm just One guy. I'm just one of 15 guys. And at the time, he was a junior apostle. And by the time you make it to being a senior apostle, you're. You're too in.

John Larsen [01:53:10] You. You have to say. You walk around telling people you're a fucking wizard. Don't tell me you're. That you're.

John Dehlin [01:53:18] No, I know, but. But he. In private, he will say, I'm just one of 15.

Carah Burrell [01:53:22] Yeah. I've seen people who says they're special witnesses for Jesus Christ, like, you are 1 of 15. You should have an immense amount of wizardry.

John Larsen [01:53:30] Yes. Not one of those has seen Jesus Christ. And they will all.

John Dehlin [01:53:35] They're admitting that these days.

John Larsen [01:53:36] They will just nurture that one out there, kind of. I want one of them to get up and say, I want you to know that as a man standing before you now, I have never laid eyes on. They don't say that.

John Dehlin [01:53:49] They do.

John Larsen [01:53:49] In the smoother.

John Dehlin [01:53:50] You know what I'm saying? In the smooth hearing, they'll say, yes, right?

John Larsen [01:53:52] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:53:53] They will admit in the smooth hearing, they never saw Jesus. But in front of the members, it's. I know in ways that I can't even describe that I, you know, believe and know that this is true.

Carah Burrell [01:54:03] And can I just say one thing, that the first.

John Dehlin [01:54:06] Are we gonna rant now? Are we ranting? No. Are we ranting?

Carah Burrell [01:54:08] John, you're ranting. I'm getting started. Okay, let me join the first shelf item. Generally for me when I was Mormon was that I wasn't being edified in a lot of ways, and I felt like I couldn't. I like talking about Jesus. I got. I got a lot of spiritual connection with a higher power. When I thought about Jesus Christ and the Atonement. And I just focused on a lot of that and that. I survived Mormonism for seven years just kind of being a little bit of a mini Jesus freak with one foot in, like, an evangelical Christian camp and one foot in Mormonism. And my first big problem was, like, the things we're talking about, how the church will enrich itself.

Carah Burrell [01:54:41] And I'm like, the Jesus Christ that I worship, that I technically put above these men that they're supposed to be special witnesses of, it's not the same Jesus Christ they're worshiping. One that is thinking about their own houses, building their own wealth, and that the Jesus I worship is like, if you want to be my disciple, I don't. Foxes have holes, birds have nests, and the Son of God, I don't have anywhere to rest my head and Sell everything and follow me and just be like this sacrificial, like the opposite of the Joel Osteens of the world who were like God wants you to be rich.

Carah Burrell [01:55:15] That's not the Jesus. And I couldn't ever match those things up. So I actually do have a question I wanted to ask you because I think a lot of Mormons love that Jesus I just described. But the church that they get their edification from, that they listen to these prophets, they watch conference like my parents did over the weekend, they like that Jesus I just described, that very self sacrificial, loving God, but the one that they're worshiping at conference, I, that how do I get through to Mormons that that's not the same version of God at all. You're talking about a church that has nothing to do with that self sacrificial Jesus.

John Dehlin [01:55:48] This is Denver snuffer's point. Oh, is it? Okay, this is also Grant Palmer's point that Mormon Jesus sucks.

John Larsen [01:55:53] Well, basically they would have to get a Bible that's printed in language that they can read. So they'd have to get like an NIV or Cambridge or something and then they'd have to read the New Testament

Carah Burrell [01:56:05] because they just haven't, they just, they don't know.

John Larsen [01:56:07] I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm trying to say they really don't understand because they, they've, they've used the King James Bible and they've just proof text, pulled things out of context.

John Dehlin [01:56:16] But also the Book of Mormon is superior. So the Bible's de Emphas. So it's the Book of Mormon Jesus.

John Larsen [01:56:21] Well, and you know, I've said before, I don't like Paul very much, but the church doesn't either. So they have to, especially they have to, they have to take different things and de. Emphasize some things, you know, because they can't accept the book either. Because they don't, they don't. Like you're saying Jesus was very clear. If you're a righteous person and you want to go to the next level, what do you do? You sell everything you have. Jesus was not, he didn't mince words about money.

Carah Burrell [01:56:47] It's easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven,

John Larsen [01:56:51] render under Caesar what is Caesar's. He opted out of the systems. He rejected the monetary system. Why did he. And this is one of the problems that American Christians have, and I'm about to piss off your audience again, American Christians have, and in particular evangelicals and Mormons because they've wedded the principles of American capitalism so much with Christianity, but it doesn't bear out. There is nothing Jesus said anywhere that would promote capitalism. Jesus was a rejecter of the capitalistic systems. So. So you've got somebody who is very clear. What do you do when you want to follow Jesus? You simplify. You get rid of everything. You get rid of money.

John Dehlin [01:57:38] Follow me.

John Larsen [01:57:38] Just get. And then you take care of. Of the people who need to be taken care of. The lowest, prostitutes have always been the lowest, and Jesus was clear about that.

John Dehlin [01:57:49] Not because they're, quote, immoral, but because they're desperate and that's the only way they're feeding themselves. Right?

John Larsen [01:57:54] Because they're human beings. When I read the New Testament, Jesus was saying, these are my children. They're human beings. They deserve. People deserve to have a life because they're alive.

John Dehlin [01:58:07] And that's what I was gonna say. You think about, like, the. The. The parable of the. The guy dying on the side of the road, the. Who passes by, what's.

John Larsen [01:58:19] Good Samaritan.

John Dehlin [01:58:20] Good Samaritan, Right. Like, you think about how the Utah Saints likely responded to. To these parties that were lost. Right? You. You said it right. How did they. When they find out that they've got some people, you know, the struggling and the Willie and the Martin handcar Company, how do they respond?

John Larsen [01:58:38] They were out within 12 hours. Had the people. Yeah, they were head. They were heading back. They were going to go rescue them.

John Dehlin [01:58:45] What's a little bit different now is you go to Mormons today and say, thousands of, you know, Sam Young says, thousands and thousands of your little girls and boys and young men and young women are getting sexual abused.

John Dehlin [01:59:00] And the Mormons go, oh, you know, what's on? How's BYU doing today? And you say, whoa, there's an elder. Our suicide rates, our death by suicide rates, LGBT are skyrocketing three times the national average. And they're like, oh, my gosh, General Conference is coming up. Are we excited? Like, there seems to be a numbness now to the, you know, and. And an opposite of the Good Samaritan impulse, where you're walking by the person dying on the side of the road as an orthodox Mormon today and basically saying, that's not going to help me get my Tesla, or that's going to not help me Upgrade to my McMansion in Draper, or it's not going to help me get an elective surgery that I want.

John Dehlin [01:59:46] It's like the. The Good Samaritan fable has gone by the wayside. And modern Utah Mormons too often just yawn and then go buy, go buy their next designer purse.

Carah Burrell [02:00:00] You know, it's easier to label things communism than to actually think critically and empathetically. Like that's how I would put it. You just go, well, if I did that, that's communism. That they, they need to pull themselves out by the.

John Dehlin [02:00:10] Well, I'm just saying.

Carah Burrell [02:00:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:00:12] Modern Mormons seem numb to the pain and suffering of other people. John Larsen comes on this podcast every time he comes on and he's in tears about the, the state of the world, the state of the environment, the state of, you know, the, the William Martin handcar company. You have empathy. But somehow it's gotten worse in the past 100, 150 years because so many Mormons are now anesthetized to the pain and suffering of others and they're just worrying about how to get to the next level of conspicuous consumption. I don't know. Am I wrong?

John Larsen [02:00:44] No. And, but it's worse. I remember you're talking about when Prop 20 and Prop 8 and I'll mingle this story, but I can get the gist of it right. There was a debate down at UVU between I think it was Millet or someone, one of those apologists and a critic and they were talking about the suicide rate. And the apologist said, give an apologetic response, said, well, not everybody in Utah is a Mormon. You can't blame the suicide rate on us.

John Larsen [02:01:11] Well, the church claims that 70% of the state is Mormon. So if the church has a Sue, if Utah has a suicide rate, that's three times the, the population, you know, the, the general number in the United States and all of that comes from people who aren't Mormons. The 30% then living next to Mormons drives people to suicide at such a rate that it will, it will adjust for the entire population numbers. Right. So their answers they give make them even worse because, and I think that the reason I bring up that story, because when you tell the average Mormon, when Sam says, hey, there's kids being molested by bishops or whatever.

John Larsen [02:01:52] Well, not good bishops. No true Scotsman would molest a kid. You know, no true Mormon would do that. If somebody's. And it's the same thing they did with the poor people dying out on the plains. Well, he didn't really. Some 16 year old kid who's confused about his own sexuality, rejected by his dad. Well, he just didn't have enough faith. So the solutions they give are worse than the original problem.

John Dehlin [02:02:20] It's so hard.

John Larsen [02:02:21] I'm sorry, this is nothing, there's nothing great about this. But it's important that we know. It's important that we tell the story.

John Dehlin [02:02:30] Well, John, we're getting a lot of feedback. Believe it or not, our audience right now is as large as it's been all night. We've got 660 people joining two hours in either through YouTube or Facebook and the comments are streaming in overwhelmingly that people are loving this conversation. Carrie, am I right or.

Carah Burrell [02:02:48] Yeah, I love reading the comments. Everyone is. You know, we get a little bit afraid like oh, we don't get too ranty. But I think they love the ranty.

John Dehlin [02:02:56] So let me just ask this because one of the pro. I'll. I want to close maybe with try and close on a constructive positive note.

Carah Burrell [02:03:04] Can I ask one more question before we do any kind of wrap up? Something's been on my mind this whole entire time is from listening to your polygamy podcast. That's where I first learned about women basically being sex trafficked over across the plains. And I was curious. I didn't ask you at the time, but it's still on my mind about when you said that it was three fourths women on these handcart companies were some of these women who were like kind of bought and sold and paid for to get them out as polygamist wives out west. Was that anyone that was in that

John Larsen [02:03:35] missionaries openly talked about in their journals and in their letters. So in, in sources known openly talking about looking for wives out there with wives at home. So it's hard to estimate how much of it was. But, but, but yes. And Heber Kimball and those guys talk about, you know, all the pretty ones. So they would come down and like try to. Yeah, so it was definitely sex trafficking. Was there a correlation between the, the Martin company and having more, more women because of that? I can't answer that. I say these were kind of the last, the stranglers, you know, the people who were sick and infirmed and blind and you know, didn't have.

John Larsen [02:04:20] So in, in 1856, if you're a woman, you know, a widow or, or you'd gotten pregnant, there wasn't a lot for you. So these missionaries come in and offered you salvation and offered to get you out to Zion. It would be a very seductive message.

Carah Burrell [02:04:35] Interesting. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:04:37] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:04:37] All right. I was just curious why there were so many women.

John Larsen [02:04:39] But yeah, I have a great grandmother, great great grandmother who was an infant in Scandinavia and the, the mother of the of my relative gave her to one of the missionaries to bring back because she was so poor, she didn't have anything. So. And then eventually the, the true mother came out and they were in Sanpeque county somewhere that they, you know, they didn't have like a big family thing, but they, you know, they gave her a home and whatever. But it just speaks to the destitute nature of your own existence that you're willing to hand your baby to these missionaries to take halfway across the world. These people are desperate people.

Carah Burrell [02:05:23] Yeah, yeah.

Outrage, Social Media, and Moving Forward

John Dehlin [02:05:24] So I've been reading a little bit about how, you know, Facebook and Twitter and, you know, social media, modern social media, basically profits off of outrage. How they, they profit off of polarization. They profit off of outrage. And if you want to get a lot of views, if you want to make money on social media, then just pick really polarizing, controversial topics and get everybody angry, and that's what wins. And I don't want Mormon stories like, I love having you on. Our listeners love having you on. These are super important things to talk about. And I don't want us to just be brokers of outrage.

John Dehlin [02:06:04] Right. So what can we do? John Larsen, Carah Burrell, John Dehlin, Brent, feel free to jump in. What in the heck? What do we do with all this outrage? So we're not just peddling outrage, feeding, you know, throwing red meat to the, to the wolves. What can we do to convert this knowledge and this outrage into something constructive? John, I'm going to let you go first. Carah, you're next.

Carah Burrell [02:06:29] Wolves that are watching, don't get offended. He didn't mean that.

John Larsen [02:06:32] Carol, you look like you've got an answer queued up.

Carah Burrell [02:06:35] I don't. I just wanted to say that there are some people who donate to Mormon stories and John just called them wolves.

John Larsen [02:06:40] I think that.

John Dehlin [02:06:42] What can we do?

John Larsen [02:06:44] I think if you listen to the arc of Mormon stories or even Mormon expression, it's not about outrage. Outrage happens. And I will, I will admit I use outrage to cut through the noise. The problem is I'm up against a hundred billion dollar, nay, trillion dollar organization.

John Dehlin [02:07:06] Hundreds of billions at least.

John Larsen [02:07:08] Who, who can buy up every spot and put markers for whatever they want. They own the Oregon Trail, the church does. I mean, if you, if you go along the Platte river, there is marker after marker after marker, you know, honoring Mormon or Mormon stuff. They have these big youth conferences which. What does this operation cost? What is the annual budget for getting all those kids out there into Wyoming? It's got to be. It's at least it's eight figures for sure, Right?

John Larsen [02:07:42] You have been trained and, and propaganda eyes to accept this, to dismiss any criticism, to not read anything that's not faith promoting. So sometimes we need the outrage to cut through the noise. The problem you're pointing out is that's become universal.

John Larsen [02:08:00] So the only way to get your voice heard is through outrage. And we respond to that. And it's, it's, it's terrible. But, and I'll, I'll admit I use outrage because who the am I? I'm nobody. I'm nobody, right?

John Larsen [02:08:16] But. But I. People listen to me because I'm. I'm shouting into the wind, right? I'm outraged and it cuts through the noise. But I think the message that I've given is don't stay here. Don't stay here in an outraged position.

John Larsen [02:08:35] You use it to deconstruct, use it to understand, use it, develop empathy, and then move on and build something. I think I've been clear in that message. We need people to build back better. I have no interest in talking to Mormons. If you're a Mormon listening, I'm, I'm just allowing it. But I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to people who've already figured out that there's something deeply wrong. And I'm validating your decision. I'm showing you that what you're doing is correct. So that's where the outrage becomes useful. But, John, you are right. Society is too much outrage, and we have to build something else.

John Larsen [02:09:12] All we're doing is tearing everything down. I mean, us. I mean, everything. I get in my car and what am I doing? I'm burning fossil fuels. I'm burning them. I'm destroying them. I mean, it's, it's just metaphoric. We're just tearing everything. We're burning everything, and we have to stop. Yeah, but one of the ways to stop is to get rid of these institutions like Facebook and the Mormon Church.

Carah Burrell [02:09:38] Okay, Carah, bigger picture. It's. I mean, there's obviously, there's petitions, there's rallies, there's things that you can do on a local scale. But the way I think is in terms of dogmatic authoritarian systems and views and things that confine people. And so if we know that dogma only changes and this church's stranglehold on its members, that needs to be nuanced. If people want to be Mormon, they need to know that it's a. It should be kind of cafeteria. It should be as healthy as possible that it needs to be nuanced. And that can only happen from outside in and bottom up. So we provide this platform for people to be educated about the ways that the church has changed under pressure because that's the way that we know that only happens.

Carah Burrell [02:10:22] So to educate yourself on these topics, take that. There's 655 of you in the chat. If you multi. If you remember your. Your Mormon multi. Marketing, multi. Multit. You tell a friend and you tell a friend and you tell a friend and you become somebody who, who knowledge is power. You have gained more knowledge about this church. So you better know how to nuance it and break down the dogma so it doesn't have a control over people. That's how I think. And then just generally there you need to be freed of dogma. You need to be freed of black and white thinking. You need to develop empathy for people who are different than you.

Carah Burrell [02:10:56] And I want the country filled with people who have had those channels in their brain opened up. And whether they deconstruct Mormonism and stay in it, whatever they do, I'm not telling people they should leave all religion to be smarter or whatever. I'm just saying I want a country of people in my hopes and dreams that care about this kind of stuff, that care. That want to see more and more critical, critically thinking, empathetic fellow American citizens. So that's the big picture to me.

John Dehlin [02:11:22] All right.

John Larsen [02:11:23] Love it.

John Dehlin [02:11:24] And I'll, I'll just say here's some things I think number one is. Yeah, get educated. Read books, listen to audiobooks. Listen to thoughtful podcasts and YouTube channels. Get healthy. Work on your mental and physical health so that you can be healthy and strong.

John Dehlin [02:11:44] Develop healthy relationships with your significant others and with your children. Make your marriages and or meaningful relationships and or family relationships as strong and as healthy as possible. I think that's where it starts. And then, and then figure out a way to make a difference in your sphere of influence.

John Dehlin [02:12:07] So for me, I feel like thrive is the. Is. Is something that I have to do to counterbalance the deconstruction that, that we're constantly doing. So if all I did was sort of take people's faith away and make them want to leave the church and get angry, that would not be sufficient. So what I did is I, I teamed up with some really excellent people. They started a non profit that is a legit non profit. No Thrive is operated at a loss. The last Thrive for Women's event that we did that had 800 women there. The, the donors lost $8,000 that they just paid out of their own pocket to make a successful event for 800 people.

John Dehlin [02:12:51] And that, that's Clint and Jenny Martin, basically. They just did that of their own love and free will and choice. And Lisa Hacking volunteered for that. There were dozens and dozens of volunteers, volunteer speakers. And what they're doing is trying to build something new. Thrive. And I'm not. This isn't really a commercial for Thrive. It's one small example.

John Dehlin [02:13:11] Let's not just deconstruct, let's form friendships, let's form community. Let's create events that give people a replacement for what religion used to provide for them. There are all sorts of Thrive volunteers who are forming Thrive. Thrive Phoenix, Arizona. Thrive Portland, Oregon. Thrive Anaheim, California. And they're starting to put their names out and form little small groups, kind of like the living community tried to do way, way many years ago and trying to foster new forms of secular community.

John Dehlin [02:13:42] Most of this is going to fail. All of it's going to disappear and fail. But we're experimenting and we're trying to build new ways to do life, as you used to say, ways to make relationships, ways to support each other in, in our relationships. So Thrive is just one example of what people are doing right now to try and make a difference. Volunteer at Encircle if you care about LGBT community. There's an Encircle house in Provo. There's an Encircle House in Salt Lake. There's an. There's one that's emerging in Heber. There's one emerging in Las Vegas. Find an Encircle House to volunteer at. There are so many ways that you can support organizations that align with your values and your goals.

John Dehlin [02:14:25] Don't stop paying tithing if you've left the church. Find a new worthy non profit to donate to or just find people in your family or community that need support and find ways to support them. We don't need the church to be altruistic. We don't need the church to do good and to build beautiful relationships, to support others in need and to build healthy communities.

John Dehlin [02:14:51] So, and if you think about the CES letter and the massive impact that that's had, or Mormon Expression Podcast and the massive impact that that's had, or Radio Free Mormon or Mormonism Live or Bill Real or whatever, or Lindsay Hansen Park Year of Polygamy Sunstone, all that is is people who became outraged, who had empathy.

John Dehlin [02:15:16] Carah Burrell and they just said, I'm going to dedicate a significant part of my life to making A difference to alleviating suffering, to educating the uneducated, to providing informed consent for the world, and to try and build a bigger and a brighter and a better future.

John Dehlin [02:15:33] Find your CES letter. Find your sunstone, Find your Mormon expression. Find your Mormon Stories podcast. Find your thrive, whatever it is, and dedicate a portion of your life to a worthy cause. You are willing to dedicate thousands of hours and 10% of your income for decades of your life to an organization that was not worthy of your donations and support. Well, guess what? You've been freed from that, and now you have an opportunity to do the same thing, but to dedicate your time, your money, your reputation, your resources to something worthy. Don't lose the spirit of giving. Don't lose the spirit of volunteerism. Don't lose the spirit of charity.

John Dehlin [02:16:20] Don't get consumed by conspicuous consumption. Dedicate your life to your cause and make a difference. And that's the only way differences have ever been made on this planet. One person at a time. Finding a cause and then not giving up when it gets hard. That's my sermon.

John Larsen [02:16:40] I love it.

Carah Burrell [02:16:41] That was a good sermon, too, John.

John Dehlin [02:16:42] Is that okay?

Carah Burrell [02:16:43] That was so good.

John Larsen [02:16:44] Yeah, we did put the bar pretty high. We just did.

John Dehlin [02:16:47] But not everyone could be John Larsen and Mormon expression. Jeremy Reynolds. A perk.

John Larsen [02:16:51] Well, that. That was the. That was the platinum version that we all just gave you. Here's the one. Go break some rules. You want to fight the outrage? Go break some rules. Who made the rules? Somebody else?

Closing Thoughts and Farewell

John Dehlin [02:17:08] All right, well, it's been a fun, exciting, enraging, and uplifting couple hours. John Larsen, we're so grateful that you've been able to now for a few months. Bless us with your wisdom and wit and. And anger.

John Larsen [02:17:27] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:17:28] And outrage.

John Larsen [02:17:29] Yes, some of this is outrage. Outrageous. But most of it is just weird and kooky and. And it's interesting in and of itself. And this stuff is part of the American experience.

John Dehlin [02:17:40] And I think it's hopeful, ultimately, because when you wake up, when you become enlightened, the world is your oyster. The gift of a Mormon faith crisis is the rest of your life. And that's what's hopeful about this, is we can make our lives in our communities whatever we want. It's just up to us. That's why this is hopeful. In my mind.

John Larsen [02:18:01] We can. And another, maybe less intense, is you can make yourself a better person by just taking it easy and consuming less. Do you slow down, eat less, use less, spend more time watching the sunset. You'll be happier. The world will be happier.

John Dehlin [02:18:20] I love it. And be kind. Don't be a dick. As John Larsen would say, just don't be a dick.

John Larsen [02:18:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:18:26] Really quickly, a couple really quick things. So many of you have stepped up to support John Larsen appearing on this episode and the the Mormon Expression Project. If you want to support more John Larsen on Mormon Stories podcast, we do pay him for these episodes. We do pay to keep the Mormon Expression Library available.

John Dehlin [02:18:46] Please donate@mormonstories.org Mormon expression. You can become a monthly donor to the Mormon Expression Project and John hopefully will be able to keep coming on for, for a long, long time and we'll keep that library going. So please support that. I do want to just do a quick shout out to we're doing a faith crisis retreat, me and Natasha and Margi in a couple weeks. It's October 15th, 16th and 17th. If you're in a faith crisis, if your marriage is on the rocks, if you're struggling to raise your kids after the church, if you are struggling to communicate with believing family and friends, two and a half full days of coaching and support and group therapy.

John Dehlin [02:19:27] When you're in need in Provo Orem area, just go to thrivebeyondreligion.com events. Sign up for the retreat. If you can't afford to come to this retreat, email us@thrivebeyondreligionmail.com we will find donors to pay your way. What we need is you just to say, hey, I want to come to this. I need the help. I can't afford it. Here's what I can pay. We will find people to make it so you can, you can come. And these are not for profit events. These events are run net at a loss, but they're just here to help you. We're going to be doing this event. We would love to have you show up.

John Dehlin [02:20:03] And of course, November 14th in the Salt Palace, Thrive Thrive Day 2021 Care is going to be there with a bunch of tick tockers. Meet Bill Real, meet Radio Free Mormon. Meet Sarah Edmondson, former Nexium survivor, participant in the HBO series the Vow, co host of A Little Bit Culty. She'll be there. Lance Allred will be there, former NBA basketball player, first legally deaf NBA basketball player, played with LeBron James along with many other amazing voices. Come celebrate, find friends, forge community, support these sorts of things so that we can create what's next. That's what Thrive is, is an attempt to create what's next. Please support these sorts of things if you can. And support Carah Burrell.

Carah Burrell [02:20:54] Yeah Support me.

John Larsen [02:20:56] Thanks, Carah.

John Dehlin [02:20:56] It's kind of nice to have care around, don't you think, John?

John Larsen [02:20:58] For sure. She's doing all the work. We just sit here like two old ladies.

John Dehlin [02:21:01] Carah's doing all the real work. And your donations to mormonstories.org becoming a monthly donor there makes Carah able to be a part of this podcast. So please support Mormon stories. Become a monthly donor@mormonstories.org and again, we're just a couple ragtag little group. Literally. This organization brings in a few hundred thousand dollars a year and we're confronting a hundreds of billions of dollar organization. A bit effectively a trillion dollar organization. There's only a couple organizations that are standing up against the church. We only can do this because you support us. So please keep supporting us. And thank you. Thank you to everyone who donates and supports us.

John Dehlin [02:21:40] Thanks to everyone who comments on YouTube and on Facebook, subscribing to us, liking us, sharing this, commenting. It all helps the algorithms. So we love this live audience. Thanks to everyone who donated through super chat today on YouTube. Those types of things make a big difference as well. Did we just get another donation? All right.

Carah Burrell [02:21:58] She just said I love Carah, so I love Jolene. Yeah, I do not believe Dolly Parton's song about you.

John Dehlin [02:22:06] All right, well, John Larsen, will you come back next, Next month?

John Larsen [02:22:10] Next month? I don't know what the topic is yet, but something great.

John Dehlin [02:22:13] Okay, we are, we are. You did put out the call for the. The Jaredite bar.

John Larsen [02:22:18] Yeah, we've had some, some help if

John Dehlin [02:22:22] somebody wants to support that. What do they do?

John Larsen [02:22:23] Go on to the Ex Mormon Reddit and they can search for the thread.

John Dehlin [02:22:27] Will you do, will you add that to the show notes? Carah, the John Larsen post on Ex Mormon Reddit where you're soliciting support to do research for what episode? The sequel to how to build a transoceanic vessel.

John Larsen [02:22:41] The ask has been to discuss and take apart the barges the way we did. So we really want to do our homework and determine, well, if it's 2200 BC, what would be the average weight of a cow? How much water would they drink a day? How much fodder would they drink day? How much do they do and what. And so what we're going to figure out what size the boats have to be The Jaredite.

John Dehlin [02:23:02] The Jaredite barges. All right, that'll be fun.

John Larsen [02:23:05] 344 days

John Dehlin [02:23:09] in a vessel that's tight unto a dish.

John Larsen [02:23:11] Yeah. So if you'd like, if you'd like to help. Look, look. Some of these things up so we can compile it together and make a really. The idea is to make a really solid case and do our homework, you

John Dehlin [02:23:20] know, and to bring our boyfriend, Kelly Lang, on to maybe as a submarine commander to help provide some insight.

Carah Burrell [02:23:28] So much fun. I just want to have him read the Book of Mormon and just be like, thoughts, Kelly?

John Larsen [02:23:34] He'll be able to tell us how much it stink.

Carah Burrell [02:23:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:37] All right, so you guys, be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Channel your outrage into healing and growth for yourself, for your families, and for our community. Don't just get stuck on the outrage. Have the outrage motivate you to build a beautiful life for yourself, for your family, and to turn this sandwich into something beautiful.

John Larsen [02:23:59] Right?

John Dehlin [02:23:59] Right.

John Larsen [02:24:00] Agreed.

John Dehlin [02:24:00] All right, take care, everybody. We'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Carah, you're awesome.

Carah Burrell [02:24:06] You guys are awesome. Bye, everyone.

John Dehlin [02:24:08] John, stay safe, and we'll. We'll see you soon.

John Larsen [02:24:10] Stay safe. Break some rules.

John Dehlin [02:24:12] All right, Bye, everybody. Take care.

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