Introduction and Welcome

John Dehlin [00:00:24] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John delinquent. It is July 13, 2020, and I am, as always, super excited for another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. I think you really are going to be in for a treat today.

John Dehlin [00:00:43] Today, my interviewee is. My guest is Karen Adam. And Karen Adam is fascinating for all sorts of reasons, but one really important reason among many. Well, I'll just read a bunch. So basically Karen is from Scotland. So it's the first interview that I can remember in Mormon Stories podcast where we're interviewing someone from Scotland.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] We obviously recently interviewed someone from Wales. We've done a few from England, but we've never done Scotland or Ireland as far as I remember. So it continues that series of interviewing Mormons from around the world. Mormons and post Mormons from around the world and from the UK we want to continue that series. So if you live somewhere abroad and you're a listener to Mormon Stories Podcast and you want to be interviewed, please message me and we'll put you on the docket. But Karen Adams is fascinating for a lot of reasons.

John Dehlin [00:01:40] She was raised in a same sex household, so her mother identified as lesbian and she was raised in a sense by two moms, but also by her dad, but she lived with her two moms. She did become pregnant as a teenage girl in Scotland, and she converted to the Mormon church at age 17 in 1992.

John Dehlin [00:02:05] So she lived as a Mormon convert in Scotland for, let's just say 20 years. She got married. She got married in the temple. She helped raise six children. And so she definitely can talk about the experience of being raised, living, living an orthodox Mormon life in Scotland in the 90s and 2000s.

John Dehlin [00:02:31] So we'll talk about that. She also had a lot of rough patches, as we all do. She has navigated divorce, she has navigated abuse and drug addiction in marriage. So that's going to be a thing. She'll talk about how members of her family experienced difficult interactions with Mormon church leadership around issues of female sexuality. So we'll be talking about that and let's just say damaging bishop interviews.

John Dehlin [00:03:06] We'll be talking about what it was like for her to learn about the Mormon churches LGBTQ policies in 2015, particularly the exclusion policy for children of same sex couples and just the basic, very harmful LGBTQ policies that the church has held for many, many years and continues to hold.

John Dehlin [00:03:27] We'll talk about her having a faith crisis in Scotland as a divorced Mormon woman and following also a series that we've done on Sort of women, the vulnerability of middle aged women experiencing faith crisis and sometimes divorce. We'll talk about how she has rebuilt a life as a divorced Mormon ex Mormon woman in Scotland. And it's kind of cool because she has become a public servant, a public activist and a politician in Scotland. And so we can just talk about how does a middle aged, divorced ex Mormon woman become a political leader in her home country.

John Dehlin [00:04:09] So those are all the things we're going to be covering today on Mormon Stories Podcast. I think you're going to find this delightful. And without any further ado, Karen, Adam, welcome to Mormon Stories Podcast.

Karen Adam [00:04:22] Thank you, John. Thanks for having me. I'm excited for this.

John Dehlin [00:04:26] Anything you want to correct about my introduction?

Karen Adam [00:04:30] No, I mean there's just so much as. Well, it just seems quite a lot hearing it from somebody else thinking, wow, that's, that's. Yeah, long story. The middle aged bit I didn't like. But it's okay, I won't correct you because it's factually correct.

John Dehlin [00:04:44] Hey, I'm 50. So what's. Tell us what that flag is behind. I'm assuming your left shoulder.

Karen Adam [00:04:51] Yeah, this is the Scottish flag. This is a salt tire. So I thought I'd just pop it there to represent.

John Dehlin [00:05:00] Love it. Okay, well, let's start with your story. Tell us where you want your story to begin.

Growing Up in Aberdeen in a Same-Sex Household

Karen Adam [00:05:09] Oh, well, I think in the beginning, basically I was raised in Aberdeen City. I grew up in a same sex household as you alluded to. My mom and her partner raised me, although I did see my dad and every weekend and every other weekend quite a lot during those times growing up, it was quite difficult. I didn't realize it was any different from anybody else.

Karen Adam [00:05:39] I thought it was quite normal for two women to be part of that family until peers really started questioning that. Probably about age 8, 9 perhaps people would say, you know, why is that another woman living with your mum? And I didn't really question it. I didn't think it was strange until other people pointed it out.

Karen Adam [00:06:02] Probably not until age 12. I really, you know, it solidified in my mind. Hang on a minute. Homosexuality and. Oh, okay, so my mum's gay, you know, because she never came out, she didn't really talk about it. It was.

Karen Adam [00:06:22] Which I think is quite forward thinking for her because why should she have, you know, people don't announce that they're straight, so why should she have had to announce that she was gay? It was just, I was brought up accepting that that was fine. But it was difficult as a child and with peers pointing that out. And of course they would call my mum nasty names to me. And that was hard. That was difficult. I think the whole vibe during the 80s was very homophobic, particularly towards gay men.

Karen Adam [00:06:53] You know, not as much towards gay women, but it was still there and it was a difficult time, really. A lot of contentions around that. So, yeah, there was that. And then I had a teenage romance, fell in love with my brother's friend and consequently ended up pregnant. Aged 15, I had my daughter. I just turned. I was six days, turned 16 when she was born.

John Dehlin [00:07:27] Hey, Karen, can I ask you a quick question?

Karen Adam [00:07:30] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:07:32] Were you raised with any religion at all? What is. What was the kind of cultural. What were cultural perceptions about religion as you were growing up and particularly as you were a teenage girl in Scotland?

Karen Adam [00:07:45] Yeah, I'm glad you've asked that, because that's quite important to get that context, because in Scotland you don't discuss politics or religion. You know, when I was growing up, religion was actually something to be quite embarrassed of. If you mentioned God or Jesus, if you attended any church or, you know, you were made fun of, really, and you were seen as maybe naive and silly and it really wasn't anything that was spoken of to be religious, but I always felt that there was something else. And even as a small child, I would be praying, but I didn't know it was praying at the time, as I think anybody does.

Karen Adam [00:08:29] You're speaking out, you're calling out into the void, so to speak. You're asking for help with something or if you're low or. So I've always felt that there was something else there or there was maybe some other higher power that could be guiding me and helping me. So I actually.

Karen Adam [00:08:47] There was a church at the top of the street where I grew up and I just used to go out and play with my friends and on a Sunday I would actually sneak to this church to go in the children's Sunday school and learn about Jesus. And I remember going home with a picture I'd drawn of Jesus and my mum said, where did you draw this? Where have you been? And, you know, quite shy and coy about it.

Karen Adam [00:09:13] I was at church because it wasn't really something that, you know, she would have been particularly proud of, but she just rolled her eyes at me. But, yeah, culturally, it wasn't really seen as something that really within my family, certainly that we went to church, funerals, weddings and that was it, really.

Religion and Secular Culture in Scotland

John Dehlin [00:09:34] So is it viewed kind of as a secular culture, do you think?

Karen Adam [00:09:37] Absolute? Oh, yes. Scotland's very Secular.

John Dehlin [00:09:41] Okay. Okay.

Karen Adam [00:09:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:43] And there is a Church of Scotland, right?

Karen Adam [00:09:46] There's a Church of Scotland, yeah. Again, it's more a Sunday thing. Sundays, funerals, weddings. I mean, there are still. There are a lot of people of different faiths in Scotland, certainly, and a lot of people still do attend churches, but generally, I know that there's been polls done on, you know, how people think and how people feel about certain things, and they, they. We are generally more secular than, you know, than other countries in the world.

John Dehlin [00:10:16] Okay, so kind of a secular upbringing for the most part.

Karen Adam [00:10:21] Oh, yeah, yeah, very much so.

John Dehlin [00:10:23] And would your mom have taught you, your parent, your parents. Would your parents have taught you to not have sex or to not drink or not do drugs? Like, how did your parents try and provide a moral structure for you without, you know, religious rules? How did that work?

Karen Adam [00:10:39] I don't know, actually. I. I suppose I just. If I was found out for doing something I'd get in trouble for doing. Wasn't really explained not to do this in the first place, even though. Well, my dad, it was kind of a different relationship because my dad's deaf. He was born deaf. So in that kind of, you know, context, having those kind of conversations with him wouldn't have really been on the table because you would have to sign, you know, you would have to sign sex and sign, you know, what genitals you're talking about. It was more of quite a reserved relationship I had with my dad. My mum was a bit more open, you know, about things.

John Dehlin [00:11:28] But did you learn to sign as a kid? Did you learn?

Karen Adam [00:11:32] Yes, I did. Yeah. I grew up signing. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, I love it. Yeah. British sign language, it's different from asl, but my dad, of course he can. He can sign most, most different ones. I would find it a little bit more difficult. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:48] Okay. So, okay, what. I'm just curious, just pop culture wise, did you like. Did you like music growing up or movies? What pop culture stuff were you into? Is it as a Mormon? Sorry, as a Scottish teen.

Teenage Years, Elvis, and Early Influences

Karen Adam [00:12:02] Well, so a lot of my friends were generally into the pop music that was around at the time. You know, it was the 80s and there was a lot of them, Charan Duran, Boy George and all that kind of thing was a big deal and I did enjoy it, but I must say, my mum was a huge Elvis fan, so I ended up inheriting that, so to speak. I mean, massively into Elvis. Just listen to his music every day, all the time. You know, watching movies as a young child and just Swooning over them and adoring him. And as I got older, I got more into the. The 70s stuff, you know, the Jungle Room sessions and things like that. So I've always been a bit different. But I love rock music.

John Dehlin [00:12:47] Isn't that a betrayal of your people to like Elvis instead of the Beatles?

Karen Adam [00:12:53] No, I think I've had this discussion with people over the years, but I mean, Elvis is king. I mean, he's king. I went to Memphis a few years ago, it was fantastic. And yeah, he's the man.

John Dehlin [00:13:06] And your favorite Elvis songs, What are your favorite Elvis songs?

Karen Adam [00:13:10] Well, I used to love Elvis gospel music. And I think this is why I always felt a bit different from my family and my peers, because nobody was really religious or spiritual and it was almost a spiritual experience listening to those songs. So I know how music can move you.

Karen Adam [00:13:25] So maybe discuss that a little bit later about the techniques of how music can, you know, influence. And I don't know, how could you put this, make a motive? Because I would listen to Elvis when he was singing.

Karen Adam [00:13:46] Gosh, if I Can Dream is one of his, you know, one of my most favorite songs of Elvis. And he'd speak about, you know, if all my brothers walked hand in hand, you know, and, you know, if we could dream of a better land where all my brothers walked hand in hand. And I used to listen to those lyrics, you know, as just a young teen and feel really emotional about it and always felt that I wanted to have a non contentious, peaceful, you know, life. And that just.

Karen Adam [00:14:16] I just, I felt that. And I would really feel that within his music when he sang Amazing Grace and it was quite strange, I suppose, for this young Scottish girl to be like an Elvis gospel music really. But I just, I felt what I suppose people would say would be feeling the spirit, you know, But I would argue it's just. It's our emotions. It's how something, if something makes us feel good, it gives us that feeling. So.

John Dehlin [00:14:46] And did. Did Elvis's, you know, gospel music kind of inform a bit your religiosity or even kind of make you feel like a Christian. A Christian, even though you weren't attending a Christian church?

Karen Adam [00:15:01] Yes, it was Elvis that converted me to Christianity. Christianity, yeah, he would. He would just. How great Thou art. I had a video of Elvis and he was singing how great Thou art on stage. And how can you not just feel overwhelmed with that? And, you know, when he sang, you know, whenever he sang the word Jesus or sang the word Lord, I think, wow, you know, it's Just there's something within this. It's like a hope and peace. And it just. I had all those feelings listening to that. And, yeah, he's to blame for the conversion.

John Dehlin [00:15:46] There's a really. There's a really brilliant Elvis documentary I saw on HBO just in the past year that talks about his later years and his drug addiction and just his career performing and his death. And I really highly recommend it. So any of you who want to Google HBO Elvis documentary.

Karen Adam [00:16:09] It's great.

John Dehlin [00:16:10] Yeah, Okay.

Karen Adam [00:16:11] I think Elvis festivals and everything. It's fantastic.

Pregnancy at Fifteen and Early Motherhood

John Dehlin [00:16:15] All right, so you loved Elvis, you're a teenage girl and you got pregnant.

Karen Adam [00:16:20] Yeah, I did.

John Dehlin [00:16:22] What's that like? Was that normal? Was that abnormal in Scotland?

Karen Adam [00:16:27] It wasn't normal. I mean, there was maybe one or two that I'd known of or heard of before me that had been, you know, caught out, so to speak. But I kind of took it in my stride. I mean, when I found out I was pregnant, I was more anxious at telling my family than anything else. I was so terrified to tell my mum and I had this plan and I must have only been about eight weeks pregnant, that I was going to write a note and just run away, go to London or whatever. I mean, what I was thinking, I really don't know, but I was just scared.

Karen Adam [00:17:06] You know, it's that fight or flight feeling. And. But when I was at the doctor, and it sounds so ridiculous because I was 15, when the doctor said yes, you know, confirmed pregnancy, I was smiling, walking all the way home. I was delighted.

Karen Adam [00:17:24] And I think that was strange to a lot of people that I was quite happy to be pregnant and to be a mum and because that's all I ever wanted to do growing up was to be a mother and to have children. I just had this. Such a strong desire and urge to have this family unit, this big family, and the idea of it, which just. Yeah, it's not true.

Karen Adam [00:17:53] I mean, it's loving, but it's not as blissful and idyllic as. As I imagined it to be when I was 15, that's for sure. But I was quite confident in my abilities that I was going to be able to raise this child.

Karen Adam [00:18:07] And I didn't, you know, I was just more worried about people's reactions more than anything. I went through school, we had our exams, we have them about June time, May, June time. And my daughter was due on 2 June.

Karen Adam [00:18:22] My 16th birthday was on 7 June, and I had exams during that time. So I think I had my final exam on the 11th. And she was born on the 13th.

John Dehlin [00:18:34] Holy moly.

Karen Adam [00:18:36] So I managed to sit all my exams as well, which I was quite pleased with. And I didn't do too bad, luckily.

John Dehlin [00:18:41] So wasn't this overwhelming, oppressive shame that you experienced culturally?

Karen Adam [00:18:46] No, absolutely not.

John Dehlin [00:18:48] That's good.

Karen Adam [00:18:49] Yeah, I think so. Or if I did, if it was happening, it was happening behind my back.

John Dehlin [00:18:55] So you didn't see it? You didn't know about it?

Karen Adam [00:18:56] I didn't see it, yeah. Or people say, I can't believe you're pregnant. And I'd be like, I know. And I was just. I'd show my bump or the scan pictures and. Yeah, there wasn't really that shameful feeling, if there was. I was completely oblivious.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] Did you. Did you talk to the. To the boy or the man about. About, you know, getting married?

Karen Adam [00:19:16] Well, I was really terrified to tell him and his parents. So this is. This is for. The interesting bit, comes in regards to Mormonism, because his father was a member of the church and I was really worried. We knew. I didn't really know what Mormons were. All I knew were they were very strict and it was something to be, I don't know, anxious about, quite nervous about, if you ever come across a Mormon, because they are. They're very strict people. And so actually, I didn't tell the dad for a while. I was a few months in and it was the same. I mean, my dad didn't know I was playing until I was eight months.

John Dehlin [00:20:01] Oh, wow.

Karen Adam [00:20:02] Yeah. He came to the door and he's signing and saying, why didn't you tell you don't tell me. And I'm like, I don't know. I was scared. Scared to tell you, but. So it took eight months.

John Dehlin [00:20:14] That's a long time to keep that secret from your dad.

Karen Adam [00:20:16] I know. And I was eating lunch with him every day during the school break because I would meet him for lunch and we'd have lunch and he must have just thought I was getting fat. He doesn't really pay attention.

Karen Adam [00:20:28] First. Babies seemed to be a bit more tucked in, though, and I was quite young and active and fit, so I hid it quite well, really. So, yeah, so I was quite scared to tell their family. Although, you know, our dad did note that he called me.

Karen Adam [00:20:44] I didn't tell him. When she was born, I went into labour and laboured mostly myself, to be honest, and had the baby. And when I got home with her, her dad called and said, I heard you had the baby.

Karen Adam [00:21:01] So I don't know what it is about me Hiding from any kind of confrontation, but it seems to be a running theme, to be honest, so. And I said, yes, I have. And he just said, come over now. I want to introduce her to the family. So we didn't actually introduce her. I was back and forth to the house. I was his girlfriend that had a baby. And then about two weeks later, we were sitting in the living room with his mum and dad. And that was a really scary part because of his dad being a Mormon. And he said, mum, dad, this is my daughter.

Karen Adam [00:21:35] And they were shocked, a bit taken aback. But his mum was lovely. She was overjoyed, she was delighted. His dad, he said that he actually respected me for my decision to keep the baby. So that's.

John Dehlin [00:21:53] Did you consider. Did you consider abortion? Did you even think about abortion?

Karen Adam [00:21:57] No, because for me, I was delighted to be pregnant. I am pro choice. I am pro choice. But for me, I was just. Yeah, I didn't. Family members did try and persuade me, but I just. It didn't feel right for me.

John Dehlin [00:22:12] So you were even pro choice back then, but you just wanted the baby?

Karen Adam [00:22:16] Yeah, I wanted the baby, yes.

John Dehlin [00:22:19] All right.

Karen Adam [00:22:20] Fifteen years, you know, you know everything.

John Dehlin [00:22:23] Yeah, of course,

Karen Adam [00:22:27] yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:27] Okay. So. So how did it go? What came next?

Pressure to Marry and First Encounters with Mormonism

Karen Adam [00:22:34] So what came next was pressure to get married and the kid wasn't.

John Dehlin [00:22:39] The dad was Mormon, but the father of the kid wasn't Mormon.

Karen Adam [00:22:42] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:43] Why didn't the dad raise the kid, the son Mormon?

Karen Adam [00:22:47] Because his wife wasn't. His wife wasn't. So, yeah, she. She wasn't. He was a bit of a trailblazer, really, to be Mormon at that time. Because, I mean, he was a member for about 10 years, I think, when first, you know, met him at that time. So he was. He was baptized in the 80s, possibly early 80s, and I mean that. It was really still so niche in Scotland at that time, and people were still meeting in front rooms and things like that. There wasn't really even a. I don't think there was a church building quite yet, and certainly not two in Aberdeen like there is now.

John Dehlin [00:23:20] And what's the. What's the biggest city in Scotland?

Karen Adam [00:23:24] There's Glasgow. Well, Edinburgh is the capital city. So we've got. So the main cities are Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness.

John Dehlin [00:23:33] So where in Scotland is Aberdeen?

Karen Adam [00:23:36] Aberdeen's the northeast. So, yeah, up in the northeast corner, where all the oil is.

John Dehlin [00:23:43] Okay.

Karen Adam [00:23:46] Big rich, poor divide. A lot of disparity there. Some quite poor areas, poverty areas and some very wealthy areas. So that's. That's Aberdeen. So, yeah, there Was pressure to get married. But of course, you know, we were so young and although I did have a child, we were taking it easy in that relationship as it was, you know, as it was going.

Karen Adam [00:24:17] But he, you know, my baby's father doesn't really. He had a lot of problems of his own and looking back now I could probably diagnose, you know, a few things. But really at that time we weren't aware. He was a really fun, loving, nice guy and I was absolutely besotted. I loved him. I really loved him. I felt like he was my soulmate and we were, we were joined at the hip really. We were best friends and we just loved being together and there was problems. So I found out that he started to take drugs. I wasn't quite sure what they were at that time, what he was taking.

Karen Adam [00:25:07] So at this point I should point out, actually I moved out of my mum's home and I had my own flat. Would you call it an apartment?

John Dehlin [00:25:16] Yeah. Flat's cooler though. Flat sounds cooler.

Karen Adam [00:25:18] Yeah, so I had a flat, it was like a two bedroom flat and I'd moved in there with my daughter. So he kind of, he was moving in with me but I was down at his. It was around the corner from his parents house. So we visited every day and saw them every day.

Karen Adam [00:25:35] But some days he would. I wouldn't see him for hours on an end and there was some strange characters coming back and forth to the door and his behaviors started to change. He wasn't the easygoing, fun loving guy.

Karen Adam [00:25:55] And then I found out that he was taking heroin. He was smoking it at that point and things just started really to crumble quite quickly for him. And we. There was one day. So one day I was visiting his mum's and he came in the house and he said, we're gonna have two visitors talk to us today.

Karen Adam [00:26:23] He said he was on the bus on the way into town to get, you know, to score some drugs and he bumped into the elders, the missionaries on the bus and he said he struck up a conversation, he was quite open with them and he told them what he was going away to go and do. So I mean thinking back now, those missionaries must have been thinking, oh fantastic, you know, this is great, this is great stuff.

Karen Adam [00:26:49] And then to find out that his dad was a Mormon. They must have just thought they took the hit, the jackpot. So they were lovely guys. Actually. I just saw one of the missionaries again for the first time three years ago when I came, I came to visit, I came to Utah and I Went to visit him at that time, I was still thanking him for helping me join the church. But, yeah, that might change now.

Karen Adam [00:27:16] So, yeah, so they came and were speaking to him in his room, but I wasn't allowed in in this conversation. But, you know, I was trying to listen at the door, and I couldn't hear what was going on. And I was so curious as to what was being taught and what do Mormons actually believe and what do they think?

Karen Adam [00:27:33] So after they'd been over maybe two or three times, and then they asked if I would like to, you know, join in and the discussions. So I said, yeah, sure, you know, And I mean, thinking of the context as, well, me being an Elvis fan, I had never met an American before in my life. And here's these two young American guys with that accent. You know, it was like, wow, they're like movie stars. You know, where I was from in Scotland, you just didn't. Well, I didn't meet where I grew up. It was a council estate, and it's kind of like the suburbs. It's social housing.

Karen Adam [00:28:08] So to me, this was just, you know, quite glamorous as well, talking to these young Americans and asking them what America was like. And I was just fascinated by it all, and I loved hanging out with them. So myself and my boyfriend at the time got talking to them and they gave us the discussions, and I just took it all in, just like it was the truth right there and then, and believed every single word that they told me, and every question I had, they answered and took it as it was gospel, excuse the pun. And I. So we decided to get baptized.

John Dehlin [00:28:51] Let me just ask you, you may not even remember this, but, like, American missionaries coming telling you that some American in 1820, God, talked to him, that he got golden plates from an angel, translated a book of scripture that was a compliment to the Bible, that Native Americans were from Israel. Was there any point where you're just like, that doesn't make sense? Or how can that be? Or was it just like.

Karen Adam [00:29:24] No, I was, wow, wow. Is this for real?

John Dehlin [00:29:32] Wow.

Karen Adam [00:29:33] I just. Honestly, like a bowl of soup, I just drank all up. And it's just. I loved it. I think I just. It was the missionaries, you know, it was with them. And I think I trusted them. And I think that's an important point to make. When there's people that you get very close to and have connections with and you become really good friends with them, you trust what they're saying. And I thought, you know, these guys aren't stupid, and they know what they're talking about. And because of how they lived their lives, because they were so disciplined, there was respect that I had for that and that I saw within them that I wanted.

Karen Adam [00:30:18] Because if, you know, going back over my life and how. I mean, it wasn't exactly traditional upbringing. And I'd had a few wild moments in my teenage years, so to see that structure was really comforting, to know that there was boundaries. And these guys just seemed to be so happy with it all.

Karen Adam [00:30:41] So I just. I couldn't wait to be baptized, you know, throwing Jesus in the mix as well. I'm like, yeah, count me in a minute. Love Jesus. So. But we had to get married first or we had to live apart, so what? We couldn't really.

Karen Adam [00:31:06] I wanted a proper wedding. You know, it was my. It was my wedding day, and I wanted a proper wedding. So we. Although I was baptized, so we got. So that was 91, because my daughter was born in 91. Spoke to the missionaries early 92. We were both baptized on the same day, 1992, 5th of July, I think it was 2nd of July, maybe 1992.

Karen Adam [00:31:35] And we didn't get married for another two years after that. Because what happened on the day that I was baptized, I didn't. I didn't feel myself. It was too big of a change for me, culturally. I was thrown into this because we hadn't really been going to church every Sunday. We hadn't really integrated into that church culture or lifestyle.

Karen Adam [00:32:00] And all of a sudden, I think my boyfriend at the time, he was. He was looking for a way out of the path he was going down. And for him, I thought, okay, this is. You know, it's important for him. I felt like we were.

Karen Adam [00:32:19] I believed what I was taught was to be true, but at the same time, it was really scary. It was scary and strange and overwhelming. On the day I was baptized, I went back to his mother's home, and we were both there, and he just took off to go and get drugs.

Karen Adam [00:32:39] And I was just so disheartened because I thought this was the start of something fresh. And I remember just cracking open the bedroom window and taking a cigarette out and just smoking it out the window. And I thought, oh, well, that was that then. That was. That's not gonna.

Karen Adam [00:32:59] But of course, the missionaries came around again to speak to us, see how we're getting on. And I said, look, I had a cigarette. I just. I can't. I don't feel like I can do this. I didn't feel myself. I felt strange.

Karen Adam [00:33:10] So it took. It wasn't really easy settling into that life. I think the huge difference in Scotland in regards to being. Well, the huge difference being brought up Mormon and being converted in it. It's such a massive change, particularly culturally when you're in a secular society as well, and, you know, it's going to church and believing in Jesus Christ and committing to these things just wasn't part of my life, and to do that was huge.

Karen Adam [00:33:42] But we went back and forth to church a few times. The drugs got worse. I found. I found out that he'd started injecting. He was getting into. The friends were quite scary. And then he started to become violent as well, which was really, really difficult to deal with, being scared at this point.

Marriage, Abuse, and Life in the Church

John Dehlin [00:34:14] You had not been married, is that right? Or you had been married?

Karen Adam [00:34:17] No, I hadn't been married.

John Dehlin [00:34:18] Okay. Okay. Yeah, I thought I just said that. I just want to make sure.

Karen Adam [00:34:22] Yeah. So we were baptized in 92, and we were back and forth to church right up until we got married in 1994. What led up to that was I was promised, you know, that the drugs thing was done with. He'd gotten clean. He had promised to change.

Karen Adam [00:34:39] There was pressure from the family to get married. And I felt pressure being Mormon, because I believed the church, you know, I really did. I believed in it, but I didn't feel like I could live it. So I was living this constant guilt, you know, every day, back and forth. I remember the meeting with the bishop at the time regarding my wedding dress and being told that, you know, remember, you won't be able to wear white.

Karen Adam [00:35:07] I was absolutely devastated. I was just devastated. I was. He was. We were discussing plans for the wedding, and I just. I was so excited about it. I thought, okay, we're gonna have a fresh start here, and things are gonna be great. He was always in and out of drugs. That's the thing he was always in. He would have periods of time where he was himself or he seemed to be himself, because people will often ask me, why would you stay with somebody that was violent or into drugs? And I just want to say. I want to wrap it in this caveat that he was a really good man.

Karen Adam [00:35:47] He was my best friend, and he. He did good things, said good things, had good intentions. And I think we automatically think, you know, somebody's either good or bad or, you know, everybody has a baseline, and that's just not true. We're all on a sliding scale of good and bad all the time. And he, you know, just did bad things sometimes. And he had problems and I certainly don't excuse that behavior at all.

John Dehlin [00:36:20] You could say he was sick. You could say he was sick, right?

Karen Adam [00:36:23] Was sick. He really, he was mentally ill. Yeah, he was absolutely mentally ill. And he was self medicating with the drugs and wrapped into that. Violence came into that as well. But he'd been clean for a little while. I remember on the wedding day I just had a bad feeling and I didn't want to get married. And I spoke after that saying I was walking down the aisle thinking, gosh, I just don't want to do this.

Karen Adam [00:36:49] I really don't want to do this. But I did it just after we had our first dance at the wedding reception. He was asking me to ask family members for money and he took the envelopes of money that we'd had. He sold some of the wedding gifts.

Karen Adam [00:37:10] One of his friends was at the wedding who I later found out was drug dealing. And he, you know, I don't know if it's the same in the States, but you kind of put on display all your wedding gifts that people have brought for you. So you walk through the entrance and you see everything.

Karen Adam [00:37:26] So you know, you've got your, a microwave oven or whatever that what it looked like in the 90s, the microwave oven, the Hoover, the vacuum cleaner and all that kind of thing. They were slowly going. I'm laughing now and I know, John, it's not funny, but this is how I deal with things in life. You know, I giggle at that.

John Dehlin [00:37:41] Me too, me too.

Karen Adam [00:37:42] It's just how I get through it slowly. By the end of the night, things were disappearing from the wedding gifts in the hall. Realizing that my newly married husband had been pawning them off to people at the reception to buy drugs. So that's a great start to marriage really, is it? It's just a laugh thinking back on it, but for me at that age, it was, it was all too much to handle and understand the complexities of it.

Karen Adam [00:38:16] I really, I really didn't. So going through that time seemed to go on and he. His violence exaggerated. I wanted to move away to get him away from the people that he was associated with. So we moved kind of out of the city center and tried to start a new life there and it didn't work. And things got worse and the violence got worse. And there was at one point I, I did think he was, I thought I was going to die.

Karen Adam [00:38:47] And that was a turning point really for me. We'd, we'd got away from the city centre. Right. I spoke to my daughter about this, and she's fine with me talking about this. We found out when my daughter was five years old, she had just started school, that a member of the family had sexually abused her, and that was really hard to take.

Karen Adam [00:39:15] Her father had been clean for a time, and everything just blew up at that point. It was something that I hadn't even considered in my life that people would want to have sexual intentions towards children. I didn't even know it was a thing. So it just completely came out the blue for us, and things went really rapidly downhill. We moved away.

John Dehlin [00:39:43] Are you able to say if the perpetrator was LDS or Mormon or not?

Karen Adam [00:39:49] He wasn't.

John Dehlin [00:39:49] Okay.

Karen Adam [00:39:50] He wasn't.

John Dehlin [00:39:50] Not lds. Okay.

Karen Adam [00:39:52] No, he wasn't lds. How the church handled it was not great, and it was not great going forward either.

John Dehlin [00:40:02] Do you want to talk about that now or later? How the church works?

Karen Adam [00:40:04] That'll probably come up later because it's. It also mixes in with other things. But I think really the whole purity thing has a lot to answer for, in my opinion. So we moved away, tried to make a fresh start. Things got worse. The violence escalated, and I moved even further away by myself, and I gave him the chance.

Karen Adam [00:40:29] Okay, we're moving. Are you coming with us, yes or no? He moved, and it was within two weeks. He'd started the whole cycle again. And I just told him, sent a packing, and that was that. As quick as that.

Karen Adam [00:40:45] I mean, I think I was reading somewhere it takes about an average of 7 times before women leave abusive relationships. I think it was probably a lot more than that, but it got to that point, and I was just done, and I completely immersed myself in church.

Karen Adam [00:41:03] I'd moved to a completely new ward, and the people were fantastic. I just instantly clicked there. I received a calling. I'd never been that fully active before, and I was the youth Sunday school teacher, and I really enjoyed that. I loved it. And I felt for once there was safety within that routine. And again, the boundaries.

Karen Adam [00:41:30] Because when your life's so chaotic and there's all these things going on, if somebody's offering you that, it seems a very safe option. It's like an instant family within that. So that was. Yeah, that was probably when I became really active with the fresh start. Moving away from everything and certainly the abuse of my daughter was too much to bear on my own, and I was really needing a higher intervention really, really quickly.

John Dehlin [00:42:08] Yeah, sorry. Sorry. I just wanted to throw something in. So we're live streaming on Facebook, and Jay Christie says hi from Scotland. So there's at least one other Scottish listener, Christie.

Karen Adam [00:42:21] I know that last name, Christie, but it is a popular name.

John Dehlin [00:42:25] But I was also just gonna say one of the things that some of my listeners get really mad at is that I'm not willing to just condemn. The LDS Church is just all evil and all bad. That I actually believe the church exists and continues to exist because it does a lot of good. And I just want to ask you, you're a teen mom, you have a husband who has a drug addiction.

John Dehlin [00:42:51] You know, you're able to move to a different place, start over, and have an immediate community that not only loves you, but values you and is a place to raise a young child as a single mom. That's got to be an amazing and a positive asset in your life. That would probably make. I'm wondering if it would just make you feel very grateful regardless of what happens later with the church. Like, the church was really good for you for at least a time. Is that right?

Karen Adam [00:43:23] Oh, absolutely. The people within the church, the. I was taken in as and treated like a daughter by one family who come, you know, they would have me over for dinner. They came over to the house, they made sure I had furniture that I needed. This ward in particular, I've had. I've been at a few different wards in my lifetime within the church, and this ward in particular was family.

Karen Adam [00:43:51] They really did care for me and my daughter. You know, that's the people. The thing I always say is, you know, we're always told within church that the gospel's perfect, the people aren't. And that's, you know, and I absolutely rebuke that fact and I turn it on its head.

Karen Adam [00:44:12] The people are already perfect. The people in the church are already perfect. It's the gospel that isn't. And if anything's corrupting the people, it's the gospel and the ideals in there. But that's just, you know, and even

John Dehlin [00:44:27] that, I'm going to say I agree in many ways, but it's complex because it is the church teaching its members, serve people, be kind, include people, be honest, be loving. You know, so it's mixed, right? There's good parts about even the gospel, right?

Karen Adam [00:44:42] Yeah. Well, as I was alluding to earlier as well, you know, when I discuss, you know, my first husband, he wasn't an evil, wicked, you know, devil person. He was just a human being. And he did love me and he did love his daughter. And he was messed up and he did wicked things. No doubt about that. But it's A sliding scale, you know, if he's going to lay his hands on me one day and then next day he's buying a bunch of flowers, you know. Okay, well you can put in the context that was nice he bought you some flowers. But you know, there's still abuse there as well. At the same time, it's so. Yeah, I get that. The whole complexities.

John Dehlin [00:45:23] Yeah, yeah, it's complex. Okay, keep going. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I just.

Karen Adam [00:45:27] No, it's okay. Interrupt. Tori. I just sometimes I think sound of my own voice constantly.

John Dehlin [00:45:33] Oh, great. Just like you loved Elvis, Americans love, you know, British and Scottish and Irish accents, right?

Karen Adam [00:45:41] Yeah. Oh yeah. Because when I went to America, we were. Myself and my daughter went and we were constantly asked to perform. Just talk. It was quite funny. But yeah, so moved to this ward and it was just fantastic. The people were lovely.

Karen Adam [00:45:57] Instantly hit it off there. And then I met my second husband who was not a member. I was fully into church and that was a problem because here I am trying to do my best and be good and faithful and I meet somebody who was just the complete opposite of the person that I'd been with before. Very light hearted, funny and just. It was like a breath of fresh air in my life at that time.

Karen Adam [00:46:29] He really gave me a great focus and he was so kind and considerate and caring and not to have that violence or addiction and any of that within. There was, you know, something new to me not to have that struggle. So I fell pregnant. As the age old story goes.

John Dehlin [00:46:53] Oops.

Karen Adam [00:46:55] Oops. So I went to speak to the bishop and of course it was, well, are you going to marry this man? I was like, well, I hadn't really considered that. But so I did love him, he loved me and you know, it just pulled things forward a little bit. We would have been married anyway, I know that for sure. And we were absolutely.

Karen Adam [00:47:26] I don't. People would say to me, you know, I haven't seen a couple in love like this and you know, in such a long time. You guys are just. Because I had such a weight off my shoulders at that point, you know, I had turned away from some really dark, dark days.

Karen Adam [00:47:40] And so I think that mixed in with finding somebody who was taking care of me for a change was, was. Yeah, it was. It was a complete different turnaround for me and I was full of hope again. And I hadn't had that for a long time. But of course the problem was he wasn't a member of the church.

Karen Adam [00:48:02] So I beguiled him. So I asked him to talk to the missionaries. So at that point, I, yeah, I got him to speak to the. To the missionaries and had him fellowshipped within the. Within the church with families there as well. So that was quite.

Karen Adam [00:48:30] Yeah, he, he's the same. You know, he was brought up in that secular society and his family weren't religious or anything like that. And I remember saying to him at the time, he's like, he came to me one day and said, I've done a little bit of research on the Internet now. So fast forward, you know, his family have a computer. I didn't have a computer at that time, so he could do a little bit of searching. And he said, I was reading that Joseph Smith took mushrooms and was hallucinating.

Karen Adam [00:49:01] That's how he saw Jesus and Heavenly Father. And I remember thinking, oh, this is too much for me. It's like a crack in my belief. And the thing that gave me so much solace at that time. And I was straight on the phone to the missionaries, I said, I'm really feeling low. I'm feeling a bit sick and confused. I found out that there's rumors on the Internet that Joseph Smith was hallucinating because he'd taken, you know, magic mushrooms.

Karen Adam [00:49:34] And the missionaries, they were right over. They came over, of course, talks me down, talks me through it, spoke to him about it and said, and this was quite interesting, he said, if you wanted to talk, if you wanted to learn anything about me, would you talk to me or would you talk to my worst enemy?

Karen Adam [00:49:58] And for me, that made sense to me. At that time, I thought, yeah, he's right, actually, because you're only going to hear really horrible things from, you know, enemies of your people. But not really looking at the wider perspective, it's that confirmation bias. I wanted the church to be true. I didn't want to believe it would be anything else. And so anything anybody said to make that feel better, you know, I would. I'd believe it and take it in because I couldn't bear for it not to be true.

John Dehlin [00:50:27] So I have to just throw in that. The other day I got a comment on my website. It's from a Roger, and he says, quote, he's quoting Neal A. Maxwell, one of our former apostles. It says studying the church through the eyes of its detractors is like interviewing Judas to understand Jesus. And I just thought about that and I, you know, logically, on face value, it makes sense. If it weren't for the fact that the Church systematically hid and covered up its history from its own members for a century and a half. Like it makes sense, except for the fact that the church has been so deceptive about its history.

Karen Adam [00:51:08] Yeah. Yes. Well, that's it. That's exactly it. I just, I wasn't. Yeah, I wasn't ready to be thinking that way or thinking that anything was hidden because I thought the church was so honest, so true, because I was taught as well, you don't lie.

Karen Adam [00:51:25] And that was something, you know, I'd always told the odd white lie or, you know, covered things up or, you know, as human beings do. So I, you know, I took this full on my membership within the church. I was taking it very seriously.

Karen Adam [00:51:42] I actually hadn't heard of scrupulosity. I actually heard of that until I watched one of your podcasts. So I went and googled that to look it up, and I think there must be a bit of a spectrum of that because although I didn't, I did identify with some parts of it. I mean, I was repenting all day in my mind, all the time, just for even having a simple thought.

Karen Adam [00:52:06] So I did take things very literally and thought I only have protections, you know, and blessings from the Holy Ghost if I am obeying 100%. So. And everything the missionaries or my leaders taught to me, I had to. Even if I felt uncomfortable or felt I had questions about it, I felt guilty for having those questions and I would actually repent of it.

Karen Adam [00:52:30] So I was. I really was at that point, gaining momentum in. In my strictness, I suppose, my orthodox, being quite orthodox Mormon. So I had to tell this man that, you know, we have to get married if we're going to stay together, because I want to keep on going with the church and I want to be married to a church man.

Karen Adam [00:53:01] So he would have done anything for me. So he did, and he got baptized. And. And although it was a rocky road in the beginning, the both of us just went headfirst into the Mormon community. And all our friends were Mormon. We had missionaries over almost every day, at least once a week for dinner appointments, and they were like our friends, really. And we ended up having. I had five more children in that. And within that time we were very active, serving in callings.

Raising a Large Family as a Mormon in Scotland

John Dehlin [00:53:43] Was it four more children or five? Was it four more children or five more children? How many total? You were pregnant at the time?

Karen Adam [00:53:48] I was pregnant, yes. So four more after that.

John Dehlin [00:53:51] Four more after that. So six. Total.

Karen Adam [00:53:52] Five, Six, one, Two. Yeah, I still count them. Even when I make dinner plates, still have to count them. So, yeah, so we moved, though. We did move. We found that difficult when we moved towards back. So we moved back to Aberdeen. My grandmother had passed away and our house was empty. Our house was busting at the seams with all these babies, these Mormon babies coming out all over the place.

Karen Adam [00:54:19] So we actually. I had my. So I had my fourth when I was still living down. It was, you know, it's like south of Aberdeenshire. So we moved back into the city. I just had the fourth baby. I had quite a bit of PTSD with that, actually. That was quite a traumatic birth and ended up emergency section. And I think I was quite low with that for a while, but didn't recognize it at the time. We kind of felt less active than the church was further away to get to.

Karen Adam [00:54:54] I wasn't pulling it together. I always felt like I was pulling the family to church and I was keeping it all together. And almost like he was going to bolt from it at any minute when things got a bit too much.

Karen Adam [00:55:06] I never knew if he was fully immersed. I think he loved the culture. He's a very extroverted, sociable person and I think he loved that aspect of it. Whereas I was in it for eternal family. I'm not saying he wasn't, but he could live in the here and now a bit more. I was always living for my eternity.

Karen Adam [00:55:30] And so we went through a bit of a difficult time there. But then we got. We were fellowshipped into a ward and they became like our family too. We had a few rough years. My. One of my sons was diagnosed ADHD and autistic spectrum disorder. And that was so difficult. That was really, really hard because I didn't know what autism was. I hadn't heard about it or anything at the time, but I just knew there was something different with my child. And it was really hard times at that point, but we were getting through that. We had good community. Church was fine again. I think when we were young and married and having these young children, it seemed like everything was great until everything was great, right?

John Dehlin [00:56:26] I mean, wasn't everything great?

Karen Adam [00:56:28] I think it was great. I must say, the whole time, though, I felt like I had to be obedient. And I remember sitting at testimony meeting one time and this woman got up and said that, you know, sometimes she felt like she was a prisoner of her faith.

Karen Adam [00:56:46] I thought, oh, man, I feel that. I really feel that. I feel like everything I'm doing is for this attorney, for this future and raising these children to, you know, we have to family evening on Mondays, get my daughter to youth on Tuesdays. And we've got. Got missionaries always over. We've been asking to go joint teachers. We're doing our call ins, we're paying for lessons. And then Sunday, and all of a sudden our families are getting a little bit left in the wayside.

Karen Adam [00:57:17] Because in Scotland, you're. Well, I mean, I suppose it's different if you're brought up within the church. There are those families. But if you're a convert and your families aren't members of the church, you're not really seeing them that often.

Karen Adam [00:57:31] There is a divide there. It's difficult for even social situations. When you go to birthday parties, things like that, you would have to say, well, I can't do that because it's on a Sunday. Or, you know, they might want to have a gathering in a pub. And, you know, for me, that was like, oh, no, not beside. Can't be having any gatherings besides alcohol.

Karen Adam [00:57:56] Not the devil's drink. It was just. It was so strange. It was difficult being Mormons within that culture because it certainly was not the norm. You are turning away from a lot of friends as well. Friends who are doing nothing wrong.

Karen Adam [00:58:16] They're just living a life that you find contrary to your teachings and you're scared that you're going to get pulled away into that. So you sever ties and cut ties with good friends. Distance from family. So the church is your family.

Karen Adam [00:58:31] And I think in that kind of way, that feels to me a little bit, although it may be unintentional, it felt quite narcissistic. How, you know, you get into certain narcissistic relationships and they start distancing you from people who would think differently from you or you away from what they want you to do.

John Dehlin [00:58:53] Some of the more conservative aspects of the church are cult like, if you know.

Karen Adam [00:58:59] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:58:59] Distance from people who aren't members. Distance from your family. Devotion, absolute devotion to the organization. You know, those are things that really quickly. Two things. So how would you pronounce somebody whose name is spelled J, E, A?

Karen Adam [00:59:20] J, E, A. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:23] So anyway, Jay, I'll just say J. J Christie. She says she's from. She's in the Glasgow stake. She's joining us on Facebook. She says, your daughter recommended a fabulous book for me to read. Do you have a daughter in Glasgow?

Karen Adam [00:59:39] Not in Glasgow, but she must. She must know her.

John Dehlin [00:59:42] She says, your daughter recommended a fabulous book for me to read. My son has autism too. I was thankful for support. And then jay writes, being LDs in Scotland is intense for women. We're taught it's all on Us. That's what Jay writes.

Karen Adam [00:59:56] Oh, goodness, it is. You know, the lads are having a great time. You know, the elders quorum are living it up. I wasn't the only one dragging our husbands out of bed on a Sunday to get to church, you know, forcing a plea. You know, if he mentioned that he had to go out home teaching him, that was a win. Yes. He's doing something spiritual.

Karen Adam [01:00:23] He's gone. He's been holy. This is great. Any signs that that was gonna happen? You know, I'd always been nudging my husband and saying, are you gonna have, you know, father counsels with the children? You know, all that thing. I wanted all that. And he just was not into that at all.

Karen Adam [01:00:40] It was the. You know, I was the one gathering all the children together on the Sunday and iron. I'd be ironing all the clothes, trying to get myself ready. And, you know, for a woman to get ready, it takes a bit longer than the man. And by the time we got to church, there was one Sunday. I was so furious at him. I was so angry. I thought I'd been doing this all day. I've got all the kids dressed, you know, of course, the boys have all got shirts, ties, even though they're like, you know, like this. Because I've got five sons, one daughter, so the teenage daughter, but she, bless her, she was an amazing teenager.

Karen Adam [01:01:15] She was really helpful to me. She helped me a lot. But a lot was on her, too. You know, being the girl and being the oldest, a lot was on her. And we'd get them all in the car, we'd drive to church, fasting, testimony.

Karen Adam [01:01:29] And he'd go up and bear his testimony, how grateful he was for me and all the hard work I did. And I was livid. And a couple of members came up and said to me, oh, isn't that lovely? Your husband really appreciates everything you do. And I'm like, no, I wish you would do more. If you'd actually be hands on and did more at home on a Sunday, you know, that would be nice. And it was really. I was scowled at and, you know, frowned upon for having that attitude. But I was just. I was so angry at it. But then he always enjoyed church.

John Dehlin [01:02:02] Sure.

Karen Adam [01:02:02] He loved it.

John Dehlin [01:02:03] He did. He did, yeah. I have to ask, was it something you had heard or were taught in an LDS context that made you feel like six kids was the right choice for you? Because I'm assuming not a lot of Scottish couples would have six kids in the 80s and 90s, right?

Karen Adam [01:02:21] No. And I mean, we're driving. We're always having to buy American cars, you know, possibly because of the oil in the Northeast. We had a lot of American Mormon families that would come over and they'd often get the positions of bishop or stake president and things like that, you know, because the Americans know how to do Mormonism a bit better. Is that what it is? I don't know.

Karen Adam [01:02:42] But so then they would always be like selling a secondhand wagon or something. So, you know, we were always going around in this, you know, secondhand cars, big buses with all these kids. And it was quite foreign, really, to our family and friends and everybody in our neighborhood to see that we had so many children. So I think that's why the church was felt comfortable to us, because it wasn't really. They didn't bat an eye. You know, there was other families there with big, you know, big families there, and it wasn't out of place, but we were particularly out of place in society.

Karen Adam [01:03:17] You know, there would be the comments, do you not have a tv or, you know, you can get things for that, you know, that. That kind of thing. But I always wanted a large family. That was definitely something I always wanted to have.

John Dehlin [01:03:33] So was it Mormon? It wasn't Mormon theology.

Karen Adam [01:03:38] There's an element of it. And the reasoning behind that is because if. If I didn't have so much faith that if I paid my tithing and all would work out fine, I wouldn't have had so many children because I always had this faith that it's okay. We were always quite, you know, on the bread line. We were always. There was never savings. We were just hand to mouth. Whatever he brought in was, you know, straight back out again.

Karen Adam [01:04:05] And I thought, we really can't afford this, but as long as we pay our tithing, we'll be blessed. And I always felt inspired to have. Yes. You know, I'd pray about it, obviously, I'd pray, is it the right time to have another child? And I'd feel it was. But, you know, that was. That's probably my hormones, because I was broody and I wanted another child. So I'd convinced myself, you know, probably that it's a sign we need to have another child. You could. I could probably, like, hear him sigh and see him physically sigh whenever I approach that subject.

Karen Adam [01:04:37] The. Because I did. I wanted the big family, but I did feel the safety net that everything, all would be well. And even though my health was actually quite bad after my fourth child, after the emergency section, I'd lost a lot of Blood. I almost died on the table.

Karen Adam [01:04:56] So it did take five years before I did have another one. And I felt this urge and push to have another one. Actually, I did get a dog or two, like when the fourth was two, because I thought that would just fill that, that gap, but it didn't. So people always wonder why, why did you have five years between your fourth and fifth? And I'll say, well, you know, we've got a puppy in between, in between times.

Karen Adam [01:05:21] But it didn't work. It didn't stave off that, that feeling. But I felt that it was inspired to have that child because after that we needed to move house again, to get a bigger house. And things weren't really great in the city for us, for our children.

Karen Adam [01:05:42] My other sons were getting into a bit of bother with having autism. You can be easily led sometimes. And he was getting in a bit of trouble, not big trouble. He was still a young boy, but I could see this was going to start escalating. He wanted out to be play in the streets. And it's hard to contain him. I mean, 2 and 3 years old, he climbed out the cat flap, we had a cat flap in the door and walked up the street to catch a bus. And we were running around trying to find him and found out he tried to get on the bus to go to the beach.

Karen Adam [01:06:14] And that's what he was like. His ADHD and autism was always on the go. We had to lock the windows, lock the doors. It was just. It was full on you micromanaging them as well all the time. So that was difficult for a variety of reasons. So I thought, right, we're moving to the country. We were broken into.

Karen Adam [01:06:39] It was quite a scary time because we were in the house at the time. There was a bit of bother in the area that we were living in. And I said, we're going. So we moved out to the country and it was great for our family, for our circumstances at that time.

Karen Adam [01:07:00] We often had people come and stay with us, actually, you know, if my daughter had a friend or I had a friend that was going through hard times, we'd have people. We were the kind of family that would have people in the house all the time. The door was never really locked because people would walk in, the missionaries would be in. We'd have a teenager staying with us for a couple of weeks or so, or, you know, there was always people in between houses or family members that needed to stay over. So it was a very busy house.

Karen Adam [01:07:27] So when we did move to the country, I Felt that it was a great opportunity and a fresh start for us. I mean, we were full on Mormon, living the dream at that point. So I asked my husband if he would consider. He was working in the demolition trade and it wasn't bringing the money in that we needed to look after these children. So I was a stay at home mom. Hadn't even considered the fact that, you know, I would be going out to work. I went out to work at a few points and there I had to work.

Karen Adam [01:08:10] I was cleaning early hours in the morning to try and get some extra money in. So I'd get up at like 4, I'd get to work for 5 and work for a couple hours to get back so then I could look after the children for the day and my husband could go to work and then he'd get in about 6 o' clock and then it would be tagged. He might go back out and do more cleaning at nighttime just so we could get that. So I was doing that work in the morning, cleaning childcare all through the day and then put them, I would feed them, bath them, put them to bed and then he would be in from work and then I'd be out working just to get to make ends meet.

Karen Adam [01:08:46] And I was pulled aside by a church leader. I'm not going to say stake presidents or bishops or anything because I don't want to point out anybody in particular or for them to be identified. So I'll just say a church leader pulled me aside and told me that I shouldn't be working, that I was needed in the home because I was tired and it was causing a bit of contention at home.

Karen Adam [01:09:12] But we needed the money, so I decided. So my husband, he went and started to. He went back to school, really. And in Scotland it's free, free education, so you don't have to pay for it. And there's also.

Husband's Infidelity and Marriage Breakdown

Karen Adam [01:09:30] So he worked, he did work now and again with the demolition, cut the hours and was studying at the same time and I was doing all the childcare. And during that time things started to really rapidly break down for us and things, things weren't, weren't right.

Karen Adam [01:09:51] Things were difficult. My daughter was preparing to go on a mission, so she. I was all focusing on making sure that she doesn't get pregnant or, you know, any of that stuff.

John Dehlin [01:10:03] Now how many years ago?

Karen Adam [01:10:06] So this was, oh, 2000. 12.

John Dehlin [01:10:17] So about eight years ago.

Karen Adam [01:10:19] About eight years ago, yeah. Because we had a reminder, actually. Yeah, I had a Facebook memory of our mission seven years ago, where she'd moved places so my daughter went on a mission. And honestly, that was one of the worst days of my life.

Karen Adam [01:10:37] I was inconsolable, and I didn't expect to feel the way that I did about that. It came up as a bit of a shock to me because would been so excited for her to go away. I was so proud of her to live her life to that standards, you know, especially in where it's not the norm with all our friends, none of her friends. She had to push away friends.

Karen Adam [01:10:59] Okay for me, being in a marriage and having married friends within church. But, you know, when you're growing up at that age, she. She's on another level. I mean, you need to be interviewing her. She is such a strong woman. She is.

Karen Adam [01:11:15] I'm not gonna cry. But she is incredible. Everything that she's overcame, and she got on that path to serve that mission. If people don't know, MD's gonna watch this, that, you know, Aunt Mormon. That is so difficult for a young girl to get to that point, because also within the church, the opposition to her going because she was a girl, why are you doing that? You just need to be getting married and having children.

Karen Adam [01:11:44] So even outside and inside the church. But she was. I think she was wanting to please me. We've been through so much together, you know, we've grown up like sisters. She's my best friend in the absolute, you know, in the whole wide world.

Karen Adam [01:12:01] And I think part of an element was wanting to please me. But she was a very obedient to God. She loved her savior. And I think she found solace in church a lot too. She brought. While she was on her mission. So she left on her mission.

Karen Adam [01:12:20] I drove her down. Her father was dying. So at this point, my first husband, he was on and off drugs for years. He became free of that. So while I'm living my life, this Mormon life, having all these children, my first husband, he got completely clean. He gained a degree.

Karen Adam [01:12:39] He was living with a woman at the time. And my daughter had been seeing him this whole time throughout all this. You know, every weekend she'd really gone to her grandparents to have contact with him, because we just thought that was best way to do it until he was completely free of everything. He become very ill before she was going on her mission. She went to see him that day. I was quite angry about this. She was. She went to see him to say goodbye, not knowing that she would ever see him again.

Karen Adam [01:13:12] She knew that he would possibly die when she was on. When she was on her mission. And he'd asked her not to come back for his funeral. Because he. Obviously he was, but he was still believing, but he wasn't active at all, but he still believed.

Karen Adam [01:13:31] So she. When she was on her mission, her father. Lots of things happened. It was. What a time. I'm trying to think what happened first. Her father had been ill. He'd had liver transplants. But I think this was possibly. So it was 2013.

Karen Adam [01:13:54] What had happened was it was. It was a Sunday. I think it was my son's birthday or the day after his birthday. Yeah, it was his birthday. And we were all just had our Sunday lunch and we're all just lying around, you know, lazing about on a Sunday.

Karen Adam [01:14:12] Dad's in the position of, you know, face down on the floor having a nap, as dads do on a Sunday. And my one year old. How old was Isaac? Yeah. So he would have been one and a half. Came walking over to me. I was sitting on the sofa with a card.

Karen Adam [01:14:32] So this was February, middle of February. And it said. It was just a blank envelope. And I thought, where's he got this from? You know, it was bent in half. And I opened the card, and it was a Valentine's card.

Karen Adam [01:14:47] And my heart started pounding. And when I opened it, I saw that it was a Valentine's card to my husband from another woman. And I've never felt so out of body before. Zahad, in that moment, because we were sealed in the temple, I thought, you know, although he was. I was dragging his heels a little bit to church there, we still had that focus. We were praying together as a family. We were scripture studies. We were doing all of that stuff.

Karen Adam [01:15:21] It was awful. I just remember vaguely picking up. No, we still had to do my son's birthday cake. So we went downstairs because we were just lounging around. I had a big bedroom with a sofa in it and lounging around. I said, let's go do the cake.

Karen Adam [01:15:37] I just completely into robotic mode. We're going to go do the cake. It's, you know, his birthday. We're not going to spoil this. I was lighting the candles and we look back and laugh now because he says to me, when you picked up that knife to cut that cake, I thought you were coming at me with that. I thought I was going to get a piece of that. You said, the look on your face.

Karen Adam [01:15:58] I was like, I would have done that. But something we kind of get. That's how far past we are. That, you know, past that we are now. But after that, I said, we're going to Talk later. So when all the children got to bed, I was sitting on the bed and he was sitting on the sofa. And I just still remember saying to him, first question out my mouth, did you sleep with her?

Karen Adam [01:16:23] Yes. And I can't actually remember much at that point. He said that he's never heard anybody cry or wail out like that before. And my memories of that next few days. Sorry, that was somebody. Oh, sorry. My memory of that next few days was quite vague.

Karen Adam [01:16:47] I think I slumped in quite a deep depression, really. My whole world had just fell apart. I'd lost my daughter on her mission. I felt like it. Sorry. Somebody keeps trying to call me. My daughter. My best friend had gone. She was, you know, the one I was closest to.

Karen Adam [01:17:08] I was there alone with all these boys. Just found out my husband had an affair. And everything didn't seem real. So it didn't come onto my mind that we were going to break up or get divorced or anything like that. I thought, well, this is it. This is, you know, sealed for time and all eternity. We've got to work this out.

Karen Adam [01:17:29] And from then on, what I dealt with within church was a very different church to what I'd known before. It was very much. You put up with that. You think about the children. You have to get over this. You have to forgive him. And all of a sudden, he seemed to be, you know, like the prodigal son treated. He was just encompassed with everybody, and everybody seemed to be looking after him because, of course, I'd thrown him out the house. I was like, I'll deal with this when you're out my. You know, out the house. You can't be living in here. Just go. I couldn't even look at him.

Karen Adam [01:18:14] And we had meetings with church leaders that were just unbelievable. I. So a church leader came to the home to counsel us. Even though I said, okay, we could have marriage counseling, he said he would give us marriage counseling.

Karen Adam [01:18:34] And he made my husband retell everything, every detail. And I mean, down to the real nitty gritty of positions, everything of what he'd done and how many times he'd done it. And I feel that that really impacted my mental health.

Karen Adam [01:19:03] Whatever kind of therapy that was supposed to be was not productive. And all it did was just break. Just break me, my heart even more. And I couldn't really look at him after that. We had to go through. He went through church discipline, which was an absolute joke, that it was his friends that were all there, the little men that were his friends that were sat around a table you know, we're talking about a man that has Melchizedek priesthood that's sealed in a temple. You know, married man that had a calling. And of course, I mean, I don't want firing brimstone on this man either.

Karen Adam [01:19:46] You know, I don't. I'm not out for any kind of revenge or anything. I was broken. I was just wanting some kind of peace, to get it back together. And I thought he would face some kind of. Because here's me. I'm living my life in a way that I'm scared to even drink. Coke, Diet Coke, because I am cutting out caffeine. I am repenting daily of even a swear word in my head, but yet here's somebody that's done a sin so huge that you're told that so close to murder. And nothing happened. There was no discipline.

John Dehlin [01:20:25] Not even disfellowship meant no nothing.

Karen Adam [01:20:30] Because the priesthood and the home was more important to me and the children than anything else. Even though he wasn't in the home. But to have him fully active was seen as their preferred method, I suppose, which was.

Karen Adam [01:20:49] I didn't feel that then it seemed all to be put on me that I seemed to be having more counseling with the leadership of the church, telling me that I needed to forgive him, that I needed to move on, that the family can only be repaired through me, that it was all on my shoulders. Even though I had just been through this devastating, you know, time to find out that that had happened. It was. It was incredibly difficult. I don't.

Karen Adam [01:21:21] It's so vague all around that time, honestly, because I don't. There was moments I was lying in my bed and I just thought, I cannot physically move my legs to get out my bed to go to the toilet. You know, I had to drag myself to go to the loo because I just. It wasn't that I wanted to die and I wasn't suicidal.

Crisis of Faith and Emotional Aftermath of Divorce

Karen Adam [01:21:40] I didn't feel that at all. But I didn't want to exist. And I don't know what that is, but I just. I wish that didn't exist. And so here was then leaders coming to my home. So then at one point I said, I don't think this is going to work. I spoke to the church leader and said, I can forgive, I can get past it, but I don't want to live with him anymore. It's something. It's my boundary, it's my line. He's crossed it. It's ruined it for me. And no, I don't want to be with him. Anymore.

Karen Adam [01:22:17] The church leader came to my home. Now I'm there on my own with the five boys at this point. And this was a Sunday evening and he stayed in my house until 4am Trying to convince me to stay married to my husband.

Karen Adam [01:22:33] He told me, he told me this. Actually, I'm kind of glad he said this to me because this just really fired me up and got me more determined. He said that divorced women never make a success of their lives.

Karen Adam [01:22:49] I just. Now he came over about 8pm and that was about 4am before he left. What is he doing? The same church leader that made my husband spill all this stuff in front of me. I was just. I was just livid. I was. I was raging at him. I thought, how dare you.

Karen Adam [01:23:11] Like how dare you tell me that I am nothing without a husband and a man in my life? And that. So a man can continually do these things, you know, with my history, men can just continually do these things to me and get away with it and I just have to put up with it and have the babies and raise the kids and be quiet. No, no.

Karen Adam [01:23:30] I'm kind of glad he said that because it really fired me up. But I decided, I think we were still friendly. We went on a holiday together. I tried to be friends because the children. I tried to heal that part of it at least so we could be civil to each other.

Karen Adam [01:23:49] We had one last ditch attempt. We went on holiday together. We were abroad at the time. And then I got the phone call to say that my first husband had passed away. At this point, my daughter is on her mission, so she's serving a mission and she gets a phone call telling her that they didn't take her in an office, they didn't chat with her, they didn't sit her down. She said she was walking up somebody's path and the mission president called her to say that her father had died and of course he hadn't wanted her to go home to the funeral. She wanted to honour his wishes.

Karen Adam [01:24:25] I couldn't go to the funeral. I couldn't go and comfort her. I was abroad at the time. And she'd also found out that at that time that her stepfather had had an affair and her mum was just suffering. She got permission to call me. I mean, wow, you know, big deal. But she, she snuck another phone call and I even remember still at that point, even though, you know, her mum, who she's very close to, is really, really low and I'm saying, are you allowed to make this phone call? You know, even at that point and everything that's going on, are you allowed to be calling me?

Karen Adam [01:25:02] And she's saying. So she called me again when she didn't have permission this time, but she's called me and I said, christine, I don't know what I'm going to do. And she said, don't you dare give up. Don't you give up now. I am on my mission, you know, don't do it. Don't you know it's not the time to be doing this. And I was like, okay, I won't. I went to the temple, I went down with a couple of friends because I thought that's where I need to go to get this.

Karen Adam [01:25:31] I don't know. It's boided up. And it was the first time I'd ever been to the temple and felt absolutely nothing. Felt nothing. I thought, what even is this? This is nothing to me now. When. When I went through the temple and they were talking about obeying your husbands or whatever, you're. What was that? What's that bit in the.

John Dehlin [01:25:58] Hearken unto your husband as he hearkens unto God.

Karen Adam [01:26:01] And I'm like, what a crop? And then it spoke about being. What's the part it tells you about adultery? What's the adultery part? I have been through a few times. I can't remember.

John Dehlin [01:26:17] Just the law of chastity.

Karen Adam [01:26:19] Yeah, the law of chastity. That's it. Yeah. I remember feeling so sick at that one because I'd been reeling after, you know, what he'd done. And I thought, this is just a reminder. This is just stirring up everything that's just not right with me and my family right now.

Karen Adam [01:26:35] I just didn't enjoy it. I felt like all I had to do, all the inspiration I ever felt that I had to do was to protect the children. That was it. Amongst everything else. It was like right now you're into protect mode and buffer them from everything that you possibly can.

Karen Adam [01:26:54] So this is. I mean, this is all happening. My daughter left her mission, my husband had an affair, my first husband died, all within six months. It was just. It was incredible time. And over that time, I still, I hunkered down, told the kids, right, listen, your dad's out the picture, but this even more now, you know, than ever, we need to be sticking in at church. But every time I went to church, I just felt. I didn't feel like I belonged anymore. I'd loved my callings. I'd love being young women present. That was just the girls I just, I loved that have that relationships.

Karen Adam [01:27:39] I had with them. And I still feel that close to them now. But I actually unfriend them on Facebook and things and don't really talk to them because I don't want them to feel sorry for me because there's nothing to feel sorry for. But I know how, you know, a lot of them are still active and I just know how their mind works.

Karen Adam [01:27:58] But I did try for a while and I think we got to. So that was 2013, 2014. Myself and my daughter went to America for three weeks and it was just. We were like, just, let's run away. I hired a Mustang convertible and we drove from San Diego to Elio. I did the whole Hollywood, then we drove to Vegas and then we drove from Vegas to Utah. And it was just incredible. But we'd flown into Memphis. Actually I went to Memphis first and hired a big.

Karen Adam [01:28:33] Those big SUV things. It was just the two of us in it and it was huge, massive. That if we're going to there, I want something that a rap star's got, you know, I want to be cruising on one of them in Memphis. So we did all that. So that was three weeks of just an absolute dream. But we went to. I thought this was going to heal a broken heart. So it was quite poignant actually.

Karen Adam [01:28:54] So I checked into the Heartbreak Hotel on Graceland, on the grounds of Graceland. And I just. I remember walking in the doors thinking, you know, this is the grounds of Graceland. I'm at Heartbreak Hotel. Like, how perfect is this?

Karen Adam [01:29:14] And the TV was 247 Elvis. It was just incredible. I went in and I had, you know, the whole Elvis thing. I was sobbing, crying during the Graceland tour. And we went to Tupelo and we drove to Nashville as well on a whim because there was return missionaries, of course. We know a lot of retired missionaries from all over America. So we were texting one and he said, well, I'm in Nashville. And we're like, right. Four hour drive from Tupelo or whatever it was. So just drove there and we just had an amazing time and got away from it all for a while. And during that time, I think I went to Utah and I realized that the best time that I'd had wasn't there where the church was, that it wasn't all about church, that the joy that I could have in my life was spending that time with my daughter.

Karen Adam [01:30:08] It was just us. I mean, we drove up the, you know, the strip in Vegas in a Mustang convertible, down with our sunglasses on and just living, living at large, having A great time and going to see shows and we saw Elton John. And then I went to Utah and it was, it was. I was there for the, for the spirit. I was there for help me, heal me, get my family back on track.

Karen Adam [01:30:38] And I sat in conference. We went to conference, general conference, and saw the homeless. I saw the big shopping mall. The culture was so different. The people that I reconnected with was amazing. It was great. Again, it was the people. But sitting at conference and listening to the general authorities talk, I just didn't feel what I thought I was going to feel.

Karen Adam [01:31:04] Which made me think, okay, so this has been within me this whole time anyway. It's maybe what, you know, have I been making up this spirit? Because I'm not feeling it here, but I surely felt it when I was in Graceland.

Karen Adam [01:31:23] I surely felt that feeling when I was standing at Elvis's grave, you know, so that I started to question things there when I started to find joy and other things. And then of course, 2013, that was the beginning of 2013. As that year went on, Scotland was having this political awakening. So we were going to be having the referendum on will we become independent from the uk And I really got stuck into that. That was.

Karen Adam [01:31:59] I'd always been the church. The church felt like home to me because I always felt we were there, we were trying to do something good in the world. We were trying to spread, you know, this goodness. And I was compassionate service leader. I loved that. I loved helping people. I loved the young women. It's all I ever wanted to do. And I realized that we could do this on a bigger scale. It doesn't have to be within this Mormon bubble in this Mormon culture.

Karen Adam [01:32:31] And the more I was reading about the, what Scotland could do as an independent country and how politically we've always been very different from the rest of the uk. You know, Scotland's never had a government really that we voted for in a long time. And we haven't voted for a Conservative government for over 50 years. But yeah, we're ruled by one at the minute. It's just how the UK is set up really does not benefit Scotland at all. We never really get a say in anything.

Seeds of Political Awakening and Social Justice

Karen Adam [01:32:59] So when I see social injustice, that's when I get furious. You know, I have been through having a drug addicted husband. I've been the woman that's been abused. I've seen what it's like to have no money. I know that it's not all making of my own.

Karen Adam [01:33:17] And I know that there are people out there that need help and what can I do about this on a bigger scale? And all of a sudden my mind opened up to the possibilities of I could be taken. What did I go through all this for?

Karen Adam [01:33:30] What was the point of all this? Do I just look back on and think, you know, what lessons did I learn? What came out of this? And I thought I could be out there helping people. So I didn't really think about standing for any political office at the time.

Karen Adam [01:33:49] But everything and everywhere you went it was yes, no, yes, no. It was just people were talking about it in cafes and you know, you sit down just to have a lunch or something, you could hear people talking about it. People were arguing about it, but debating. But generally I think the feel was good.

Karen Adam [01:34:09] Certainly a divide between unionists and you know, indie sporters. So at that time as well, obviously I'm still quite active within church, but fading out. I ended up going out and campaigning. There was a member of the church actually who was an MSP at the time. So it's a member of the Scottish Parliament and his.

Scottish Politics, Independence, and National Identity

John Dehlin [01:34:35] Talk to us really quickly about and some people are going to not need this, but others have no idea because Americans can be very self aware but completely unaware. Talk to us about uk, talk to us about England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland. Talk about the political structure a bit just so we can get a sense.

Karen Adam [01:34:54] Okay, so the UK basically is made up of four nations. And within that four nations you have Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales. And each nation, well they don't each all but Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have their own devolved parliaments. So matters that are reserved, that means it's overseen by the UK government which resides in London, it's called Westminster and that's in England. So they have powers and they have devolved some of those powers to the parliaments in their respective nations. So Scotland has its own parliament, the Scottish Parliament. So a member of Parliament, an MP is for the UK government in London. An MSP is a member of the Scottish Parliament for the Scottish Parliament located in Edinburgh.

Karen Adam [01:35:55] Now what, although powers are devolved, not all of them are predominantly our money and the freedoms to have powers over like immigration, you know, and things like that. We have like education, health, they're devolved to Scotland and we've been doing so well. I mean crime is at the lowest it's ever been on in recorded history right now in Scotland since this government came to power.

Karen Adam [01:36:34] There's so many things, it's just, it's fantastic what's been done. And I just think, you know, if Scotland being independent, it doesn't want to. I think a lot of people see it as a nationalist ideal, and that's where I think a lot of contention comes in. Because unfortunately, a lot of independence followers, not all, but some, are the Scottish National Party, which I'm a member of, and Scottish National.

Karen Adam [01:37:05] It's just national. It's not nationalist, because we're in favour of a very inclusive Scotland, so not one that's cut off. This is our country, you know, we. Not the British nationalist type. We are in favour of immigration. We see the benefits of migrants to our country, we see the benefits of a multicultural society, so it's more inclusive and in favour of equalities.

Karen Adam [01:37:35] So it's. I mean, I was taken away with this when I started really getting into the politics of that. I could see the benefits of having an independent country. And because the whole. Yes. No divide rippled through the whole of Scotland at that point. It rippled through church as well, you know, and politics and church mixing is never a good thing. You probably get that with the whole Trump thing. Although I can't talk about Trump much because I'm his counsellor.

Karen Adam [01:38:02] I'm not really. You're what I'd say. I'm his local councillor because his golf course is in my area, so I just. I've got to make decisions on his planning and things. So if I say anything bad about him, he'll say, I didn't get that because she was speaking.

John Dehlin [01:38:18] It's never good to bash Trump or any politician on Mormon stories, because I have listeners who like Trump, I have listeners that hate Trump and I want to focus on my mission and I don't like politics to turn off anybody.

Karen Adam [01:38:30] No.

John Dehlin [01:38:31] So I'm glad we're not going to bash Trump. Let me just quickly, even though I obviously have my own feelings. So did Ireland. Did Ireland break off from the UK at some point? Not Northern Ireland, but Ireland. And, you know, is there. Does the UK have a history of other. Obviously, the UK used to be, you know, Great Britain used to be colonial and they always said the sun never sets on the British Empire. So clearly the past 50 years have been countries gaining their independence and breaking off from the uk. Is that right? So what would have been some of the more recent examples, countries that had separated that Scotland would have looked to as examples?

Karen Adam [01:39:15] I don't know if one's breaking away from the uk, but there's certainly loads of examples of small independent nations, a population about 5 million that do really well, that don't even have the, you know, the same resources that we have here either. I mean, there's loads of examples. We look at Norway quite a lot.

Karen Adam [01:39:40] It's quite similar. Norway has the oil as well, same as Scotland. And although we wouldn't be dependent on the oil, we could do something similar in Norway, where they have an oil fund. And particularly during this Covid time, we could see that Norway has been using their oil fund that they've been putting away to, you know, to help, you know, to finance that. Whereas, well, I think us and here UK wide, it's been quite devastating on the public first, that's for sure.

Karen Adam [01:40:10] There's a lot of work to be done regarding, you know, getting the economy up and running. That's had a huge detrimental effect. But yeah, so countries like that, small independent nations mostly, we voted to stay in the eu, so that was a big bonus contention. After that, we, the no side had campaigned that if you vote, if you vote no, it's. You're only sure we are staying in the EU. And of course, so Scotland voted 55% no, 45% yes. And shortly after that, there was a referendum on leaving the EU and Scotland voted to stay, but the rest of the UK didn't. And this is why I would like us to be independent, because we have to do what they want to do because there's not enough of us.

Karen Adam [01:41:08] I mean, the whole of Scotland, the MPs that are. So all the MPs gathered in Westminster, there are more MPs within, like the City of London and the area of London than there are in the whole of Scotland. So if they're going and voting on certain things, the whole of Scotland, the whole country can be outvoted by one city.

Karen Adam [01:41:26] It's just, it's really not democratic to me. I just don't see why we can't be making our own decisions in that regard. But the contention at church was there during that time. It rippled through that and as I got more involved in church, in politics.

Karen Adam [01:41:44] One day I walked into church wearing tartan shoes and I'd worn tartan shoes before. I'd had the high heels for a long time and it was pointed up to me as I was walking up to the stand to give a talk.

Karen Adam [01:41:55] And I thought, what is going on here? This isn't a political, you know, symbol. I'm in Scotland, I'm wearing tartan. Is this, you know, what is this about? Because I was quite vocal on Facebook, politically vocal. And what is tartan?

John Dehlin [01:42:12] The word tartan? You may have just told me, but I.

Karen Adam [01:42:14] Tell me, say it Tartan, you know, like the pattern that would be on. Would you call it plaid?

John Dehlin [01:42:20] Okay. Plaid. Oh, okay.

Karen Adam [01:42:22] Okay. Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:42:24] And so somebody. You had shoes that were plaid colored tartan, and somebody's in that. That some would take that as a symbol for Scottish nationalism.

Karen Adam [01:42:35] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:42:35] And there would have been other people at church that were against Scottish independence.

Karen Adam [01:42:39] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:42:40] Okay.

Karen Adam [01:42:41] There was a divide there at the time. And one day, this is why I started to leave, because I was getting more and more politically active and more politically aware. I was already been thinking I'd been on that big adventure to America and things weren't. Just weren't sitting right, but I was still believing in God. You know, I was still believing that the whole Mormon, you know, way of life is the way of life. But I was kind of falling out of love with the.

Karen Adam [01:43:10] With the structure of it. It's hard to explain that actually how that was happening. It was a slow burner, really. I walked into church one day and somebody gave me a Nazi salute at that time. And mixing up, of course, the national with the nationalist, and it was. That was really difficult. I thought, come on, don't bring this to church. You know, I'm still going through quite a hard time. I'm recovering from everything that's happened in my family life. And, you know, people would come up to me and ask how my husband was doing because they hadn't seen him for a while.

Karen Adam [01:43:48] And I'm like, come on this. It just. It started to be a place that wasn't a place of comfort and home for me. It just. A leader even got up and on the stand and bashed. And I know it was targeted at me for my political speakings on the Internet.

Karen Adam [01:44:09] And I just. I didn't want to go back. It didn't feel like a place of comfort for me at that time. And I completely threw myself into politics and asked my husband for a divorce. And I'd never been happier. My children were already going and leaving. My oldest son had read the CES letter.

John Dehlin [01:44:34] Oh, wow.

Karen Adam [01:44:36] Yeah. And he'd passed it around, or had it passed around at church? The youth were passing the CES letter around each other because I remember one day him saying to me, mum, so how could there have been horses, you know, in America at this time? And I'm like, I don't know, just.

Karen Adam [01:44:52] I just wasn't willing to listen or whatever he was saying. He. He didn't say, here is a letter. Read this. He was telling me snippets out of it. So I don't Think you have the full effect until you read it in full, you know, in the full context of it. I think just hearing little bits of it doesn't have that impact. So I'd kind of brush that off. But he had a meltdown one day. He freaked out. The missionaries were in the house and he was just screaming at us. I don't believe in church, I don't want to go. You can't force me anymore. Just he was done with it.

Family Drifts from the Church and a Troubling Leader Visit

Karen Adam [01:45:26] And slowly but surely, dun, dun, dun, dun, you know, the kids were all just not going. We had a church leader come to the house wanting to talk to one of my sons, my autistic son. And he was sitting on his computer and he said, oh, do you mind if I go and talk to him?

Karen Adam [01:45:41] I was like, do you know what? On you go, there's no twisting these kids arms. And he stood at the door for like nearly an hour trying to talk to him. And my son's really stubborn. It's just, it's wonderful actually. He can completely blank a person that, you know, that you think they're just not in existence. He just sat staring at his computer screen, not acknowledging that that church leader was even talking to him. Completely zoned out. But he stood there for nearly an hour talking at him.

Karen Adam [01:46:19] And he said he text him. So he would pick up and look at his phone. He's standing in the doorway, my son's at the computer. And he just looked at the text, put the phone back down. Eventually he gave up. But after that, I didn't know this was going on. I thought he was just chatting to him in his room. But my older son came and told me what had happened and said, mum, that's not right. That is harassment. That is, you know, Daniel's autistic and he is intimidating him, asking him to come to young men or whatever. It was growing an hour, that's not acceptable.

Karen Adam [01:46:54] So I started to see these really odd behaviors from leaders grappling at our family. And then of course I said, well, you know, why not send out the missionaries? We haven't seen the missionaries for a while. I wasn't allowed to have the missionaries at the house, of course, because, you know, I'm a single woman and I might, I don't know what, be overcome with romantic intentions towards these young men because I mean, a single woman, how can you trust one of them? So yeah, the missionaries weren't allowed to come over at the house anymore. And it was just, it was done. But at the same time, I still believed in Jesus Christ, God, I believed in him, but I was furious at him.

Karen Adam [01:47:35] I was so angry. And I would pray and tell him I was angry. I say, I am so angry at you. If you really are the God that they say you are, I don't even want to live with you.

Karen Adam [01:47:45] Why would I even want to live with you? If this is how, you know, you treat people and the level of expectations you have for me and being young women leader and having friends that were young teenage girls and sitting in bishop interviews, worthiness interviews with them, or if they had committed sin, which I don't believe is a sin, but, you know, a sexual sin, they would ask me to come in with them quite a few times.

Karen Adam [01:48:16] So I know they can't be identified by anything I'm saying at this time, because I certainly. I wouldn't ever do that, but I've been in a few times. And the questions that the bishop would ask the young women, my friend, meaning young women, not the group of young women, but, you know, young women, my friends who were adults, having to confess these. These things, asking intimate questions, asking if they.

Karen Adam [01:48:53] If they climaxed during the intercourse. Like what? Like you're. You're a grown man. She and she, you know, whoever it was had asked me in there to, you know, be with them at the time. They didn't have to have, you know, it wasn't a given that somebody would be there with them. And this has happened one to one with, you know, with women in that situation before, I started to see a lot more clearer because I wasn't in the happy bubble anymore.

Karen Adam [01:49:30] Church wasn't, because I wasn't in the perfect family set up for it anymore. I started to see the reality of it. For people who weren't married with the children sealed and just getting on with your callings. It didn't. It wasn't. It certainly wasn't a place of refuge anymore for me. And I completely turned away from.

Karen Adam [01:50:00] Was an awful time because I was so angry at God. But during that time, I'd reconnected with a friend who was brought up Mormon, but family had been less active. He's a gay man, he's 20 years younger than me, and he's one of my best friends. We go on holidays together, weekends away together. We just.

Karen Adam [01:50:27] Gosh, we were living the dream. Up to this Covid. I really found my tribe within the LGBTQ community because during that time as well, you know, there was the new policy. So thinking, you know, this is 2015, like a year after the referendum, they'd asked me to be adult Sunday school teacher, I think, just trying to keep me going to church.

Karen Adam [01:50:50] And there was a new policy that came out that children of same sex couples could not be baptized. And I thought, does this mean that my baptism is undone then?

John Dehlin [01:51:05] So let me pause for a second. So let's go back. So for those of us who joined us late, you know, you were raised in a, in a same sex household with your mom who had a partner, female partner, and your dad lived separately because your parents have been divorced. So had the church talked to you then long, long time previously about their policy on what they would have called homosexuality? And then prior to 2015, before you were feeling frustrated and starting to want to leave, you know, you probably would have heard rhetoric in the church about, again, what the church called homosexuality. Talk about what you heard and how you processed it prior to 2015, and then talk about, you know, what 2015, November 2015 was like for you, if you don't mind.

Karen Adam [01:52:00] Yeah, sure. So we were always taught. The question did come up because I'd say, well, you know, my mum was gay. Are you saying that my. Because obviously we talk about eternal families. So are you. How did it work even in the first place, with my parents being divorced, you know, so I'd had these questions and I said, you know, I spoke about my mum and they had said, you know, leaders or whoever I'd asked at that time, it could have been anybody really, that, you know, it all gets, it all works out in the end. You know, you just have to have faith. You do your bit, you do your part, it all works out.

Karen Adam [01:52:36] I hadn't really known anybody else that was gay because I was in this Mormon bubble. I wasn't connected to the LGBT community. I didn't have any gay friends that I knew of really. So it never came up in any kind of conversation until that policy, really.

The LGBT Policy Change and Doubts About the Church

Karen Adam [01:53:00] I was always told that homosexual, homosexuality, being homosexual isn't a sin, it's acting upon it. That's what was. That was what was taught. And it was two sides of the same coin. It was breaking the law chassis. So if you're not married, you shouldn't be having sex. So, you know, that that was it.

Karen Adam [01:53:28] But I did, you know, I pondered and I think it wasn't till that point because, you know, I was busy in my own life and it didn't, I think if something doesn't affect you, then, you know, and I'd asked about my mum, you know, what would happen to her. She'd passed away, actually, when I was pregnant with my third child, quite suddenly, she was only 49, of a heart attack.

Karen Adam [01:53:47] So I had thought, you know, what's going to be, you know, happening to my mom? Am I going to be sealed to her? And all this stuff. But it was never really discussed. I think if she was living, maybe that might have made a difference.

Karen Adam [01:54:01] But it wasn't until that policy came forward. And I thought, I'm going to start digging and asking more questions now. And then I was told I'd asked a question about it and I was told that. And I don't think I went back actually after this.

John Dehlin [01:54:21] You're saying when the November 2015 policy hit, you asked a question, started asking

Karen Adam [01:54:26] questions and I asked a question in regards to. So I'm saying you're saying it's the same. The same two sides of the same coin. So how would you have been made

John Dehlin [01:54:36] as just a regular member of the church in Scotland? How would you have been made aware of the policy change? News, maybe through the news. What's that?

Karen Adam [01:54:49] Members, probably. Okay, probably few members. But it must have been announced somewhere. I'm sure it was. It would have been in the papers.

John Dehlin [01:54:57] It would have been in the papers too. Like the news.

Karen Adam [01:54:59] Yeah, yeah, probably. I mean, we were quite aware of it because it. Was it not long after that the whole Prop 8 thing started, or was that just. When did that start?

John Dehlin [01:55:09] Prop 8 was in 2008. Prop 8 was in 2008.

Karen Adam [01:55:13] There was also a big campaign, wasn't there, later than that?

John Dehlin [01:55:18] Prop 8 was the big campaign in California to take same sex marriage away from the state of California. Okay, but so the November policy came about seven years later.

Karen Adam [01:55:31] Yeah, because I remember something around that time because I had a friend, a church member living in California states at that time who'd been asked to head, you know, the campaign against same sex marriage. And I was. Or maybe it's because I was discussing with her at the time and maybe that was something she'd done previously. Actually, maybe that's what I'm getting confused with the timeline and having that discussions and just thinking this is not right because I've been told here. So if what you're saying is, okay, so you're not breaking the law, Chastity, you're not having sexual relationship until you're married, but at least within Mormon limitations.

Karen Adam [01:56:09] You can get married when you're straight, but you can't get married if you're homosexual. So you're saying that you have to be celibate and alone forever and you're telling me that so what's the prospect for eternity? Then after that, that really. That hit me quite hard, particularly at the same time, because I was now reconnecting with an old friend who had struggled quite a bit because of the church, how the church had viewed homosexuality and him just coming out as a gay man to his family and community at that time.

Karen Adam [01:56:47] So we really connected and bonded over all this. And he would say, karen, you know, this is. The church isn't real. He's complete atheist. He's like, listen, God's not even real. And we'd have these debates. And I remember we went out actually one night and, you know, I'd started having a drink, alcohol, going out, dancing. So I went out dancing with him, and we actually sat outside and we just grabbed a kebab. I don't know if you have kebabs in the States.

John Dehlin [01:57:16] Oh, yeah, I love them.

Karen Adam [01:57:17] It's traditional. After a night out, you have a kebab. So we're sitting, having a kebab, and we're having this really intense debate. We always have these intense debates about religion. And I'm saying, no, but there is a God, you know, And I still believe that. I just. I don't think the Mormons have got it right. And he's like, karen, you know, it's nonsense. And I was like. I said something about having a sign, and a white feather just came floating down between us.

Karen Adam [01:57:40] And I said, look, see a sign? It's an angel. It's a sign of an angel. And he just said, karen, look up. And I looked up. And of course, we've got these seagulls circling around, circling around for their kebabs. And I think, you know, that's a funny story, but it's so. It's a great insight into the mind of somebody that's conditioned to seek signs.

Karen Adam [01:58:02] Everything, you know, for the last 20 years, or whatever it had been to always be looking for a sign in something or a meaning in something. And I thought, yeah, sometimes it just is what it is. And I started, I suppose, not. Not completely disbelieving in God. I don't know what I believe in anymore. I got to a point where.

Karen Adam [01:58:27] So this. This is where I am at the moment. The other week, I prayed and said, you know what? I don't even think I believe in you anymore. So that's how confused my thinking is right now. I think that says a lot about where I stand, really.

John Dehlin [01:58:45] So one of you may or may not know this, but a lot of people who lose their faith in the church or leave the church. You know, it's obviously hard for believing members to watch formerly strong, stalwart members leave. And they can't just sit with that cognitive dissonance. Like, whoa, you know, they're thinking, what if the church might be wrong? What if I have given my life to something that isn't true? Like, that's a lot of cognitive dissonance. So people who remain in the church have to find a way to make sense of it, of someone else leaving, especially that that was devout or who they respected.

John Dehlin [01:59:22] And so they often need to make mental justifications. And the common stereotypes, you know, in the United States and probably abroad is that if someone leaves the faith, either they were offended or, you know, they never believed to begin with or they wanted to sin. And you mentioned, number one, kind of all that political stuff happening and then not feeling comfortable in the church. And then you mentioned, you know, drinking.

John Dehlin [01:59:52] I want you to directly address anyone who would want to say, up. See, then Karen lost her faith because she got offended. She wanted to sin, and so she lost her faith. What would you say to someone who wants to discredit your decision with those excuses?

Karen Adam [02:00:09] Well, okay, so just for the record, the whole time I was a Mormon for 20 years, pretty much wanted to sin quite a lot, and I think a lot of Mormons too. So that wasn't a reason for leaving. I'd always be wanting to sin.

Karen Adam [02:00:24] There was always moments of wanting to. I mean, being human and getting offended. Yeah, I think I was offended quite regularly as well as I probably offended others. But that certainly wasn't a reason for leaving my. And for talking about it after as well. I did feel quite guilty thinking I was on and off, you know, yourself. I was pondering whether I was going to do this interview with you because I really don't want to upset people. I don't want people to think, you know, that I, you know, have horrible stories to tell or, you know, I am disappointed with some people in the church and how they are, how they treated me and my family at a time where we really needed, you know, something else and not to be seen as a project that was going to perhaps have people follow on our example, so to speak.

Karen Adam [02:01:19] I think there was no genuine feeling there. I think the fact that I came away from church feeling that I didn't, even if it was true, I didn't. I didn't want to be a part of it. And I left believing.

Karen Adam [02:01:40] I left believing and I left guilty quite a lot. The way I was living my life, having a Coffee in the morning, you know, like, I know that sounds strange to people that aren't in the church, but that's quite a big deal, you know, having a coffee and thinking, am I ruining my whole eternal salvation for myself and my whole family by having this coffee in the morning?

John Dehlin [02:02:01] And so you left the church as a believer. I think that's important. So why would you, why, why would you leave the church as a believer?

Karen Adam [02:02:09] Because I felt that if that's the way that life had to be, if that's what eternity was going to be like, and that environment with that kind of God that I felt was quite manipulative.

John Dehlin [02:02:21] How so? How is the Mormon God manipulative so manipulative?

Karen Adam [02:02:28] Well, you're always, you're given snippets of information and you have to go on faith. And it's always, well, you know, you have to act first and act first and then the belief, you know, comes next. And if a belief doesn't come, then you're not faithful enough. You obviously didn't do it properly. There's always the narcissist. It's very narcissistic. I've been in a narcissistic relationship and that is exactly what it is. There's a lot of gaslighting that goes on. It's always turned back on you. Of course it's not.

John Dehlin [02:03:00] What do you mean, what do you mean by gaslighting? Just for those who don't know what that term means.

Karen Adam [02:03:03] Okay, so if somebody. It's like sign posting any content. So if you have contention or if you have questions. I'm trying to think of an example. It's always best to have an example of gaslighting lighting.

John Dehlin [02:03:23] Describe it and an example may come.

Karen Adam [02:03:26] Okay, so if you believe. I'm trying to think, because I do have a really good example of it. It was done quite a lot, particularly in leadership interviews, for example. So I'll go in and asking questions. I was asking questions about my ceiling to my children and where I stood with that after I would be divorced. So what happens now? What's the point of all of this if I can't be sealed to my family and, you know, to be told that I had to be more faithful, that that was at my feet and that it was all on me and not answering the questions that I was wanting answered.

Karen Adam [02:04:10] It was always thrown back on to me to be. To having to come up with the answer. So if you're not getting answers to your prayers, you're not faithful enough, or it's not the Right answer. If you're still confused about something, it's not the right answer.

Karen Adam [02:04:27] A lot of that went on. I had so many questions that started to ping up at that time and none was addressed. It was always, yeah, pushed back, pushed back onto.

John Dehlin [02:04:43] Yeah. So whether it's your son's questions about the Book of Mormon and science and Book of Mormon historicity.

Discovering the CES Letter and Leaving Mormonism

Karen Adam [02:04:47] Oh, yeah, he sent the CES letter to the leader. He emailed it to me.

John Dehlin [02:04:51] Talk about that. Tell that story.

Karen Adam [02:04:54] So well, I didn't know this until recently, actually, because I'll tell you, I only read the CES letter about two months ago for the first time at 17:30, and I was. I sat with it and I'd got to that point where like, yeah, you know, I was not fence sitting, but I was on the other side but still thinking now and again, having doubts. And I read the letter, I put my phone down and thought, well, that was a waste of 20 years.

John Dehlin [02:05:25] Oh, what was it about the CES letter that was shocking to you that you didn't know?

Karen Adam [02:05:33] Oh, Joseph Smith's behavior. I really think that he was a treasure hunter in the beginning and he still managed to make this treasure hunt in church today. And we went through times, you know, of being really tight of money. We were actually on welfare at some points and we paid tithing on our welfare. You know, I wonder how the governments would feel about that, knowing that they're, you know, they're supporting their citizens with welfare and the church has taken 10% of it.

Karen Adam [02:06:03] I've often wondered about that, said that when I've asked about paying tithing on it and being asked, do you. Well, do you feel it would be the right thing to do to pay it? You know, what's somebody that's wanting to be faithful going to do about that? Of course you're going to be paying it. If you don't pay it, you're riddled with guilt and think that you're going to you not receive all the blessings you can get. So in that regard, I think when I read about Joseph Smith using the stone in the hat, thinking about the pictures that I'd grown up with looking in church and showing my children, and I had them all over my house.

Karen Adam [02:06:39] I had pictures of Christ. I had pictures to Emma and Joseph in temples and all that. I had Joseph scribing from the gold plates and to find out that he never actually did that, and that is on church record in church history, he did not do that.

Karen Adam [02:06:53] But they have. They use those pictures in church that it's a false depiction. It's something that did not happen. We. But you're brought up with that image. The fact that he was a treasure hunter. The book that he was probably around at the time, the same names. Was it Moroni?

Karen Adam [02:07:18] I always had a crush on Moroni when I read the Book of Mormon, every time I went to that part. I read the Book of Mormon a few times in my life and I like, wow, I wish I could have a husband like Moroni.

Karen Adam [02:07:30] But now I'm like, no, I'm so glad I don't. But just, you know, it was names like that. He was. He was a con man. Oh, there was. When I was listening to Elder Holland's talk. I remember there was conference. We're all gathered at one of the chapels and it was being streamed, and Elder Holland got up and said, you know, I remember at the time hearing the talk. I'm going, this is what I need to hear about the Book of Mormon. You know, he sealed it with his own blood. You know, he died not denying it. And after I read the letters, I was like, you know what?

Karen Adam [02:08:02] Why did I always like that talk? Because Joseph did not seal that in his own blood. Joseph did not do a deathbed confession. He was shot trying to climb out a window. Don't even try and claim that he sealed his martyred blood in the book. He didn't proclaim it when he was going out the window. He didn't know he was going to die. So you can't claim that he sealed in his blood when he was, you know, caught out. And he didn't.

John Dehlin [02:08:30] He was also. He was also incarcerated. He was incarcerated for destroying a printing press. So destruction of public property and violation of freedom of the press that he was mad because one of his first. One of his first presidency members was exposing his secret polygamy that he had been denying.

John Dehlin [02:08:54] And so he's destroying private property and violating freedom of the press. And so he's incarcerated. And then, yeah, it's no good that a mob came to hurt him. But, you know, the surrounding citizens got tired of all the shenanigans and the violations of law and all the scary stuff that was. It was like David Kresh or Jim Jones living in your backyard. And people were just afraid over time that there was this cult, this cult leader. This cult leader was sleeping with people's children and their wives and stealing their money and marching around with a legion, you know, building up these huge armies and then marching around people's surrounding towns with his legion to show force People were just getting freaked out.

Karen Adam [02:09:44] Yeah. And I think, as well, what I didn't like was when you go on the church website and you can see for yourself, you know, a lot in the church history, it backs up what's been said in the CES letter. And it said she was almost 15. Like, come on. Does that make it even better? Even just using that language? There's a bit of gaslighting for you, you know. No, she was 14. Just saying that she was almost 15 does not make it any longer.

John Dehlin [02:10:12] Yeah. The essay on polygamy says she was a few months shy of her 15th birthday.

Karen Adam [02:10:18] So she was 14.

John Dehlin [02:10:20] Yeah.

Karen Adam [02:10:21] Yeah. And then I think, you know, I've been reading a little bit more about it, but I'm just. I'm not one of these. I did. I liked your website. It was actually, I have a friend who's left the church recently who. I cut off contact with him and we never spoke for years, for the last three years or whatever it was, and we made contacts and we're best, you know, chatting away all the time, and we're really good friends again. And it was her that pointed me towards your Mormon Stories podcasts.

John Dehlin [02:10:50] Had you cut her off because she left the church?

Karen Adam [02:10:53] No, I am. She was still in church when I left.

John Dehlin [02:10:56] Oh, when you left and I cut them.

Karen Adam [02:10:58] I think it was a mutual thing. I think when I left church, I didn't want to be talking to any of them because I didn't want them to try and make me come back. And I also. I've had members leave before that I was friends with. And I remember sort of my dogs barking.

John Dehlin [02:11:13] No, it's fine.

Karen Adam [02:11:14] And I remember. And I remember the feeling of feeling, you know, I'm quite embarrassed about it now, but feeling pity and feeling sorry for them that wouldn't have the gospel in their life anymore and how can I get them back to church? You know, there was always an agenda, and I didn't want that friendship. I wanted an authentic friendship. I didn't want anybody to have an agenda for it. I don't want to be a project for any friends, but I knew where their mind and head was at, so I didn't feel any contention towards them. The same reason why I unfriended loads of Mormon friends on Facebook.

Karen Adam [02:11:49] It's just better that way. If we're not going to have an authentic friendship without an agenda, then let's just not go there, because it's not going to work out well for either of us. But we reconnected and I thought we would talk for a long time about why we didn't, you know, why we weren't talking or anything. And we just thought, do you know what? The past.

Karen Adam [02:12:13] We just picked up where we left off. We talk about, you know, church quite a bit. It's really helped me. She sang. Because when I left church, you know, I was still believing. I didn't really look for any solace and anything like Mormon Stories podcast or. I didn't look for any of that or look to read the CS letter. I was just living my life away from it. And since I've been pointed in this direction to have this. And this is why I decided to do this interview, because it really helped me. It got rid of the last of the residual shame and guilt and any doubts that I might have.

John Dehlin [02:12:50] So you were saying your friend. You were saying your friend turned you on to Mormon stories?

Karen Adam [02:12:55] Yeah, yeah. She said, there's this guy going down, you need to watch him. And I was like, oh, I will, I will. So, yeah, I've been hooked hours and hours, like watching.

Mormon Stories Podcast and Finding Community After Faith

John Dehlin [02:13:06] Do you remember any of the episodes that were really impactful to you? Just so others can know. You can describe.

Karen Adam [02:13:14] I can describe them. You'll know. Well, so the guy that actually wrote CES letter, Jeremy Runnels.

John Dehlin [02:13:21] Yeah, that was.

Karen Adam [02:13:21] That was brilliant. The church historian woman who was husband and wife with the. They were the original. Seen as the outcast, the original anti Mormons.

John Dehlin [02:13:34] Margaret Toscano and Paul Toscano.

Karen Adam [02:13:36] Oh, or Sandra Tanner.

John Dehlin [02:13:38] Sandra Tanner.

Karen Adam [02:13:40] Tanner, yes. That was amazing. I couldn't.

John Dehlin [02:13:44] She's great.

Karen Adam [02:13:45] I watched Sean's. I watched Sean's interview.

John Dehlin [02:13:47] Sean Coombs. Shout out to Sean and Paul Coombs. They're great. They're your Welsh brother and sister.

Karen Adam [02:13:53] Yes. Celtic. Celtic connections. And was it the pen? The penance was the family. So it was the mum, dad and the pinsons. The Pinsons, Yes, Pinsons. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:14:08] They're great.

Karen Adam [02:14:09] I've listened to quite a few, actually, but particularly Sandra Turner, I think struck with me. I did watch the one brain you were interviewing. Oh, the guy. So he's done his facial hair in the same way as the anonymous mask. What's his name? The name?

John Dehlin [02:14:27] Noah. Yeah. Mike Norton.

Karen Adam [02:14:31] Mike Norton, yeah. And I thought, what a guy. He's. That's not the route I would go down. But, yeah, I watched that. I don't know if it was. I would definitely recommend watching it, but I think to highlight the contrast in how I felt about leaving church, I didn't want to go down that route.

Karen Adam [02:14:54] I still believe that. Even though I don't believe in the temple, I don't believe in the ordinances, I don't believe that they are sacred from God. I do believe that they are sacred to the people that still do them and perform them. And I feel that I should respect that for them.

Karen Adam [02:15:12] So even though, you know, I don't believe it's from deity, I think we should always respect other people's religions, regardless. I only talk about Mormon religion because I was in it for 20 years. But, you know, if I was out of it, I would want to respect the people and the members in it as much as I do Muslims, Jews, you know, any other Christian denomination.

Karen Adam [02:15:37] I just. I feel like we need to have that respect for them. But I'll talk about Mormonism and my experience, because that's my story and I'm entitled to tell my story. And I do feel that the church has a long way to go. And, I mean, you can't break down. If you break down doctrine, you'd have to go breaking down doctrine of all the religions. Like, you know, if you're going to treat everything equally on that point. But I think I, in my eyes, I think particularly recently with the Black Lives Matter movement, that the Book of Mormon is.

Karen Adam [02:16:10] It's a race war and it's white supremacy. I went back over, I thought, what did I teach my children from the storybooks, the Book of Mormon stories, the cartoon things? And I actually found the link to the animated series on it. And if you go to it, it said that their skin's darkened, they become loathsome, lazy people.

Karen Adam [02:16:34] That's still being shown to Mormon kids right now. Can you imagine if there is a black child in Primary being shown this, sitting with, you know, white peers? What sort of relationship is that going to cultivate between these two children?

Karen Adam [02:16:51] What questions are they going to start asking? So I think in terms of that, the church really needs to look at that materials and ask themselves, what are they teaching? You know, children, if you're going to start saying, oh, it's just symbolism, no, you have a picture of a Lamanite with dark skin, animated, don't. That's not symbolism that you're teaching white supremacy.

Karen Adam [02:17:15] My kids told me this for years when they were growing up. They said, this is racist. Mum, have you read this? This is really racist. And I'm like, where? You know, I'm reading it and I'm like, oh, actually, yeah, I think you're right, because the kids are so. They're much more switched on now.

Karen Adam [02:17:35] But Particularly, you know, for LGBT rights as well. My kids are just having none of it. You know, I kind of followed them out really. I'm now, I mean, in regards to, I mean, I'm a local councillor, I got elected. But I'm also within the party, within the snp. I'm a member of the ofi, it's the out for Independence group. So it's the LGBTQ affiliated group for the party to help them, you know, advocate for and to discuss LGBTQ policy and bringing that into the forest. So I'm actually, you know, I went from this Mormon lifestyle and I'm now even an advocate for the LGBT community.

Karen Adam [02:18:25] And I'll tell you something, I have never met a more loving, kind, inclusive, non judgmental community before. I mean, this just blows socks. Then who then? Your Mormon kindness. This is true kindness.

John Dehlin [02:18:46] Which community is truly kind?

Karen Adam [02:18:48] The LGBT community in Scotland. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:18:53] Okay.

Karen Adam [02:18:53] It's very. They love people for who they are and they don't try to make them be anything that they're not. And I think that's something that I struggled with within the church was the natural man is an enemy to God. I always felt that my natural self was wicked, that there's more gaslighting, because that's teaching that you're not good to start with.

Karen Adam [02:19:22] So any ideas or thoughts or anything that I had would be quashed because I would do whatever was expected of me to be obedient to God. So yes, any natural feeling, natural man is an enemy to God. It's just that means that you can't be authentic. That means that you're not doing things because you truly want to do them. And that is, you know, your true. You're not being your true self because you're constantly repressing it. The repression within the church is incredible. And I, you know, I talk to my ex husband now and he, you know, we discuss things and I can see why he had an affair.

Karen Adam [02:20:04] You know, angry at him for it and he shouldn't have done it. I wish he'd said to me at the time, you know, I feel like having an affair. Although I can't see him approaching me and saying that to me.

Karen Adam [02:20:14] Having that affair and the betrayal was the hard thing, you know, but, you know, if we got to a point where we could have discussed it. But it's the, that, that whole aspect of it, it's. He was repressed, probably wasn't happy, hadn't he probably didn't even want to go to church. I don't know. I would talk for him.

Karen Adam [02:20:33] But that's a big, you know, having a big family with additional support needs in there. And it's hard work and everything the church asks of you, it's, you know, it invades your home. It's not just church on a Sunday. It's not just in the building. The church is omnipresent, you know, even down to the bedroom and the underwear that you're wearing, it's everywhere.

Karen Adam [02:21:02] It's very oppressive. And I can see even more now that I'm out of it. It's like, you know, when you're ill, you feel ill, but it's not until you feel better, you realize exactly how ill you are. And I feel like that's it with the church. Now that I'm out of it, I feel so much relief. I didn't realize how repressed I was and how I was living for somebody else and not myself.

John Dehlin [02:21:26] Yeah.

Karen Adam [02:21:28] I was doing everything for. For somebody that I don't even think exists anymore. Now I just do everything for myself now.

John Dehlin [02:21:38] To Mormon ears, that sounds selfish, that you're just being selfish.

Karen Adam [02:21:42] Yes, yes. Yeah, it would be. I don't care.

John Dehlin [02:21:48] But serving in the. In the Parliament, serving in the Scottish Parliament, it doesn't sound selfish. You could probably make better money doing other things, right?

Karen Adam [02:21:58] Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I'm a local councillor, so it's like local government. So it's a council area, so I cover Aberdeenshire and a portion of Aberdeenshire. And I feel like I'm really giving back more to the community now than what I ever did being a member of the Church.

Karen Adam [02:22:17] I can still things that I thought, oh, you know, I could. I could say, well, it's thanks to the Church that I managed to do this. I feel like the Church held me back for 20 years. As a woman.

Karen Adam [02:22:27] I feel that if I hadn't been focused on doing everything I could to be good and obedient, I would have loved to have studied law. You know, people say, if you could go back in time, you know, and whatever, would you. I study law. I'd probably still want to get into politics, but I'd have a better grounding and understanding of things. I, academically.

Karen Adam [02:22:47] I really missed out on all that. All those years of not expanding my mind, being a part of the LGBT community now, I've missed out on that for years. And that's like, the highlight of my time now is getting to, you know, mix with them and talk to them and bring in what they need to the forefront of politics as well, for equality. Because right now, we have the Gender Recognition Act. There's a bit of contention around that, you know, on transgender people being able to self id.

Karen Adam [02:23:24] So that. That's a bone of contention right now, particularly in Scotland. I think there was a poll done the other day that was quite positive though, and I think the majority of people were in favour of that. But I find that ridiculous now. You see, I'm like, why are we even having a debate on the rights of other people? It's their rights, you know. To me it just. I feel like we're still a bit backwards in certain aspects in regards to things, because I remember the 80s, the AIDS epidemic, the homophobia, you know, all.

Karen Adam [02:23:58] All that comes flashing to my mind, the news stories when I was younger, so. And I feel that being repeated again in terms of transgender people, I feel like it's the same things regurgitated, but just targeted towards different people. So I feel like I'm doing a lot more positive things now.

John Dehlin [02:24:21] Absolutely.

Karen Adam [02:24:22] I used to think the church did so much service and that the community groups that are out and around here, particularly when Covid hit, I mean, we had groups all over forming and coming together and making sure that people had medicines and that they were fed and, you know, really gathering together to make sure that, you know, parks and things are safe. We've had them come, cut grass, the local parks, you know, tractors and things. And the communities have really pulled together. It's not just within church that there's that community spirit and there's that, you know, kindness towards each other. It's, you know, it's all out there and to see that working and in practice has been fantastic.

John Dehlin [02:25:10] Yeah, orthodox or fundamentalist religions are really good about building the religions or the organizations and so you will get social, financial, community benefits from being a member of. But all of the efforts are really oriented towards building the church and the actual opportunities for really helping society or individual self development, learning, expanding your horizons.

John Dehlin [02:25:44] They want it channeled to building the institution, not towards building the broader society. Serving the broader society. Even if there's charitable efforts to. They're either often superficial or they're pr. Heavily PR focused efforts to manage the reputation. But in terms of really building the intellect, the emotional maturity, the strength of the marriage, building the community, the serving the broader community, these fundamentals organizations really fail and oftentimes the marriages aren't strong. They're strong in the context of everybody feeding the church, but in terms of the marriage being strong so that it could thrive on its own if the church weren't a presence. No the marriages fall apart when the church isn't there or they're starting over from scratch. They're not strong, vibrant, healthy marriages on their own. Only in the context of the religion.

Running for Office and Pursuing a University Degree

Karen Adam [02:26:43] Yeah, I mean, I. Yeah, I certainly feel like that. I feel like there's definitely a bubble that's there and that I never. I've always had this scratch to itch. I suppose that I've wanted to help more in the community. I've always been a bit of a helper, a peacemaker. I've always liked, you know, if I've seen social injustice that I want to help, that I've always wondered, why is there pockets of poverty? You know, I want to get into the, you know, the property, you know, social sciences. Actually, I started a degree as well. I was doing a degree at home, but I just started working. I'd been elected, I had the five boys at home, and I was doing it on my own.

John Dehlin [02:27:23] Wait, let me, let me back up. How do you go from being a divorced, you know, Mormon or ex Mormon mom? You know, there's probably a lot of financial stresses to running for public office. Like, there's a lot of women that find themselves middle aged, and I'm sorry for using that term, I'm middle aged if I'm not over the hill. But, you know, how do you pick up when your whole life has been about raising kids, serving your man, supporting the patriarchy, serving in church? Then all of a sudden you're divorced, there's financial trouble, you've lost your faith. How do you pick up from there? Give women who are in that situation, you know, some inspiration or some insight into how you pick up from there and end up healthy and strong when. When there's so much of your life that got shattered.

Karen Adam [02:28:14] I think for me, I did. I got involved in the politics aspect. I joined the political party. But I mean, it could be anything that you could be joining, you know, if anything that you feel is positive and beneficial to you. Any kind of books, even if it's a book club, you know, anything that's going to explain, expand your mind and help you connect and talk to people. Out with that Mormon bubble. If you're coming out of that, you need to be connecting with people, varieties of different people from all, you know, walks of life.

Karen Adam [02:28:44] Getting involved in something. I just started to. So after the referendum, you know, I had filled. There was a political campaign to get somebody elected and I got. I just went for it. You know, I was out door knocking, I was leafing, and the next thing I Know I'm asked to be the women's officer of the branch of this police party and I was women's officer.

Karen Adam [02:29:05] There was more. There's always a campaign to be, you know, getting involved in. And then the, the council elections came round and I was approached and asked if I would stand as a local candidate. And I had been politically active for three years at that point and helped out in some campaigns. So that's how I really.

Karen Adam [02:29:24] And I got elected. Even on the day I'm thinking I'll probably know, not get elected. The next thing I know I'm standing up on the, on the stage with the rosette thing on and called, said I'd been elected. I was like, what? Okay, so I'm a working mum now. I hadn't had a job for years, you know, I'd worked in the community and I'd, you know, done some charity work and volunteer work but I hadn't had a paying job before so it was quite scary and it was hard to juggle in the beginning. And I was also doing a degree at the time as well because I'm doing an online degree with Open University studying politics, economics and philosophy because I wanted to learn a bit more about that.

John Dehlin [02:30:08] Tell our listeners about Open University. I think that's a really cool model for university that Americans won't even have an idea about.

Karen Adam [02:30:16] So I think the great thing as well in Scotland where the welfare system is really great, so, so my income didn't even drop that much really when my husband moved out, we were boided up by the welfare system. Our rent was paid, for example, all of that we had money and food to live on. So it meant that we didn't fall into a poverty trap. It meant that our mental health was stabilized for a while until I could pick myself up and get myself back together. I signed up to the Open University. So it's an online university.

Karen Adam [02:30:50] There's loads of prospectus, you can have a look online if you even just, you know, Google the Open University UK probably have to be UK from the States and you pick what course you want to do. You can take up to 15 years if you want. You can take a break in between it. So you do it in your own time. It's all online. There are in person meetings once a month if you want to go. And I had that with my first year and I got to go to Stirling University and met with a lecturer there once a month just to go over what we'd learned during that month at home, the part time course I chose to do was over six years.

Karen Adam [02:31:29] It's a three year degree course but you can do it part time over six years which is about 15 hours a week. And you do it. You only have to submit an essay once a month if you do about 15 hours a week. So you can really fit it in anytime. It's all on your laptop, it's all online. You get some books to read through, some textbooks and a lot of videos online videos and materials and things and it's really, it's fantastic. You're fitting school around your life. I would be pulling all nighters because I was working and I had the children.

Karen Adam [02:32:06] So my 15 hours would sometimes be crammed in the Friday night into the Sunday. So it was a lot of Red Bull going on. Monster Heatherti to get through and put it in. So I passed the two years and I got halfway through the third and I can't do it all. I wasn't spending enough time with the children. I was always telling them to be quiet, to get out my room. Weekends were never fun with mum. And I thought, you know what? I'm doing enough right now.

Karen Adam [02:32:36] I need to spend time with these children, these kids, because it was just, it was all getting a bit too much. But I can go into that, back into that and dip in anytime I want. And also I think the great, the benefit of Scotland is that you don't pay for it. It's free.

Karen Adam [02:32:51] So I didn't pay a penny for that course so I could have a degree for nothing. Poe helping, keeping a roof over my head until I can so. Because then it lifts me back up onto my feet and then I can work and in turn pay taxes and pay back into the system and you know, work in the community and give back for that period of time, you know, for that two years that I was reliant on the, on the government and to help me and my family overcome a difficult time. I couldn't imagine being somewhere that that wasn't available. I don't know what happened to us.

John Dehlin [02:33:26] Yeah. And I'm not trying to be political on Mormon stories. I think there are good reasons to be conservative and Republican, conservative and liberal. Republican or Democrat, I see the problem with finances and nations becoming bankrupt and all that. But in the United States, if a couple gets divorced and especially if the husband isn't allowed or able to pay child support or alimony, a Mormon woman, or any woman for that matter, they can lose their source of income, lose their health insurance. And then the idea of a woman who really has not A lot of educational background, because if she got married, Mormon, super young, she didn't get her education, or if she did, it was in elementary ed, then you're like trying to support your kids.

John Dehlin [02:34:21] You probably lost your health insurance. Going back to school is prohibitively expensive. Like it's a whole multiple levels of a disaster. On top of going through a faith crisis, on top of going through the devastation of a divorce. It sounds like it's much more catastrophic, potentially in the United States than, than

Karen Adam [02:34:45] in Scotland, and probably harder to leave.

John Dehlin [02:34:49] Yeah. And I guess there are risks of a socialist government, of course, and a nation become bankrupt or people can be lazy, as they say, living on the dole. But it's just important to understand the upsides, which is that if everything falls apart, you still have health care, you can get an affordable education and you can rebuild, Right?

Karen Adam [02:35:14] Absolutely. And that's, you know, what I'm grateful for here in particular, like healthcare, because we have the National Health Service and, you know, and if anything happened, you know, with us, we need to go to the hospital, the doctor. It's free. I mean, in the rest of the uk, this isn't the case either. It's university education isn't free. I'm not sure about the other devolved nations, but it's the. In England, it's not and it's not free. It's just in Scotland, we don't even pay for prescriptions.

Karen Adam [02:35:44] And I know that, you know, working and we talk to people and they're happy to pay that little bit more, knowing even if one person, say one person has taken advantage of the system for that one person, you're helping a lot more people who, I mean, you're only one step away from losing your job or an illness or a death or, you know, a family breakup. Like I had through no choice of my own, you know, I, I didn't expect my husband to have an affair. I was being good and faithful, thinking, you know, that God was going to look after me and our big family that would be blessed by paying our tithing.

Karen Adam [02:36:16] I didn't expect any of that. So I am really grateful, actually, for living in the country where that opportunity has been afforded to me. And I will defend that, and I am, I really hope that we will always have that in Scotland. And I want more of it.

Karen Adam [02:36:37] I think there's still more that we can do. We have this lovely thing in Scotland. So for every baby that's born, regardless of what income that the born income level they're born into, they receive a baby box. And it's like a cardboard. I don't know if you've ever seen them before, but it's a cardboard box. The baby can actually sleep in it. They do it in Scandinavian company countries as well, but in Scotland, they give them out free to every child. And there's a poem in it. It's filled with all the necessities that a newborn would need. And the reason behind it is because every child in Scotland is born equal, regardless.

Karen Adam [02:37:13] The children all have the same start in life. And that more than what the actual material physicalities of that is, it's. It's just that symbolism of it. And the poem, welcoming the baby into the world is what Scotland is. I mean, it's a welcoming country and we welcome people from all over. It's why we're devastated, actually leaving the eu, because we love different cultures. Well, obviously, you know, if you come to Scotland, you live here, you move here, you're Scottish, and that's it. You know, you could be Scottish American, you could be Scottish English, but you're Scottish.

Karen Adam [02:37:50] So I'm really grateful for how I've been able to pick up through that. I don't know how that would be doable in any other country. I mean, imagining that in particular, when all your family are also Mormon, your friends are probably all Mormon, your whole street's Mormon.

Karen Adam [02:38:10] How do you even get out of a marriage in the first place? Because you wouldn't be able to see a way out. You'd probably just have to live in that misery. That's. Yeah, that's a really difficult one to actually digest and think that there's women living like that, because we are. We're not encouraged to gain an education or to work our way through any kind of career, you know.

Life After Mormonism in Scotland and Reflections on the Church

John Dehlin [02:38:36] Now, some who would call themselves pro family would say that's a good thing. If the pressures are such, the social pressures, the financial pressures are such, and even the religious pressures, the leadership pressures to stay in the marriage, to work it out. What would you say to someone who says that's good, that maybe you should have stayed with your husband, and maybe it would have been better for your family to have two parents in the home. And maybe it was worse for everyone that you got divorced. And what would you say to that?

Karen Adam [02:39:07] I would say beneficial to who and to what end? And this. This is where it comes and breaks down a lot more, because we're talking about a patriarchal society. And that is something that has blown apart for me as well.

Karen Adam [02:39:21] And I really do think that. Right. That traditional Focused outlook. I think it's. I think it's run its course and I think that. I think everybody should be able to live their lives how they want to live it. I don't think that we should be forcing anybody to be in a family if we think that couples are better and families are better and happier. Having a mum and a dad, it's just, it's, you know, not the case when we look at studies in regards to that. And, you know, I'm trying to think of the. I wish I had the sources for you to.

Karen Adam [02:40:04] I was looking at that the other day, actually, because it's something I'm often looking up for because of the LGBT community and the work I'm doing within there and how, you know, they do these, like, polls. How happy do you think happier would you be in a same sex home over, you know, and the only issues that ever come up is society's perception of them and how they feel others perceive them.

Karen Adam [02:40:28] It's never the actual conditions within the home that caused any problem. It's people's perception of that. And I think that pressure for a family to fit in a certain mould is not healthy. And I think, you know, with the age of the Internet and people being more informed and people may be being bolder, there's that challenge against that. And I think we're going to see a lot more butting heads over that. But I say I'm down with the patriarchy. I'm ready to scrap the whole lot and just let people live how they want to live, however they want to be. It's Karen.

John Dehlin [02:41:09] I feel my power slipping away.

Karen Adam [02:41:13] Down with the patriarchy. It's just like such an old notion, but, you know, it's not good for. I see the patriarchal system and the whole toxic masculinity really affects my sons as well as it does women. And I just think the church really upholds that.

Karen Adam [02:41:32] That is like. Yeah, I mean, that's the whole focus on it, isn't it, really? That's what it's all about. The power is within the family and the family units and keeping that under control and keeping them together. Because, I mean, goodness forbid a woman would end up wanting to get divorced and leave the church and take her family with her and go off and do some political things that would actually promote LGBT issues and pull more people away. I mean, goodness forbid that would happen.

Karen Adam [02:42:06] So you could see why they would want to keep me in that marriage, because probably it would have fit their narrative a lot better if I was. And they'd still be getting 10% of my income. So that would be nice for them. Would it?

John Dehlin [02:42:22] When I, when I traveled to the uk, when I traveled to the UK a few years ago, I, I talked to some Scottish, you know, ex Mormons that were there and they described the LDS Church in Scotland being in free fall, like not just flat but like closing up branches and wards and stakes, mass defection. Can you talk about the state of the Mormon Church in Scotland?

Karen Adam [02:42:50] Yeah, absolutely. I think I was going just at the time that all that just started kicking off and happening. And I think what is happening, it's a ripple effect through the youth and I think it's coming from the younger members and particularly in Scotland when it came to, and I know this is crossing over politics again, but there was a huge political awakening in 2013 and 2014 and during that time people were really trying to educate themselves.

Karen Adam [02:43:18] Up until that point, you know, we just lived our lives, everything's comfortable. All of a sudden, oh, there's a chance that things are going to change and change drastically within our society, within our country. People were researching more, finding out more, more things. You know, I think when you become more politically aware, it expands your mind out with church perhaps, you know, out with your, with your community. I also think there, there was a quite a bit of a divide and there did seem to be a slipping away at that point. I keep hearing of more families leaving.

Karen Adam [02:43:58] I think the other day there was a woman messaged me saying that she knew you. She must have saw that I'd commented on something and she's from Dundee and she said, oh, John had asked, you know, if I knew you because it's like a small community and I think I'd known of her.

Karen Adam [02:44:14] So I've just connected with her and we're going to have a catch up and talk about things as well. And she was saying, you know, it's the same, there's a lot of people leaving now, families that you never ever thought would have left. We're talking about strong families, you know, raising, you know, a bundle of children, I call them a bundle of children within the church. And they're going, the youth are perhaps having a kickback. They're certainly more educated within Scotland. We're one of the first countries to have LGBT inclusive sex education within schools.

Karen Adam [02:44:53] So I mean that, I wish that was around when I was younger. Certainly wouldn't have made me feel odd having, you know, it would have answered questions from my peers that were making fun of me to say, look here, this is actually a thing. This exists. Gay people exist.

Karen Adam [02:45:11] There's a little bit of kickback about that, but I think the education system, I think we've got it right here when it comes to those kind of things. So if you can imagine a Mormon child going to school and being taught about. I know you're not the shock. People will be like, homosexual.

Karen Adam [02:45:31] You're being taught about gay sex. No, it's not that. You're just being taught about relationships, you know, and different types of relationships and that. That's okay. And people are different and, you know, age appropriate, of course, as well. And taught about transgender, you know, transgender people in community. And I think the. The youth are really switched on. I mean, it was my children that came to me shoving the Book of Mormon in my face, saying, mum, this is racist. You know, it's them that are noticing and seeing it. It's them that read the CES letter first.

Karen Adam [02:46:06] I think it was the same. I know the friend that left church not long after me, that it was her son that had read the CES letter first as well. In fact, I think it was him that passed it to my son.

Karen Adam [02:46:23] So, I mean, there's Google. The kids are going to be Googling. There's not really support for Mormon Church out with the church. There's no support for it within schools. The minimal schools that are still saying maybe a prayer assembly or whatever, that's fading out as well.

Karen Adam [02:46:43] It's just. It's not really that type. Yeah, a secular country, I suppose that's what it is. And the children see that. And equalities is, you know, a really forthright focus as well, you know, within us. I mean, what we have free Santa first countries, actually free sanitary towels to all students and pupils in Scotland, so that girls. Because we recognize that there's a period poverty as well.

Karen Adam [02:47:13] So, you know, we'll have all these social justice issues that are being tackled and approached, and I think equality has been a huge one. We'll celebrate pride in school. Got pride flags up in schools and things like that. So.

John Dehlin [02:47:31] So you think Mormons are leaving. The youth of the church are leaving because of equality issues.

Karen Adam [02:47:37] I think that's certainly part of it, which is, you know, I remember I'd said to my friend, actually, I said, oh, did you hear that the Pope. I think the Pope had said that homosexuality would be the downfall of the church. And he said, did you hear that? And he went, good. And I thought. I thought that was great. It's not that homosexuality will be, but equalities will be. And People becoming aware that, you know, you don't have to be living these repressed lives. People can live how they, how they wish to, and that's what we should be doing. People should be able to be authentic, certainly.

John Dehlin [02:48:21] So do you miss, do you miss being Mormon in Scotland?

Karen Adam [02:48:25] No. Oh, my. I am so relieved to be out. I never thought I would say that. I always thought, oh, I would never leave church, you know, and I'm focused on eternity and now I feel that I live my life for the here and now. I've got more enjoyment out of life because instead of living for tomorrow, I'm living for today. I'm enjoying each moment that comes along.

Karen Adam [02:48:56] I'm focusing on thinking, right, when I die, that's it. So what am I going to do up until that point? And who knows when that's going to be? And it's quite interesting because the six children. So my daughter was actually married and sealed in the temple as well, actually, which she doesn't go either. And I have two granddaughters. And it's going to be interesting because my youngest child's never been baptized, doesn't really know what church is, and my two granddaughters don't go either. So it's going to be interesting to see how much more freer they are without the confines of that, having to live up to a certain, you know, obedience to be obedient to the, to the gospel and just to be themselves. I think that's.

John Dehlin [02:49:47] Many of us are raised to feel petrified that we can't raise moral or healthy or happy kids without the church. Do you worry about that at all?

Karen Adam [02:49:55] No, no. I think what I found is that. Well, actually it was really interesting because my, my son had said some sexist remark or something the other day, but he does, just to wind me up. Anyway. I don't believe for a minute he believes it, but you'll say something. He'll say, well, mum, you did bring us up Mormon. You know, what did you expect? Do you know what we used to speak about in young men? You know, what we used to think of the young women?

Karen Adam [02:50:24] And I do think there's a lot of truth to that, though. He said they were always taught that they had all the responsibility and they just, you know, they had the priesthood and they were, you know, this, this chosen young man and all this stuff. So I think to see these younger children, to see each other, whether they're boys, girls, non binary, gender fluid, free, homosexual, straight, whatever, religious, not religious, hopefully not religious, living their lives just how they want to Because, I mean, what I was saying, that's unmoralistic. Like, I would say that's been unkind.

Karen Adam [02:51:15] And I think if they believe that they can live their lives how they want and they allow others to as well, that they're going to be more accepting, that they're going to be kinder human beings for it. You're not going to go and murder somebody just because you're not a member of the church.

Karen Adam [02:51:32] You know, I think that's the kind of notion they have. Oh, no, it's all going to end up with murder and drug taking. I mean, that, you know, I had that kind of life, you know, the abuse and that. Well, back in the beginning, before church, we'd hoped church would help that, but yeah, it didn't. But yeah, absolutely. I think I can see the difference in my youngest already, because he's not caged in. It's almost like a golden cage.

John Dehlin [02:52:04] Right, right. What about you? So you get freedom, you get 10% of your income, and you don't get the bigotry, the bigoted teachings.

Karen Adam [02:52:16] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:52:17] And the patriarchy. But you lose community. You lose the young men's leaders, the young women's leaders, the youth programs. You lose that Sunday moral reminder and the spiritual seeing and be kind and be honest. And all of that's reinforced by a loving community. Honestly, the very community that took you in when you were really having a hard time, is that a loss? Is that a loss for you? Is it a loss for your kids? The community aspect?

Karen Adam [02:52:48] No, because that whole community aspect was. Because it was connections between human beings. It was connections to me and those humans. It just happened to be that they were members of the church as well. And I think if I'd met them out with the church in any other area in life that we would have, you know, that we would have got on and being friendly. Anyway, I have a huge community within the political party that I'm in. I love a lot of friends and community there. I could.

Karen Adam [02:53:21] I'll tell you what's a really good, big community that's better than Mormons. It's the Elvis community. So I could go anywhere in the world and I could find out where there's an Elvis fan club meetup or there's an Elvis festival going on. You could be there on your own and you're. You're taken straight in and you get to see some live tribute acts at the same time. So I've made amazing friends within that Elvis side of thing. I'm a big fan. I'm a Rock music fan. So I follow the darkness. I don't know if you heard of them in the States. They do tour America, and I have a darkness community as well, that I keep in touch with them.

Karen Adam [02:54:03] So between the political aspect, the LGBT community. Wow. Like, I would give it all up just to keep them. That is just. I have opened the doors to all of this over and above the Mormon community, and you can find that anywhere. It's not exclusive to them. You could be a member of anything and go anywhere in the world.

Karen Adam [02:54:30] And why not try different people? Why do you have to. Instantly isn't part of life meeting new people and making new friends and connections. And if you're going to move somewhere and then instantly have that friend set up and somebody unloading your van, maybe you're missing out on the people that aren't really just down the street that would have helped you unload your van. And, you know, it's. I think the narrative of that is not really based in real life and how we have natural connections with. With people.

John Dehlin [02:55:05] It's just kind of fear. It's fear and conditioning, basically.

Karen Adam [02:55:09] Yes. Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

John Dehlin [02:55:13] Yeah.

Karen Adam [02:55:13] But, you know, I know I feel like I'm definitely leading a fuller life. I have regrets that I wasn't living this life earlier. I feel like a lot of my life's been taken and I. Yeah, but, you know, you can't change the past.

John Dehlin [02:55:33] We have a lot of evangelical Christians that listen to Mormon stories, especially since I interviewed Ed Decker, and they say things like, what a tragedy that so many ex Mormons lose their faith in God and Jesus. Why do you have to throw God and Jesus away? You know, it's sad that you've been polluted, that your Jesus has been polluted, that your God has been polluted. But don't throw away God and Jesus. They're precious. And that's your salvation. You're throwing your salvation away when you leave behind God and Jesus. What would you say about that?

Karen Adam [02:56:10] I've never thrown away Jesus. I've been angry at God, but I've never thrown away Jesus Christ. And I say this in the context that I don't know if he was ever the Son of God. I don't know if he was the living Christ. I don't know if he was the Savior of the world. But whoever Jesus was, and the person that was written about and that we read about, and the person that I felt I had a connection to, which, you know, we have that relationship with what we feel is our savior, that whole feeling, that example I take it with me every day.

Karen Adam [02:56:51] I always have that with me. And I don't know if Jesus Christ is a person alive or dead or whatever he was. But I've never left Jesus as a concept and as an example of how we should be living our lives, how people interpret Jesus Christ, sometimes people interpret them. But my Jesus, he's inclusive and he's, you know, that love one another. That's. I've always taken that.

John Dehlin [02:57:26] And that's beautiful. But when evangelical Christians talk, it's more like unless you're saved by Jesus, you're going to go to hell and you won't go to heaven, that sort of thing.

Karen Adam [02:57:36] Well, if heaven is anything like I've been taught it's going to be. And as oppressive as I think it's going to be, I'm not going to be really happy there. So, yeah, I'll take whatever comes, to be honest.

John Dehlin [02:57:50] Wait, what do you mean by oppressive? Heaven? How is the traditional Christian heaven oppressive to you?

Karen Adam [02:57:56] Okay, I feel that. So I was living my life in obedience to the laws and commandments so that I could have, you know, eternal salvation. Are we going to be living our lives under those strict commandments and being obedient again, you know, in heaven? How.

Karen Adam [02:58:15] At what point do we just get to be ourselves? At what point do we just get to do things that does make us happy without being guilty about it? Why? Always got to feel shame or guilt just for having even just a joyous moment with somebody. And if that's what eternity is like, to me, that sounds like hell.

Karen Adam [02:58:41] Being with my family forever sounds wonderful, but I don't think I fancy that ideal of what heaven would be that they portray. It doesn't, you know, one of the best things. Right. So this is one of the most superficial thing that I've enjoyed leaving church is having a good swear. I think you call it cussing. I love like the F bomb, and I don't even feel guilty about it anymore. And I say it lots and it's quite a Scottish thing, so I turned my back on that. I turned the back on my culture. If I can't say the F bomb in the afterlife, like, what even is that?

Karen Adam [02:59:24] And I know that's such a tiny thing, but in the great perspective of it, but it's that feeling of being able to just naturally be yourself. And that's not. That doesn't hurt anybody, having a good swear every now and again. I don't even care if the kids hear me anymore. That's how rebellious I am now.

John Dehlin [02:59:43] John and the F word isn't even the worst word in Scotland, right?

Karen Adam [02:59:48] Oh, no. Well, the C word, people think it's a C word. But you know what the C word means? Good things. If you get called a good C, then you know, that's a compliment.

John Dehlin [02:59:56] Really?

Karen Adam [02:59:57] A compliment? Yeah. The sea words is probably the only place in the world where the sea can't.

John Dehlin [03:00:01] Oh, that's okay. It's okay. It's okay.

Karen Adam [03:00:05] It's a compliment.

John Dehlin [03:00:06] No, it's okay. It's okay. That's good to know. Like, I think we give. I think we give words. I think we give words way too much power. When we make words forbidden and scary and awful, we're giving them way too much power. And if it's just like, oh, it's just a word. Like, I believe in being respectful and in, you know, in having good diction and being educated and not insulting people. But like, if you make a huge deal about a little word, it's just giving it too much power.

Karen Adam [03:00:39] It is. Isn't it funny sometimes, you know, I think my youngest, he dropped his controllers or something and he let something slip out. And I thought, oh, whereas before I would have to have, you know, a word with him about that and how that's not, you know, a child of God would not say that word. Well, do you know what? If he's a child of God regardless, isn't he? You know, if that, if that's what you believe and he did say the word and he's not a bad person for it. So whatever. Just had a little giggle to myself and walked on by. Now that's a battle that I probably would have to pick and, you know, what for?

Karen Adam [03:01:16] What for? But no, having a good. Just being able to be yourself. I love being myself. I don't think I've ever really been this much of myself my whole life. Just so depressed and. I mean, I don't. They say for drinking alcohol. I don't hardly ever drink at all. I know that's not really Scottish sounding, but it would be the odd night out. Maybe once every few months I would go out, you know, and have a few drinks with friends or if a friend came over, but you know, it's not even a daily thing or even a weekend thing. You know, it's not, it's not that often, but I don't feel guilty when I do.

Karen Adam [03:01:57] And yeah, so I wouldn't. Yeah, I wouldn't have left eternal salvation and eternal life as, you know, a sealed family just for the sake of going and having A drink and having a swear left it, because I don't believe it anymore, because it's nonsense. Because Joseph Smith was a fraud, because I don't. Because I was angry at God, because I don't want to be a part of that. I don't. I wouldn't want to be in that kind of heaven. So life's so much better right now.

John Dehlin [03:02:35] And no more patriarchy for you?

Karen Adam [03:02:38] No, we're down the patriarchy in all forms. Just get rid of all. So

Political Career, Parliament, and Karen's Work Today

John Dehlin [03:02:48] your current political office, do you have any idea what the equivalent would be in the United States? I know we don't have a parliament. I know that we're structured differently. I mean, imagine it's like a state legislature, a city councilman, like in a city.

Karen Adam [03:03:03] City councilman, yes.

John Dehlin [03:03:05] Okay.

Karen Adam [03:03:06] I think that's what it would be.

John Dehlin [03:03:08] So you're the equivalent of a city council person. And do you have political ambitions to be more.

Karen Adam [03:03:15] Yes, I do. Yeah. So not official as yet, and I know this is going out live, but I might. But I would like to go and seek selection for the Scottish Parliament elections that are going to be happening next year.

Karen Adam [03:03:36] I feel that, you know, there's so much to be. There's, like so much work to be done, and I just really want to get stuck in about it. I just want to really. I feel that my. I found. It's hard to put into words, but I really feel, you know, that purpose that I've always been looking for in life. I feel like I found my purpose. I feel like I have so much life lessons to learn. You know, I could be helping people with. I always thought I could be a counsellor, the other type of counsellor, you know, counseling people one to one to help them with drug addiction or if they're in abusive relationships, if they have children with autism, if they've had.

Karen Adam [03:04:11] If they're dealing with a child that's, you know, been sexually abused, if their husband's had an affair. There's so many aspects of my life that I could help people with, one to one. But wouldn't that be amazing if I could go in there at a policy level, even a national policy level, and help shape that and help bring forward the voices of these people on that bigger scale?

Karen Adam [03:04:35] To me, that's having a bigger impact and helping these people more. And I think that's really, like, what I'd like to see going forward, and particularly helping the LGBT community, you know, with more equalities issues, children. I mean, it's a different time now than when I was you know, growing up in the 80s and what I faced, but there's still a long way to go.

Karen Adam [03:05:05] It wasn't seen as normal. And we should be teaching children that that is normal and it's okay. And that happens. And it's. I think I said this before. It's normalizing the normal, and that's what. And I think having an impact nationally.

Karen Adam [03:05:24] I'd love to be a part of that. I really would. I'd love to be able to advocate for people, definitely. And I think I've got a lot to offer for it. But even if it doesn't get that far, you know, there's so many paths to take, and I'm really positive and think that, you know, myself and my children have got a bright future with Mormonism.

John Dehlin [03:05:52] How are Mormons viewed in Scotland? And I think I have a friend who has a Scottish background who likes to talk to me a lot about members of Parliament. And I'm not sure if it's members of the UK Parliament, the British Parliament, or if they're part of the Scottish Parliament, but there are Mormons who are highly influential in Scotland, right?

Karen Adam [03:06:13] Oh, yeah. Well, there was one that. Well, there was one. The one that I knew was a member of the same party that I am just now. He passed away, unfortunately, and he was a fantastic man. He. He was a member of the Scottish Parliament. And I remember having a hard time at church, actually, with my son with autism and adhd, and he was jumping out and he was actually. Even though he was a member of the Scottish Parliament, he was a teacher in primary.

Karen Adam [03:06:39] And I remember peeking in the door to check on my son at one point. And he's. My son was standing on his shoulders and he was holding his hands up and he's trying to teach them, you know, about the gospel. And he was a great man. Absolutely sad. He did pass away, but he's the same part. He was a member of the Scottish Parliament, but we have.

Karen Adam [03:07:01] There was a member of Parliament. He was. Was a different party from me, and I didn't really like his politics. And I was quite disappointed during the last campaign because I followed him on Twitter just to keep up with what he was saying.

Karen Adam [03:07:17] And he actually, he told a lie. So I called him out on Twitter because, you know, I said, well, I said, what would the church think of you? This is an out and out lie. You're supposed to be standing up for truth. I used to listen to you in the pulpit at church.

Karen Adam [03:07:32] I think he was a 70 at one point. I used to look up to you church and, you know, and take everything you said for the truth. And now here you are lying. And he was. He was being misleading about something that had happened because I know what actually happened at the time. I can't remember what it was. And I called him out. I think that's when I started to get a bit more brave towards other members of church. Whereas before I wouldn't have anything much, actually. But that was a bit political talking.

John Dehlin [03:08:07] And, you know, once you kind of step out of the Mormon bubble, you realize that oftentimes we're compared to, like, Jehovah's Witnesses or Scientologists. How are Mormons viewed in Scotland these days?

Karen Adam [03:08:19] Yes, like that. Yeah. Like Jehovah's Witnesses, it gets mixed up. They'll often say, oh, do you give blood or do you receive blood if you need it? And I'm like, yes, we do. I don't really know much about the Jehovah's Witness religion, so can't comment on how different it is. But we're certainly viewed like that. We are viewed as cultish, definitely. It's not seen as the regular church of Scotland or being a Catholic, you know, these are more what we have, you know, within Scotland Presbyterian. We're not. It's seen on another. It's not seen as a Christian church at all. It's seen as a bit obscure. It's like, oh, Mormon a bit. It's also seen, actually, which is interesting. It's also seen as the. A bit like the Masons as well, a secret society. It's also viewed like that, which is quite interesting. If they knew the links.

John Dehlin [03:09:34] And do you have a sense for the degree to which wards and branches and stakes or missions are closing or collapsing? Do you have any sense for the numbers?

Karen Adam [03:09:45] I kind of cut off the contact with the Mormon side of things. When I know that things are happening is when people have left and they reach out to me. I've had a few messages, it's generally on Facebook. And they'll say, you know, I'm thinking about leaving or I've left. How did you cope? Is there life after Mormonism? That's. You know, I've been asked that and I say, yes, there is just, you know, step into my office, let's have a chat about this. I certainly don't want. When people are. We call. There's a great word in Scotland. I don't know if you have it. It's called dithering. So if you're unsure about something, we'll say, oh, you're Dithering.

John Dehlin [03:10:31] Yeah, we say that.

Karen Adam [03:10:32] Yeah. So somebody's dithering. I don't want to pull them off, away from church. I wouldn't ever do that to somebody because that process is really painful for somebody to go through. And it's such a personal. It's just so personal and it's hard to describe. You just, you can't be interfering in that process.

Karen Adam [03:11:01] I think all you can do is answer questions when they ask things of you. I certainly don't go shoving the CES letter under people's noses. I don't do that. My children might because they don't care, but I don't.

Karen Adam [03:11:17] I do say I will mention it. I have a few group chats with people who were still. While my daughter was serving our mission, two of her friends got baptized who she had taught before she left. They both got baptized while she was on her mission, which was quite something because she's a very.

Karen Adam [03:11:38] She's a charismatic girl. She's really charismatic as well. And she's great at teaching. She's a great teacher. But I don't know how we feel about that now. I think in jest we've said to people that we've helped to convert in the past, I'm sorry about that.

Karen Adam [03:11:53] I'm so sorry about that. But I think there's still actually, yeah, there's a lot of people that aren't going anymore that are leaving. I know that families are leaving in particular. You know how you would normally see maybe one child go or one grown up child start slipping away, but it seems to be your whole family's dropping out. I know quite a few. There's quite a big ex Mormon community forming.

John Dehlin [03:12:27] And how do ex Mormons in Scotland find out about each other and find each other and create community with each other?

Karen Adam [03:12:36] Through you, Josh.

John Dehlin [03:12:38] How. Through me?

Karen Adam [03:12:40] How does that work? I think if people recognize names because I don't think we outreach to each other like the person because I don't want to see it in case she doesn't want me to mention her name. But I commented on a post of yours or if they see that they like the same page as them or, you know, they'll, they'll reach out and say, oh, right, okay, so we're on, we're on the same page here. Are you still believing or, you know, what point of the journey are you at? So that kind of, that kind of forms the ex Mormon community do like calling it.

Karen Adam [03:13:17] That actually is made up generally of friends and people that I've already known within church and we've reconnected after they've left, so. And it's, it's, there's. Yeah, there's more and more people. I'll say to my daughter, I think they've left church now. You know, they post their new tattoo or something on Instagram. Oh, I think they've left, so. And it just seems to be more and more, especially returned missionaries, the ones that I've kept in touch with.

John Dehlin [03:13:50] Mark Johnson. Hey, Mark. Mark is a buddy of mine from the uk. He's asking if you know Steve Kerr, the ex member of Parliament.

Karen Adam [03:13:59] Yeah, that's him. That's him. I called out on Twitter.

John Dehlin [03:14:02] The one you didn't like.

Karen Adam [03:14:04] Yeah, I don't know him too personally. I knew his parents and they were lovely. They were part of my church family, but I don't like his politics at all.

John Dehlin [03:14:15] Got it. And so you're saying that if you want to find other Scottish ex Mormons, if you like the Mormon Stories podcast page, or Friend Me, you can see other people from Scotland either like Mormon Stories podcast, Facebook page, or who are friends with me and that. That can help you identify who they are.

Karen Adam [03:14:40] Yeah, absolutely. And I think I do recommend your podcast and I haven't really. I've delved into other things and other sites, but I do find this a nice, gentle crossover because you're very vulnerable. It's an extremely vulnerable time when you're questioning your faith and you're coming out of that and you, if you're angry, you don't want to exacerbate that. You don't want to go straight to the church bashing because you'll end up in a cycle of anger and resentment that you won't be able to get out of. And I think there's a healing that needs to be done. And I think certainly, you know, coming from that angle of being, you know, gentle about things, but being honest, you know, you.

Karen Adam [03:15:32] There has to be the transparency, there has to be the honesty. There's, there's a certain amount, you know, there's, there's the boundary line there, that there's no apologists here. But at the same time, you know, this is, there's, there's no real contentious attitude. So I think this is, this is a good meet up.

John Dehlin [03:15:54] I. And again, this isn't to be political, but my guess is that because of the past few, several years, maybe America has lost some of its standing or some of the global admiration that it once has. I wonder, is that true? And if that's true, do you think that negatively affects the church's image in places like Scotland, where if Scottish people don't think of America like they used to, then an American church would be a little bit less appealing? Is that. Am I making that up or are those dots relevant, do you think?

Karen Adam [03:16:33] I don't know if that is relevant. I do. I do get what you're saying, but I don't think it's America as a whole. I think. I can't speak for the whole uk, But I do know in Scotland, you know, we are relatively anti Trump. You know, that's, you know, the majority of people are.

Karen Adam [03:16:51] He's never really welcomed when he comes here. And so when we think that he's been voted into office, you know. Well, we know he's been voted in office, and we get snippets of the media. You know, it's how America's portrayed right now over here as it's like face palm, like, guys, what is going on? You know, it's that kind of attitude. There's no, like, hateful resentment or anything like that. It was a face palm. When we see.

Karen Adam [03:17:24] There was. What was it? The demonstrators were out with guns and they were refusing to wear masks. I think that's what we, what we saw. But it's knowing that that's not the, you know, that's not the whole America as, you know, the media always puts out what they want to put out, and I'm sure the majority of people aren't like that. But that's. That's the images that we're being sent across. We're seeing Trump telling people to inject bleach. And we're telling. And we're seeing people out with guns wanting the freedom not to wear a mask. That's going to prevent them from dying. So, yeah, I think that media portrayal doesn't really help, but I don't think that would influence the church.

Karen Adam [03:18:04] I think where there would be a problem is the encroachment on freedoms and the lack of equalities would not be appealing to people right now. I think that's where. I think that's where the problem would be with people joining the church. I think less and less would join because of that. And they would go straight on Google and be like, what? So Joseph Smith did what?

Karen Adam [03:18:34] Yeah, they're like, no, it's okay. In fact, I had a friend when I was. I was kind of left church. I was in that, you know, a year ago, and he got baptized and he asked me to say the prayer at his baptism, and I Hadn't been to church for about a year. And I was like, you know what? Okay. He's like, you were a Mormon? I was like, yes, just talking.

Karen Adam [03:18:57] Now, bear in mind, he's a black man. And about three months after his baptism he started sending me all this church history about the priesthood being withheld. And he's asking me about all this and I'm like, I'm so sorry. But I, you know, I didn't know much about this history. I hadn't really read much into it. Had to, you know, had to deal with it or anything. So he left quite sharply after learning much of that history. He.

John Dehlin [03:19:28] So the missionaries didn't happen to mention to this person of color, this black man, about the church's history with the blacks? They no conveniently left that out of the missionary discussions.

Karen Adam [03:19:40] And when he, obviously after he'd been baptized, he was still having that, you know, the follow up discussions or whatever it is that the missionaries do. He had sisters. He said that he asked the sisters, I've came across this material, what do you say about it? And they said, oh, we can't comment on that because we just teach from this. And it was like some book or other. So they couldn't even answer his questions about it. And he was saying, look, because I said, you know, join if you want, whatever makes you happy. You know, I wasn't going to tell him not to join.

Karen Adam [03:20:13] So that's, you know, I left the church. But I still went and said a prayer at his baptism because he asked me to. So there certainly wasn't, I certainly wouldn't try to pull anybody away from it. When he asked me about, you know, the church history regarding, you know, black people, I, it was a yikes moment.

Karen Adam [03:20:35] Like, yikes, okay, yeah, you probably shouldn't go back then if that's how you feel, because he was just really furious about it. There's no point in going causing. You're not going to get the answers that you want. You're just not.

John Dehlin [03:20:54] So he left the church after that?

Karen Adam [03:20:56] Yeah, yeah. Quite soon after that. As soon as, as soon as there was more research, he was quite quick to get baptized. I think people are over here. I don't know if it's the same with you, but they seem to have discussions and it's six weeks later they're baptized. I mean, coming from this kind of background here where nobody's even really that religious, it's a huge leap.

Karen Adam [03:21:17] It's, it's. Yeah, it's too much, I think, for people to try and do that. So we end up a lot of the time with people who are vulnerable being baptized really quickly, sometimes people with learning disabilities, people who have addictions.

Karen Adam [03:21:39] I've never felt comfortable with how some people are guided in that way. But I know, I mean, you say, you talk about good intentions. I know what the missionaries are. Missionaries are thinking that this is good and helpful for them and it's the right thing to do. Of course, but really there's a moral argument there.

Karen Adam [03:21:59] I, you know, some people should be seeking professional help and not being asked to rely on the missionaries and be baptized and have their lives transformed by it. I don't think that's right by something

John Dehlin [03:22:12] that turns out to be kind of demonstrably false. Yes, you know, there's good and bad in the church in anything. But if the church, you know, can be demonstrated to be demonstrably false, or even if enough reasonable people can look at the evidence and agree that it's fraudulent, as you say, there does seem to be a moral and an ethical obligation to sort of to have people be fully informed before they get swept up emotionally in the church. And then if you're a person of color, for sure, you need to be told every single person of color, or gay person for that matter. It's very common for me to have European, kind of gay Europeans reach out to me and say, hey, I'm gay.

John Dehlin [03:22:57] But the missionaries found me and I really want to join the church, but I'm not sure because I'm gay. And it's just like gay people, women, people of color, they all intellectuals, they all need to sort of be told all the truth about the church so they can make a fully informed decision with full consent, you know.

Karen Adam [03:23:20] Yes. And I didn't have that when I joined. I certainly didn't. I just took it all in and just took their word for truth. I didn't know any of the history if I'd known about. I did used to think, you know, I thought that's quite funny how Emma didn't carry on in the church, you know, after Joseph was killed.

Karen Adam [03:23:40] And then it's like, oh, okay, put that back to the, put that in the back of the mind. But how? Well, it was his wife, it was the wife, the prophet. Like, I don't know why that wasn't a bigger red flag, to be honest.

Karen Adam [03:23:54] Yeah, I mean, it certainly is now. And to find out, you know, some of the historical records regarding Emma, you know, finding them in a questionable position with a 16 year old girl and. Yeah, it's not the More I read about it at this point though. You know, you get to a point where you read enough and you're like, right, that's enough. I mean, I suppose it is interesting to delve in more and find out more of these things, but to what benefit? It's not bringing me any more benefit now. It's just making me, you know, annoyed. Even more annoyed that this isn't transparent. The church needs to be transparent.

Karen Adam [03:24:36] It needs to be honest. It needs to drop the whole white supremacy thing. But I don't know how they can do that because that's the whole gospel, it's the whole Book of Mormon. How do you even, how do you even deal with that? But I suppose, you know, all religions have got, you know, different aspects that people could disagree with, but they certainly need to be open and honest about it.

Karen Adam [03:25:00] You need to own that history. Listen, the church is going to die on the hill of pride. That's the hill they're choosing to die on is pride. Because they're not willing to be humble enough to admit their mistakes.

Karen Adam [03:25:14] After all we've been taught for all these years about, you know, pride is the downfall of man and don't be proud. And you know, you have to be humble. It's the church after all of this and you know that are going to be chosen to be prideful about it.

Karen Adam [03:25:34] Sneaking the information away online, just tell people, just own that, just own it. This happened. Joseph Smith probably told a lie. But you know what, we've got something really good going on here with the community. Let's scrap the rest of this. Who wants to stay in? Who wants in? You know, just be honest.

Closing Reflections and Farewell

John Dehlin [03:25:56] Well, Karen, this has been a fascinating story. You're a lovely human. I'm so glad you were willing to come on one of stories and tell your story. What other parts of your story or about your philosophy or anything did you want to make sure and share with our audience before we say goodbye?

Karen Adam [03:26:15] I think in particular the lessons I've learned, you know, throughout everything, is that when I talk about that sliding scale of good and bad, you know, that people aren't inherently evil. And I think the whole black and white culture within church, the black and white as in the good, the evil, you know, it's not as clear cut as that in life. And I think that we can't be judging people on one action or we can't be. The whole judgment culture within church was quite, was quite difficult to handle for me, particularly if you see somebody looking at their phone saying, oh look, she was wearing A she's got her shoulders out, you know, I think what we need to discover is we need to know that everybody has good and bad within them.

Karen Adam [03:27:04] And I don't think that children makes you any better or moves your sliding scale to the good side all the time. And everybody that's out of church is necessarily at the bad side. I think when it comes down to what I learned is, and I think I said this before, that the people within the church were perfect human beings in themselves. As much as we can be perfect, they're good as it is. Their authentic selves are good anyway. The things that they want to do out of kindness, I believe that they would do it anyway.

Karen Adam [03:27:38] I think I would connect with these people anyway. And I don't think being a member of the church changes that. I think the gospel is corrupt. I think the gospel is false. The Book of Mormon isn't true. Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet. And I think that when people realize that they're doing it on their own.

Karen Adam [03:27:59] This compassionate service you're doing, you're doing that because you want to. You're doing that on your own. You are a good person. You don't need this. And I have no contentions towards the members or maybe one or two, especially the one that said I wouldn't make it come on.

Karen Adam [03:28:19] But yeah, I think scrap the whole. The gospel's perfect, the people aren't. The people are perfect, the gospel isn't. That's. That's what I'd probably like to say about that.

John Dehlin [03:28:29] I love it. Well, is there anything our members can do to either support you or get a hold of you? Any of our listeners who either want to connect with you or support you or follow you or help you,

Karen Adam [03:28:45] they can get in touch with me through Facebook if they want. They can search me up or maybe comment on something or other, and they can give me message through that and connect if they want to chat about things or maybe we can make a Scottish Exmoor community where we actually have meetups, that would be good.

John Dehlin [03:29:06] So if you want to create. If you want to create a Facebook group that just is like Scottish ex

Karen Adam [03:29:11] Mormons or whatever, yeah, I'll share it.

John Dehlin [03:29:14] I'll share it all over. And I bet we could get a lot of people to join up.

Karen Adam [03:29:18] Oh, that would be brilliant. Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:29:21] All right, you. What's that?

Karen Adam [03:29:24] That's a good plan.

John Dehlin [03:29:25] Okay, so you or any of our listeners who are from Scotland create the Facebook group. Share with me. I'll blast it all over. There are some other UK Facebook groups for ex Mormons. We can share it all there and we get the word out. And maybe I'll come to Scotland and we'll do. We'll have a party.

Karen Adam [03:29:44] Yes, a big party. There'll be lots of cussing.

John Dehlin [03:29:49] What's that?

Karen Adam [03:29:51] I said there'll be lots of cussing.

John Dehlin [03:29:53] Yeah. You'll teach me some Scottish swear words. I want to learn them all.

Karen Adam [03:29:57] Yeah, that's a good plan. Yeah, we'll have a Ceilie. A Scottish ceiling is really good. We do some Scottish country dancing.

John Dehlin [03:30:07] That sounds like fun.

Karen Adam [03:30:09] Yeah, we could do that.

John Dehlin [03:30:11] Do you guys have any good food or is it all just, like, potatoes and fish and chips and heavy stuff?

Karen Adam [03:30:18] Yeah, it is, and it's great. We have quite a large vegan community. Actually. The rate of veganism has shot up recently. Don't know if that's a worldwide thing, but, yeah, there's more and more vegans. Gosh. But yeah, we do like our steak and our haggis and our iron brew and our fish and chips and. Yeah,

John Dehlin [03:30:46] I love all that, too. So we'll enjoy that. What about those mushy peas?

Karen Adam [03:30:50] I don't know. I don't like the mushy peas. I don't like the mushy peas so much. I don't know what I would have instead. Probably beans.

John Dehlin [03:30:58] Do you have beans for breakfast?

Karen Adam [03:30:59] Beans? Yeah, Beans for breakfast we had. Because we still have American friends. I had them over, they stayed for a little while, actually, and I gave them a haggis breakfast. Haggis with sausages and beans. I think the haggis was mostly left. They couldn't face it for breakfast.

John Dehlin [03:31:17] And what's haggis for those who don't know?

Karen Adam [03:31:20] Oh, it's basically all the guts of a sheep ground up and then stuffed in its stomach and served up with some oats and spices mixed in with it.

John Dehlin [03:31:33] Is it tasty?

Karen Adam [03:31:34] It's really tasty. You get vegetarian haggis for those that are a bit scared about trying the real thing.

John Dehlin [03:31:43] Haggis.

Karen Adam [03:31:43] Okay, some haggis. I think we mostly eat pasta at home, though, to be honest.

John Dehlin [03:31:49] Pasta?

Karen Adam [03:31:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:31:53] All right. Well, Karen, you're lovely, and I'm so happy to learn of your story. I'm so honored that you would come on Mormon stories inspired by your life. And I hope you'll stay in touch. Will you?

Karen Adam [03:32:08] Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yes. And hopefully I'll get over the States again at some point.

John Dehlin [03:32:13] Yeah. Come visit.

Karen Adam [03:32:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:32:16] The thing about Utah is there's a lot of Mormons, which is great, but There's a lot of ex Mormons, which is even better.

Karen Adam [03:32:21] It's better. And I know some of them as well.

John Dehlin [03:32:24] That's great. If you met Gina Colvin. You know about Gina Colvin? Do you know Gina?

Karen Adam [03:32:30] No. No.

John Dehlin [03:32:32] Gina is a feisty New Zealander who also likes to swear. And she left the church and eventually resigned. But she blogs occasionally. You ought to look up Gina Colvin because I think you and Gina would love each other.

Karen Adam [03:32:46] Yes, well, do then. I'll do that.

John Dehlin [03:32:49] Gina Colvin. You'll love her. So.

Karen Adam [03:32:52] Yeah. Good.

John Dehlin [03:32:54] All right, Karen, you're amazing. Stay in touch.

Karen Adam [03:32:57] Yes, will do. Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [03:33:01] My pleasure. And to all our listeners, Mark Johnson. Mark says Scotland has great seafood. Best larder in the uk. I have no idea. What. What's that?

Karen Adam [03:33:12] Yeah, it does. Good seafood. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:33:14] What's larder?

Karen Adam [03:33:16] Larder or lager? Does he mean?

John Dehlin [03:33:19] It says L A R D E R, but maybe he misspelled it.

Karen Adam [03:33:23] Oh.

John Dehlin [03:33:25] Anyway. Hey, Mark, Mary says mushy peas are more an English thing. That's good to know. Well, huge thanks to our listeners for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Also, to those who listen after this recording, please email us if you have feedback. MormonStoriesMail.com please comment on YouTube or on the Mormon Stories podcast page at MormonStoriesMail.com or here on on Facebook.

John Dehlin [03:33:52] If you enjoy Mormon Stories, there are so many ways you can support us. You can donate@mormonstories.org, you can become a monthly donor. You can give us a positive review on Facebook or on itunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can share these episodes. Man, wouldn't it be great if every Scottish ex Mormon shared this interview with with all the other members in Scotland? The goal wouldn't be to take anyone out of the church. That's an individual decision, but just to make people aware and to let people know they're not alone. I would just love every struggling, doubting member of the church in the UK could just know they're not alone and that there are options and that they can find healing and joy afterwards.

John Dehlin [03:34:41] I just want everyone to know that. And so if you're listening, you can share this episode with as many people as possible. That's a way that you can support Mormon Stories as well and let people know of your favorite episodes and just spread the word. Those are all things. And once this COVID 19 thing ends, I really want to come out to the uk. I want to visit England. I want to visit Scotland, I want to visit Wales. I want to meet Sean and you know, her wonderful husband. I want to visit, you know, Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway and Denmark and other cool places. So let's, let's have that happen by next year. How does that sound? Can I meet you face to face, Karen?

Karen Adam [03:35:26] Yes. Come over.

John Dehlin [03:35:28] That'd be so fun.

Karen Adam [03:35:29] We've always got a party just waiting to happen

John Dehlin [03:35:33] and do you guys have a good football soccer to football teams in Scotland or not?

Karen Adam [03:35:38] I don't like football.

John Dehlin [03:35:40] What about rugby? Rugby?

Karen Adam [03:35:42] No, I'm not really a sporty person, but yeah, they love football up here.

John Dehlin [03:35:46] Okay.

Karen Adam [03:35:46] I love it. The guys too, Right? Right.

John Dehlin [03:35:49] The blokes. Okay.

Karen Adam [03:35:50] The blokes too.

John Dehlin [03:35:52] All right. Karen, you're awesome.

Karen Adam [03:35:54] Okay, thank you.

John Dehlin [03:35:55] Thank you. Thanks to all our listeners and please join us again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody. By.

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