Welcome and Introductions

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's November 5, 2020, and we are super excited for our interview today on Mormon Stories podcast. As those of you who've been following us for years will know that we have this open invitation to anyone who's ever served as a Mormon bishop, stake president, mission president. You know, Mormons pay attention to levels of leadership. And so if you've served as a bishop or as the spouse of a bishop, you get to come on Mormon Stories. And recently, I was grateful to have Adam and Marlena Hughes reach out. To me, the basic kind of high level summary of this interview is that 12 years ago, Adam Hughes was serving as a Mormon bishop in Northern Arizona, and Marlena was a stay at home mother of four. Even as recently as last year, Adam and Marlena Hughes were still active, believing orthodox Mormons living in Tucson, Arizona. Only a few months ago, in 2020, like months ago, Adam and Marlena lost their faith in the Mormon Church completely. And they did so while their son was preparing to leave on his mission. And so we're going to cover their story. We're going to try and do it in about three hours, three and a half hours. And they've traveled here to Salt Lake City, all the way from Tucson. Adam and Marlena Hughes, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Marlana Hughes [00:01:37] Thanks.

Adam Hughes [00:01:37] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [00:01:39] And even though they're in studio, we're doing a Covid friendly setup where we're in separate rooms. So thanks for being good sports about that, guys.

Marlana Hughes [00:01:50] Yeah, of course.

Marlana's Mormon Childhood and Upbringing

John Dehlin [00:01:52] All right, so let's begin. You guys know how we do this. You know the drill. And as we talked at lunch, I know you guys were inspired by other people's faith crisis stories. I know you were inspired by Lila Tuller's interview. That's a. That's a classic. She's obviously the daughter of Marion D. Hanks. And. And you were inspired by the Lusks, the wonderful Lusk family from, I believe, New Mexico. So shout out to the Lusk family. But this interview is very much in that tradition. And so, Adam and Marlena, where should we begin in your awesome story?

Adam Hughes [00:02:31] Wherever you want, John.

Marlana Hughes [00:02:33] Start at the beginning.

Adam Hughes [00:02:34] Start at the beginning.

John Dehlin [00:02:35] Who's older?

Marlana Hughes [00:02:36] I'm older.

Adam Hughes [00:02:37] Marlena's older.

John Dehlin [00:02:38] Marlena, tell us about your kind of Mormon upbringing.

Marlana Hughes [00:02:41] Okay. I grew up in Illinois. I think it's about two hours away from Nauvoo. I like. I think that's significant because we'd go there every summer for a week or Two during the City of Joseph pageant. I grew up with. My dad was in the church. You know, huge pioneer background. I think I've got. What's his name? John. No, Butler is. Was a bodyguard of Joseph Smith. My mom converted to the church when she was 9 in Pennsylvania. Missionaries knocked on her parents door and she moved to Utah. You know, met my dad, and they ended up back in Illinois. But. And I have five siblings, so a couple are out of the. Well, it's complicated.

John Dehlin [00:03:28] You don't have to mention about that. So let's follow the timeline. So you guys were raised. You were raised mostly in Illinois, right?

Marlana Hughes [00:03:35] Yes, completely. Until I was 18. Then I moved to Utah.

John Dehlin [00:03:38] So tell us how Mormonism informed your kind of family life, your upbringing, your childhood. Talk about that a bit.

Marlana Hughes [00:03:45] Totally in. Did everything. All the. The Mormon things. So we went to. Back to Nauvoo a little bit. We went there every year for that. We. I all, you know, mutual. Every Sunday we were there. And in Illinois, everything's spread out, so anytime there's an activity going on, like a fireside or anything, you went to it. So you got to see all those people that were members that were in our ward. I mean, people were coming to our ward from far away. And so youth conferences, roadshows. Back in the day, the sports, basketball, volleyball, um, we were in, like, every thing. Growing up, we did it.

John Dehlin [00:04:31] So, Elena, what brought your parents to Illinois?

Marlana Hughes [00:04:35] So my mom was from Illinois and she went to Utah, married my dad, and then they ended up back in Illinois. My dad worked for Caterpillar, and. And they just ended up staying there.

John Dehlin [00:04:46] Okay, how was. Was your ward like, it. Was it a ward? Was it a branch?

Marlana Hughes [00:04:51] It was a ward. And actually it was. I thought it was a really big ward growing up for being rural.

John Dehlin [00:04:57] Rural.

Marlana Hughes [00:04:58] And people would come, you know, 20 minutes away to come to church. But I still remember, like, during sports, like basketball, we were one of the bigger wards that we'd had. Have had to have two teams or, you know, and just things were bigger growing up. And then it started to get smaller as I got older, but it was pretty good size. But, like, in my high school I went. Only had like three or four members in my high school.

John Dehlin [00:05:18] That's pretty normal.

Marlana Hughes [00:05:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:21] Okay. So do you remember, like, how you felt about the church as a kid?

Marlana Hughes [00:05:26] I love the church. I loved everything about it. I think that's why I bring up Nauvoo. Nauvoo was like my second home. I loved it. We'd go there, like, you know, during the summer and, like, Christmas and we, you know, we'd go in the summer and camp. That's.

John Dehlin [00:05:40] What would you do in Nauvoo as a family?

Marlana Hughes [00:05:43] So we've camp for. During the City of Joseph pageant. Now, it's a different pageant, but that was a huge part. Since we were. I was little, we would go and there'd be other ward members there, and you'd always get together and you'd go to the pageant every night. I mean, every night we'd go watch the pageant, and then we'd go to the homes in Nauvoo. And we used to joke that we could take people on the tours because we'd been through the home so many times, which we'll get to that later. When it comes to Joseph Smith, how those affect each other.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] You guys ever act in the pageant?

Marlana Hughes [00:06:14] No. We almost did a couple years, but we ended up.

Adam Hughes [00:06:17] But you were in Legacy.

Marlana Hughes [00:06:18] Oh, yeah. So my brother did go in the pageant, but, yeah, I do forget we were in Legacy when I was younger. So the movie Legacy, that was in church.

Adam Hughes [00:06:27] Your younger brother had a fairly large role.

Marlana Hughes [00:06:29] Yeah. So, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:31] And that was all. That's all culture. That was a big deal. And that's. That's maybe a little bit lost. You know, it's kind of vanishing. Right, Right.

Marlana Hughes [00:06:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:41] Yeah.

Marlana Hughes [00:06:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:44] So, okay. So. Oh, sorry, you broke up for a second. Yeah, sorry you broke up for a second. Can you guys see me? Okay.

Marlana Hughes [00:06:58] Yeah.

Adam Hughes [00:06:59] You're back.

John Dehlin [00:07:00] Okay, so. Yeah. So, okay. So you would spend a lot of time in Nauvoo. You would watch the pageants. How did you enjoy going to church as a kid?

Marlana Hughes [00:07:13] Oh, I loved it. I wouldn't miss it. I remember other kids that, you know, their parents wouldn't make up. Like, my parents didn't make me. I always felt like they would say their parents made them. And I'm like, my parents don't make me. Like, I want to go. Like, I loved going. And I would go to Mutual, and I would, you know, I got my Young Women's medallion and I did all the things. I mean, I remember even during General Conference, we were lucky enough to get it on at home, which is not normal in Illinois. And so my parents would stay there, but I would go to the Stake center to watch it. So probably because the missionaries were there, but I would go, you know, and just take notes and be there. And I feel like that was extreme for me, I guess instead of just wanting to stay home, which I could have done.

John Dehlin [00:07:56] So what were your favorite teachings about the church. Marlena

Marlana Hughes [00:08:02] I loved families could be together forever. That was huge. And that was what I love to share with other people. Just. Yeah. And the happiness and the, the family, the, the repentance, the. Maybe not so much when I was younger, you know, you don't understand it as much as. Till I got older, the teachings. Yeah, I think the family one was huge for me.

John Dehlin [00:08:30] Was your family pretty close knit?

Marlana Hughes [00:08:32] Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think all of us, even as we got older and got married, all my siblings stayed around like my parents. I was kind of like the only one that left. I mean they would all kind of leave and go to college and then they all got married and came back, so. And I wasn't there. So they were always super close. I always felt like I was missing out.

John Dehlin [00:08:50] So. So super tight knit family. And would you say your upbringing in the church was pretty happy?

Marlana Hughes [00:08:56] Yeah, yeah, really happy. So.

John Dehlin [00:09:00] Wow.

Marlana Hughes [00:09:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:01] Talk. Talk about your testimony as a teenager. Did you have one? What was it rooted in?

Marlana Hughes [00:09:06] Mostly, yeah, for sure. I remember. I mean I got my parachute of blessing when I was 12 or 13. I think it was, it was everything to me, the gospel growing up. So I mean I grew up, like I said, in the community where there wasn't very many members. I mean there's the talk of the God makers at the time. I remember in junior high specifically still, people would turn around and. Or I turned around and this girl said, how many moms do you have? And you know, shocked by that. But my testimony, I mean, I defended and stood up for what I believed and I felt like I was a huge example. I mean I grew up with neighbors who wouldn't talk to us at all because we were Mormon and just my mom teaching us just to be nice and kind to them. And I mean they wouldn't even look at us for years and then they finally moved. But it was always just being that example and always being friends with everyone. Yeah. And living that testimony and that. The love of the gospel.

John Dehlin [00:10:09] So you basically had just a super. I mean, non Utah. And maybe in some ways that is ideal. Kind of a non Utah, orthodox, happy Mormon family upbringing.

Marlana Hughes [00:10:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:23] What's not to love? Right.

Marlana Hughes [00:10:24] Right. I thought it was pretty good. I thought it made me stronger. I always said when I get to Adam, when he was. He grew up in Utah. And I said, I don't want to raise our kids in Utah. I think it makes them stronger not living in Utah. But that's. I don't know if you want to expand on that now, but when I Moved to Utah. It was just a little bit different for me, the perspective that people have on the church than I had growing up where there wasn't very many members.

John Dehlin [00:10:49] Yeah. Okay. Anything else you want to. Anything else you want to share about your childhood or adolescence before we. We turn it over to Adam, especially, you know, anything about your teen years or any big events that were church or faith related that play into your story later?

Marlana Hughes [00:11:12] I grew up with a cousin who was gay and died of aids. And then I had an aunt who was lesbian. You know, that was a huge impact on me that they were just people. And that I think has a huge effect when it comes to the honor code and things in the church with that later that they're people and we love them and they're not different than everybody else.

John Dehlin [00:11:35] What, what were you taught about being gay or lesbian as a Mormon growing up? And then how did that, how did that relate to, how did you reconcile that with. With the family members you knew who were gay or lesbian at the time?

Marlana Hughes [00:11:54] I don't, at the time, like growing up, I don't think, I don't remember being taught about it in church and I don't, I don't remember any of that specifically at church. And my parents, I don't know if they said anything specifically except that, I mean, we just accepted those people. And my aunt and my parents had some friends in like their garden club or this hosta group they were part of. We just accepted them as who they were. There was no difference in who they were compared to anybody else. And I same with friends that get. Didn't. They didn't have to be Mormon or to be friends with them. Like there was no distinguish. You can only be friends with the Mormon kids or you can't. And then so later on, I mean, I've just never had that thought that I would treat anybody with that was gay or lesbian different than in that category.

John Dehlin [00:12:42] So it wasn't like, oh, I was taught the gays are bad in church and so I've got to be distant or like your parents saying stay away from the aunt or the uncle, you know, like, don't get too close or any of that kind of stuff.

Marlana Hughes [00:12:53] No, no, no. She was very involved because we were very close family. They came over for holidays and. No, not at all. It was. I didn't know. We didn't even talk about that and how it was definitely never anything negative. So sorry.

John Dehlin [00:13:08] That's nice.

Marlana Hughes [00:13:09] Yeah, it was good. It was good, healthy perspective. I didn't know. Again, I didn't remember hearing anything at church at that time back in the 80s 90s, that any of that was bad. I don't remember being taught any of that. So it was good. It was good.

John Dehlin [00:13:24] It sounds like. And I don't want to project or like, fill in the blanks here, but it sounds like your family, Marlena, was kind of living the best of Mormonism and avoiding a lot of the negative stuff about Mormonism.

Marlana Hughes [00:13:42] Yeah, I think so. I think. Yeah, I think it was good being in. In Illinois again, not. I don't know, not being where it was so concentrated. It made my testimony stronger, and we had to stand up for that. And you just. And then you were kinder to everyone. I mean, there was no judgment if they were. There was no judgment, no labeling, at least in my family. So we were kind and loving to everyone. And which, you know, rolls over to how I raised my kids. I'm like, some of my really good friends were not lds, and they had the same standards and sometimes better than

John Dehlin [00:14:19] the kids, but also not putting the LGBT stuff aside, just not a lot of negativity, you know, pressure, stress, you know, harshness. Some people grow up with the kind of the harsh, stressful, guilt ridden, shameful kind of family environment. And that doesn't sound like it was yours.

Marlana Hughes [00:14:39] No, no, not at all.

John Dehlin [00:14:41] Excellent. All right, well, that's a good background for you, Marlena. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, Adam, tell us. Tell us the same kind of background for you.

Adam's Utah Roots and Early Faith

Adam Hughes [00:14:53] Okay, so I grew up in Lehigh, Utah, and a little background on my family. So on my mom's side, they were all Mormon pioneers, some outstanding people that had just phenomenal amounts of faith in the church. And. But once they settled in Utah, you know, they slowly started to slip away, each generation. So by the time it got down to my mom and her family, they were semi active, mostly inactive. My grandparents did end up getting sealed right at the end of their lives, so. So my mom was. Was kind of in the church, kind of not in the church. My uncle, her. Her brothers, my uncles that I knew growing up were all very much inactive. And. And my mom ended up going. She. When. This is important to the story here, but she ended up going. She wasn't too interested when she was a kid, and so she ended up going to Los Angeles when she became an adult. Met my dad there. He was. He was not a member. And they got married and had two children. And my dad still struggled with a lot of issues from his own childhood. Ended up taking his own life when I was 4. So my mom raised us from that point on by herself. And growing up in Lehigh, Utah, in the 1980s, I felt very different than most of the people at church. So I was from a single parent household. I just had the one brother, and he was five years older than me. And my mom took the church with a grain of salt. I would say that she believed. She 100% believed, but she wasn't all about following all the checklists and all the performances. And she'd go to sacrament meeting a lot of times and then go home. She definitely said state conference was completely optional and a lot of times wouldn't go and. Hard to the church. And I think part of the reason was maybe I was seeking to be accepted by my community. I was seeking to be, you know, maybe I wanted to be a little different than my family, and I wanted to stand out. I wanted to be exceptional in the church. And I think that might have pushed me a little bit to really internalize a lot of it. It didn't come from my mom so much, but I myself internalized the teachings of the church. And I think I naturally craved that security and that stability. And so, I mean, I really ate it up. And I was pretty studious as a kid and just really read everything I could get my hands on, even from a young age. When I started seminary when I was 14, I loved it, and I just consumed the Book of Mormon and just absolutely loved it. And I think part of it was stabilizing in my life, but part of it was, now that I look back, maybe a little unhealthy too, in that I was looking for the church to kind of fill some holes maybe in my life at the time. And so I clung pretty hard to it. And I mean, I took it so literally, and I was so devoted. I remember even as a teen coming home from tithing settlement that I went to by myself and convincing my mom that maybe she should start paying tithing because it would be the right thing to do. And so that's part of my story, is that I really adhered to it, and I had a lot of leaders that really gave me a lot of affirmation and validation because of that, because I was so committed. And that was even more reinforcing because I would get that positive reinforcement, that positive validation. And so suffice it to say, I was all in, all the way through, even leaving on a mission and going to Mexico and serving there, completely, 100% in.

John Dehlin [00:18:46] Did you, Adam? Well, one thing that just jumps out at me is whenever someone loses a Parent young. And we've had several guests on Mormon stories that lost a parent young. It's very common for the church to be a. Really to be extra meaningful to them because it's the way you get to see dad again. Right.

Adam Hughes [00:19:10] I very much believed in that. The church was very much a stabilizing influence in my life when I was young, and it provided all the answers and it provided a lot of comfort with that idea. Like you're saying that I'd get to see both my parents, you know, at the end of my life. And, and I really, I mean, it's not a bad thing, but I really felt, even from a young age, like a real connection to God. And I felt. And that was completely intertwined with church and with, you know, there was no separation between just me and my communion with God and the church. That was all one and the same.

John Dehlin [00:19:54] Yeah. And I, I also, you know, my mom was a single mom for, for some time as we were Mormons when my parents got divorced. And like you say, the church can be such a stabilizing influence, especially an incredible support to a single parent family after divorce. I'm sure, I'm sure it. I, I can only imagine a widow raising young kids would just find so much value in having other leaders helping, potential material support or emotional support or moral support. There's just all sorts of ways the community that a church can just mean so much to a. To a single parent family with your kids.

Adam Hughes [00:20:38] Right. And, and actually, too, there was a lot of really great men in the war that I grew up in that I can't say enough good things about that kind of took me under their wing, you know, would take me fishing or would, you know, whenever there was a fathers and sons camp out, they would always reach out and say, hey, why don't you come along with us? So that I wasn't left out. And I sometimes actually feel lucky that I felt like I didn't have just one father, but I had many men in the ward that I grew up in that reached out and provided that kind of support and assistance. And, and even to this day, I'm very grateful for that and the selfless service that they did give to my family. So another aspect, though, as you were asking Marlena a question, it made me realize, though, and I've just now begun to realize that another component that really bound me to the church was, you know, as a, as a teen, as a young man, you know, you begin, you hit puberty, and there's a very natural evolution of, of of, you know, And now I can look back now though, and see that, well, there was a great quote I found.

John Dehlin [00:21:57] Hey, Adam, you broke up, you broke up a tiny bit. Can you repeat that when you're saying the hormones and everything leads to what,

Adam Hughes [00:22:04] what I was saying? I'll just, I'll just summarize it by this. I, I found there's a religious trauma institute and they talk about how a lot of times religion ends up being, you know, they're offering you the solution and the, the healing medicine and yet at the same time they're the ones causing the harm. And I can look back now and see that, you know, I was very concerned about my, my, my spiritual welfare. And at the same time the church is saying you're just normal growing up things, you know, exploration and coming of age, you know, as a young man, just normal things that young men do. The church completely shames that and the church completely tries to shut that down and creates a lot of guilt and shame around anything normal as far as, you know, growing up as a young man. And, and those, those hormones that start raging after puberty. And so I can see now looking back too, that was another thing that bound me to the church because I thought that I needed heavy, serious repentance for very minor things, you know, that I experienced as a young man.

John Dehlin [00:23:16] And we're, you know, we're often afraid or conditioned not to talk about it, but I'm guessing you're talking about masturbation and just normal sexuality stuff.

Adam Hughes [00:23:28] Normal sexuality, yes, yes.

John Dehlin [00:23:30] You, you like 99 of all young boys and most girls as well, had sexual passions and had to figure out how your body worked and what didn't, didn't feel good. All that normal stuff. Right?

Adam Hughes [00:23:44] Yes. I think we're so recent out it's still almost difficult to talk about, but yes, that, you know, I remember being maybe 14 and figuring out I connected the act to the actual word masturbation and realized, oh wow, that's what that is. And then feeling just an enormous amount of shame and guilt. And you know, I knew enough by that point to know by, by the strength of the what for the Strength of Youth pamphlet that I was supposed to go talk to my bishop and confess. And I'm thinking to myself as a 14 year old boy, I wonder if they're going to throw me out of the church. You know, I wonder if I'm going to get excommunicated. I mean, maybe I take things too literally, but I was, I was so black and white and I just really believed every word that they put in on in print or that the leaders of the church spoke that I'm internalizing all of this and felt enormous amounts of shame. And I think that really reinforced it and really, again, forced me to say, oh, I need this, I need the church, because I've got these defects that I've got to overcome. And if I don't stick with this and if I don't cling to this, then I'm going to lose my soul. So. And I don't think that was healthy, now that I look back. It was very unhealthy for me.

John Dehlin [00:24:57] Right. So it's mixed. What's so hard about it is that it's mixed. It's that the church is absolutely good and healthy in some ways and absolutely harmful and difficult in other ways. And it's both. That's what's so hard about it. Right. I mean, both of you just got through describing all the good things, right?

Adam Hughes [00:25:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:21] So. And the truth is, everything has good and bad. So that makes it even more complicated is there's no such thing as organization with only good or only bad. And so it's so confusing. Really quickly, Adam, talk about your religiosity, you know, in terms of like your. Your theology. Theology, your doctrine, your testimony. Did you have a, you know, did you feel like you had a solid testimony as a teenager before your mission? Did you have that moment where you wanted to get the testimony and read the Book of Mormon and follow Moroni's promise and all that? Or. Or not? Or did you just always believe? Talk about your faith.

Spiritual Experiences and Patriarchal Blessings

Adam Hughes [00:26:00] Okay, so probably the best example would be, I remember praying a couple of times. And again, I had a very strong faith. Well, I remember getting my patriarchal blessing. And that's an interesting story in and of itself because it really impacted me and I felt like it truly was God speaking to me. And yet, now that I look back, it took me a long time as I went through my faith crisis and as I started to deconstruct. Now, looking back, I can see. Okay, well, I studied for like three months before I went and got my patriarchal blessing. I went to the Lehigh Library and read every Ensign or New Era article I could find because I wanted to know everything there was and be totally prepared for my patriarchal blessing. Entire time and knew my family knew me. He was my fourth grade teacher. I got my patriarchal blessing only four years after I'd been in his class as a fourth grader.

John Dehlin [00:26:56] Okay, you broke up. You broke up for a second. So your Patriarch was what?

Adam Hughes [00:27:00] He was my fourth grade teacher in elementary school. In elementary school? Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:04] How old was he?

Adam Hughes [00:27:06] Oh, mid-50s or later. 50s.

John Dehlin [00:27:10] Okay, cool.

Adam Hughes [00:27:11] Yeah. And so a bit of a younger.

John Dehlin [00:27:13] A bit of a younger patriarch than is often normal.

Adam Hughes [00:27:16] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:17] Usually it's a grandpa who's kind of in their 70s.

Adam Hughes [00:27:21] No, he was younger, and I was one of his first blessings that he ever gave. But just four years earlier, he'd had me for an entire year in fourth grade. And so now I can look back and see that between me anticipating this and building up to this and being so excited to get it and having studied so much and him knowing me that maybe. Maybe there's some explanations there for why it impacted me so hard. Another. No, now my. Now my mind went blank. I was going to share another story, but. Oh, you asked about my testimony and I did pray. I tried Moroni's promise a couple times. Never really felt anything. But I remember going to a fireside again by myself, because I was so into all of this just on my own. I remember going. And the person giving the fireside said, if you've ever read the Book of Mormon and just felt a good, peaceful feeling, well, that's God telling you it's true. That's the Holy Ghost telling you it's true. And it just hit me right then. I thought, oh, well, I have a testimony and I don't. I don't even need to pray because, wow, God's been trying to. Trying to tell me the whole time that this is true because. Because when I read from the scriptures, it feels good. And. And I was completely convinced that that's how God worked, was just by giving us nice, pleasant feelings. And so I was all in. I completely believed that I had just an unshakable testimony in the church, you

John Dehlin [00:28:48] know, I don't think that point can ever be emphasized enough. And we've. We've touched on it, you know, throughout the past 15 years. But, you know, I can't tell you how many people I've had on Mormon stories that followed Moroni's promise. Moroni 10, 4. Where they read the Book of Mormon and prayed about it and didn't get an answer. But then they were taught that if you just feel joy and peace and warmth and emotion in a church context, that means that the church is true. It doesn't mean that someone said something touching or someone said something meaningful or someone got emotional. That narrative that we learned from the church, which is that if when they say the Holy Ghost is joy, peace, comfort, you know, love, charity, kindness, warmth. You know, if you're in the church long enough, you're going to feel those feelings because you're with humans who are sharing things and helping each other and trying to do good, you're going to feel those feelings. And then if you're conditioned to connect those feelings with, oh, well, that means you must interpret it then that the church is true, then everyone's going to have a testimony, but it's really just rooted in normal human emotions that every human feels right. And that's so difficult because then you go on and make all these huge decisions and you act as though you know, the church is true now, and you go on a mission and you tell everybody what you know. When really the basis of all that was just you felt some really good feelings and you were taught to interpret that as the church being true. Isn't that, Isn't that interesting?

Adam Hughes [00:30:25] And not only that, but now I see that the church co ops all of life's most important events. I mean, being ordained as a deacon is kind of a coming of age ceremony for Mormons. And then every two years after that, you know, you would keep advance. And baptism is a kind of a coming of age ceremony for kids. Going to the temple is kind of the beginning of adulthood for young men and young women. And so all of that completely is intertwined with the church and its doctrine and its teachings and including family and what we do on Sundays and how we spend our free time. So it's almost completely impossible as a kid or as a teen and even as an adult to untangle that and decide when I feel good. Is it because of all of this built association that I have with family and these ceremonies and performances, friends and

John Dehlin [00:31:20] leaders and youth and, you know, music. Right, Exactly. Marlena, did you want to add something? I want to get you in here just because this is a topic that probably touches you, too. We don't want to jump ahead in the timeline, but as you're thinking about your youth and adolescence, anything you wanted to add?

Marlana Hughes [00:31:38] Yeah, it just made me think because when you're asking me before, I didn't think. Yeah, I did all that. I prayed and I. I had early. One year. I had perfect attendance, which was a huge deal for me. I had a paper out and I'd get to go to, you know.

John Dehlin [00:31:55] Did you say you had early morning seminary?

Marlana Hughes [00:31:58] Yes. Yeah. And I had a paper out growing up. So I had got up at like 5 o' clock every morning and did my paper out and then I go to seminary and so I did. And I only went to seminary for three years because I graduated high school a year early. So I didn't officially complete seminary. But to me at the time I didn't care because I was like, I went to three years of high school, this three years of seminary is good. But yeah, I was reading my scriptures and praying and doing all that. But with our patriarchal blessings, I think we, even though I'm a little bit more gray than Adam, I took it pretty literally. I mean it said I should serve a mission, you know, later on. And you're reading these things and reading it and they tell you to mindset to read over and over and all those things and you know, there's things in there maybe if you don't follow. I didn't go on a mission. So it's just, it's an interesting concept when you get on the patriarchal blessing thing also. But yes, all the rest, I was still doing, reading the scriptures every day and doing those things, but the feelings were still there. I felt like I never got the answer either. And I was just like, well, I just take things for how they are and I don't really need to know the in depth and true answer because yeah, the feelings felt good.

John Dehlin [00:33:02] Right. Okay, couple quick things. Just really quickly have to give a shout out to Lila Tuller. Lila's joined us. You know Lila, I don't know if you heard when we started, but you were an important influence on the Hughes's. So Lila, thanks for your story, Hughes, as you can tell Lila, thanks as well.

Adam Hughes [00:33:25] Thank you.

Marlana Hughes [00:33:26] Thank you. I want to say I just, I met her dad a couple times. He came to our youth conference and then after listening to her the podcast with her, I'm like, he was there and it made me happy. But on the other hand, I remember talking that it was taking him away from his family. So it was kind of, you're happy that you get to meet those, those, you know, general authorities and different things. But then it was interesting to see the other side of the story that. Thank you for sharing your dad with us at the time. I mean, he sat right next to me at this youth conference. We got to have a talk and, and just he was a great guy, so. And thanks for sharing your story, Lila.

Adam Hughes [00:34:02] Yours was the first Mormon stories episode that I listened to all the way through and had a big impact on me. Thanks for having the courage to share that.

Marlana Hughes [00:34:09] Huge. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:10] And of course Lila's dad was Hartman Rector Jr. And that's one of the, one of the really awesome Mormon stories interviews this year and of all time. So shout out to Lila. Also want to shout out to Kristen Gluth, Granny. She. She had the comment, that's the covenant Path. And I think she's talking about how feeling those emotions and getting emotional and then connecting it to the gospel kind of really is the covenant path. And that's part of the plan. And I should just add, I don't think it's nefarious. I don't think the leaders are saying, how do we manipulate people and how do we deceive people? I think that's what they were taught. That's what their parents were taught and their grandparents were taught. And, you know, here we are just all down the line, influenced by decisions that were made really early on. Right?

Marlana Hughes [00:34:58] Yep.

Mission Experiences and High-Pressure Tactics

Adam Hughes [00:35:00] Okay. So I went. I went to Mexico. I went to Monterey, Mexico, on my mission. And I was just given a little bit of background that I. I was really excited to go. It was. It took some faith and some trust to be able to go because my mom was a little older and. And I had been a big support system to her, and I was having to leave her behind. I went. The first few months were very difficult when I got to Mexico because I didn't speak the language. But eventually I learned to speak the language and I absolutely loved it. And, you know, I'm just going to be honest that now that I look back again after my faith crisis started, I realized that. And as I started really reading about religious trauma and I started reading about how people are pulled into religion and why they're so bound to the religion, I realized that I may have had a little bit of what I would call martyr syndrome, that I liked the feeling of sacrificing to the extreme for God and for the church and that I was working my way back to heaven. And I was doing that with my acts of being out there and sacrificing and being on the mission for two years and walking into dusty streets of Mexico and going hungry and going without heating in my home and being cold and all of that sacrifice actually spoke to me. And I had a really great time on my mission, and I really loved it. I, again, I look back now with the perspective that I have, which might be a little healthier than the perspective I had then. And I. I think that maybe I had that a little bit of. I felt like a martyr for the church and. And maybe not in a healthy way. So I wanted to stay forever. And I had a hard time when I came home with, again, waking up from dreams and. And wishing I was back as a missionary because life had been simple and I felt so committed to God during that time.

John Dehlin [00:37:00] So I served in Guatemala. I'm just curious that, you know, in my mission, they had this problem of baptizing people that shouldn't have been baptized. You know, super high pressure sales techniques, baptizing people way too fast, way too young, and then super low retention rates. Did you experience any of that on your mission in Latin America?

Adam Hughes [00:37:23] You nailed it. I mean, there may be a couple of people that we baptized that are still active. One young man in particular is still active. We reactivated him. He was a teen at the time. And. But other than that, I don't think there's many people that are still active. And it was very much about the numbers. It was very much high pressure. We were under a lot of pressure to have certain numbers as companionship and zones and as a mission every month. And that was relentless. That never let up.

John Dehlin [00:37:55] How was that for you as a missionary?

Adam Hughes [00:37:58] I mean, I learned to deal with it, but, you know, I learned pretty quickly. Maybe not really. That wasn't. Didn't come naturally to me. Sales doesn't come naturally to me. Pressuring people or figuring out ways to get people to say yes under pressure was not. Didn't come naturally. But I learned very quickly from some of my first companions how to say things right, how to frame questions right, so that people didn't have a way to say no. You know, saying things like, you know, wouldn't you want to be with God? Wouldn't you want to please God? And. And in leading, I mean, the missionaries themselves joked that it wasn't the commitment pattern. We called it the manipulation pattern. And we said that with. With love, you know, because we. We hardly believe that this was the Lord's way of bringing people into his church, was maybe to use a little bit of high pressure cells and manipulation to get them to eventually say yes, because obviously it's for their own good.

John Dehlin [00:38:54] Right? Yeah. And Gerardo's asking. That was the Monterey mission, right?

Adam Hughes [00:38:59] Monterey south.

John Dehlin [00:39:00] Monterey South.

Adam Hughes [00:39:01] 97 to 99.

John Dehlin [00:39:03] Okay. And again, it's tricky because I can't say that the church was bad for the Guatemalans that I served. Like, there were so many. It provided community, meaning, purpose, all sorts of good things. And so it's both. It's that there's a lot of manipulation and coercion and, you know, undue influence. And a lot of these people were. Their lives were really improved or were really improved for. For a time, because they were in the church. And so, again, it's always mixed, isn't it?

Adam Hughes [00:39:37] I absolutely agree. And that actually was hard for me to understand at first, because as I went public just a month ago, very public on Facebook, about me stepping back, I had some missionary companions, and actually this young man that we reactivated who's now serving as a bishop in Mexico, that reached out, and they had some pointed words for me. And it took me a little bit to think about the fact that maybe for some of these folks that I taught or that I served with, the church did lift them up to a degree and maybe gave them that community or a little bit solid, more solid foundation than what they had had. And, you know, without jumping too far ahead, maybe. I mean, I just feel like maybe for me now, though, having been in so long, that I was slowly starting to see there's maybe a little bit of a toxic side or a little bit of a dark underbelly to the way the church approaches things.

John Dehlin [00:40:32] Yeah, we'll get to that for sure.

Adam Hughes [00:40:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:35] Daniel adds that the church provides education and resources to those in Latin America, and not just Latin America, all over the world. And that's an important point, Daniel. Totally true. Okay. So, Marlena, did you consider a mission at all, or was that not in your plans?

Marlana Hughes [00:40:55] I did, but it was because of my patriarchal blessing, I think mostly because it said, if you have a desire to serve a mission, you will be called to the work. And so, of course, I'm reading this over and over, and, you know, at the time, I think it was still 20, 21, and, you know, but I was living in Utah at this point, and I'm just looking to get married. That sounds horrible. But I thought if I went on a mission, then I'd miss the opportunity to find the one. And I didn't love the idea of getting up at 6am to. To be honest, is what I think. I actually got my papers to put them in to go on a mission because I think I kind of had that guilt, like, from my patriarchal blessing that this is what you need to go do. But I didn't even fill out those papers, so I never, never went.

John Dehlin [00:41:46] Yeah, and you would have gone prior to the time where all. Basically all Mormon young women were encouraged to serve missions back. I'm guessing that back in your time, it was still like, all men need to go. Women only go if you can't find a husband.

Marlana Hughes [00:42:02] Right.

John Dehlin [00:42:03] You know, or you just really, really, really, really must go.

Marlana Hughes [00:42:07] But if you.

John Dehlin [00:42:07] If you go, you have to wait Two years. Because women have to be older. You know, there's that whole deal. Right.

Adam Hughes [00:42:12] It was less common back then for sure.

Marlana Hughes [00:42:14] Right. And I. Yeah, you're kind of odd. I feel like if you waited, I mean, you know, back at that time,

Adam Hughes [00:42:18] if you went, it was 21, right?

Marlana Hughes [00:42:20] Yeah.

Adam Hughes [00:42:20] You couldn't get to wait till 21.

Marlana Hughes [00:42:21] Did you get married or you weren't doing something else then? Okay, I guess I'll go on a mission, so. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:26] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. But you want to marry a missionary, right?

Marlana Hughes [00:42:31] I did. I did. I. I guess I should give that background a little bit. People watching that know me maybe if they. I like the missionaries from my time I was three on, like, I think I had a crush on a missionary from then.

Adam Hughes [00:42:42] And you had a thing for missionaries.

Marlana Hughes [00:42:43] I had a thing for missionaries and. Which I always said saved. You know, my parents were probably grateful because it saved me from. I didn't kiss anyone until I was 21, which I was not going to say on here, but at the time I was proud of that because John, by the way, had come out with this, like you. Some poem about kissing. And the more each dollar is printed, the less each one is worth. And so it is with kissing I've given since my birth. See, I remember, like, I memorized that. My mom had given me a book called It Was Kissing Sinful. You read that book? It's horrible. I threw it away a few years ago after having my own teenagers, you know, definitely no kissing, no French kissing. None of this saved my parents. Probably a lot of crazy heartache because once I kiss people 21, it's kind of downhill from there. But anyway, that's kind of. Yeah, I haven't heard that.

John Dehlin [00:43:32] That's pretty intense. And you. And you feel like that was harmful to you. How is that harmful to you at the time? Don't jump ahead in the timeline, but why do you think now, looking back, that might have been harmful to you?

Marlana Hughes [00:43:44] So you're. When I was 21 or back, like when I read that book.

John Dehlin [00:43:48] I mean, you say you threw it away, which means you think that wasn't a good book.

Marlana Hughes [00:43:53] Right.

John Dehlin [00:43:53] You lived it. So what? What? What? Looking back, why do you think that wasn't good, looking back?

Marlana Hughes [00:44:02] Oh, I don't know if.

John Dehlin [00:44:04] Or was it bad? Was it good for you?

Marlana Hughes [00:44:07] It was probably good for me. I think it was good for me. People couldn't. First of all, people couldn't believe that I hadn't kissed people, so actually became kind of cooler to tell a story that I Hadn't and to not. It's not that I didn't have the opportunity and have the opportunity, but because I was a little bit crazier and you know, party, social, whatever. I don't know how to explain that, but when people started to not believe that I hadn't kissed anybody by the time I was 21, then it became cooler to say I hadn't and so I stuck with that. So then I always said, oh, it was better for my parents because then if I didn't kiss anybody, then it didn't lead to anything else. And I was, you know, I didn't go down that path that my, I had to worry about, my parents had to worry about. So in the aspect of the church, I think it was being raised in the church and it was maybe helpful. But then I look back and that was harmful, I guess having teenagers and realizing that that's the time that maybe you should have, I don't know, maybe

Adam Hughes [00:45:01] if you're going to make mistakes, you should make them while you're at home. Maybe instead of waiting, have those experiences.

Marlana Hughes [00:45:05] Yeah. Before and while you're at home and not wait till. I don't know, I don't know if I'm explaining that correctly or no.

John Dehlin [00:45:11] And you guys really knew. But you, you guys are kind of newer to being out, you know, losing your faith or whatever. But you know, as a parent myself, you know, kids are having sex these days and they're having sex young and, and it's just, you know, I, I realized how profoundly unhelpful I was to my own children in all sorts of regards. But including dating and sexuality and even experiments, experimentation with drugs and alcohol, that's what Mormon kids are doing. So of course Mormon kids are doing that. And, and yeah, so if you're bringing that purity culture and that perfectionism culture and that kind of sex negative culture into parenting now in 2020, it's problematic because it's, you know, you're going to be having some of those expectations, you're going to be putting some of those expectations on your kids in a world that's very different and they may not even be healthy because like you said, part of adolescence and young adulthood is experimenting and trying and finding out who you're attracted to, what you're attracted to, what you like, what you don't like, because the last thing you want to do is be rushing into a long term marriage commitment and then find out later you were incompatible for whatever reason. Right. So there's all sorts of reasons why some of this purity culture causes a lot of dysfunction later, I think.

Dating, Marriage, and Temple Wedding

Adam Hughes [00:46:43] Yes, absolutely. And I think even for us, I think we can say, you know, just even as we began to date and as we got engaged, you know, that's to keep, you know, the church has an unbending standard that you're not going to have any type of, you know, mishaps or sexual relations besides maybe just holding hands and unpassionate kissing and so anything beyond that, wow, what an enormous amount of guilt and shame and just stress and grief as you're trying to figure out if this is the appropriate person that you want to spend the rest of your life with and build a life with. And yet you're struggling with even just dealing with, you know, your, your own emotions and, and your attraction and figuring that out and, and it just doesn't. I mean, it creates a lot of unhealthy unfeelings and, and shame and yeah, you can say, you can almost say it better than we can, John. But yeah,

John Dehlin [00:47:42] some fun comments. So, let's see. Kelby writes, Adam, I grew up in Tucson, Arizona and served in the Monterey, Mexico North Mission, finishing up around the time you were entering the South Mission. Really appreciate your perspectives. Adam and Marlena, congrats on. They're saying, congrats to you. Carrie writes, I remember that poem. I had that book. So that. John, by the way, book. You weren't the only one, Marlena, Carrie's

Adam Hughes [00:48:11] a good friend of ours.

Marlana Hughes [00:48:11] Yeah.

Adam Hughes [00:48:12] Shout out to the signalers.

John Dehlin [00:48:15] Larry writes, I was my husband's first kiss. He was a good, good Mormon boy. That's Laren. Ben writes, met my wife at 23, first everything with her. Larryn also writes, sounds like my husband. Sounds like my husband. He was such a good boy. He took a different girl to every high school dance. Never held hands, never kissed, never got serious. And that's an interesting thing about Utah. Utah. There's this cultural thing where a high school kid can't ask the same girl if the girl can't go with the same boy to more than one formal dance like homecoming or Sadie Hawkins or whatever they call it prom. You have to always pick someone different because you can't ever get serious and you can't have a serious.

Adam Hughes [00:49:05] No study dating.

Marlana Hughes [00:49:06] Yeah, yeah, I'd heard that. We tried it. We, we thought we would try it. Didn't work. So.

John Dehlin [00:49:14] And then Matthew says, guess I missed out on all the weirdness as a kid. I'm a convert. So. Matthew, there's probably good and bad to that as well. All right.

Adam Hughes [00:49:24] So.

John Dehlin [00:49:24] So let's jump back to your story. Oh, Tracy wants to give us some data. Tracy says today teens are statistically just as active. I'm guessing Tracy means sexually active. Just as active as in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Teens making out is not new to any culture. I'm sure it's as old as time. Thank you, Tracy, for that.

Marlana Hughes [00:49:46] Just one thing I want to say still is, once I started to have teenagers and kids, I threw the book away before we were out of the church as we had teenagers, and it was completely different than how we grew up. And I think. And obviously more open. We are super open with our kids, and they're super open with us anyway, and we'll get to that and even more so now that we're out of the church. But, yeah, it just creates this. I don't know where I was going.

John Dehlin [00:50:13] No, it's hard.

Marlana Hughes [00:50:13] It just be. Yeah, it just was ridiculous once I started to have teenagers that were kind of squashing that. I mean, yeah, they were just completely different than I was growing up. I think just the timing, the. The time of it and the. It's also.

John Dehlin [00:50:29] It's also a combination of how pervasive porn is now. People are sexualized much younger, and the church is always talking about porn and masturbation. So kids just have no hope to develop a curiosity. They're going to develop massive curiosities of it more now than back then because it's so pervasive and the church can't stop talking about it.

Marlana Hughes [00:50:51] Right, Right.

Adam Hughes [00:50:52] And there's a great quote from Dr. I think it's Finlayson Fife. I hope I said the name right. Where she says that our attempts to squelch human sexuality actually drive our obsession with it.

Marlana Hughes [00:51:03] And.

Adam Hughes [00:51:04] And I've Natasha Helfer, that you've had on Mormon stories numerous times and has her own podcast. I think it's more misex info.

John Dehlin [00:51:12] Yeah.

Adam Hughes [00:51:13] She talks at length and does an outstanding job of explaining how as we try and keep a lid on it, and especially as the church teaches that there is no gray. It's either you're perfect, you adhere to these standards perfectly, or else. Or else you need to go talk with your bishop because you're committing sins that are in that category of, you know, murder, then, you know, we try and keep a lid on it, and we try and keep it lit on it, and that actually just reemphasizes all of that and drives our obsession with it.

Marlana Hughes [00:51:39] And.

Adam Hughes [00:51:40] And I would say definitely as a teen and even as an adult, you Know, you know, that's been an ever constant. My. You know, our human sexuality isn't going away and our sex drive isn't going away. And instead of accepting that as part of our nature, the church actually creates this really unhealthy narrative around just normative human sexuality and. And. And completely creates these scenarios where people believe that they're sex addicts or that they're addicted to pornography when all they're doing is trying to deal with their own normal human sexuality.

John Dehlin [00:52:14] Yeah, so true. Gotta get James's comment in here, and then we'll go on with your story. James writes, I was gay, so it made my life easier to fake being straight. It set me up for the perfect storm later. And. And that's. Yeah. The casualties of LGBTQ Mormons is something that's its own thing and. All right, so let's jump back to your story now. So anything else about either of your adolescence or young adulthood before you. We. We get to the point where you guys meet. Anything else you guys want to share about your Mormon. Your Mormon stories

Marlana Hughes [00:52:51] now that I get.

Adam Hughes [00:52:51] I think I covered it mostly.

John Dehlin [00:52:54] So where did. So where'd you guys. How did you guys meet?

Adam Hughes [00:52:57] I was going to byu. I had only been home from my mission for about nine months, and I was living in apartments there right off campus of byu, and Marlena was living there while she was going to hair

Marlana Hughes [00:53:09] school at the time.

Adam Hughes [00:53:09] Hair school. Yvonne Curtis. And we met, and she pretty much.

Marlana Hughes [00:53:16] Well, yeah, we have to stop him. He moved in in January, so it was like, new, you know, new guys move, moving in. So everyone in our. Our apartment was like, okay, who's the new guy gonna move in?

John Dehlin [00:53:27] We're.

Marlana Hughes [00:53:28] We're all over that. So that's. It was a fight.

Adam Hughes [00:53:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:32] You're saying fresh meat.

Marlana Hughes [00:53:34] Fresh meat, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Adam Hughes [00:53:37] Just. I met Marlena, and she was the most fun person I'd ever met. And even though she was not quite as serious as I was or as you could say to Bow, I don't want to be. To be rude, but, you know, Marlene has always been gray, like she said. And she grew up in a family that you can see that they. They took things, they lived their religion, but at the same time, they weren't fanatical about it, if that's. Hopefully I'm not being offensive. And I was more along those lines of there is no gray. And so when we met, we were a little bit like oil and water when it came to how we interpreted the church and its teachings and all that, but there was some type of magnetism that's unexplainable, that we just couldn't. We just.

Marlana Hughes [00:54:21] I was a breath of fresh air for you.

Adam Hughes [00:54:23] Yeah, that's right. We just said we couldn't stay apart.

John Dehlin [00:54:27] Yeah. Love it. Yeah. You want to add anything, Marlena?

Marlana Hughes [00:54:30] I was just gonna say, he says when he was deciding if we. If he should marry me or not, he just talked to a friend that said what you get with Marlena or what you see with Marlena is what you get. So I've always been pretty open and honest, and he felt like that was a lot different to girls that he had dated or met in Utah. That.

Adam Hughes [00:54:49] Yeah.

Marlana Hughes [00:54:50] Very much more of a facade being put on than.

Adam Hughes [00:54:52] Yeah.

Marlana Hughes [00:54:52] And I had nothing to hide, so.

Adam Hughes [00:54:55] Exactly. And actually, that was extremely refreshing. Is that she just is who she is, unapologetically. And that's always been one of her most attractive qualities. And. And was. It was a breath of fresh air compared to, you know, in the dating scene. A lot of it is about creating a facade because you're trying to attract someone. And even part of that facade is creating an image of, you know, this is my family, and we go way back in the church or whatever it might be. You know, they're trying to create that perfect Mormon Persona. And anyway, we both just kind of found each other. And don't worry about the facades.

Marlana Hughes [00:55:30] And it just worked out. So I think I just started school, actually. And that's when it happens when you're not looking. So. So. And then again, back to my par. Blessing. It said I'd marry someone that was humble, and actually, Adam was quite humble. So it just worked. And it worked really quickly. So I'll give the timeline. We met in January, beginning of January, by the end of February. It's almost embarrassing. Now we are engaged. We were engaged by the end of February and then married in June.

Adam Hughes [00:56:00] We didn't rush into anything at all.

John Dehlin [00:56:04] What were you. Were you taught by your parents or by your mission president to get married as soon as possible?

Adam Hughes [00:56:09] Oh, yeah. That was our last. My last interview. The night before going home from my mission. The mission president said, you just go home. Don't make a list of 28 things that you're looking for. Make a list of five things that you're looking for. But. But keep it basic, you know, so that you're. You're not setting your standards so high. You can't find someone. And then when you find that person, just do it. Don't think about it twice. Just do it. Just jump In.

John Dehlin [00:56:30] So you guys did it. So it was me. It was meeting to marriage in how much time?

Adam Hughes [00:56:35] Six months.

John Dehlin [00:56:36] Yeah. That's so fast. Really quickly, a listener writes, I think I may have said the wrong general authority. So Lila is the daughter of Harmon Rector Jr. Not Marion D. Hanks. I may have said the wrong general authority. So thanks to vibration for that clarification. I love that my listeners and viewers keep me. Keep me honest and accurate, because my brain doesn't always do that. Okay, so six month. So what do you guys want to say about anything about your courtship? Anything you want to say about, like, what the agreement was, what was the contract for your marriage in terms of, like, what you were building it on and what the understanding was, how Mormonism was interwoven into your marriage. And then we could talk about the wedding and even you're going through the temple and what that was like. But talk about that so we can understand kind of what the agreement was and how sometimes we get set up for a lot of difficulty because of the way the church gets baked into the marriage contract. Does that make sense?

Adam Hughes [00:57:40] Yeah. So I don't know if we actually talked about that, now that I think about it.

John Dehlin [00:57:45] No, no, no. I don't mean formal. I don't mean there's a formal written contract. Maybe, like, what was. What was the expectation, if not the understanding? What were you both expecting your Mormon life to kind of be like? You know what I mean?

Marlana Hughes [00:58:00] Yeah, I think. Well, I wanted to say that he asked and I said yes, and that was kind of it. So, no, he. I think we were. In fact, when we got. After we got married, his mom. I go back and look at on our video that you can't get Adam and I to stop talking to each other, especially when we were first married, that we talked so much about everything that I think we were actually a lot alike, even though we're very different. So we were pretty much on the same page, pretty much on every single thing except for when to have children. And that was a big.

Adam Hughes [00:58:37] I was going to mention that, yeah,

Marlana Hughes [00:58:38] that was a big thing in our marriage before trying to figure out, like, you know, talking about when do we want to have kids or not. The other thing is, is I was like, absolutely, I do not want to move back to Illinois. I don't. I'll move anywhere you want to, but it's. Soon as I had kids, you know, I want to move back to Illinois. But the back to wanting kids is we had to talk about that. And of course, I'm still We're talking about it. And he wants to have kids right away because he thinks that's the way it's supposed to be. And I said, and he only has one brother. I had five siblings growing up and a foster brother. And I'm like, no, we. Let's wait. I don't. I don't want to have kids right away.

Adam Hughes [00:59:12] I didn't know it was coming.

Marlana Hughes [00:59:13] He didn't know it was coming. And I was trying to warn him what was coming. So that was kind of contentious. And then I would talk to my mom, you know, just to get her opinion still. And that kind of was a little bit.

Adam Hughes [00:59:25] Yeah, it was. It was hard because, again, I took things so literally. And I've got all these quotes in my head, you know, Spencer W. Kimball, saying, just let the children come naturally and don't. Don't prevent them. And. And that's our responsibility as parents. And I believe there's a talk, too, where they talk about, it doesn't matter whether you're in. In school and in college and dirt poor. This is the Lord's plan. You've got to. You've got to do your duty and just. You just start having kids, like, right away. So it was a little bit of a point of a contention. We came to see eye to eye, and really, actually you just came around at my point. I think I drowned you in church course.

Marlana Hughes [00:59:58] I'm like, no, actually, I remember going actually to the doctor to get like, birth control or something. And he's like, what? You went to the doctor and you didn't tell? You know, so then still continuing the discussions, but I'm like, you got to get on this soon enough before you get married. But anyway.

Adam Hughes [01:00:13] Yeah.

Marlana Hughes [01:00:14] And then just kept. Yeah, we worked through it. Yeah. Came to a kind of agreement.

John Dehlin [01:00:20] How was the. Any of. Any of you guys have any with the temple, positive experience or struggles with the temple ceremony? Any of that?

Marlana Hughes [01:00:29] No. So we went through the April before. So we're getting married June 10th. And we, with my brother was going on a mission actually to Guatemala also, and he went through in April. So I was like, oh, it'd be cool if we went through together. And we went. Went to Salt Lake Temple. And I back when we were thinking about my youth and I didn't want to give too much information. I think that's one thing I was excited for the most. So I prepared. Even when I was way young, I was super excited to, you know, get married, go to the temple. I want to get married in the Salt Lake. Temple where my parents had. And I would watch film strips of. They had in pictures of the inside of the temples. I think that's maybe the only place at the time you could see those. So I would watch those sometimes just in my room. I would. I read the what's the Temple? Book by Boyd K. Packer, the Holy Temple. Just trying to get ready for it. So I didn't. It didn't seem weird or odd to me when I first went.

Adam Hughes [01:01:21] Yeah, me neither, now that I think about it. You know, I went through when I was 19, and it didn't. It didn't strike me as too odd. Looking back now, you know, I'm not sure how it. It didn't, but, you know, then again, I mean, I. I knew that my mom went to the temple frequently. I knew everyone I knew goes to the temple, and everyone talked about how beautiful it is and sacred and special. And so you just. I took it at face value that this was God's way of teaching us and, And. And that this was all super important.

Marlana Hughes [01:01:53] So you were part of the club. You know, once you went to the temple, once you got to wear the garments, like, that's you. You know, you'd reach the next level, and that's where you wanted to go. And I was just thinking, I. It wasn't so shocking. My parents kind of, you know, they had their suitcases or the temple clothes, and they kind of talk about it. I don't remember them showing them to me and. But I remember, like, when my grandma and grandpa died and they had their clothes on, their temple clothes, they buried them. So it wasn't so shocking to me as it could have maybe. Ben.

John Dehlin [01:02:21] Yeah.

Marlana Hughes [01:02:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:23] What about the keeping the law of chastity before you get married kind of struggle? Was that hard? Were you guys just naturals at that?

Adam Hughes [01:02:32] No, that was hard. That was hard. Yeah.

Marlana Hughes [01:02:34] And we had an awesome bishop, to be honest, at the time.

Adam Hughes [01:02:36] So we went in and talked to our bishop once, obviously, because it was. We were struggling with that.

Marlana Hughes [01:02:41] He just had us meet with him every week and said this is, you know, he basically. He was cool. He said, this is normal. Just come meet with me. Talked and he, you know, he was not reprimantive. Reprimantive. I want to say it was just. Yeah, reprimanding. Thank you. Of it and was awesome about it and, you know, didn't have us go into super detail. And it was a good, good.

Adam Hughes [01:03:02] It was okay. But I mean, there was still. I mean, I know for myself, you know, you just.

Marlana Hughes [01:03:06] We had guilt.

Adam Hughes [01:03:07] There was a lot of guilt.

Marlana Hughes [01:03:08] He would bring up stuff, and I'm like, don't talk about that.

Adam Hughes [01:03:10] Yeah. Even after we were married. After we were married, I'd be like, hey, remember that one time? I mean, we didn't go all the way, but, you know, you, you know, there was some, you know, Levi loving. You push it, you know, and, and you push it about as far as you can because, because you're normal. You're 21 and 22. You want to.

Marlana Hughes [01:03:26] No, we are 23.

Adam Hughes [01:03:27] 22 and 23.

Marlana Hughes [01:03:28] Yeah. 22 and 23.

Adam Hughes [01:03:29] So, you know, that's, that's a struggle. Like even six months and, and, and even after we got married, even many years after we got married, I'd be like, hey, remember that one time? And Mar. Be like, no, no, don't talk about. Because I, I still feel bad about that.

Marlana Hughes [01:03:43] But it was good. It was good.

John Dehlin [01:03:46] Yeah. I guess it sounds, Adam, like you had a little bit of scrupulosity. Have you heard that term before?

Adam Hughes [01:03:52] I have, and I think so. Maybe I'm, I, maybe I don't want to admit that I had it, but I, I, I'm starting to come around to the idea that I had a little bit of scrupulosity. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:02] Yeah. And it's nothing to be ashamed of. It just, it's just hyper conscientiousness. Right. It's just, it's basically obsessive compulsive disorder, high anxiety in a religious context. And so it sounds like you had a rumination. Fear, guilt, shame, a lot of purity, a real purity mindset where if you messed up, it wasn't just like, oh, well, I'll try and do better. You would kind of beat yourself up.

Adam Hughes [01:04:25] Oh, yeah. Even, even as a missionary, I remember I was thinking about this the other day that we gave a blessing to someone and like, a week prior to this, you know, you know, I'd had what the church would call, you know, an inappropriate thought. You see some girl on the street, I don't know what she was wearing. I have no idea. What I remember is I remember having a thought that I was not happy about. You know, I felt guilty about this thought, and even a week later, I'm helping give a blessing to someone, thinking, I really hope that God's forgiven me at this point because now I don't want to ruin this person's chance of getting blessed. And obviously, you know, we have to be these perfectly pure conduits of priesthood power or else this person's not going to get their blessing or, or, or pro. Or all get punished in the next life for it. So that's probably the definition of scrupulosity right there. But yeah, that's how I understood life.

John Dehlin [01:05:16] Yeah, that makes sense. All right, well, I'm just going to note that up until your marriage, your story is remarkably positive. And I don't mean that in any, I'm not trying to say anything

Adam Hughes [01:05:31] good

John Dehlin [01:05:31] or bad about the church or anything, but a lot of times, a lot of the people that come on Mormon stories probably have more trauma, some abuse, some really bad experiences with church leaders or really harsh parents or, you know, some. And, and this is great. What I'm hearing is you guys had kind of like ideal Mormon upbringings, adjusted for a lot of the other problems that we often see. Are you guys comfortable saying your, your Mormon upbringings up to marriage was kind of ideal?

Marlana Hughes [01:06:05] I, I had some issues with some bishops, I had some issues with some leaders growing up, but nothing. I'm pretty chill and I was pretty go with it and it wasn't anything that disrupted my testimony or disrupted my. Yeah, so I, I guess. Yeah. When you pointed out maybe.

Adam Hughes [01:06:24] Yeah, I think, I think you're accurate up to the point where just I can see now how I wanted to be so much like the people I surrounded with. You know, I wanted to be. I, I just wish that my family could be like, like the Stake President's family because they were, they were well off. Everyone's in the family seems super, you know, high functioning and, and successful and driven and, and they just seem to have this perfect, beautiful family life. And I was, I guess you could say envious of that or. That's right. I wanted that so badly that it. Even at the time, I might have been able to admit that that was unhealthy for me. But there was some. Yeah, there was some facade there. I see it now as facade. You know, there's no perfect families and there's nobody that's, you know, we all, we all have struggles. Every single human being does, no matter how perfect we look from the outside. But I always felt very odd in my ward. I felt odd growing up. I wish that I, I always wanted to feel more like everybody else. Maybe it didn't help that my mom was, was politically leaning. She was liberal and she was very outspoken about that and, and I, you know, absorbed her. Same way of seeing the world politically and in terms of U.S. partisan politics. And that really, again, was another way in which I felt very different from everybody around me. Growing up in Lehigh Utah in the 1980s. So. So I don't know if that answered your question or not, but.

John Dehlin [01:08:00] Yeah, I mean, I wasn't trying to say, Marlena, that you had perfect experiences, but nothing super traumatizing, at least as you processed it as the. At the time. Right.

Marlana Hughes [01:08:11] Right. I mean, yeah, definitely. My family wasn't perfect growing up, and there was issues, but, yeah. Yeah, it was. Overall, it was pretty good.

Early Married Life and Young Family

John Dehlin [01:08:18] So what do you guys want to share about from your marriage to where the faith crisis started to happen? Anything about your story that you guys feel is. Is really important. So it could include good things about your marriage and family, hard things about your marriage and family. Good, Good. Or hard things about your church experiences, little cracks that may have developed before the real cracks and problems started to happen. Tell us whatever you want to. About your marriage and your lives before things start unraveling, if that makes sense.

Marlana Hughes [01:08:54] Yeah.

Adam Hughes [01:08:55] You want to go first? That's a span of 20 years. So, yeah.

Marlana Hughes [01:08:59] Yeah, I would start when you're a bishop, but what. Where would your start? You could start before.

Adam Hughes [01:09:07] Okay, I'll try and not talk too long, but interrupt me, Marlena, if you want, but. So, yeah, we were all in right away. Like, Marlena said, you know, she was a little more gray than I was and said, well, you know, we don't need to do family home evening when it's just the two of us and we don't have kids. And that, to me, was like, oh, but the prophet said, even you'd be blessed, even if it's just the two of you. So I was still struggling with that.

Marlana Hughes [01:09:29] Not like a formal lesson. We were hanging out. But you wanted to do a formal lesson?

Adam Hughes [01:09:32] Oh, yeah. No, I wanted to, like, kneel down and say prayer and all that stuff and have a hymn. And Marlene was like, yeah, I'm not.

Marlana Hughes [01:09:37] Because it was a start of a family. You didn't really maybe have that growing up.

Adam Hughes [01:09:40] Yeah, I just. I was still kind of dealing with that. And. And. And I can honestly say it took a long time, decades, for. For Marlena to help me to. To kind of unwind a little bit. And even when we first got married, I would credit her with helping me to unwind because I was a little tightly wound in terms of all aspects of life and to just take life a little less seriously and go with the flow. But, yeah, we had children right away.

Marlana Hughes [01:10:10] Let me explain that really quick, though, is once I. We did decide to wait at least six months, we compromised in the middle. Just for those people that feel like they need to have kids right away. I definitely recommend now that you wait some time. But once we got married, then I was like, what? We can have kids. So we did go off the birth control, and I thought it was gonna be six months by everything we'd read. But we got pregnant within like two months. And I had our first kid. He was.

Adam Hughes [01:10:35] He was blessed.

Marlana Hughes [01:10:36] His baby, he was one week old and got blessed on our one year anniversary. So we went in and then we said, we might as well have these kids really quickly. And it's been great.

Adam Hughes [01:10:43] And then we had three more kids, all two years apart. So we have four children. They're all two years apart. And got done with school. I went to byu, Graduated from byu. That was. That was difficult. Graduated in civil engineering, and that was extremely difficult. It's a very competitive place to go to school and very demanding.

Marlana Hughes [01:11:02] You had two kids?

Adam Hughes [01:11:03] I had two kids by the time I was done because of Spencer W. Kimball. And we. It was just very stressful. It was very trying time. I left actually, with. I did not like my experience at byu. It didn't resonate with me. They put a lot of demands on their students, telling you, well, you need to start your food storage. You need to have a calling. You need to pay your own way. So you're not taking, you know, loans or government assistance. You need to get good grades. You need to get out in less than four years so that more students can get in faster. I could go on and on, but they put a lot of demands on you. And at the time, I could see that I was unhealthy and toxic. And I. Even despite my own scrupulosity, if you will, I finally figured out, like, I can't do all this. I'm going to have to ignore the majority of what they're saying because I'm just trying to survive financially and academically. But we survived and we made it out even with two kids and started working. And I joined the US Public Health Service. I worked for the federal government. I'll just leave it there. But my first assignment with the Public Health Service was on the Navajo reservation in Northern Arizona. And that's what took us to this little remote community on the Navajo reservation. And we'd been there two years, and that's when I was called as bishop after being there for two years.

John Dehlin [01:12:26] Before we jump into that, Marlena, were you going to say something? And I was going to just ask you about how you experienced being a young mom and a mom with lots of kids, really young, because we always End up talking about women in the church and authority and their role and even feminism a little bit and opportunities. Anything you want to say about being a young mother to lots of kids before we jump into kind of the faith crisis stuff?

Marlana Hughes [01:12:55] Yeah, I should, because I wasn't planning on getting pregnant so fast. All the books we'd read said, oh, it's going to take at least six months. It was like a month. And I was in hair school at the time. I had taken a little break to get married, and then I went. But then I got pregnant and I was so sick, I couldn't go half the time. And then Adam was in school and I said, okay, I'll just go and work and support you. So then I ended up dropping outta school and going back to work to support him to finish school. And I think I even had started some school at the time. It was UVSC because I dropped outta hair school. I'm like, I'll just take a class at a time so I can, you know, work on my degree and things. And that didn't work out. I. I can't remember why, if it was because I was sick or different things, but I was 23, 24 maybe when I had our first kid. And I don't know how people do it even younger. I was tired. It's exhausting. Yeah. We didn't have any money. I mean, it was great. I loved it. I wouldn't. I probably wouldn't do it. I don't know. I don't know if I would change that again. No, I would wait. I would wait. I have more time together a little bit. Because we even look back now and say we could have both. One of us could have been psycho. You know, we didn't even get to know each other before that. And then we're throwing kids into the mix, which is a whole different level. And then your focus kind of goes off your spouse, unfortunately, and onto those. Those kids. And then each kid just progressively came, you know, two years apart, and there's really no time in between that.

John Dehlin [01:14:23] So.

Marlana Hughes [01:14:25] Yeah. And it's hard to get your degree while you've got all those kids, so. And. But do it while you're younger. Cause it gets harder, I think, actually when they're teenagers, which I thought would be different, but it's not.

John Dehlin [01:14:37] Yeah. And. And again, it sounds like, you know, motherhood is. I think it's the hardest. It's the hardest job I've ever seen motherhood of young kids in my life. And I've, you know, been around A bit. And. And it sounds like, as far as adjusting for a hard motherhood is, again, you had a. A relatively good experience where the rubber meets the road. I'll just interject. This is when a couple has a faith crisis and they end up divorced. And then now, Marlena. Marlena, can you imagine having 10, having four kids, no ed, no formal education, you know, no. No bachelor's degree, no career experience, and all of a sudden, your husband leaves, your income split, and you're trying to figure out what job you're going to take now that, you know. Now that you have to have a career, you know, in midlife, like, that's. That's where you guys maybe are lucky. And other people really have it rough. Right.

Adam Hughes [01:15:32] Women in a very vulnerable place. And I can't help but say that's maybe by design, because it forces you to stay together, it forces women to stay. Even if the relationship is abusive, it

Marlana Hughes [01:15:44] forces you to lean on the church. And I can give some examples of that with some friends. But I don't know if you want me to address that now or later. No, no, no.

John Dehlin [01:15:50] We can talk about that later.

Marlana Hughes [01:15:51] Okay. Because it does come up, actually, later. A little bit.

Adam Called as Bishop

John Dehlin [01:15:55] Okay. So is it. Is it time to talk about the calling as bishop? Adam?

Adam Hughes [01:16:02] Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin [01:16:03] Okay. So you were how old?

Adam Hughes [01:16:05] I was 26. No, you're 28. I was 28.

John Dehlin [01:16:08] You're 28 years old. Three kids at the time.

Marlana Hughes [01:16:12] Three kids at the time while he was bishop.

Adam Hughes [01:16:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:17] And newer. Newer to your career, right?

Adam Hughes [01:16:19] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:21] All right. And did you always want to be a bishop? So tell us all about that.

Adam Hughes [01:16:25] I mean, I wasn't opposed to the idea, but I never expected that to happen when I was so young. And I felt very unprepared for it, like Marlena was. She might tell the story, but we were. They just changed the word boundaries. There was two wards in this town. We were. Of course, we're living on the Native American Navajo Indian reservation. And so we were very much in the minority, but we were attending our ward. We'd been there two years, and they changed the boundaries, and we kind of just wanted to keep going to the ward where we knew people, we had friends, and so we kept going for, I don't know, a couple of months maybe, to the ward. We were. We were. We were going to the wrong ward now because the boundaries changed, and we were in a new ward, and we got a call to go in and meet with the stake president, and we both thought for sure the stake president was going to say, hey, you need to go to the correct war. This isn't right. You know, And. And they completely blindsided us and said, we'd like to call you as the bishop. And you started crying. I started crying because I'm just, like,

Marlana Hughes [01:17:23] I was in shock, I think.

Adam Hughes [01:17:25] Like, I'm not ready for that responsibility. And. And I don't feel. I don't feel ready for it. And of course, they use the example of Joseph Smith and said, well, he was 14 when he was called, so, you know, you can do this. You're. You're double his age. You're 28. And. And so, of course, I mean, again, leaning heavily on my patriarchal blessing. My patriarchal blessing said to accept every calling, and not only to accept every calling, but to accept every calling with joyfully, and to do it joyfully. So is. I mean, which, yeah, then again, maybe not the most healthiest advice for me in terms of my own autonomy and my own personal health and being a complete and whole adult and being able to make my own decisions now, thinking that God has commanded me that I have to do everything the church tells me, My patriarchal blessing even says to follow the advice and counsel of my leaders in anything they call me to do. So I took that very literally again. And so, of course, I said, okay, I'll do it if you really need me to do it. And so my very first Sunday in the ward that I was being called bishop to was my first Sunday attending that ward. And we maybe knew a few people in that ward because it was a smaller town, but it was very weird sitting in sacrament meeting that day, not knowing anybody. And the state president stands up and says, okay, well, Brother Hughes is being called as the new bishop. And everyone turns to look at me and it's like, well, who's this guy? So that was odd. And, you know, I don't know if I'd. If I'd say too much about that experience. I served for two years. We loved the people. The people were outstanding. And actually, I really loved serving there. We have a lot of Navajo friends and still maintain contact with them on Facebook and just outstanding people. And I loved being able to be of service as to the extent that I was able to. Now, with that being said, it was very challenging because the activity rates there just. I'm going to be completely blunt, the activity rates there are kind of like what you'd find in. In Guatemala. So the ward that I was in had 1100 members, and we had maybe 90 people attending sacrament meeting. There was a Lot of financial need. And I was completely overwhelmed with requests for financial help, assistance through the church, fast offerings, assistance. And I was just completely overwhelmed. The priesthood is not deep, and the church says you've got to have priesthood to run the church. That's just the way they've. You know, that's the way that it's been created. And it was really challenging from a staffing point of view, from an organizational point of view, and there just wasn't a lot of support from the state presidency. Our state covered a very wide area, a large area on the Navajo Nation. And I mean, without being disrespectful, it's not too far off to say that I felt like they handed me the handbook, set me apart, and said, good luck. We'll talk to you soon. And that was just up. It was up to me to figure it out from that point on. Most of the bishops who served in that ward before me, I think the three bishops prior all served for two years and got burned out to the point where they. They. They were out. And. And I can say the same. It took about two years, and I was. I was exhausted. And so we should.

Marlana Hughes [01:21:03] You should say we moved. So we. It's a hard area to live, and our friends were moving, and we ended up moving to Alaska from there.

Adam Hughes [01:21:10] It's extremely remote. Extreme, extremely remote. And that was a hardship from day one. Marlena asked me every single day where we live there, when can we leave. And the public health service that I work for is a uniformed service. I won't go into too many details, but as a. As a uniformed officer of the government, they could kind of move me when they want. But after having been there for a couple of years and after being bishop for a couple years, I. I asked and applied for it and. And was seeking to get out. And part of that was because I was exhausted and I was overwhelmed in my current calling. And then when I did leave. Well, okay, one story.

John Dehlin [01:21:47] Wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we talk about leaving, I want to talk about you being bishop. Is that okay?

Adam Hughes [01:21:52] Yeah. Yeah, go ahead.

Serving on the Navajo Reservation

John Dehlin [01:21:53] Okay, so first of all, those of you who are my age. I'm 51. It's 2020. When I was growing up, Spence W. Kimball was the prophet of the church. And anyone who knows Spencer W. Kimball, every prophet's kind of got their hammer that they pound the membership with. And the main hammer that Spanish W. Kimball hammered the membership with was with. Was with the Lamanites. Right. It was the Native Americans, how, you know, the main purpose of the church is to, you know, lift the Lamanites, to make them blossom as a rose, to help them become white and delightsome and strong and healthy. And that's all rooted in the Book of Mormon. If you read the title page of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith said that the Book of Mormon was written primarily for the Lamanites. And when I say Lamanites for those who aren't Mormon, I mean Native Americans. The idea was that the Native Americans were the pure blood of Israel because Lehi and Nephi came over on the boat from Israel, came to America, brought the pure blood of Israel with them, built up these populations. The, the dark Lamanites, the bad dark Lamanites, you know, were cursed with dark skin because of their wickedness. They killed off the light white, you know, Nephites, and then they fell into savagery. And of course, that's all problematic because it was based on the mound builder myths of the 19th century that was all over New York. And Joseph Smith just sort of absorbed that into the Book of Mormon. But aside from the fact that that was super racist and totally false, but it's in the Book of Mormon, and that's how we all grew up. And so with Spencer W. Kimball hammering on that, Lamanites were super special, super important. And this. So in the 60s, 70s, 80s, you would have this Lamanite placement program where the church would take Lamanite children, Lamanite children, out of their homes, with their families, out of the reservation, place them into adoption, into white Utah and Arizona Mormon homes, Idaho. Raise those kids with whiteness, you know, take them away from their culture, teach them good, good English, teach them how to be refined, teach them good morality, teach them the white American ways that are the true Mormon good ways. And in that way, we were going to help lift up these royal blood of Israel people and have them reach their full potential. And that was just like such a huge focus in the 60s, 70s and 80s. BYU had the laymanite generation, which was like the young ambassadors, but it was Lamanites. And, you know, the Hawaii Cultural Center, Polynesian Cultural center, you know, and it was just like, we love Lamanites, Rah, rah, rah, Lamanites. And somehow at some point that all died. And so I give that as a history, just for those who don't know about that history. And of course, many now view that whole program as cultural genocide. There's a lot of abuse that went on, ripping people from their families, stripping them of their culture, all the cultural imperialism, all sorts of problems with that. I Give that background. Because now I want to ask you, Adam, how much of that did you know when you were being called to be bishop over, you know, award that or a branch that covered a reservation, and whether or not you knew anything about that. Talk to us about your ideas about the Book of Mormon and about dark skin and about Lamanites and Native Americans and how that informed how you approached being a bishop.

Adam Hughes [01:25:32] Yeah, so, I mean, maybe the summary would be to say that I just adopted the church's position on all of that. So, I mean, I believe that the Navajo were of the Lamanites. And actually, though I had read a book that was done by an anthropologist that claimed that, well, the Navajo, their language is similar to the Athabascan tribes of Alaska, and that most likely in the Navajo are recent newcomers. I think historians and anthropologists would say they've only been in the region, in that Four Corners region of Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico for maybe 400 years. Whereas, like the Hopi, which are in that same vicinity, they've been there for 2000 years and have some of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements, United States. So. So it was interesting because I remember asking Navajo members of my ward, what is your take on this? Are you Laymanites? Are you really actually related to the Mongolians and to the Athabascans of Alaska and you migrated down only 400 years ago? What's your take on it? And they, I mean, they all really firmly believed that they were Lamanites. I didn't meet a single one who would agree that they were really Athabascans or, you know, used to be part of Mongolia 5, 600 years ago or however long it was. So they all very much believe that. And we're very proud to be Lamanites because the promises of the Book of Mormon are to them. The promises in the Book of Mormon even state that, you know, if the Gentiles, which is supposedly, you know, the non natives that came here to this land, if the Gentiles don't accept the gospel and live it and become Christian, then the Lamanites are going to go through and tear them apart and this will be their land forever, and no one's going to come on it. So. So they were very proud of that and very much believed it and took it to heart, and it was because of the Indian. I didn't know much about the Indian placement program before I was bishop, but then after I was there, I kind of learned more about it, kind of learned how it worked. You know, there's all the Members that I knew that went on it spoke highly of it. None of them. None of them regretted having done it. But it is because of the Indian placement program that Tuba City had two boards. This is the city that we lived in, was called Tuba City. And so there was two boards of 1100 people, 2,200 people, and yet about 180 active members. And it was because so many teens had been put on this Indian placement program, but it didn't stick for whatever reason. And so now you've got these massive wards. We really only had enough active members to be one ward, but it was unmanageable to have 2,200 members in one ward. So. So it had been split. We had two boards, two bishops, but they were very str. The ward struggled because of their. Their size.

John Dehlin [01:28:32] Yeah, so. So lots of comments from listeners. Cal Tingy writes. My uncle Dale Tingy was a mission president for the Navajo Mission and then went on to run the American Indian services at byu. Thanks for tuning in, Cal. Sounds like you probably got some stories as well. Several people are asking what city you lived in again, or what city was the ward in?

Adam Hughes [01:28:59] Tuba City. It's a tuba. Yeah, tuba. And it was actually originally a Mormon settlement. So before. I don't remember the date, I think it was maybe in the early 1900s. The federal government extended the Navajo reservation boundaries, but Tuba City was originally a Mormon settlement. There's still a little Mormon graveyard in the vicinity. And when the federal government extended the reservation boundaries, then I don't remember if they bought out the Mormon settlers or not, but the Mormon settlers were pushed out and went elsewhere. But there's some deep history there. If you ever read the biography of Jacob Hamblin, he came through the area, and I believe he started the original settlement there. Jacob Hamlin was kind of more of a famous Mormon pioneer. So, yeah, there's some deep Mormon history there, and there's a lot of pride among the members of their heritage and of that Mormon heritage in the area.

John Dehlin [01:29:57] Cal also asks if you had ever heard of George P. Lee while you were there, and if so, what. What you had heard about him.

Adam Hughes [01:30:04] Okay, so George P. Lee, I don't know a lot about him. He was a general authority. Now, if I remember right, he was Native American, correct?

John Dehlin [01:30:12] Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Adam Hughes [01:30:13] Okay, so Navajo.

John Dehlin [01:30:15] I'm gonna Google it. Keep talking.

Adam Hughes [01:30:17] Yeah, I believe he was Navajo. So I had a co worker who I became really close friends with who was Navajo, and this guy said, oh, John P. Lee. Or. Yeah, John P. Lee.

Marlana Hughes [01:30:27] Right.

Adam Hughes [01:30:27] I get the name.

Marlana Hughes [01:30:27] Right.

Adam Hughes [01:30:28] He was my George P. Lee. Excuse me, George P. Lee. So George, he says, oh, George was my high school principal. And he said that guy had some amazing talents. He was an amazing public speaker, he was motivational and he didn't have, he had a lot of great things to say about George P. Lee. But this guy also knew that he'd been high up in the Mormon Church and then I believe, excommunicated. I want to say it was maybe under allegations of abuse maybe.

John Dehlin [01:30:57] Yeah, that's right.

Adam Hughes [01:30:58] Yeah. So. But people didn't talk about him. I, after I heard the story from my co worker, I asked around to some of the old time members and said, what do you know about George P. Lee? And, and if I remember correctly, now this is 12, 13 years ago. But if I remember correctly, one people didn't want to talk about it. Two people said, well, George P. Lee was just an outstanding guy and it was, it's really sad what happened to him. So almost as if it wasn't his fault or maybe some disbelief that, that, that the allegations were true because they'd known him and it sounds like he was very charismatic leader and, and maybe there was a lot of hopes placed on him as the first Native American General authority.

John Dehlin [01:31:35] Yeah. And I'm just, I'm going to read just a tiny bit from his bio because I. It's a story that we don't know and you know, we shouldn't forget stuff like this. So just a couple things about him. He graduated from high school, was a Navajo, served as a missionary to the Navajo Nation, was called the Southwest Indian Mission at the time, became called as a general authority on October 3rd, 1975. He was 32 years old at the time, so that's super young. And he was the first Native American General authority. And he was a general authority for from 1975 to 1989. So that's 14 years. That's a long time to be a general authority. And it says here on 9-1-1989. So that's the same year he was released. He was excommunicated, it says for apostasy and other conduct unbecoming a member of the church. He was the first general authority to be excommunicated since Richard Lyman in 1943, which we talked about during my Shannon Caldwell Montez interview about the B.H. roberts stuff. But first general authorities since the 1943 to be excommunicated. And you know, some say it had to do with abuse, some say it had to do with, with abuse of a Of a, of a young girl, you know, so, so it's kind of always weird when somebody called as a, as a high level ranking general authority or a bishop or stake president, whatever, you find out they were child molester. That's not a good thing. And he, it sounds like he admitted it, but it's also true that he lost his faith. So, you know, it's kind of interesting Whenever a Mormon general 40 or top leader loses their faith, you wonder how that can happen. But I guess even the very elect shall be deceived.

Adam Hughes [01:33:50] Right, Right, We've heard that one recently.

John Dehlin [01:33:55] So anyway, that's George P. Lee. Really quickly, as you were, as you were working, you know, your faith crisis came a lot later as you were working with these Navajo members. Did you ever hear about the DNA problems with the Book of Mormon? The anachronisms, you know, just the Bering Strait, you know, did you have any doubts about whether these, these people were, were truly Lamanites?

Adam Hughes [01:34:23] I never heard of any of the issues. Oh, well, I will mention it was while I was in Tuba City that I'd heard. First heard of Simon Southrington. He's the geneticist that was Mormon from Australia that published the book. And I remember reading a news article somewhere. I saw a news article that he'd been excommunicated. And that actually really bothered me as I read that was probably the first doctrinal issue in my entire life that had ever bothered me was reading Simon Southernton's and I just read a news article about it. I didn't read his book, but just reading this Mormon geneticist had come to the conclusion that there was no way the Book of Mormon could have happened because the DNA science just absolutely does not back any of it up. And he's, he's been on Mormon stories. I listened to that. I think he did like a panel with Simon and, and he talked at length about that and does a good job of laying out the science of why there's just no way that, that the genetic variety that we see today could have come from a handful of people only 2,000 years ago.

John Dehlin [01:35:30] Yeah. Okay, so that was maybe a little crack that developed for you.

Adam Hughes [01:35:34] Yeah, but I mean that just came from reading the news that didn't come from serving at the time.

Marlana Hughes [01:35:39] But what about that guy that lived that told you the Hopies had the same. That was kind of one for me. It started to think like, yeah, you can explain it.

Adam Hughes [01:35:48] Okay, so. So our ward had a few Hopi members in, in our ward, even though it was mostly Navajo The Hopi reservation is just right to the south of where we were living. And the Hopis have a lot of oral traditions that somewhat match up with Book of Mormon stories. And so without going into too much detail, to me, that was very confirming at the time, it was faith promoting. It was very faith promoting for the Hopi members of our board. Now that I've learned, you know, it was only through this faith crisis and as I started research that I realized that a lot of those oral traditions go, they predate Joseph Smith. I thought that I was stumbling onto things that very few people in the world would even know about and didn't realize that some of these oral traditions about, you know, a great war or about, you know, light skinned, dark skinned natives fighting against each other, I didn't, I didn't realize that some of those stories might, might predate Joseph Smith himself.

John Dehlin [01:36:53] Yeah, for sure. So overall, how, how were the Lamanites blossoming while you were working with them? Were they blossoming as a rose? Were they growing white and delightsome as had been prophesied? Was the church, was it a vibrant ward with super faithful? Because the truth is, Kimball died. And when Kimball died, the church's focus on the Lamanites seems to have also died. So what was the status of the blossoming as a rose and the white and delightsome evolving Native Americans by the time you were working with them?

Adam Hughes [01:37:34] Yeah, I mean, at the risk of offending my Native American friends, and I hope I don't do that, but the church still very much struggles on the reservations and it's just a difficult environment. And, and some of that is of no fault of their own. Some of that is because I, I've worked with Native American tribes for 20 years or 16 years now. Excuse me. Part of the, the reservation system that the federal government set up just is dysfunctional. It doesn't work well for the natives themselves. And part of that forces a lot of Native Americans to leave. That leaves a lot of the leadership positions unfilled. That forces a continual revolving door with people leaving, people coming back home, people leaving again, either looking for opportunities, better opportunities off the reservation or coming back home later in life to take care of their parents. It creates a lot of instability. And so I would definitely not say that the church is thriving or blossoming as a rose. And you know, the light skinned stuff about becoming white and delightsome, I mean, it's almost, it almost seems disrespectful to even talk about that because it's such a ridiculous theory that people are going to turn. Their skin color is going to turn white. But I mean, that is what it is. People's skin color is what it is. And so I'm not even sure how to answer that one. But, I mean, well, was their skin

John Dehlin [01:39:09] turning white and delightsome?

Adam Hughes [01:39:12] Well, I would say no, because, you know, their. Their genetic makeup is what it is, and. And so their skin color is what it is. And. And I would say no.

Marlana Hughes [01:39:23] I think it's hard for them, though, as Native Americans and being Mormon, just between their culture and Mormonism. You could see the struggle between the. The two. Staying in their culture, but staying in Mormonism, if that makes sense. It was completely different.

Adam Hughes [01:39:42] And again, no disrespect to members who are Native American or our friends that still live there, but it's very similar to what I experienced in Mexico. You know, a lot of members, low activity rate, and even the people who do join the church in Mexico have a very hard time separating the Catholicism and the. You know, it's almost a mystical version of Catholicism that's mixed in with native traditions. And it's hard to ever get them to fully abandon that because it is ingrained. It's probably been their religion and their way of thinking for so many years. You know, the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico, and. And for Navajos, it's the same way. It's hard to let go of that. So a lot of them still have one foot in Mormonism and one foot in the native traditions and the ceremonies and beliefs that they had and that their family still has. So, yeah, it's difficult for them to leave.

John Dehlin [01:40:40] Yeah. Yeah. And really, that's one of the hardest things, is that I've been reading about this. This mound builder myth that emerged in the 1600s, 1700s, purely because we were. We were killing. We were committing genocide on Native Americans and stealing their land. So we had to dehumanize them. Because you can't commit genocide on the people that you think are people. You have to make them subhuman. But then they would find all these ruins and all these beautiful mounds and all this art, and. And they're like, well, surely these savages couldn't have created all this great stuff. So there must have been a white race that created all this stuff that got killed off by these savages. And those who are listening, I'm. I'm saying savages and air quotes because I know that's an offensive term. And so we go on to steal their land, displace them, kill them, kill millions of them, just by the germs we brought over and isolate them and push them away and demonize them and that type. You know, before we came on this land, they were these thriving advanced civilizations. They had better agriculture than Europe did and a lot of better art and just really advanced civilizations. They had written language, they had calendars. Not every white civilization had, you know, calendars and written languages by the time, you know, the Mayans or Aztecs did. So these were advanced civilizations, but we decimated them and left them as they are oftentimes now. And they're just reeling from the years and years and years of multi generational trauma. But then you've got the church that's this white constitution loving, flag waving American church and they're angry at America and they were mistreated by white Europeans and yet the church is like rah, rah, Constitution, America, whiteness, yay. Darkness no come be like us. And so I can only imagine the cognitive dissonance again, just like Latin Americans of like. Well, they can provide community, they can provide structure, maybe they can provide financial resources or support or meaning or education. And it's a super racist church that is part of this whole cultural imperialism that's wrecked us. So how in the world is that going to end up good for, for them, you know, in the long run?

Adam Hughes [01:43:11] Right, right. And I would agree with everything you just said. Yeah, at the time I didn't see it, but now I see it that, yeah, that imperialism has not been good for them. And it's, it's sad that the church comes in and tells them this is your true identity and your true culture is what's in the Book of Mormon. And yet as well, you know, as we can talk about later, you know, the Book of Mormon itself doesn't stand up to any type of investigation, you know, or factual investigation. So it's really a crime to come in and tell them your culture is invalid, your culture is not good, it's actually bad for you and you've got to leave it behind and adopt this culture that was written by some guy. Joseph Smith, author and proprietor, Book of Mormon from, from the Americas. And you got to try and be more like the, the white folk. So it's sad.

John Dehlin [01:44:15] Yeah. A couple comments that are really important. The first one, MG Mill W writes, I am a First nations person. I should probably be saying first nations and not Native Americans. So there's one, one mistake I'm making. Thank you MG for educating me even though that's not your job. But MG Goes on to write. Your comments and laughter are making me Uneasy just the way racism makes me when white people denigrate us. And I'm, I'm thank you for that feedback. I'm so sorry. If you're talking to me, we don't I, we mean no disrespect. In fact, the opposite. What we're intending to say is that we have done so many bad things as white, European, you know, Americans to your people. And I am so mad and uneasy with Mormon racism and Mormon teachings about skin color in the Book of Mormon and all these teachings from Spence W. Kimball and the Lamanite displacement, you know, Lamanite placement program and all that stuff. So I laugh at tragedy. It's a weird, unhealthy tendency of mine, and I do not mean it at your expense. MG so thank you for writing in and sharing that with us. I'll just add a couple other perspectives. Cal writes, Lamanites have a difficult they have the Native American culture, so that's the culture they come from, the white man's culture when they go to work and then all the LDS culture. So they're having to navigate, you know, three different, at least three different cultures. And that's, that's super hard as well. So also, Heather writes, my grew up in Flagstaff, Arizona. My dad always had sort of an obsession, fascination with the Navajo and Hopi Indians being Lamanites and studied their symbols and stories of their gods. Thank you for sharing that, Heather, as well. Okay. Any. So, so this was all just to say the church is way too racist. It still is too racist. The Book of Mormon is racist, Mormon history is racist, and the Indian placement program was racist and just way too much racism, blah, blah, blah. It's awful. And you were swimming in the middle of all that. Anything else you want to say about, you know, being being in that mission, being a bishop over a Navajo ward that you think is important here?

Racism in Church Teachings and Native Communities

Adam Hughes [01:46:44] I just want to reiterate what I started out with. And, and again, the only thing that the only time so far that I've started to get choked up is talking about the friendships that we formed there and how much we absolutely love the people. Marlena served in various callings in, in the ward while we were there during that four years and created some very strong friendships with people from their teens all the way up into their 80s that kept in communication with us and still do communicate with us. And we absolutely love the Navajo people and the Hopi people and the Hopi people.

Marlana Hughes [01:47:17] They took us in as family because not all white people are accepted and we were part of their family when we left. And that's what I think. I didn't want to hope we're not being insensitive to that either, because that's what I was saying. It's hard for them, and it's hard to watch that when they're trying to live this culture of the LDS culture, white culture, and then they're still trying to be involved in their culture, the Native American culture, which they should. And I want to say Elder Holland came. I mean, they're still receiving that message. He came and spoke to them in 2008.

Adam Hughes [01:47:53] He did a special conference, and very

Marlana Hughes [01:47:54] much still saying, you're the Lamanites, you're the chosen people.

John Dehlin [01:47:58] Yeah.

Adam Hughes [01:47:58] Telling that there would be a temple built in their midst soon, which was built up maybe unrealistic expectations, I mean, considering how strong the church is at now, or not strong, that telling them the temple was going to be built soon in their midst was maybe setting up people for disappointment. But.

Marlana Hughes [01:48:18] But again, I think it was based on their faithfulness. I'm sure he said so, but.

Adam Hughes [01:48:23] Yeah, I just wanted to reiterate how much we love them. And. And I actually was a little concerned about this portion of the interview and how to explain that, because I don't want to come off as disrespectful or anything. I'm trying to be realistic about how my experience was there at the same time honoring the friendships that we had and the amazing people that we met while we were there.

John Dehlin [01:48:47] So, really quickly, two things. I want to just make it really clear for those who don't know, the part about the Book of Mormon that says that. That current Native Americans are descendants of, you know, Lehi and Nephi and Layman and Lemuel, who come from Israel. That has all been proven scientifically to be 100% false. Native Americans came to north, south and Central America through the Bering Strait from Asia, and. And DNA evidence, cultural evidence, anthropological evidence, linguistic evidence, all of it proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt. That's why the Church had to change the title page of the Book of Mormon. That's why the Church changed the name of Lamanite generation to something else. That's why the Church ultimately has abandoned their support of the Lamanites and tries not to talk about it anymore, at least publicly, because a core fundamental premise of the Mormon Church in the Book of Mormon has scientifically been proven to be bankrupt and completely false. So I just want to make sure we say that. And so that's a big problem. And so the church Tries to ignore it. But the other thing I want to do is just ask you guys to say what you loved about these people. So each of you take. Because we've talked about the tragedy, we've talked about the hardship, but you guys are getting emotional. Can each of you just describe three to five traits or experiences or characteristics of these people? Where you learned, where you were inspired, where you were humbled or taught, or you experienced amazing joy and, and, and humanity.

Adam Hughes [01:50:30] I, I think for me it was just their warmth that these are very warm people and, you know, once they get to know you, they will wrap their arms around you and, and make you part of their community. And, and that's the best way I can explain it. Just very great down to earth people, they're trying their hardest to live their best lives and, and they, they just love people.

John Dehlin [01:50:57] They.

Adam Hughes [01:50:58] Yeah, we just felt completely accepted there.

Marlana Hughes [01:51:01] Yeah, I was gonna say totally accepted.

Adam Hughes [01:51:04] Our, Our children accepted.

Marlana Hughes [01:51:07] So accepted. I mean, I think there was. I don't know how to say it other. Except my son is very white, very blonde haired. But he would tell kids that his dad was Navajo because he wanted to be part of the culture. He went to school there. That's where he started school. But he had. Not everyone has a great experience with kids and going to school there and, and in the community. But those people accepted us for whatever reason and became our family. When we did move away, I was taken back by.

Adam Hughes [01:51:42] Oh yeah, the outpouring of support that they showed us how much when we

Marlana Hughes [01:51:46] were going to leave, how much they were going to miss us and we were going to miss them. And yeah, it was like leaving. We became so close to those people. I think it's because of where we're, the location and the people and we relied on each other so much and yeah, the love and friendship. I mean, there was nothing they wouldn't do for us and then we wouldn't do for them.

John Dehlin [01:52:07] Okay, thank you for that. Really quickly, this is a comment question for you. Marlena Christina writes, I've always been surprised at how willing wives are to support their husbands being a bishop when they have young families. When we had young kids, my husband worked full time and was in school full time. I was alone with the kids a lot. I remember telling him that if he were to be called as a bishop or any calling that took a lot of time away, I absolutely would not support. Never happened, thankfully. But I wouldn't have been okay with it. I know that's against everything the church teaches. Marlena. What's that like to have your husband super busy, not just as a bishop, but in a super high demanding ward with really challenging economic and social kind of challenges. Was that a burden on you? Was that healthy and happy for you? Not so bad?

The Weight of Serving as Bishop and His Wife

Marlana Hughes [01:53:03] No, that was definitely hard. He was, again, like Adam said, he'll. I'm gonna get emotional. I don't know why. Adam will do anything, and he will serve those people and be in his callings, and he'll give 110%. And I'm a selfish wife also. I want to. I mean, even when it would come to general conference and priesthood session, you know, when we were first married, I'm like, I don't need to go. Just stay home with me kind of stuff. So I supported them as best I could. There was definitely hard days. I remember sitting in Sacrament. I think we only had three kids, and I don't know if I was pregnant at the time with her fourth breaking down, you know, he's up on the stand and I just start bawling, probably because I couldn't handle all the kids at once. But again, speaking of, you know, a lady. And Liz came up and helped me, you know, and. And took over. But the hardest thing was Adam was either marrying someone every Saturday or doing a funeral for someone. So not only was he gone every Sunday, he was pretty much gone every Saturday doing that. And again, not every Saturday, but a lot of Saturdays. So he was serving those people and helping them. And it was hard because he wasn't always there and the kids were young and. Yeah, it was really. There were some hard times. There was some really hard times. And again, maybe it's why I finally was like, we got to get out of here, because I can't take anymore. And I felt selfish about that. But. Yeah, but again, you're telling yourself we're getting blessings for this, and that's what he's supposed to do. And we're gonna. You know, we're gonna do it. So that's. That's what we did.

Adam Hughes [01:54:49] That's a good segue, John, into. One thing I wanted to mention was it was hard. We had such little kids. And I could see how much Marlena struggled with juggling all those demands because I was gone almost all day Sunday. Like she said, I was gone a lot of Saturdays. And, you know, when we take the youth to the temple, the temple was in Snowflake, Arizona, which is like, what, three hours, maybe one way. So that's an all day trip on a Saturday to take the youth to the temple. And I could See how much she was struggling, and she would be vocal about it and say, hey, this is hard. Can you maybe, like, not go to their bishopric training? Do you really need to go to that? It's just an hour meeting. They're not going to miss you. There's, you know, there's other bishops there. They won't even notice you're not there. And. And so she'd say, you know, hey, I'm really struggling tonight. Can you just help stay home and help me. And I could feel that tension. And so when I was leaving, they also. They were also replacing the state president at the time. And there was 270 general authorities who came around to interview. And I said, well, I'm. I'm leaving. I've already got, you know, government paperwork to move to my next location, so there's no reason to interview me. But they said, no, we still want to interview you. So that these 270 sat me down in a room in the church, and we talked for just a few minutes, and. And I let them know right up front, well, I'm leaving, so I'm really not under consideration here. And they said, yeah, we know that, but we wanted to ask how your experience was being called as a young bishop. And I don't know if I was just on one that day, because I'm usually not very confrontational or what, but I just told them straight to their faces that I said, well, a lot of days it felt like a negative in my life, but then I put the caveat in and said, well, but I'm sure looking back on this, it'll be a good experience, and I got blessings for doing it. But the looks on their faces when I said that, one, I don't think they were expecting that, and two, they just didn't look very pleased. So the meeting ended very quickly, and they said, okay, you can go. And that was it. But I told Marlena, you know, from that time on, maybe I just felt guilt of having left without doing the full five years that's expected or, you know, kind of unwritten expectation, or if it was because I felt guilty about, you know, not being grateful for this opportunity and not being joyous about it, that I felt like I was under a little bit of a black cloud. It was probably just all imagined. But I felt funny the way I left, and because it was hard, and I was honest about that. I knew it was hard, and I knew it was hard on Marlena, and I felt bad for being honest about it, but at the same time, I didn't want to lie to him about it. So I guess that's. That is what it is.

John Dehlin [01:57:19] But one last question then. I want to get to your kind of faith crisis stuff. Mormons believe that their bishops really are God's representative in their congregation. And they assume that bishops, when they make a calling, that the calling is inspired of God, that when they give counsel, you know, the church teaches, whether it's by, you know, God's voice or by the voice of his servants, meaning the bishops or the stake presidents or the general authorities, it's the same. In other words, bishops speak for God. And not every Mormon believes this, but there are a lot that, that sort of do believe that, that if a bishop tells you to do something, if, if a bishop makes a calling, you say yes. Like you said, Marlena, you say yes because the bishop is speaking for God kind of thing. Once you're sitting in the bishop's seat, Adam, is it different? And were you disappointed or surprised or did it all work as you expected?

Adam Hughes [01:58:23] I think for me, it wasn't too shocking because I'd been a missionary, I'd been in other leadership callings, even all the way down to deacons quorum president. And so it was no different than being deacons quorum president. I remember being deacons quorum president and getting down on my knees and being told, well, you gotta find two counselors, pray about it, make sure you get a confirmation. And getting down on my knees as a 12 year old and praying about it and just not feeling anything. And. And you just eventually got to make a decision because the bishop's gonna want to know on Sunday who you're going to call.

John Dehlin [01:58:51] And.

Adam Hughes [01:58:51] And it was the same, you know, again, no disrespect, but it was the same as being a bishop. Brand new bishop. You got lots, you got a bunch of callings to fill, and you can get down on your knees and start praying even about who's who your counselors are going to be. And 20 minutes into it, you know, praying, you're just like, the Lord's not making this obvious to me. So I guess he just wants me to use my best judgment. So you just use your best judgment. And you know, I was just, just recently released as executive secretary and my most recent calling. And that's the same way it was in this current ward. So I don't think I was any different than any other bishop that you got a lot of stuff to do and you don't have time to go out in the woods and pray like Enos did for an entire day to try and get your confirmation on every single calling. So by and large, 99% of the time, the bishop's just making rapid fire decisions based on gut intuition or based on, well, I'm pretty sure that person is going to do okay in that calling or, or can deal with the workload at that time in their life. So a lot of it's just common sense and intuition and, and I mean, I'm sure most bishops pray about these callings, but again, it boils down to maybe people are way more spiritual than I am and get spiritual confirmations. But no, for the most part, it's just, you just got to make a decision and move on.

Marlana Hughes [02:00:09] But this was a big part for me, I think. What's. When my. I don't know if I had a shelf I was putting stuff on because I just took everything for what it was. But I. We lived in Flagstaff before we moved to, actually to Tuba City. And I had been asked to be released from a calling in nursery. I had little kids. It was hard. I didn't want to be there. I'd had some surgeries, different things. Um, and Adam didn't love that I asked to be released. And I'm like, you want me to come to church or do you want me to, you know, be happy here or not? It was not fulfilling. So I asked for you released. I didn't think that was a bad thing. So when he became bishop and I saw how it kind of worked a little bit. In fact, at one point, I was young women's president. Well, he was bishop. We had little kids at home. He would end up staying home on Wednesday nights so I could go to the church and be with the youth so he could stay home with our kids. Or sometimes we'd go together and it was fine and it worked out at the time, but it just made me realize like, okay, this isn't exactly how it works. They're just putting people sometimes. I mean, and maybe you prayed about the bigger callings, like really society, president and different things. But then I, yeah, that was a big one for me. That I'm like, oh, these are not. Because they'll use that line of where this is where God wants you and they'll help you grow. And you just realize like, no, that's not always true.

Adam Hughes [02:01:27] So it's a lot of just, you've got a need who, who doesn't have a calling right now, okay, put that person in that calling solved, move on.

Marlana Hughes [02:01:33] And then I asked to be released from A few callings later. And after that, years. A couple years later, that.

John Dehlin [02:01:42] Yeah, okay. Well, okay. And so.

Marlana Hughes [02:01:47] But.

John Dehlin [02:01:47] But it's safe to say that, Adam, you. You weren't channeling God as a bishop. You were just coming up with the best ideas and suggestions you could, right?

Adam Hughes [02:01:57] Yeah, very much so. I mean, there's times when you're talking with someone. I always. I like talking with people one on one. There's times when you're talking with people and the words just seem like they're flowing out of your mouth. And I thought. I completely ascribed all that to God and thought, okay, well, this is the Holy Ghost or God speaking through me to this person. And, you know, what's interesting, just even in general terms about stepping back from the church, is you realize that none of that went away. You know, you can. You can walk away from all of it, and God's blessings don't stop pouring into your life, and your talent, your natural talents and abilities don't go away. So I. I now see that, you know, maybe a lot of that I ascribe to God was just me connecting with another human being and having a good conversation with them.

John Dehlin [02:02:42] Right? Yeah. Okay. And this is a question that maybe some will find odd, but I have to ask it. I talked to Sam Young about this when he was bishop. Bishops are in the position of enforcing the law of chastity and enforcing things like, you know, porn and masturbation on the youth and on the adults. But I imagine bishops are human too, right? Absolutely. And so anything you want to either directly or indirectly say about that so that we can understand that these people who sit as judges and in even deciding the fate of whether someone goes on a mission or whether they get married in the temple or whether they get a temple recommend, have their own secrets and their own sins that they're holding and hiding, but also, you know, being in the position of judging others and enforcing rules, you know what I'm asking?

Difficult Aspects of the Bishop's Role

Adam Hughes [02:03:42] I understand exactly what you're asking. So, you know, I'm just gonna be really blunt and. And let you know that, you know, what I said about trying to. Trying to deal, you know, with just normal human sexuality that never. I've said it earlier in the interview, that never goes away. And, you know, even as a bishop, you're still dealing with that in your own life. And it's been so therapeutic to listen to some of your episodes and Natasha Helfer's episodes, you know, to learn that. That, you know, we're not broken just because we still experience human Sexuality. And I guess the best way to answer your question is just directly and say that. Yeah, that was, that was still a struggle for me. It's been a struggle on and off, on and off throughout my whole entire life. And, and now I guess the gift is I don't even see that as a struggle. I see that as a normal human experience to, to masturbate, to. To have an erotic side of your life. And whether you're, You're. You're sharing that eroticism with your significant other or whether you're experiencing that by yourself, you know, so. But that was, that was. That was an interesting experience. And I think I was very lenient on the folks who came in and talked to me about pornography and masturbation, because I had. I mean, this was an ongoing thing in my entire life, you know, for my entire life. And there was something I had written down. I can't remember it now because I, I thought of a good way to explain this. But, you know, I think. I think most men, now, there's a spectrum. You know, some people don't have as much of a drive. Some people have more of a drive. So maybe not every single bishop struggles with it, but I would say on average, most. Most bishops are going to struggle with it too, because they are also human. They also have, you know, a part, a component of their soul that, that, that. That desires human connection and sexuality and eroticism. And, and at the time, that was. That was difficult to deal with in my own mind of how to process that and without feeling just overwhelming amounts of guilt and shame because of my own normal feelings. I don't know.

John Dehlin [02:06:02] Yeah, yeah. And I don't. I don't bring it up to be scandalous. It's just that so many youth and adults are spiritually and psychologically terrorized, kept from missions, kept from the temple, kept from taking the sacrament, all sorts of super shaming and embarrassing things. And so we just have to call it out that they're being oftentimes restricted and judged and punished by men who are. Who have got their own problems with the exact same thing. I just, I have to call that out and just.

Adam Hughes [02:06:39] And just to touch on that again, you know, I think that was an item on my shelf because my entire life, you know, this was something that I was grappling with and trying to understand now. Now something that helped me along the way was a Brigham Young quote who said, if you, if you sin in public, then confess in public, and if you sin in private, then. Then confess in private. But at the Same time, I still had waves or episodes throughout my life of shame and guilt surrounding what would be normal, considered normal human behavior and, you know, regarding masturbation and, and pornography or eroticism. And let me see if I can explain this, that there's real damage that's done to human beings because of that. And I just didn't realize how damaging it was to me psychologically and emotionally to constantly be told by the church that you're broken, that this is not normal, that you, you know, that the church is telling you, you know. Yeah. No one talks about it. No one knows that every other adult struggles with this. You feel alone in this, or I mean, at least most adults, you know, are going to feel this. And so there was some low points in my life and like I said, ebbs and flows and then there's times when it's not that much part of your life and there's other times that it is and sorry if I'm talking cryptically, but no, that's good. I'm just saying that there was some low points for me where I felt completely worthless, to be honest, despite all of the things I'd done and all the callings and all the service, that I felt completely worthless as a human being because this was an ongoing struggle. And I guess even while you were a bishop. Even while I was bishop, yeah.

Marlana Hughes [02:08:29] The higher calling didn't give you any more grasp over that control.

Adam Hughes [02:08:34] Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it didn't. It didn't improve things at all and.

Marlana Hughes [02:08:39] Which made the guilt even worse.

Adam Hughes [02:08:40] Yeah. So you're spot on, John. Thanks for, thanks for the perception.

John Dehlin [02:08:45] Thanks for taking a hard question and being direct. We've got a lot of great question comments coming in. I'm just gonna run over them all really quickly. We don't have time to really answer them all. Darren. Just talking about the sacrifice of a bishop. Darren writes, of course it's a sacrifice. Hard days do come in. My experience serving in the church made our family stronger. Thank you for serving them. Yeah, there are lots of benefits that come from service, Darren. And it's good and bad, like everything. And I'm glad you had that experience. Craig writes, long before my faith crisis, I've been bugged. At the time bishops take away from their families, Bishops become so addicted to feeling important. That can definitely be the be a problem. Another comment that's really worth sharing. Kristen writes, my husband was called one year ago to serve as bishop. Our stake president was aware of my faith crisis. He told us the calling was from God and looked me in the eye and told me Satan was working on women in the church to destroy families. I knew this calling was not from God. After a traumatic weekend, my husband called the stake president to tell him that we could not accept. That was a pivotal moment for me in my faith crisis. Thank you so much for sharing, Kristen. I'm so happy for you and your husband.

Marlana Hughes [02:10:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:10:06] Craig writes, John, I think you could have an entire episode about bishops and the craziness of time spent. People putting so much trust in him while not utilizing the Relief Society president or the Elders Quorum president. Yeah. Thanks for the idea, Craig. Josh writes, oh yeah. Coming to the conclusion that callings were just popularity based or random or I'll say, or just arbitrary was a shelf item for me. That's what Josh says. Donna writes. This is Donna Berry. Shout out to Donna.

Marlana Hughes [02:10:37] Hey Donna.

John Dehlin [02:10:38] Hello Tucsonites. We love Donna. She writes, that is the most shocking thing, that they just fill a spot. I always thought it was by prayer and I think she means by direct revelation. She says it kind of pisses her off now. Sorry, Donna. I think you're doing better though. Now. That's my, that's my gut. Couple other comments that are really, really good here and then we'll get to the faith crisis. Larry writes, we are a military family and during one of my husband's appointments while I was still fully active in the church, a pre deployment training class discussed how to keep the home fires burning. It was shocking and enlightening and terrifying. I think we all know what is meant by that. And yeah, it's just also kind of twisted sometimes. Let's see. I think that's all I'm going to share for now. Let's now jump to how, how does a bishop, and you know, the wife of a bishop or a strong, faithful, devout orthodox Mormon mom. How does that turn into, you know, leaving the church and losing your faith? How can the elect become deceived? How does that happen? Where, where does it begin?

Early Doubts and Problems With the Church

Adam Hughes [02:11:53] Okay, well, you want me to start? I'll start. So for me, you know, that was 12 years ago that I, that I served and, and even after that we continued to be, you know, totally believing Mormons for, for a long time. And I went on, you know, we moved to Alaska for a short period of time. We moved back to Arizona. Back in Arizona I served on a high council. We moved to Tucson eventually and throughout this time completely, all in, completely faithful. But, but things did start to build up on my shelf. So, so to use that terminology, you know, when people have doubts or something that, that concerns them. You can liken it metaphorically to putting an item, a heavy item up on a shelf and, and eventually that shelf breaks and cracks and, and everything comes crashing down. Your testimony comes crashing down. So for me, you know, just some things that started to get put on my shelf, boy, there's so many, but I don't even know if I can remember them all. But, you know, there was, there was Prop 8. We lived in Alaska during the time of Prop 8, and I didn't even know much about it. It wasn't much in my awareness. But I had a coworker come up to me who said, you know, I know, I know you're Mormon and I know you're like, you're conspicuously a Mormon, proud of it. And, and I just don't. We were close. We were actually pretty good friends. And he said, you know, I just don't understand how you can belong to a church that just seems so hateful. And I, I was like, I felt attacked. I'm like, what are you talking about? You know, our church is not hateful. But that was a little shelf item for me, you know, thinking, boy, that seemed like maybe a PR blunder on the point, on the, on the part of the church. There was, boy, I'm gonna have to just jump all over the place. Maybe not chronologically.

John Dehlin [02:13:36] Go ahead, jump all over.

Marlana Hughes [02:13:38] I want to say really quick though, is we had, we were talking about this earlier. The Prop 8 is we had four young kids still, which. And you're so involved in the church, you don't have time. I didn't agree with Prop 8, but I didn't even know much about it because you're so busy raising all those kids that they want you to have right away and in all your church things that sometimes you don't even delve into those subjects for us anyway, as much as we should have at the time.

Adam Hughes [02:14:01] So thanks. That gave me a moment to think. So chronologically. The next really big one for me was in 2015, I was reading in the deseret news of all places. It's a church owned newspaper and they were covering the Mormon leagues that, that there had been leaked videos of private meetings that the quorum of the 12 were having and that they were being briefed by a state senator from Oregon, I believe his name's Steve Smith, if I remember right.

John Dehlin [02:14:30] That's a U. S. Senator, I think.

Adam Hughes [02:14:32] U. S. Senator. Oh, a state senator. He was U. S. Senator. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:14:35] I think it was Gordon Smith.

Adam Hughes [02:14:37] Okay. And he's now, maybe so. So he was being briefed, and I thought, well, okay, you know, it's kind of underhanded that someone took these videos and posted them online. But, but the Deseret News, it's owned by the church. They're posting a link to them. I'm gonna check them out, see what's going on. And, and in the, in the one episode I watched, and I don't remember how much I even watched, but, but there comes a point where this senator is briefing them on politics and he makes a really callous joke about Democrats. And again, I've been either moderate or Democrat leaning my entire life, and that has been hard for me. I've had a lot of people throughout the years, as a teen and throughout my entire life say, well, you can't really be a good Mormon and be a Democrat, right? I mean, like, how can you, how can you make those two things work? They, they just can't work. There's no way you can do it. I mean, I've had people joke about me like, you know, well, it must be hard to get a temple recommend, right, because you associate with a, an apostate group. You affiliate or support this platform, the Democratic platform, and that's got to be. That's apostate, right? And, and not. Not. Not realizing, you know, that there are good things about both platforms or acknowledging that there might be legitimate reasons why a member of the church aligns politically with the Democrats. So my point is, is that the quorum of the 12 laughed. There was a lot of laughter in the room on this leaked video that's. I assume it's still available on the Mormon Links website where the senator said that you could classify Democrats as feminists, environmentals and other miscellaneous miscreants. So I had to look up the word miscreants. It means reprobates or low lives or criminals. And it hit me so hard because my entire life I'd been trying to convince people that, yes, you can be both. The brethren constantly say every election that you need to vote your conscience. The church doesn't align with one political party. And the amount of laughter in the room when that joke was said made me realize that again, maybe that's a facade. Maybe that's just what has to be said so that the church can keep its tax exempt status. But really, it's funny to them, the thought that, that Democrats are really just a group of misfits that are kind of weirdos. And it stung. It really stung. And I, I sat down, I penned a little thing about my thoughts because I was so angry, I wanted to clean it up and send it to the quorum of the 12. I never did. But just asking for an apology because I thought it was so atrocious. And I understand it wasn't ever meant to be leaked. It was in a private meeting. But the truth was it was leaked. And the truth is that they should have apologized for demeaning probably a quarter of the membership of the church in one senseless little joke.

John Dehlin [02:17:32] Okay, yeah, that's a big one.

Adam Hughes [02:17:34] So that, that was a big one for me. Maybe not for anybody else, but that was a big one for me. Jumping around. You know, there was the changes to the temple ceremony in 2019, which again,

LGBT Policy, Temple Changes, and BYU Controversies

Marlana Hughes [02:17:44] wait, back up to the 2015.

Adam Hughes [02:17:46] Oh, there's, there's the 2015 exclusion policy.

John Dehlin [02:17:50] That, which today, today is the five year anniversary of that infamous awful policy. Today is November 5th, 2020.

Adam Hughes [02:18:01] Yeah. And again, I, at that time was fairly aligned with the church's position on all that. But again, I felt like that was unnecessary. It felt like a PR blunder on the church's part and it felt a little reactionary because it was only days after the Supreme Court had legalized same sex marriage across the country. And I'll come back to that here in a moment when the policy was reversed. The religious freedom stuff bothered me because I remember maybe 2012 to 2020, you know, the church was really pushing the religious freedom stuff and wanted us all to get on that bandwagon. They even set up a website, I can't remember what was called bridges freedom.org or something. And I remember going on and I tried to understand it, but to me it just, it felt baseless. It felt like scare tactics that, you know, I think it was, I understand now it was well settled in case law that, that no church was going to be forced to perform gay marriages if it was against their, their conscience. But the church was really pushing this narrative that if, if we don't band together as church members and stomp this out, you know, the legalization of gay marriage, that we'll have to be performing gay marriages in our temples and, and you'll lose the right to even be able to speak your beliefs in public because it'll be termed hate speech. And I see now that. Well, I read a great book, one of the first books I read after my faith crisis started called Gay Marriage and the Mormon Church intended actions, unintended consequences, and they did a great job of laying out that.

John Dehlin [02:19:31] Greg Prince's book.

Adam Hughes [02:19:32] Yes, they did a really Outstanding job of laying out that there was already settled case law that would have protected the church. And so it really was fear mongering. And maybe I'm patting myself on the back a little bit, but I could sense at the time that it was overblown and that here we've got prophets and apostles that are kind of trying to stir up emotions and stir up these feelings of being attacked when really the church was not being attacked. And that really we were maybe the oppressors of trying to hold down this minority population with the resources that the church had. Boy, I could keep going, but yeah,

Marlana Hughes [02:20:11] I'm not to my faith crisis yet you keep going.

Adam Hughes [02:20:14] So just a couple other really quick things that bothered me. I mentioned the 2019 temple changes. I remember thinking at the time that, well, I mean, it's a great step towards a better equal, you know, so according to equality, where the women no longer have to pledge to follow their husbands and they're a little bit more on equal footing as far as how the temple treats or the temple ceremony, how it treats women and men. So it's a step in the right direction. But at the same time, for someone who understands the words of the prophets or, you know, alleged prophets literally, I'm thinking to myself, well, the ceremony had to been given word for word to Joseph Smith, right? Like someone's got it written down somewhere. And how can the church just go about it felt willy nilly to me like the church was caving to social pressure because of all the Kate Kelly stuff and all of the pressure they'd been getting from, from the women's rights groups. And so to me, I'm thinking again, this is a big item on my shelf because I'm thinking, well, if it's truth and if that's the way the temple ceremony has been for well over 100 years, why are we ashamed about that? Why aren't we just courageously standing up and saying, well, this is the way God works and this is how the ceremony was given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And if you don't like it, then don't be a part of our church. But to me, it was odd that it was changed to meet social pressures. And I mean, those kind of things start to form little cracks where you start to wonder, is there anything really truly sacred or would everything be up for negotiation depending on the politics and the social pressures that is put on the church. And that thought was important later on because as things come around and as the church does start to change on things like reversing the 2015 exclusion policy. And as the church does start to begin to change, it was just a recurring theme to me, wondering, are we really as resolute as we think we are, or does the church really bend to social pressures, even just changing the design of the garments? I think it was also 2019 that women's garments changed and the shoulder cap got shorter and I think the legs got a little shorter and the styles got a little bit better to accommodate modern clothing styles. And again, as a literal, all the

Marlana Hughes [02:22:41] changes over all the years, too.

Adam Hughes [02:22:43] Yeah, well. Well, once I started to study. Yeah. Then it really started to come out. I really started to see how the church completely keeps moving the bar and moving the line and moving things to where, you know, if Brigham Young came back to the church today, he'd think we were all apostates. All the way up the line to Russell M. Nelson, because, well, now you. Well, anyway, I'll stop there, but those were just all things on my shelf. And just really quickly, we'd had an issue in spring of 2019 with our daughter, our teen daughter, who was about to go to girls camp. And actually, this might be better explained from your viewpoint, but there was some things there with the girls being shamed and told.

Marlana Hughes [02:23:26] Well, before that, it was the honor code at byu.

Adam Hughes [02:23:29] Oh, yeah, the honor code things at byu.

Marlana Hughes [02:23:31] So the stuff at the BYU started to happen. The honor code and with the gay rights and all those things that were happening.

John Dehlin [02:23:37] Tell the listeners what that. Just summarize that for our listeners who don't know.

Marlana Hughes [02:23:40] I'm gonna let Adam summarize that because he better, and then I'll talk about it.

Adam Hughes [02:23:44] So. So that was also spring of 2019.

Marlana Hughes [02:23:47] There was. There was like, 00:19.

Adam Hughes [02:23:49] Yeah, there was a lot going on the shelf in 2019. So. So again, I never really had super warm feelings about BYU anyway. Didn't love my experience there, but. But then seeing on Instagram about how it was being exposed that BYU's honor code was so linked to their academic standards, and that if someone had a violation of a religious tenant, like, you know, trying tea or trying alcohol or trying tobacco, again, probably pretty typical things that college students are going to experiment with that I could. You know, you could be a week away from graduation and you could get reported to the honor code office, and BYU can hold your diploma that you've earned, academically earned, and not give that to you until you've met any demands that they've made. And then it just started to come to light because of the Information age and social media that the Honor Code office was abusing this. So even after folks had repented through their ecclesiastical leaders, through the bishop, that the Honor Code office was still saying, not good enough. We want you to repeat a semester. We want you to come and meet with us for six months, even after graduation. We want you to write endless essays, really groveling and explaining how horribly sad you are that you messed up in some minor way. And we will not give you your diploma until you. Until you meet our demands. And then I believe their police department.

Marlana Hughes [02:25:16] I don't even.

Adam Hughes [02:25:16] Yeah, the BYU Police Department, which is not. Should not be integrated with the Honor Code office. You know, well, okay, there's. There's still a couple other things about it.

John Dehlin [02:25:26] The.

Adam Hughes [02:25:26] The police department was found out that they were sharing information to the Honor Code office, which was not Okay. I believe they're still under investigation about losing their. I don't know what you'd call it, like, accreditation to be state law and peacekeeper or not peacekeeper. What do you call them? Peace officers. Because that was a violation of trust, of sharing information from the BYU Police Department to the Honor Code office. And then there's the BYU Title 9 office, which I don't know all the details, but I know that it's federally mandated, that schools take seriously allegations of sexual abuse or rape, and that the Honor Code office would immediately. I mean, the Title 9 office was immediately kicking people back to the Honor Code office so that, you know, if. If someone was just sexually assaulted and gets up the courage to come in and report it, then they were being kicked over to the Honor Code office. And the honor code office was saying, you know, was there alcohol at that apartment? Or was there, you know, were you doing something that any little thing that

John Dehlin [02:26:25] they could after hours, you know.

Adam Hughes [02:26:28] Exactly. You know, were you in someone's dorm that was of the opposite sex? Was there something that you were doing that led to this? And totally disregarding the absolute trauma and terror of having been sexually abused and instead saying, well, we're going to report you to your bishop and you maybe get kicked out of the university and we may take away your diploma. And you got to write now endless essays for why you're sorry for having stepped out of line.

Marlana Hughes [02:26:54] Well, that's when it really started with Instagram, when they created an account, starting to cut you off as the. They just had people start sending in all their stories and honor Code stories, Honor code stories, and how disturbing those stories were and how people.

Adam Hughes [02:27:08] Hundreds of stories were being treated and

Marlana Hughes [02:27:11] kicked out and Made, you know, they became suicidal. And there's people that were, you know, they'd have sex. And then there's the story. I think it's on the believer that Imagine Dragons did where he's going to BYU and he had sex and got kicked out. I think he self reported. And then they kicked him out for five years and he committed suicide. Like, this kind of stuff should not be happening. And there was just. And how they make you repeat the story over and over if you're, you know, rape victims. And it was appalling. It was appalling. And I was. I think we'd already convinced our kids not to go to BYU at that point, but for sure, kids shouldn't be going to college and having normal human experiences and messing up and then being shamed on top of it from the church and then on top of it from the university. And I felt for those kids, those people, the kids going there that were gonna plan to go there. And at the time, I spoke out about that quite a bit. I mean, I wanted to go right down to BYU and make T shirts and, like, you know, be whatever part of that I could. But that was a huge, huge one for me.

Adam Hughes [02:28:14] And it was sad to see that the church did as absolutely little as they could to address it. There was no apologies for the abuses that the honor code office. And they were obvious abuses. Overstepping their bounds, overstepping their authority and harming people. No apology. There was a lot of students and leaders of the movement who wrote to Russell M. Nelson, who's the. What is he? The. The trustee of the. The board for byu. Just no. No statement from church headquarters at all. There was rearrangement of the honor code office. But it just makes you begin to realize that. That maybe there's parts of our organization, our church and these church schools, that's toxic and that's not healthy. And that maybe the love that we purport to share for all human beings maybe is a little pharisaical at times that we're more worried about rules and adherences to rules and performances than we are about the human and in their spirit.

Marlana Hughes [02:29:16] Well, it's about making BYU look good, and they don't want to look bad.

John Dehlin [02:29:20] So Gerardo is asking me to ask you the question. What about the argument that you knew what you're getting into when you signed the honor code? You knew what you were getting into when you applied to byu. BYU is subsidized. Lots of people want to get there. There's a limited number of seats you can go to a state school, so you knew what you were signing up for when you signed up. And if you don't like it, you can leave. So obey or leave. What's wrong with that approach? Gerardo wants to know. Gerardo having been to byu, Idaho himself, and had his own story there.

Marlana Hughes [02:29:55] I have. My thing is that a lot of these stories, people had repented already with their bishopric, their bishop, and were cleared of that, but the honor code office. So they'd taken care of it and thought that they had taken care of it. But BYU is taking it way farther and putting on way more guilt when they had already cleared themselves through their bishop. So it was just. And, yeah, I mean, I had the same questions. They know what they're getting themselves into. But again, think if you have your own children, you're sending them to college. I don't know what kid does not have. There's not a perfect person out there. So you are having an issue with something. I'm sure. I don't know. But I. For me, I didn't think it was fair to those kids or want my own kids to go there thinking they have the guilt already, that they messed up, and then they have the extra guilt that and fear that they could be kicked out of the university, that they just spent time, money and energy to get a degree in, and they could lose all of that when they already repented with their bishop.

Adam Hughes [02:30:55] So my perspective is no one goes to BYU saying, I want to go and smoke and drink and try and get myself kicked out. So these are honest mistakes. And I think students understand. I mean, went to BYU myself, and I always assumed that the honor code office was there to help me and that they would be benevolent and that they would, you know, just work with me between me and my bishop. I mean, I never had to use the honor code office or was called in while I was there. But the level of tactics that they were going to, it just honestly felt like they were trying to destroy people's lives. It felt like unreasonable levels of punishment. So I think if. If, you know, if they were honest and upfront about it and said, hey, listen, if you end up getting raped, we're going to look for any, you know, if this was on their promotional paperwork that they send to prospective students and say, we'd love to have you come here, but if you end up getting raped and you report it, we will look for any possible reason we can to pin it back on you. We'll send you home. We might not let you come back. To the university. And guess what? Because we're a religious school, private religious school, a lot of your credits might not be transferable to another university. So good luck. I mean, if they want to be upfront and honest about it, then great. But I don't think most students realize that the honor code office was going to be so aggressive at going after them with, with such vindictiveness. Based on the stories that we were reading from all these self reported stories at honor code stories on Instagram.

Marlana Hughes [02:32:20] They were hurting more people than they were helping. And you know, if you, even if you knew what you're getting yourself into, I have a story of someone that I know closely, that had a full race scholarship, went there, you know, messed up once, but it causes them to. The way the grilling process they put you through is not something anybody should go through, no matter if you knew what you're getting into or not. So they're just pushing people out.

Staying Despite Growing Doubts

John Dehlin [02:32:51] Okay, so it sounds like over the past five years and maybe the past five to 10 years, you guys have been noticing some problems, noticing some issues and putting it on the shelf, as you say, trying to talk about it, trying to deal with it, maybe trying to resolve it, but then putting it on the shelf. But this whole time you're conceptualizing yourselves as orthodox, active, faithful Mormons, right?

Adam Hughes [02:33:20] Absolutely.

Marlana Hughes [02:33:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:22] Yeah. So how do you do that? How do you. How do I know how? Because I did it forever. But how did you do it? How? Like, what kept you from like the first problem or two? Like, whoa, this isn't true, I'm out of here. How did you keep going? Why did you keep going in spite of all the problems you're noticing? And how did you, how did you kind of reconcile all that, you know, with your faith?

Adam Hughes [02:33:51] John, I think that's, I think it's okay.

John Dehlin [02:33:53] It's okay. Just ignore it. Okay.

Marlana Hughes [02:33:57] I, we just kept doing it. I don't know.

Adam Hughes [02:34:00] Well, for me, I think, you know, it comes down to those feelings that you think, you know, you say, well, okay, the church might have some problems, might have some issues, but I felt, you know, that this is true. And I can think back to all these experiences where I felt good. And I mean, not to make a light of that, you know, if, if people are watching that, that still have a testimony of the church, but, but honestly, you know, the church teaches that those, those good feelings trump everything. And that if you've had good feelings about the Book of Mormon and the prophet and Joseph Smith, then, then you have a testimony and that that should matter more than any other, you know, little, Little thing that seems out of whack. So you just keep on going, you keep on believing. Cause it. It's always felt right.

Marlana Hughes [02:34:44] So I think u. You said it once when we were in Tuba City, he was talking to a coworker that said, I've had his friend asked if he could ever deny the church, and he said, I've had too many experiences to deny that it was true. So when this faith crisis started to happen, I mean, and I think that answers that. Like, we just had too many experience in our. In our life to go there to even, you know, that there's some issues or, you know, that there's, you know, they say, what's that saying the church is perfect and the people aren't, and different things that happen in it. And.

Adam Hughes [02:35:18] But part of that is you just

Marlana Hughes [02:35:20] kind of push it to the side still and just keep going, because that's the way back to the social kingdom.

Adam Hughes [02:35:24] Part of that is. Is the control that we're under as members of the church. And if I can speak a little freely here, you know that the church uses some tactics that might not be completely ethical in the way that they. They teach us to deal with our emotions, the way that they teach us how to interpret our feelings, the thought control and information control that we're under. And, and so a lot of that, you know, you stop those thoughts pretty quickly because you're told never to go there. There's a lot of us versus them thinking that, well, I don't want to ever end up like an unbeliever, you know, because my life would probably just unravel and I'd end up, you know, living in the gutter as a drug addict because the church is the only thing keeping me as a good person. And so there's a lot wrapped up in it that you don't feel like you can let go. You hold on really tightly because of all the indoctrination and the, the mind control. I mean, I hate to use that kind of a term, but there's. There's a lot of.

Marlana Hughes [02:36:28] It's the indoctrination.

Adam Hughes [02:36:29] There's a lot of indoctrination that. I mean, I'm talking about, like, going back to maybe 2005 or so when I read about Simon Southerton and his book and the DNA studies and, and being shocked that what the DNA evidence does in genetics does not prove the Book of Mormon. And yet you just shut it down as quickly as you can because it's uncomfortable it's cognitive dissonance when you've got two competing ideas that both can't possibly be right. And it's just where church members were taught to say, well, but I felt good when I went to seminary. I felt good on my. I felt something that I thought was God speaking to me. So I'm just going to put all that away for now.

John Dehlin [02:37:10] Yeah, yeah, they really do. With all these thought stopping techniques, with all this conditioning, with all the family connections, the fear, you know, you could have all sorts of problems and none of it has anything to do with whether the church is true or not. You don't even let yourself go there. You just keep having problems putting it on the shelf. Maybe you're happy, maybe you're super unhappy. Put that on the shelf and you're just on the train. And getting off the train just is never an option.

Adam Hughes [02:37:40] Right, right, exactly.

John Dehlin [02:37:42] So when did these. Oh, go ahead, please, Marla, please.

Marlana Hughes [02:37:45] It's not even an option to slow the train down really, you know, to even, you know, question anything that, you know, they might have got this wrong or they might have got that wrong. But, you know, as a whole, it's doing good for me. And so I'm not going to question the bigger stuff. So.

Marlana's Breaking Point and Rape Culture in the Church

John Dehlin [02:38:04] So tell us when things started really getting serious and when you actually. There's always that moment, you know, this is kind of like so many people I talk to. There's this moment where you, like, things get so hard that you're like, wait a minute, is it possible the church isn't true? Is it possible the church isn't what it claims to be? And you can go 20, 40 year, 50, 70 years and you never allow yourself to actually ask that question. But for so many people, things build and build and build to the point where you, like all of a sudden one day it's like, wait a minute, there's one option that explains all this stuff. There's one answer, there's one question that, that if answered in the negative, explains everything on that shelf. Whereas if I try and actually maintain the belief that the church is true and have all those things on my shelf, I'm twisting myself in complete pretzels. So which of you was the first to ask that question? And what were. What were the circumstances that led to that moment?

Adam Hughes [02:39:20] Okay, so I would say for me, my. Mine was the first. My crack. My shelf cracked first. And, and so again, just a little. Just a real quick background through 2019. Like I said, that was a rough year. There was a lot of things heavy Items going on my shelf. And one of those was my daughter going to girls camp. And my wife went to the pre camp meeting and so did my daughter and they left. And they were quite angry. In fact, Marlena walked out of the meeting. So, not to tell her story, but there was a lot of questions at my house that Sunday about, well, why, why can't. Why can't girls just wear leggings to girls camp? We're just going to be around girls. What does it matter? Why can't I wear shorter shorts? Or why can't. Why is there such a strict dress code at girls camp? This is. This is ridiculous.

John Dehlin [02:40:10] And what was the dress code?

Marlana Hughes [02:40:14] Oh, geez. They couldn't. Oh, I can't remember. You couldn't wear leggings. You couldn't wear flip flops. You couldn't wear the shorts. I think if you're standing up, I think it was hand width from the shorts to your knee. And they were like. And the camp was three hours away. And if you didn't, if they showed up with that kind of stuff, they were going to make you come get your daughter no matter what. Just. And then everything like, don't bring cards, don't bring your playing cards, don't bring your phones, don't bring. I mean, they were telling us all sorts of minute, every little detail of what they could and could not bring. And I'd ask some questions and I mean, it was just ridiculous stuff. So I got up and walked out because this is not the first year she's gone. I mean, it just kind of gets worse. So I walked right to the. Where they were having the boys meeting and just kind of started venting because we have one daughter and three boys. And I could see it and my daughter could see it that they, the boys have no rules. They can wear whatever they want. They're not told what to wear at boys camp. At boys camp, they can bring playing cards. They can, they can do whatever they want, basically. And we saw the difference in that. But there. And you know, so I called the person in charge of camp and I talked about that. But there's just. I don't think it's just there either. It's kind of everywhere. There's issues and I don't know, it's just a culture of the church. But they won't be sent away in our ward. They won't be sent away if they show up in shorts that are too short from like volleyball practice or something.

Adam Hughes [02:41:38] On a Tuesday night.

Marlana Hughes [02:41:39] On a Tuesday night. But they'll but they have all these rules where they're not near boys or, you know, because they're always explaining it's around the boys and the priesthood holders. But I mean, I'd get answers that there's still priesthood holders up there because they still have two adult men come walking up around for safety. Again, these girls should be able to not worry about what they're wearing and have a good time and a spiritual time or whatever while they're at girls camp. So that. And then. Yeah. Leads into a discussion at our home of the unfairness of. Yeah. I mean, our daughter's more feminist. A more feminist. As a Raise a daughter and become older and realize that it. How they are treated in the church. It goes. Yeah. Two different ways. There's two different. A double standard for boys and girls.

John Dehlin [02:42:22] We're getting some. A rapid fire of comments. Melissa writes, I'm so glad I had all boys. Rena writes, good for you, Mom. And Josh says, yeah, it's a boys church, so lots of feelings about. About girls and boys and men and women in the church.

Marlana Hughes [02:42:42] Yeah, yeah.

Adam Hughes [02:42:43] So. So there was some discussions at our home about, okay, well, why can't we wear that? What's modest, what's not. And I'd already kind of been thinking about a lot of these things over the years. I remember my mom saying that when she went to BYU, I, I think in the 60s, maybe early 70s, that they had to wear skirts women weren't allowed to wear. Allowed to wear pants at BYU back then. And I'd kind of already figured out that, you know, the, the modesty standard is a moving goalpost. And, and that the church really doesn't want us looking like the Amish, which is why. Well, I mean, no. No offense to the Amish, but, you know, there's a reason why they don't want us dressing like pioneers. They want us to look like we're part of society, but at the same time they don't want us looking edgy. And so that's why there's no double piercings for women and, and. And, you know, no colored hair. And this is why we're supposed to look very conservative and corporate almost, because the church. We're. We're the representatives for the church. We're the. We're the walking billboard for the church. And it kind of made sense to me. But. But as we get into this and, and we're. And again, all these changes are swirling around in my mind about, you know, some recent changes to the female temple garments and, and recent changes to the temple ceremony. And I'm thinking about how the church just constantly moves the goalposts on, on what it means to be modest, depending on. On what area you era, you live in. So all of this is in my mind over the summer. And I was on the church's website one night and there was an article about modesty on their main webpage. And it was. I think it was just three paragraphs. There was no author. It was just some simple little article. And I think it was probably intended for teens. But I read it and I just thought it kind of doesn't make sense. You know, it sounds so trite that, oh, if we're modest. Well, I don't remember what it said, but it was just, you know, very trite about, oh, if we're modest, then we're going to be safe. And if we're modest, then, you know what, you name it. You know, all of our dreams, wildest dreams are going to come true or whatever. You know, not to make light of it, but it just didn't sit well with me. And I thought this didn't explain anything. I mean, I'm actually wondering, you know, what is the why? I need to be able to explain this to my own kids and even for my own self, you know, what is the why behind these standards? And so I, I started to dig a little deeper as soon as I'd read that, and I wasn't finding much on the church's website, so I just started to Google, you know, like societal standards for modesty. And, and what is modesty? And I really quickly found a blog post that was on Rational Face. I think it's rationalface.com which is a Mormon blogging platform. And this article is written by a mom with, with daughters of her own. And she talked about how the churches. And you could tell she was, she was totally believing Mormon, but she just talked honestly and said that she wishes the church would change the way it approaches modesty because by focusing so much on hemlines and, and, and where the cap sleeve comes down to, and, and exactly what we look like that we're, we're hypersexualizing our youth, our. And especially the girls. And, and she did a really good job of linking this to, to basically an unhealthy attitude towards our own bodies. And, and I jumped from there quickly into a couple other articles that I found and just within the span of an hour or so, I found some really great articles that, that helps me to see that this hyper focus on modesty actually fuels rape culture. And maybe that sounds shocking.

John Dehlin [02:46:14] What do you mean? Well, people don't understand that term rape culture. Explain how that's rape culture. What you mean when you say rape culture.

Adam Hughes [02:46:22] Okay. And hopefully I'm using it the way that other people would use it.

John Dehlin [02:46:24] No, no, you are.

Adam Hughes [02:46:26] Okay. So in my mind, what that means is this idea that that young men maybe aren't always in control of themselves and that maybe they aren't. Oh, should. Maybe they shouldn't always be held totally responsible if they act sexually aggressive towards women. And. And even to the point, you know, of rape or forcing themselves on. On a woman because maybe the woman was inviting it by the way she was dressed, or maybe the young girl, you know, was being provocative. And so that gave him license. And it made me realize really quickly I was able to connect the dots just in this hour of reading that we focus so much. Well, there was quotes from the leaders over the years that were going through my mind at the time. I believe there's a quote from Elder Oaks, who says that young women, be careful about the way you dress because if you dress too provocatively, you're becoming pornography to the young men who see you. There's other quotes now. My mind went blank. But that one in particular stands out, that he's. That the leaders of the church have placed this responsibility on the shoulders of the women and the youth, the young women. That it's their responsibility to dress in a way so that men's thoughts don't go places that they shouldn't go. And so if you really break that down, we're saying that men are incapable of controlling themselves and that it's women's jobs to. To. To get a. It's women's jobs to help men control themselves. And so, one. It invalidates men's agency. It no longer puts us in the driver's seat over our emotions and our thoughts and our actions, because we are so weak that a young woman or a woman could dress so provocatively that we're not in control. And that's. I realized very quickly these Mormon mom bloggers did such a great job of laying out that that is so unhealthy because we should be putting the responsibility back squarely on the men. I mean, Christ himself said that if your eye offends, pluck it out. In the New Testament. He didn't say, if you can't control your gaze, go shame the woman that caught your attention and they caught your eye. He doesn't put it back on the women. So they did a good job of Explaining this. And in an instant it made me realize that the church is invalidating its own principle, doctrinal principle of agency, that I'm responsible for me and you're responsible for you and I should have control over myself. And if every single woman on the earth took off their clothes and walked around naked, it shouldn't change how I act at all. And that you're actually taking the responsibility off the shoulders of the young men and the adult men and putting them on the women. And it's not healthy. It's actually toxic. And that's what I mean by referring to that this idea fuels rape culture. And where I'm really going with this is just to explain that in that instant it was like a lightning bolt hit me and I realized that one, the quorum of the 12 and the first presidency that push these ideas don't have a clue what they're talking about. That good social science actually would say the opposite. That we should tell young men that they need to control themselves, that they always need to get consent before they touch someone, before they expect anything to go anywhere sexually with a woman or a young woman. That's their responsibility. And it shouldn't matter what the young woman does. They need to be in control themselves. And it just made me realize that they didn't, they didn't have a clue that this was toxic and harmful. And, and that I've been perpetuating these teachings onto my boys and my daughter. And it made me a little bit upset that I'd bought into this and not realize that just how toxic that that was. And that it invalidates the agency, it invalidates the agency of the young men, and it invalidates the agency of the young women by making them responsible for something that they aren't responsible for. And in that instant, then the thought goes to my mind, well, if this is messed up and if they don't know what they're talking about on this topic, and if they can be so far off course and actually teaching harmful and toxic things, what else, what else is out there that good social science or psychology or policy would say, you know, that's not healthy. And I say that at that point my testimony was still intact. It was still really, I had a strong testimony, but there had been a crack opened up in my mind that made me want to investigate and investigate in a way that I didn't already have a pre concluded outcome where I had already determined that okay, the church has to be true, so all the puzzle pieces have to line up to create a picture of the church being true. So I decided I'm going to look at the puzzle pieces and see where they go and what the puzzle actually looks like when you put the puzzle pieces together just the way they naturally fit. And I hate to say it, but it only took 9, 10 months of me studying for things to continually start to fall. And I won't jump ahead here, but just saying that that was the difference when my shelf broke was that I decided to actually investigate and see where the truth led without a predetermined outcome.

John Dehlin [02:52:04] Shauna Yost shares the quote, women get what they dress for by elder Tad Callister. So that's. I don't know the origin of that quote, but that. That sort of idea that if a woman, if a girl, you know, if a boy, if a girl doesn't dress the way the church says, very conservatively and a boy has a bad thought or even does a bad thing, that it's the girl's fault. Right.

Marlana Hughes [02:52:30] Right.

John Dehlin [02:52:31] Yeah. Okay. So that. That was. That was where the crack, the big crack first started for you, Adam.

Adam Hughes [02:52:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:52:42] Okay. And when Was that? About?

Adam Hughes [02:52:44] August 1st of 2019.

John Dehlin [02:52:46] So that was just a little over a year ago.

Adam Hughes [02:52:48] Yeah, 15 months ago.

John Dehlin [02:52:50] Okay. And. But was that. Was that when you asked the question, what if the church isn't true? Or not? Not quite yet.

Adam Hughes [02:52:57] You know, the crazy thing is, is that the thought didn't go through my mind. What if the church isn't true? The thought went through my mind. The church isn't entirely true.

John Dehlin [02:53:06] Okay.

Adam Hughes [02:53:07] Because here's a subject where they're talking that doesn't make logical sense and is harmful to people. So it can't all be 100% true anymore.

John Dehlin [02:53:16] And this process of one of the members of the relationship starting to lose their faith is like a super big deal in the Mormon world. It causes so much stress and distress, and like you guys said at the very beginning, it often wrecks marriages. So, Marlena, as Adam had that first lightning bolt shattering thought, and his shelves start to crack. Did he come tell you? Did you have any idea. Were you totally oblivious to all this?

Marlana Hughes [02:53:46] No, he. He was out of town, actually, at the time that it happened. And, yeah, I think I had sent him something else. I think we are very open, like, really open. And I'm sure there's some things that maybe we're a little scared to, like, talk about, but we're. We tell each other everything. And so I had sent him just something funny that somebody else had posted, but it was a little bit meta. Harrison's 72 ways to 73 ways to

Adam Hughes [02:54:14] be a Good Mormon Mormon.

Marlana Hughes [02:54:15] But it's kind of making fun of

Adam Hughes [02:54:16] stuff by Meta Harrison.

Marlana Hughes [02:54:18] And someone else had posted it and I sent it to him and he realized, okay, I can talk to her about this morning.

Adam Hughes [02:54:24] I woke up the next morning to a text and it's Marlena sending me a Facebook post that was a funny article of 73 easy ways to Be a Mormon. Good, you know, a good Mormon. And it instantly made me realize that she was a safe space and I knew she probably was, but it's a

Marlana Hughes [02:54:40] hard subject to start.

Adam Hughes [02:54:41] Yeah, questioning. I mean, I just had this like profound experience the night before. I could barely sleep because my mind was just going in circles and that was the first thing I wanted to do was wake up and talk to her about it. But I wasn't sure where to start. And when she sent me that, I was like, okay, I can be upfront about this.

Marlana Hughes [02:55:01] And he worries too much. I never worry about what he's talking to me about. But yeah, so we just talked about it, I think and he was driving home from San Diego. We just talked about the whole thing. And I'm again, I'm really gray in my thoughts of the church. And he is more black and white. So I can take. And really open minded. So I just listened to him as. And he can tell more of his story because he goes on, I think, to further investigate more things. And I just, I listened to him but it got to a point where I didn't want to hear very much about it. We were still going to what? We're still going to church.

Adam Hughes [02:55:38] You had a couple items on your shelf though leading up to 2019. Please remind me what your friend that had posted from.

Marlana Hughes [02:55:47] From Ms. Oh, yeah. So I had. Okay. This was actually back in 2018. Thank you. A friend who posted some stuff on Instagram and I think it was from Mist in Sunday School. And it was one at least was about Sam Young. I had to go back and look at her pages and different things and I read them and then I would go ask Adam because he remembers all this and loves church history and different things to go on with the church and. And we looked it up and yeah, it was true. So it's just like, oh, kind of, you know, question it but kind of

John Dehlin [02:56:12] put it what was true? What was true?

Marlana Hughes [02:56:15] I think it was about Sam Young

John Dehlin [02:56:16] and what about Sam Young?

Marlana Hughes [02:56:18] The abuse in the church. And he was, I think he had been excommunicated because he was trying to open that. Bring awareness, bring Awareness. Thank you to that. And I was like, really like. And talking about how the church was covering that up and I was like, well, I haven't heard any of this and can this really be true? And when we looked it up, you know, you start to find all this stuff that is true. And she had posted a few other things and I thought, I can't go down that road. So I shut it down really quickly and actually unfriended her. Since then, I've reached out to her and say thank, told her thank you, and she was the start of it. Next it was oh, Lifestyle after Mormonism on Instagram requested to follow me. And I looked at their posts that people that who had left the church and they were just talking about the reasons. Maybe not even so much I think why. But then what triggered in my mind is they were happy and happier. They sounded happier than what I was in the church. And as they tell us that we can't be happy, you know, in. Without the gospel and being in the church, it was intriguing and I couldn't put my finger on it until just a few weeks ago of why I think it's the authenticity that we could get and freedom of leaving the church.

John Dehlin [02:57:31] Lifestyle after Mormonism is because a lot

Marlana Hughes [02:57:33] of people don't know lifestyle after Mormonism and I hope I get it right, is they just feature people have left the church and kind of explain their stories and why they left. And I think kind of, yeah, like where it's kind of led them and in their happiness and their.

John Dehlin [02:57:50] There's these beautiful photos, right, of people

Marlana Hughes [02:57:52] happy and healthy family or couples. Yeah, that.

Adam Hughes [02:57:57] And they're inspiring and moving stories about how they found higher levels of authenticity and happiness. And you know, that they can love everyone. They don't have to create artificial labels onto people about, well, you know, you're lgbt, I can't accept your lifestyle. You can just love everybody. And it sounds acceptance. Marlena even showed me. She's like, look at this account that followed me or requested to follow me on Instagram and read some of their stories. Tell me what you think. And I read them and I'm like, well, that's kind of interesting because that doesn't fit the church narrative that, that if you leave, you're going to experience profound sadness and loss of happiness and you're going to have despair and. And. And it was a little unsettling to hear all these beautiful families saying we left and we're thriving and happier than we've ever been.

Marlana Hughes [02:58:44] And we were completely in. And I Just remember saying to him, saying, I want. I want that. So it's almost like the same as, you know, hear these stories in the people in the church. But I wanted. They had a higher happiness than what I thought I was having.

Adam Hughes [02:58:58] That was summer of 2019. Last summer.

John Dehlin [02:59:01] Yeah.

Marlana Hughes [02:59:02] And again, I just put it off

Adam Hughes [02:59:04] another shelf item for both of us, really.

Marlana Hughes [02:59:06] So mine really didn't start to happen until January of 2020, when Adam was going down reading all sorts of different things. And I'll let him go back to that.

John Dehlin [02:59:19] So you knew he was struggling, but you just put. You just put that on your shelf and you're like, I don't want to deal with this.

Marlana Hughes [02:59:24] Yeah. And he would talk to me at some point, maybe I was getting ready to go to nursing school full time. It was intense program where you go Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, and then you still have to study and do that. And I still have four kids at home. And I was like. And he's still like, hey, why don't you listen to this or read this or do that? And I'm like, nope, not right now. I don't wanna. I don't wanna go there. Like, I'm good. I'll talk to you. In fact, I don't even think I was talking with him about it because I didn't even wanna really hear it. I was good. He was exploring. I never probably thought that he would be like, I don't think it's true. And, you know, completely.

Adam Hughes [03:00:02] You're more supportive than you remember, to be honest.

Marlana Hughes [03:00:04] Yeah, I don't remember much because I again, was preparing and testing to get in school and go. And he finally got to a point, I think in December. It was just like, I'm gonna have to go see a counselor if we can't. If I can't talk more openly or we talk more, because I think I shut it down a little bit harder going. Preparing to go to nursing school.

Adam Hughes [03:00:22] Well, and as it got more real as she realized that, oh, like, he's serious. Really serious. Like, he doesn't know if he believes this anymore.

Marlana Hughes [03:00:30] Like, kind of scary serious.

Adam Hughes [03:00:31] Then she was like, well, this. Like, I'm okay with Gray, but not okay without.

Marlana Hughes [03:00:37] Okay if you find some bad things and we can deal with that. Yeah.

Adam Hughes [03:00:41] But, yeah, and. And I was going through quite a bit of just emotional and psychological turmoil as. As anyone knows who's gone through this. It's. It's absolutely heart wrenching or gut wrenching to go through this. And, you know, because you lose your entire worldview it's like, yeah. Having the rug pulled out from underneath you suddenly, and you don't know which direction's up and which direction's down. And. Yeah, I was. Yeah, it was mainly. I started saying I might need to go see and get some counseling just to be able to talk about this. And. And then she said, okay, yeah, I'm

Marlana Hughes [03:01:14] not gonna let that happen. Like, you can't talk to me.

Adam Hughes [03:01:16] Like, yeah, you should be able to talk to me. So, fine, I'll. I'll open up a little bit and. And listen a little bit better to what you're saying. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:01:24] Yeah.

Marlana Hughes [03:01:26] So.

John Dehlin [03:01:27] Okay.

Marlana Hughes [03:01:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:01:30] So it sounds like at that point, Marlena is focusing on being a mom, on going to nursing school, and on just trying to keep the train running, so to speak, to kid, to do that metaphor. And then Adam's really struggling and thinking he might need to see somebody to get help because he can't talk to Marlena. So, yeah. Adam, tell us about your descent or your ascent down into or up into the different sources of learning, like books. Was it books? Was it podcasts? Was it websites? And what were the issues you started learning about when you started going up or down the rabbit hole, so to speak?

Researching Church History and Facing Hard Truths

Adam Hughes [03:02:12] Okay. So I just kind of started looking for more stuff. I don't even remember exactly how it happened, but pretty quickly I found an article, I think, on the Salt Lake Tribune that was talking about Jana Reese's new book called the Next Mormons. And so I downloaded that. I listened to that on audiobook and. And was astounded. It. Astounded at the wide variety of Mormons out there and how people interpret the gospel and live it. And. And as I just kept researching things, I pretty quickly jumped to three topics. Quickly. Garments, tithing, and blacks in the priesthood. And. And started finding a lot of literature, a lot. You know, there's been a lot written about those three topics and. And about. Well, especially about blacks in the priesthood. I found 2012 church newsroom statement that was, again, just a couple of paragraphs long where they. They said that the theories advanced in the past for. For the reasons for why blacks couldn't enter the temple, be married in the temple, or hold the priesthood, that those were just theories made in the absence of direct revelation, and they were theories of men, and that we now disavow those theories. And pretty quickly, I found on Instagram a bunch of different accounts, like missed in Sunday School that compares leaders quotes from then and now, or leaders quotes with. With current doctrine and how they've shifted Quite a bit and found, I don't know, just various articles online talking about how, you know, that showcase how, you know, saying that they were just personal statements, that the ban against blacks being able to be endowed, be sealed, or receive the priesthood, you know, saying now that those were just personal statements, really, that my testimony went from, you know, 99% down to 70% almost instantaneously. Because you begin to see as you read the quotes from the leaders for 100 plus years that, you know, this is doctrine, this is absolute. Brigham Young said that blacks wouldn't get the priesthood or the temple blessings until the millennium, until every single white person had had a chance to get it. You read these kind of statements, they're just absolute saying that this is doctrine and it's never going to change. And then realizing that the church did change again due to social pressure. And I won't go into that, but it's well documented that the church changed because of social pressure. And now they're throwing all those prophets under the bus. I think it's 11 prophets in a row that they now just say, well, they were speaking as men and not as prophets. And it just makes you realize, I mean, it's like a game of Jenga and you're down to the last cube of wood and if you pull it out, the whole thing crumbles. And as soon as you say that what was church doctrine for 100 and whatever it was, 30 or 40 years was just a big, huge mistake. It was a big oops and. But we're not going to apologize for it. We're just going to quietly let it go and disavow those old teachings or just quietly quit talking about it again. My testimony took a huge blow and I was already in that mindset of questioning and being able to let my mind open up and say, I'm going to let the pieces of the puzzle and the facts go where they go and see what this looks like and pretty quickly realize that just because a prophet talks and stands up there and says that they will never say anything that's not true doesn't make that true. They say a lot of stuff that they later disavow.

John Dehlin [03:06:00] And then if. If you can't trust what the prophets said back then it.

Adam Hughes [03:06:05] You.

John Dehlin [03:06:06] You immediately draw the. Connect the dots and you say, well, how do I know I can trust what they're saying now about women, about LGBT people, about the Book of Mormon, about everything.

Adam Hughes [03:06:16] Right, Exactly. And not to jump too far ahead chronologically, but our. Our stake president and bishop just came and met with us a couple of days ago at our house. And that was a point I was able to get them to concede on because they were downplaying, as we talked about some of our concerns and why we've left. I brought this up and said, you know, that's, that's pretty damning for the church to now say that 11 prophets in a row couldn't get it right. They were just guessing. And we disavow what they said. And, and you know, the state president said that, well, you know, they were imperfect men. And I've heard so many people say this. So many of my close friends who are still in the church and completely 100% believing say we just got to acknowledge that they were men and there's biblical precedent for prophets making mistakes and God lets them muddle their way through life just like us. And they're not perfect and we can't expect perfection out of them. And I completely reject that for the exact reason that you just said. And I was able to get the stake president to acknowledge that if the prophets were able to get something that seriously wrong about denying that, really the privileges of the gospel and its rights and blessings to an entire race for over 100 years, if they could get that wrong, then there's the chance that they're saying stuff to us today that they were. They will later have to disavow and try and make it go away quietly. And, and luckily the state president had the integrity to acknowledge that. Yeah, that's completely within the realm of possibilities. So. So. And I wish I would have drove the point home more with him in the moment. I let the, I let it stand for a minute and we just sat there in silence for a moment after he said that. But I wish I would have drove home the point that then there is no foundation. If we can't trust that what the prophet says today is doctrinal and isn't going to change, then where do we stand? And I know the church response is, well, everyone needs to go get their own testimony of what the prophet says, but that's also technically not what the church says. The church has said in the past that our church leaders have said that when the prophet speaks the speaks, the thinking is done and that we just need to fall in line and follow the prophet. I mean, we have a primary song where we chant follow the prophet. So, so it's so extremely disingenuous of the church to just say, yeah, we disavow what they, what they say. But, but please, you Know, you need to keep believing us today, because what we say today is absolute truth that comes straight from God. And you should build your entire life around this and. And devote your entire life to it because we speak for God himself. That's disingenuous and dishonest.

John Dehlin [03:08:56] Yeah. And not only is it true today, but if you defy what they're saying today, you can get punished or excommunicated. And, you know, the stakes are very severe.

Adam Hughes [03:09:06] Right, Exactly.

John Dehlin [03:09:08] Yeah. Okay. So you start struggling with these issues. A lot of people at that point start worrying, is my wife going to divorce me? You know, do. Do I tell her, what about my parents? What about my in laws? What about my kids? What about my siblings? What about my ward members? What about my job? Like, there are all sorts of really severe and traumatic reverberations that happen when someone starts going down the rabbit hole. Is that right, Adam?

Adam Hughes [03:09:40] That's right.

Marlana Hughes [03:09:41] Yeah. Should we skip forward to, like, January? Ish.

Adam Hughes [03:09:46] Yeah.

Marlana Hughes [03:09:47] So about January. We're gonna skip forward to about January. I started school and he's. And we're. I can't remember at one point I told Adam, though, that I would choose him over the, you know, whatever path he's gonna go, I'm gonna choose him and not the church. I'm not gonna choose the church over my own school.

John Dehlin [03:10:04] Okay, I gotta pause you there, Marlena, and we want to hear a lot from you, but that's a super rare comment because most people that I've experienced, and maybe it's just. It's selection bias of who comes to me, maybe the people who have a good believing spouse, good reaction don't need to come to me. But for all the people coming to me, it's like, oh, no, no, no, no. This was our agreement. It's the church. This is why we got married. This is where we built our whole life. And if it's not the church, I may be out of here. How did you. So for me, your reaction, especially for an orthodox Mormon, is very unique. And so I'm wondering if you have a sense for where that came from and how that developed in you when so many believing Mormons can't say those words to their spouse. I choose you over the church.

Marlana Hughes [03:11:02] I'd seen it with other couples. I'd seen it just break up marriages. I saw people that were going to choose the church over their spouse. I thought that was super sad and maybe that maybe there's more to it for them. But I love him enough, and I love, I guess, to give up those Things, you know, I love him enough in my family that I think the worst thing I could do is get divorced over this and break up my family because of that. Was I happy about it? No. At the beginning, I think I said that. And I. At the time, I remember it being nice, but it wasn't easy. We still went down a path of. I mean, as we go into January. Sorry. I'm trying to get my thoughts of where I want to go with this.

Adam Hughes [03:11:50] Well, there was definitely. I definitely felt some anger coming my way. I mean, she. We do. We weren't talking about getting divorced, but there was some serious.

Marlana Hughes [03:11:59] No. As soon as he finally got to the point of where he said he didn't believe the church was true. I think this was before this happened. I said, I'm going to choose, you know. You know, over the church. I'm not going to go that direction. And I think that's where I started to open up. And he said, just listen to this podcast. You know, he'd found Mormon stories by this point. And that's when we listened to Lila Tour. Sorry to this podcast. And that was a big one for me. I listened to it on the way to school and at home again, because I had met her dad. I held him at a high esteem. It was interesting to process those things and general authorities, family, they can leave and those different things on that end of it. And things started to slowly go for me. I started to ask more questions to Adam and what else? And I wanted to know more. But back to that. As soon as he got opened up and said he didn't think the church was true, I was like, well, if I never thought we'd be here in a million years. So once he said that, I was like. My mind went straight to divorce. Like, what that means. Then we could get divorced. I never thought we could get divorced. So, like, ever, like, nothing would break that up. So even though I said I would stay with him and choose him over the church, my mind went straight to, well, then we could get divorced. And. And I don't know if I can keep it all straight, but your mind goes everywhere at that point. So, I mean, I had thoughts of.

Adam Hughes [03:13:24] Because it's a breach of trust.

Marlana Hughes [03:13:26] Yeah. Like, this is not what I signed up for. This is not who I married. This is, you know, And I had to process all those things of. Yeah. And I guess just process that he. Maybe. Because I. I think I started to think he changed or he was going to change because he had made this choice. And then that's where I'm like, oh, well, maybe then we could get divorced because he's changing. Yeah. If that makes sense. So.

John Dehlin [03:13:53] So you were just. You were kind of terrified, right? You were kind of afraid.

Marlana Hughes [03:13:57] Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:13:59] And so, Adam, you experienced that from her as anger, Is that right?

Adam Hughes [03:14:04] Yeah, she was. She was pretty upset at me, at, you know, just, you know, why am I. Why did I have to put the family through this? Basically, you know, because. Because this wasn't. Yeah, this wasn't very fair to them.

Marlana Hughes [03:14:16] I felt like I kept saying, you've pulled the rug out from under us. Like, even though we were talking about this, I didn't think this was going to happen or we were going to go this far, so can handle most of it.

Adam Hughes [03:14:28] But, yeah, it was a little touch and go there for a while. It was a little sensitive. And there was. There was days when she would say, I can't talk about this and I don't want to hear about it. There was others days that she would say, you know, tell me every Mormon stories podcast that. That you liked, because I want to go listen to them and try and understand. So it kind of just depended on the day or the week.

Marlana Hughes [03:14:49] And I was already cracking, like, some of the stuff he would say. A big one for me was the first vision. The first vision. So, yeah, so I go down this. The rabbit hole, and I'd be like, yeah, it's not true, and this isn't true, and I. I don't like this. What I'm hearing, like, on the first vision again, was I had never heard that. Even reading the gospel topic essays when it says the four or five different versions. And. And that was almost enough for me right there because I was just like, our whole church is. You know, they teach that. Our whole church is. He had the first vision, and it. The movie. Movie is really good at creating those feelings. That he prayed and he went back and told his mom that he saw God and having fun, and then he created, you know, organize a church. Well, when you find out that's not how it went, that was. Yeah, that was enough. But I kind of kept going back and forth of saying, well, it's fine, it's fine. I'm. There's still lots of good and there's still lots of other things in the church.

John Dehlin [03:15:48] You know, Marlene, I was going to say. Sorry, Marlene, I was going to say that that stuff about Joseph Smith touches on your experiences growing up in Illinois, right?

Marlana Hughes [03:15:58] Yeah, definitely. Yes. Because we were there. Yeah. And that was a hard one for Me, because I think as we're going through this and it's Covid. I mean, we can get back to that. Oh, there's nights. We stayed up all night. There's some big fights we had. There's. I mean, we're going down this crazy path. So. Yeah, the first vision was a huge one for me to learn that out. Learn that because I've been to Nauvoo, I've been to Carthage jail a million times. These places. A big. I guess, yeah, the first vision was huge. But I listening to. I think it was Tom Phillips or the other 70 that talked about saying Joseph Smith did not go to Carthage jail as a martyr. And he talked about the Navajo. Oh, my word.

Adam Hughes [03:16:40] Nauvoo Expositor.

Marlana Hughes [03:16:41] Thanks, Nava. Yeah. And that he had the printing press destroyed because they were printing about his polygamy. That floored me. Floored me. Because that's not the picture you're getting when you go to Nauvoo or to Carthage Jail. That's not the pretty video that they're giving you up front. That was a absolute huge one for me because I thought, okay, all the other stuff might not be true, but then there's still Joseph Smith. And he had a huge place in my heart. I felt like I knew him because you go and walk on the land he walked on and you're there and you felt. I felt like I knew that history. I thought I knew all the stuff there was to know. And when you find out this, it rips your world apart. So.

John Dehlin [03:17:23] So you're saying in all that time hanging out in Nauvoo, they never taught you about the Nauvoo Expositor?

Marlana Hughes [03:17:29] I'd heard it, but I didn't really know that's what it. That what happened. I mean, when they talk about even Joe Smith running to Iowa, like running away, they just always said, I mean, and I knew about his polygamy growing up, but they just said that was the age of the girls at the time. I knew he had married 15 year olds growing up and young girls, but they just put it off at that was the time. That's how things were. And then when. That he was being persecuted, it's because he was going around telling the first vision story. Well, no, it wasn't, you know, he was being persecuted because of treasure digging and you know, later the polygamy. And then he. Again, I always remember the one where he, you know, ran away to. Was it Iowa?

Adam Hughes [03:18:05] Yeah.

Marlana Hughes [03:18:06] You know, he's just running from the law for things that he was doing illegally, not because he was really being persecuted, but that's what they're teaching you. That's what they're telling me. So that, yeah, that was a huge one that they lied to us about and I didn't like it. And that was really enough for me to say, okay, I, you know, but I, again, I still processed and you know, go. The indoctrination is huge. So you can't just go with that and say, yeah, I'm done. For me, I had to keep exploring.

John Dehlin [03:18:41] Right.

Marlana Hughes [03:18:43] So.

John Dehlin [03:18:43] So how did things progress

Marlana Hughes [03:18:47] where.

Adam Hughes [03:18:48] So for me, I kind of say that for my me, it was fairly linear that I just slowly kept reading and investigating and my testimony just kind of kept taking hits and it just kept declining.

Marlana Hughes [03:18:59] And at this point, we're doing it more together, though. We're like, listen to this podcast. Let's listen to it together at the same time when we're going, wherever we're going so we can talk about it tonight or let's read this together. And I was reading stuff with them before I. Oh, and at this point, I've dropped out of nursing school a month in just because of. That was crazy. And this, this was going to come to a crazy head. You know, with COVID it got intense, our relationship and all the church stuff. So.

Adam Hughes [03:19:26] But yeah, we. I just kept researching and every time I thought I had something that would never fall, you know, it. It fell. I listened to Joseph Smith Rough Stone Rolling on. On audio tape and, and that, or audiobook, and, you know, that was eye openening. I started reading on the MormonThink website. They do an outstanding job there of answering questions, deep questions about the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon. And, you know, one of the biggest ones, for me, that really was probably the final nail in the coffin of my testimony was reading Grant Palmer's book, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins. I started on a Saturday morning. I think I was the first one awake. It was like six in the morning. I started. I could not put it down. I think I finished it in five hours. And it was. I was like Marlena said, absolutely floored to find out that there were books in circulation at the time of Joseph Smith that bear remarkable resemblance in themes, in language, in storylines, to the Book of Mormon. And that maybe, maybe Joseph Smith had just was a master remix artist where he could take books that he'd read and spin new stories based on facts and language from all sorts of different books like the Late War and the View of the Hebrews and James Adair. I think it's called the History of the American Indians. And. And then the most crazy one was Grant Palmer documents a story called the Golden Pot in his book. I think it's the last chapter. And this book, again, was in circulation at the time of Joseph Smith, and. And is remarkably similar to Joseph Smith's own story about a young man who's supposed to get buried treasure out of a hill and who has to go back and meet an angel every year on the fall equinox, September 22, and even has to bring his fiance at one point. And Grant Palmer, you know, was still in the church. He was still a believing member when he wrote the book. He said he wasn't trying to take away people's faith. And as you know, you've interviewed him. He was never excommunicated from the church. He was just trying to document what he'd found through all his years. He was a longtime CES Institute instructor, and he was trying to document these things that he found a. Possible storylines that matched up maybe where Joseph Smith got some of his storylines. And it was just absolutely damning to my testimony to see that. I always felt like the Book of Mormon was too complex, that it could never have been written. And then when you start to see the similarities between that and these other books, you begin to see, well, okay, I. Yeah, people were pretty eloquent at that time. And, you know, this book, the Late War, sounds a lot like King James. It's a history, but it sounds a lot like King James English. And as you just begin to read these things and read about how there's. There's anomalies in the. Even in the King James Version, the verses of the. Of the Book of Mormon that are taken from, supposedly, you know, they're similar to the Bible, but there's King James errors in the Book of Mormon. So you used to. It just all starts to build on itself. And as it kept building and building and my testimony kept shrinking and shrinking, I guess it came to a point where in February, I was serving as the executive secretary. And it came to a point in February where I texted the bishop and said I'd really just prefer to be released. And that never went anywhere. And I had to finally send an email in May, I sent an email to the bishop and said I can't continue on. And I finally admitted to that point that I'd had a faith crisis because I'd researched and I couldn't in good faith continue to serve in my calling. And asked, but you were serving up to that point, yeah, I was serving up until end of May of 2020. I tried to be cautious about it. I was researching it, and I didn't want to do anything drastic and out myself because I thought, well, if I change my mind or if I find something that convinces me that this is all true, I don't want to go public or make a lot of noise about it. I just wanted the time on my own to research it. And that's what I did. And maybe it blindsided some people when I finally came out and said, I don't believe anymore and I'd like to be released and. And I can't even in good conscience continue to, you know, to pay my tithing or. Or even wear my garments because I just don't see this as is true. The whole entire narrative just doesn't make any sense. And despite the feelings and all the good feelings I'd had over the years and what I would call a testimony or witnesses of the spirit, you know, emotions, I came to realize, are, you know, can be easily manipulated based on the music we listen to or the. The propaganda that we are exposed to, whether that's in print or audio or visual. You know, you can feel all range of emotions. You know, you go to the movie theater and you can feel great empathy for people and great compassion or excitement or anger because those, you know, movies and media have such a great power to make you feel things. And it finally just dawned on me that I needed to trust facts over feelings. And that no matter how good the church felt, that if the underlying facts don't make any sense, and in fact, if the pieces of the puzzle don't make a complete picture of the church being true, but instead, actually the puzzle pieces finally line up and point to this having been invented by Joseph Smith. Then I've got to follow the facts. I can't just blindly follow my feelings anymore.

John Dehlin [03:25:25] Yeah, Beautiful. That was a great summary. Thank you for sharing. How was it for you, Marlena?

Processing the Faith Crisis Together as a Couple

Marlana Hughes [03:25:33] I just want to go back. My biggest thing was how. So we were talking all the way through March and listening to the Mormon stories, which were so helpful because you kind of get dragged back into. Well, maybe we should stay. What if it's really true? What are we doing? A big thing for me was I'd be out probably, you know, just with the Joseph thing and be completely out just for Adam and I. But I was like, what about the kids? That was huge. What am I gonna do with the kids? How am I gonna raise them? Like, I can't I don't. You know, because the church gives you this good plan and you, you know, you follow it. If you follow it, you know where your kids are going. So you take that away and you're just, you know, lost. So in March, I think we had talked a lot, and I finally, he kind of left, kind of left me alone a little bit. And so on my own, I wanted to, to research, so I started to listen to podcasts on my own. I reached out to some people that had come out that I, in our stake. They were in the ward next to us, Carrie and Aubrey and I, I contacted them, I knew of them and we had talked, but I didn't really know them. And I said, can I just meet with you guys? So I met with them and this is the day of we were thinking I needed to take a break from the church. I said, let's just take a break and see how we feel. And even up to this point, I guess I should address that. I had a real issue with President Nelson. I did not sustain him at the last ward conference before this all happened, even before any of this faith crisis stuff, I just, I had no issues with President Monson or Hinckley, but as soon as he was called, I don't know, I just had some uneasy feelings. Something felt off, felt off for me, and I couldn't get on board. I couldn't, I couldn't get on board with that. But at the same time, I'm like, okay, it's just the profit. I'm gonna go. You know, I didn't even question that. Sorry about the side note. So I'm going, great.

John Dehlin [03:27:28] That's rare where somebody just doesn't feel good about the profit. But I'm sure it happens.

Adam Hughes [03:27:33] Well, you know, like changing, like saying we can't, we can't say Mormons. It just felt.

Marlana Hughes [03:27:37] Oh, I think, I don't think I liked all the changes. I don't like that the Boy Scouts was taken away.

Adam Hughes [03:27:42] That was huge for me too.

Marlana Hughes [03:27:44] Both of our older boys are Eagle Scouts, and we still have a, I think, yeah, I have a lot to say about that because I don't think so far, I mean, with COVID we haven't seen how the youth program is going to be, but it's not giving them the skills that the Boy Scouts gave to my two older boys that

Adam Hughes [03:28:00] equivalent to what the Scouts provided. And it definitely is not, it's, it's pretty sad.

Marlana Hughes [03:28:04] I, I, I think he tried to come in and change up things that, and I didn't appreciate that, I guess, to be honest, I don't think that he was trying to make it better or different or that switching up would keep people in or bring people in. And I, I have my theories that if people our age, I think it's pushing them away by all the changes and I don't know. So there's that thing with the prophet and I didn't think much about it. It's just that I just get, I don't know, I want to say creepy vibes. I didn't like it, which is horrible to say, but I never. Anyway, so I started researching on my own and doing those things and met with these people, these ladies that had left in our ward or stake. And I just needed to know how, I need reassurance, how it's going to be moving forward. You know, maybe for me, but also for their kids. I'm like, how are your kids? How did they survive? Because I've. Up to this point we hadn't told our kids that we were even questioning. They probably heard us talking, but we hadn't. We didn't want to say anything to anybody until we knew we were sure. So this is still like March. And again, our son, I should say our oldest son, is preparing for a mission, saving up his money. I think his paperwork actually was put in in February so he was supposed to receive his call by the end of March. So we're both questioning this. And I'm starting to question more on my own, even though, I mean I'm believing all the stuff he said. But I'm like, do we still stay in? Is this how, you know, how do we navigate this? Hard to navigate. And I think the biggest thing I don't feel like a lot of people, maybe stress or I didn't get is the emotional roller coaster. No, the sheer terror and emotions that this puts you on. It's rocky. I mean I'm. We probably are painting a pretty picture, but it's not a pretty picture going through this.

Adam Hughes [03:29:55] So

Marlana Hughes [03:29:57] I mean, you can ask our kids, like we don't usually argue or fight. I think we had some big blow ups and I, you know, about the church and where this is going to go and what's going to do. And we weren't talking for a couple days or I just take off in the car and he'd have to come find me. And it actually kind of led to almost, I don't want to say suicidal, but just where's my life going? And it's out of control and different things of how am I going to handle moving forward without this roadmap I've had my whole life? I don't think I've cried that much in forever. And the unsettled settledness that it leaves you. So it was tough. It was really tough. And so. And then you're still researching and you're still going back and forth saying, is this really. What if we're making a huge mistake? What if, you know, and what if we're messing up our kids lives? And. And so you're still graveling with that because, I mean, that's what you've been taught. So it's hard to process.

John Dehlin [03:31:00] Let me share a comment from Larry. And she writes, I'm going to be very vulnerable here. But when I was really teetering on unbelief, I seriously considered, quote, taking myself out of the equation, close quote. So that my husband and children could stay and not have the baggage of an unbelieving mom and wife. Thank you so much, Larryn, for sharing that. And tell me, Marlena and or Adam, if either of you kind of had any of those types of thoughts.

Marlana Hughes [03:31:32] So I guess I should just own up to it more so. Because I don't like to admit to that. Yeah, I don't even. It was in March, I think this is. We went through a three day, really hard period of. I started to think, because I wasn't. I didn't know if I wanted to go that route. And again, Adam, being awesome that he is, said if you want to stay in, if that's what you want to do, we will do the church 100%. I won't, we won't go this direction. So even though he knew it wasn't true and he, you know, he wasn't completely, I don't think 100% at this point, but he said, if that's what you want to do, if you want to stay in, I'll stay in with you. So we, you know, we're choosing each other. But it got to a point where I felt like I wasn't what he wanted, you know, because I wasn't maybe going that direction. I don't know if I'm. You correct me?

John Dehlin [03:32:22] Yeah, no, keep going. You're doing great.

Marlana Hughes [03:32:26] I mean, I was just like, you know, and then I felt like I should give him an out. I said, if you want to divorce me, then I'm giving you permission to do that. If I'm not going to go the direction that you want me to go. And you need more freedom in this, you know, and of Course, we don't want to do that with the kids. And, you know, I didn't mean it, but I did, you know, I did. I was allowing him to grow in who he was. And I know. I think there was a lot of miscommunication, too, which caused anger and, you know, and different things. But there was that point where I didn't. I don't know what exactly caused it, but I did. I had a lot of emotions. I think. I didn't. I think the future was unforeseeable at this point. There wasn't that nice, pretty roadmap of where we were going. So I did take the car and I left and. And I think I had texted them after crying and screaming and yelling in the car and in anger and frustration. And now the emotions are going to come because. Makes me want to swear at the church because I guess that's what makes me so mad, is them. They make you choose either your spouse or the church. And I hate that that breaks up families. And I wasn't going to let that happen to us. I didn't want it to happen to us. And so I think. I think I was at that point, even though he was choosing to go that way. And I knew it wasn't true. True. Not completely, but I wanted him to be able to live his best life also. So I don't know. I don't know what caused the. I did have thoughts where I did text him, and I didn't even. I wasn't serious. You know, I think these thoughts like, okay, life would be better without me, but I'm not that crazy. I'm not going to do it. But I remember turning off my location device so he couldn't find me, but he already knew where I was at, and he came right to where I was at to make sure it was okay. But it puts you through a painful reality and you. Of where you have to navigate what you're going to choose and what you're going to do. And it shouldn't be like that. And I think that's what pushes me to. And again, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but to be vocal because they've heard enough people in the church with guilt and shame and tried to live a perfect life. And everybody puts on this facade of their perfect life, which is literally. It kills people, I think, you know, spiritually or physically or however, you know, mentally, Psychologically. Psychologically. Thank you. Yes. I just noticed how real I. I talk about my kids and real. And I just realize other people don't want to talk about the real and how, you know, life isn't perfect. And so, yeah, where was I going? Um, it just, it, it really became emotional at that point of are we going to really do this? And where is it going to lead? And. And then it. Then we. I, you know, he was ready to. Yeah. Talk to the. He'd already wanted to be released. And then I said, okay, we need to. Again, if it was just me and him, I probably wouldn't find and been like, let's, let's go, I'm done. I can. I'll follow you completely and let's just do it now. But the kids were there. So I said, okay, if you're going to really do this and let's talk, you need to talk to the kids and tell them what you kind of discovered and how you feel. And. Because I always blame it on him. He started it. So if it's wrong, if he's wrong, then we're blaming it all on him. So, yeah, then it kind of went to finally. Well, I guess, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. Our son had had his mission call and then we talk to the kids.

Adam Hughes [03:36:11] So I was just going to jump in and my apologies if I'm taking a lot of the time up, but just to. Just to explain, you know, that, you know, I sit here and think to myself, wow, what a jerk I was, you know, like to put my wife through that and my kids. But, you know, through this whole journey, I see, you know, as I deconstructed from the church and it's indoctrination. I was one, I was mad as well, because you begin to realize that the church hasn't been honest and I've devoted so much time and money and given so much, and they did it under false pretenses without being honest. So there's all that and there's the doctrine. But then there was. The other side was slowly beginning to realize I couldn't even go to sacrament meeting without hearing the quotes from the leaders. And you hear those little tinges of manipulation in their quotes and you see the things that they're doing that are. That are not okay. I mean, I could go on about that, but you know, the conference talks and there's just so much pressure that they put on people and it's so toxic the way that they talk to us. Right after my faith crisis started. Let me just segue, or not segue, but let me just get off track one second here. It was like two weeks after and I was debating Whether to, whether to go to priesthood or not, or just because I was the executive secretary and I could make myself busy, look busy, and not have to go to priesthood for the second hour. But I decided to go because I thought, well, I need some extra help, so I'm going to go. And we studied a conference talk by Elder Holland. And it was just horrible. You know, I think, I'm sure everyone in the room thought, oh, what a great talk because he talked about being a parent. But all I heard him say, the quote that I remember from that was, and the whole talk was horrible, but this part was the worst. He said that the biggest determinant of where an arrow is going to land is the skill of the one holding the bow, shooting the arrow. So he was talking to parents saying that we need to live the gospel conspicuously in our lives, that if we don't, our kids are going to go astray and that that's back on us, that's on our shoulders because we didn't shoot a straight arrow. And like I say, I was probably the only one in the room that's had an issue with that. But I felt so incredibly shamed and I was so angry, you know, and going to priesthood that day didn't help me. It actually pushed me out faster because again, I'm seeing this unhealthy narrative that, that I'm responsible for someone else's actions, I'm responsible for my kids. And no acknowledgement that supposedly in Mormon doctrine, even one out of every three of of God's children didn't decide to follow him and come to earth. And, but, you know, and we're not claiming he's a horrible parent, but, but boy, Elder Holland in this talk sure laid it on thick and really made everyone in that room feel super inadequate as a parent. And so I'm seeing this toxicity and I, I'm. I just couldn't stay in. It's like seeing the other side of a coin, you know, And I couldn't unsee it and I couldn't keep going along pretending now I was willing to go, but I couldn't do it as a believing member. I was going to have to own where I was at and just be honest about it. And as I'm. Not only am I leaving behind toxicity of what the church is telling me, but my mind is expanding and I'm finding healthier ways of living. I'm finding that I was becoming more honest because there was less of a need to create a facade that everything was okay and I could just Be honest and say, no, everything's not okay. I was finding greater levels of honesty with. With my wife and talking about things that I never wanted to talk about because I thought they were embarrassing or I thought she would have judged me for it, or I thought that that should be upset because, you know, maybe they. You know, I'm admitting the things that I had done over the years that. That I hadn't been perfect in my. How I'd lived the gospel or whatever, you know, so I'm finding health, and I was finding a voice that I hadn't had before, because the church teaches us to kind of live small. You know, I have to. I have to. My patriarchal blessing says I always have to say yes to a calling and do it joyfully. And it says that I shouldn't, you know, that I have to do everything they call on me to do. And that's so invalidating as a human being that. That I'm not in charge of myself. I'm not in charge of my time as executive secretary. I was spending 10 to 20 hours a week. And there's no question of whether. Can you do this? Do you have the time? Are you emotionally ready? It's just, you know what? We're calling you to do this, and we're telling you to do it, and it doesn't matter whether or not you're free. But, you know, the bishop's free on Sunday until 6pm so we're going to expect you to stay until 6pm and as I stepped away from all that, I began to find much, much healthier levels of autonomy, personal autonomy, and responsibility for myself. And it's hard for me to even explain it in words. I'm not doing it justice. But there was a growth that I found that allowed me to decide. I am a complete human being in and of myself. I don't need a priesthood leader to tell me that I'm worthy. I don't need the church to tell me that I'm worthy. I don't need the church to tell me that I have value. I don't need. I don't need that I am valuable and whole in and of myself, and I am divine as a creation in and of myself. And as I began to step away from the toxicity, I'm finding all this greater happiness and peace of mind, and. And so, even though I could see the trauma that it was causing Marlena, I just kept being hopeful that she would eventually be able to find the same things that I was finding. So sorry to be so long winded John.

John Dehlin [03:41:55] No, that was beautiful. That was not long winded at all. And you guys are given some really powerful kind of highlights in this segment. So that was so beautifully expressed, Adam. Marlena, do you want to now jump to your process? Back to your process a bit or

Adam Hughes [03:42:16] you were talking about Carson.

Marlana Hughes [03:42:18] Yeah, I'll just give a little bit. We kind of were on this. He was a little bit ahead of me on this whole faith journey, but I agreed with pretty much everything and what took me out. I mean, you know, I explored all the same things he did and, you know, the lack of.

Adam Hughes [03:42:32] Yeah, but the stakes were higher for you because you. I have co workers. I go to work every day.

John Dehlin [03:42:38] Oh.

Marlana Hughes [03:42:38] Of leaving.

Adam Hughes [03:42:40] Leaving for you is leaving behind your entire community and support system.

Marlana Hughes [03:42:43] I think I was okay. Leaving me. Yeah. Let me start back here in February. I remember going to church still and remembering. I can't listen to all the people in church. It's true. So sorry about messing up the timeline a little bit because I can't remember myself. So I was pretty much. I was probably already mentally out. I had read enough. Once he read Grant Palmer's book, I had read it. I had read a little bit of the CS letter again, the podcasts were huge for me and the things that were coming out of them as far as the gospel doctrine and also people going through the same thing and feeling exactly the same thing was helpful for me. So I'm like, okay, we're going to survive this. We're going to get through again. It's still those shadow, you know, those doubts of are we doing the right thing or do we just stay in and. Or do we just get out? But I couldn't handle being in church either, listening and just knowing that they're just saying such things. So March, you know, Covid came. We were going to take a break, and luckily, Covid, the day they came out, so they're counseling church. It was awesome to see how are we going to do without church? How are we going to feel? So it's pushing me forward because I think I'm about four months behind how where Adam was. And again, I was researching and then I needed to feel know where the kids felt because, you know, what are we going to do with them? How do they feel? Because some of our kids were in more than the other kids were, spiritually, mentally so. And again, I started to say this earlier. We had a son who was preparing for a mission, had saved all his money for his mission, had submitted his paperwork and received his call at the End of March to go of 20. March of. We received his call March 24th of 2020 and was supposed to go report June 2nd. So we kind of just sat and down the kids and kind of vaguely gave them. And I don't know if I'm John, if I'm skipping too far ahead. If you want me to talk more about what led me more out. I mean, it's still a process. I think I'm still processing it, but. Or if you want me to go into more doctrinal detail, if you just want me to keep going.

John Dehlin [03:44:56] Yeah, just. Just kind of, you know, in a few minutes. Give the highlights.

Marlana Hughes [03:45:01] Okay. It went with. As soon as I heard the first vision, I thought, how could they even start the church without. With, you know, Justice Smith not writing down the first vision for 12 years. And what they portrayed in the Good feeling movie of the first vision is not how it went. So again, I think I was pretty good saying, yeah, if that wasn't true, then okay, yeah, I probably believe half the other stuff isn't true. So the next one, I think Adam had mentioned this. He's like, I'm holding on to the truth of Joseph Smith. And when that fell and crumbled with all the polygamy and polyandry and different things, it went to the Book of Mormon. And then once that was destroyed, for me, there was. With all the things Adam mentioned, I mean, I think the supercomputer thing and how they kind of ran it through there and, and see how it's taken on from all these other books and, and different things. I mean, the information that's out there that's the truth is astounding of how much they are whitewashing and hiding from us. That. Yeah, I'll get to more of that. How it's pushed me to want to share that. But back to our kids is. Well, no, I want to go back to where that is gut wrenching. And I never saw that in anybody else's faith crisis of how painfully hard it is to go through something like this. Your whole community. That was hard for me because I had a lot of community people, friends in the church. I liked the activities. I liked, you know, doing those things. Some of those things I was involved and so that. And I had community outside, but not as big as I did in the church. And most of my friends from growing up, you know, you kind of navigate towards those people that think and do the same as you. So I think that was harder for pro me to process dealing with that and leaving the church than it was. I'd already come to terms with all the doctrine and then I was going to have to process telling my parents and my siblings, which did not happen until just recently. So. So we. Yeah, at this point we're out. We're out and we're telling the kids and do you want me to go into the story then? Of course our kids and yeah, a

Telling the Kids and Navigating a Son's Mission Decision

John Dehlin [03:47:15] lot of people are like, how do you tell the kids? Yeah, especially if you've got a son about to go on a mission.

Marlana Hughes [03:47:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:47:21] He's already received his call. Right?

Marlana Hughes [03:47:23] Right. Yes. So he'd received his call to Guatemala. He was going to go. It was going to be. At this point they've already announced, I think that it's going to be the. Or soon to announce. It's going to be the online mtc. I don't think we knew what was happening with COVID and where it was going to lead. So we. They kind of already knew. We'd kind of question. We kind of said some things so they weren't completely shocked. Do you remember more of how it went?

Adam Hughes [03:47:46] I just remember we sat down and we talked to him. Our oldest son I think was a little surprised. Our two middle children were frankly a little relieved because they both pretty quickly expressed, yeah, we've been having doubts for a long time and they were 17 and 15.

John Dehlin [03:48:04] Isn't that fascinating that your kids are having their own processes and you're loving parents but they're still afraid.

Marlana Hughes [03:48:12] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:48:13] To tell you.

Adam Hughes [03:48:14] Oh, and. And that just continues to compound even today.

Marlana Hughes [03:48:18] Wait, well, let me go backwards. Let me go backwards. Is that our son started to have some questions about his own patriarchal blessings and blessing and some other like word of wisdom and just different things that should have opened our eyes more than they did. But it was questions, sometimes questions we couldn't even answer for them at the time that these kids these days can. They could see that BS a little bit. I want to say these two kids can see it and at the church where they're trying to shove you into this one line and you need to be friends with all these people just because you have this one thing in common. Even though maybe you don't get along with those people. But yeah, they start to open your eyes for you, your kids.

Adam Hughes [03:48:57] Yeah, they had a lot, especially our 17 year old had a lot of hard questions for us over the last couple years and deep questions.

Marlana Hughes [03:49:03] Deep.

Adam Hughes [03:49:03] My, my saying is that I, I don't know how well the church is going to survive the information age because the Information that's available at their fingertips is astounding. I mean, it's the same thing that we're discovering is that the information's out there like it's never been before. The publicly available information that, that's really difficult for the church to explain away and that in prior decades they, you know, they were able to not share that or keep it suppressed. But with the information age and the ability to share information so readily, it's really hard for him to keep that under control. And I think our 17 year old, you know, had, had already started to find things online that, that were making him realize maybe the narrative isn't exactly what the church is saying it is.

Marlana Hughes [03:49:49] And he heard it from other kids too.

Adam Hughes [03:49:51] Yeah, and from other kids. But I think for us it was just sitting down. Yeah, was just sitting down with our kids. And the initial reaction again was a little bit of shock. Our youngest son is 12 and he was a little sad frankly because. And hopefully I'm not putting words in his mouth, but the way that I interpreted it was that he was just a little sad that maybe we were like turning our backs on God a little bit and was really quite confused of why we would come to the conclusion that we didn't need church in our lives. He likes church. I think he's sensitive and you know, maybe kind of like I was when I was 12. It, it speaks to him. He feels good when he goes and not. Not questioning. I mean he's only 12, but he was, he's. Out of the four children, he was the hardest one to talk to about it, to let let him know that, you know, we can still believe in God. We can still believe in the life after death. We can still believe that we'll all be together again. That doesn't have to change. It's just that we didn't want him going to church and getting these unhealthy, toxic, manipulative indoctrination and then trying to help him to understand that when he's older he'll probably thank us for it. So I don't know if that's.

Marlana Hughes [03:51:14] Well, it was during COVID and so we weren't going to church and he, his was. He had been passing sacrament since he was 11 and he's a cool 12 year old and everybody loves him, the leaders love him, the older kids love him. He likes that and he likes that. I think he likes that attention the community and. But his fear went right to, well, what happens now, like when we die and we didn't explain a lot of doctrine and different things to him. We just. And we had already showed him, I think, believer on the movie from Imagine Dragons, the documentary.

John Dehlin [03:51:45] Believer.

Marlana Hughes [03:51:46] Believer. Yeah.

Adam Hughes [03:51:46] And actually for our 12 year old, that was. That was. Impacted him pretty hard because he's so sensitive and he just accepts all the

Marlana Hughes [03:51:54] kids in a good way.

Adam Hughes [03:51:55] Yes. Yeah. He. He just is kind. Super kind.

Marlana Hughes [03:51:59] And he just said the church shouldn't act like that. And.

John Dehlin [03:52:02] Yeah.

Adam Hughes [03:52:02] Yeah. When he saw that the church really pushes this. This harmful ID idea that LGBTQ people just aren't the same and that they kind of almost are a threat to us, he just was super sad about that.

Marlana Hughes [03:52:17] Yeah.

Adam Hughes [03:52:17] And it maybe kind of started to open up his mind that maybe not everything the church does is wholesome.

Marlana Hughes [03:52:25] So, yeah, we kept. We told the kids and to be honest, we didn't think it was going to affect all of them. We said we'd support our son on his mission. And this point has a call. We said we'd support our kids if they wanted to go to church. When they went back to church, we would take them again. A couple of them, one was going to go on a mission. A couple of them are like, we're good. And then there was Ben. So we said, when church starts again, we'll go. And then it goes from there. We.

Adam Hughes [03:52:55] Well, okay. So then our. Our oldest. It was getting closer.

Marlana Hughes [03:52:59] Yeah.

Adam Hughes [03:53:00] And they. The church gave him the option. They said, well, your mission's going to look like online MTC at home, learning Spanish, learning Spanish on your own over zoom, and then you'll probably be reassigned stateside for who knows how long. And he wasn't really excited about that. He was really mostly excited about going to Guatemala. And so he was like, I don't know. And then the church gave him the option to hit pause for 18 months and hopefully then the pandemic would fall over and he could just go have a regular experience at a regular MTC and go straight to Guatemala. And he. He really didn't want to delay. He wanted to just go. But I started talking to him a little more seriously, one on one, saying, well, this is why mom and dad are stepping back.

Marlana Hughes [03:53:40] Well, first I want to say that he. Some of his friends had come home from missions because of COVID and they said, no way are you going to be able to learn Spanish and do the MTC online. That's weird. Take the option. So he had already told the stake President he was going to start the online mtc.

Adam Hughes [03:53:54] And because he didn't want to wait,

Marlana Hughes [03:53:56] he didn't want to wait. So then we ended up talking to him.

Adam Hughes [03:53:59] Well, and I've got to put a plug in here for another book that I absolutely love. The name of the book is no more Mr. Nice Guy. So the book, someone on Reddit had suggested it to other members of the church who are leaving. And it's. It's totally about reclaiming your personal power and reclaiming your ability to just own who you are. And the first time I talked to my son, he was like, you know, Dad, I really kind of don't want to hear about this because it's going to mess with my head. I just. I'm going to go on my mission. I've made the decision, been planned on it for years.

Marlana Hughes [03:54:28] He didn't want to regret anything later in life if he didn't go.

Adam Hughes [03:54:31] He did say that.

Marlana Hughes [03:54:31] Yeah.

Adam Hughes [03:54:33] But I'd been reading that book, and I woke up one morning, one morning, and it just hit me that I'm not being authentic. I'm not owning my truth. I'm kind of holding back. And. And so I just went into him and said, I've got to be honest about this. I think you need to understand where I'm coming from.

Marlana Hughes [03:54:50] We're still trying to protect their feelings, I think, because we didn't know how to navigate it right.

Adam Hughes [03:54:54] And so I just started to talk to him very honestly about why I was in for 41 years and almost 42 years, and now I'm out. And then he admitted, he said, you know, just even a little bit, that we talked as a family over the preceding four to six weeks. He said it started to make him think. And he said, you know, I've prayed to know if the Book of Mormon is true, because I don't want to go on a mission and be teaching this if I don't know. And he's like, I've never gotten an answer. He just started to talk about his own doubts, and. And we just let him know that it was okay to have doubts and it was okay for him to do what he wanted to do, if he wanted to go because he didn't want to have any regrets, then. Then he would go and we'd support him, but that if he was having any doubts, that maybe the safest option was for him to hit that pause button that the church had given him, take that option to hit pause, and that would slow everything down. That would give him some time to really think it through, do a more serious investigation before he commits to 18 months. I mean, sorry, two years out in

Marlana Hughes [03:55:56] the mission Field and going to the temple, because that was a big thing for me, like, to start to realize, like, he's not just going on a mission, but he's got to commit to going to the temple. And.

Adam Hughes [03:56:05] And the. The promises that you're going to make there and commitments. Yeah. So it was just. It only took actually a couple more times. We kept talking and. And I just kept being very blunt, even though the feelings on the inside are hard to describe, because on the one hand, for 19 years, we have hoped and wished and prayed and encouraged this kid to prepare for a mission and to go. And now all of a sudden, at the last minute, I'm saying, you know, maybe you shouldn't go, because you're going to go teach people about a false narrative and tell them that they're Lamanites when they're not really Lamanites, and try and convince them that they need to be a lot more like us Caucasian Americans and give their money to a corporation that doesn't need it. And, I mean, just the whole thing about how unhealthy it could be, and even thinking back to my own life. Well. And we'd read a really great book by Stephen Hasson combating.

John Dehlin [03:57:03] Combating cult mind control.

Adam Hughes [03:57:04] Yes. And Marlena was the one reading.

Marlana Hughes [03:57:07] Yeah, I didn't even read it. I just. Because I didn't have time because I'm yet to read the whole thing. And I just went to the. You know, the index and found all the Mormon books parts of it. And I just read that he said he was talking about when he was in the Moonies and how they make you give up your bank account and your car and your everything and go live with them and the indoctrination that that creates. And he said the Mormons do it the same way with their missions. And I was like. And I was worried about him talking to Carson and kind of talking him out of it, because I still. I still wasn't sure 100% that that's what I wanted to do, that we weren't going to mess up his life. But. But as soon as I read that, I was like, you go talk them out of it right now. Like, right now.

Adam Hughes [03:57:45] Because you realize. And I'd begun to realize that, you know, the Mission is the biggest indoctrination tool that the church has, and it meets all the hallmarks of just like Scientology or the Moonies that rip you away from your support system. They let you have very limited contact with your family. You pay for it yourself. You pay to go be indoctrinated you memorize stuff that you're going to repeat. You're trying to gain adherence through the high pressure sales tactics. All of these things meet the hallmarks of just a high class indoctrination program. And it made me realize I came home from my mission much, much more committed than I ever would have been if I hadn't gone and that I think we'd both just come around to the idea that the mission really is a great tool for the church to build lifelong adherence that will never be able to, to step away and to get the, to get that out of their own heads and then come home

Marlana Hughes [03:58:47] and get married really quickly and quickly and raise a family so they, they got you hooked.

Adam Hughes [03:58:51] It's like if we wanted to create a little army of Jason Bourne's, you know, we'd send them to the mission field. So, so anyway, we just started talking very honestly with him and, and he,

Marlana Hughes [03:59:02] he still hadn't decided.

Adam Hughes [03:59:03] Well, he, he did decide and he emailed the state President and said, I'm definitely going. And then the deadline passed for him to decide and about three days later he said, oh, no, no, no, no, I need to hit pause. I've, I've really got serious doubts now. The more we've talked and the more that I've let it sink in. And so he hurried and emailed the state president and luckily the state president was able to call Salt Lake, call Salt Lake City and talk to the missionary department and, and put it on pause. And he's read enough now on his own, and he hasn't really even studied that much, but he's read enough on his own now that he's like, yeah, I don't, I don't think actually I want to do this just in general as we've talked to him about how Mormonism, I mean, it can be a positive in your life, but maybe there's even a better way where we can find self actualization and happiness and, and just do it under our own will without needing all the rules and the shaming and the, and the manipulation to try and force us to be good, decent people. And I think he started to see that himself. And so he hasn't, he hasn't contacted the state President, but he needs to and just tell the state president that he doesn't plan to go. But as of right now, he still has a mission call, technically.

John Dehlin [04:00:20] Wow, what an epic story. And sounds like you're, all things considered, your family has handled all this so well and you guys have dodged a lot of Potential bullets, and you're all kind of emerging intact and maybe even stronger as a family.

Marlana Hughes [04:00:37] Yeah, definitely.

Adam Hughes [04:00:38] Yes. And actually, I wanted to mention that earlier when Marlena said something, or maybe it was you, John, about how the kids have been able to be a little more open and honest with us. And I feel like. I feel like my relationship with Marlena is deeper and stronger than it's ever been. I feel like our relationship with our kids is so much more open and honest. They feel free to be who they are and to own that and not try and put on a facade or lie to us just to make us happy. So, you know, just. Even in the last few days, our kids have talked to us as they begin to realize, okay, my mom and

Marlana Hughes [04:01:17] dad

Adam Hughes [04:01:19] aren't going to punish me for not being Mormon, and they begin to talk to us more bluntly about mistakes they've made in their lives. And it's actually sad to think about

Marlana Hughes [04:01:29] not mistakes, but explored the world, experiences that they've had.

John Dehlin [04:01:34] And.

Adam Hughes [04:01:35] And they're able to talk to us more frankly. And it's actually sad to think like, you know, some of our kids have dealt. They've been carrying a burden for a year, two years about things they didn't think they could talk to us about that may have even been traumatic for them, but they didn't think they could talk to about it because they didn't think we'd understand or that we would punish them for it. So it's made us a lot more open as an entire family. I would say, like, extremely more open.

John Dehlin [04:02:01] Yeah.

Marlana Hughes [04:02:01] And we thought we were pretty open before, but this is a whole new level of honesty. I mean, I don't. I didn't think we could get any more honest for the most part, but stepping back away from the church and not becoming your own self and having your own being accountable for your own self and not someone else judging our worthiness as it will change your. Yeah. Your relationship with your spouse and with your children and realize.

Adam Hughes [04:02:27] Yeah, go ahead.

John Dehlin [04:02:28] It's such a mind bender to, like, have that conditioned fear that if you leave the church, your marriage will fall apart and your kids will become a disaster and your family will fall apart. And to find out that if you handle it right, you'll be healthier, your spouse will be healthier, your marriage will be healthier, your kids will be healthier, and your whole family will be healthier. And that's not that there isn't difficulty and pain in the process, because life always contains suffering, but when you can be more authentic More vulnerable, more real, more open, more connected, more honest with each other. How can that not lead to good things?

Marlana Hughes [04:03:04] Right, Exactly. Yeah. That's how I lost my thoughts.

Adam Hughes [04:03:10] Feeling well, exactly. And. And I mentioned our stake president and bishop came and visited us a couple of nights ago at our home. And. And we told them the same thing, that, you know, the church pushes this narrative that if you ever walk away, you're walking away from all the blessings that. That God was giving you and raining down on you, you know, for. For paying your tithing, for wearing your garments, for doing your callings, for all those things, all those performances. And, you know, as we've stepped back, we continue to see little and what the church would call tender mercies, you know, that things just continue to happen and to fall into place. And it's astounding to see that our worlds haven't fallen apart. I mean, it was tough and it was. You know, there was trauma in leaving the church, but the church caused that trauma. Not. Not us. We didn't cause the trauma to ourselves. It's trauma because of the indoctrination and the fear of what's going to happen if you leave. But actually, stepping back, you're allowed to finally see that we were blessed all along. The blessings didn't stop. If you want to call them blessings or whatever, or it's just life continues to happen and the rain falls on the good and the bad. And it was never conditional upon us adhering tightly and strictly to the performances of Mormonism and doing all those checklists and all those things that we're told, hey, if you don't do it, you're not going to have the spirit with you, and you're not going to be led and you're not going to be able to know how to teach your kids, and you're probably going to get in a car accident. And, you know, all these things that we. We think we're told that we have to do or. Or else.

Marlana Hughes [04:04:43] So, yeah, I just want to say that's what I finally realized. Even though I realized that when I'm going back to when I said I found the lifestyle after Mormonism that I couldn't put my. You know, I couldn't really decide why they were happier than we were. And I think I've come to realize that we are now our authentic selves and realize that we're inherently worthy without the church and then someone else telling us that we are. And that. And with openness and the. Our family is so much stronger and stronger than I thought. It could get, you know, more strong. And even though that's what you're processing is even though I knew when I found out about the first vision, I was like. And that was almost enough for me, and I needed to explore all the other things and to absolutely make sure we studied and researched and did all things. But it was also processing how we're going to live without all those things in our lives that the gospel teaches. I can't remember the wording. You said it earlier, and you said it perfectly, but I can't remember exactly how you said it. So it's just better altogether.

John Dehlin [04:05:50] Yeah. So I'm so happy that you guys have. And, you know, you're kind of babies in this process. Right. You're kind of new to it, but you're handling it so well. And I'm so happy that things right now are going so smoothly for the family.

Marlana Hughes [04:06:06] Thanks. Thanks.

Going Public, Threats, and Coming Out to Family

John Dehlin [04:06:09] So I want to end because we may be having you back on Mormon Stories because you guys have been vocal on Facebook and you've received kind of a threat. And, you know, we have a commitment. We have two, at least two standing offers on Mormon Stories. If, you know, if you've. If you or your loved one has been in a high level of leadership, you automatically get a Mormon Stories episode. And if you get threatened with the disciplinary council or, you know, get excommunicated or whatever, you automatically get to come on and tell that story. Because we hate, Hate, hate, disrespect, whatever the word is. I. I don't like to use the word hate. Let me take that back. We think that excommunication, disciplinary councils, especially for losing your faith when they haven't been honest with you, are just. It's just so wrong. Along with anytime they silence people and try and shut people up and try and keep members of the church ignorant from the problems by coercing and intimidating people not to speak up, not to share what they've learned, not to express concern. That's, you know, silence is deadly. It's the silence that kills. And so people need to be vocal. And so when they coerce or intimidate people with disciplinary councils or excommunication to try and shame them or marginalize them or ostracize them or silence them, we're not going to have that. So tell us really quickly, as we're wrapping up, kind of what that experience was and what you guys are anticipating.

Adam Hughes [04:07:46] Go ahead, Marlene.

Marlana Hughes [04:07:47] All right. I'm just going to finish up by that. I told my family in September. Then I told my Family. I told my parents in September, end of September. And then I told my brothers and sisters October 1st, because we are going to come out publicly because stuff was getting around, you know, in the ward in our area and we just wanted to, you know, navigate our own story be and make sure that that was going out correctly. So we put out a public statement on Facebook and Instagram October 3rd that Adam eloquently wrote about all of us. And we got a lot of positive feedback. Adam. I mean, get into another time and you know, there's. For the most part it was positive. I don't know if you want to say anything more than that. And then I felt a huge.

John Dehlin [04:08:35] Did you go to detail, Adam, or did you keep it really brief and non specific?

Adam Hughes [04:08:39] I didn't talk a lot about the reasons why or even our story of how we came out because I knew it would take four or five hours like this. But I just went over the main bullet points that I think would apply to anybody leaving, which is that we were all in. We loved the church. It was our entire life. It was our entire worldview. But that through a series of events we had begun to study and that a deeper study and investigation of the church forced us to find that the church didn't live up to its own standards of integrity and how they've approached their own history and that they've whitewashed it and that due to that we were going to have to step back due to our own sense of personal integrity and honesty, that we couldn't keep going forwards. And just that we didn't feel adversarial towards any of our friends or board members, that we still would welcome those friendships, that they could continue, that people could feel free to reach out to us and ask questions, but letting people know that we'd found a higher level of just honesty and authenticity and kind of peace as we had stepped away.

Marlana Hughes [04:09:52] Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

John Dehlin [04:09:54] And you chose to do that over Facebook?

Marlana Hughes [04:09:57] Yeah. We didn't want to go public. We didn't. But people were getting pieces of our story and. But they wouldn't come to us directly, so. And we weren't in church, so we felt the need to put it out there. Like I did not want to because I. My parents aren't on social media, but I didn't want people that saw that to get. For them to go back to my parents and say something stupid or whatever or insensitive and which can happen with social media. So I. I said, well, I've got to talk to my parents first. And Talk to them. And then. Because I wanted them to hear it straight from me. And then I said, okay, we still can't do it until I talk to my brothers sisters. They need to know that. So. And how did that go?

John Dehlin [04:10:46] How did that go talking to your parents? That's terrifying for people.

Marlana Hughes [04:10:51] Yeah. So I approached it a little bit earlier in the summer, just saying I thought they had questioned when they were my age. A little bit later, they had a lot of church books. You know, again, Nauvoo there. You know, I know. Who doesn't have a problem with polygamy? Sorry, Mouse getting dry. I knew my mom didn't love that. Like, who does? And so I thought that maybe they had questioned it. So I. I kind of brought it up that way. And they said they hadn't, but. Yeah, so I just kind of brought it up. Asked him about some books. They had a lot of church books. I asked him if they had a certain book about Emma Smith. They said they did. And I just kind of approached it gently, saying I was questioning some things. I didn't believe it all, and. And they were cool and talked to me about it, so. And then I actually went back to their house and was going to talk to them in person, and they're still in Illinois, and. And it wasn't the time. And so then I actually just called them and. And told them it was the hardest thing I've ever done through tears and, I mean, ugly crying, telling them that I didn't believe it was true and having a discussion. But my parents. And I knew, because I had said a little bit earlier that I didn't have, you know, some siblings that were, you know, completely in. And I knew that they would be loving and accepting. So they said, we will love you no matter what you do, whatever you choose to do in your life. You're an adult, and you can make your own choices. And it went a lot better than I. I mean, I knew that would be their main response and they would love me no matter what. But I always, you know, when my brothers and sisters see this, I always say that I'm the favorite child and in my own mind, anyway, that it's

Adam Hughes [04:12:35] hard to step down from that pedestal.

Marlana Hughes [04:12:36] Yeah, I was gonna. I was gonna come off that pedestal of maybe, you know, checking all the boxes and doing those things. So. But again, they. I knew they would love me and they support me and do those things, and they were willing to have a conversation more about those things that, you know, they didn't. Weren't aware of. That I was talking about. So that's still to happen. And then my brothers and sisters, I sent a text. I talked to some siblings a little bit before that in person, but sent a text and everything was positive, except from about one person. But it was still good. It did good. I think it was a shock and scary fear. Fear on their part of that if I could be leaving, maybe. And maybe I interpret that wrong, but I think it was shocking. So. And we just agreed to disagree and to move on without hard feelings. And we didn't want any. I didn't want any of that. And to change our. I didn't want it to change our relationship. And I will. You know, we'd still support any marriages, baptisms, missions, different things like that. That we weren't going to be like, you know, anti. About the church. Like I. Yeah.

Adam Hughes [04:13:53] Antagonistic.

Marlana Hughes [04:13:53] Yeah. Yeah. We still love a lot of things about that. So again, going back. So then we put it out on October 3rd publicly, because we were commenting on other people's pages and people, you know what the church has taught that we are offended, we leave because we're lazy, we want to leave because we sin. And we wanted to clear that up of kind of the reasons we are leaving that we weren't doing because of those things. So.

John Dehlin [04:14:19] So just to make it. Sure. Did you guys leave to drink alcohol? Did you leave to sin?

Marlana Hughes [04:14:24] No.

John Dehlin [04:14:24] Did you leave because you wanted to, you know, do all the things Mormonism wouldn't let you do?

Marlana Hughes [04:14:30] No. No.

Adam Hughes [04:14:31] None of that really ever held an appeal for us. So we didn't.

Marlana Hughes [04:14:35] We didn't. Again, we didn't think this would happen in a million years. It's still shocking to me to find ourselves in this situation because never in a million years. And we weren't looking for this. We weren't. We didn't want this to happen. And that's why we did so much studying, is because I didn't want to not be true. I wanted to stay in. I wanted it to be true. I wanted Joseph Smith to be who they said he was. I wanted the church to be what they said it was. There is good in the church and it's good for those people, especially like Adam that, you know, converted on his mission. And it's good for those people that are maybe not a good situation, that it brings them to a better situation. And. But I like, I think John Delane, you. Sorry, calling you by your whole name, but you said on a podcast or somewhere that if you're going to give your time and your money and your life. And I was willing to give my life just a year or so ago. I remember thinking, would I die right in front of my kids if someone asked me to deny the church, I would die and not deny that. And so to find out that it is not true that the things they've told us, that. That sent me over, when you're that committed, that's unacceptable. And I love that you made that point because you better darn well know what you're getting into. And when you're born into it, you trust your parents, they don't know any better. You trust what you've been taught. It's. There's so much good about it that you don't question those things that we had issues with because, you know, you know where your kids are going to go. You know, you know, and there's that path that's laid out for them that they're going to turn out good. And you don't question if it's toxic or bad or harmful for them. And mentally and physically and different things, you know, and so again, I. We didn't think we'd find ourselves there, but if you're willing. Sorry, I'm losing my train of thought. Getting emotional about that. If. Yeah, if they're asking that, what are

John Dehlin [04:16:27] you getting emotional about?

Marlana Hughes [04:16:29] The pain it causes you. It causes me that. It causes other people that. And so that's what led not just our public post. I wanted people to know why we came, why we're leaving the church. And so they didn't come up with their own narrative that they knew the facts and not that we left because we were offended and all those things you said. But I get emotional because I get angry kind of about it. I get mad that they take people's entire lives and mess with them on something, especially if it's not true. And that's why I started to post, because even though it would make me sick to my stomach, it would make me ill. In fact, I went through a week of. I would post something, I get sick, actually the middle of the night, I think, And I actually found out just from the dentist, I was grinding my teeth and I would throw up in the middle of the night because of the stress. And then I threw up because I just see a picture. I said when Covid was over, I'd go back to church, and I didn't feel like actually going to church. So we turned on the Zoom church and he pulled up something and it physically made me ill.

John Dehlin [04:17:33] I think you actually threw up.

Marlana Hughes [04:17:35] I threw up. Over a week span, at least four or five times. Thinking of the pain and the. The stress that the church. Yeah. Because I feel like I need to do my part of sharing that with other people. And, you know, and then I stress out that I'm posting stuff, and I don't want to diminish any people that are in it and that they're okay where they're at. But at the same time, I feel like my loved ones should know the truth and be able to make that logical decision. So even though.

Adam Hughes [04:18:02] Informed.

Marlana Hughes [04:18:03] Informed, and so even though it was making me physically ill, I didn't. I didn't want to stop. And I think it was good to get out of my system, to be honest, because after that, I felt. I feel like I had to get rid of a little bit anger and a little bit of sharing. And then I had this. I felt a lot better. And I. I mean, I'm still posting some things, but.

Adam Hughes [04:18:21] Yeah, it was crazy, though, because I was the one that brought up church on the Zoom on the computer, and because she said, well, maybe we want to see it. You know, just see what it looks like. I mean, this was just a couple of weeks ago, right?

Marlana Hughes [04:18:35] Yeah, like a week and a half ago.

Adam Hughes [04:18:36] Yeah. And at the same time, I thought, well, I wonder how much tithing I paid. Oh. Because we got an email saying it's time for tithing settlement. I thought, I wonder how much tithing I paid this year. I couldn't remember. So I pulled up the church's website, and it pulls up to where you make online donations, and it pulls up a big version of the tithing donation slip. And Marlene is like, I think I'm getting sick looking at that. And I'm like, no, no, I'm sure you're not. And she's like, no, actually, can you hand me that garbage can? And I handed the garbage can, and she threw up. And she comes back and sits down again, and there's Zoom church on. And she immediately starts feeling sick again. She's like, I think it's the church. I think you got to turn that off. And as soon as I turn it all, she was okay. And later that day, you saw something on social media that had a picture of someone standing in front of one of our churches. It was a Sunday. And as soon as she saw that on her phone, she's like, I feel like I want to throw up again. And so, I don't know. Call me crazy, but I. I felt like there was a cause effect relationship there.

Marlana Hughes [04:19:36] Yeah, I definitely. I Think and I, you know, Googling all these symptoms of stress and different things that I think I was just stressed out about all of it. So. And I maybe going more public, I don't know.

John Dehlin [04:19:49] I mean that's a pretty severe reaction to literally throw up because of the seeing. Seeing how much tithing you paid, for example. That's pretty intense.

Marlana Hughes [04:19:57] Right.

John Dehlin [04:19:58] And I know it's that, it's that severe, it's that emotional. We're not being dramatic here.

Marlana Hughes [04:20:03] No.

John Dehlin [04:20:03] This is what it's like to be an orthodox Mormon, find out the church isn't true and then to realize you've dedicated your entire life to something that wasn't what not only was it not what it claimed to be, but you were knowingly and intentionally misled by the leaders.

Marlana Hughes [04:20:23] Right. Enough to give my. I mean I was in it enough to give my life for it. And so yeah. When you find out that it's not true that things you've been misled and you know, some of your things on BH Roberts where they knew. They knew a long time ago. They know what they're doing. It makes, it obviously makes me ill, physically ill and I feel that need to speak up and that's why I posted it. Tried to only post true stuff because people are happy in the gospel then that's great for them but again they need to know that stuff so they can make that informed decision because.

Adam Hughes [04:20:54] And you've had a lot of people actually reach out to you.

Marlana Hughes [04:20:56] Oh, I've had a lot of people reach out to me and thank me for my voice in being because I'm kind of feisty and if the church, if they're going to say they don't. As soon as I heard them say they don't want us to go quietly because you know that that's. They just want you to go quietly so you don't stir the pot. I'm gonna stir the pot a little. And so I tried to be nice about it and put out, you know, just the facts church sourced so that people knew, you know, because they're afraid to read stuff that's not and so that they would be informed. And I had people reach out to me with yeah. Issues of their son was gay, someone that was separated and going back to. They're feeling pulled back in to talk to the bishop, which was toxic for them. I just. So many different things and people that want to get out of the church but they can't, you know, they have to stay closeted. There's people. If I, when I Saw that because I had guilt. Like, okay, I've put it out there. I've kind of made a stink about that. If I can save one person's relationship, one person's life, keep a family intact, whatever I can do to help those people, I'm going to do it. So if that comes to, you know, the bishop and stake president wanting to just come and see me after a month of posting, that's what happened. They call the Sunday. I don't know if you want me to get into that.

Adam Hughes [04:22:21] Well, and it's interesting because, you know, the bishop. I was in the bishopric. I was. I was serving there. And of course I said I didn't wanna. I didn't want anyone to make us into a project. So maybe he felt like he needed to be a little hands off, I don't know. But, you know, I knew him. We. We served together for about two years and. And we weren't good friends, but we. I mean, we were friends.

Marlana Hughes [04:22:45] And for five months there was no contact from the bishop. He actually called once in the summer to release my daughter. He called Adam and said, I need to get a hold of Mara. Whatever. Not.

Adam Hughes [04:22:59] You said all of our other kids.

Marlana Hughes [04:23:00] Okay, fine, whatever. To get a hold of our daughter to release her friend, because they're reorganizing something in the. In the young women's. And he didn't ask Adam how he was doing it. He just. Not even a casual, how are you doing? He just said, I need to get a hold of her to release her. So no one reached out to us, but apparently I made somebody mad or someone went to the bishop.

Adam Hughes [04:23:23] Well, it was when you started posting all of a sudden, when you started posting so publicly.

Marlana Hughes [04:23:27] October, the beginning of October, just for a month.

Adam Hughes [04:23:29] All of a sudden they called on a Sunday afternoon and needed to come see this the very next day.

Marlana Hughes [04:23:33] I was posting stuff before, before that, but it was a little cryptic and not exactly about the church, but it was about things to do with that, you know, authentic and different things. So, yeah, and they called us and came over and acted. I don't know. I don't want to say. I'm sure they cared and I'm sure they wanted to really know how what led us out of the church is what they asked us and how we felt.

Adam Hughes [04:24:00] They were cordial. And it.

Marlana Hughes [04:24:01] It was cordial, but it. At the end, and maybe I'm wrong, and I don't think so, but at the end when they finally said, I heard you've been posting and I'd like you Basically to not keep posting.

Adam Hughes [04:24:12] Well, they said that we. They'd have a problem.

Marlana Hughes [04:24:14] They would have a problem. And I said, well, I'm only posting things that I think are truths or facts. And he said, okay, I don't have a problem with that. But I don't think the stake president knew what I was posting, and only the bishop did. And again, I could, I could see when he was seeing my posts and he, he stopped for a while. But I know there was other people. So I don't know if someone went to them and said, these are offensive, or she's out of hand, or if he just thought I was out of hand or that I'm going to bring people out of the church. And I don't know. I just, I didn't get angry about it until the next day that they weren't concerned about us until they thought that we were going to take people

Adam Hughes [04:24:50] out of the church or use their word, recruit. We were recruiting people.

Marlana Hughes [04:24:54] They thought we were recruiting people. And I told them that I'm helping people and then I'm a safe space for people. And I didn't think of it at the time, but they might have thought that was a competition of being a safe space where they could go talk to the bishop.

Adam Hughes [04:25:07] Yeah, I thought it dawned on me really quickly because she said to the, to the bishop and sake president that a lot of people had reached out to her, even people in our ward who, who don't want to be known. They. They don't believe at all, but they, they don't feel like they can say anything because of their family situation or whatnot. And, and that these people had reached out to her just as someone to talk to. And I'm thinking, oh, this is what a bishop does. A bishop is the spiritual counselor, the spiritual counselor for the entire ward. And they may see that as. They might not have seen that, but at that moment in time, I'm thinking, oh, this is in direct competition with what the bishop does. And they might, I don't know, we might be getting a letter in a week or two saying, this is not okay.

Marlana Hughes [04:25:50] I tell them there was no safe space. There is for us. There was no safe space in the church to talk about these things because you're either in or you're out. And if you go talk to them, they're going to try to convince you to stay in or do whatever. They're not going to give you the real facts.

Adam Hughes [04:26:03] So you've got to dismiss your concerns.

Marlana Hughes [04:26:04] You got to do it on your own. And Find those other people that can. Can help you navigate that, you know? And, like, that's what Mormon Stories Podcast does. And that's why even though they just came and talked to us on Monday, and I'm like, e, here we are all of a sudden on Mormon Stories three days later, which they're probably not gonna like. But I told him I wasn't gonna stop posting and I'm not gonna stop being a safe space for people that need that safe space. And.

Adam Hughes [04:26:32] Yeah, well, and I feel like, very much so, that it is so hard to come out. It's in the church to say I'm questioning because it's just, you know, the church paints this. This picture that if you're questioning your week, you just need to have more faith. You just need to try harder. For some reason, you're the one that's broken if you're questioning. And if. Or if the church doesn't work for you, then, I mean, it's God's one plan. So if it's not working for you, then there's something wrong with you, not with the plan. So I just felt like we needed to go public. I was a little more adamant that we go public because I wanted to at least kind of pave the way for other people and to normalize it, to be able to say, it's okay, it doesn't matter if you've been in 40 years and devoted your life to it, it's okay to admit that maybe it's not working for you. And it's okay to say, I want to take a step back. Meta Harrison. I love her writings. And she talked about doing the same thing where she just thought the church was toxic, thought it wasn't working for her, and she said, I'm going to do a test. She has an article somewhere on this where she talks about, you know, she just took a break, and at the end of the break, she's like, wow, my mental health improved. A lot of things in my life improved. I'm going to make this change permanent because it's. It's improved. So my point with posting was, again, just to kind of normalize it and let people see that average everyday people do leave. And it's not because we wanted to go have an affair, even though people have told us that. They've said, well, you literally have.

Marlana Hughes [04:28:05] I've had someone say, what stops you from now having an affair? I've had. I just made a list the other day because I got so bad again that people said, what's stopping you from Being a drug addict or alcoholic. What's stopping you? Yeah, from having an affair. Now what. The biggest one I was surprised about is just, please tell me you still believe in God, right? You still believe in God. Like, I got that a lot. And I'm like, I never said I don't believe. And God, I never. I just don't believe the church is true. So I was. It was kind of like, again, I made a post that I said no one asked me why, because. And I called out people saying basically, because they're gonna have to confront themselves and confront their. Their whole life, you know, what their whole life is based on. But they. No one would ask why, but they would just wanted to confirm for themselves that, you know, everything was okay.

Adam Hughes [04:28:52] Yeah, people don't want to know why you left. They're just assuming that because you've left now, your life is going to unravel and you're going to end up, like I said, in the gutter, addicted to drugs and having affairs. And that's just. We definitely want to destroy that false narrative. It is completely a false narrative. And it's a narrative that the church purposely pushes to create that fear and emotional control that doesn't let people question or to go there in their own minds and to use their own thinking abilities to decide, does this even make sense? And is this all logical?

Marlana Hughes [04:29:29] Because we got other people too, that actually texted before we came out and said I sent messages and saying, I hope I didn't ever offend you.

Adam Hughes [04:29:37] Oh, yeah. Immediately people started texting saying, did I offend you?

Marlana Hughes [04:29:41] We didn't even say we were out. But yeah, I was super shocked that people. Actually, I've never thought that with people that have left so.

Adam Hughes [04:29:48] Well, okay, so I'm going to admit, as a bishop and as a leader, in all my callings as a missionary, I was always taught the same thing, that people leave either because they were offended or because they couldn't hack it. So I hate that I used to think that about people and, And I apologize for that. But that, But I don't blame people for thinking that, because that's the standard narrative in the church, is that there's no legitimate reason to step away from the church. So the only reason is because you wanted to sin or, or what was the other reason I gave it?

Marlana Hughes [04:30:23] Well, that was actually the other day, that we were lazy. Someone had said that you were lazy and couldn't hack it.

Adam Hughes [04:30:27] Basically, like, you were not in so many words, but I had a good friend that said, and they thought what's funny is in the same message, on the one hand, they said, no judgment. We accept you as you are. And on the other hand, in another part of the message, they said, it's sad that you're. You're trying to step away from the accountability and your covenants.

Marlana Hughes [04:30:46] Yeah, yeah.

Adam Hughes [04:30:47] You just don't want to be accountable and, and follow up and live up to your covenants that you've made. So. But no judgment.

John Dehlin [04:30:54] Yeah, yeah. It's tricky. It's so tricky. It's so messy. Well, so you guys may face a disciplinary council then, because coming on Mormon stories is kind of like. I mean, from my perspective, it's an act of honesty and sincerity. It's a. It's an act of charity, of kindness, of service. It's sharing with others, sharing your story, being authentic, being open, helping others. But from the standpoint of the church, it's probably viewed as a thumb in the eye, as. As an excommunicable offense.

Marlana Hughes [04:31:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:31:30] So are you guys, are you guys prepared for that? Are you ready for it? Will you attend? Have you thought about that?

Marlana Hughes [04:31:37] I just want to say really quick, when they said about the posting that we said we weren't going to. And they said we kind of asked how it worked because he said, well, we're going to have to decide. He said he had to talk to the Area 70. So I don't know if that means they were going to proceed or kind of wait and see what happens. But I just want to make it clear that we were not planning on coming on Mormon stories the same week. They said that to kind of, you know.

Adam Hughes [04:31:57] Right. This just kind of fell into place at the last minute.

Marlana Hughes [04:32:00] Yeah. That. I didn't do that on purpose. I mean, that is kind of in my style, but it did not happen on purpose. And. Well, I do want to say again, really quickly, they asked us very poignant questions that did go along with the apostasy questions, like how we believed in God, if we believed another religion. And I didn't see any of that until they. After they left. And I looked at the apostasy questions,

Adam Hughes [04:32:24] you know, in the church handbook. In the church handbook, definition of apostasy.

Marlana Hughes [04:32:27] And that they actually were asking us those questions of apostasy, see, to see where we stood. And I did not realize it until after. And again, I think it was deceptive on their part that they came in acting like they were caring and then said, okay, well, we're really here because you're posting. So they did ask us where we stood on. Did they. Not about if we wanted our.

Adam Hughes [04:32:48] Oh, yeah, they asked what we. What we wanted to do with our membership in the church. And I was honest actually with them and said that for me, it's taken this long. It's taking 15 months. And I was like, out months ago, but it's taken this long for me to be mentally okay and emotionally okay with the idea of letting my church records go. And I, I mentioned to him that, you know, the thought had crossed my mind to just do it myself. That would save them and me a lot of hassle and time and. And maybe hurt feelings to just do it. But at the same time, I don't know. I know there's been other people on your podcast, John, that have said that that's not my responsibility. There should be space within the church for all of us. Very few churches out there take such drastic measures. So most churches, you can have a wide variety of thought and not face the possibility of being excommunicated from your community. I mean, it is my community. It's my heritage. It's everything. And so, you know, maybe by not removing my records, it just makes a statement that it's the church that is making the decision that I'm no longer welcome in this community, despite all my hours of service, despite all the contribution, all the ways we've contributed, despite my own heritage, pioneer heritage in the church, that it's their decision. I'm not the one removing my name, but it's them. So I don't. I don't know if that was clear

Marlana Hughes [04:34:20] or not, but, yeah, I have thought about it. I don't know. I'm not prepared. I still have family that I, you know, there's a whole issue of all that. And I don't. I haven't even talked to him in depth about that, but.

Adam Hughes [04:34:34] About removing your name?

Marlana Hughes [04:34:35] Yeah. Removing my name. Thanks. But I mean, I think about it sometimes when I get bugged enough and how mad I sometimes get about things, things that I don't want any part to do with it. But at the same time, if they're going to excommunicate me or dis. I mean, I. Sometimes I'm like, yeah, they're not going to do that to me. You know, maybe disfellowship because I'm a girl and I'm posting these simple things, but maybe they think I'm more of a threat than I am, then I am ready to let that be a show of how ridiculous that is that they're going to. I posted a few truths. Maybe it's more threatening to them than they. I thought. And if they're willing to go that far, then that's on them. So I'll take whatever they and I let them know.

Adam Hughes [04:35:24] This is interesting and maybe a little bit of a shameless plug here for my website, but I let them know while they were there that I had just like about a week ago set up a website. It's Super Basic. It's MormonKnow.com K N O W and I, because I, I feel just as. And I let them know this, I let the stake president and the bishop know that I feel almost as passionate about letting people know and making sure that people have informed consent as I did when I was a missionary. So if you want to call that recruiting, if you want to say I'm an apostate, whatever, fine. But I know for me that first six months after my shelf broke, I really kind of stumbled around for a long time. I know on your show you frequently ask folks how long it took them. Did they. Had they, did they know about Mormon Stories before they had their faith crisis? Did they know who you were? I had no idea who you were. Never heard of it. It took me months and months. Yeah, closer to four months before I even stumbled upon Mormon Stories. And I just, and a lot of people actually that I've seen online that posted and said I wish there was just a one stop shop where I could go and find quick links to all of the important stuff that helps explain this because I'm struggling. I can feel that something's not right. I can feel that there's misinformation here coming from the church but I can't combat it myself. These are people who are in a faith crisis themselves and they're reaching out online for help and they're saying, you know, my, my husband or my wife is just absolutely. What's the word I'm looking for? You know like dominating me with, with conference talks and church doctrine and quotes and all this. And, and they're searching for a convenient place to go and find quick information at their fingertips. So I just put together a really simple website and I'm just trying to mate together, put together a list of, you know, the best YouTube videos and books and documentaries and just another source

Life After Mormonism and Final Reflections

Marlana Hughes [04:37:30] so people just hopefully can find.

Adam Hughes [04:37:32] Yeah. Where, you know, so, so anyway, not to be in competition with, with, with the Mormon Stories website because your website is outstanding, John. But just to try and help us spread that awareness in any way that I can. And, and I let the state presidency, I Mean, the state president and the bishop know that just as they were leaving, I figured that eventually they're gonna figure it out and that I might as well just be upfront and honest with them too. And, and, and again, that's one of the gifts that this all has given me, is an ability to just own my truth and say it unapologetically. And, and hopefully we've done that here today, so.

John Dehlin [04:38:10] You sure have. This has been such a lovely and powerful and thoughtful interview in the same, you know, in the legacy of Leah and Cody Young of Julie and Jerry Johnson, Doug and Julie Beckett of, you know, so many, the ones that you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast. So many couples and families have been excommunicated just for speaking openly about their experiences. And, and I'm just going to say that I, I want to try and always speak responsibly and kindly. But this tendency the church has to silence to keep, keep the information from the members and to silence and coerce members when they try and speak openly, it's what allows Mormon stories to exist. 15 years for it to be covered in the New York Times. You know, you know, global coverage of Mormon stories. Non Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews know about it, but most active believing Mormons have no idea that it even exists. The CES letter can, like, transform Mormonism, and nobody knows that. The gospel topics essays can be put out by the church, and no one knows that they're even out there. This lock on information that the church has is so damaging to this idea of informed consent, to letting people make informed. Know what they're a part of and make informed decisions. And it's outrageous. And that's why we're gonna, we're gonna spotlight the church every time they try and silence a coerce people from speaking their truth. And that's what makes your interview today so courageous, in addition to just the lovely, thoughtful, kind people that you are. So, on behalf of my listeners, I just want to. And viewers, I want to thank you guys for your willingness to tell your truth. And I know that just like, you know, so many of these faith crisis stories have impacted you, I know that your story is gonna bless lives, even save lives, even save marriages, because you were willing to tell the truth.

Marlana Hughes [04:40:25] Well, thanks for having us because that's all we want to do. Like, yeah, it's just, again, yeah, we just want to save those lives and get the truth out there and help those people. No matter if it again makes me ill or gets me in trouble or whatever, I Think it's important. Again, it only took, you know, I mean, multiple people reach out to me and it only took that one person to know you're helping. So whatever it takes, I'm willing to help those people. So reach out to us.

John Dehlin [04:40:53] I love it. Yeah, I love it. Well, it's time to roll. Any final things you guys want to say before we, before we close?

Adam Hughes [04:41:04] I think I'm about all talked out. If I think of it. I'll send you a message. John, if I think of anything else,

Marlana Hughes [04:41:09] I just want to say on the stories we told of our kids, it's their stories are their stories. And I mostly shared what they said I could share. So again, I don't share too much, but they've been awesome and I just wanna. I'm grateful for them going on that journey with us. And I think that families that can be open and honest and share that with their kids, that it'll just make your family become closer than it's ever been. And that's the most important thing and thing we want. And. And I guess the one thing I do, another thing is it'll be okay. It's gonna be okay. You're. You and your spouse are hopefully gonna be okay. And if you work at it and open your eyes and it's going to take some work and it's going to be hard, but your family's going to be okay. That's what it's searching for at the beginning. Knowing that we're going to come out on the other end okay. Because it's scary and you don't know where that other end leads, but it's good and you're going to be fine. And reach out to people that you know are out. Reach out to us. Reach out and get help and get that comfort and make friends that are out that can support you.

John Dehlin [04:42:17] I love it. Well, our listeners and viewers are all sharing their love. Ken says, thank you, Adam and Mar Marena. Susan says, thank you all. This is so inspiring. Roger says, thanks, John. Josh. John says, thank you for doing this video. I appreciate you all. Billy says, I commend your courage. Joey says, thanks for sharing Mormon stories. Was my savior. Helped me realize I wasn't crazy. Mary Jane says, thank you for sharing your story. So thanks to all you listeners for your kind words and comments. And Adam and Marlena Hughes, thank you so much for sharing your story. Today on Mormon Stories. It's meant the world.

Marlana Hughes [04:43:00] You're welcome. Thank you.

Adam Hughes [04:43:01] Thank you.

John Dehlin [04:43:03] All right. You guys are awesome. And stay. Will you come back if if they try and excommunicate you, will you.

Marlana Hughes [04:43:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:43:11] You record as much of that as you can, either written or whatever. However you record it and come back and let us know how that goes.

Marlana Hughes [04:43:19] Okay? Sure.

John Dehlin [04:43:21] Because we're gonna shine a big fat spotlight on that.

Marlana Hughes [04:43:25] Of course.

John Dehlin [04:43:27] All right. And love to your kids and your family.

Adam Hughes [04:43:29] Thank you, John.

Marlana Hughes [04:43:30] And to yours.

John Dehlin [04:43:31] Thank you. All right, listeners, thanks for joining us at Mormon Stories. We love you. Thanks to everyone who donates that makes this possible. If you don't donate, less than one out of a thousand of our listeners and viewers donate. If you want to see this continue, we need you to donate. So go to mormorestories.org click on the donate button. 10 bucks a month, 25 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. 100 bucks a month, tax deductible. All of it goes to helping this cause. And we'll keep going as long as you support it. So if you value it, please, please support it. And thanks to everyone who already does. Please spread the word like us. Give us positive reviews on all the social medias. Share this with everyone you can and email us@mormonstoriesmail.com with any feedback you have. Comment everywhere you want to share this everywhere. And let's just keep this ball rolling so more and more people can learn the truth about the church so that people can make informed decisions. Thanks, everybody. Love you. Take care. We'll see you all again soon on Mormon Stories podcast. Bye. Bye.

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