Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 601

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Daniel Miller [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home.

John Dehlin [00:00:51] Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host John Delinquent, and I'm very excited today for this interview. It is December 2, 2015 and it's 2:51pm in the afternoon and I am interviewing Daniel Miller and he is joined if you're watching us on video, he is joined by his lovely wife Anna Marie Enfield Miller, and Daniel has a really cool story. Daniel worked for the lds Church from 2011 to 2013 as a program manager in the publishing services department. He oversaw all media production for Seminary and institute or as he describes it, the CES portfolio, including broadcasts. So this is a guy who had an inside view of the workings of LDS Church headquarters for a couple years and he came out on the Internet with he sort of did an ask me anything on on the Reddit Ex Mormon forum, which is where I learned about him. And a lot of people said, you need to do a Mormon Stories interview. And so we connected up and he said he'd be willing, which I think is really courageous and cool. But at the outset, I just want to begin by speaking about intention. I will just say, personally, I've read over Daniel's outline of what he wants to talk about. I don't think that he's interested in slamming the church, of trashing the church, of just sort of focusing on the negative. I think that he just feels like it was an interesting experience. He learned a lot. He saw things that deserved respect and things that were a little bit troubling. But most importantly, at least as far as I'm concerned, my intent is simply that, you know, people give billions of dollars a year to the LDS Church and there isn't a ton of transparency. And so the extent to which people are willing to talk about their experiences just provide some transparency into how their money gets spent and kind of what the goings ons are at church headquarters. So that's my intent. Happy to be as objective as possible and talking about the good, the bad, the neutral, and it'll be hopefully just really fascinating. Now, Daniel, really quick. Well, first, Anna Marie, welcome to Mormon Stories.

Daniel and AnnaMarie's Backgrounds

AnnaMarie Miller [00:03:33] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:03:33] Thanks for joining us. And Daniel, also welcome to you.

Daniel Miller [00:03:37] Thank you. Glad to be here.

John Dehlin [00:03:39] And why don't you also just speak briefly about your intent, what you do and don't want to accomplish, just so that we can keep things as constructive as possible.

Daniel Miller [00:03:50] Okay. From me or from her for you?

John Dehlin [00:03:53] Yeah.

Daniel Miller [00:03:54] Okay. Yeah. Like you said, I had some unique experiences and had talked to several friends of mine who said, oh, you should post your story, your experience on Reddit. It's really interesting. And I didn't really understand why it was interesting for the most part, because I lived the experience right. And my life is not really that exciting. And I just want people to know I'm not coming on here to drop any big bombshells, like I have some great inside information or anything like that. I'm really just a guy who worked for the church, and I did see some of the interworkings of the church which were very interesting. And I actually really enjoyed my time working at the church. I loved working there at the time that I was there. Unfortunately, I saw some things while I was there that were troubling to me and at the same time was kind of going through some questioning of my faith, and it led me eventually out of the church. But ultimately, I don't fault the church for anything. If I hadn't been a member of the church, I never would have met my wife, wouldn't have had the family and the life that we have. And I'm thankful for that past experience. And I also understand that there are people who are still in the church that are close friends and family and so on and so forth of ours. And we love you for it. We understand why you're still there and we get it and we support you. And I'm not here to try to persuade anybody to leave that the church is some wicked organization that's trying to do anything, you know, other than be a good organization. And for me and for, you know, the experiences that I had, it just didn't seem to. To work. And there's, there's some specific reasons why that I think I'll share on here and just, I want people to respect me for that. If you're still a true believer listening, understand that it didn't work for me. And there's, there's some reasons why. And I'll support you as much as you support me.

John Dehlin [00:06:02] Excellent. All right. And I should say that Anna Marie is. Is being a mom during. During this time period. She's got kids coming home soon, so she may jump in and out of the interview. And mostly, I think, AnnaMarie, you're here to kind of support your husband. Is that. Yeah.

Daniel Miller [00:06:21] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:06:22] Well, feel free to jump at any time. All right, so, Daniel, let's just. Let's just begin. Let's talk about your. Your history growing up.

Daniel Growing Up Mormon in Idaho

Daniel Miller [00:06:32] Okay. Yeah. So I grew up in Rigby, Idaho, and born and raised in the church. I have brother and two sisters, and we were very active growing up. I enjoyed playing sports and very athletic and competitive in the things that I did. I think that I was quite a troublemaker, if you ask my friends, neighbors and parents and siblings, that I was kind of that third child that wanted all the attention and, you know, was always trying to one up everybody else. But, you know, one of the things that really stands out about my childhood was that because I was so competitive and kind of wanted to make my own name for myself, that I was not somebody that was very open to be controlled, that my parents, as hard as they tried the discipline me, I think, you know, had a rough time trying to keep me in line with me. Always trying to just do whatever it was that I wanted to do. And I definitely. Probably just a typical kid. You know, you wake up in the morning on Sunday mornings and your parents tell you it's time to go to church. And I went and kind of did my thing. And like any other kid, probably had a lot of times where, you know, you go to sacrament meeting and then a couple of the guys decide to skip out the rest and go up to Maverick and grab some hot dogs and, you know, hang out for a couple hours and drink your Maverick mugs, those big Maverick mugs that they used to have, and then hurry and make it back to church in time so that you could be there to write home with your parents and, you know, at the dinner table trying to come up with what you learned and, you know, the typical growing up Mormon in Idaho. In Idaho, yep. That was what we did. Went to seminary, graduated from seminary. I do remember as a teenager, there was some struggles that I had in terms of just not feeling like I fit in with the cookie cutter mold that Mormonism tries to teach you to be as a priesthood holder. The look, the behaviors, the, you know, all those things. And it wasn't like I necessarily was doing anything that was over the top or completely outrageous, but it was just. I just didn't really feel like I fit in. And for whatever reason, my personality type took to the programs of the church in such a way that I just didn't really feel like I was ever worthy enough, you know, like I was good enough. Like, no matter how hard I tried, I just. I would always fall short. And it was a constant worry for me, feeling like. In fact, I remember right after I was baptized feeling like I'm washed clean. And I remember the. I don't even remember what it was, but I remember the first time I thought, oh, I sinned, and now, you know, I'm not clean like I was anymore right after I got baptized and how guilty I felt about that and realizing that now I need to go repent and pray and ask for forgiveness. And it just seemed like a constant battle where I was never good enough. I always had to try to do better. And a lot of the mistakes and then not wanting to be controlled, I think played a big part of that, that I don't do it just because you tell me to do it type person. And in fact, if you tell me to do it, a lot of times I would have just done the opposite just to prove to you that I could do it. And she's laughing at me over here because she knows that.

John Dehlin [00:10:28] Is he still that way, Anna?

AnnaMarie Miller [00:10:30] Yes, you still have.

Daniel Miller [00:10:32] And so, yeah, I really just kind of wanted to march to the beat of my own drum. And it was torn with a lot of guilt. And I think that it compounded a little bit for me when they did the whole raising of the bar. And I'm thinking, man, I don't feel like I'm worthy enough now in everything that I'm supposed to do. And you see all your friends that are priesthood leaders and, you know, teachers, quorum, deacons, quorum, whatever, advisor or not advisors, the presidents and the counselors and whatnot. And I don't really think that I ever participated in any of those because I just was maybe a little bit too fringe in a lot of areas and never really participated there and quite honestly don't know that I really ever wanted to, because the commitment and the requirements to be there, I enjoyed my freedom and didn't like to be tied down to a lot of those types of things. So when the whole raising of the bar thing came, I think that for myself, I really had to find a way, because as I've researched over the past couple of years, there were a lot of people who went through those same types of experiences that would literally decide they couldn't deal with it and kill themselves. I don't know what the rate of suicide is in teens in Mormonism, but I was one of those that was really struggling with that guilt. And when you are a teenager going through those self esteem issues and feeling like you're not good enough and nobody loves you because you can't be this person. And a lot of people I've talked to about that have said, I don't know what you're talking about because I never experienced that, I've never felt that, I don't see that. But for me, that was my experience with growing up Mormon was that there was just a lot of guilt associated with being a Mormon and never feeling like you're good enough. I've had people tell me, well, that's because you don't understand the atonement and how it works. Maybe not, I guess, I don't know. But for me, I felt like I was as in as anybody could be. But the guilt always remained. And later on in life, as you grow up and you know, become a parent, a husband, and you've got all these things that you're supposed to do, the constant worry of continuing to be worthy for the next baby blessing or the next baptism or the next whatever, it was just like, or I gotta have the spirit with me when I go home teaching or whatever it is. It just was always a constant thing that for me, in order for me to cope with that as a youth and probably 17 age maybe. Yeah, probably 17, be a close estimate, I had to learn to kind of shut off the feeling of guilt because it was such a constant thing in my life that I mean, it would just end up doing damage or ultimately lead to suicide. And that's, I think, had an impact on me throughout the rest of my life. Because as you're still Mormon, you continue down that cycle of guilt throughout your whole life with all the things that I just mentioned there. And it's hard. I mean, for a very long time in our marriage, I think it was really hard for me to say I was sorry because when you can bottle that guilt up inside of you so far that you don't feel remorse, then you don't really ever apologize when you make mistakes because you're not really sorry for that. And if I would do something that was hurtful to her, I was able to just shrug it off. Like, why is that a big deal to you? You know, it's not a big deal to me, but that goes back to that early on in my life, having to just shut that guilt down so that I could function and be a person. And unfortunately, there's some negative side effects with not being able to fully feel remorse for some of the things that you do or whatnot. And looking back now, I recognize that. But back then I didn't realize that it was just survival mode as far as I look back now. And it wasn't that I made any conscious decisions to do that. It was just, it was the choice that I made. So I kind of grew up in that frame of mind. I remember when the mission call came or the time to go on a mission came and I was extremely filled with anxiety over that. In fact, I remember all growing up telling my family, my parents that I don't want to go on a mission. And they're oh yeah, you do, you want to go. You're just saying that now, but you'll want to go. And no, I never wanted to go. Even right up to the day I left, I really didn't want to go. But when you grow up in Rigby, Idaho and all your friends are going on missions and the expectation is there, and back then it was a commandment of the Lord that, you know, every worthy, willing and able person does go on a mission. And I felt like it was part of my salvational requirements and if I didn't go on a mission, that somehow I was breaking commandments that was going to put my salvation at risk. And so preparing for that, I had a lot of angst about going out of the country. I definitely didn't want to go foreign. I felt like being at least in the United States, I was somewhat close to home and wouldn't feel so homesick. And along with that, I loved my family. Growing up, I didn't spend a lot of time with friends outside of my house and going to, you know, the get togethers and all the social activities and things like that. I had a couple of really close friends with that. We either hung out at my house or their house, but quite honestly on the weekends, if I had the choice, I would have spent it with my, my family. That's, you know, so that played into the fact of now I have to leave my family for two years and I can't talk to him. And that was a real, real hard thing for me to try to accept that I'm going to be so homesick because I hadn't spent more than a couple nights away from him ever in my life and now I'm gone for two years. So I go through the process and I remember, you know, My brother sharing experiences with me about his mission and how great it was. And he loved his mission and that I'll do good. And he was kind of like that at first. But, you know, eventually you overcome that and, you know, everything is fine and you'll love your mission. And had a few friends, a couple of my other. My brother's other friends also had kind of taken me out on the drives in their car and chatted with me about their missions and kind of given me encouragement. And so I didn't really feel pressure from my parents. I mean, I just kind of felt the general Mormon pressure that this is what you do. I don't recall ever being told you will go on a mission. It was just kind of what you do, you know, in Rigby, Idaho, if I didn't go, what else would I be doing? All my friends would be gone. I'd be by myself. And so I guess I'll do it.

Mission Call and MTC Experience

John Dehlin [00:17:55] So where were you called?

Daniel Miller [00:17:57] So, yeah, I went to the Japan Tokyo North Mission. And I remember going into the mtc and I'm probably a little bit embarrassed to admit this, but I had never read the Book of Mormon cover to cover. I remember going into classes and going over the first discussion that we learned and they're talking about this guy Joseph Smith, and I'm like, who's Joseph Smith? And I grew up Mormon, going to church and doing all these things. I had no clue who Joseph Smith was.

John Dehlin [00:18:30] So all your time in Rigby, Idaho, going to church, I guess you spent more time at Maverick than at church?

Daniel Miller [00:18:36] Yeah, probably. You know, we didn't really do a ton of family home evenings and go over. We would kind of get on a kick here and there and it would be more of, you know, loving your neighbor and loving your family and being a good person. But it was never really gospel oriented or doctrine oriented.

John Dehlin [00:18:55] Did you say you graduated from seminary?

Daniel Miller [00:18:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:57] And you never heard about Joseph Smith?

Daniel Miller [00:19:00] And I have to admit I did slough seminary quite frequently. And I think the guidelines back then for graduation were much more lenient now in 1992 than they are today for attendance and whatnot. So I feel really embarrassed about admitting.

John Dehlin [00:19:18] That's all right. No, it's interesting that. That's really interesting. Okay, so mtc.

Daniel Miller [00:19:24] Yeah, so I get into the MTC and, you know, learning about Joseph Smith. Wow, this is really cool. And I really felt strongly about, oh, that scripture that talks about how great shall be your joy if you save one soul. And I really felt like, well, that soul's kind of mine. Because I'm just now being converted and really learning about the church and what it's all about. And so I guess I'm that first person. And yeah, how great, great shall be my joy now that I'm receiving the true church and the truth and being able to go to the celestial kingdom. So, yeah, for myself, I'll experience that joy. And now as a missionary, I get to go. Having been newly converted, basically, I'm kind of excited about it in some aspects and I get to go share my testimony with others. So that worked out well. One thing that stood out to me in the MTC was I remember in my district, my companion and a couple others, we were looking through the Book of Mormon at the facsimiles, or in the Book of Abraham, the facsimiles. Facsimile 2, the circular one there, that has all the stuff. And we had heard that there's a lot of temple stuff that's really buried inside of there. And we were really trying to study that and understand it and like, oh, this is going to reveal some great mystery. But then I remember as we were studying some of those things, we all kind of got this really ominous feeling like we're seeing stuff in there that's somewhat related to the temple. And we really felt like the adversary was there strongly and we were doing something that we weren't supposed to because we were looking at temple stuff outside of the temple, and this really negative, dark, ominous feeling that we were perceiving over ourselves. And we closed our eyes, Book of Mormons, our scriptures, and we ran back to our rooms, you know, from. I don't even remember where we were studying one of the classrooms or whatnot. And that feeling, you know, that impression like, oh, you know, the adversary is really there and he's real. And, you know, I look back at that now and think there's probably a lot of cognitive dissonance that, you know, was associated with that now. But back then, that was kind of an impactful thing that really kind of made me heavy experience with what the adversary in Mormon terms must really be like. And in a way was a testimony builder that, oh, yeah, it's true, you know, because the adversary is here, he's real, he's trying to tempt me or he's trying to tear me down or whatever the case was, and kind of solidified it a little bit in my head at that point. So graduated from the MTC or whatever, you know, got done with the MTC and was sent out to Tokyo north and hugest culture Shock. Well, second, hugest culture shock probably of my life. You walk off the airplane and jump in a car, a van there with the mission president and the APs, and they drive you to the mission home. And I remember sitting in the van, looking out the windows and billboards. First of all, concrete as far as you can see. And they say in Japan, where it was at one time one of the largest or the largest city in the world, that if you start on one end of the city of Tokyo and you walk as far as you can see to the horizon, and you do that six times, you'll be to the other end of the city. So we're talking huge, like from Rigby, Idaho, to Tokyo, Japan, in the size of the concrete jungle that you're in, number one. But number two, looking at these billboards and realizing there isn't one word of English anywhere. And in train stations, not one word of English. And nobody as much as the Japanese people back then. Maybe it's different now, but back then thought they could speak English. They very broken and couldn't understand anything. Trying to communicate was very tough. But I just remember that initial culture shock. Like, what did I just get myself into? And just pleading with God to please don't let me get separated from my companion because I won't even know how to call on the telephone or who to call or where to go. And just completely scared. Like, literally just physically shaking. I was so scared at the time. So that was definitely a very defining moment for me. I do remember for probably the first three months, because I wasn't able to communicate that I kind of really wanted to share the gospel, but I just felt like I'm homesick. Number one, I can't speak the language, number two, and now I'm in the thick of it. I've got two years to go. I'm not really sure that this is what I want to do. It's hard. And I remember crying myself to sleep. And my mom, after my mission and in subsequent years would laugh about the letters. Yeah, you would write these horrible letters about how sad you were and how much you hated it and how much you wanted to come home. And we would just ignore it and write you letters back of encouragement and hope you're doing well. Eventually all that changed, but I do remember those first several months, very traumatic for me in that instance. And I was put in an apartment where the people that were in there, my companion and one of the other people that were the other missionaries that were there were both Japanese. And the one My companion actually spoke really good Japanese, excuse me, really good English. But because he was my trainer, he never told me the entire time he was my companion. He never spoke English to me one time. So two of the two of the people there were Japanese myself. And then the other person that was there, the other missionary that was there, were American. But for the most part, I got thrown in right out of the gate into spending the majority of my time with the Japanese people learning the Japanese language and subsequent companions from there. The high majority of all of them were Japanese natives and didn't speak much English at all. There were times that I would go a month until he'd go to his own conference without speaking any English at all. So I really did learn the Japanese language very well. Toward the end of my mission, when members or investigators would call and I would answer the phone, they couldn't tell whether I was the American or the Japanese in the apartment. I always kind of felt like that was a badge of honor that I was able to fool even the Japanese, that I was actually the gaijin, they called it, with the funny accent. And a few people nicknamed me Watanabe as my Japanese name because I sounded very Japanese. So I really dove in and tried, I guess, is the thing that I really tried to learn the language and tried to do my best to be able to share the gospel while I was there.

Serving a Mission in Japan

John Dehlin [00:26:33] Would you remember enough Japanese to give us a sample of what your testimony would have sounded like in Japanese?

Daniel Miller [00:26:39] Oh, geez. Yeah, maybe.

John Dehlin [00:26:43] Go for it.

Daniel Miller [00:26:50] Yes. I'm really nervous about speaking Japanese. I don't know why.

John Dehlin [00:27:00] No, that's all right.

Daniel Miller [00:27:01] I mean, it's been, what, 20 something years?

John Dehlin [00:27:04] No, that's fun. I just wanted to do it a little bit.

Daniel Miller [00:27:07] We had a couple of Japanese exchange students that we've brought that have stayed with us a little bit since. And I speak a little Japanese here and there, but for the most part, I really don't get to. It gets rocky.

John Dehlin [00:27:18] It gets razzy. Okay, any. Anything else about your mission before we talk about what came next?

Daniel Miller [00:27:28] You know, maybe one story that I do remember. I really got kind of passionate toward the end in being zone leader and the callings that I had there. And I remember that there was one missionary that was there during a zone conference and got a lot of reports that he's just kind of acting out, goofing off and staying out past curfew and going into areas that he wasn't supposed to. And I remember just very passionately kind of taking him aside and he Was kind of belligerent during the Zone conference and whatnot, and taking him aside and just saying, you know what? I've spent nearly two years of my life out here building up the kingdom of God and serving these people and loving them. And it's very offensive to me that in one short action, you can ruin the entire two years that I've put forth, as well as all the other people here, to give the church the name that we've worked so hard to give it and think about those types of things. And, you know, so I was very, very defensive, I guess, and maybe a little bit, definitely, probably a little bit self righteous, you know, in the sense that I've worked hard for this and, you know, why aren't you giving your best while you're here? And so I definitely changed from not wanting to be there to I love it. I don't want to go home. One of the. I'll maybe share a couple of experiences. One of the experiences when I was first baptism, I had, we knocked on the door of a guy who had been reading the Bible and years ago he learned about tithing and he felt like, oh, the one true church or the church that I'm going to join is a church that has tithing. And so he had been saving tithing for nearly two years since he read that in the Bible. And we knocked on his door one day and talked to him for a couple minutes and the first thing he asked is, do you have tithing? And we said yes. And so we went in. He was baptized, paid all of his back tithing from before he was even a member for like a year and a half. So that was a big spiritual experience for me, you know, thinking, oh, God led us to him. And toward the end of my mission I actually got to go. He was called as a branch president and I went through the temple with him. And I remember standing in the celestial room with him, you know, giving him this hug and just holding him in there and him telling me thank you. And you know how it was a very spiritual, very powerful experience standing there with this guy that I had baptized and seeing his progress, I guess, in the gospel. I had another experience where I met a kid, a younger kid, probably 17. And it was just one of these feelings that when I met him, it was like, I know that I knew you in the pre existence type feeling that we were friends long before. And then you start going through the scenarios. It must have been that I said that I would find you and bring you the gospel. And he felt A lot the same way. We just clicked, you know what I mean? We just felt instantly, we just bonded. We were really close friends. It may not necessarily have been that we were actually friends in the pre existence. It may just have been that we clicked and we were really good friends or whatever the case is. Right. So he was baptized since I know he went on a mission, baptized quite a few other Japanese people friends of his, and was very successful in converting people. But I think probably the most powerful experience for me on my mission was I met a Brazilian girl about halfway through my mission who had come to Japan to work in the factories. And what they do is they come over and Japan pays you so well that they earn the money and then they send the money back home to their families. And so she had just arrived to Japan. And what we used to do in Japan is we would teach free English classes once a week. And so we'd go to the train station and we would hand out the little. We call chirashis, is what we call little pamphlets that had the date, time, location, all that stuff. And so she showed up or. Well, actually what happened was she found one of those pamphlets on the ground and she picked it up and she called the number, it was our apartment, and I answered and she asked all the details. And she was speaking kind of broken English and whatnot, didn't know any Japanese. And I gave her all the information. So that next week she comes in to the church and I'm sitting down and kind of working with my class. She came in late and I'm working with whatever class I was assigned to. And she walked in and I remember her looking at me as she turned the corner to walk in and her eyes just about popped out of her head. And then she started getting tears welling up in her eyes. And then she walked out of the room and went into one of the other rooms and a couple of the other missionaries went over and were talking to her and said, I want to talk to that guy. And she was pointing at me or whatever. So I switched with one of the other elders and they took over my class and I went back and I sat and I was talking with her. She told me of an experience just a couple weeks before coming to Japan where she had a dream and she was looking over the earth and wondering what the purpose of life is and what it's all about and why we're here and so on and so forth. And she said that a man in white robes walked up to her and. And said that I have A plan for you, and you'll find these things out and be patient and blah, blah, blah. So then she looks back over the earth, and she's just feeling really good and excited for her new path and whatever. And she turns back to the man, and he's gone. And so she goes looking for him, and she can't find him. Well, off in the distance, she sees another. She sees a person. So she goes toward that person. And she said that she got up to that person and saw a face and didn't recognize him. And so she said the first face she knows was the Savior. She knows it was Jesus. But then that second face she saw, she said that it was me. And so a couple weeks later, she comes to Japan, and here she is. We meet. And two weeks later, after meeting her, she's baptized. And I guess I should preface that that this was in November, and we had been praying for what the mission did as a Christmas miracle is what they called it, that we wanted to have one baptism in November and one in December. And so my companion and I, what we did at the beginning of November is we did what we called covenant dendo, or covenant proselyting, basically. So we covenanted with God that we would start sacrificing our mornings and our lunch breaks and all these other things. And instead of doing those things, we would focus on finding people to teach. And so when we found this girl, we really felt like, okay, the Lord's blessing us, and we're holding up our end, and he's holding up our end, and this really great, super powerful experience. Well, then in December, this girl's sister gets baptized. And so now we've hit our goal for November, and we've hit our goal for December. Super awesome experience. Well, toward the end of my mission, I was able to go back to that area after I had been transferred out. And there was, I don't remember the exact number, over a hundred Brazilian people who had been baptized since then. And they had enough, they were saying, or close to enough to start a Brazilian branch in that area. They had all the headsets there. You know, they'd go because the services were in Japanese. So the people who didn't speak Japanese, they had translators there that were doing and all that stuff. And my wife and I went back to Japan, what, 10 years after my mission, and they still had Brazilian people showing up there. So, you know, I don't know how many people that ended up converting, but enough there. And then, you know, you look at how many people went home to Brazil and Took the, you know, the gospel to those people in Brazil and so on and so forth. And how, whether that's still going on or not, you know, I don't know. But that was the thing to me that was like, you know what? I'm so glad I came. I was called to this area by revelation. Just a really super powerful experience, which is why when I found out how they actually assign missionaries based off of the computer generated format that they use now, I was a little shocked at that. Anyway, super powerful experience. One of the best of my mission. I remember on the plane ride home, just calling, stopping in Salt Lake City on my way to Idaho Falls and calling my mom and saying, I don't want to come home, I want to go back. And. And she was in tears. Why would you not want to come home and see your family? And I just wanted to go back and she didn't understand. So the second biggest culture shock was when I came home and went back to Rigby, Idaho and saw these roads. Why do you need such wide roads? It was just so foreign to me.

John Dehlin [00:36:57] It wasteful.

Daniel Miller [00:36:58] Yeah, it really was. And just seeing the mountains and the sunsets and the potato fields that are out there. So that was probably more of a culture shock and trying to adjust. I remember sitting down at the counter the first morning I'm home and opening up my little blue planner that they gave you when you're on your mission and saying, okay, well, who can I serve today? What can I do? And I sat there for probably 15 minutes and I'm like, I got nothing. There's nobody that. I mean, everybody's Mormon here. What do you do? And sitting down on the couch and just feeling like it's so wasteful to be here watching tv. There's got to be something that I can do to. To spread the gospel or do better than this. I just can't resign myself to such a wasteful life and not being about my father's work or whatever it was, you know. So you were kind of hot.

John Dehlin [00:37:50] You were a little bit hot and cold, weren't you?

Daniel Miller [00:37:51] I was, yeah. And, you know, my parents, I think, were a little irritated at me because my mom would be like, hey, can you run up and drop this off at the post office for me? And I would be like, alone. You know, I don't have a companion. I can't go alone. And every time we would drive somewhere in the car, we would have to say a prayer and, you know, just very, very living the rules, which is so not like me, you know? For me to be a rebellious child and then come home and just get up in the morning and still do my ppp and all the things I was supposed to be doing, you know, for my mission was it didn't last long. I mean, don't get me wrong. But I still wanted to try to keep that focus, and that was what my mission did. And, you know, I had a lot of fun. I realize now some of the things that you go through to help indoctrinate you into the, you know, being excited about the work and whatnot. But it definitely worked for me. I loved my mission. I had a great time.

John Dehlin [00:38:52] Excellent. So you come home and you go to Ricks College, right?

Daniel Miller [00:38:56] You did, Yep. Went to Ricks College. I was working in a jewelry store in Idaho Falls at Jensen Jewelers was the name of the jewelry store. Full time and going to school kind of part time. And I met my wife there at Rick's.

AnnaMarie's Background and Early Life

John Dehlin [00:39:16] Now, Anna Marie, do you want to tell us a bit about yourself or do you want to not tell us anything about yourself?

AnnaMarie Miller [00:39:20] Oh, that's fine. What do you want to know?

John Dehlin [00:39:22] Just a little bit about your background.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:39:26] So I grew up actually in southern Utah, not too far south, but. And I lived there until I was 16. So I have five siblings. There's six kids in my family, and I am number two. I'm the oldest daughter, and my family's always been very active. And I was like the opposite of Dan. I don't have a rebellious bone in my body. So following the rules was always very easy for me, very comfortable for me. I did not feel stifled in any way whatsoever with that kind of a life. I liked the security, and I like to have a plan for my entire life and know what was next. So definitely a different kind of experience than he had. And let's see. So we lived there until I was 16, and then we moved to Idaho, to Rigby. But I didn't meet Daniel. He's five years older than me. So by the time I was 16, he was already finishing up his mission. And so I did not know him, even though we graduated from the same high school. And then I had my last two years of high school in Idaho, and I went to Rick's right after that. I, you know, I had my plan, and I was not going to deviate from that. Like I said, I have, you know, very different kind of perspective. And my experience in the church growing up was very different from his experience in the church growing up.

John Dehlin [00:40:58] So in what way?

AnnaMarie Miller [00:41:05] I always felt that I didn't I always felt like I had freedom. My parents went every single Sunday no matter what, but it was always. They got up, they got ready for church and invited us to go with them, but we were free to stay home if we so chose. We didn't really do that very often, but we were free to do that. And there wasn't even like a guilt trip involved of that's where we should be or anything. They genuinely. It was our choice. So I didn't feel any sort of like I did it because I had to, or that I was guilted into it or anything like that. I'm the type of person, definitely that's. That's kind of a nurturing person. I want to take care of those around me. And so I think that I have always had a little bit of. I didn't want to disappoint my parents, but they. They did not ever put any pressure on me that way or that what they expected of me, it was just more what I expected of myself. So his experience and my experience were different, I think, just because our personalities are so different.

John Dehlin [00:42:16] And it sounds like you didn't have the guilt and shame, none of it.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:42:20] No. And it's different, I think, for a priesthood holder too. And there's no expectation as a female that I would be going on a mission, you know, that was more of a choice, not a commandment or whatever. So I think, yeah, there's definitely a different level of pressure on maybe for him than there was for me. Yeah, it's a little bit different.

Daniel Miller [00:42:44] I will say about our dad too, that I love is he is a guy who lives to teach him correct principles and let them govern themselves. And he spends the time teaching the things that he believes is right and allows you to make those choices and will love you regardless of what those choices are. And it's been something that I, as a parent definitely wanted, have always wanted to with my kids, try to model after in that respect as well.

John Dehlin [00:43:15] That sounds great.

Daniel Miller [00:43:16] And you know, maybe for me, I think maybe one thing more about my childhood, it was a little difficult, I think, for my mom because my dad worked out of town construction for over 20 years and he would leave on Sundays and he would be gone the entire week. And he would come home Friday nights and then Saturday morning early, he would get up and he would go to his office, corporate office there where he would do the time cards for his employees and he would get the supplies that he needed. And he spent most all day Saturday preparing to hit the road again on Sunday. And So I didn't get to spend a ton of time with my dad growing up. And.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:43:56] And

Daniel Miller [00:43:58] maybe that was why my mom was kind of trying to do a lot of the raising her own. Maybe why I was a little more wild and felt like I was free. But I do remember when dad came home, if I was bad the week before, I was going to hear about it. Dad was a little. Mom was very authority figure because she had to be, but she was also very nurturing. And I remember dad coming home and he had the personality, very competitive. I think half the scars or more that I have on my body is playing basketball with my dad and getting in fights and fouling each other. And, you know, so since then, you know, he's been a huge influence in my life. Once that he was able to finally come and work in town and come home every night, our relationship grew because he and I are so much alike in so many ways that, you know, I love spending time with my dad. And there's definitely a ton of things that I implemented for myself that I want to pattern after the way that he raised me. But also with her dad, the experience that I've had, I've never seen anybody that will unconditionally love another person as well as he does, and that's not an easy thing to do. And, you know, for me, it's a trait that I've had to learn over time. Some people, it comes much more naturally for her, and I think that that's how she is, where I'm more spur of the moment and wear my emotions on my shirt sleeve sometimes. And when I'm happy, everybody's happy. When I'm angry or sad, everybody else is sad. And, you know, I'm the spontaneous, hey, let's pick up and let's go to St. George for the weekend. And she's, well, where are we going to stay? And we got to have a plan. What are we going to do? I don't know. Let's just go. We'll find a place when we're there. And so, yeah, I think we complement each other very well in that aspect.

John Dehlin [00:45:42] And so you guys met it. You guys met at Rick's.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:45:46] So he'd been home from his mission two years by then, by the time I met him, but I was just out of high school.

John Dehlin [00:45:53] Okay, you were 18?

AnnaMarie Miller [00:45:55] I was 18. Yeah.

Daniel Miller [00:45:58] He was a youngster, barely.

John Dehlin [00:46:02] Okay, so you guys met.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:46:03] And so we met through a mutual friend who, yeah, we hadn't. We had had some friends in common at the time that I Had been there, but we were hanging out with them at different times based on our different personalities.

Daniel Miller [00:46:21] They were. Her friends were in the party scene.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:46:26] I was not.

Daniel Miller [00:46:27] She was not. And I was. And so there was some areas of Rick's college where it was a 24, 7 party on campus dorm that, you know, happened to have a lot of non Mormon approved activities going on.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:46:47] So we didn't overlap even though we

Daniel Miller [00:46:49] had some good friends. So, yeah, I would hang out with her friends when I was out partying and then when they weren't, they thought she was super cute and they would hang out with her and pretend to be good guys and whatnot. And so.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:46:59] So we ended up meeting through a mutual friend, but.

John Dehlin [00:47:03] So the squeaky clean missionary rubbed off.

Daniel Miller [00:47:05] It did, yeah. Yeah. So that's one thing to point out. I had never, prior to going on my mission, tried alcohol or tobacco or anything like that. Even one time. I was really trying to do my best to live it and came home and you know what, I'm 21 now and I've never tried this. And I think it would be fun and whatnot and kind of got into that scene a little bit. So it was a good thing she came along when she did because I think she kind of rescued me from my addictive personality. I guess you could say I obsess over things, which I think is part of the whole process of me exiting the church when I did obsessing like I did from 6 to 10, 12 hours a day sometimes just reading, I just obsessed. And so, yeah, she came along definitely to make sure that I was back on the straight and narrow.

Courtship, Marriage, and Starting a Family

John Dehlin [00:48:02] So you guys dated how long before you were married?

AnnaMarie Miller [00:48:05] Three and a half months.

John Dehlin [00:48:07] Wow.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:48:07] Almost four months. We were engaged after two and then we were engaged for just under two when we got married.

John Dehlin [00:48:14] Wow. And you were still 18?

AnnaMarie Miller [00:48:16] I was still 18, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:18] You guys have been married how long?

AnnaMarie Miller [00:48:20] 18 years.

John Dehlin [00:48:21] And how many children?

AnnaMarie Miller [00:48:23] We have five.

John Dehlin [00:48:24] Okay.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:48:25] We just had. We have a one year old, so.

John Dehlin [00:48:27] Wow. Yeah, a caboose.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:48:29] Maybe he's seven years younger than our next caboose.

John Dehlin [00:48:34] All right. And maybe, maybe we'll jump into talking about your church employment, but there's a story about a patriarchal blessing and having a child that maybe you guys want to talk about as we wrap up talking about your personal history. Is that all right?

Daniel Miller [00:48:53] Yeah, you bet. So in my patriarchal blessing, and it's pretty specific, you know, and some people can say, oh, well, it could mean the next life. But the way it's. In my patriarchal blessing. It basically says that I'll be a father to sons and daughters in this life. Yeah, very specific.

John Dehlin [00:49:15] Plural, male and female.

Daniel Miller [00:49:18] Yeah. And so I also do remember a time where she. I don't remember if you needed a blessing of comfort or if you were sick or whatnot, but

AnnaMarie Miller [00:49:30] I remember that,

Daniel Miller [00:49:30] yeah, it was a blessing where I said that you'll be the mother of sons and daughters or something like that. And I used plural for daughters as well in that one. And, you know, at the time, she said, well, you, you know, blessing is over. You realize you said daughters, and we don't have enough daughters yet to be daughters.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:49:49] We just have one daughter.

Daniel Miller [00:49:51] Yeah, we had one daughter. So we had. Going along the gap in the seven years we had three boys and one girl. And we were trying to decide, well, do we want to have another child? We're not sure. And we kind of waffled back and forth. And so we decided, you know what, we're going to pray about it. Patriarchal blessing says that we're supposed to. So we're going to pray about it. And I remember at least myself and she can speak to. She can speak to it on her own, but I remember very distinctly feeling like the answer that I got to my prayers was that, yes, there is one more that's supposed to come and that, yes, it's a girl beyond a shadow of a doubt, more so than any spiritual experience or any answer to any prayer that I had ever had in my life. I was as sure about that as anything. And I don't know, maybe you can speak to yours, but I didn't have that as strong. So anyway, we go. And this is kind of at a time where I'm going through a little bit of a faith crisis and not sure of a lot of things, but so we decided to have a next baby and just really felt like there was a daughter up there waiting. And we're excited and kind of planning for it, and we kind of both talked about it, you know, that we're ready for it and whatnot. So we go in for the test and find out it's a boy. And I mean, I was shocked. I don't know how you felt about it.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:51:31] I wasn't, but I was.

Daniel Miller [00:51:34] You were. I don't think she was shocked that it was a boy, but I know that her and my daughter were kind of sad because they were so sure that. Or, I don't know, so wanting a girl, I guess, at first. But I know for me, I was shocked just because I had prayed about this and my patriarchal blessing said it. And how could it be anything other than that? I don't understand. And how do I reconcile that? You know, and there are times where you can think that you should have a prayer answered, or you can find a way as a Mormon to rationalize away or justify away the reason why, or it's not in God's plan, or I'll know later. But to me, I knew that was our last child and it wasn't what was supposed to happen. So I was pretty traumatized over that. And not because we had a boy, obviously I love our son and wouldn't trade him for anything, but just because I felt like God specifically told me, this is a girl. And, you know, I know people will say, oh, well, that's because you were doubting and maybe you weren't living the way you were supposed to. And so you lost the blessings of your patriarchal blessing. And, you know, my rebuttal to that is, so how does that make my son feel knowing that we were cursed with the boy, that we were supposed to have a girl? And that's the answer is now God's going to show me by giving me a boy, that I lost my blessings. And what does that make my son? I mean, that's not a legitimate answer to the concerns that I wasn't living righteously. So I was not receiving the blessings I was supposed to.

John Dehlin [00:53:22] But it sounds like an even bigger part of that was just you feeling like God had told you it would be a girl and it didn't happen. So that made you think or feel what,

Daniel Miller [00:53:35] like just. Well, and at that time, too, I was. I was kind of questioning some things, which we'll talk about later. But it just made me feel like, okay, well, if this wasn't God talking to me and answering my prayers or telling me his will for me, then what about all the other experiences? Can I really, at this point, put it? All these experiences with other times and these dreams that people had where they saw me in dreams and baptisms and the times I felt guided by the Spirit and all these other things, is that all just made up in my head? You know, what's the reality here? What's really the answer to a prayer and what's not the answer to a prayer? What's made up in my mind and what's actually God talking to me? And does God even care? Does he really play that much of a role in my life? Sure, sure, we can talk about that later.

John Dehlin [00:54:36] No, that's good. Okay, so if that feels right to you. What we could do is we can end this episode as being sort of episode one talking about your background and we'll start the next episode talking about your time at the church. How does that sound?

Daniel Miller [00:54:53] Yeah, that sounds great.

John Dehlin [00:54:54] All right. Well, listeners, thanks for joining us for episode one of this interview with Daniel Miller, former LDS Church employee. And we look forward to interviewing Daniel Moore about his time with the church next episode. So thanks for listening and we'll we'll talk to you guys very soon. Thanks, Daniel.

Daniel Miller [00:55:17] Yep. Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:55:24] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights and other sources.

Daniel Miller [00:55:39] Cease to make me whole

John Dehlin [00:55:47] when with

Daniel Miller [00:55:48] a wounded heart, anger or malice I draw my soul self apart Searching my soul.

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 602

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under Support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Daniel Miller [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home.

How Daniel Came to Work for the Church

John Dehlin [00:00:51] Hello and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. We are currently in part two of my interview with Daniel Miller. In part one, Daniel talked about his experience growing up in the church in Rigby, Idaho, serving his mission in Tokyo, Japan, and then coming home and marrying his wife, Anna Marie. Is that her name?

Daniel Miller [00:01:14] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:01:16] And an experience that he had sort of thinking that he had received revelation about a child being born and then having the child having that revelation turn out a little different than he thought. It's a great episode and I'm really glad we did it. Talks a lot about kind of what it's like to grow up in the church in Rigby, Idaho in the. Was it the 80s that you were growing up? Is that kind of. Yeah, in the 80s and super interesting. So we are now going to turn to Daniel's time working for LDS Church Headquarters. As I mentioned in the previous episode, Daniel worked for two years as a program manager in the Publishing services department where he oversaw all media production for Seminary and Institute, the CES port, including the CES portfolio and broadcasts. And so we're going to be skipping a lot of stuff, Daniel, in your life, but why don't we just talk about how you came to work for the church and we'll talk about what it was like for you.

Daniel Miller [00:02:26] Yeah, so I remember at my previous job prior to going to work for the church that there was one of my co workers that I kept talking to and I was experiencing kind of some severe burnout. Been there for seven years and just wasn't having much job satisfaction and kept going into this co worker's office and telling him, you know, I just feel like there's something else I'm supposed to be doing. I don't know what it is.

John Dehlin [00:02:56] What was your general career?

Daniel Miller [00:02:58] So I worked in the mortgage technology industry for a company in Idaho.

John Dehlin [00:03:03] So how many years have you worked sort of how many Years. Have you been in the workforce by that time?

Daniel Miller [00:03:09] So at that position, I had been in seven years in that role. I did work for another five or six years as a manager of the jewelry store and then went back to college. So I worked, then went back to college and then went back into the workforce.

John Dehlin [00:03:28] And were you a multimedia guy? Were you a computer programmer guy? What were you by the time you went to work for the church?

Daniel Miller [00:03:34] I had a lot of, with my previous job, had a lot of experience in project management.

John Dehlin [00:03:41] Okay.

Daniel Miller [00:03:42] Which is what they were looking for. So there's a certification that you can get called the PMP certification, which requires a four year college degree and 4,500 hours of documented past project management experience. And I have that certification, which is a requirement for program managers, project managers that work for the church, that if you don't have it, you have to get that certification to work there. So. So I had already had that. So that was part of what. I guess the allure was for them to hire me in. They have three different levels. Well, four, they have a project coordinator, they have a Program Manager 1, Program Manager 2, and Program Manager 3. And each have different pay scales and whatnot. And they hired me right in as a program manager three. So I kind of came in already with a little bit of seniority.

John Dehlin [00:04:38] So what's it like to interview at church headquarters?

Daniel Miller [00:04:42] Yeah, a couple of really interesting experiences like that. I do remember that I was supposed to be traveling with my work and I had gotten to the airport and I traveled so much with my past work. Kind of had it down to a science. Well, I had a flight that I was supposed to get to. I get to the airport and I go through the kiosks to print my tickets and check in and do all the stuff. Doesn't work. I move to the next kiosk. Doesn't work. I go up to the front counter. Idaho Falls is a small podunk airport. There's nobody even at the counter. And I'm dinging on the bell. Finally the lady comes out and she punches in on the computer and says, oh, I'm sorry, it's 6:01. You can't check in. You had to check in by 6 o' clock. And I lost it. I mean, I had to be somewhere important for work and I lost it. I was so mad at the lady, explaining I'd already gone through this and she's basically, sorry, there's nothing I can do. And I remember the drive home, super upset, probably cursing in my mind and replaying the Conversation over and over. Well, I go home, I rebook my flight, but now I have to get a rental car and drive to Salt Lake and catch a flight from there. I'm thinking how big of a pain it's going to be and whatever. So I get all that booked, I get all of it done. I'm sitting on the bed and I think I'm eating a bowl of cereal on the bed and my phone rings and I answer it and it's the, what do they call it? The guy, the recruiter for the church and says, hey, we'd like you to come on site and do. I'd done several phone interviews prior to that, but he says, we'd like you to actually come on site. Can you come today or tomorrow and meet with people? And I'm like, are you kidding me? My flight. Miraculously I'm thinking this was a miracle. This was God's plan. He made me miss my flight. Now I have to drive to Salt Lake. If I leave now, I'll have plenty of time between when I get there to do the interview for when I have to be to the Salt Lake airport to fly out. I'm like, wow, God's really guiding me. And I was really feeling like I'm going to get this job. As the numbers dwindle down, I do remember that I applied right on the church website for it. I didn't know anybody there. And they show you the number of people that have applied for that position and there was 250 something people that applied. And at first I'm thinking, no way, right? Not going to happen. And then as the interviews went on and on and they kept telling me, you're now down to the top 10 and whatever and now you're in the top three. So I remember my first time showing up to do the interview. They had the manager of that department, which happened to be for family history and church history, was the manager of that entire portfolio. And she brought in at least two other project managers that were already employed there. I showed up and I had my full suit on and whatnot, but I had like a dark colored, almost like a rust colored shirt on. And as soon as I got there and saw everybody in the white shirts and whatnot, I was like, crap, I should have worn a white shirt. I was really, really stressed about that and thought that probably killed my chances right there. I had a good laugh after it with the manager. She said, yeah, you probably don't want to show up in a rust colored shirt. But it wasn't that big of a deal. But I remember I was really super nervous because I had all these people just in a conference room doing the interviews with me. But they were very friendly, very personal, and just kind of went over my resume and asked me about some experience. Very, very laid back and very casual. And overall, I thought it was kind of fun. And I left there feeling like, you know what? I could see myself working with these people. They all have great personalities and they seemed kind of fun, and I'm kind of excited for it.

John Dehlin [00:08:41] Did you view it as like, working for the Lord, basically? How did you think of it?

Daniel Miller [00:08:46] Yeah, at the time, not knowing, I mean, it kind of felt like, yeah, this is just another calling almost, you know, except now I get paid for this calling in a way. I just felt like it was going to be very spiritual. Prior to that, I wouldn't say that I was super active. You know, we would go. But I just, you know, I always felt like the church is true. I always felt like, you know, I need to get my life back on the path. I'd start being more engaged and active and callings and, you know, doing more of that. But I just was kind of lax, you know, just kind of keeping my head down and flying under the radar and not really engaged in it. And, you know, my wife was very, very spiritual, wanted to be much more active in the church. So I felt like, you know, this is a way that she and I can kind of make sure that we're on the same page, is now that I'm in the mix of it, it'll be good. And it was. It was great.

Working in Church Media and Podcast Production

John Dehlin [00:09:42] And you were how old at the time you went to work for the church?

Daniel Miller [00:09:46] Late 30s.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] Okay, and this is around 2011, right?

Daniel Miller [00:09:52] Yeah, 2011.

John Dehlin [00:09:54] Okay. So that's about four years ago. All right, so you interview, you get the job, and go ahead and describe what you were hired to do.

Daniel Miller [00:10:07] Yeah, so I was hired, first of all, to work for the family history, church history department. And my original office was actually at the motion picture studio in Provo. And you drive onto the motion picture studio area there. They ran out of office space for the employees there. And so they purchased a couple of houses just at the end of the property and then kind of merged that in. So I actually worked in the living room. Had some kind of desks set up for, let's see, one, three, probably four or five of us, six of us there. And just right in the living room had a TV up on the wall that you could throw in some church videos or what, not while you worked? And I got to jeans and a polo shirt to work every day, very casual in that area, and would go to the corporate office or the church office building once or twice a week when there was meetings with the stakeholders and whatnot. But for the most part, I just went there and hung out with the crew.

John Dehlin [00:11:12] So you were doing what during that early time?

Daniel Miller [00:11:15] Yeah, so during that time I was doing the same type of stuff, the program management stuff where I was new. I wasn't running the entire portfolio. Right. They're giving me smaller projects to kind of get my feet wet. So there was some revisions to some church history manuals that were being done that I worked with. They were talking about putting kiosks in the church history library where people could come in, and we were recording the videos for those and going through some of that stuff. Just really small projects, print type things, brochures, pamphlets, announcements for upcoming church history events when they would do different things and you know, the flyers and the posters and a lot of that stuff that were just really super small projects so that I could get my feet wet.

John Dehlin [00:12:04] Okay, and then what did you end up doing?

Daniel Miller [00:12:07] So then I think I kind of got my feet wet. And one of the bigger, first, bigger projects I worked on was a podcast series called five Minute Genealogy. And that was for the family history department. And you can look online on Google. They have them all over on Google. There was 20 something episodes, I think we did five minute episodes that teach you how to go from knowing nothing about how to do genealogy work all the way through becoming an expert and being able to find your own name. And the whole concept was find a name in five minutes. And so it took 24, five minutes to do it, which is ironic, but yeah. So we did that podcast series that was probably my first introduction to the correlation department was at that time. I don't know if you want to go into that.

John Dehlin [00:12:56] Quick question. I think Mormonism probably has the most robust podcast presence or network of many world religions. Now, I don't know that to be sure, but I just suspect that there are few religions with as many podcasts that are as intense as we have. Did you at the time, do you think the church had a sense for the breadth and depth of podcasts that were out there? And were you aware at the time?

Daniel Miller [00:13:32] I don't think that I was necessarily aware because I really wasn't big into podcasting, but there was definitely surveying. I mean, there are people that are out there that are looking for what the hot items are, what the hot apps are types of apps, what the hot websites or look and feel. I remember we'd spend time as we're trying to come up with concepts of what videos recently have gone viral on YouTube. And we would spend time in meetings going over the viral videos and oh, look at this ESPN video. And we should do something along these lines, really trying to find what was the viral video so that we could reproduce that on our end. And we definitely spent time doing market research, I guess you could call it on that.

John Dehlin [00:14:16] But you didn't get a sense that. Because I've always thought maybe the church would want to stay away from doing podcasts because it would if someone, if they start promoting podcasts amongst the membership, then the members are going to find out about maybe podcasts the church wouldn't want them learning about. But you never got that sense.

Daniel Miller [00:14:36] No, I don't think so. And when I look back, the podcasts that we made weren't really true podcasts. They were full on professional produced videos that were edited and music and all kinds of stuff that were put to them. They just happened to be five minute, you know, long episodes and okay, not really true podcasts.

John Dehlin [00:14:57] You couldn't find them on itunes, for example.

Daniel Miller [00:14:59] Probably not, no.

John Dehlin [00:15:00] No. Okay. So in, during this podcast project, any interesting stories you mentioned? Correlation, anything that you think our listeners would be interested in? You don't, don't feel forced to talk about it if there's nothing there that you think is interesting?

Daniel Miller [00:15:14] Yeah, I think there was a few interesting things. First of all, what I found was that there were so many layers of involvement in producing a video that I'm the project manager and I'm writing the Gantt charts for these things. And it's just copy and pasting from previously done templates, but they're very standardized in the process that you're supposed to go through. And so I'm looking at all the stuff. First of all, I've got to go get bids. The family history department or whatever the sponsor is comes to me or the project manager and says, we would like to do a project around this. And they kind of scope it out and they define what it is and what it's going to be. And then it's my job now to go out and get estimates for what is it going to cost for you to do this. And so the problem is, I have no clue because there's so many layers. You've got to get the writers that are going to write the scripts, you've got to get the designers that are Going to design the logos and the graphics and the stuff that's coming in and out on the, you know, the videos and the fading and whatever graphics are involved that they have to do stuff to. You've got the actors that you've got to figure out who's going to be your actors and have the casting calls and do all that stuff. And anyway, the layers go on and on all the way through correlation and what they have to be involved in and the billing hours for their time and editors to edit your script and the billing hours for their time. And everybody, every department has a specific per hour bill, I guess you will, that they assign to their work so that when I say, here's a general script, it's going to be five minutes long, blah, blah, blah, and I give them all the information, then they come back with an estimate. And so then what I do at that point is I compile all the estimates together and I write a formal project plan and then I submit it back to the sponsor and I say, to do these 24 episodes, it's going to cost you $250,000 or whatever the case is. And then they have to decide, okay, well, out of my entire portfolio budget, how much do I really want to spend? Or do I want to allocate $250,000 to that project? Because what are the opportunity costs? What am I missing out on if I do that on other projects that now I can no longer do? But even outside of that, there's still more planning that goes into it, because you have to have a general outline and general budget of all of the projects your department is going to do in September of the year before. And that has to be submitted to the disposition of ties department. And they got to review it so that when January 1st comes, I know that my department is going to do 72 projects this year, and this is how much money we have to do it. And then if you go over budget on one project, well, I'm under budget on this one. So now I'm going to do a transfer of funds from this project. And they actually would put, quote, unquote, money, which I'll talk about in a minute, in one project bucket and move it over. I would do a request to have the finance department actually transfer money into project number 28756 or whatever it was, and then I would have more money if I was over budget, so on and so forth, or they would just say, we're done, we don't want to put any more money into it.

John Dehlin [00:18:40] So my I have a couple reactions to just hearing you describe it. One, that sort of sounds like how a corporation would probably lots of corporations would handle projects. And the second reaction is it sounds like they tried to be really thoughtful and careful and deliberate about how things got done. So was there anything, you know, positive or negative about that for you? You know, or was that just kind of what you expected? And. And it was sort of all positive.

Daniel Miller [00:19:13] Yeah. Well, so I'll just say right out of the gate, the positive side of that for me was, you know what? I'm working for an organization that does true project management, that I have to scope this, I have to schedule this and I have to budget it, and I have to make sure that all of those things are delivered on time. And that's what real project management was. And that was exciting to me because I was in a true project management with a true project management office that I had to submit change requests to if I wanted to do an additional podcast outside of the 20 that I had scoped. I had to rewrite a change request and get new bids and submit it into the project management office and get formal approval and the managing director had to sign off. And I mean, it was, it was a real deal in terms of project management.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] And it sounds like, I mean that you could interpret that as reflecting really well on the church, that they wanted to do things right, they wanted to do things well and thoughtfully.

Daniel Miller [00:20:10] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:20:11] Is that, is that kind of how you felt?

Daniel Miller [00:20:12] I did. I felt 100%. I thought I felt, yeah, absolutely. And the other thing that I noticed is, and it was said quite frequently that, you know, in the past, it used to be, well, you're, you're not really going to get paid a lot. You're going to really more work for the blessings of working for the church and what comes with that. And the church will take care of you and you'll do well. But from what I saw when I was there, and I don't know necessarily what other people made, but I felt like they compensated me fairly well. It really felt like they wanted. And I think the big thing was in this day and age of media, the adversary is using media as a mechanism to people away. And so we as the church need to combat that with equally as good technology and media productions. And so they would try to hire the best of the best, you know, and so I think people right out of college especially that were really good and promising, they would really try to go after those guys and they would keep them. I think a lot of them for kind of like me for two or three or four years. But at some point, there is a point where they can't pay you what the private sector would. And, you know, when I left, they asked me specifically, well, what do we need to do to get you to stay? And I said, well, here's my offer. You can match that offer. And they said, yeah, there's no way that's going to happen. And so they do lose people to that. But all in all, I think they're fair in their compensation.

Culture and Employee Life at Church Headquarters

John Dehlin [00:21:43] And I had someone ask what your impressions were of the caliber of employee at church headquarters. What would you say to that?

Daniel Miller [00:21:53] So, two things on that. Well, a couple things. I remember first going to work for the church and riding the train into town because as part of your deal, you get the UTA bus passes and trains passes and all that is just part of your package. So it didn't cost anything. And you can go right up to the corporate office front door and you don't have to drive every day. So I remember sitting on the train and just kind of looking down at all of the other people that are going to work for the church and you can tell pretty much who most of those people are because you start to see them over and over again. And I just remember being new there and looking at them and just seeing them kind of spaced off in this dazed look and observing that these guys have kind of become zombies. They're in zombie mode. They're just complacent. They just do their thing. They're not really trying to go anywhere, advance in their career. They're not super motivated, they're not driven. They just seem like they're resigned to this is what it is and it's what it's always going to be. And they just get into their comfort mode, or zombie mode is what I called it. I kind of, right even from the beginning, felt like I never wanted that. I want to have the drive and the passion and the motivation and whatnot to be better, to advance in my career, to do other things. And so in that respect, I felt like there was a little bit of complacency. The other respect with that is that some of the newer people that would come in younger, I don't know, or maybe just newer people to the church. I really felt like they were highly motivated and highly driven and highly skilled, very talented people could do some amazing stuff with media production, you know, video, film video and graphic design and all those different things that they had some super good people. And then, like I said, I felt like there was people there that had been and not all of them definitely were this way, but there were people who had been there 20 plus years and they were those zombie people that you couldn't go to them and say, hey, I've got this deadline and I have to give this whatever to the project sponsor by Thursday. They didn't care. A lot of times it's like, well, if I get to it, I get to it. The other thing with that is it seemed like the priesthood department and the missionary department trumped no matter what it was what they wanted and what they needed, always bumped everybody else to the back of the line. And so that was a little bit part of it where we're jockeying for the same reason. But certain departments have a bigger stick and their stuff's always going to get done first.

John Dehlin [00:24:44] So what? And I don't know if you want to give one of the earbuds to Anna Marie, but what. Tell us what that department does. You said priesthood department.

Daniel Miller [00:25:00] Which department?

John Dehlin [00:25:00] The one that you said bumps everybody else out.

Daniel Miller [00:25:03] Yeah. So the priesthood department is another media portfolio. And so anything for the manuals that you use in gospel doctrine to your elders quorum, to anything priesthood related or I guess general church related, really any of their media projects, manuals or whatever for editing and correlation to do would always trump. And even in translation, seminary and institutes would translate into 32 languages and trying to get their stuff done, and even Spanish a lot of times. And I remember one particular instance, I'm kind of jumping ahead here, but with seminary and institute, we were trying to get a student manual in English edited and the priority. Excuse me, a student manual in. I'm trying to remember what the experience was. No, it was posting online in digital format. We were trying to get an English student manual posted online and we were putting it into the pool. Well, priesthood department uses the same resources to put material online. Missionary department uses the exact same resources to do theirs. We submit ours in and then they send out a spreadsheet of the priority of what everything is, and this student manual in English to get posted online and in the gospel library for students to download on their mobile app. Right. Was prioritized below the Chinese primary songbook to be posted online. And it's like, how. Why would you make those types of priorities? And it didn't seem like it mattered to the people that were doing it, whatever it was. In fact, one of the guys that worked for seminary and I always had the standing joke that the priesthood will decide because that was whatever they Wanted is pretty much what happened. Or, you know, it was always priesthood will decide or correlation will decide. That was kind of our standing joke, was that, you know, they'll decide. Go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:27:15] Why don't you, if you can remember, tell us the main major departments at church headquarters that you can remember just to give us a lay of the land of how it's all structured.

Daniel Miller [00:27:25] Yeah, so you've got the priesthood department, you've got the church history, family history department. You have the missionary department.

John Dehlin [00:27:32] Oh, wait, Go slowly. Go slowly. Start over.

Daniel Miller [00:27:35] Okay, so you've got the priesthood.

John Dehlin [00:27:37] Priesthood, which is about priesthood manuals and anything related to the priesthood.

Daniel Miller [00:27:42] Yeah, well, and not even that, but I mean, even like the, the Relief Society manuals were probably part of priesthood as well.

John Dehlin [00:27:51] Okay. So kind of that third hour. Third hour. Okay, priesthood. Okay, priesthood.

Daniel Miller [00:27:58] Who else Conference, I think fell under the priesthood.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:28:01] I thought that was church history.

Daniel Miller [00:28:03] No,

John Dehlin [00:28:06] General Conference.

Daniel Miller [00:28:07] That fell under the priesthood purview of. Yeah, priesthood department. And then they combined church history and family history under one media portfolio for a group to manage. So there was a manager of the church history family history portfolio, if that makes sense. They would each have their separate budgets, but because they were small enough, they would combine those two under one program manager to manage all the stuff for both of them independently. But they each had their separate budgets.

John Dehlin [00:28:38] So church history and family history. Church history is. It used to be Marlon Jensen, now it would be snow. I think we kind of have a sense for what they do. And then family history would be helping out with genealogy and stuff.

Daniel Miller [00:28:50] Yeah, FamilySearch was really big. And media to, you know, get people excited about doing family history and all that kind of stuff.

John Dehlin [00:29:01] Okay.

Daniel Miller [00:29:02] And the family history library was a big part of that. When I left working for the church history family history portfolio, it was right at the time that they were initiating the project to redo the family history library. I don't know if anybody, if you've seen that or no, but I was right there as they were initiating those projects to do that. And it was a multi year project to get that done and do that.

John Dehlin [00:29:25] Very cool.

Daniel Miller [00:29:25] And they do roots tech as well. That's part of the family history portfolio and that's a huge event that falls under that too. And then just general media that they put out, they have budgets for, you know, all the family history other little things that they want to do.

John Dehlin [00:29:41] Okay, all right. What other departments?

Daniel Miller [00:29:44] So CES was one, and that was broken up a little bit because CES also had money that was put into that department from BYU for projects that they wanted done. And so they would put in a certain portion. They'd say, we want PSD Publishing Services Department to manage those projects and do them for us and we'll contribute money out of BYU into the CES portfolio. I didn't manage that portion of it. There was another project manager that did that kind of stuff. And I was slowly starting to get some of that stuff. But when I left, I still hadn't completely taken that over. So Cesing General is one. But it breaks it out into the church schools that they had. BYU, BYU, ID, the overseas ones, all those that they had for church schools. That was really more of what we called CES Church schools. And so my side of it was seminary and institutes was the other one. And then they had the magazines, I think was the other one for all the publications for the Liahona and the Insight. No, that's a separate one. Is the publications. I don't know what they call it. Magazines, probably.

John Dehlin [00:31:02] Okay.

Daniel Miller [00:31:02] And that was another one. There may have been a couple others there. Oh, there was actually an internal one for the PSD department itself. There was a budget. Media budget for publishing Services department as well for our HR type stuff and all that was a smaller one. And then there was ic. I'm not sure how ICS worked with that, but there was some media stuff involved with ics.

John Dehlin [00:31:36] Okay. Other other major departments. So ics.

Daniel Miller [00:31:42] But that's. ICS was. Well, they're more separate. There was some media stuff for them for the online content, for publishing in the gospel library and doing some of those things. And they used ICS budget or ICS resources. But I still think. Actually, now that I think of it, they fell under the priesthood department. LDS.org had some budget stuff specifically allocated to that, but I think that they fell under the priesthood department.

John Dehlin [00:32:08] How about the technology group? Just the people in charge of technology. What was that group?

Daniel Miller [00:32:13] That's the ICS side that we would. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:15] What does ICS stand for? I don't know.

Daniel Miller [00:32:17] I can't.

John Dehlin [00:32:18] Okay. Probably computer systems, internal computers, information. And then isn't there like construction, like church buildings and temples kind of thing? Isn't that a major apartment?

Daniel Miller [00:32:33] Yep. Yeah. Actually temples, I think, is one.

John Dehlin [00:32:36] Temples and construction. Okay, so that gives us.

Daniel Miller [00:32:40] But in terms of media, there wasn't a lot. I mean, that's another major department. But in terms of pure media, they weren't involved in the overall media budget. Right. So they have a managing director of publishing services department and temple construction and design and all that stuff. Wouldn't fall under their purview. We would all, as independent departments that I just mentioned, would all submit our individual budgets into the managing director and then he would submit those budgets to the disposition of ties to look overall budget.

John Dehlin [00:33:14] So your group was which one again?

Daniel Miller [00:33:18] So when I started out working there, I was church history, family history for about the first year and then I moved over to seminary and institutes was the one that I pretty much fully ran in that guys I reported to a manager that was still over seminary and institutes and Cesar. So there was my counterpart that worked more of the church schools side of the CES stuff. And then I worked the seminarian institutes and we both reported up to a manager there that that person reported to the managing director.

John Dehlin [00:33:53] Got it. Okay, so you did this podcast. What came next?

Daniel Miller [00:33:58] Yeah, so. Well, I think the interesting thing when I started in this podcast was nobody knew anything. I mean, we had all worked there for various times. Some had been there several years, some hadn't. And the process for producing was still new. So we knew that we had to create the script for it going forward. And we knew the general process, or at least they did. And I was just kind of following along because I was so new and getting the budgets that they requested and just kind of flying by the seat of my pants and trying to figure it out as I went. It was kind of a sink or swim type. There wasn't really a lot of training. But the thing that stuck out to me that I didn't know, we had gone several podcasts, probably eight or ten podcasts in where we had written the scripts. And so I sat down on a weekly meeting with a script writer that worked for publishing services department and then counterparts that actually worked for church or, excuse me, for family history. And there was a couple of designers or producers I guess is what they called them, that worked for family history. So the producers would come up with the ideas for the project of what they wanted to do, and then they would bring their ideas to me because they were not allowed to produce their own media, even though they did. A lot of them did. The church was really trying to pull all media production into the publishing service department and not let each individual department go rogue like they used to, because family history department would go buy a bunch of of cameras and equipment and then church history would go by a bunch and priesthood would go by and they're rebuying all this stuff and there's so much waste in all the stuff that was being purchased there that they decided we're not going to allow you guys to do that anymore. If you want any media produced, you have to go through your project manager, program manager, through the publishing service department, and they'll control all of that. And that way you could share resources across all departments instead of rebuying all the same equipment for each individual department, if that makes sense. So it all got consolidated into the publishing service department. So we're writing these scripts, and we have the producer that initiated the project from the family history side, we have me and the script writers, and we bring in some food, and we throw up the word doc on the projector, and we're going through and we're talking about who the characters should be and what they should be like. This one should be funny and this one should be serious. Or we can't be too funny because then the correlation department will think it's irreverent and that, you know, so you have to kind of walk the line of trying to be cool and hip and new, but not too cool and not too hip, because then, you know, you stand out. And they don't want that kind of messaging going out anyway. We get eight or 10 podcasts in where we've written the scripts and we've shot the videos for them, and now we're going to get final correlation approval, and after that, send them out for translation, because we were going to translate into a bunch of languages and post them out. So the first thing that stuck out to me is the correlation department comes back and they're like, did you guys get these scripts approved? And we're like, what do you mean you're not allowed to shoot any film or video on any scripts that you've done until you have correlation, approve of your, edit your scripts, and approve of your scripts. I didn't know that I was new, and apparently none of the other people knew that either. We had a little bit of a hiccup there where we had to go reshoot some stuff in the final ip, the intellectual property and correlation approval, where we didn't have some of the stuff that they wanted and we had to cut some scenes and reshoot some scenes and do things differently. Then we learned, okay, once we write these scripts, we have to have correlations approve of them. And then after that, when we sent them. So we did that. But then in subsequent podcasts, when we sent them out to translation, we then found out, no, you have to have the translation department approve of your scripts too, because some of the things that you do or say or humor that you put in there in other languages either it's not going to translate and it's not going to be funny or it's going to be offensive if you translate it word for word. And so you got to have the translation from each of the departments sign off on that. And I'm like, wow, yeah, no idea of all the layers of red tape just to go through to get a video produced. And so really big learning curve there. But one of the instances I do remember was when we sent it to Correlation for approval on a scene that we were green screening at the motion picture studio. They have this huge room that's two, three stories tall with this gigantic green screen. Actually they have two of them kind of side by side. We were in one of the bays there and we were green screening a trip to Hawaii. Hawaii, where somebody was going to learn about their ancestors in Hawaii and do something there. We had green screened in the sand and the beach and we had some beach balls out there and people didn't buy on skateboards and we were all wearing Hawaiian shirts and stuff. Correlation department said you can't put that in there because when you put this out on the Internet and in other languages, people in third world countries see that the Americans here are living these lavish lifestyles at the church office building or on this continent and it's very offensive to them that they're paying their tithing dollars. And the green screening that you've done, so real like you're actually taking these trips to Hawaii and whatnot. And that's not something that's appropriate for these third world countries because they'll assume that we're wasting their tithing money or whatnot.

John Dehlin [00:39:46] So when you work with correlation, is there a whole staff? Do you just work with low level people? Is there just one guy that is Correlation. Like what do you know about the actual correlation department?

Daniel Miller [00:40:01] So I know that through the project management software, when it came time to submit the correlation, they have the software and whatnot that just really automates all of that. And it will go to the correlation department in an automated way. I'll get it ready to submit and take it to the correlation department and basically drop it off at the front desk if I have the final meal, like the data DVDs, I would have to print off five DVDs for example, with these eight podcasts that we. So we do them in sections. Let's say we do eight podcasts. I have five DVDs that I produce, or 10, I don't remember the number, but there was several DVDs that I would drop off to the correlation department at the front desk and list the project number, fill out the paperwork with it to attach to it, and then I don't know where it would go from there.

John Dehlin [00:40:53] Okay, so you didn't directly interact with the people?

Daniel Miller [00:40:56] Nope. I would drop it off at the front desk and they would go through and do the correlation site. Now, we had a person who would work for my department that did intellectual property, and their job was to take the final DVD and slow motion, go through everything in there, and if there's anything in there, you can see the word Dell on a laptop, they would notate it and you'd have to go and black it out. Or anything that's proprietary or could be construed as proprietary in any way would have to be blacked out or in some cases reshot. They would go through everything and look at the forms for releases. If there's anybody that's considered a part of it or too close or they're not part of a general audience, they would have to have release forms. And if we didn't have release forms, we'd have to go try to track them down. And if we couldn't track them down, we couldn't use that section or we'd have to them out, we couldn't find them. And so we'd have to blur the background on the videos. And so the IP department, I knew who that was and that was all intellectual property. But when it also went out for correlation approval, I would just get the feedback back of, this is what needs to change and this is what you need to do.

John Dehlin [00:42:09] How did the feedback come in what, electronic format or written?

Daniel Miller [00:42:13] Yeah, it would come in email format or forms would be filled out. And usually they wouldn't come back to me. They would go back to the family history department, like when you're writing the scripts, because the family history department is in charge of that. The approval stuff would go back to the people who wrote the scripts or were in charge, the producer who was in charge of the script. And then they would have to go, okay, correlation doesn't like this. They want us to change that. And so then in our next week's meeting, we'd go through and change needed to be changed.

John Dehlin [00:42:47] So it's kind of like this black box where you would submit the content and then receive the feedback back.

Daniel Miller [00:42:53] Yep. And I'm assuming when I. When we would deliver the final product and we had to have a certain number of them, that there was more than one person looking at the. At it to make sure that it's correct. They didn't just have one person do it. If I'm giving them five DVDs, right. They're having probably five different people look at it and provide their feedback and then compiling it all together and then sending it back back.

John Dehlin [00:43:13] And as you were working with Correlation, did you feel like, oh, yeah, this makes perfect sense. I'm glad there's correlation. Or did you feel, whoa, this is kind of weird. How did it feel for you just to know that there was a correlation department and to have to work with them?

Daniel Miller [00:43:29] At that point, when we were writing scripts for a podcast and whatnot, I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, that makes sense. And I mean, there was some of them where stuff that I would have never thought about, but we had a character that was a female who was teaching a newbie how to do family history, and we shot a part where we did kind of like a spoof on Mystery Science Theater 3000. And we had them sitting together in a movie theater, and you could see the silhouettes from behind, kind of like my wife and I here behind. And then they were showing on the actual movie screen a deal about this guy's family history and blah, blah, blah. A movie. And they were making comments throughout. Oh, so you can do this. Can find, you know, and whatever. Well, at the beginning of it, when they were walking into the movie theater, they were holding popcorn, and the girl had a wedding ring on, and they obviously weren't married. She was just somebody who was helping him. And they went into the movie theater together. And because they were there together and she had a wedding ring on, they made us nix that part because it was inappropriate to have a married woman going to a movie theater with another man.

John Dehlin [00:44:39] They weren't married in the movie.

Daniel Miller [00:44:41] Yeah, they weren't married in the movie. She was just a woman helping a man learn. You know, a guy learned to do family history, but they weren't married in real life. They're in a theater. So, you know, correlation said, no, that's interesting. Okay. I mean, they looked at all kinds, which makes sense, right? Because you. But we never thought of that. I mean, you don't. Yeah, you wouldn't have thought of that at all. So I think what we just ended up doing was blurring out her wedding ring or cutting the scene that showed her wedding ring or whatnot. So we didn't have to reshoot the whole episode.

John Dehlin [00:45:08] But that's right.

Daniel Miller [00:45:09] Funny.

John Dehlin [00:45:09] Okay.

Daniel Miller [00:45:10] So crazy stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:45:11] So for you, it made sense to have a correlation committee that. That worked well. For you?

Daniel Miller [00:45:17] Yeah, at the time, yeah, I understood that. Oh, yeah. This is the type of stuff they do, and they don't want people going rogue out there and, you know, oh, I want to make this really cool video or whatnot and have it misrepresent or not represent the church in some way. You know, that the church kind of has a standard message that they want to give to everybody. And in that instance, it makes sense that they got to make sure to protect, quote, unquote, brand.

John Dehlin [00:45:42] Okay, so what came after the podcast?

Daniel Miller [00:45:46] So that was really kind of my major project on that, on the family history side. Did a little bit of work on revising some church history manuals and things like that, but for the most part, that was probably my biggest one there. And it was shortly thereafter, actually, as that one was winding down, that I was transferred over to work for the seminary and institute department. Department.

John Dehlin [00:46:08] Now, did you work on the church history manuals that are coming out now? The ones that are informed by the essays and that are trying to. Okay, so you weren't a part of any of that. All right, so you moved over to ces?

Daniel Miller [00:46:20] Yep, I went over to that side. Really hit it off well there with the. The producers. So in most of the instances on the seminary and institute site, they bring in people into the church office building that were in the field as seminary teachers or institute directors or whatever, different levels, who have made a career out of being an institute director or being a seminary teacher or whatever the case is, of various different levels throughout that organization. And they put out to those seminary teachers a job posting saying, we need a digital media producer, or we need a writer, or we need internal training materials producer, somebody that can manage all that stuff. So they have multiple actual seminary teachers that get a promotion to come and work at the church office building and come up with ideas for new media production for the kids and whatnot. Those are the people that I would work with as kind of my counterparts. So those people were the ones who thought of the project, initiated the project, came up with the ideas, and then they would submit those ideas on a yearly basis into the overall portfolio of all seminary and institute projects that we would do for the next year. They used to also make their own videos and whatnot. And the church put the Knicks on that and said, nope, you got to do everything through the publishing services department. So they would come to me to initiate a new project, and sometimes it wasn't something that they thought of in the year before, but they're like, you know what we really need this. Do we have any leftover budget money anywhere? Or can you move money from another project over? And I would have to look through and I can take 3,000 here and I can take 5,000 and I can take 12 and whatever. And now we can initiate a new project. Yeah, I had the latitude to do that for them. But for the most part we really tried to stick to what we had planned for that budget.

John Dehlin [00:48:24] Okay, in your outline you have a few sections. One called working at the church, one called meeting general authorities. And then there's the reorganization one. Let's jump back to that. Why don't you paint a picture for us about just sort of some of the main interesting things about working for the church, just generally.

Daniel Miller [00:48:47] Yeah. So I think when I first started working there, it was really foreign to me to go in and sit down with a group of, let's say four to six people in a conference room room and begin every meeting with a prayer. You're in the workforce, but every meeting was with a prayer. What I used to do with my meetings is I would really try to have. Because I worked at the motion picture studio in Provo, I didn't want to go down for a one hour meeting and have to dress up at the church office building for that one hour meeting and then work either the rest of the day there or turn around and drive back to the motion picture studio. So I would try to have one or two days a week that were my meeting days and I would go and I would meet with everybody. And then when I switched over to seminary and institutes, I ended up working there full time. But I still at the church office building full time and left working down at the motion picture studio. But I would do the same thing and have my meeting days be one day. So it was back to back to back to back to back half hour or hour long meetings on one day and just to get them all done. But the problem with that was the thing that was really weird to me about that is you start your first meeting with a person prayer and you have four or six people there. That half hour or hour meeting ends, two people might get up and walk out and all the rest of the people stay there. And then one person comes in and now we have another prayer. And I was always like, guys, can't we just do one blanket prayer for the whole? Why do we have to have a different meeting? Don't you think God probably knows that we're here and let's just bless this day that the spirit will be with us? But it was a repetitive prayer every time. Whoever said it was the same thing. Guide us to produce the media that will touch the heart. And you know, kind of all the same, the same thing regurgitated over and over.

John Dehlin [00:50:34] I remember someone saying, can't we just buy all the groceries? Bless all the groceries at once.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:50:40] There we go.

John Dehlin [00:50:41] That's efficient.

Daniel Miller [00:50:43] Seriously.

John Dehlin [00:50:46] Okay, so you got. The prayers were a little bit weird to you.

Daniel Miller [00:50:50] The frequency? Yeah, the frequency of them. I just, I really wasn't used to. Gosh, it just seems like, you know, we're bugging God a lot. Doesn't he have some worlds to create or some other more important things than to check in with, you know, kind of what we're doing down here every hour.

John Dehlin [00:51:06] Okay, what else was interesting about working at the church? You got temple recommends. Temple recommends?

Daniel Miller [00:51:12] Yeah, yeah. Everybody that works for the church. And I believe it's even in their for profit arms. If you're a janitor, you have to be current temple recommend holder, or if you haven't gone through the temple, have an equal note from your bishop or whatnot from your bishop. And they checked once a year. You had to go show your current temple recommend. So they were very strict about that. The belief was if everybody there holds a temple recommend, then you're all on the same page in terms of why you're there.

John Dehlin [00:51:49] And briefly, what does that do for you to know that your employment is tied to having a temple recommend? What's psychologically, was that good? Was that hard?

Daniel Miller [00:52:04] It was a little bit frustrating for me, I think, just for the sheer fact that I guess I had always been a little bit undesirous to pay tithing as maybe as regularly as you should. And it just always seemed like such a sacrifice to me to pay tithing. And now it's like I got to be a full tithe payer here and I got to make sure that I'm on this. And while they compensate me. Well, maybe before the church coming to work for the church, I wasn't a full tithe payer. And so now I got to make sure that I am. And there's a 10% cut out of the top that I wasn't planning on when I made that move that now I got to do. But I understood all in all that they don't want people who aren't the top tier and focused on their spirituality and whatnot together. So it didn't really bother me, I guess that bad. It just kind of seemed like a little bit controlling. But other than that, it wasn't that bad.

John Dehlin [00:53:08] Okay, any other parts about the culture of working at the church before we talk about the general authority stuff?

Daniel Miller [00:53:16] I will say hugely family oriented. I remember actually having anxiety attacks over my cell phone not ringing or not getting emails. I came from a mortgage industry where if somebody called me, which they did at 2 in the morning and they needed help with the software that I was up at my computer remoting into the network and trying to help them resolve their issues 24 7. That was my responsibility to go into work at the motion picture studio. And 4 o', clock, 4:30 rolls around and I'm sitting there doing my work and typing on the computer and I look up and I look around and all the lights are off in the house and I'm the only one there and everybody else has gone home and I'm asking what the heck, where'd you guys go yesterday? What do you mean? I was here at 4:30. He's like, yeah, we go home, we got families, we go do our family thing. And so, so when the work was done, it was done. And you left, you left the work at the table. And I had my phone that the company that the church paid for, that was my cell phone. And I would just get anxiety because I'm so used to 6 o' clock and 7 o' clock and 8 o', clock emails coming in and answering and I'm like, oh man, something must be wrong or something must be down. And it was really a hard change for me to just say 4:30, the work is done, time to go home.

John Dehlin [00:54:34] That's kind of cool, right? I mean, yeah. And Anna Marie is nodding.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:54:40] Yeah, I loved that part. I felt like in his career before that then I would get calls, I mean my 30th birthday he called and said he wasn't coming home until the middle of the night because they had a client that needed something. And I, you know, he was on a road trip, what was supposed to be a two day trip and pretty soon I'm shipping him clothes because he's going to be on the road for three weeks and, and you know, it's hard to raise young kids and not know when your husband's going to be there and not be there and have him be under a lot of stress. And so I actually really enjoyed that. And when he came home, he was not stressed out. He enjoyed the kind of the environment. It was really low stress and there wasn't a lot of pressure. And when he hopped on that bus to head home, he was done and he Got to be fully with the family. So I felt like it was great, a really, really positive working environment.

Daniel Miller [00:55:35] And the way that I worked it too was that I would get to the bus and catch the. Right around 8am train or, excuse me, the train station, catch the 8am train and I would do. Answer all my emails. I had my laptop with me and so I would answer all my emails and I would use that commute as part of my workday. So I didn't have to be at the church office building right at 8:00'. Clock. I would utilize that time to answer emails and do work and create schedules and whatever I needed to do during the train ride. So I could go in and show up to the church office building or sometime around 9 o' clock or so, and then I would leave, you know, around 4:00', clock, and then I would spend the rest of that time on the ride home doing the additional work. So it was nice and it kind of gave you a break to get out of the. I'm at the office and I had some commute time to, you know, do my thing and transition out of work. And now I'm into family mode.

John Dehlin [00:56:27] Okay. So good work, life balance and good support for families.

Daniel Miller [00:56:31] Yep. Yeah, I loved it.

John Dehlin [00:56:33] That's great. Okay, so you talk about how general authorities are treated talk about how general authorities are treated at the church office building.

Encounters with General Authorities

Daniel Miller [00:56:46] You know, you're worried that you're going to step into an elevator, which. So one of the rules that they have there is if you ever leave the floor that you're assigned to work on, you have to wear your suit coat. So if I worked on the 27th floor, so if I wanted to go to the 26th floor and I was just going to take the stairs, it didn't matter. I had to put my suit coat on. But the fear was, you know, you're going to jump in an elevator and one of the general authorities is going to jump in there with you and you're not going to have your suit coat on. And they wanted everybody, I think if you're out in public because the church office building has other visitors and whatnot coming, and they wanted everybody to look the same and kind of standardize that too.

John Dehlin [00:57:26] I just have to tell you that I used to work for Arthur Anderson in Chicago, which was one of the world's largest accounting firms. It was the world's largest accounting firm in the 80s and 90s, and that was the rule there. So I wonder if they got that from like IBM or Arthur Anderson or something. Like that sort of a corporate holdover from formal IBM accounting corporate culture.

Daniel Miller [00:57:51] Yeah, it could be. And I always thought it was weird because I would go to whatever floor I think the eighth floor is, where the seminary and institute people were. And, you know, they'd come in and none of them are. Not. None, but some of them aren't wearing their suit jackets. And then there I am with mine. And then I would take my jacket off when I'm in the conference, you know, and then I'd put it back on when I leave, and then vice versa. When they'd come up to my floor, I wouldn't be wearing the suit jacket and they'd be wearing. And it's like, I don't know, it just seems a little bit weird. Does that really matter?

John Dehlin [00:58:24] Right, right. Okay, so what else? General authorities.

Daniel Miller [00:58:28] Yeah, so there was a couple of devotionals. I didn't really spend a lot of time kind of rubbing shoulders with the general authorities. I did get the chance to spend a little bit of time, 30 minutes to an hour maybe, with Elder Oaks when he was doing a panel discussion for seminary and institution. And he comes in, they do their little opening deal with the directors of the seminary and institutes, and they have their opening prayer and all that stuff. And then he comes into the room where they have all the craft services laid out there for the food and all the things for him to eat. All of the staff, I guess, to eat. And just kind of being there, hanging out with him and getting the chance to talk, really down to earth.

AnnaMarie Miller [00:59:14] Earth.

Daniel Miller [00:59:15] I was always worried. And it always struck me, like even when I was in the MTC and one of the apostles or prophet or somebody would come and speak in the mtc, people would be all, oh, I gotta go shake his hand. And, you know, I really felt the spirit in his presence and whatnot. I never felt that in the mtc, you know, when I'm shaking the prophet's hand, I just felt like, this is a dude. This is just a guy. I didn't really have any special, powerful experiences. And when I chatted with Elder Oaks, he just seemed like typical stake president type of guy. You know, he's kind of quiet and just very personable and social and, you know, had some fun stories to tell. But you could still tell he had the serious side. And there was an air of authority about him that was a little bit intimidating as well. And I was definitely nervous. But, yeah, I didn't really have any super powerful spiritual experiences. He just talked about his home life and, you know, a couple of just short or, excuse me, small talk type things.

John Dehlin [01:00:13] So you've got some bullets in your outline about meeting GA's. Do you want to cover those really quick?

Daniel Miller [01:00:20] Yeah. So the one thing about meeting them and I guess I don't know if meeting them is the right term, but more of interacting with them in situations, it seemed like when their input was needed on big projects or when they were involved in them and giving their input on projects that half or more 3ths of the people in the room would look at that and they would know from their being in the trenches. Right. And having the experiences, they would know, yeah, that idea is not a good idea and it's probably not going to work. But nobody dared say that, right? I mean it was all nod your head and yeah, that sounds like a great idea. And everybody was really scared to give true feedback. And that was, I'm not like that. If they would ask my opinion, I would have said that's a horrible idea. But the other people for the most part would just, yeah, yeah, that sounds great. And so I often wondered how in tune with the reality of situations are they because they're not in the trenches day to day, even on media stuff, but outside of media, just in general life and in social media and all these things, they have people that do all that stuff for them and provide them the feedback and are they getting the true picture or are they getting the all is well in zion type feedback? Do they really have, I don't know, are they really down to earth and in touch with the reality of the situation and what people are going through in the day to day church life?

John Dehlin [01:01:57] Okay, you have a story about Elder Holland that you mentioned in your outline.

Daniel Miller [01:02:02] Yeah. So one of the things where people were scared so we were doing the CES devotional for him at the, what's it called? The BYU Conference center. And we had it pretty much all booked out and all scheduled and you know, the things that we had to pay for in advance were all paid for and reserved and non refundable fees and whatnot that were paid to the BYU Conference center in order to utilize it for the CES devotional. Well, it turned out that there was a little bit of a conflict and Elder Holland was also getting a building dedicated to his name. I don't even know remember what building it was, but there was something about him getting a building dedicated to his name that he needed to be there for that in St. George and he had family flying into town for all that. And it was for him it was Kind of a big hassle to have to be able to do that. He proposed that rather than having the production at the BYU Conference center to move it to Dixie College, I found it, sorry, to move it to Dixie College and do it there. He presented that to the people in seminary and institutes and we said, okay. And so we reached out to Dixie College and scheduled all the time building or got the bids basically for what's it going to cost to rent your facility to get the lighting people? You know, when you hire the lighting company, they want their crew to come and work and do all the setup and all the breakdown. You have to now take your production buses. And we had a couple of them that would drive big, huge buses with all the broadcast and everything stuff right there in those buses. Rv, like giant RV things would have to go down to Dixie. And the travel cost costs and the overnight expenses and all the stuff that goes with that Dixie College charges you. They have to be the ones to set up the auditorium and tear it down and the cleanup and the catering and all the stuff that goes with it. So we went through and we got the bids for what that's going to cost us kind of bottom line with what we're going to lose, that we put down on the BYU Conference center and then added the loss on that with what we were now going to have to pay. And BYU Conference center gives you pretty good discounts, obviously for the stuff you do there. Dixie didn't give you as many discounts and whatnot. So the net cost of all that was basically $50,000. That was not planned for. For that one project. I mean, we normally only spend, you know, 30 to 40,000 as it was. So with all the. And it's a lot cheaper because you're doing it locally. But when anytime you take it out of town, the cost go up significantly. And so the net bottom line was it cost us $50,000 more than what we had budgeted for that project. Well, I remember talking to the one guy as we got those final numbers, and it's like, what do we do? Should we tell Elder Holland? And I'm like, you know what? Elder Holland is a good guy. He is a guy capable of making decisions, but he can't make decisions if he doesn't have all the information. So all you can do is say, elder Holland, here's the budget. You asked to move it. I just want you to be aware this is what it's going to cost. Are you okay with this? And I said, that's all you have to Do. I was kind of scared. Well, it turned out that nobody gave him the information. He wasn't able to make an informed decision. I don't know what his decision would have been. I have no clue. But it just seemed like there was some waste there and maybe given the right information and if people weren't so afraid to approach these guys, I mean, they're just guys trying to make decisions the best they can with the information they're given. So there's a lot of waste in areas like that. And I sat there and thought, $50,000 of somebody's tithing money is going out the window. You know, would Elder Holland be mad about that? Would he not? I don't know, but that sure seemed like a lot to me. So.

John Dehlin [01:06:11] But. But at the same time, I remember working at church headquarters, and there was always this sort of prevailing sentiment that you want to consider the. The tithing funds is really sacred. And there was this saying about the widow's might.

Daniel Miller [01:06:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:26] So it wouldn't be accurate to say there was a culture of excess and irresponsibility, Right.

Daniel Miller [01:06:32] No, it was constantly, I mean, brought up. I think I heard that on a daily basis about. Well, we talk about we need a new hard drive to store media material on for this project because we ran out of hard drive space and. Well, is that really taking care of the widow's might? Can we repurpose a hard drive from an old project? So I think in general, people were really trying to do their best, but then in the same token, because projects were so. Budgets were so loosely monitored that if somebody said, you know what, we're going to produce a new epub or a new ibook, and we got to make sure that this ibook is compatible with the latest iPads coming out, because the last thing you want to do is, you know, get it for the iPad3, and now the iPad4 comes out and the layout doesn't work and blah, blah, blah. So, you know, you'd go out and buy brand new iPads. Well, where would all the iPad3s go? You know, and I'm not saying, you know, people. There was theft or whatnot, but it seemed like there was a lot of opportunities that you could just charge hardware and other items onto project budgets. And then when the project is over, what happened to some of that stuff? Where did it go? So it just seemed like it was not very tightly monitored.

John Dehlin [01:07:50] Right. Okay. You talk about some changes Bednar made regarding media production. Talk about that for a bit.

Rewriting the Seminary and Institute Manuals

Daniel Miller [01:07:59] Yeah. So originally it was called the media services Department. And we had a big departmental meeting where several hundred people went into the church office building on the first floor. They have kind of a conference room there. And they had, it was recorded. They had somebody there recording. And then they had some media people back in the production room and there was a big presentation of slides. And he basically came, you know, stood up in front of everybody and said, we're doing some reorganization to the departments. And a big part of that was, I mentioned before about each department, like family history, buying millions of dollars worth of their own production equipment and then seminary and institutes buying their own production equipment and the priesthood department buying their own equipment. They didn't want all that excess and that waste. And so they were bringing everything out of that into more of. It's now a requirement for the publishing services department to do all that stuff. And, and as part of that, they were talking about breaking down some of the red tape and some of the bureaucracy and the multi levels that you have to go through to get approvals and things like that. But the gist of it was he showed this video about. It was a very nicely done, professionally produced video about an airplane flying. And they had these guys, supposed workers for the church in their suits and ties, and they're tearing down the airplane while it's in the air, flying, and they're rebuilding the airplane from the ground up while it's in flight. And you know, that's what Elder Bednar was saying, is that we're rebuilding from the ground up, but we're doing it while we're in flight. We're not stopping any media production. We're going to continue to produce as we make these transitions. And it's going to be tough and it's going to require everybody to be all hands on deck and all bought in. But his one really powerful statement to get everybody bought in and really on board with this, because there were people who we knew or they knew weren't going to like the changes that were coming because it was going to completely change their job description. And so looking back on it now, his big powerful thing was we in our current structure, organizational structure, our not able to produce enough media fast enough to spread throughout the world before the second coming. And you know, then there's that silence and everybody gets goosebumps and it's like, wow, you know, holy cow, we're really, we got to do this, we got to be involved in this change. Because according to Elder Bednar, it sounds like the second coming is going to happen, you know, and we got to Get. We got to get the word out to everybody and make sure that, you know. Because you hear how the second coming won't happen until every continent. The gospel's been spread to every continent, and everybody's had the chance to hear and whatnot. It's like, oh, he's saying, this is it right now. We're making our last push to get the media out there so that everybody can hear the gospel. And then here comes Christ. So that was how I interpreted it. Anyway.

John Dehlin [01:11:05] That's pretty intense.

Daniel Miller [01:11:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:08] So you mentioned the names on your paycheck changed at that time.

Daniel Miller [01:11:13] Yeah. And I don't. Honestly, I don't know what the purpose was that or was for. For that, other than they were putting different general authorities over publishing services department. To kind of monitor a little bit more closely. But when I first started working there, my paycheck came from the corporation of the president. And then after that, it changed to the corporation of the Presiding Bishopric. So the Presiding Bishopric somehow had tie ins with the media department from that point forward.

John Dehlin [01:11:45] Okay, that's interesting. All right, so let's go back to your work with seminary institute. What were the main things that you started working on there?

Daniel Miller [01:11:57] So the big thing with seminary and institutes was the rewriting of the manuals that were basically produced in the late 70s and early 80s and were the ones that were still being used today. Seminary manuals in particular were extremely out of date. And I think that people specifically talked about how the New Testament manual was horrible. That really needed to be rewritten and updated and modernized. I think in one of those manuals, they still had a map of the USSR as an example in there. So, I mean, in 2000, 2014, or 13, you're using that in your object lessons. It doesn't quite translate to kids that have no idea probably what the USSR Even was definitely out of date. And that was one of the big things that they really wanted to focus on. A couple of things on that. When I first took these on the previous way that manuals were done. Is that the seminary writers would write the entire manual cover to cover. So front to back, every lesson. And that would take them several months to do. Well. Then from there, they would take their finished product. And they would submit it into the editing department. The editing department would then take six months or however long to go through cover to cover and edit it. And the interesting thing I found about that, which is kind of a sidetrack, is that the editing department really actually acted on behalf of the correlation department quite a bit. It was Their job to go through and make sure that everything was doctrinally correct, that the seminary writers wrote that they weren't misquoting anything, just fact checking in general. Grammar, punctuation, spelling, all that stuff as well. But I remember talking to one of the editors saying, yeah, really, the correlation department relies on us to do the bulk of the work in terms of correlating and making sure that it's the message that the church wants to deliver and that everything is doctrinally accurate. That's probably, for me, as close as I ever got to the correlation department is the people who are actually doing the editing took a lot of the heavy lifting for correlating the manuals. The problem with the production of the manuals, when you. You write it cover to cover, you submit it into editing cover to cover in one big bulk. Then it goes back to the seminary writers to edit, and then they fight back and forth with correlation and whatnot until they get the final product. Then it goes over to graphic design and layout, and they have to put it in their software to lay it out, and they have to find the artwork for it and the examples and the graphs, and they have to build all that stuff. And that takes forever as well. And then from there it has to go over to the translation department. And when you're translating it in 32 languages, then that takes a ton of time, right? So you've got to just write one manual in that format. You've got at least four years on one manual, and then you move on to the next manual. Well, you've got five manuals that you got to do. So by the time you come around to read rewrite the first manual that you started on, it's 20 years later.

John Dehlin [01:15:25] Wow.

Daniel Miller [01:15:25] And so that was their process. That's how they did it. And so when I came in, they had kind of already started with the idea from the previous project manager that was running it. But they started with the idea of breaking it up into chunks and saying, we're going to do 12 chunks and we're going to write the first chunk and we're going to send it off to editing, and then we're going to move to the next chunk chunk. And so that you could kind of have an assembly line. So all along the way you'd have the writers still writing chunk 6, and the designers were now designing chunk 2, and the translators were translating chunk 1, and then it would just go through that whole assembly line. So we were able to actually. And it was a whole change in the organizational structure and I remember fighting with the editors and fighting with all these people and people didn't want to do it and they didn't like it and it wasn't what they're used to doing. It was like pulling teeth to get people to let's try it on this and see if we're successful. But ultimately we ended up doing it that way. And we were able to take the production of the manuals from a four year minimum down to a one year maximum, which now allowed them to go through within five years and have all of them rewritten. Then the goal was after that to do a 10% revision each year after that. So what they've done now is they've all been published and so now they don't have to go back and rewrite. All they have to do is go back to the Book of Mormon one, for example, and look at the stuff that new apostles, new prophets, new conference talks or whatever that they've given and remove old stuff and put in the newer stuff. Stuff that's been said about the various topics or chapters or lessons that they're working on. So now from here on out, instead of a rewrite in 20 years, it's just every five years a 10% revision. 10 to 15% revision.

John Dehlin [01:17:18] Excellent. Okay. Well, that's pretty cool.

Daniel Miller [01:17:21] Yeah, I thought that was kind of exciting. You know, I felt like I was really making a difference. And I remember the feeling for myself of, you know, these are the manuals that my kids are, are going to study and millions and millions of people throughout the next years are going to be reading these and touched by the spirit and converted in their youth through seminary. And I really felt like I was a part of something with a lot of that. Like this is a really big deal. And the editors that worked on it felt the exact same way. They were fighting over who gets to do the work on it. And they all wanted it because it was such a high profile project. And the designers were the same way. They were really excited and felt like they were in on it. And you know, it was a big deal to them. So everybody felt like they were just really a part of spreading the word and some really important work.

John Dehlin [01:18:12] That's great. Okay, so you helped revolutionize the process. Let's move to the section that you have in your outline about inoculation. I think this is a part that's really going to be interesting to people.

Inoculation Efforts and Discovering Difficult History

Daniel Miller [01:18:25] Okay. Yeah. So when we first started doing the rewrite of the manuals, I remember and it wasn't really something that was necessarily written down and strategically planned and methodically done in the manuals. It was just a general, okay, we recognize that there's a lot of stuff out there that these kids are being exposed to later in life that's shocking to them. So we're kind of doing them a favor is basically the general deal. And I don't know if favor is the right word, but we're really trying to do the right thing in introducing them to some of this controversial material early on in life so that when they hear it later in life, it's not going to be like a big slap across the face when an anti Mormon or a non Mormon or an intelligent investigator drops a bombshell on them. And they've never heard any of this stuff. And so there was a plan to do that, but there was no formal, methodical, here's exactly how it's going to go. It was just more of, hey, writers, when you're writing this, please make sure that you're giving some of the inoculation type things on the controversial topics.

John Dehlin [01:19:44] Now, you know, Mormons, you know, I mean, Sunstone and Dialogue have been around forever, but the Internet started really heating up in the early 2000s and Mormon Story started in 2005. The blogger Knackles started around 2004, 2005, and then by 2009, 2010, Mormon Expression Podcast had come on the scene. And you know, by 2000, 2011, 2012 was when, you know, we were working with Marlon Jensen and really providing the feedback to the church that would lead to the essays. So you were there, right, As a lot of the heat was really increasing as you could tell that the church inside was starting to be really worried about the Internet. And I'm wondering if you were sheltered from all that.

Daniel Miller [01:20:41] I had no clue. I didn't even know what Mormon stories or Mormon expressions or anything was because I was one of those where don't go to non church approved sites. I never did. And you know, you get that feeling of the adversary when you click on a page that looks like it might say something negative about the church. Oh, the devil, you know, adversary is here trying to tempt me. And I, I would immediately click off of that stuff. And so I never had any clue at all.

John Dehlin [01:21:08] So even though you, you struggled with tithing, you still stayed away from, you know, questionable sources.

Daniel Miller [01:21:16] Yep, absolute had no clue of any of that. So when these guys are talking about inoculation, I'm assuming at this point, looking back that, yeah, they, they were probably much more aware of some of the stuff that's out there in the Internet, and. And that there are people going through faith crisis and so on and so forth. But I had no clue. I just thought all was well. I thought, you know, everything's great. We're trying to help these kids.

John Dehlin [01:21:41] And so no one would have talked about all this other stuff?

Daniel Miller [01:21:46] No, I didn't have any. Anybody that was, you know, like I say, methodically going through and saying, we have all these people who are experiencing major crisis in their faith because they're coming across this. All it was was just simple. You know, we want to make sure our youth get exposure to some of this stuff early. That's kind of shocking in church history. So it doesn't destroy their faith and their testimonies and whatnot. But other than that, I didn't really have much clue that anything else was even going on out there.

John Dehlin [01:22:12] Okay, great. So this concept of inoculation was introduced to you, and where did it go from there?

Daniel Miller [01:22:20] Yeah, so. And it was a little bit before that that I had kind of started to have some concerns. Concerns because when we moved to Utah, and I'm just going to give a little back history here, we moved to Utah, and while our home was being built, we lived in some condominiums. And while we were living in those condominiums, we were going to the ward we were going to eventually go to. And the stake president came by and visited me. You know, just. Excuse me. It was our bishop. He's the stake president now, but back then, he was our bishop. He came by and he visited us in our condo and we talked and whatnot. Well, when we moved into our house six months later, immediately I was called as the elders quorum president. And I remember man as the elders quorum president. I just want to know everything there is to know. I want to be one of the leaders that just is an inspiration and people can look to for answers and whatnot. And I remember our biggest bishop at the time who called me, or I guess the stake president technically calls, but the bishop told me he submitted my name to the stake president. Well, the stake president was his brother. And now my old bishop is now the new stake president. And that stake president has gone on a mission. But anyway, the whole deal with that is as an elders quorum president, you kind of know in the future, your next step is most likely going to be called into a bishopric or maybe a stake high councilman and callings like that. And then eventually you'll be a bishop, and then eventually you'll be a stake president. And A mission president. And I kind of saw that as, okay, well, this is where I'm going. And when you work for the church, it's like you're fresh meat. Oh, this is going to be somebody who can be a leader in our ward and they work for the church and they'll be great. So I wanted to be what all those expectations were. So I'm like, when our current stake president came and spoke in priesthood to the combined, I just remember him pulling stuff out of oh, and in the Journal of Discourses, it says this, and on the Lectures of Faith, it says that, and Book of Commandments this. And I'm like, I don't even know what half of those things that you just quoted are and never even heard of the sources. So anyway, I looked up to him during that kind of talk or presentation he gave, and I'm like, that's the kind of guy that I want to be just in know it all. And so I had started down that path and I said, I'm going to read the Journal of Discourses cover to cover. I'm going to take as long as it takes, and I am going to finish that, which I did. And then I moved on to lectures in faith and the Book of Commandment type stuff and what's the doctrines of salvation and you know, some of those things that I. Mormon doctrine type things that I felt were kind of key things and I just absorbed it. But along the way, I started being introduced to all these things like Adam God doctrine and the blood atonement and a lot of these things. I'm like, man, that's some really weird stuff. That's kind of bothersome. But, you know, you're all in and you just kind of put it up on your shelf.

John Dehlin [01:25:26] Okay.

Daniel Miller [01:25:27] And so it ties back to that is now they're talking about inoculation. And I remember one of the guys saying, you know, things like Joseph and the Seer Stone. And I'm like, what are you talking about, Seer Stone? He used the Urim and Thummim, you know, and then I'm talking about Joseph Smith and polygamy and polyandry and so on. I'm like, wait, what? I never heard of any of that. And so I was already going through a phase where my intent at the beginning was to totally be the most spiritual, most informed and know my religion as well as I possibly could. And all of a sudden I start seeing these things that are troubling to me. And now I'm getting introduced to more things that are Troubling. And I'm like, man, I really have gotten to start studying some of this stuff because I don't know any of this stuff that they're talking about. And as we're in the meetings and whatnot, when they're doing some of these things, I'm looking around to see, is there anybody else that is kind of shocked or questioning. I couldn't tell. And I'm thinking, man, must be I'm the only one that doesn't know. And so I figured, man, I really better get out and study some of this stuff. And then that's kind of what took me down the path of. Of research and my ultimate faith crisis.

John Dehlin [01:26:39] Okay, so you're digging in deeply to Mormon doctrine and trying to. And you're hearing about all these things you'd never heard before as you're trying to rewrite the Seminary Institute manuals. Okay, all right, so I see you mentioning there, coming across the Damon Smith podcast. So how did you hear about Mormon stories or other sort of unapproved sources, and what made you feel comfortable starting to dig into those?

Daniel Miller [01:27:17] Yeah, so I had been for roughly a year now, kind of trying to research some of these things, and I'd had questions of my own, and I never shared it with anybody, never said a word of it to my wife, to my bishop, to anybody. It was just like, you know what? All the answers will eventually come. If I study hard enough, and I figure I find it and I work hard enough, the answers will come, and even if they don't, I'll know it in the next life. And so I was on a family trip with my extended family to go on a golf course trip, and my wife stayed home with the kids. And so I went with my other family members, and one of my family members somehow came up where we were talking about the church and some of the issues, just some weird things that I think the both of us had heard. And then it led to, well, have you ever heard of this guy named Tom Phillips who wrote a letter to Elder Hall? And I'm like, no. And he's like, well, yeah, I read this. You ought to check it out. I'm like, okay, well, let's read it. And we're in the car driving to Mesquite. So together we read the entire letter exchange from Tom Phillips out loud, and then the response from Elder Holland and that whole deal, and I had never heard of it before, and I'm like, holy crap, man. It kind of blew my mind a little bit. Number one, it's like, these are good questions that this guy is asking. Why don't you just answer the questions? I would love to know those answers. And some of those things I never even thought of before, but now that you mention it, yeah, I kind of want to know the answer. So I was a little shocked and a little like, why would you not give the answer? But at the same token, I'm like, okay, maybe there are other people out there that are experiencing these same things that I'm going through and feeling guilty that I'm having all these concerns and worries. Maybe I'm a little bit justified. And so that kind of spurred me a little bit more to go down the path and learn all the stuff that's out there.

John Dehlin [01:29:21] Okay,

Daniel Miller [01:29:24] so I don't know where.

John Dehlin [01:29:25] So the. So the Damon Smith podcast.

Daniel Miller [01:29:28] Oh, Damon Smith. Yeah. So that's what introduced all of that stuff. And then that whole weekend.

John Dehlin [01:29:32] So the Tom Phillips thing.

Daniel Miller [01:29:34] Yeah, that's what kind of started all of it.

John Dehlin [01:29:36] Okay.

Daniel Miller [01:29:36] Is okay. There's stuff out there. And so then it's like, well, you know what? I better go out here and try to start looking and seeing what's really out here. And then I think I stumbled on Mormon Stories podcasts, and I think there was also the other one with Grant Palmer. So I listened to both of those over that week that I was in Mesquite, and my off time from the golfing stuff that we were doing just powered through as many of the podcasts that I could. So I listened to several of those. The Damon Smith one was one that just kind of floored me. It's like, yeah, I know what he's talking about with correlation and all those things. I've experienced that, and that kind of lit a fire under me. And I don't know, just the way that he spoke too. Just a very intellectual guy. And just listening to him talk, he knew his stuff. So that one really kind of impressed upon me. And so I ultimately then ended up sharing it with my wife. And we listened to it after that on a drive to Boise. And then here, six months ago or so, I listened to it again with my son, my 16 year old. So I've actually listened to that one three times, and that's probably one of my favorites of all because he really goes into some good stuff on that one.

John Dehlin [01:30:48] So the first time you listen to the Damon Smith and the Tom Phillips stuff about what month and year, any idea when that would have been?

Daniel Miller [01:30:57] It was probably like January of 2013.

John Dehlin [01:31:00] Okay, all right, so we're in 2013 now.

Daniel Miller [01:31:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:04] All right. So you start really doing this research into unapproved sources, and yet you're trying to work at the church.

Daniel Miller [01:31:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:14] So what. What happened?

Daniel Miller [01:31:16] Yeah. So that weekend we were in Mesquite, I, you know, I'm looking up stuff, and I find the Mormon curtain was one of the places, and Mormon Think was another one. And I remember going on there and reading some of these things that some of these guys have really critical thought about this. And one of them that stood out to me was the whole concept of the Jaredite barges and what it would take to actually build a transoceanic vessel with no tools, no nothing in 2200 B.C. and to be in that ship for 340, whatever days, singing praises night and day. And the brother of Jared building these things and getting them completely done before he realizes they're completely dark. And after eight of them have been built, then he goes to the Lord and says, hey, what am I going to do about light? Halfway through the first one, you'd realize there was a problem, but the story is a little bit off. The thing that really struck me on that one was the brother of Jared speaking about light. He goes to the Lord and says, what are we going to do with light? And he suggests windows. The Lord comes back and says, no, you can't do windows because they'll be dashed to pieces. And that's right there in the scripture saying, the windows will be dashed to pieces. And I'm like, wait a minute, that's 2200 BC that this guy's talking about building windows. They didn't invent blown glass for windows until, like, 1400 A.D. so how are these guys going to the Lord and talking about, no, the windows will be dashed to pieces? There was no concept of a window back then. And so then that was for me when I really started critically thinking about these Book of Mormon stories and what's the there. So that whole weekend was just obsessively going through that type of stuff that ultimately, like I say, led me to the Mormon curtain in some of those. And working at the church, it became harder and harder. And it became harder and harder to keep quiet about it, too, because I'm also now the Elders Quorum president. And at that point, I had kind of started to talk to my wife a little bit when I was on my. I think I was on my trip to Mesquite. I sent her a copy of the Tom Phillips letter, and I said, this kind of concerns me. Read this, and she freaked out a little bit at that point, she was like, oh, no, my husband's going into apostasy, and this is really bad. And, you know, not good at all. And I think, what was that like

John Dehlin [01:33:40] for you, Anna Marie?

AnnaMarie Miller [01:33:44] The second that I got the text from him, I didn't even read. I just had. I know how he is. I know his personality. I know once he gets going on something that it's going to be a long road. And so, I mean, good or bad, it's not necessarily a bad thing. But I knew it wasn't something that he would just leave alone. And I was pregnant at the time, and it was very kind of scary for me. It was something that I just wanted him to leave alone. And I basically told him as much. And I didn't actually even read what he sent me. I was just kind of asking him to drop it, to leave it alone, because everything was great. Everything in our life was good. Our family's good. We like the life that we're living. There's nothing we're trying to fix. There's nothing that we're searching for. So to me, I felt like there was a lot to lose and nothing to gain. So I kind of of. I wasn't very supportive. I just was kind of told him to leave it up, leave it alone, let life be the way it is.

John Dehlin [01:34:49] And how is that for you, Daniel?

Daniel Miller [01:34:52] Frustrating. You know, I'm somebody that if I see something wrong, I'm going to call it out and I want answers for it, you know? And like I said, when times are happy, when I'm happy, everybody's happy. When I'm mad, everybody's mad. And so wearing my shock and anger over some of these things that I was stumbling upon on my shirt sleeve and her being my companion and my confidant and the one that I wanted to talk to about it, she's in the midst of a pregnancy and is trying hard enough to keep it together through the emotional roller coaster that a pregnancy brings that she didn't want to hear it. So it's like, well, now where do I go? I can't talk to my wife. And it was a little bit of a separation that came between us.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:35:44] We weren't fighting over it or anything. Like we had discussed right at the beginning that it was not something that either one of us would let break up our marriage because our marriage came first. And we were both very clear about that from the beginning, that no matter which path the other person took, that. That the marriage was staying together. We wouldn't let that Destroy us. But the problem was, like you said, he. Here's this thing that he's kind of obsessed with at the time and that's all he wants to talk about. And of course I'm the first one he wants to talk to about it, but I don't want to hear about it. And I was already, you know, being pregnant and stuff. The place that he was at, he was at the beginning of his journey. It was kind of a lot of frustration and anger and bitterness and I'm like really just kind of a happy person. I'm pretty even keeled. I don't like a lot of negative emotion at all in my life. And so I did not want all of that negative emotion being thrown at me while I was trying to raise four kids and go through a pregnancy and whatnot. So instead he just kind of. We weren't really ever really fighting about it. It was more just that he kind of withdrew to his corner and I withdrew to mine. But we did notice that there was more of a distance. I think we weren't opening up to each other and communicating the way that we normally do because we were on such different pages with it.

John Dehlin [01:37:16] Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, real quick. I think I want to try and keep this, this episode to two hours. So we've got about 20 minutes left if it's all right. Daniel, let's finish out your observations about working at the church. Try and do it in the next 20 minutes and then we'll do a third part which will be sort of your guys journey, you know, out of the church or your loss of faith or whatever that is. So let's jump back and take us through the rest of your time at the church.

Layoffs, Missionary Numbers, and Internal Concerns

Daniel Miller [01:37:53] Okay. So one of the things that really kind of brought some, I think, anxiety in both of our lives was shortly after I went to work at the church, they went through the lowering of the missionary age to 18. Right.

John Dehlin [01:38:09] Okay.

Daniel Miller [01:38:10] And I don't specifically know that it was a direct result of the lowering of the missionary age, but I do know that there was a huge influx. I think everybody knows that. A huge influx of missionaries that went out into the field. Like we, what, quadrupled the mission force out there or more. And I don't think the church expected that there was going to be that much of a change or a difference.

John Dehlin [01:38:39] I don't think we quadrupled it. It probably went from maybe 40 or 50,000 to maybe 80.

Daniel Miller [01:38:45] 80,000? Yeah, you're right, it went to 80. I was thinking it was more like 20 or 30, but, yeah, okay, so it doubled or whatever the case is. But in any event, I don't know that they expected and prepared for that amount of missionaries heading out to the mission field that quickly. Well, in order to support those missionaries, I mean, that's a lot of money. You've got the resources. You've got new apartments you have to hunt down, you've got cars, you know, all the stuff that goes with supporting these missionaries out there. And it was kind of the standing deal that, yeah, this. You know, we're in kind of a budget crunch right now to be able to support the influx of these missionaries who divert money over to support this. They're very tight on their budgets and where their money is allocated. And we had to go through our existing media budget and try to slash budget money that we had already been granted through the disposition of ties. And it was all finalized and approved, and we had to go through and slash a whole bunch of stuff and give money back. And the understanding was it was to support the missionaries.

John Dehlin [01:39:51] And your annual budget was about what?

Daniel Miller [01:39:54] In my department, it ranged between 16,000 or 19 million.

John Dehlin [01:39:58] Between 16 and 19 million. Okay.

Daniel Miller [01:40:01] Yeah. For each year.

John Dehlin [01:40:02] Okay.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:40:03] So.

John Dehlin [01:40:05] So big budget cuts.

Daniel Miller [01:40:08] And so then shortly after that, they start talking about layoffs. And I know my boss calls me in, and I had only been there, what, six months at most? Yeah, probably six months. And they're like, yeah, we're probably gonna go through layoffs. And the only fair way to do this is to, you know, give the seniority and so on and so forth. But I'm going to try to do what I can to save your job and this and that. So, I mean, I was. Nothing was set in stone, but I was all but under the impression that I was going to be laid off. And I was pretty upset because it's like I'm in the middle of building a house.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:40:48] We had just relocated and left our other house to move here.

Daniel Miller [01:40:53] Yep. I had a great job at my other company, was making decent money and so on and so forth. I kind of felt like, you know what? I stuck my neck out there in good faith and loyalty to you, and it doesn't feel like you're going to be loyal back to me. Well, I mean, all said and done, I guess they were loyal because I ended up keeping my job and I was not laid off. So I look back and it's like they did their best to take care of me, but also with the other thing that kind of upset me about that was that you're going to do layers to support these people who a. A lot of them probably didn't save enough money to be able to pay for their entire mission. And so the church is going to have some responsibility to put forth money to pay for their missions. But not only that, these people are only in it for two years and you're going to do layoffs of people who have been in it for years and years. And this is their livelihood, their career, they're all in. And you're going to value the people who go out for two years to do the missionary work over people who've given their entire lives to work for the church. I was a little upset that that was the decision that they would make to lay people off. I will say, though, in their defense, they did everything in their power that they possibly could to not lay anybody off. They would move people to different departments, fill other open positions even if you weren't fully qualified. They did anything and everything they could to keep the people that they have because they understand and they don't want to have anybody go through financial hardships in any way. While I was upset about that, I was very appreciative. And I know that no other company out there would take as good of care of their employees as what the church did for trying to keep the employees that they had. Understanding is a business and sometimes you have to make business decisions as well. And it kind of stinks when church and business get mixed, but, you know, it is what it is.

John Dehlin [01:42:55] Okay. So during that time, just really quickly, while we're on the topic of missionary work, you heard some speculation about missionary numbers. Talk about that really quick.

Daniel Miller [01:43:06] Yeah, so we were talking, I think there had been some market research out there and some people who had looked and had realized and done the number crunching that the number of active, of members with children age 8, primary age and whatnot that are out there now are dwindling. Families are getting smaller, a lot less active, and so on and so forth. What I heard was that within 10 years, the number of people on missions is going to be lower than what it was before the missionary age, simply because, you know, there's just not enough members out there to be missionaries in the future. So the numbers were supposedly going to significantly drop even with the lowering.

John Dehlin [01:43:53] So church membership is shrinking.

Daniel Miller [01:43:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:43:55] At least at the younger ages. Okay. And then you talked about some interesting things you learned in terms of temples and temple work and temple names. Talk about that really quick.

Daniel Miller [01:44:09] Yeah, and some of that's some speculation, but I was at a retreat While I was working for the church history family history department for a day in Alpine, where the managing director, I guess you would call him, and a couple of his people that worked for him came to that retreat and were talking to us because we were taking over all the production of their media. And they were talking about how they're excited to do a new look and feel for familysearch.org, that it's going to be super easy to find names of people to take to the temple. And the church is going to, in the near future, be doing a big push for family history work so that people, instead of going to the temple and getting a name assigned to them, they will, you know, just do. They'll be able to easily do their own work and take their own names of their own family members, and it will be memorable for them because they are actually doing their own ancestry and their own work for their own family. How great that was going to be. But one of the things that he said is that he had been in meetings or talks or whatever the case is, and was told that the reason why this is occurring is because the temples are running out of names. And in the near future, it's going to be a requirement that all members, if you want to attend the temple, are going to have to take a family name, because there just aren't any. There's not enough names to continue to keep up the amount of temple active goers that are out there right now. And so that was one of the big things that they're trying to do, is make it easier for the members to find names, which it is. Now, if you go on FamilySearch, it's quite easy to find a name. Now in five minutes, I can have three names to take through.

John Dehlin [01:45:53] Okay, so there was a concern that the temples were running out of names. And then later you heard about the recycling of names. Talk about that.

Daniel Miller [01:46:01] Yeah. And that was much later, after I left working for the church. That wasn't anything that I heard at the church. But there was a guy, and I can find the source of it again if you ever want to post it. But you could probably Google recycling temple names, but there's a whole big deal out there where a guy

John Dehlin [01:46:22] kind of

Daniel Miller [01:46:22] lost his testimony as well of the church because he was a temple worker. And he went in the first day he was there and went through and saw the big stack of names that they have and went through and assigned out all the names. And then the next day, he comes in day two and he looks at it and he realizes it's the exact same stack of names that they did the day before, that they're redoing again. And then the third day, same thing. So three days in a row, they reused the same dead people's names that all these people were going in and doing the work for. And that was a big shock. And he asked, what's the deal with this? And they said, yeah, we reuse them because there's just not enough names to go around. So we'll do them for three days here and then they get shipped off to another temple, and then we receive names from another temple and they're just kind of recycling the names round and round through all the temples. And that kind of. When I read that, it kind of. And again, I don't know 100% for sure whether there's truth to that or not, but when I read that, it resonated with me because of the actual factual information that I did hear that members in the near future are going to have to start taking their own names because the temples are running out of names. And so there was some correlation there that just really kind of resonated with me that maybe there is truth to that. There's no actual fact or documents to prove that that is going on. But this guy's story seems to line up with what I personally heard.

John Dehlin [01:47:55] No, I remember reading about evidence that someone had gathered that Hitler and that Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had had their temple work done and their ceiling performed something like eight or nine different times. And it was disturbing to hear that Hitler had had his work done. But I was even more disturbed to learn that it had been done so many times.

Daniel Miller [01:48:19] Anne Frank was another one. She had her work done many, many times. So, yeah, that definitely happened.

John Dehlin [01:48:26] So I think over the, over the past several decades, you probably have on average, an individual being baptized, having their work done between three and ten times at least.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:48:38] Least.

John Dehlin [01:48:39] So that's a lot of wasted time for people, for members going to the temple and doing all this work, when in reality the ordinance work is meaningless.

Daniel Miller [01:48:50] And we can get into that in the next segment there. But for me, there was a time when I realized that there's some stuff going on here that keeps people in the Mormon bubble. And temple work is a part of that. Regular temple attendance is part of the keeping you worthy, keeping you full, tithe, paying full, all in, bought in, indoctrinated into our way. And we'll talk about some of the other things that I kind of were eye opening to me about keeping how they keep people in the bubble later when we get onto those other sections. But that's something we definitely want to talk about.

John Dehlin [01:49:25] Okay, so let's end by, you know, if you're, if you're doing this work for CES around inoculation and correlation, if you're learning about all these difficult topics, were you involved at all in difficult discussions about what you should and shouldn't disclose? I guess you weren't involved in actual content creation?

Daniel Miller [01:49:50] No.

John Dehlin [01:49:51] So did you ever see or hear or experience anything interesting around what details to share or not share with the Seminary Institute students?

Daniel Miller [01:50:03] Well, some of the things. Well, I guess one of the things that really kind of stood out was that when the correlation or editing department, whichever you want to call them, and again, my speculation, because I never actually met anybody on the correlation committee is I guess technically what they called it on large projects because they would get multiple people to get together on big manual rewrites and stuff like that. But I was told that the people that make up these committees are BYU professors, scholars, people like that probably fair, Mormon people and others that work for BYU or are Mormon scholars in some way. And they form a committee and probably go over each of those chapters. They get together, I don't know, once a week or a day or, or whatever the case is, they all get together and then they discuss, read out loud and discuss and make sure that everything's in line. So whether that's actually how it happens or not or who it actually is, I don't know. But that's kind of the impression that I got is that's the type or the type of people that made up the correlation committee and I'm assuming they would be paid for their work, obviously employed by the church and are part time or whatever it is contrary, but they know they are a part of the correlation committee and they just contract as they are contacted to do the work as they're needed.

John Dehlin [01:51:26] So regarding your final months or years at the church, any other stories or experiences as you're learning about these difficult things and working at the church? Like what led to you ending church employment? Was it any of this stuff or was it just a better job came along?

Daniel Miller [01:51:49] Well, yeah, I had another opportunity. I had several opportunities to kind of go back into the old industry that I was in and I still wasn't yet at a point where it's like, okay, this is great, I'm going to take this opportunity and leave working for the church because it's not true or I don't want to be involved in it or whatever. And I got to get out of here right away. It just happened to be that a really good offer came along. And I accepted that offer and was really kind of sad about leaving. Working for the church while I was still going through some of these things, I still had hope that, you know what, these things can be answered. And not a major huge deal. And it wasn't until later on, probably in 2013, where I really started going through, because at that point, it's like, I'm not conflicted now. I'm free to think a little bit more and be a little more critical of the church and not have to worry about it interfering with my job. But in terms of leaving because I had a faith crisis, that wasn't the case at all.

John Dehlin [01:52:51] Okay. And so any other aspects or stories about working for the church that you want to include before we move on to sort of your journey out of the church?

Daniel Miller [01:53:05] I guess the last thing regarding the correlation type stuff that just kind of struck me is it was almost like a little bit of a battle back and forth. When the seminary writers would write something and they had a manager that would kind of take all their stuff, right? And then submit it into the correlation department, and it would come back with the edits and the changes and all that stuff. And, you know, listening to the producer, the manager over the writers and whatnot, be like, I'm not doing that, I'm writing it anyway, or, we don't care what you say. And, you know, kind of back and forth, battling to get the stuff that they wanted. And some of it was because they didn't want the information out there in the way that they were presenting it. And some of it was because, oh, these people want to leave their mark. You know, like, I write it and I want to say it it in a particular way. But then there was other times where they're jockeying like, oh, no, somebody went and rewrote my entire paragraph and put it in their own words. And it makes me mad because I'm the one that wrote it, but they wanted to write it. Everybody's trying to make their own mark and leave their legacy in these things that were created. That was interesting to me. The other thing was when the scripture mastery cards changed. Going all the way through the process of each scripture book had about 10 to 12 scriptures that changed. I had heard that we get all the way almost ready to go to the printing press, and then, nope, we need to go back and pull this scripture and replace it with this one. My understanding with that was there was some general authorities jockeying back and forth and pulling rank and seniority over who gets what Scripture mastery in the new Scripture mastery, or maybe it was just the S and I leaders, but that some of the top people were jockeying over which ones should be there and pulling rank on the ones who wanted their favorites versus the senior ones who wanted their favorites. And so that project kept going, start, stop, start, stop and change. And just seeing all these guys jockey back and forth and pulling rank on each other to try to get their favorite scriptures in the new Scripture mastery remake. So it's kind of fun.

Final Reflections on Working at Church Headquarters

John Dehlin [01:55:14] Okay, so your final reflections on working at church headquarters or what?

Daniel Miller [01:55:22] Really, no complaints at all. I absolutely, for the time that I was there and as a believer, I personally loved it. I just felt like I was secure for the most part. Once those layoffs kind of left, I just felt like I was secure. I felt like I was taken care of. I know that the severance packages that they offered for those that they did lay off were far better than any severance package that any other corporation would ever offer an employee. And I just felt great about my time there. And when I left, I actually was a little bit concerned that whether or not I made the right choice to go back into the private sector because our family life was so great, everything around that was just very church centered and very family centered. And I was very worried that all of that would dissolve, moving away from working for the church.

John Dehlin [01:56:16] Church. And so if you were to sort of talk to members about how comfortable or uncomfortable they should feel about how well the church is run. It sounds like you're saying that the church is actually pretty well run based on your experience.

Daniel Miller [01:56:40] Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of red tape in areas and I think maybe my personality type helped me get around a lot of that stuff because there's a lot of people jockeying to use the same resources and they can only do so much. And so my way around that was going to the person that I needed to have do something for me and tell them I'm scheduling a meeting next Thursday at 2 o' clock and I need you to be there. And we're going to give a status update on whatever you're doing on your part of this process to the stakeholders and I want you there personally reporting on it. And then they're like, oh crap now okay, if I gotta be there and stand in front of the SNI directors, I better make sure my work is done. And so I kind of put people on the hot seat a little more instead of submitting it into the black hole. And then when they get to it, they get to it and not having any end dates. So if you followed their processes, a lot of times it seemed like you're submitting stuff into a black hole. But if you really kind of started owning your stuff and taking some personal responsibility and holding people accountable for it, which, you know, a lot of people who've been there for 20 years don't like a new guy coming in and putting deadlines and all that kind of stuff on them. And I'm sure I stepped on some toes and whatnot. But overall, I think the SNI department was happy at some of the progress that they had seen made. But, yeah, it all varies. I've heard some people say it's so disjointed, and there's people who have morale issues and. And it's poor. There's no leadership, and there's none of that. But for me, I thought where I was at was really well done, and we accomplished a lot, and I saw a lot of good media produced to go out and influence people's lives. So, I mean, my experience was I felt like we were really making a difference.

John Dehlin [01:58:31] Beautiful. All right. And, Anna Marie, your thoughts on. On your husband having worked for the church for a couple years.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:58:42] I actually had a really positive experience with it. When he came to me and said he had the other offers, I was very, very torn because everything from the time that we moved here to that point had been positive changes in our lives. And I felt like I was a little scared to rock the boat, which is typical of my personality. I don't like to rock the. The vote in any way, but. So he came to me and asked kind of what my opinion was about it. And, you know, I. A lot of prayer and a lot of thought and felt pretty strongly that it needed to be his choice. It was what he was going to be doing day in and day out with his life. And so I just went to him and I said, I support you in whatever decision that you make. Just keep in mind that we've seen a lot of positive changes, and if you decide this is a change that you want to make that we focus really hard on making, sure things are still moving in that same direction. I think I cried more when he left and switched jobs than he did because I had seen, you know, going from a super high stress career over a lot of years to that I had seen some really positive changes in him as a person. And so it was A little bit scary for me, but I wanted to support him in whatever he wanted to do with his life.

John Dehlin [02:00:15] So sure.

Daniel Miller [02:00:16] And for me, it was, this is double my pay. And it was all about dollar signs at that point. It's like I loved working for the church. I learned a lot, lot. I feel like, or I felt like at the time. It's like it gave me the foundation that I need now that I had lost somewhere along the way to go back out into the private sector and still be a good Mormon and be able to keep my values and do all that, where maybe somewhere along the way I lost that. I felt like that two plus years gave me that foundation again that I can go back and do that, even though I started struggling with some of the concerns and whatnot. And I felt like, man, those dollar signs are there, so let's go do it, you know? And I felt like everything will be okay. And that's why I think we ultimately made the decision.

John Dehlin [02:01:03] Okay, so this has been great. We've done a couple hours on your time at the church, and what we'll do is we'll close out this episode, and then what we're going to do is have a final episode. We're going to all ask a bunch of questions that the listeners wanted to know. We'll do kind of a Q and A and then we'll end talking about your time, your kind of decisions to kind of separate from the church. Does that sound all right?

Daniel Miller [02:01:30] Yep. Yeah, that sounds great.

John Dehlin [02:01:31] All right, Well, I want to thank Daniel and. Oh, were you saying something?

Daniel Miller [02:01:36] No, I just said I'm excited.

John Dehlin [02:01:37] Okay. So I want to thank Daniel and Anna Marie for these two hours. Thanks, listeners, for listening. Check us out@mormonstories.org and join us for our final hour to talk about Q and A and what led Daniel out of the church. So we'll talk to you guys soon. Thanks so much, everyone. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber. Subscriber@mormonstories.org Music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights.

Daniel Miller [02:02:27] When with a wounded heart, anger or mouth sweet I draw myself apart searching my soul.

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 603

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Daniel Miller [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home.

John Dehlin [00:00:52] Hello everyone and welcome back to part three of my interview with Daniel Miller. And we've also been fortunate enough to have his wife Anna Marie, join us as well. So welcome back, Daniel. Anna Marie, thank you. Thanks for joining us in hour four of this episode. Episode one, we talked about your kind of lives before working for the church. Episode two was sort of two hours of kind of in depth what it was like to work for the church and the beginnings of sort of your faith crisis at church headquarters. But we ended with you leaving the church's employee and doubling your compensation. And now what we're going to do is we're going to try and answer some questions from the listeners and then we'll end with having you guys talk about kind of your journeys, you know, struggling with the church or out of the church. Is that all right?

Daniel Miller [00:01:53] Yep.

Listener Questions About Church Operations and Media

John Dehlin [00:01:54] So one question just right off the top, you know, a lot of people have confirmed to me that that President Monson is, has Alzheimer's and that he really isn't leading the church and that he, he's really sort of not competent tells, you know, people who have been with him say that he'll tell stories two or three times with the same people, same stories within the same 15 minute period that he's just completely out of it now, he can still read from a teleprompter, but that he's just not able to function as a normal person. Now as you were working in the church, did, did you have a sense for whether President Monson was leading? Was there ever talk about his capacity to lead or was that just never discussed?

Daniel Miller [00:02:47] Never really discussed. And I think there was a question in there where somebody asked about who's leading the day to day operations and whatnot. The departments that throughout the church organization were very self sufficient. My manager I think was called the publishing services partner who reported to the managing director who would then go to whoever his meetings that he would meet with until you got up to your general authority that ultimately presided over your branch of whatnot. And, you know, they would give general guidance, general leadership, and then there would be a little more involvement and a little more motivation from the managing director and then down to my manager, you know, so there was some direction. But generally speaking, everybody just kind of did their own thing. They knew what their projects were. They came to work and they did their thing. And there was no real micromanagement. There was nobody there making sure you punched the clock at a certain time and whatnot. You just kind of came to work and did your thing. And it was very casual and laid back for the most part.

John Dehlin [00:03:54] So you didn't get the sense that the apostles were really involved in what you were doing or directing it?

Daniel Miller [00:04:00] Nope. I mean, the apostles were involved, for sure. But each apostle has purview over an assignment over certain areas. And so they have evolved in the area of their purview. And I'm assuming that, you know, they would talk about their areas and what's going on in their meetings. The general authorities, the 15 Met and whatnot. But no talk of President Monson having any diminished capacity in any way. It was just, you know, they would receive instruction from my managers, would receive instruction from the general authorities that oversaw my particular area.

John Dehlin [00:04:43] And do you know which apostles oversaw your area?

Daniel Miller [00:04:47] It changed, but I think Elder Holland was involved in it, and Elder Bednar was involved in it as well. They were somehow sharing it. There's probably three of them, actually, I think, that were kind of overseeing various

John Dehlin [00:04:59] multimedia stuff, all in the Bedner. Okay, so there are a lot of questions about your ability to sort of see the debates regarding the seminary institute manuals about what gets included and what didn't, and the inoculation question and the controversial topics like peep stones or polygamy. And it sounds like you just had no interaction with any of that. Is that right?

Daniel Miller [00:05:30] So I wasn't involved in any of the debates that went back and forth. I've gone back and looked at some of the things that were written in the previous seminary and institute manual regarding the seer stones and what it actually said and compare with what's in the new ones. And the 2001 SNI DNC manual is very, very elusive to a see earphone. It mentions it very briefly in one or two sentences in the lesson and in a couple of other places. But for the most part, it's made very clear in that manual that the Urim and Thummim were used, which is not, you know, we now know that's not the case, that the Urim and Thummim were not what was really used. It was. It was the Seer stone that was used the majority or all of the time.

John Dehlin [00:06:24] But you didn't have visibility into the changes that were made and why they were made. You were managing the production process, but you didn't have visibility into the content discussions, is that right?

Daniel Miller [00:06:38] Yeah, I mean, I would. So I didn't really even interact with the writers themselves except one of them, I guess the manager was also a writer. The manager of the writers was also a writer himself. And he would come to our status update meetings and just the interactions with him. In terms of, you know, correlation is saying, we can't add this, but I'm going to add it anyway. And I don't care what they say and you know, kind of back and forth, stuff like that. But in terms of the actual dialogues that went back and forth, I didn't have any visibility really into the correlation and what they said and how they said it and stuff like that. Okay, okay.

John Dehlin [00:07:16] So you don't have any opinions about how candid they were or weren't or how good of a job they did?

Daniel Miller [00:07:23] Well, so again, going back to the fact that the editors did a large portion of the actual correlating, I did have interactions in that front because I knew and spoke with on a daily basis those editors that were doing it and followed up. Well, where you at and are you on target? Do we need to adjust the time, so on and so forth. So those people who are doing some of that fact checking. Yeah, I definitely had interactions with and it may have been them that was doing the majority of the edits, you know, but I didn't get into any real big back and forth or was in any meetings where there was big back and forths like that. I think that they correspond through their mails and you know, you got to change this and you know, they would have a working document where they would strike stuff out and so on and so forth. And I did see some of that stuff, but you know, looking at specific of what was actually struck out. And I lost your sound.

John Dehlin [00:08:27] Okay, sorry. Sorry about that. I was on mute for a second. Okay, so there's a bit of a discussion about the church and this may go back to your kind of video segments, but there's a, you know, there's a lot of questions about what, what used to be called Heart Sell, which is the church's use of sort of music and emotion to kind of, you know, you could, say, manage or inspire, or if you wanted to be more cynical, say, manipulate emotions. Did you have any exposure to or understanding of sort of the Heart Cell brand and that approach to sort of manage emotions?

Daniel Miller [00:09:11] There was a little bit of exposure to some of that. Because as part of doing the video productions, right, you have to. Or the producer that would work on the project had to decide what music they wanted and the feel. And is it going to be upbeat, is it going to be powerful, spiritual, is it going to be jazzy bandy, whatever the case is? And they had music libraries out there that they could go through that were purchased, rights were purchased to the music to use, or they had. There was one of the videos that I did where we actually had composers who composed music specifically for the video to give us the exact look and feel. I guess not look and feel, but feel that we wanted for that video series. And we would send them samples. We want something very similar to this. And so we would send them the sound bite, and then they would compose music specifically targeted toward that feel that we're going for on this particular scene or this episode or whatever the case is.

John Dehlin [00:10:16] But in terms of just this idea of managing emotions and sort of, again, what they call heart sell, that wasn't something that you would have been aware of or exposed to or really a part of.

Daniel Miller [00:10:30] Well, I mean, working with the producers and going through and seeing the process, I mean, that was obviously what you wanted to do. You wanted to elicit powerful emotional responses, and you wanted people to really feel something when they watched this. And people always say, I don't think it was intentionally deceiving, but people will always say, I really feel the spirit to music. And so they would try to get music that would make people feel the spirit particularly powerful during certain powerful scenes that they would do. So there was definitely some forethought into music in the Spirit, but it wasn't in a sense of, I'm trying to heart sell in a devious way, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:11:18] Okay. One listener wanted to know if there was ever pressure to steer sort of business contracts towards companies that were connected to the church or general authorities or the families of general authorities. Any weird stuff going on in terms of vendors you used and contracts?

Daniel Miller [00:11:41] Vendors and contracts. There was generally a list of those vendors that we would have that were kind of an approved list. I never did any research into, well, who are these people, actually, but there was definitely a list of people if you're looking for composers that would be out there. And it was a little bit of A pain to go outside of those people because you had to go fill out the contract paperwork and get them signed up and so on and so forth with the church, which we could do. But generally speaking, they wanted you to use the people that were already in the system and had all the paperwork filled out and been vetted and whatever the case is. But I don't know in terms of the organizations or companies that were used, if there was any affiliation with general authorities or others like that.

John Dehlin [00:12:31] And were you aware of anyone being banned, like people that you couldn't use because they were forbidden to be used?

Daniel Miller [00:12:39] Yeah, there happened to be times like that where a bad experience occurred and then people would be. Contractors would be removed from the list of approved people to be used.

John Dehlin [00:12:48] But you know, you hear about like Kurt Bester couldn't be used because maybe he left the church or maybe like an actor who was in the temple, who was in the temple movie, later came out as gay and they had to take him out. Were you exposed to any of that sort of stuff?

Daniel Miller [00:13:05] Yep. So while I was working there, they began production at the motion picture studio for the new temple movies. And as most people know, for several years one of the two movies was pulled and was not used. And the reason that I was told was because so many of those people had either left the church or were homosexuals or apostate or whatever the case is that they pulled that video from usage so that, you know, people who associate them today as non members and are seeing them in church videos would not have, you know, a shock reaction to something like that.

John Dehlin [00:13:43] Do you have a, do you have a sense for how much a movie like that would have costed to then understand what the, the cost of pulling that movie might have been?

Daniel Miller [00:13:53] Well, I think that one was used for so many years that they probably got their money's worth out of that one. But I worked on the Bible videos section a little bit and you know, we paid for a few short clips for the seminary and institute side to be shot. And I mean there was hundreds of thousands just on our end on seminary and institute side for a couple of years, 22nd clips. And you think of all of the Bible videos that are out there now, we're talking in the tens of millions to do the production on some of those. So there's big budget.

John Dehlin [00:14:33] Were you ever exposed to kind of search engine optimization? Did you hear anything about that? There was a post on Reddit about how someone who worked in the sort of the technology department was told that they, the essays were coming up too high in the search engine retrieval process on Google. And so they had to figure out some algorithm to make them. It was either the church's own search system or on Google, I'm not sure which. But the point was they were trying to manage that the essays could be searchable, but not too easily findable. Were you involved in any. Were you aware of or involved in any discussions around search and the Internet and being able to find these materials?

Daniel Miller [00:15:21] That type of stuff was more for the ICS department to work on. They had developers and stuff like that. So it was really kind of outside of the media auction. And I didn't see any of that as I was there. I've heard the same thing, that the church does participate in killing some of that stuff. I know that one of the projects that I was involved in was the content conversion project where we were taking all of the old conference or, excuse me, CES devotionals and video and everything that was related to CES and trying to get it online in a digital format. But it seemed like they did put a cutoff date on how far back that goes. They had digital material, but they put a cutoff year, I think, on that material. And my suspicion and others, I guess, was that there was controversial stuff prior to that that they don't really want out there. And so they just kind of put a blanket year that we don't even want to put that stuff online because some of the stuff that they taught is not in line with the doctrine we teach today.

John Dehlin [00:16:28] Right. Somebody writes that Idaho, California and Colorado were part of the pilot program introducing the new teaching curriculum for Sunday school, and that they were instructed to destroy or turn in their current Sunday school manuals. Do you have any light you can shed on sort of that sort of instruction to destroy things that were piloted?

Daniel Miller [00:16:53] Oh, they were told to destroy the pilot material?

John Dehlin [00:16:57] I think so, yeah. Oh, no, no, no. Current. Current manuals. So maybe the older stuff. Anyway. Were you ever sort of privy to any attempts to sort of get rid of stuff or destroy stuff, or do you have any idea what that might have been about?

Daniel Miller [00:17:14] So. Not too much. I will say that while working on the seminary and institute side of things, one of the things that we were actually beginning piloting and shooting videos for is a pilot that they did to take seminary out of brick and mortar buildings and do everything online through Skype. And they were using the Moodle software. Moodle to do that.

John Dehlin [00:17:38] Interesting. Okay.

Daniel Miller [00:17:40] And that was the one that they contracted with. And I know there was a lot of the Seminary teachers that were kind of freaking out, that were full time employees, like, well, does that mean my job is going to be gone if we don't have brick and mortar seminary? So there was pilots to do things like that. But all of the old seminary manuals as far as I know, are still online. Like I can go pull up the old 2001 D&C right in the gospel library if I search for it or on google or on lds.org so I didn't ever see any times where they were trying to deliberately destroy me to hide something that might have been controversial. The only thing I can think of with that is if there was stuff in there, doctrine in there, or different things that contradict with what's being taught in the new manuals that they wanted people to get rid of those any of the controversial stuff that doesn't meet with what's being taught today and the best way is just to tell them to destroy it. Makes sense because they've come out with a lot of those changes. Right. A lot of things that I look at in the old seminary and you'll don't jive with what's in the new seminary manuals. And I think if that gap gets too wide, then they would probably want them to destroy it.

John Dehlin [00:18:52] Okay. Alison Udall asked, what's the role of women in decision making at church headquarters?

Daniel Miller [00:19:01] Both of my bosses were women, so I didn't really see any sort of discrimination there for women. The two women that I worked for were very, very professional and very well capable of doing the jobs that they did. And we had women on all gamuts across the board in the management, down in the trenches with everybody else. I can't speak to if there was any sort of pay differences or not. I assume probably not because they have pay scales for each grade that you're in, what you're ranked. But yeah, it wasn't like you're going into a ward council or a PEC and the men kind of dominate it. I didn't really get the sense of that. It felt like everybody had equal say and their input was valued. One of the things I can say especially with that is that there was only one time in the entire two years that I worked there that I ever remember any sort of a confrontation of any kind, which is not normal, right. In the day to day workplace, especially with that many people working in the church office building on that many projects. There was only really one sort of kind of tense moment where one of the gals there got a little bit emotional and kind of felt like her efforts were being undervalued a little bit. But outside of that, I really feel like everybody was treated fairly equally. Seminary and institute. Obviously there was no women. I mean it was all men. So there were producers that would come in to do some of the work. But in terms of the management levels and all that, nobody that I worked with on the management side of things was female. So I guess that's. I never thought about that before, but I guess that's true. I mean there was some secretaries that were up there that were women. But in terms of anybody sitting in any of the offices in the eighth floor for seminary and institutes, I don't think there was any women that I ever saw there.

John Dehlin [00:21:13] Okay, so not a lot of women at the seminary institute.

Daniel Miller [00:21:17] Yeah, and I think that kind of holds true though, because seminary has been historically, we want men, the women. You know, it's been hard for women to get jobs as seminary teachers in the past and I think they're opening that up. But still there's some of that culture there where they really want the men there and the women are traditional. They want you staying at home with your children and whatnot.

John Dehlin [00:21:39] So another question, when, when you used actors, were the actors paid or volunteer?

Daniel Miller [00:21:48] Some of both. I have one. Two of our kids were in one of a little three. Three of our kids were in a little movie shoot. And so they'll put out casting calls in some instances. And what they, a lot of times will do is they'll blast them out over some of the networks that email wise that are specifically in the industry for that. But then they'll also blast it out to current employees and say if you know anybody, we're looking for some older couple between the age of 60 and 75 that blah blah, blah fit these criteria, or a newly married couple or a couple who has a brand new baby. The baby can't be older than four months. And then we'll blast it out to all our friends and if somebody wants to do it, then they can come and volunteer and. And it's just kind of a fun thing to do and people get their little claim to fame with that. But then there were times where we had specific things that were going to be outward facing and public facing. The Bible videos were a big one. There was huge auditions for that and those would go out so the motion picture studio would get the list of characters that they're looking for and kind of the general traits. And you know, we want kind of ethnic or we want whatever, you know, the criteria is for that particular role. And they would send it out to the acting agencies and then the acting. And they would be given the time, date and time. And then the actors would come in and we'd go in. So I'd go in as the project manager. I would take in the producer from the sponsor. If it was family history, for example, you'd have a couple people that would go in there and then we'd have them read small paragraphs of part of the script and we would record them. And then we'd take those little videos and send them over to the seminary and institute group or whoever and then review all of those. And those were paid jobs that we would just have whatever their pay range was or whatever the case is. And there are actually paid actors that would come in for the more professional type roles that we're looking for.

John Dehlin [00:23:59] Okay, let's see. Megan wanted to know what you think the implications are for the inoculation sort of efforts in the CES manuals. So these manuals are starting to go out, right? The ones that you worked on. What do you suspect and what are you seeing and hearing about whether it's going to work or not work with the youth? Do you have any idea?

Daniel Miller [00:24:28] Yeah, so my. Initially, and I want to say that I don't think that the people who were focusing on doing inoculation had any nefarious motives or were trying to do anything sneaky or conniving. I think that they generally were concerned, you know, true believers, right. And wanting the youth to keep their testimonies and stay strong. And that was their. That was inoculation was their way of, hey, you know, maybe we can early on start to introduce these kids to some of these topics out there, because you've heard tons of stories where a missionary goes out and the investigator pulls out, well, what about this? And slaps something down on the missionaries that these missionaries have never heard before, right? And then it's shattering their faith and the missionary comes home or whatever the case is. And so what I think they were attempting to do is take away the shock value that anti Mormons have of slapping a true believer across the face with something that will devastate them. If they can inoculate them at an early age, they can introduce them to these principles or these troubling things and give them a little bit of information so that it's not such a damaging thing, and it can take away some of that empowerment that an ex Mormon or anti Mormon or whatever has in being able to shake their faith. You know, in just one big shock like that.

John Dehlin [00:26:02] Sure.

Daniel Miller [00:26:03] And so that was, I think, their goal.

John Dehlin [00:26:04] And what do you think the result is going to be?

Daniel Miller [00:26:08] So for me personally, I think that it will actually be effective. And to me it's a little damaging because I think what will happen is they're going to be introduced to some of these topics. And so then when later on in life, maybe they're going to stumble across the essays and they're going to remember, oh yeah, I heard about some of that in seminary. And so now to me, the inoculation on the youth level is kind of a tier one of taking away the shock factor. But then the chance that later on they might stumble across the essays that are out there are kind of a tier 2 inoculation. So by the time they get to the point and when they're in seminary and they ask questions and they're really concerned, now somebody can send them out to those essays and say, well, here, here's some more information on the seer Stone or on the blacks in the priesthood or polygamy or whatever it is. And now they can go out and get the second dose of that inoc, which at that point now they're going to feel like they've read everything that there is to know because the church is completely open about everything and they wouldn't lie to me. And so when somebody slaps them across the face with, well, what about this? They're going to be like, oh yeah, I already know about that. I know everything there is to know about it. There's no problem with that. And so in effect, it's almost indoctrinating them and brainwashing people more into not being critical thinkers or allowing them to be critical thinkers. And look at all the evidence, because now the church is more open about it and I have all the evidence right here in front of me. Whatever you're going to tell me is most likely going to be anti Mormon lies.

John Dehlin [00:27:51] So you feel like it's going to be effective in keeping people in the church?

Daniel Miller [00:27:56] Yeah, to an extent, I think so. I think it's going to cause true believers to feel like I've already got enough information and I don't need you to tell me all that. It's not shocking to me. It doesn't shake my faith. So I don't have a problem with it.

John Dehlin [00:28:13] And that's what I've heard, that the church has sort of written off the 20 and 30 somethings currently as being kind of lost. But they're investing their efforts in The. In the teens and people younger so that we may have a, you know, a bit of a dip in membership, but that we can save the future generations because they've kind of blown it for a lot of the current generations.

Daniel Miller [00:28:38] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:28:39] Yeah. That's your sense.

Daniel Miller [00:28:41] Yep. I. Yep. I totally feel that exact same way. The problem is, is it seems like the youth now are not as inclined to. Just because you're wearing a white shirt and a tie and you're an old man, I'm going to believe every word you say. That they're a little more of. You know what? I'm going to check out what you're saying because it just doesn't seem right. And I think they're going to run into a problem with the youth today. They're a little more free thinking and not. So. What's the word? Submissive to an authority figure.

John Dehlin [00:29:14] Yeah. Any. Any experiences where, you know, broadcasts were released and then. Or a live broadcast was made and then it was changed and edited and re released. It sounds like you were never involved in that sort of so initiative.

Daniel Miller [00:29:38] There was really only in terms of general authorities. And I was involved with some of the other Bishop Kose and a few of those guys that weren't full general authorities of the 12 and whatnot. So I was really only involved with Elder Oaks who did one, and Elder Holland who did one in terms of the CES broadcast or Elder Oaks did that discussion panel. And the discussion panel to me was really interesting because it wasn't like what you would normally expect a panel discussion to be where you go in there and say, have somebody kind of leading it and people asking the questions and whatnot and people responding freely and openly. It was a lot more scripted. And it just. When you watched that particular one, I was like, man, that just seems so scripted to me and rehearsed and kind of fake, you know. And there was definitely editing done on all that stuff. People would say things and they would go on too long or whatever the case is, and they would just get the exact one little thing. So they would have the question or the topic. They knew that was coming. Right. And then somebody would answer and they would make sure and get exactly the response edited into the video, the final product. So I did see some of that. Elder Holland or whoever. I do know that when they submit in their talks for correlation approval that they're edited and looked at and so on and so forth and then approved. And when they give the talk, they actually come back again for correlation approval and editing because sometimes they go off script, they'll be reading on the teleprompter and then President Monson might jump into a story that wasn't written on the teleprompter. And so now they've got to go write that in and so on and so forth. But in terms of what they said, I think the correlation department at this point is pretty good at making sure that they're all staying and they're pretty good at making sure they all stay on script and that they're not going to say anything that's going to cause major doctrinal changes to past. You know, they're kind of all aligned, if you will, in that. And so I never saw anything where they said something that was totally non doctrinal and they had to go redo it or change it.

John Dehlin [00:31:56] You wrote in Reddit you were a little bit disappointed that prophets and apostles had to have their conference talks correlated. Talk about that for a bit.

Daniel Miller [00:32:06] Yeah, that was a shock to me. I mean, for me, when Elder Holland is doing a CES devotional for the youth and his talk has to be submitted, I was like, I don't understand that this guy is a prophet, seer and revelator. Why does he need somebody else to prove the things that he's saying? I often wondered, what if he were in one of his talks or maybe it was a conference talk where one of the apostles or the prophet came out and said something to the effect of thus saith the Lord, Or I received this and this is what the Lord wants me to tell you, and he submitted that in in his talk to correlation. Who would trump there? It's new doctrine, it's not something we believe, or it's a change to doctrine. Who would win there? And I would hope that the prophets and apostles would trump not that in the recent past said thus saith the Lord, but if they did and supposedly received a revelation that contradicted current doctrine, what would actually be the result of that with the correlation committee? So. But yeah, it was a little disappointing, you know, thinking, who's really running things here? So

John Dehlin [00:33:27] sorry, that was my thumb. So somebody asks, and you may not even know about this, that, but the essay on the Book of Abraham does a better job at talking about the discrepancies between the papyra and the actual text of the Book of Abraham than the Institute manual does. Have you looked into that at all?

Daniel Miller [00:33:51] You know, I've read the essays on the Book of Abraham because I had so much reading to do as it was on the current projects and the Rewriting of the seminary manuals. As the project manager, I'm like, if I'm going to be a part of this in writing these, I want to at least know what they say. And so trying to keep up on the reading material of all of that stuff flowing in, it really didn't give me a lot of time to go back and read other institute manuals and whatnot. So I'm not sure what they actually say about the Book of Abraham in the institute manual. But yeah, I'd be curious to see. But I'm just not sure what the discrepancies are between the two.

John Dehlin [00:34:31] Okay. There's someone who's asking about hiring people that are temple worthy versus competent. And I think you've pretty much already answered that. That a lot of the younger people were actually quite skilled and competent. A lot of the older people were kind of burned out and zombified, I think, as you said. So I think you kind of answered that. Let's see, what about secrecy? Were you ever discouraged from talking publicly about what you were doing at work or was that even an issue?

Daniel Miller [00:35:05] Yeah, on current projects, especially things like the. In the family history department. The restructure of the family history library. Was it the family history or the church history? The one they just did. All the big. What was it? The museum, sorry, the church history museum that they just did. They remodeled and redid that whole deal there. And obviously they don't want people talking about that type of stuff. And temple movies, when they were shot, they definitely wanted all that to be hush hush. In fact, when the temple movies were being shot, just to get on site at the motion picture studio, everybody that worked for the church had their regular security badge. But to be on the premises, you actually had to have a separate photo ID badge to ensure that you are somebody who is supposed to be on the motion picture studio and not just a general worker. So they definitely had a lot of secrecy around stuff like that. I worked there at the motion picture studio and I couldn't even get in to watch the stuff they were filming for the videos. So they had it locked down pretty tight on the secrecy with that. And for the most part most everybody knew like the temple videos when they were reshooting them that that's what they were shooting. But there was no announcement that yes, this actually is what it is. It was all speculation and you know, somebody had leaked something unofficially. But yeah, there was nobody coming out. It was very secret and wanted to keep it on the hush hush.

John Dehlin [00:36:44] Sacred, not secret.

Daniel Miller [00:36:45] Yeah, both and the same thing with Goshen. You know, I went down for the Bible videos, and they built that whole set down there in Goshen to shoot the Bible videos. And it's a whole, you know, town of Jerusalem remade. And it's impressive. And when we went down there prior to the Bible videos being shot and kind of got the exclusive tour, we were told you can't post anything online. No Facebook, no social media. You know, you can't mention anything or post any pictures of the facility online. So, yeah, they had some of the things they wanted to keep under their coat, for sure on that.

John Dehlin [00:37:23] There are people asking about how the Church has portrayed Joseph Smith's translation of the Book of Mormon in the manuals. Do you have any thoughts or experiences related to the Church's attempt to sort of manage that story?

Daniel Miller [00:37:42] Yeah, so I actually pulled it up and read it. And they just recently. And it's interesting that they just give so little credence to downplaying really what the Seer Stone's involvement in the translation process was. Because, you know, the essays, in my opinion, completely contradict what's written in the seminary manuals in terms of the amount of usage that the Seer Stone had. You know, the. The seminary manual talks about how there's at times. Yeah. And it even says in there, he may have used the Seer Stone, you know, and. Well, that's not the case at all. And so, yeah, there's some significant contradictions. And I think maybe that's again, going to the level, tier one inoculation of introducing the possibility to then later on saying, oh, well, here's a little more information, and gently easing them into this instead of giving them the shock factor.

John Dehlin [00:38:46] But there was never that discussion that you saw about, you know, the pictures we're choosing for the manuals are mis. Portraying Joseph Smith's translation. You were never a part of any of that sort of discussion about whether or not to portray it visually more accurately.

Daniel Miller [00:39:03] So the guy that actually did the design work was just right up from me in the area that I worked in. And great guy. I don't think he had any clue that the translation process was anything other than Joseph studiously looking over the gold plates and using the Urim and Thummim. And so the other thing with that is there's the Church media library that has all the approved images that you can use inside of manuals without going to the intellectual property. If you take new photos or you use new stuff or some of the covers for the manuals, we actually had to go and they wanted to have somebody do a painting, so we had to go out and hire a painter to come in. But for the most part, the art that they used was already pre designated and pre approved in the church media library and they chose from that site stuff. And I don't think that there was any thought that, oh, you know, from the design standpoint that we need to include that in. And I do know that the writers of seminary and institute signed off on the art that was used. So when he's laying it out and he's putting a picture of the Savior, Joseph Smith or whatever it is, that they approve of all the pictures that he selects. And in some cases he would give them multiple pictures and they would pick the one that they liked, but it was all from the already pre approved library. And honestly I don't think that if he saw a pre approved picture of Joseph with his face in a hat, which there probably isn't any formally approved for use, he probably would never have chosen that one because he wouldn't have really understood what it was.

John Dehlin [00:40:48] But the content creators now, they would know, right, by now?

Daniel Miller [00:40:55] Not necessarily, no.

John Dehlin [00:40:57] I mean with all the essays coming out and everything, those writing, those who are writing the Seminary Institute manuals, surely they know the basic concerns by now.

Daniel Miller [00:41:07] Yeah, I think the seminary people, the producers and the instructors and all those people know definitely of the issues and the concerns and essays that are out there now. But the guy maybe who's doing the design work and layout of the manual and choosing the photos, he may have no clue of any of that stuff that's out there. So he's gonna pick the traditional stuff that looks good to him and fits the story.

John Dehlin [00:41:31] But the writer, who knows, could say, I want an image of Joseph with his face in the hat. Right?

Daniel Miller [00:41:38] Absolutely. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:41:40] But they haven't. I guess they haven't done that yet.

Daniel Miller [00:41:42] Nope, nope. And then the big question is at the end, when the final product is done, we would have to print off the, you know, copies of the manual and submit copies of the final product to Correlation for approval. And whether Correlation would approve of those manuals or not is another question too. Maybe they would say we don't want those in there.

John Dehlin [00:42:04] Okay. Were you, were you at all around when that anti masturbation slash war video came out? I think at byu, Idaho? I mean that was that something that you were privy to at the time?

Daniel Miller [00:42:20] That's more recent. It wasn't that like in just the last year or so?

John Dehlin [00:42:24] Yeah, maybe.

Daniel Miller [00:42:25] Okay, that's fine.

John Dehlin [00:42:26] So yeah. You don't remember that coming out?

Daniel Miller [00:42:28] I remember that. You know, I remember the video and all that stuff, you know, and all the spoofs that they made off of it. But I wasn't there. I think that was after I left. That was just. That was much more recent than when I was there.

John Dehlin [00:42:41] So it's clear that while you were there, the church was trying to play catch up with social media and Internet. Do you feel like they're catching up? Do you feel like at some point they're going to be like world experts at this stuff? How do you see that playing out?

Daniel Miller [00:42:56] No, because I think they react. They do member surveys and, you know, they pull the members and figure out what the hot topics are. And I know when the videos, the podcasts and different things that we would produce before we ever released them, we would send them out to. And we had an agency that worked for us that would do little screeners, and all along the way the people watching would have these little clickers to click like, don't like and you know, so it would tag all the don't likes and the exact timestamp of what they didn't like. And then they could go back and write, okay, you said you didn't like this here. And then they could answer what specifically they didn't like about that. So there was a lot of just general polling out there to try to catch up with what people are really interested in. And there's not a lot of, we're the pioneers and we're at the forefront of this. They're just trying to adapt with what changes out there and keep up with how quickly things change.

John Dehlin [00:43:56] So a lot of surveying, a lot of polling, a lot of gathering data to make the decisions.

Daniel Miller [00:44:04] Yeah. And if there was, you know, people watching it on YouTube, we had all kinds of stats of, if this is a five minute video, what's the average length? You know, and we realized, oh, you know what? People don't really generally watch any longer than three minutes. So we have these five minute podcasts. We need to find a way to cut them all down to three minutes. Because at the three minute mark, everybody shuts it off, even if it's good and they like it and they say good things about it. Three minutes, they shut it off. So now we got to find a way, you know, to shorten things up. But they had the stats on all that stuff and how many people were visiting what sites at what times and monitoring that data like crazy, man.

John Dehlin [00:44:42] How has Mormon stories survived if people stopped tuning in after three minutes.

Daniel Miller [00:44:50] That's a good point.

John Dehlin [00:44:50] We're at our fourth hour.

Daniel Miller [00:44:52] Yeah. If you guys make it three minutes here, it's probably a good thing.

John Dehlin [00:44:58] Someone's asking if they actually use the word inoculation. Did they actually use that word?

Daniel Miller [00:45:03] Yep, that was the. Definitely the word that was used, inoculation.

John Dehlin [00:45:07] That's really interesting. Okay. Someone's asking whether you feel like they were producing Orwellian propaganda, either manipulating emotion or just, you know, misrepresenting the facts. Did you ever feel like you were creating propaganda versus, you know, credible information.

Daniel Miller [00:45:34] At the time? I didn't, and probably for me, because I didn't work on a lot of video type things where you're producing the Mormon message type stuff. And even when I watched the Mormon message stuff and I actually interacted with several of those guys on the Mormon message side of things, we were all in it like that. I never really felt like there was, you know, propaganda type stuff for us when we were doing the video stuff that we did. It was like, well, how can we make this fun, you know, and what can we do to spice it up? And really kind of hit home with the youth? But I didn't really, especially as a full true believer, didn't see or think that there was any sort of propaganda there. And, you know, looking back now, I see that that's the majority of what those feel good movies and the Mormon messages and things like that are, is propaganda to just elicit a spiritual response. And, you know, some of those ones where they're talking about the end days are coming that you've seen and putting all the music to those. I think it was Holland going around. Wasn't it Holland on that video that was going around that they put the music to and how it's the end of days and you know, the wars and disasters and all that there was definitely. That was complete propaganda. I don't know that I would have recognized it at the time. I would have just recognized it as prophecy coming true. But looking back now, yeah, there was definite propaganda. But again, I don't know that that was the intent, was to say, I'm going to create propaganda. People were like, I'm going to. But I do think that when they created this stuff, they were like, what can I do to make this the most powerfully impactful spiritual and elicit that most powerful response that I can possibly elicit? And that's what they were going for.

John Dehlin [00:47:28] Got it. Okay. Well, those are most of the questions that our listeners had. So unless there's anything else you wanted to talk about? I think we can go ahead and move to sort of what's led you guys sort of away from the church.

Daniel Miller [00:47:47] Okay. Yeah, I think that's good.

Leaving Church Employment and Faith Transition

John Dehlin [00:47:49] Okay, so you, you left the church's employ and let's just talk about, you know, what. What happened then.

Daniel Miller [00:47:59] Yeah, so I left and obviously was still Elders Quorum president. Loved being elders Qu. Just had a really good time doing that. I used to do a monthly activity called menrichment where we would get all the elders together and ping pong or pizza or movie and whatever it was, it was just our men Richmond night for the guys to go out and hang out. I think I was much more social in that capacity than I was prior to moving to Utah. I was a little bit of a recluse, but loved the experience. But at the same time, I'm studying all these things and I'm really just trying to soak up information to the point where I'm up till three in the morning reading stuff and she's rolling over. I keep waking her up or I'm mad I hit the bed or the headboard or whatever it is that I can't believe this. And she's like, would you just go to bed? We're crying out, it's three in the morning, what are you doing? And then I get three or four hours of sleep. And before I get up to get ready for work, I'm reading again. And I just started getting this obsession that was really unhealthy for just me in general and for our marriage in general. Because she didn't want to talk about it. And all I wanted to talk about was all the stuff that I found that was upsetting to me. I had to find other outlets. For the first little while, I think I went into the uncensored LDS discussion Facebook group and said, hey, I'm elders corn person.

John Dehlin [00:49:41] That's a rough one. That's a tough one.

Daniel Miller [00:49:44] Yeah. So I was brand new in there and I didn't know. And I introduced myself and kind of gave my story and it was immediately bombarded. There was a couple of them and they know who they are. Mark Hanson and a few of those guys that were in there that just bombarded me to the point where I'm trying to actually defend the church. Even though I'm upset at the church. They bombarded me so hard that I'm trying to now defend the church. Right. So it was just kind of a weird dynamic there. And then ultimately it's just like, okay, man, I can't do this anymore. It's too hard. And I just started coming, I don't know if you want to say, coming over to their line of thinking. And a lot of times they posed good questions that I just didn't have answers to. And I just had to say, I don't have an answer for that. And so realizing that there are other people out there that feel those same ways and are experiencing those same things just kind of fueled me even more to find what the truth was, I think is the big thing. And as bitter and as anger as I got a couple of times, what happened several times is I fell into the trap of, okay, reading what I would now consider looking back as true anti Mormon material. The true believer will say anti Mormon is basically anything that contradicts with what they currently believe about the church. To me, that's not anti Mormon. It may happen to be critical of the church and it may contradict what you believe, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's anti Mormon. It just means that you believe something that's your choice to believe. That's not the truth. What I found is that there's actually so for me on the far left, I would say that there is true anti Mormon material that is material that is specifically printed and published or whatever the case is to spread falsities and to tear the church down in a way that is not a truthful way. For me, that's the anti Mormon material. And I fell into some of those where I would read something and start to believe it and would check the sources and would make me mad. And then I would come to find out later that somebody totally made that up and it wasn't true at all. And then it'd be like, dang it, I can't do that. And so I began to understand that on the far left is the true anti Mormon lies that are being spread out there. And then just to the right of that, there's the type of material out there that is presented that's factual and logical and is true evidence and has the supporting data that is very critical of the church. Then I kind of draw a line and I say on the opposite side of that, to the right, there's the apologetic stuff that's out there. And the apologetic stuff is the faith promotion. So looking at the troubling stuff out there, but putting it and explaining it in more of a faith promoting way. And so that counteracts the apologetics and the critical stuff kind of balance each other. You've got the people who are going to look at the facts. And they're going to say, well, here's why it's negative. And then you've got the apologetics that look at it and say, well, here's why you can still believe. And then you've got the far right. That's the church material. And you mentioned propaganda, which to me now in a lot of instances is very propaganda like, and will not tell the truth and will specifically lie about things. To me, that's no different than anti Mormon material of somebody who is out there intentionally promoting lies to get you to believe what they want you to believe. That's on the far left. The far right is materials that the church is publishing out there that they are intentionally putting in their manuals, the Sunday school, the gospel doctrine, all those manuals that are intentional lies and meant to deceive. And I've seen it. I think all people who've really studied it have seen that the church, as much as they say there's anti Mormon lies out there, there's pro church lies that the church publishes as well.

John Dehlin [00:53:53] Now you're saying that, okay, so this is sort of a bit of a different take than what we've heard so far because, you know, so far we've heard that the church kind of does their best job. They're thoughtful, they're deliberate, they're good people. But this is a bit of a different message. You're basically saying a lot of the church content is propaganda and it's deceiving people. And I haven't heard you say that up until now.

Daniel Miller [00:54:21] Right. And I guess the distinction with that is while I was employed there, I personally never had any instances where I saw that somebody is intentionally publishing lies. And it's probably because I didn't know. I mean, if I had the kind of the knowledge that I have now, maybe going back, is somebody not telling the whole truth? Is the correlation department specifically striking stuff out and not telling everything that the writer wanted to say? Or is the writer. Does the writer. I don't know for sure, but does the writer not know the real story and are they spinning it, you know, whatever the case is? And I would have been much more critical back then, but at the time, I'm looking at the people like, you know, they're doing their best. I'm not seeing any major issues. It seems like they're, you know, they're all on the up and up. But looking back and actually going in, and I think it's in the teachings of the presidents of the church, for example, under Brigham Young, where it talks about how there's going to be source material that's going to be quoted in here that won't be readily available to the normal member. And you can go read that in the current Brigham Young manual that they use in gospel doctrine classes. And it says these materials won't be readily available, and there's no need for you to go out and purchase additional material. The material that's presented in here is sufficient for your needs for study. And to me, that's hiding something. And I think there was definite intent to hide that material from the members and not have them go out and look at, well, what are all these source material? Because those source materials are going to expose the members to all kinds of stuff that Brigham Young taught that the church doesn't want them to know about. And so looking back and now seeing. Yeah, I think that in some cases there are definite deliberate attempts for them to publish lies or not the whole truth or to withhold or hide stuff. And there was definite intent with that.

John Dehlin [00:56:23] Okay, all right, that makes sense. So you're not a big fan of anti Mormon stuff or pro church propaganda. You think both. You think both are harmful?

Daniel Miller [00:56:34] Yeah, absolutely. For me, that's why it's really hard now to go back to church. Do I go back to church and do I sit in the gospel doctrine class and do I listen to what's being taught and raise my hand and say, well, that's not actually the case, and pull up the real citation right. From the history of the church or from the Journal of Discourses, or this is what Brigham Young actually said or Joseph actually said or did, or whatever the case. They don't want that there. And there wouldn't be a place for me to do that. And for me to go back and sit there, I would find no joy in sitting there and listening to that because I would feel like it's propaganda.

John Dehlin [00:57:17] Right, okay, so just talk about your journey out.

Daniel Miller [00:57:22] Okay, yeah. So with my obsession over the course of about another year or so, what really kind of happened for me is, and my wife probably played a big role in that, was she mentioned how you're dwelling on all this negative stuff and you're bitter and you're angry, and are you looking at things on both sides of the story? And in some cases, I look back at that point and I'm like, you know what? No, I'm really not. And I need to change my perspective of how I'm viewing this. And so what I decided to do in my study was I need to place myself as if I'm a juror, and I've been called to look at the evidence for, and I need to look at the evidence against, and I need to weigh both of them equally. So, you know, somewhere along the lines, there is when I started to hear about Fair Mormon and whatnot. And so I said, you know what? I'm going to go to fairmormorm Mormon and check this place out. And they said they got a lot of answers to things. And, well, I realized, you know what, they're telling you every controversial topic that there is right there on FairMormon on their little topic section. So I said, okay, I'm gonna check this out. And then I realized, well, the sources that they're quoting as critical are right here on FairMormon. And I can go read the critical sources right off of Fair Mormon. What better way to study both sides? And so I really went through every topic on Fair Mormon, and I looked at what they had to say. I looked at what. What the critics had to say. While I was doing other readings, I read Grant Palmer's book, read some Denver Snuffer books and things like that, but was kind of doing a lot of that at the same time, but really tried to take a step back and say, I'm going to look at the evidence for and I'm going to look at the evidence against, and evidence four is convincing that the church is true. Beyond a reasonable doubt, I don't have to know for sure, but if it's beyond a reasonable doubt, then I can let my faith take me the rest of the way. I'm going to believe. But conversely, if the evidence here says beyond a reasonable doubt, it's not what it claims to be, then what? And the answer for me was I got to make a decision. And I was pretty sure where this is going to go. But ultimately it was. I read something that said, when an honest man discovers he's mistaken, he either ceases to be mistaken or he ceases to be honest. And I realized at that point that if I'm mistaken, as painful as is for me to cut ties and to make that decision, to leave 40 years of my life behind, that that's what I have to do. And if I do it, it's got to be quick and painless. I've got to go in and I've got to do that surgery and just get it all out at once and then heal from it, rather than letting it linger on and trying to slowly distance myself. I just have to cut ties and if that's where it takes me, then I was determined that that's what I was going to do. A little bit detrimental because Anna's kind of feeling like she's being strong. And the core of our future is solely dependent on the decision I make whether we stay active or whether we don't. And so she kind of felt a little bit strung along through that and that it was there. She didn't have much of a decision in that, that it was. I was gonna make the decision, and she had to live with it. And, you know, that was a little bit painful for us to kind of experience that together.

AnnaMarie's Experience Through Her Husband's Transition

John Dehlin [01:00:56] So, Anna Marie, talk about your experience as your husband sort of, you know, decided that the church wasn't what it claimed to be and has decided that he doesn't want to really be a part of it. Talk about what that's been like for you.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:01:14] So I was. It was very difficult. We have older children. Our oldest is 16. And so I'm not just taking myself into account through the process here. As a mother, I can't not think about how any big change like this would impact our kids, particularly our older 2. They're 16 and 12. And for me, I'm the cautious one in the relationship, and he's the risk taker in the relationship. And so there have been times in our 18 years together where I feel like I've had kind of had to reign in his spontaneity a little to keep the family on track and to keep him from making kind of spontaneous, big decisions that without thinking about the consequences. And so at this point, I'm just spending a lot of time kind of praying about things, trying to figure out what to do. The church has always been a big part of my life, and I'm happy in the church. And I'm trying to figure out, okay, what does God want me to do here? And the thing that just kept coming back to my mind over and over through kind of trying to navigate that was to put your family first and everything will be fine. And that's really not really what I didn't really answer my question, but that's what I just kept feeling in my mind and in my heart was that I needed to put my family first. And that had to be the biggest priority. And so I knew that the most important thing to the kids, too, would be that, you know, we were still good. Everything was still good between us. So it was difficult, too, because we would go to church. You know, we were still going to church as a family, but he was not wanting to be there and would be kind of sending texts about how frustrated he was about what was going on. And I was trying to listen and trying to feel the spirit and all of this. And instead, all I can feel is, like, his frustration. And I think at some point I was finally like, just stay home. Like, just, if you don't want to be there, don't go. I'll go. I'll take whatever kids want to go with me, and whatever kids don't want to go can stay with you.

Daniel Miller [01:03:57] But that doesn't work when you're the Elders Quorum president.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:03:59] Yeah, so he still was the Elders Quorum president, but I felt also at that time that I wasn't really sure, as his wife, where he stood, because I was seeing him live both sides of things. I was seeing him go to church and pretend, pretend. And then I was seeing him come home and be, you know, not a different person. He was still the same person consistently, but I was seeing him, I don't know, maybe have a different belief system than he was putting on at church. And I wasn't really quite sure what the authentic him was at the time, which was a little bit uncomfortable for

John Dehlin [01:04:32] me

AnnaMarie Miller [01:04:36] at that point. So it was really difficult. And I just felt like as much as we tried not to let it come between us, like I said, it didn't create a problem, it didn't create fights, it didn't put us on the path to divorce. But I felt like it did create this distance because we made this union and this family with one goal, and the church was always a very central part of that. And now to have him going in this direction and me going this direction was kind of a terrifying thing for me. And also to feel like, well, what are covenants now? If he no longer believes in them, then what does that mean for the rest of us?

John Dehlin [01:05:28] So where are you now about those things? Like, where are your beliefs, if you're comfortable talking about it? And then how are you feeling about, you know, things as they are now with. Between you and with your family?

AnnaMarie Miller [01:05:43] So I was pregnant at that time, and I noticed the distance, and I thought to myself, okay, here's the thing. If this is the one and only true church and this is what God wants me to be doing with my life, I'll fight tooth and nail for it till death. But if it's going to create a problem in my family, I better be 100% certain that I'm on the right side of this before I am willing to sacrifice anything, any of my familial relationships or parts of my marriage for something that I think is true, but I'm not. Not absolutely certain. So I don't think he shared exactly what kind of happened that. Have you talked about getting released and all that?

Daniel Miller [01:06:39] Not yet.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:06:39] Okay, so he'll talk a little bit kind of about that. But. After we got to that point, I realized at some point that if I was putting our marriage first, staying in the marriage wasn't enough, if I wasn't listening to what he had to say, and that it wasn't fair to him to not at least sit down and have good conversations about this and kind of find out why he felt the way he did and why he believed what he did. And it wasn't okay for me to just shut him down completely without kind of hearing his side of things. And so kind of, as time went on, I said to him, okay, listen, I'm ready to kind of listen to you, but it has to be in doses. So I'm trying to raise these children, and I'm kind of, you know, have to keep everybody happy and keep everybody's lives functioning. And you might be able to kind of lock yourself in a room and read for 10 hours and come out angry and upset, but I can't do that. This family doesn't function if I do the same thing. So if you want to discuss it with me, then it's got to be in doses. And you have to understand when I say, hey, that's enough for today, all the negative emotion I can take for today, and we'll have to pick this discussion up later. And so that's kind of how the door opened a little bit to a little bit more discussion between the two of us as far as where he stood. And I think over time, too, I stopped being so fearful that looking at anything other than what I was supposed to see was going to destroy everything. So, yeah, so at that point, which was about a year ago, I feel like we started to kind of open the lines of communication on that. And, you know, we don't agree on every point of everything, but I feel like we've found a path for our family, and we're really, really open with discussing it, discussing where each other is at and kind of why we're at the places that we are. And. And we've been able to sit down with our kids and have a lot of conversations with them and tell them, here's the thing, your life is your life, and we don't want you to feel like there's one path that you have to take in your life. And no matter what you choose in your life, we fully support you and our oldest son. At first, I think it was really difficult for him, and I thought it was because all of a sudden we're not attending church as a family and all of this. But when push came to shove and we were able to actually sit down with him and talk, the only thing that he was really torn about was when I was attending and believing one thing, and he's not attending and he's believing something different. He was feeling like no matter what he did, he was going to be disappointing one of his parents, and he was having to choose a side. And he is such a good kid and he loves both of us, and it was breaking his heart that he thought he was going to be disappointing one of us. And since then, the fact that he knows that his life and his choices are his and he. I mean, it hasn't been stressful for him. I feel like he's kind of found his own path and what he believes. And I'm sure it's. You know, he's 16. It'll evolve and it'll grow and it'll change throughout his life. But there's definitely a confidence there and in him and a freedom that he feels to kind of figure it out on his own and that there isn't a predestined path that we expect of him.

John Dehlin [01:10:33] So it sounds like you guys are remaining active at least you are with the kids for the most part.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:10:38] No, none of us are attending at all anymore.

Daniel Miller [01:10:43] We've been once, maybe in the last year.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:10:45] Yeah, we did go just to support a neighbor whose son was leaving on a mission. A friend of ours, we went to Sacrament, but other than that, we. No, we're not attending at all.

John Dehlin [01:10:56] Is that hard for you or not hard?

AnnaMarie Miller [01:11:03] No, no, it was at first. You know, Daniel never pressured me to not go or to kind of follow him along his path. I kind of came to that decision on my own. I don't know. I guess once I was willing to dig in and listen to him and to dig in and kind of do my own research, then I kind of came to some of the same conclusions that he did just a lot later in the process. And so as a family, you know, we just have

Daniel Miller [01:11:42] moved in a different direction.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:11:43] Moved in a different direction? Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Miller [01:11:46] But the thing is, we look back and we still have love and respect for the life that we lived before and understand why people do it. You know, we get it. We were there and it's just not us. So we're in a different direction.

John Dehlin [01:12:01] So, Anna Marie, there's a lot of couples out there where one believes and one doesn't. And a lot of the time the believing spouses just don't want to hear it, don't want to talk about it and want to avoid. Want to avoid it. And what would you say to someone like that if you were to make your case for taking a different approach? You could either make a case for not hiding or avoiding things, or you could talk about why you feel it was important to sort of go there. What would you say?

AnnaMarie Miller [01:12:43] Like I said, for me, I'm a very. It's something that I lived through and through my whole entire life. And anyone who knows me would know that I would never be looking for an excuse to sin or to get out or to make my life easier because it's not. I've been perfectly happy from day one in the church.

Daniel Miller [01:13:00] I could probably count on in 18 years the number of times she drank a caffeinated beverage. She was looking for reasons to sin.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:13:08] Yeah. So, I mean, I was very happy in it. It was something I would have fought tooth and nail to keep my family in. But I just felt my understanding of what I believe in God and what God wants for us. I didn't feel like I could sacrifice that he would ever want me to sacrifice my family for. For something that I wasn't. That I hadn't given everything I had to kind of make sure it was right. I mean, I know this is right. I know our family is right. I know that. That it's the most important thing to me. And if that's, you know, I don't know. I just felt like it wasn't fair to him. This is the person I love most in the entire world. And I couldn't see taking someone who I've shared my entire life with and my best friend and saying that I'm going to throw it away without even discussing it with you. And at that point there was no doubt in my mind that he was wrong and I was right. I just 100% convinced he was wrong and I was right. But I didn't feel like you can walk away without even having that conversation or even, I mean, never threatening to walk away. But I didn't feel like I could let it come between us and the relationship that we had without even having that conversation with him. And I felt like it was only fair I would want him to hear my side. And he did hear my side. I mean, there were a lot of times he came to me and he was angry, he was upset about something, he was frustrated, and I would kind of talk him down and give him maybe the other side of things and why I felt differently about the same subject or why my experience maybe inside the church and with different aspects of the church was different, how he could grow up in the same church that I did, but have a completely different experience than I did inside of it. But it's not fair of me to go to him and expect him to hear all of that and to take my opinion into account without me giving him that same chance and without me honestly stepping outside of myself and saying, what if you're right and I'm wrong? I mean, you're not really having a discussion, you're not really trying to make a relationship work if you're not considering the fact that maybe it's you that's wrong. So for me, it. When it got to the point that I said, yeah, I'm starting to sense that there's a difference in our relationship here, there was no choice other than to sit down and have really honest, open communication and be willing to consider that possibility, that maybe, maybe I wasn't 100% right.

John Dehlin [01:15:56] And knowing how much the church has meant to you in your life, how could you ever say that you're glad you made that decision to listen and to open up, given that it's led you out of the church?

AnnaMarie Miller [01:16:13] Yeah, that's hard. I mean, there are times where there are aspects of it a different. Definitely. Ms. But I think sometimes until you're outside of something, you also don't see. It's. You know, hindsight is 20 20, and there are things that you look back on and you see a little bit differently than before. And there are things about myself, like I said, I've always been really happy. I grew up in a family with really. My parents have an amazing marriage. There was no yelling, there was no screaming, there was no fighting. We were very calm, talk it out kind of people. And that's really good. That's really healthy. But I feel like I grew up and I became this adult who didn't really even know how to process negative emotion at all. And I didn't know how to express, even to my husband, if I was upset about something, because I just would go along with whatever kept the peace, whatever made everybody happy. And that's not particularly healthy. So I feel like one of the benefits for me is that I've felt like it's. It's Not. I don't know how to explain this, because I don't know how much of it kind of came from myself and how much of it came from just growing up in the church, but that I felt like there was an appropriate way to be and being angry and being frustrated and all of that was not what was expected of me, was not the kind of person that I was supposed to be. And I feel like there's been a little bit of emotional freedom since that's allowed me to say when I'm upset about something and that it's okay sometimes not to be the nice guy. And that doesn't mean it's okay for me to be mean, but that it's okay for me to say, hey, I don't agree with this. And I'm. You know what you're saying? I don't have to. I don't have to agree with you. And I can be vocal about that, and I can be upset about something that you say. And so I feel like that has been really healthy for me. Like I said, there's definitely aspects of it that I miss because it worked for me. I mean, it was really. I had a really happy life. I don't have any complaints about that. But for me, I didn't leave because it made me unhappy. I left because I came to the conclusion that it wasn't what it claimed to be, and so I had to kind of be true to that. In no way was I looking for a different life because I wasn't happy with the one that I had or I felt stifled or anything like that, because that was not the case. I fought it tooth and nail. And he'll tell you I fought pretty bold. I started earlier than I did, so I was later kind of coming into the process.

Daniel Miller [01:19:04] And I remember many nights laying in bed, crying myself to sleep and pleading with God that if I'm being led astray or I'm being deceived, then just show me, tell me, Give me a sign, Give me a feeling. Give me anything and nothing. You know, I never felt like what I was doing, that God is punishing me, that I'm going down the wrong path. I got no answers at that point. So, you know, push comes to shove, and at some point, you have to make a decision, right? And I think that, for me, it was really starting to come to a head that I felt like I was living a double life, like what she said. And I just. I wanted to find ways to be released as an Elders Quorum president. And how is that going to happen, but then I'm going to miss that life. And I know that I would have been in the bishopric and that would have been kind of fun, but no it wouldn't because you, you know, back and forth. But at some point it was like, okay, I've got to find a way to get out. And so what happened one time here in Elders Quorum President in the class in what, August of last year? Because I was Elders Quorum president last year, right? So about August of last year, we were having an elder scorm class and the person who was supposed to show up and do the lesson didn't show up. And so we're trying to wing a lesson and we got on the topic of. It was kind of open discussion. We got on the topic of the temple ordinances and. And polygamy and a few of those things like that. And so I started asking some questions. So the temple sealings and whatnot was one of them. And I said, there's some things I don't understand about that that are really curious to me. So let's take an example of if my sister is sealed in the temple and then she gets a divorce and remarries another man, that she can't be. They can't be sealed because she's already sealed to somebody else. And then they have children together with the new couple. Who are those children sealed to? I've got 12 returned missionaries in the room and they're like, oh, I don't know. Good question. It'll all work out in the end. But no, that's not the answer. It all work out in the end. There's got to be a way that they should be sealed because it's a salvational requirement that your family is sealed together. And you're telling me these people are going to die without their saving ordinances or their sealing ordinances to their family? And so I was a little bit confrontational there and one of my friends kind of knew where I was at and he's like, oh boy, what's Dan going to do here? And this could be bad. But then kind of the bigger One was in D.C. 137. So we moved on and talking more about the ceiling ordinances. And then I got talking and I said, you know what, I don't even really understand why sealing ordinances are needed in the first place. Because if you read In D and C137, there's a specific 10 verse revelation that Joseph Smith had where he says he saw a vision where the heavens opened up and his brother Alvin, who had died having never been baptized, was in the celestial kingdom and had obtained the glory and blah, blah, blah. And I marveled at how that could possibly be, that he's in the celestial kingdom having never been baptized. And so it goes on to basically say that men are judged according to the desires of their heart, their works, and the desires of their hearts. And I said, well, if that's the case, what are all these temple ordinances even doing if people are still going into the celestial kingdom without having all these saving ordinances? And again, kind of awkward, dead silence in the class, and you could kind of hear crickets chirping. Nobody could answer it. Well, the high councilman, stake high councilman was in the class that day, and he sent an email right after class to the stake president, who then sent an email over to the bishop and said, you need to get over to the President Miller's house right away. And so that's kind of where it all started there with, I'm kind of outed myself and I've committed to go down this path at this point. That's kind of the beginning of the end. When the bishop showed up to my

John Dehlin [01:23:29] house, I just looked and confirmed that in D and C137, it's got Alvin in the celestial kingdom along with Adam and Abraham. And I never really thought about that before. I'm sure apologists say that it was a vision about the future is what they say. Yeah.

Daniel Miller [01:23:49] But that's not what that specifically says. Read in like verse seven or so. I don't remember what it is that men are judged according to the desires of their heart. And that's why he's there. Not because he was or wasn't baptized, but because he was a good man.

John Dehlin [01:24:04] Yeah. Verse 8 also. All that shall die henceforth without a knowledge of it, who would have received it with all their hearts, shall be heirs of that kingdom.

Daniel Miller [01:24:12] Yeah. Which then in the class made me say, why do we do missionary work? Wouldn't it be better to just let these people die and know that they would have received it anyway, and then we guarantee their salvation versus baptizing all these people and then risking the chance that they fall away and go to outer darkness or a lesser kingdom?

John Dehlin [01:24:30] Yep, yep. Yeah. For I, the Lord, will judge all men according to their works, according to the desire of their hearts. Okay, so talk to us about how it all ended then with your stake president.

Daniel Miller [01:24:44] Yes. Well, so the bishop shows up and we have the conversation. He tells me, you know, the stake president wanted him to come by. And he basically started it out by saying, you can't ask these questions in church. And that was his literal. He says, if you have questions that you want to ask, you can ask them to me. And so I clarified with him. I said, so what you're saying is you are telling me not to ask these questions in church. And he said, well, I'm just saying that if you have questions to ask them to me. And I said, so what that really means is don't ask them in church. And he said, I'm just saying that by asking these questions in church, you are leading the elders into battle against the adversary, and they're unprepared for that battle. And I said, so in other words, you're telling me don't ask those questions? And he's like, well, yeah, you know, in a roundabout way. And he said, you can ask any of those questions to me because I have keys that will protect me from the adversary and being led astray.

John Dehlin [01:25:42] Wow.

Daniel Miller [01:25:43] And I'm like, well, can you quantify what those keys are? Can you point to me somewhere in the scripture that says that you have those keys? Because I don't believe that one bit. And I think, Bishop, you're naive if you think that this material that's out there isn't damning enough to the church that when you read it yourself, that you wouldn't have questioned yourself. And he assured me, no, I couldn't be led astray because my keys protect me from that. Okay, whatever. And I think the part of it that really upset me is he says, you know what your problem is? And as soon as he said that, it just kind of set me off. And I'm like, no, why don't you tell me what my problem is? He's like, well, I didn't mean it that way, but I just mean that I think the issue here is that you are allowing the adversary to use your intellect to deceive you. And I said, yeah, I remember a conference talk where I heard somebody talk about inappropriate intellectualism. And I find that quite fascinating and quite humorous that the church warns you against inappropriate intellectualism. And, like, what does that even mean? Didn't God give me a brain to critically think for myself and study it out? And am I not told to study it out for myself? So I said, you know what your problem is? I could say the same thing to you is you're allowing Satan to deceive you by not using your intellect and causing you to remain faithful in the church. How can you prove which one of us is right. How can you prove that he's deceiving me versus the Spirit is leading me toward actual truth versus you're not using your intellect and so Satan is using you as easy prey to keep you in something that's not true. He's like, well, yeah, I guess I can see that. All I know is that following the prophet will bring happiness. And I said, well, which part of what the prophet says? Because there's been many times that a current prophet has disavowed things that a previous prophet says. So if current prophets can disavow past prophets, then how do I know what a current prophet is saying isn't going to be disavowed in the future by a future prophet? And he's like, well, I can just tell you that happiness comes and if the prophet told me to stand on my head, I would stand on my head. And I said, well, if the prophet told me to stand on my head head, I would think about that and decide whether or not that had any relevance to my salvation. And if it didn't, I would discard it and say that's of no value and move on to something else. And I said, that's the difference between us. And so we kind of went back and forth on a lot of that stuff. And he bore his testimony that the church is true and he's prayed about it. And I said, well, I've prayed about it and I bear my testimony that the church is not true. So which one of us is right? I was kind of just laying it all out there at that point. And I said, you know what, Bishop? At this point, just go ahead and release me. I've been doing it for enough years and this gives somebody else a chance. And I just need to take a step back. He made the comment, well, you mean take a step back from your calling and not from church, right? And I said, not necessarily. I may take a break from church for a little while as well. He's like, well, we love you and I'm not going to let you take a step back and, you know, whatever. And I said, well, that's not really your decision to make, but, you know, I appreciate your concern, but I need a break for a while. And so we kind of parted ways there. And a couple days later I got a phone call. And that was on that same Sunday, but like on a Tuesday, I think I got a call from the stake secretary or clerk or whatever saying the stake president wanted to meet with me. And I said, well, what's that About? He said, I don't know, I just scheduled the appointments. I said, well, I asked to be released from my calling as Elders Quorum president and I'm assuming that he wants to meet with me to talk about that, but I don't need to have a meeting with him to be released, so just go ahead and tell him to release me and that I don't need a meeting. And the clerk was like, oh, oh, okay. And he was a little kind of shocked. So I never heard back from him. But at the time. So the next Sunday was when the stake president wanted to meet with me at like 2 or whatever in the afternoon. Guess who knocks on my door at 2 o' clock at the time that I was supposed to meet when I said I didn't want to. And there's the stake President. First thing he says is president is, did I do something to offend you? And I said, no, not at all. I just didn't want to have this conversation and go deeply into all the issues that are out there. And I'm just ready to be released and I was hoping you could respect that. He's like, well, do you mind if I come in and talk to you for a few minutes? So he did. And I asked him all the same questions that I asked the bishop and asked in Elders Quorum and all that. And he was actually aware of the CES letter. His brother in law had left the church and had sent him a copy. And he said that he had read the CES letter. And he said, I have a few questions and issues with things of my own that I'm working through. So I understand where you're at. Great conversation. But ultimately at the end, I asked to be released again and I said, there's a lot of this stuff out there and I'm not looking to lead other people out of the church. And as long as you leave me alone and give me my space, I won't go around the neighborhood and to others and share the things that I feel and try to lead people out of the church either. And let's just respect that. And so far he has. So that portion of it has been a very clean break. Okay, maybe we can talk a little bit of some of the struggles of coming out, living in Utah county with friends and neighbors and everybody wanting to rescue your soul and all that stuff and thinking you're deceived. So we did experience a little bit of that, had people call me who the Spirit just prompted me that I need to call you and we needed to talk all right, yeah, sure, let's talk. And we would have big, long, two hour conversations and at the end of it, they couldn't answer any of my questions and there was really nothing resolved. And I always looked back on, on those conversations like, so if the Spirit prompted you to call me, what was going to be the expected result? Should it have been, if the spirit really prompted you to call me, shouldn't you have rescued me or saved me or impacted me in some way to influence me down a different path? Because you didn't answer any of my questions. I always looked back and I was like, was that really the spirit or was that you kind of just thinking to yourself that I need to make the call or whatever? It would just seem to me like if it was really the Spirit, that there would have been a beneficial fruit of that prompting, that I just didn't see any. So several of those instances occurred. I had some different people who would invite my children to go to church without me knowing. That kind of. That frustrated me a little bit. When I was in ward council, there was kind of that initiative to, well, what can we do to involve their children so that their parents will come back? And so I saw a little bit of that, that they're trying to get back to me through my kids and all that stuff. There were many instances, I think some of the big things that I really felt and I feel to this day when I'm trying to talk to a true believer and they're trying to answer questions or they're trying to save me, to me, I feel like I'm standing and I'm looking at two apples on a table, and I can see that there's two apples on that table. And the person who's trying to rescue my soul has their back to the table facing me, and they're telling me there's really three apples on the table. And I'm bearing my testimony that there's really more to it. And you don't see it right now, but you will. And all these powerful feelings of there's really three apples. And I'm saying, just turn around and look for yourself to see there's two apples there. And they're saying, I don't need two because I already know there's three. And so we're speaking on two different terms, right? They're speaking that they have the feeling that there's three apples, but they refuse to look to see whether or not there's actually two. Like what I'm telling them. And so I use that analogy. I Guess that when I can see with my own two eyes that there's two apples there, even though you're telling me there's three when you haven't looked, there is no need for me to pray and to read my scriptures more. Because at some point the evidence outweighs the need for that faith to believe when I can see it there. No amount of praying and reading my scriptures is ever going to change the physical sight that I can see the evidence against.

John Dehlin [01:34:35] There's actually. I had an episode with a man named James Nagel who talked about social psychology. And there's a really famous study in psychology called the Asch Line Experiment. And in effect in this experiment they would have a bunch of people all in sequence say that a line was shorter than it really was or taller than it really was. And if enough people were willing to say, give the inaccurate information, the person that they were studying would, would be willing to also provide, you know, the inaccurate answer.

Daniel Miller [01:35:16] Even though they knew it was.

John Dehlin [01:35:17] Yeah, even they knew. Even though they knew it was inaccurate. And it just showed the power of peer pressure. I'm sure I didn't explain that perfectly, but if anyone wants to look up Asch, the Ash Line experiment, it's fascinating.

Where They Are Now and Closing Thoughts

Daniel Miller [01:35:31] And the other thing that started to become really fascinating to me was and you probably are very familiar with the byte methodology that now looking back, I see that that byte methodology was being employed.

John Dehlin [01:35:42] What did that acronym mean? Byte.

Daniel Miller [01:35:44] So BYTE is. It's what high demand groups implement as a structure for controlling mind, controlling people. And basically what it is is BYTE stands for behavior, information, thoughts and emotions. And so they try to control all of those aspects of your life. And what they do is high demand organization will control the flow of information to its members in an effort to control their behavior, their thoughts and their emotions. Right. And in Mormonism you're taught to behave a certain way, given the commandments and look a certain way and represent. Right. In a certain way. You're taught that you're supposed to feel a certain way, your emotions, that certain responses, you're supposed to have certain emotions in a certain way. And you're told that your thoughts have to be pure, you have to have pure thoughts and avoid impure thoughts and all that stuff. So the church actually employs that BITE

John Dehlin [01:36:51] methodology, avoidance and avoid any information that would ever cause you to doubt.

Daniel Miller [01:36:55] Right? Yep. And so what happens is the church tells you only read through church approved sources. And so they're controlling that flow of information. And what happens is that information. Now your behaviors are conditioned, your Whole life you're taught how you're supposed to behave, how you're supposed to think and how you're supposed to feel. What happens is anytime you encounter anything that takes your behavior. So let's say you're tempted to drink coffee or alcohol. Alcohol or caffeine in some people's cases, right? This feeling of anxiety and angst overcomes you and you have. And I think they call it cognitive dissonance, right? You have this anxiety that you don't like, that you need to get back to your comfort zone. And so what happens is the church tells you that's Satan tempting you, and they use Satan as the ploy. Well, it's scientifically proven that it's not Satan. It's cognitive dissonance and it's chemical reaction that happens to conditioning over long periods of time to people. And the same thing about your thoughts, when you start to have impure thoughts, you get this bad feeling and I got to get back in line and I got to repent and so on and so forth. And the church uses that as Satan. And then conversely, when you confirm your behavior by doing the right thing, you feel good about it. And that's the confirmation bias that comes into place. Well, the church uses it. That's the spirit that's doing that, right? Very, very powerful. Look up the BITE methodology and how that works. Looking back now, I see that the church employs that. And part of keeping people in that BITE model is the whole bubble that we talked about earlier where at an early age you're baptized and then you've got to get the priesthood. So you have to be worthy, right? And all the different priesthoods along the way, you have to be worthy, and then you have to be worthy to go on a mission. And then you come home and you have to be worth to be married in the temple. And then what do they tell you? Have kids right away and multiply and replenish. So you have kids and now you've got to do baby blessings right away and more baptisms and more baby blessings and now priesthood confirmations. And so the church has this structure set up for especially males to keep you in that bubble using that BITE methodology of worthiness and never having your behaviors, thoughts or emotions out of alignment. And it's very powerful because you've always got to be worthy of for the next thing that's going to happen. And I think it's, for me personally, looking back now, I think it's very thought out in how they do that, keeping you in the bubble of Making sure that there's something that you always have to prepare for along the way. I've really looked back and I see that that's pretty powerful, and it's very indoctrinating and brainwashing. And I get why people are in it, and it's so hard to escape from it now.

John Dehlin [01:39:46] And having worked in the curriculum department, you sort of got to see firsthand how they do that.

Daniel Miller [01:39:52] Yep, exactly.

John Dehlin [01:39:55] So let's talk about, you know, just to wrap up, maybe just tell us really quickly where you are now. Anna Marie's already told us that you guys don't go to church. So to talk really briefly about where your beliefs are now.

Daniel Miller [01:40:11] Yeah, I think I've wavered all over the place. For me, the big thing right now is, and I guess more appealing or most appealing to me, is that our souls or our consciousness exists and maybe has always existed. And I don't look at life anymore as we come down here and there's sin and righteousness. I look at it more like we, prior to this life as a consciousness or as a soul, looked at what we need to personally grow and expand our consciousness. And we chose a general area that would help us grow in the area of where we wanted to excel or improve or expand our consciousness or whatever the case is. And so as we come down here and we make mistakes, that's part of why we came here, is to learn all of these things. And so for me, I don't really necessarily believe that there's sin that's going to separate you, that's going to keep you out of heaven. I believe that we're going to come here and we're going to learn the lessons that we need to learn through the good experiences and the bad experiences. And we're going to take that with us on the journey into the next life for whatever that brings. And who knows, maybe we'll decide we're content for a while as this conscious being of some sort. And maybe at some point in the future, we're going to say, you know what? Now I want to go learn these things, and I need to expand my consciousness or want to here, and I'm going to go live this type of a life, and maybe you're going to live multiple lives and try to expand your consciousness in multiple ways. And the big thing is really, to me, learning to love other people unconditionally, which is a hard thing to do, but it's about even in Mormonism, as much as I don't agree with the doctrine and the things that are being taught there now that if that's something that you need and that's the anchor in your life that's going to help you to be a good person and it brings you happiness, then I'm happy for you. And like the article of faith says that you believe that all men can worship to the distant Almighty, to the dictates of their own conscience. All I ask is that you respect that of me and understand that I didn't make this decision to leave and go down the path in the journey that I'm on now because I wanted to sin, or I was lazy or I was deceived, but because I studied it out and I critically thought about it and made the decision that I'm following the evidence. And Mormonism is no longer tied to my sense of identity. Like when I was a Mormon and somebody would attack Mormonism because I'm this cookie cutter Mormon and Mormonism is who I am. And I know you've probably felt this, you know, your life. Mormonism is who I am. I'm a Mormon. That's my culture. Mormonism is your sense of identity. And so when somebody attacks your belief system, they're attacking you. And to be able to finally get away from that and have a belief system based on facts and evidence and logic, if somebody can come to me and present evidence to me that contradicts what I now currently believe, I'm not offended by it anymore. I'm actually happy. If you can prove to me extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, and if you can show me the evidence that what I believe now is not right, then I'm happy. Because that means I can discard the untruth and I can move that much closer to what actual truth is. And at the end of the day, I feel like Mormonism for me was just such a minefield that you had to navigate that I can't believe in a God place. All these tricks and DNA and all the stuff that's out there for me to have to muddle through to believe, I think it's much simpler than that. And so that's the path that I've kind of gone down is just really learning to kind of expand my consciousness and take every moment and every experience as an opportunity to learn to love myself and family and friends and other people. It's all about love at this point. And I definitely still have my moments where I'm bitter and I'm angry and I fall back into it and I have to bring myself back in check or I'll put a post on Facebook that is not about love. That's about, you know, I don't like this or that. And I have to, you know, always course correct and self correct. But I'm definitely much more self aware than I've ever been in my life.

John Dehlin [01:44:53] So. Anna Marie, a lot of people who come to the conclusion that the church isn't what it claims to be feel scared to leave. And I think most of the time, honestly, they're just worried. Can I be happy and healthy and moral as an individual? Can I have a happy and healthy marriage outside the church and can I raise happy and healthy kids? Can you talk about whether you think those things are possible, leaving the church and whether, you know, you've been able to be individually healthy and happy and moral to have a healthy and happy marriage and to raise healthy and happy kids outside of the church?

AnnaMarie Miller [01:45:39] Yeah, absolutely. I had every one of those concerns. I didn't really know how to figure out what I wanted without doing what I always was told I was supposed to want. And so kind of, I was very kind of scared about what exactly that was going to happen to mean, you know, if I made that choice. Okay, now that nobody is telling me every second of every day or, you know, every week what exactly it is that's going to bring me happiness, and I have to figure that out on my own. That's. That was kind of scary for me. But I knew that the, the biggest thing that had always brought me joy in my life was my husband and my children. And so he and I had kind of a lot of discussions about, all right, what do we want for our family? And really distracting. Sorry, what do we really want for our family? And we realized that, you know, most of who we are that we thought was, was tied up in Mormonism really wasn't really. It was who we were. It wasn't, you know, I'm loving because I'm loving. I'm not loving because the Mormon Church told me that I need to be loving. I'm moral because I'm moral, not because, you know, the Mormon Church told me that I have to be more moral. But I didn't necessarily know that beforehand. I guess so.

Daniel Miller [01:47:24] And I've often, we've talked before that if you need the thread of eternal damnation and torture to be a good person, then you're not a good person. You know, and that's what we teach our kids.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:47:36] So for us, you know, there's a lot that didn't change in our lives. We still spend a lot of time together As a family, we still focus on service. We still, you know, are charitable. And I feel like our focus really has not changed in that way whatsoever. I do feel a little bit of freedom in that. I want my kids to know that this is their life, that they. They are in charge of it, that they. I never want. I didn't feel that. That guilt and that pressure and that it has to be this way as much as he did, but I don't want them to feel that. And, you know, we talk with them a lot about that, about how they get to make their own choices. And the thing is, our morals really didn't change. I really can't think of anything that changed much other than, you know, yes, we don't go to church on Sundays and there's a couple, you know, maybe doctrinal things or whatever that our beliefs are different.

Daniel Miller [01:48:41] But as far as 10% raised, yeah,

AnnaMarie Miller [01:48:43] our actual, you know, morals have not changed at all. Our family has not changed at all. And we. I feel like our relationship itself has grown. I don't know how to describe, but I guess. How do I put this without kind of making one of the two of us look bad? I feel like there was a lot of time where I felt like there was this ideal of how everything had to be. And because, like I said, I'm the cautious one in the relationship and he's the more spontaneous one in the relationship, I think sometimes it maybe drove a little bit of a wedge between us that I felt this burden on me to kind of rein him back into this worthy priesthood holder that he was supposed to be,

Daniel Miller [01:49:29] which would then make me feel that guilt I talked about before.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:49:32] Yeah. And so, I mean, while the relationship was working at that time, he definitely felt like he wasn't free to fully be himself. And I felt like if I wasn't on my toes all of the time watching to make sure he was making sound decisions, which. He's a responsible adult, for heaven's sakes. He's always been a responsible adult, but there was just this ideal of this perfect priesthood holder that we both thought that he had to be. And I felt a lot of the pressure to kind of reign him in, to be that person. And I feel like once that kind of went out the window, he didn't change into this person that. That suddenly went off the deep end. He's still exactly the same as he was before, but now there's not this pressure and there's not this, like, feeling on him that he has to try to mold himself into someone that he's not. And there's a big relief off of me when I realized that the person that he is, when I'm not putting that pressure on him, when that pressure isn't on him, is already who he's supposed to be, is already who I want him to be. It doesn't. I don't know. I guess there was always that fear inside of me that isn't there anymore. I've gotten to know who he really

Daniel Miller [01:50:55] is

AnnaMarie Miller [01:50:57] and that it's already who he needs to be.

Daniel Miller [01:51:02] And for me to have that kind of cool, cathartic relief of no longer needing to hang on to the guilt of never being worthy or good enough has brought me more happiness into my life than I ever experienced while I was in Mormonism. Because I don't have to go and daily repent. I can just be me, and I can be with who I am, and I'm content with that.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:51:23] But even by church, and he works hard. What's that?

John Dehlin [01:51:26] Even by church standards, you would still say you're a moral and ethical person.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:51:31] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:51:32] You're just. You just don't have the guilt and the shame associated with it, you know?

AnnaMarie Miller [01:51:36] And even with as much removed as he wants to be from the church, still show up to a lot of the, you know, the moves and the service projects. He's the first one there because he

Daniel Miller [01:51:46] was sometimes the only one there, sometimes

AnnaMarie Miller [01:51:48] the only one there because he's not there because it was his calling. He was there because he wanted to help and he wanted to be there for people. He wanted to, you know, to be a friend, to be a neighbor. And so he still goes to all of those because of who he is, not because it was his calling.

John Dehlin [01:52:04] Got it. Well, that's great. Well, I see that he stood up.

AnnaMarie Miller [01:52:11] He'll be right back. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:12] Oh, no, it's okay. So the way, you know, I think, you know, for me, it's been fascinating to hear about Daniel's experiences working at church headquarters. So I really appreciate, Daniel, that you've been willing to share with us your experiences at church headquarters. For me, the golden nugget of this whole thing, honestly, is to hear how you guys have handled your faith transition as a couple. So that's. That's a real gem for me. And I almost want to have you guys back for Mormon Transitions podcast just to talk about that more and to hear more from Anna Marie. But I just want to thank you guys for coming on Daniel, for telling your story, Anna Marie, for supporting him. You have a great, thoughtful perspective as well, and you guys just really represent this path well. So it's time to wrap up and I just want to thank you guys for, for coming on and sharing your stories. Anna Marie, do you have any final thoughts or perspective you want to add or a final testimony before we close?

AnnaMarie Miller [01:53:24] I would just like to say I know, especially for, you know, my perspective as a woman that I know there are probably a lot of moms out there that have questions about, because I've heard it about their children and how to kind of take this, this path with their kids and keep it kind of from being a traumatic experience for them. And if anybody, you know, has any questions on that, would like to reach out, then that's a conversation we can definitely have. I feel like we've been able to kind of help our kids through this process in a pretty smooth kind of transition without them going through any sort of trauma. And, you know, we have kids all the way from 1 to 16, so. All the way.

John Dehlin [01:54:07] Anna Marie Enfield Miller is the Facebook name.

Daniel Miller [01:54:11] Yeah, and I will say in regards to the kids, we definitely, and I reiterate, especially with my oldest, you got one life. And as much as we talk about religion and what we do and don't believe, none of us really knows, right? As far as we know, this could be it. And the day that you die, you fade to black and that's it, you're done. We can all speculate and say we've got these feelings, but when it comes down to it, nobody knows. So when my son asks, dad, what do you think about this or that? I always reiterate to him, this is your one shot. You do what's going to make you happy and I will support you in anything that you decide to do that will give you happiness as long as you're trying to love yourself and love other people and build yourself and other people up. And he came to me a couple months ago and he said, dad, I just really want to tell you that I appreciate you helping me kind of get out of the religious mindset and free myself and not have to go through the stuff that you're going through at age 40 and that you allow me to think for myself and I really appreciate that my life is now mine to do whatever I want. Having your 16 year old son come and say that when you're so worried about what that this faith transition is going to do has been more reaffirming than anything because I've seen him blossom and just say, the world is mine, I can do it. And I'LL have the support. And instead of being pressured into mission and marriage and all these things, he can do what he wants now. There is no path. There is no pattern. Your life is your own. You got one shot at it. Go do what you want to do.

John Dehlin [01:55:51] Beautiful. All right, well, Daniel Miller, thank you so much for being willing to open up and share your story. It's been really interesting. I think it's going to be an important piece of history for those who just want to learn a little bit more about what goes on inside. We don't have much of that on record in the world, so this is one of the first times I think a church employee has ever spoken publicly about what it's like. So thank you for that and your journey as well. And Anna Marie, you've just been delightful and thank you so much for joining and supporting Daniel and I hope to have you guys back. Thank you for maybe a Mormon transitions episode, if that's all right.

Daniel Miller [01:56:34] That would be awesome. We'd like that.

John Dehlin [01:56:36] All right, guys, thanks so much. And listeners, please feel free to join us@mormonstories.org if you want to ask questions or make comments about this episode. You know, I hope that maybe Daniel and Anna Marie will be willing to maybe respond to some comments or questions if there are further ones there. Again, thanks to everyone who listens. And most importantly, thanks to everyone who financially supports Mormon Stories because it pays me in a way that makes me able to do this sort of for my living. And so thanks to everyone who does that. Please continue your support and for everyone, we'll see you again soon on Mormon Stories. Thanks again, Daniel and Anna Marie.

Daniel Miller [01:57:20] All right, thank you.

John Dehlin [01:57:21] Talk to you guys soon. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights. When with a wounded heart, anger or

Daniel Miller [01:58:00] madness, I draw myself apart, searching my soul.

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