Today on Mormon Stories News, John and Meggan examine new Pew data on Mormon retention, the Church’s opposition to Idaho Proposition 1, questions surrounding David McConkie’s employment at BYU, a response from Suzie Greco, Elizabeth Smart’s Survivor Files, and Colorado State’s apology following anti-Mormon chants at a BYU football game.
ARE MORMONS STAYING? New Pew data gives us another look at LDS retention in the United States. We compare the new findings with Church-focused retention research released earlier this year.
https://www.deseret.com/faith/2026/06… https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/…
CHURCH OPPOSES IDAHO PROP 1 The LDS Church has asked Idaho members to oppose Proposition 1, a reproductive freedom ballot initiative. We look at what has transpired since.
https://www.eastidahonews.com/2026/09…
DAVID McCONKIE AT BYU Questions are being raised about BYU’s employment of David G. McConkie, who appears on a public offender registry. We look at the available records and what is being reported about his work at BYU. https://www.nsopw.gov/search-public-s…
https://www.icrimewatch.net/offenderd…
https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/comme…
SUZIE GRECO RESPONDS Survivor advocate and researcher Suzie Greco responds following our previous coverage of the warning she says she received from LDS leaders.
ELIZABETH SMART: SURVIVOR FILES Elizabeth Smart is sharing a new series, Survivor Files, centered on survivor stories and experiences. https://www.instagram.com/elizabeth_s…
COLORADO STATE APOLOGIZES TO BYU Colorado State apologized after fans directed derogatory chants at BYU during their football game.
https://www.espn.com/college-football…
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Co-host: Meggan Hayes
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Welcome and Episode Introduction
John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello everyone, and welcome to our very first part two in the Same Day of the Mormon News Podcast. I'm John Dehlin from Mormon Stories Podcast
Meggan Hayes [00:00:11] and I am here with Meggan Hayes from Generally Unquotable. Nice to see everyone again.
John Dehlin [00:00:17] Why are we doing two episodes of the Mormon News Podcast in one day, Meggan?
Meggan Hayes [00:00:21] Because there is so much news. And you know what, I probably had 20 stories to choose from. I think it pared it down to like seven and we got through one in the first.
John Dehlin [00:00:29] Well, that's my fault. Yeah. So for those who are joining us late, we just did two hours on the recent news with the lawsuit, the LDS Church suing me and Mormon Stories Podcast. The lead attorney of the church, David Jordan, weirdly, bizarrely decided to grant an interview about the lawsuit. And so we covered that in the first two hours. Go back and watch that if you're curious about how the lawsuit's going and my thoughts and feelings on it and Meggan's thoughts and feelings on it. But we've got a whole nother hour, so Meggan, take it away.
Pew Research on LDS Demographics and Retention
Meggan Hayes [00:01:07] Okay, now we are off to some research that has come out in Pew and it was there. So the Pew surveys come out and then they continue to analyze them. Right. So then we continually get new headlines about what the research has told us. So this is the most recent headlines that have come out about the research. And it's interesting to me because if you go to, let's see, Slide 27, the two very different frames. So when you get.
John Dehlin [00:01:37] Sorry, one second.
Meggan Hayes [00:01:38] Yeah, go ahead. Well, so when you, when you get the church trying to put a headline out about this data, it always comes off as like, we found the most wonderful faith affirming nugget and we put it out there. So on the left hand side there is the headline that says Tradition and Change among Latter Day Saints in the U.S. members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are still highly religious and conservative, but signs point to demographic and social, social change. So pretty nuanced like yes, their religious, but things are changing. And then on the right hand side is The Deseret News 1 and, and the huge headline is Latter Day Saints continue to demonstrate Uniquely High religiosity according to a new BYU report.
Meggan Hayes [00:02:22] So they're talking about the same information and I am just always interested in how the church goes about framing it. So yes, they are religious, but the survey, the data actually talks about if, like, if you go to the next slide, how things are actually that, yeah, just how things are starting to change.
Meggan Hayes [00:02:44] So the Deseret News wants to focus on the religiosity, which is fine, they are religious. But let's talk about some of the ways that the demographics of the church are changing. And this one I found incredibly interesting. More LDS women have bachelor's degrees. Women rose from 25% to 40%. And LDS men stayed at nearly 1/3 from 2007 to 2023, 2024.
John Dehlin [00:03:11] So LDS women, if I'm reading that right, LDS women are becoming more educated.
Meggan Hayes [00:03:16] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:03:16] And men, LDS men are not becoming more educated.
Meggan Hayes [00:03:21] No, it was. I know this one actually blew me away. Like, I don't know why I was so surprised by it. I mean, I was raised in the church and like I was second class and the men. But, but I still don't. With all of the disaffiliation of women in the church, this makes sense. They're becoming more educated and they're going a different direction. They don't, they don't want men telling them they should stay at home and maybe shouldn't become educated or whatever it is. This makes sense to me. But I still, when I saw it, I was like, wow, good. Good for them.
John Dehlin [00:03:52] Like, yeah, that's really good news. Right?
Meggan Hayes [00:03:55] That's amazing. It's amazing. But the tension, if you see on the right hand side, is that 79% of LDs who were surveyed say children with two parents are better off when one parent stays at home. And 41% say that it's better if that's the mother. The women are getting more educated. But the tension is that the survey also shows that there is still this need to hold onto, that one parent should stay home and that should be the mother. Just these interesting tensions in the data.
John Dehlin [00:04:29] Do you how much credit does the church get for this increase in education for of women in the church? Is that, is that because the church. Is it your read that that's because the church is encouraging its women more than before to get educated.
Meggan Hayes [00:04:48] I don't know that I've seen the church saying that women should get educated. I think there's been a lot less of women shouldn't, which was not what they said before. What they didn't say, don't go to school before. What they said was stay home and have children and get married young and don't wait to have children. And those messages are still coming out, but I don't feel like they're as prevalent as they were in the 80s and 90s when I was, you know, getting ready of marriageable age. I feel like there's a lot Less of that and they're showing more representation of women who are my age who didn't listen to that.
Meggan Hayes [00:05:21] You know, the, the leaders, the women who are leaders in the church, a lot of them didn't follow that guidance from Hoot Benson and some of the more hardliners that were like, you should stay home, you should stay home. I mean we have lawyers and like these, these women have had these amazing careers and so younger women and girls in the church are seeing representation of women who have done, you know, quote unquote, done it all. They've been moms and had these amazing careers that they wanted. So I think it's a combination of those of a lot of things.
John Dehlin [00:06:00] Yeah, I, I do think that, that the ordained women movement and Mormon feminism has, has kind of forced the church to stop the anti education messages with women some and to pull back. I think the economic realities of just there needing to be two income workforces these days and so many, you know, both parents working in the home, I think all those just economic realities, plus just the cost of living in Utah going crazy, that the church had to stop telling mothers that the only option for them was to stay home and never to work.
John Dehlin [00:06:44] So in that sense, I think you're right. They've done less to keep women from getting educated. But mostly I think this is just a national trend that women are taking part of and an economic trend that Mormon women are just taking a part of more. And I do think it's why so many more women are leaving the church. Why wouldn't you, if you're a second class citizen? Right. Why wouldn't.
Meggan Hayes [00:07:08] Yes, yeah, yeah. And you go to university and you're amongst peers and maybe you go to a church school, but maybe you don't. And possibly you see that like you have value outside of the things that the church told, told you gave you value. Like I have, I have a brain and I'm, I'm really good at math and I could make strides in cancer research or whatever it is. Like these women are realizing how value they have and can share with the world outside of what the church told them.
John Dehlin [00:07:43] Yeah, interesting. Okay, so let's go to the next slide.
Meggan Hayes [00:07:50] So the next one shows the Deseret News text. Young Latter Day Saints generally show higher levels of faith with fresh challenges apparent among young women. Longitudinal data also show that Latter Day Saint Youth 12 to 18, 12 to 18 have the higher rates of religious service, attendance, daily prayer and daily scripture reading than their peers of other faiths, which is true. But the Pew Research center portion of that says Latter Day Saints have grown less likely to say they believe in God with certainty. They believe in God or a universal spirit with absolute certainty. In 2007 was 90%. And in 2023, 24, 76%.
Meggan Hayes [00:08:32] The next one is religion is very important in their lives. In 2007, 83%. And then in 2023, 24, 72%. And they pray daily. In 2007, 82% and 2023, 24, 73%. So both of those things are true. Latter Day Saint youth are more religious in those areas than their peers of other faiths, and those things have still gotten less.
Meggan Hayes [00:09:00] So I. I think it's just important to present the whole picture. And the Deseret News will put the bigger headlines as the we are more religious. And I know when I was a member, I would see that and just be like, hurrah. And I wouldn't even read the article. And that's how. That's how deep I would dive, when in reality, the trend is downward. They're just still more religious than their peers. That's just trying to give the whole picture.
John Dehlin [00:09:27] Yeah. And I've always. I've always seen the Deseret News as kind of a propaganda arm. It's really not a legitimate news source at all. So it's just. It's too bad, because I think always was owned by the church, but I think it at least made attempts to be a journalistic source. I don't even think it's really pretending ever since. I think it's Clark Gilbert that got a hold of it. I think it's just not even trying anymore.
Meggan Hayes [00:10:02] Yeah. To me, it reads a lot like when I listen to apologists, when I listen to the Fair Conference, there was a lot of the. The. The feel was the same as the Deseret News.
John Dehlin [00:10:13] Yeah. Yeah. All right, next slide.
Meggan Hayes [00:10:16] Okay, so this one, changing demographics among us Latter Day Saints. So in 2007, 85% were white or Caucasian, and in 2023, 2024, only 72% are. So I thought that was. I mean, we. We know why that's happening because they're pushing towards converting people who are not white Americans.
Meggan Hayes [00:10:42] And so the next one, the median age, this one also just tracks in all of the data. In 2007, the median age of Latter Day Saints was 41. And in 2023, 2024, it's 44. So that has risen. People who were in the church and have stayed in the church are making up a larger portion, I think, than people who were born into the church and are staying in the church.
Meggan Hayes [00:11:04] The next one still, as of 2023, 2024, 31% of, I think it's us Latter Day Saints live in Utah. It's still such a big number. And then the last one, acceptance of homosexuality. In 2007, 24% say that homosexuality should be accepted by society. And that rose to almost double at 46% in 2023, 2024. Those were some of the most interesting findings to me.
John Dehlin [00:11:41] So, yeah, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on the implications of those. So, for example, and I don't, you know, there are a lot of MAGA Mormons in Utah, especially in an Idaho and Arizona. You know, the Mormon church disproportionately supports the MAGA movement. And I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just stating a fact.
John Dehlin [00:12:09] And there seems to be a lot of. There seems to be at least a proportion of Republicans in the US that express concerns about race, concerns about white. I don't want white nationalism about racial purity, keeping white race pure, and concerns about immigrants or concerns about people of color.
John Dehlin [00:12:40] And again, I'm not trying to paint all Republicans one way or another or say anything politically other than if that's true about Republicans. Some Republicans, some maga. And that means a bunch of Mormons. I wonder how those MAGA Mormons who are concerned about white nationalism and, and the white race, how they're feeling about their church becoming less white. Have you thought about that?
Meggan Hayes [00:13:09] Yes. Yes. Well, and I've seen hints of that in podcasts with some of the more conservative pro Mormon podcasts where they're like, what, what church do we belong to? What even is this church? And it's not just like a racial purity thing, but also when it comes
Guest 1 [00:13:26] to
Meggan Hayes [00:13:28] homosexuality, having gay members of the church, like, it is upsetting to them that those things are being so widely accepted.
John Dehlin [00:13:38] Yeah.
Meggan Hayes [00:13:39] And I, I mean, I think I was listening this morning to Summer Rain on a podcast talking about the, the priesthood ban and how there were people who started the church with that. That was part of the theology of the church. And then it changed and that was really hard for them. And how, because the church hasn't come out and said this is not what God wanted, that that thought often remains. And it was something I just hadn't thought about at that level before. But yeah, there are people who are upset because there are still people who became members of the church or were born into the church when the priesthood and temple ban existed. And in, in a fashion that it kept them away from ordinances.
John Dehlin [00:14:30] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. My take on this is I don't think white Utah Mormons and Arizonans and Idahoans are going to take kindly to the church becoming more and more dark unless they change their, unless they become more, less, Less racist, less white supremacist. Because I do think white supremacy is alive and well in the world and in America and in Mormonism. And I think that there are going to be a lot of Mormons that are uncomfortable with the church becoming less white and they're either going to leave the church because it becomes too mixed race or it's going to cause tension in the church.
John Dehlin [00:15:19] And I think that's evidenced by missionaries being told to no longer help with immigration. I think that's an interesting backlash from MAGA Mormons expressing concern about immigrants in Utah and elsewhere. And then I also think that if MAGA Mormons or white Christian Nationalist Mormons start doing the work to learn about race and white and white supremacy and they read Second Class Saints or they listen to the podcast Second Class Saints. And by the way, I now have a website called secondclass saints.com where you can check out the podcast that I did with Matt Harris and buy his book.
John Dehlin [00:16:00] If Mormons start learning about white nationalism and white supremacy within Mormonism and Mormon doctrine, that might cause more people to start questioning the church. So I don't know how that's good for the church in the long run. The only thing that's good for the church in the long run, in my opinion about it becoming less white, is that because more diverse, which I think is good, but also. And it helps more people who need help, that's good.
John Dehlin [00:16:31] And then I think statistically it helps the church because they're dying in the white world, frankly. So it allows them to buffer their statistics where they might be hemorrhaging in all of the white world, but they can use Africa in the short term to make it look like they're not shrinking.
Meggan Hayes [00:16:50] Yeah, yeah. But I think it's going to be tricky because they can't hold on to that forever.
John Dehlin [00:16:57] Yeah.
Meggan Hayes [00:16:57] Eventually they will have gone into all of the places they can go and talk to a lot of people. And it just, the more that the information gets out there about what the church really is, about what their history really is, even those people a lot of times aren't going to stay. So I think it's a short term fix.
John Dehlin [00:17:18] Yeah. The church has always had this problem of if it moves too far to the right, it loses the left, if it moves too far to the left, it loses the right. And it's trying to thread that needle, and it's a job. I would never want other things. The fact that the church is becoming older, that's probably partly baby boomers just getting old and living longer, but it's also young people leaving the church. I think both of those things are driving up, in my opinion, the median age.
John Dehlin [00:17:49] You know, it's interesting that the living in Utah thing appears to be staying the same. There are a lot of Mormons leaving the church in Utah, and I think what's happening there is. It's being offset by all the Californians that are leaving California and moving to Utah.
John Dehlin [00:18:06] That's the only thing I can think of for why Utah remains so heavily Mormon. Because we know the church is hemorrhaging in Utah. They're closing chapels, they're closing stakes. They're collapsing wards and stakes all over the Salt Lake Valley and elsewhere.
Meggan Hayes [00:18:22] Well, and this information is 2023, 2024. Right. So we're already two years out.
John Dehlin [00:18:26] Yeah.
Meggan Hayes [00:18:26] So what would that stat look like today? I don't know.
John Dehlin [00:18:29] Maybe worse. Yeah. And then. Yeah, that. That acceptance of homosexuality, that's always the reckoning where I, you know, that's where prophets are handy. If Joseph Smith could have had revelations about LGBT people, if the Doctrine of Covenants, if church leaders could have gotten ahead of this thing, they could have avoided the hemorrhaging, but instead they've got the miracle of forgiveness. And Markey Peterson and all the homophobic rhetoric and all the conversion therapy, including electroshock therapy at byu and then Boyd K. Packer and like, the church has painted itself into the corner. And I would say a huge percentage of the defections in the past 10 to 15 years are Prop 8.
John Dehlin [00:19:10] And then the November policy and then the reversal and the trans policy. The church is that. That will be a huge reason why the church hemorrhages and becomes a shadow of itself is because of its policies on. Because the. It's only going to get worse. That number, 46%. Even with all the people leaving the church, it's still high and it's going to get higher. So that's going to be a problem for the church.
Meggan Hayes [00:19:41] Yes, I agree. I love that that number is 46%. But, yeah, I think it's. I mean, it almost doubled. That's just. I love it. I love that people are, you know, their children are feeling safe to come out and they're realizing they love their children and they're going to support their children over the church. I love that.
John Dehlin [00:19:58] Yeah. All right, let's go to the next slide. Meggan, what else is going on?
Church Opposes Abortion Ballot Measures in Idaho and Nevada
Meggan Hayes [00:20:03] Okay. Yeah, so this is, we talked about this last week the church sent out a letter to the congregations in Idaho and by the church. It was sent from the area authority, but I don't think that means that the brethren weren't involved. And the letter, just as a refresher said, Dear brothers and sisters, an initiative called the Idaho Reproductive Freedom and Privacy act will be on the November ballot seeking to amend Idaho state laws related to abortion. The church opposes this initiative. Our long held stance on abortion remains clear and unchanged. And then it tells you where to go on their website to see it.
Meggan Hayes [00:20:40] As noted in a 2024 statement, the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is neutral regarding political parties and candidates and addresses issues it believes have significant moral consequences. We join with other like minded individuals and organizations working against this initiative and encourage our members to voice their oppos opposition to it in a respectful manner consistent with prophetic direction of always demonstrating Christlike love and civility in political discourse. So that's what we talked about last week, that the letter was sent out. It was read over the pulpit, I believe last Sunday. And then it will be read over the pulpit again this coming Sunday.
John Dehlin [00:21:17] Okay. And then. Okay, so what's this slide?
Meggan Hayes [00:21:22] This is that they also sent a very similar letter to congregations in Nevada. It has almost the exact same wording. It just has an initiative to change the Nevada State constitution titled Question six. So there is a similar fight, for lack of better word, going on in Nevada and they sent out a letter there as well. So I just want to make people aware of that. That wasn't, for some reason the one in Nevada hasn't been as big of news, I think, because we'll talk about why in just a second. But it's happening in two states and the church sent out the letter in both states. So the next slide is kind of the update to what's been going on.
John Dehlin [00:22:03] Do you have an opinion about, number one, the church getting involved here? Are they being deceitful? Are they being honest? And do you have a take for whether this is good or bad? And do you have a take for whether this is going to harm the church? I would love to hear your thoughts on all that.
Meggan Hayes [00:22:20] So this is so complicated for me because there was a whole history here about abortion that I did not understand until probably just the last couple of years. And so I went back and I was trying to look at when was it that the church really started making strong official statements about abortion? And they did have comments about it back in the, you know, 1850s, I think were maybe some of the first ones, but they were very brief and few and far between.
Meggan Hayes [00:22:46] And then in the 1970s, when a Christian like this history is hard for me to articulate because it's. There was a lot going on. But from what I understand, what happened was for the first time in US History, the Christians all got behind each other to vote because some very powerful white Christian folks decided that abortion, and I think the other one was gay rights, were something that all Christians were going to stand together on and oppose. And that's when the church started coming out with its most definitive statements about abortion.
Meggan Hayes [00:23:29] So it just makes me think, like, if the church was actually speaking with God, why were they not at the forefront of that? Why did it happened when it was happening societally? And now they're pretending like it's just always been this way and we've always been against abortion, but it was actually a societal movement that pushed Christians to come against abortion together.
Meggan Hayes [00:24:00] And like, there are whole podcasts and. And videos and documentaries that people should go watch about that and why that happened, because I'm not explaining it in depth at all, but really shocked me that it was something I had never heard about. But the church got right on board and was like, yes, if all the Christians are voting against abortion, then we're going to get on board with that.
Meggan Hayes [00:24:23] And for them. I think I tried to say this last week, but I didn't. Didn't do it very eloquently. But the church's stance on abortion is not as strict as Idaho's current stance on abortion. And Idaho's current stance is endangering and harming women because there aren't allowances for sometimes what women need to stay healthy and alive and abort a fetus for a myriad of different reasons.
Meggan Hayes [00:24:58] So the church coming in and saying, you should oppose this is actually pushing beyond what they have in their official stance because Idaho's current law is more strict than the church's stance on abortion. So there are a lot of people who are coming out, even active believing members saying, no, we need this because women and mothers health is at risk right now with the current law as it stands in Idaho.
John Dehlin [00:25:27] Yeah. Do you have a quick view on just the woman's right to choose versus right to life that you want to share?
Meggan Hayes [00:25:38] Yeah, I believe in a woman's right to choose, and that's something that I have Studied a lot about. That's why I tried to understand why abortion came about like as a Christian voting bloc in the first place. And I have read hundreds if not more stories of women who. Because in places like where I live now, Texas, or in Idaho, where the laws have gotten strict since the overturning that women who just were having a miscarriage but couldn't get the help they needed to evacuate the rest of the miscarriage, died from sepsis, or the laws are so strict, they're so black and white in some places that it's not only not producing a baby because the fetus was never viable, but then the mother is dying.
Meggan Hayes [00:26:30] So I think the right to choose, especially like I've read through this Idaho bill and it's very good because it doesn't say you can abort a fetus to, you know, at eight and a half months that was going to be viable. What it says is let's let women and medical professionals work together to ensure the best possible outcomes for the mother and the child, which I think is really good. I actually think the law as it's written, this proposition 1 would be amazing because it would take the decision making out of the hands of politicians and powerful men and it would give it to women and the people who are caring for them, which is where I think it should be.
John Dehlin [00:27:22] And if, if somebody says you hate babies and want to kill babies and, and don't care about the fetus and, and that kind of thing, what do you, what do you say to that?
Meggan Hayes [00:27:33] Like, if people say that, if I say that I don't care about babies.
John Dehlin [00:27:36] Yeah, yeah, you're okay, you're okay with killing babies up to nine months and, you know, just using abortion as a form of reckless, you know, contraception. What, what do you say to people that basically claim that's, that must be your position then?
Meggan Hayes [00:27:54] Well, people who, because abortion does get used to as contraception by some people, obviously that's, that's, that's happening. However, laws that make it so even the most minimum of care can't be offered to women who need it don't stop people who are using, you know, often don't stop people who are using an abortion in that way. They're going to go somewhere else, they're going to find someone else. You know, I watched Call the Midwife and I read the book and it's about midwives in England in the 50s, 60s and 70s. And women back then, you know, a woman would be pregnant with her 12th child and be like, I can't handle another kid.
Meggan Hayes [00:28:38] And so they would be going to some back alley and somebody would be using unclean instruments to try and help them with an abortion because they were so over taxed that they couldn't, they just couldn't handle one more child. And they knew if they had that child, there was nobody coming for them.
Meggan Hayes [00:28:54] Nobody else was going to take care of that child. It was going to be their responsibility. So when these laws come into effect, they're not, they're not about killing babies. They're about having babies born into the most supportive and healthy environment they can be born into.
Meggan Hayes [00:29:15] And there's never going to be a law that prevents people from using abortion as birth control because there are just always going to be people who do that. But I think it's important that we have laws that allow for the most amount of women and children to be helped.
Meggan Hayes [00:29:33] So do I. Am I just for support of killing babies? Absolutely not. No. I'm in support of people being offered and allowed the best medical care that they can get and for politicians not being in the room with an expectant mother and her doctor.
John Dehlin [00:29:53] Yeah. And one of our viewers wrote, Heather RP writes, late term abortions are almost always a health issue, not just a terminated pregnancy. I think that's true. And I think for me the best position is we all want less abortions and that comes through education, good health care and good laws.
Meggan Hayes [00:30:17] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:30:17] And good moral. And good moral teaching.
Meggan Hayes [00:30:20] Yeah. Well, and, and safety nets for someone who is pregnant and actually wants to have the child but doesn't know how they're going to take care of said baby.
John Dehlin [00:30:30] To the availability of contraception. Right.
Meggan Hayes [00:30:32] Oh, absolutely. Yes.
John Dehlin [00:30:35] Sorry.
Meggan Hayes [00:30:36] No, no, that's true. I mean, yeah, yeah. And that comes along with comprehensive sex ed. Let's, let's start.
John Dehlin [00:30:43] Yeah.
Meggan Hayes [00:30:43] At the beginning. Let's not go to the. In this river where these people are drowning and be at the end trying to pull them out. Let's go to the beginning where they're falling in. Let's start there.
John Dehlin [00:30:52] Yeah. All right, let's keep going. What's going on with Maddie Packer?
Meggan Hayes [00:30:57] Oh, man. So now this debate is heating up in Idaho and there is a group of women who are saying, if you're in support of Prop 1, which would be more pro choice than the current Idaho law, then wear purple to church in support. Which I think is amazing. Like for two reasons. Not just to show that you support women in general, but to be in a Mormon congregation and to see someone else wearing purple and knowing, like, I'm not alone in a church that has sent out a letter against this. Like, I'm not alone. There are people like me. Maybe I do belong here.
Meggan Hayes [00:31:35] And then Maddie Packer has come out in response to that because how dare women wear purple and support each other. I don't know. It says her post says in response, let's wear white. Please share so we can let the saints in Idaho know. And then she has a graphic there that says, but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home. Wear white. Show your love and support for children in the womb by wearing white at church this Sunday, September 27. White is the color of innocence, purity and covenant.
Meggan Hayes [00:32:07] So I don't know how many people are even going to see this, who are even going to get involved, but online it sure has seemed like a pretty hot debate between the were purple and the where white folks. And surprisingly, and in a good way, I have seen quite a few active, believing LDS women come out and say, I'm going to vote for Prop 1 because I want women to get the best care that they can get. And I think that's amazing.
John Dehlin [00:32:37] The wear purple to church thing reminds me of the Wear pants to church day. Those of you who aren't old, do you remember? Don't wear. Do you remember wear pants to church day or.
Meggan Hayes [00:32:45] Absolutely. Because I was totally against it because I had a friend on Facebook who was supporting his wife who was going to wear pants to church. And I sent him a little private message and I was like, you do realize that if your wife wears pants to church, that means you're supporting ordained women. Like, he didn't know. Like, I was like, this is very ex Mormon.
John Dehlin [00:33:07] Yeah.
Meggan Hayes [00:33:08] And I was.
John Dehlin [00:33:10] Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.
Meggan Hayes [00:33:11] Oh, sorry, my dogs.
John Dehlin [00:33:12] It's okay. We love you.
Meggan Hayes [00:33:13] I was at the door.
Guest 1 [00:33:14] Yeah.
Meggan Hayes [00:33:14] Anyway, so, yeah, I just, I figured he couldn't possibly know how controversial this was and how ex Mormon it was of him to allow his wife to wear pants to church.
John Dehlin [00:33:24] Yeah. And so that happened. I don't know, 2012, 2013, I don't remember. But it was a kind of a precursor to the ordained women movie movement that then caused a lot of people to leave the church and also caused the church to change. Do you see this abortion stuff as being anything like ordained women or being anything like where Pastor Church Day are being? Anything like the November 15 policy, causing a backlash, causing people to leave the church, causing the church ultimately to change his policies or, or not.
Meggan Hayes [00:34:00] I. I do think that it is a continuation of those movements because for Women to feel like they can speak out because the church has sent a letter that's very official. When they read something over the pulpit in every congregation in a state, I would not have felt like I could speak out against that. I would have thought it was the final word. And for women to be going publicly online and saying, I am going to vote yes on Prop 1, I think it's a furtherance of the movement, more like we were just talking about. The demographic is changing. Women are becoming more educated and they're using their voices more. So I think it's just a continuation of what was started with ordained women.
John Dehlin [00:34:45] So if the church is losing women now in the United States at a higher rate than they're losing men, will the church's opposition to abortion rights in Idaho and Nevada accelerate or not affect the epidemic of women leaving the church?
Meggan Hayes [00:35:07] Yeah, I think it will continue to accelerate it because women increasingly are getting frustrated with men trying to make all the decisions for them.
John Dehlin [00:35:19] So, I mean, it can't help. It can't. It can't decrease the number of women leaving the church. So my question is, Meggan, they've got money. They're. They're not dumb. Why would they do this?
Meggan Hayes [00:35:31] I don't. I don't actually understand. Because they have to know what the research is about. Really strict abortion laws. And this change is not saying everybody can abort a baby whenever they feel like it for no reason whatsoever. That's not what it's saying. If the church is really in support of women and children being born in the healthiest circumstances possible, they should be supporting Prop 1. So I don't understand why they're not. Because it is not there. In the. In the middle between where Idaho is now and where Prop 1 wants them to go. The church is in the middle. And instead of giving a little more leeway, they want to go backwards. It doesn't make any sense to me.
John Dehlin [00:36:20] All right, well, let's go to the next slide. How effective is it in Nevada?
Meggan Hayes [00:36:25] Okay, so this, this comes. This data comes from Mormon metrics. I can't remember the name of the guy who does that, but he's got a whole website and a substack. It's amazing. So he went through and predicted whether the church sending out the letters is going to make a difference in whether these laws or propositions, ballot measures pass in Nevada and Idaho. So in Nevada, he came to the conclusion that overall, 31% of LDS people support the church.
Meggan Hayes [00:37:06] That's like the baseline status quo. Overall, 31% of people support the church when it comes to abortion. And they're, they're pro life. Okay. If the letter makes a difference and only 10% of LDS people vote in opposition in Nevada because the letter was read and there's this core 10% support, then down under that is the number that it would still pass by 63.7%.
Meggan Hayes [00:37:37] And then the third column is if LDS support is 0%, then he believes or is predicting that in Nevada this ballot measure will still pass by 63 with a 63.4%. And that is. Yeah, that is because the voter block in Nevada of LDS people is approximately only 3%.
Meggan Hayes [00:38:01] So whether full support, middle support because the letter dissuaded some people or no support, he's predicting that in Alex, Alex is his name, that in Nevada it will likely still pass. Idaho is different story. So that's the next graph is Idaho.
John Dehlin [00:38:18] So I, I mean that really. It reminds me of the lawsuit conversation we had last time. Like, why would the church sue me? Mormon stories, the Open Stories foundation, and especially why would it go on YouTube and talk about it with David Jordan if, like all that stuff, if the church is likely to, to. To lose? And I guess the answer we talked about last episode speculating is it's because it was never about actually winning. It was about other things like smearing me or silencing me or bankrupting me. In this case, what you're saying is, and I'm sure they've got great pollsters to do their own internal polls, if the data show clearly that speaking up in Nevada really won't change the outcome, that would lead us to ask, what. What does it do?
Meggan Hayes [00:39:11] Like, do they garner favor with who? Right, right. Like, like, who are they trying to impress with this letter that we oppose these changes in abortion laws?
John Dehlin [00:39:24] Yeah, like, is it to please the MAGA base? Is it to help out the Republican politicians? Is it just to. Is it just a pet project for Oaks or, you know, whoever. That's what, that's what I would wonder.
Meggan Hayes [00:39:41] Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting. Yeah. So Idaho is a little bit different.
John Dehlin [00:39:47] Yeah. Okay.
Meggan Hayes [00:39:50] So in Idaho, with the same 31% of LDS support, 10% if only the, the block votes, because the letter dissuaded that other 21% or 0%, it's going to be super close. So he has predicted that it will likely still pass, but then it's going to be a lot closer. And the reasoning is that In Idaho, the LDS voting block is approximately 12% versus in Nevada where it's only 3%. So in Idaho, the LDS vote has more weight, but he said the. The most likely scenario falls to 54.3%, close enough that other factors could matter. So in Idaho, it is going to be, he predicts, very close, whether it passes or not.
John Dehlin [00:40:34] And I wonder what the margin of error is, because if the margin of error is 5%, then like with the Equal Rights Amendment, like with Prop 8, the church actually could be the deciding factor.
Meggan Hayes [00:40:46] Yes. And that's what, like, I was reading through this this morning, so I had to do it quite quick. But his. You can go look at all of his stuff at Mormon Metrics. Alex Bass is, I think is his name. He does some really great work and, and he explains all of his methodology and he explains where he got all the numbers and all of that.
John Dehlin [00:41:03] I know that when the Church entered into Prop 8 back in 2008 to take same sex marriage away from Californians, the logic I heard was, as goes California, so goes the nation. And the church was worried that once same sex marriage was legalized in California and it stayed that way, that it was just a matter of time before it became legal nationwide. And so they had to fight California to keep it from going nationwide. And of course, I think that backfired. But it could be the church is just worried that if Idaho and Arizona or Idaho and Nevada accept abortion, that Utah could be next. Because Utah did legalize cannabis, as I understand it, even medical cannabis, against the Church's wishes. Mm. So it could happen that Utah legalizes abortion, at least some form of abortion. That could be one reason why the Church is fighting it in Idaho and Arizona.
Meggan Hayes [00:42:03] Yeah. Yeah, that would make sense. They're like, we don't want people getting an idea that this is slowly working its way to our state.
Guest 1 [00:42:14] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:42:14] Interesting. Well, that's going to be interesting.
Meggan Hayes [00:42:17] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:42:18] Our dear friend Bishop Bo has joined us. We always love Bishop Bo. He writes, the parents are seeing the church change so much, scrambling to keep their kids in via Jesus Cosplay. This is a signal to the parents, wink, wink. We got you. Huh? So that's Bo basically saying that the church is doing this so that members feel like they have the church's support. Is that what I. Is that what Bo means by that, do you think?
Meggan Hayes [00:42:47] I think so.
John Dehlin [00:42:48] Yeah.
Meggan Hayes [00:42:48] Yeah. Like my generation, who has kids that are teens and young adults now, feeling like society is doing one thing and the church is doing the other. And like, will the church please speak up? And this is the thing they've chosen to speak up about.
John Dehlin [00:43:03] Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. Well, that's interesting. I did not realize that both Idaho and Nevada were projected to legalize abortion. I did not know that.
Meggan Hayes [00:43:18] Yeah, I just, I saw it. So I get emails from the Mormon Metrics. And so it came into my email this morning and I was like, oh, I've got to include this. Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:43:26] This morning.
Meggan Hayes [00:43:27] Yes, I did.
John Dehlin [00:43:27] Not surprising. Not surprising. That's cool. All right, well, thanks for that, Meggan. Before we tell the next story, I'm going to tell you a story. Is that okay?
Former Church Leader Convicted of Child Sexual Abuse
Meggan Hayes [00:43:36] Absolutely.
John Dehlin [00:43:37] So introduce the story, and then I'm going to tell you a story.
Meggan Hayes [00:43:40] Okay. So this is from floodlit.org this is David George McConkey. It says David McConkey was a Mormon Bishop approximately 2013 to 2016, a stake president from 2016 to 2021, and Deputy District attorney in Colorado. He is the paternal grandson of Mormon APostle Bruce R. McConkie. And he was arrested in 2023 and charged with felony sexual assault on a child by someone in a position of trust. Allegedly confessed child sexual assault to a Mormon church Leader in 2008. In July 2025, sentenced to five years probation. So that's the background.
John Dehlin [00:44:16] So, Meggan, I just. First of all, I want to say. Meggan, Julia, I want to do an episode this, this story. Given how big the McConkie name historically is in Mormonism, this story deserves its own episode. So if anyone out there and. Or you, Meggan, and or Julia or whoever wants to do some research on a dedicated episode, this, this deserves its own episode for a lot of reasons. And right now, it's not even in the title of today's episode. And I think the church loves it that this story hasn't gotten more play. But I do have a fun story to tell you. So for the never Mormons out there or the newer Mormons.
John Dehlin [00:44:54] During my upbringing, the most popular general authority leader of the church, other than Spencer W. Kimball and maybe Ezra Taft Benson, was Bruce Armaconki. And it was probably more Bruce Armaconki. He published a book in 1958 called Mormon Doctrine that then got reprinted several times. And that was viewed as the book that was running the church in terms of its doctrine and theology for decades and decades. If anyone wanted to know what the Church thought or believed on something, they opened up Mormon doctrine. And Bruce McConkie was an apostle and, you know, he was very much loved. And his final testimony said that once he had cancer and, you know, once he died and knelt at Jesus's feet and felt the nail prints in his hands, that he wouldn't know any more then than he knows than he knew at the time he was giving that talk that Jesus lived.
John Dehlin [00:45:51] So, I mean, very strong convictions, very much an orthodox true believer and viewed as the bastion of Mormon orthodoxy for decades. And the book on, on Mormon doctrine was Mormon doctrine until the church decommissioned it, which is its own story. But the one thing I'll just tell you is when I was getting my Ph.D. at Utah State University back in 2004, 2005, one of my colleagues was Mark McConkey. And I, I don't know if this guy's Mark's brother. I think it might have been Mark McConkey, I believe, grew up in Colorado. And I think this David McConkey was also in Colorado. I think David and Mark might have been siblings.
John Dehlin [00:46:33] But, you know, there's too many McConkeys. But I'll never forget when I was doing Mormon stories, but talking to my friend Mark McConkey, who is a grandson of Bruce Armaconki about Mormon Stories podcast, he would tell me stories about Bruce Armaconki. And this is a fun one for you.
John Dehlin [00:46:53] When ultimately, you know, the church lifted the priesthood ban and even, you know, Bruce R. McConkie said, forget everything we ever said about race in the priesthood and other sorts of things. And even when the church forced Bruce R. McConkie to change parts of Mormon doctrine, like the Catholic Church is the great abominable, like suicide can't be repented of. You know, like there are some really horrific things like, like black people were fence sitters in the preexistence, and that's why they didn't get the priesthood in this life. When those, when Bruce McConkey was forced to change those things.
John Dehlin [00:47:38] What Mark McConkey told me, he said it with a grin. He said, just because, just because my grandpa changed those things doesn't mean they weren't true. And it doesn't mean he didn't believe them. You know, And I think it was kind of that wink, wink, like, not all things that are true are useful, you know, kind of thing. I thought that was interesting. But the other thing he said to me was, you know, John, no children and no grandchildren of Bruce, I'm a Conkey. Have ever left the church. You know, this. He's a, he's a great guy. And I don't know if he'll ever hear this, but there was just this pride that, like, the world may be falling apart and the church may be decommissioning Mormon doctrine and the church may be making Bruce R.
John Dehlin [00:48:29] McConkie change his book or his Teachings to, you know, out of pressure for social media. But we all know that. Bruce. I'm a conkie. Got it right. And by the way, none of his grandchildren or children ever left the church, you know, so, like, anyway, I just. I. Is that. Is that interesting in the context of this. In this conversation?
Meggan Hayes [00:48:55] Because I don't know if this guy wanted to leave the church, but I have a feeling he might have been. I mean, I would hope at this point he's been excommunicated.
John Dehlin [00:49:05] My guess is he has not been excommunicated. But I don't know. I'm speculating. I'm speculating.
Meggan Hayes [00:49:11] Yeah, I don't know. Now, it reminds me of when Hinckley went on national news and said, I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it, and got up in general conference and was like, but, you guys know, we still believe you're gonna get your own planet.
John Dehlin [00:49:25] We know what we know. Church doctrine. Don't be confused.
Meggan Hayes [00:49:28] Don't be confused.
John Dehlin [00:49:30] We are not confused about what church doctrine. Really.
Meggan Hayes [00:49:34] These terrible winks are gonna get chopped up and put in every pro Mormon podcast. This is great. This is great stuff.
John Dehlin [00:49:42] All right, so anyway, so yes, Bruce armor. And by the way, I'm always like, I'm not reveling in the fact that this guy abused children. I'm not even, really, like, wanting to come down hard on him. I always say compassion on individuals, tough on systems, easy on people. I'm more, if it's not clear, I'm not really targeting David George McConkey with my comments. It's more the Mormon church and it's orthodoxy and it's. It's history of protecting pedophiles, you know, and. And so. So in that. In that light, I think it's important to note that this. This David George McConkey was both a bishop and a stake president. And you know this just right along the lines of. Of. Of Clark. Clark. Is it Wade? No, Wade Christopherson. Right. Like, the church, like, is more likely to protect and promote a pedophile than it is to attack one and punish one.
Meggan Hayes [00:50:51] Yes, yes. And actually, our next story is going to be like the perfect little segue right after this one to talk about that.
John Dehlin [00:50:58] So what happened to David? What's the latest news on this story?
Meggan Hayes [00:51:01] Well, so go to the clip. There's a. There's a news clip.
John Dehlin [00:51:05] All right, let's roll the clip. Former deputy D. A. Will not see jail time after admitting to sexually assaulting a child. This man, David McConkey was sentenced to five years sex offender supervised probation this afternoon. It's a Class 5 felony after taking a plea deal back in April.
Guest 2 [00:51:25] That sentence was for a charge of attempt to commit sexual assault on a child. And in his statements to the court today, McConkey actually admitted that the incident passed just an attempt. This is video we've got today of McConkey at the El Paso County Courthouse. He was arrested in 2023 and charged with sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust as part of his deal. McConkey pleaded to the lesser charge, the attempted assault. The judge said several times the agreement was extremely favorable to McConkey today. In his plea agreement, he admitted to at least one incident when the victim was 10 or 11 where he inappropriately touched the victim and, quote, could have removed his hand sooner.
Guest 2 [00:52:05] The victim spoke remotely to the court today, saying her priority was an admission of what he did. The five year supervised probation sentence includes conditions like seeking treatment, which McConkey has been attending since early May, not having contact with anyone under 18, with the exception of his biological children, and registering as a sex offender within the next few days. Jail time is still a possibility if any of those conditions aren't met. And that probation can also be terminated early if appealed, though the judge in the case said she would not expect that to happen unless at least half of the sentence has been served.
John Dehlin [00:52:42] All right, Meggan, what say you? Oh, you're muted. You have to unmute yourself. Sorry.
Meggan Hayes [00:52:49] Yeah, my dog was whining to go outside, so.
John Dehlin [00:52:51] No worries.
Guest 1 [00:52:52] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:52:52] The slide. Or do you want to comment first before we show the next slide?
Meggan Hayes [00:52:55] No, so I wanted to. To give the initial floodlet and then the new spot so people would have a background if they didn't know what was going on with him. But then the next slide is the newest possible wrinkle in what's happening.
John Dehlin [00:53:07] Okay, so show the slide.
Meggan Hayes [00:53:09] Yes, yes. Show the slide. Okay, so this is a Picture of David McConkey from the National Sex Offender Registry. It has his address there, which is required. It has a picture, and then under his employment address, it has seven seventy East University Parkway, Provo, Utah, 84602. And if you look up that address where he's listing as his employment on the National Sex Offender Registry, it's byu.
John Dehlin [00:53:35] Are you telling me that the church and BYU are as callous and as dumb as to take a known and now convicted child offender, former bishop and former stake president, and employ him at the Lord's University at byu? Is that what you're telling me.
Meggan Hayes [00:53:58] I don't, I don't know if that means they actually employ him or if he just listed that. I actually sent a email to try and get that confirmed or not and of course got nothing in response. But if we take the National Sex Offender Registry at face value, he is claiming his employment is fbyu. I do not know what that means beyond that, but that is from the National Sex Offender Registry.
Guest 1 [00:54:27] I.
Meggan Hayes [00:54:27] Someone put it on Reddit and I went and checked it three or four different times just to make sure I was looking at the right thing.
John Dehlin [00:54:34] Wow. That. If that's true, that's wild. And I guess we don't know for sure. So it's just alleged at this point?
Meggan Hayes [00:54:41] Yeah, yeah. And I tried to reach out to BYU and say, does he work there? And I didn't get anything in response.
John Dehlin [00:54:47] So it would zero percent surprise me if the church hired him. The Church protects and sometimes promotes child abusers and sexual predators. It's just a fact.
Meggan Hayes [00:55:02] Yes. And I mean, if you look at his original flood thing, it says that there was an alleged cover up to start out with, where people knew about what was going on and it didn't get reported. And the same story.
John Dehlin [00:55:13] And who knows how much church lawyers in the background helped cover up this story, helped with his legal team, helped get his, you know, is he still on the registry or was that removed that picture?
Meggan Hayes [00:55:29] I got that yesterday because I would
John Dehlin [00:55:31] not be surprised if he was if the church and. Or his lawyers helped him get removed from the registry.
Meggan Hayes [00:55:38] Have to go. Yeah. Check back in a week or so and see.
John Dehlin [00:55:41] Meggan, we've talked about this before. Why is it that so many Mormon bishops and stake presidents end up being child abusers? Do you have a theory about that? Because it literally is like almost every week we've got a story like this.
Meggan Hayes [00:55:53] I know. It just. The system is set up in a way that it makes people. It breeds people to be sexually uneducated. Right. So people in their 30s and 40s who still mentally or physically feel like a teenager.
Meggan Hayes [00:56:17] I mean, I was not educated about sex when I got married. I really didn't know what was going to happen and that. It's not like the Church said, don't educate your kids about sex, but what they did educate us about was don't have sex.
Meggan Hayes [00:56:29] So it's this entire culture of sexual immaturity and lack of education. I mean, this guy obviously had a lot of other education, but there's so much sexual immaturity in the church and so much hiding and lying about sexuality, because a lot of times it's presented as shameful if you are doing something that's totally healthy and natural, but the church forbids.
Meggan Hayes [00:56:56] So sexual immaturity partnered with shame. And so then sexuality comes out in Mormons in ways that is just unhealthy. It's unhealthy. And the next story we're going to talk about highlights a little of this. Like, it's a. It's a systemic failure in numerous ways that comes together to put people in this position of being totally uneducated and immature and still having a sexual drive because they're humans. And then it coming out in these ways that are just massively unhealthy.
John Dehlin [00:57:36] One thing I'll say is you've got two options. You've got an organization where there's a zero tolerance for policy for child abuse and severe punishments, including always going to prison if you abuse children. You've got one organization like that, you've got another organization where if you're a child abuser, you're more likely to get off. It's going to be hidden. You're not going to be reported to the police, and you may even get promoted. And you're going to be fought for at the expense of the rights of the victims. Which one's going to have more child abusers in the leadership?
Guest 2 [00:58:11] Right.
Meggan Hayes [00:58:11] The one that's going to protect them where they feel safe, where they're given an avenue to have access to people who abuse other people who are also not educated emotionally and physically to protect themselves from such abuse. Children who don't even know what their body parts are called so they can't tell. Someone so and so touched me, you know, touched my penis. Because they don't know that word.
John Dehlin [00:58:37] Yeah. And also, just what organizations do pedophiles flock to? Catholic Church, Boy Scouts. Why? Because it's a haven of protection where you get access to children. So again, if your organization protects abusers and is a harbor for abuse and has systemic abuse and makes systemic abuse more easy, you're going to attract and retain more abusers. It's just math. So, anyway, thanks for covering that story, Meggan. And let's do an episode on, because that deserves its own. Yeah, episode.
Meggan Hayes [00:59:16] Yep. Making another note.
John Dehlin [00:59:18] And Julie, you can help out with that if you want. Okay. Well, last week we covered Susie Greco. Looks like she's back in the Mormon news podcast.
Susie Greco Discusses Mormon Sexual Abuse Accountability
Meggan Hayes [00:59:27] Yes. So, yeah, last week we talked about her because she made a Facebook post saying she'd been threatened by the church. And I think let's see what did I put in this slide. So, yeah, her research calls for trauma informed leadership training, survivor centered protocols and and reform of the church's abuse response system. She tried going through church channels. She is in a PhD program and she said reform proposals were passed through church leaders but were repeatedly stopped or sidelined when they got to a certain level of church leader. And then she talked about publicly on her Facebook page about how a scholar and high ranking LDS church leader emailed her with concerns about her research.
Meggan Hayes [01:00:04] His words. I grow increasingly concerned as I see you move your writing about abuse from being a concern that the church needs to address in more effective ways to now questioning its organizational practices, its structures, its rituals and its doctrine by claiming they are the cause of such abuse. So after we talked about that, Susie came out on her Facebook page saying, you know, she put up the thumbnail from our episode and said, here is my response to Mormon stories. And when I first read it, I was like, was she, was she feeling upset that we did it? Was she feeling like we backed her up?
Meggan Hayes [01:00:36] And I actually was on the phone with her this week and had a conversation with her that was amazing. And she did not feel hurt or put down by our episode at all. She was very complimentary about us being able to get the word out there. And she asked if she just put together a little video segment if we could put it on so we would understand more about her work. And I said absolutely. So she sent me a little video. It's about four minutes long, a little longer, but she's like, I just think I tried to pare it down. So I put that in there so that we could watch what it is, who she is, what she's trying to do, why.
Meggan Hayes [01:01:09] And at the end, she's going to kind of make a little announcement about something that's going to come out in the future. That is going to be, it's going to be big.
John Dehlin [01:01:18] All right, let's roll it.
▶ Video Clip 1Video Clip 1 [01:01:19] Hi, I'm Susie Greco. So Mormon news stories covered part of my story last week. Meggan, thank you. You read my article, you mentioned my book. You took the academic work seriously and that matters more than you know. So, John, you said you'd like to get to know me to understand how I'm approaching this. I'd like that too. So let me start.
Video Clip 1 [01:01:42] I was abused as a child in an LDS home by my LDS father. I was abused as an adult by my LDS husband. Everything I study, I study because I lived at first. I was at a school for 26 years. Raising my children. When I applied to Harvard Divinity School, I was in the middle of a horrific divorce and somehow I got accepted and then I got into a PhD program.
Video Clip 1 [01:02:06] Both are miracles and I know it. I didn't begin with a thesis. I began with questions I couldn't put down and with a sense, which I trusted, that I was being led somewhere I hadn't chosen. So I went and found out. And I want to tell you what that has cost because I think the cost is relevant to how the findings were received.
Guest 1 [01:02:28] Years of doctoral research, self funded, at a point in my life when I needed a paycheck. 25 long form interviews, which means 25 times sitting with a woman while she tells you the worst things that ever happened to her and then going home and carrying it as a survivor yourself without letting it pull you under. A survey of 922 current and former members. 259 of them just didn't tick the boxes. They wrote at length, unprompted, because no one had ever asked. And around all of that, therapists, attorneys, policy experts, advocates and clergy from multiple countries. People who have spent their careers on this, checking my reasoning.
Guest 1 [01:03:12] Peer reviews, supervisors. The ordinary unglamorous machinery of trying to get it right. I share that work privately in good faith with leaders I respect because I genuinely believed they would want to know what survivors experience when they disclose abuse. And the answer came back with a line drawn through it. It is acceptable to say the church should handle abuse more effectively. It becomes unacceptable to ask whether the church's structures, policies and practice help produce the conditions in which abuse persists and disclosures are mishandled. And this is something I address directly in my thesis. Why such a stance? I'm not going to name anyone. It isn't about a person.
Guest 1 [01:03:56] It's about a posture, one that can absorb a survivor's pain, but not her findings. And to address John's concern, I am very well aware that people who address such issues are excommunicated. But I think my case is a little different. I am a survivor, standing in solidarity with survivors, doing academic research. In all of it, not one person asked me a question a curious mind should ask. What did you find? That's not a set book. To my research. That is my research. Women are welcome to testify to victimhood and to healing. We are not welcome to name causes. So here is what I'll present tomorrow at the Spiritual and Belonging Conference at Harvard Divinity School.
Guest 1 [01:04:39] An argument that deserves to be argued with, not managed. That what happens to survivors is not an organizational failure. It is the predictable output of a dual authority design. An arm built to absolve perpetrators and another arm to identify a corporation and no organ anywhere in the body whose actual job is the person who was harmed. Not that the church will not see the victim, but that it cannot help see the victim. Two women will speak in their own voices. Kristen Dunbar Motts, who was involved in the Wade Kristofferson case, and Meggan Reader, whose story will go out with Jason Dearen and Michael Rosendez, not as illustrations, as expert witnesses to a system they lived inside.
Guest 1 [01:05:23] Some of this will be disturbing to faithful members, and it should be. Survivors call the church's response the second injury. And you cannot describe an injury gently enough to make it stop being one. And I'll end with a quote by David F. Holland, associate dean at Harvard Divinity School, writing from inside the tradition. We cannot be healers if we shield our eyes from the wound. And that's the whole ask. Don't shield your eyes. John, Meggan, the invitation is open, so let's talk.
John Dehlin [01:05:54] Man, she's sharp as hell. Holy moly. I'm so glad you're immediate. We showed that.
Meggan Hayes [01:06:03] Yes. Isn't she fantastic? I mean, the phone conversation I had about 30 minutes before I had to get somewhere and I could have stayed on the phone with her for hours. She is just fantastic. And the work that she's done and so I don't know if you caught it, but there at the end, she is working with. If you go to the next slide, Jason Dear and Michael Resendez are just top notch investigative journalists on a story that's going to come out. She said early winter is the timeline they have right now.
John Dehlin [01:06:31] Dang.
Meggan Hayes [01:06:32] And it is gonna be, it's gonna be really big.
Guest 2 [01:06:35] And.
Meggan Hayes [01:06:36] And she'll keep in touch and we'll all know when it's gonna, you know, come out. But it's. She found the story through one of the survivors that she interviewed and then, as far as I understand, paired with these two investigative journalists to really get to the bottom of what happened. But it's going to be a similar story to The Wade Kristofferson 1. Highest levels of the church, cover ups of abuse, people who knew the.
John Dehlin [01:07:04] Yeah, and so I'll say I did interview Chelsea Goodrich on Mormon stories podcast episode 1846. And you know, it's one of the most viewed episodes of all time and it's a really disturbing story. And wow, the church might be trembling in its boots because this is the guy. One of the best movies I've ever seen that I recommend everybody see is called Spotlight. And Michael Rosendez's work is featured in Spotlight. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning investigator. And it sounds like that faded day that so many victims have hoped for that the Mormon Church would have its own Spotlight moment. It's more and more increasingly likely to be on the horizon.
Meggan Hayes [01:07:57] Yes.
Guest 3 [01:07:57] Yeah.
Meggan Hayes [01:07:58] The work that she's been doing is going to come out in a very major way and she's got the research and the, the talent to back her up. And I, yeah, I just amazed at what she's done. And like you said, she's just sharp, sharp and, and so kind and she's listened to so many people. Like I, I once she sent me the video and I watched it, I couldn't even respond to her in a way that felt adequate. I was like, Susie, I don't even know what to say. I literally texted that to her. Like, I don't know what to say because that just blew me away.
John Dehlin [01:08:29] Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's great news. I love it when we break news on Mormon news podcast and. Yeah. But also just a huge thank you to Susie for taking us seriously and for giving such a thoughtful response and mostly for her important work in advocacy and for Michael and Jason as well and, and freaking. The spotlit, you know, website and project is that website. That's just great stuff. And Chelsea Goodrich and everybody else involved, so. And you. So thanks, Meggan. That's great stuff.
Meggan Hayes [01:09:13] Yeah, absolutely. It was, yeah, it was my pleasure to speak with her. So.
Elizabeth Smart Launches a Podcast
John Dehlin [01:09:18] And if that weren't enough, we've got Elizabeth Smart news. What's going on with her?
Meggan Hayes [01:09:26] Right. So she has started a podcast. It's called the Survivor Files and the description says, building on more than two decades of Smart's advocacy, the Survivor Files will bring listeners inside the experiences most people only hear about from the outside. Through a hybrid format that pairs documentary style storytelling with intimate conversations, the weekly series will follow survivors of abductions, home invasions, assaults and other traumatic events as they share the experiences that changed their lives with host Elizabeth Smart before joining her to explore the lifelong process of healing, justice and reclaiming what violence nearly took away. The series will also include special episodes that invite those at home into the conversation through listener submitted questions.
Meggan Hayes [01:10:15] It's. It's quite new, I think. I don't remember how many episodes there were. I pulled a clip from the Instagram, but right now it's, I couldn't, I didn't see that. It was on YouTube, so she's got an Instagram page And then it's on all the normal places you can find podcasts. But here's one of the clips. I think there is great goodness in religion, or there can be. I think there can also be great evil in religion.
John Dehlin [01:10:42] And did your experience during your abduction have an impact on where you ended up?
Meggan Hayes [01:10:47] Absolutely. It absolutely did. Because it was my captors saying, God commanded us to kidnap you. God commanded us to marry you. God commanded us to do this to you, that to you. They used God's will, God's name to try to tell me that's what was supposed to happen when really my captor, Brian Mitchell, just wanted to rape a little girl.
John Dehlin [01:11:09] Man, I wonder. So do you think the church, I mean, first of all, huge news. She's a. She's a big star nationally and internationally. And way, way to use your platform, Elizabeth Smart, to help people. Like, that's just all amazing. And only good things will come from this for victims and to prevent future abuse. So that's all amazing. And I'll just say, do you think the church is trembling in its boots or not?
Meggan Hayes [01:11:41] I think they've got to be trembling in their boots over all sorts of things now. And this is certainly on the list. Like, because Elizabeth is so kind and knowledgeable. It. Like, I. I don't think I could think of a single person who doesn't have a positive view of her because of. Just because of who she is. Because of who she is. So it's going to be really hard to look at her and say, oh, she's trying to tear the church down. Because it's just so obvious that that's not what she's trying to do. She's just trying to help people.
John Dehlin [01:12:16] I've had. I've had a connection to the Smart family for a while. My they. Their ward was in the boundaries of my cousin Brett Parkinson's ward. Up, up, up, you know, in the kind of above the University of Utah kind of area. He was a bishopric over there. Family, I think, right around the time of the abduction. So Ed Smart is a friend of mine. He actually came out to me when he came out as gay before the world knew he was listening to Mormon stories. And he invited me and Margi to his wedding in Camas. They had a big gay wedding, big cowboy gay wedding where they both.
John Dehlin [01:12:57] He and his groom rode up on horses, you know, and got married as gay cowboys in Camas. And as I understand it, they're still together. And. And, yeah, I've known for a while. Yeah. And there are still very faithful Members of the Smart family.
John Dehlin [01:13:17] My senses Elizabeth's not believing or attending member anymore, but she's not wanted to really talk too much about that publicly, but I get the sense that she is out of the church, but also not really wanting to talk about that for whatever reasons, you know?
Meggan Hayes [01:13:39] Yeah, yeah, I get the same sense that I. I just don't think for what she does. Like maybe to her that her being in or out of the church isn't going to change the way that she's advocating. Because I think. Yeah, she just. Her integrity is such that in or out isn't the. The key factor in what she's doing. She's trying to help people.
John Dehlin [01:14:02] Yeah, she's super classy.
Meggan Hayes [01:14:05] So absolutely.
John Dehlin [01:14:06] Kudos, Elizabeth Smart. Keep up the great work. And now we have F the Mormons.
Anti-Mormon Chants at BYU Football Game
Meggan Hayes [01:14:13] F the Mormons. So this has come up in the news a couple times in the past couple of years, but when I started looking into the most recent story, I was like, how long has this been going on? It turns out a really long time.
John Dehlin [01:14:24] Yeah.
Meggan Hayes [01:14:25] So the first recorded instance that I could find was in 2007 at UCLA and then the next one, so these are just ones where headlines were made, was in 2021 at USC. So, and this is happening at a sporting event. I think most of the time it's football, but it's also been basketball, as far as I understand.
John Dehlin [01:14:42] But also.
Guest 1 [01:14:42] Yeah.
Meggan Hayes [01:14:43] Where the student section of the opposing team starts chanting, f the Mormon.
John Dehlin [01:14:48] You know Mormons. Yeah, except they don't say. Except they don't say F. No, no.
Meggan Hayes [01:14:54] They go ahead and just throw out the real word there. So, yeah. Then the next One was in 2022 in Oregon, 2024 in Providence, 2025 in Arizona, 2025 again in Colorado, 2025 in Cincinnati, 2026 Oklahoma State, and then the most recent one, 2026 at Colorado State. So there's actually more than what I was aware of. When I really started digging, I thought it'd be interesting to put out that timeline. And there were a couple of times in there where the schools were fined. The 2025 Colorado one, they were fined $50,000. And then the 2026 Oklahoma state one, they were also fined $50,000.
John Dehlin [01:15:32] Do you have a clip of this?
Meggan Hayes [01:15:34] Yeah. So if you go to the next
John Dehlin [01:15:37] slide, it'll be Colorado State University apologizing after the conduct of some fans during
▶ Video Clip 2Video Clip 2 [01:15:42] Saturday's BYU football game.
Video Clip 2 [01:15:44] During the game, derogatory chants targeting the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints echoed throughout the stadium.
Video Clip 2 [01:15:50] New specialist Dan Rascone has reaction now, joins us live.
Video Clip 2 [01:15:54] And Dan, unfortunately, we have seen this play out several times before.
Video Clip 2 [01:15:59] That's exactly right. Mike and Deenie. That's why some people are so upset about this. This is not the first, the second, the third, or even the fourth time something like this has happened. So for fans like Daniel Jensen, he believes the consequences are sending the wrong message.
Video Clip 2 [01:16:15] Get him.
Video Clip 2 [01:16:15] And he walks into the end zone.
Video Clip 2 [01:16:17] Touchdown, Kruegers. BYU versus csu. And they're in the crowd. I've been rooting for BYU my entire life. Daniel Jensen and his brother, ultimate BYU fans. But right before kickoff, it starts. The derogatory chant started before the game kicked off. It was not isolated individuals. It was a chant that many students participated in several times. CSU later issued an apology saying mocking anyone's faith has no place at the university. But unfortunately, this same chant, this happened at the University of Colorado Buffaloes game last year, has happened time and time again at many BYU sporting events. Daniel was at the CU game and an Arizona game when the chant happened.
Video Clip 2 [01:17:04] He feels the fines and apologies are not enough. If I were to say any of those kind of things at an NBA game or NFL game, I would be removed from the stadium immediately. And he says students don't care. These are college kids who want to be part of an environment. They want to be accepted by their friend group.
Video Clip 2 [01:17:22] Religious discrimination is never okay.
Video Clip 2 [01:17:24] Spencer Linton is a host to BYU Sports Nation and travels with the team and is a sideline reporter. It's becoming the exception when these chants
Video Clip 2 [01:17:33] do not happen with BYU's road opponents.
Video Clip 2 [01:17:37] Along with fines, he believes the team should be penalized.
Video Clip 2 [01:17:40] Could we give them an enforceable, like
Video Clip 2 [01:17:42] conduct penalty for 15 yards?
Video Clip 2 [01:17:43] Because guess what?
Video Clip 2 [01:17:44] I think that if they saw that they were hurting their team and their team's chances to win the game on their home field, I don't think that
Video Clip 2 [01:17:50] they would continue that.
Video Clip 2 [01:17:53] No word yet whether or not CSU will face a fine here. The University of Colorado did face a fine by the big 12, $50,000 fine. But CSU is actually in the PAC 12, a different conference. So we'll see what happens there.
John Dehlin [01:18:09] Wow. What's your take on that, Meggan?
Meggan Hayes [01:18:12] So if you go to the next slide, I kind of tried to sum it up like I. I think the f. The Mormon chants are. They're unwarranted. Are there things about the Mormon Church that I think need changing? Absolutely. Do I think we need to chant f the Mormons at their football players? I do not.
Meggan Hayes [01:18:29] And I think if we're going to talk about marginalization or persecution, then we need to have the whole conversation. Like, let's talk about how race in the LDS Church has been handled. Let's talk about LGBTQ members today and how the church treats them.
Meggan Hayes [01:18:49] So, like, the question I put, can experiencing religious marginalization create more empathy for people who have experienced exclusion from the institution itself? So if these BYU players are out there and they're feeling targeted, hopefully that can push them to a place where they understand that their church is doing the same thing to other people. And maybe we can have the whole conversation because it's not just. It's not just FU chants at BYU football games.
John Dehlin [01:19:20] I love it. Yeah, Obviously, this is Mormon stories. I consider myself a Mormon. So when they say that, they're saying that to me. They're saying that about me. I would. I would be against it if I didn't consider myself a Mormon, because can you imagine F the Jews or F the Muslims or F the Catholics or F the Christians?
John Dehlin [01:19:44] Like, I denounce this as deplorable, horrific bigotry and racism. Not racism, but bigotry. Religious bigotry. It's terrible. I agree that. That the opposing team should be fined. Unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. It'd be like the fan base throwing crap on the field or like harming the refs or harming the opposing team. They've got to have rules where if. If the home team misbehaves or the opposing team, they get ejected, their fines, the team gets punished. I think the harshest measure should be applied for this. I condemn it. It's. It's. It's horrific. And I hope. I hope the harshest penalties get assessed.
Guest 2 [01:20:36] Right?
Meggan Hayes [01:20:36] Because what. What are sports like? I'm always trying to boil stuff down to, like, its most base, like parts. And sports, for me, are a way for people to experience community and collective joy. And we're all rooting for the same thing. It's similar to being in a band or singing in a choir, because everyone has their different likes, right? So when we go to a sporting event, there should be rules of decorum, because we're there to have this experience where we get to have a community who, even though this person is a different socioeconomic status than I am and we have different political beliefs, we can come here and we can root for our team, and it can be good fun.
Meggan Hayes [01:21:25] And like, for me, that's what sports boils down to. I know people are like, oh, people shouldn't get paid as much as they do. And there's all these debates. However, at its. At its best, sports can bring people together in a way that allows a lot of those barriers to be taken down. And I don't think f the Mormons is helping that. As as many problems if I as I have with the church. I don't think f the Mormons is helping that.
John Dehlin [01:21:49] It's terrible. And someone else wrote, you know, the last thing we want Latter Day Saints to have is. Is. Is ammo to feed their persecution complex. There's enough of that already. Don't give them more. But it's wrong because it attacks all of us. And Liz writes, okay, how about f the Cougars? And I'm like, no, like, go Cougars. Like, I. I'm weird because I love every Utah football team. I love Weber State. I love SUU Thunderbirds. I love uv I love uvu. I love University of Utah. I love Utah State. Obviously, go Aggies. And I love BYU football and basketball. Like, why not?
Guest 2 [01:22:34] I could watch.
Meggan Hayes [01:22:35] I could watch football all day long. John, you're preaching to the choir right now. Like, I have loved football since I was a teenager. And I mean, I'll watch all sports, but football. I love football. And I would watch a BYU game I used to have. I used to cut pictures of the BYU football players out and stick them on my wall in my bedroom when I was a teenager. Yeah, I think. I just think it's fun.
John Dehlin [01:23:00] Well, what a great set of stories, Meggan. And I think you probably only included half of the ones that we could have included, but what a great week. You did great work today. You gave us a twofer. And I'm just really grateful for who you are, your professionalism, your sharp mind, your hard work, and all you do for Mormon Stories in the Mormon News podcast and for the broader community.
Meggan Hayes [01:23:27] Thank you, John. I'm sincerely honored to be in the position that I am in right now and be able to do something I love and also have it be part of a community now and hopefully help people want to find the things they love to do and do those things. It's an amazing feeling. I get excited to wake up every morning and research this stuff. I have to tear myself away from the computer, literally, and be like, I've got to do something else for a minute.
John Dehlin [01:23:58] Yeah, we have cool jobs. I think in some ways it's not always cool, but there's a lot that's cool about it.
Guest 1 [01:24:04] It.
John Dehlin [01:24:05] But anyway, thank you. Please, please like and subscribe to Mormon Stories podcast and to generally unquotable. Please donate to the Mormon News podcast@mormonnews.com or you can donate to Mormon stories@mormonstories.org donate. You can also throw some cheddar cheese Meggan's way. How do they donate to you, Meggan?
Meggan Hayes [01:24:31] I do have a Patreon. Just look up generally unquotable and you know, just watching my videos on YouTube and sharing them, that helps immensely.
John Dehlin [01:24:39] And comment like subscribe all the things. We really appreciate that as well. So tune in again every Friday for Mormon News Podcast. Hopefully whatever Meggan's in town and available. I'm. I'm trying to convince Meggan to sometimes do a second weekly episode or a feature news story when it hits because I think there's enough news to warrant it. I'm guessing we just have to make it attractive to you to make you able to do that and, and still be able to do all the other things you want to do. So donate to the Mormon News podcast if for no other reason, so that we could pay Meggan extra to do more news, to have more news coverage on. On Mormon stories.
Meggan Hayes [01:25:29] Yep, John, we'll get there. You're very convincing. Plus, you know, I love this. I love this. Thank you for everyone in the live chat and showing up like it's. I, I have to pinch myself to remind myself this is real. This is really what I get to do every day.
John Dehlin [01:25:46] I'm interested because, because the, the after we cut off last episode and restarted we dropped to 300. Some of those are going to be people who watch later, but I still think that's more than the people that drop off and don't watch a three or four hour episode. So I still think we're ahead. But it's interesting to see how many people drop off when we say come right back. Why didn't they come back? Why didn't those fetchers come right back, Meggan?
Meggan Hayes [01:26:12] They didn't listen to us. We're not the prophet John.
John Dehlin [01:26:16] Well, anyway, thanks again for doing two episodes. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Thanks to Julia.
Guest 1 [01:26:21] Thanks.
John Dehlin [01:26:22] And Brooklyn and also Trevor Trevan for helping us with the moderation. Thanks to all the donors that make all this possible. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. We'll see you all again soon on another episode of the Mormon News Podcast and also on generally unquotable. All right, thanks everybody. Take care and see you all again soon.
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.
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David McConkie Court Transcripts. I was a member of his stake when this happened and I have a copy of the court documents. Please tell me where to send them for inclusion of the upcoming episode. Even though it’s redacted, it appears clear that he molested his own daughters.