Welcome, Introductions, and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. I don't know the date today. It's December 29th. 29th. My anniversary. My 27th anniversary. Happy anniversary.

Liz Cannon [00:00:12] We're keeping him late. Sorry, Margi.

John Dehlin [00:00:13] Oh, tomorrow, tomorrow. But today I'm super excited. We're gonna have a little bit of a different change of pace every couple years. We turn the tables and I have somebody says, hey, John, I really want to interview you. Sometimes it's for their own project, sometimes it's just someone that wants to interview me. And some of you will know my dear friend Liz. Hey, Liz, say hi to our audience.

Liz Cannon [00:00:36] Hi.

John Dehlin [00:00:37] I had Liz on Mormon Stories a year or two ago. She was Liz Layton at the time. Liz is awesome. You may remember her if you heard the episode. She's been a Utah jazz dancer, dance instructor. She talked a lot about her life, about learning a lot of things in your 20s, losing your faith. But also she's had a few marriages that didn't work out. She's had a few of. Two of her siblings died by suicide. She's dealt with suicidal thoughts and depression herself. Anyway, it was an amazing, epic interview. I really recommend it. But it's, but, but this is Liz. And, And Liz is back. And Liz is back with Ray. Hi, Ray.

Ray Purcell [00:01:17] How do I follow up that I'm just Ray.

John Dehlin [00:01:19] Just Ray. No story.

Ray Purcell [00:01:21] No story.

John Dehlin [00:01:22] Ray. What's your last name?

Ray Purcell [00:01:23] Purcell.

John Dehlin [00:01:24] And, and, and. Welcome, Ray.

Ray Purcell [00:01:26] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:01:27] We're gonna have you back on Mormon Stories to tell your story.

Ray Purcell [00:01:29] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:01:30] But Liz and Ray are starting a new podcast and they were kind enough to ask to interview me. So I, I, you know, when somebody comes on Mormon Stories and is willing to tell their. Be super vulnerable and tell their heartfelt story, I feel a sense of duty and obligation to then support them in their projects. And any of you who've been on Mormon Stories in your projects, if you have them. And so Liz and Ray are starting a new podcast and they're gonna. They wanted to interview me, so I thought it'd be cool to share this episode with my listeners. For people who aren't sick of me telling my story, this will be a different slant. There are way a ton of questions. We've already recorded it, so now we're recording the intro after we've already done the interview. So there's a bunch of cool things we've talked about that I've never talked about. Some of the stuff you hear again, like Renee Zelliger, you hear that story again A brief, brief version of it.

Ray Purcell [00:02:23] Again, again.

John Dehlin [00:02:25] But it's, it's a lot of cool, fun conversation. But Liz and Ray are interviewing me for their podcast, but I'm sharing this on Mormon Stories. They're going to tell you at the end more in detail about their podcast, but tell them quickly the name of your podcast.

Liz Cannon [00:02:38] It's maintenance required.

John Dehlin [00:02:40] And it's for who?

Liz Cannon [00:02:42] Well, it's really for anyone, but it's. That's a hard question, John. I should know this.

John Dehlin [00:02:47] It's 20 and 30 somethings and others who are exploring life.

Liz Cannon [00:02:52] Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so. So like you said, you know, at the end we kind of give our little elevator pitch about the podcast, but basically both of us were members of the church and we left. And many postmember Mormon people can relate to this. You revert back to, like I always say, age 16 and we had to relearn the world again. So we're kind of exploring all of our ignorance and bias and naivety through this podcast. So we talk about a variety of

John Dehlin [00:03:16] subjects with swear words.

Liz Cannon [00:03:17] Yeah, I had to, when I had to like submit it, like on itunes or whatever, I had to click explicit.

John Dehlin [00:03:24] You guys will talk about sex, relationships, swearing and. Yeah, and, and a warning there, there might be some swear words. There will. There are swear words. There might even be enough bomb or two. And we talk a little bit about the Mormon Temple ceremony. Not in any super sacrilegious way, but, but you know, this is, this is four Mormon stories. More of a PG13 version of Mormon stories. Not in our version, just a PG13 version. Is that okay?

Liz Cannon [00:03:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:53] You guys okay with that?

Ray Purcell [00:03:54] We only get. You only get one F word in a PG13 movie, so you might have to upgrade it to our. Or just edit out or just bleep out a couple of them.

John Dehlin [00:04:00] Yeah. But now, now Liz and Ray are going to interview me and turn the tables and so if it's okay, I'll turn the tape, turn the time over to you, Liz and Ray, and you guys can interview me as a part of your podcast.

Liz Cannon [00:04:14] Let's do it.

John Dehlin [00:04:15] Here we go. Should we do it?

Ray Purcell [00:04:16] Let's do it.

Liz Cannon [00:04:17] Let's do it.

John Dehlin [00:04:17] All right.

Liz Cannon [00:04:18] Welcome, John. I am like, honor doesn't even begin to describe how excited I am to have you with us today. Woo hoo. Thank you so much for being here.

John Dehlin [00:04:27] It's my pleasure. It's good to be here. I'm honored to be one of your early guests.

Liz Cannon [00:04:32] I know I kind of question. I'm like, I'm a rookie. This is a Seasoned professional. Should I bring him on this season?

Ray Purcell [00:04:39] Like, he's. Everyone probably looks at Joe Rogan as, like, the pedestal for podcasting he's been doing. He's been in the game five years longer than Joe Rogan's been in the podcast. I mean, that.

John Dehlin [00:04:47] Since five.

Ray Purcell [00:04:47] I'm not sure, but it's about five years. But you were in it before. Like, I thought Joe Rogan was cutting edge. You were five years before that. What made you even decide to do a podcast in 2005 when nobody was doing podcasts?

Liz Cannon [00:04:58] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Back up. We're gonna get into that.

Ray Purcell [00:05:02] Okay, my bad. Jump in the gun.

Liz Cannon [00:05:04] Jump in the gun.

Ray Purcell [00:05:07] Pull those leashes back on. Ray.

John Dehlin [00:05:08] Ray, Ray, Ray.

Liz Cannon [00:05:10] Okay, yeah, Ray Ra. No, but. And you know, you think when people think of, like, podcast kings, you think of Joe Rogan and you and I left the church. We are more familiar with this post Mormon community, but some of our listeners might not be aware that we have the post Mormon Joe Rogan with us.

Ray Purcell [00:05:30] Yes, it's true. That's the perfect analogy. The post Mormon Joe Rogan.

Liz Cannon [00:05:35] He totally is.

Ray Purcell [00:05:35] I like it.

John Dehlin [00:05:36] Who doesn't swear or drink or smoke weed during the podcast or off the podcast.

Liz Cannon [00:05:47] Oh, my gosh. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:05:48] I'm boring Mormon Jo.

Liz Cannon [00:05:52] But okay, so you've kind of touched on this. My first question is, how long have you been doing this full time?

John's Background and Ironman Journey

John Dehlin [00:05:58] Yeah, I'm almost. I mean, 15 years in. This will. Next year will be my 16th year. So. Yeah, I've been doing it a super long time.

Liz Cannon [00:06:05] Good. All the way through.

John Dehlin [00:06:07] What do you mean?

Liz Cannon [00:06:08] I mean, have you enjoyed it all the way through? Obviously. I'm sure it's been tough.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] I mean, it's been amazing. But it, It's. It has been brutal, too. It's brutal and amazing. It's both. Yeah, it's regularly brutal and excruciating and amazing.

Liz Cannon [00:06:24] I can appreciate that. And we're going to get into that for sure today. But let's just start by briefing listeners on your background in Mormonism. What did your faith mean to you growing up and how involved with the church were you? Yeah, through childhood and young adulthood.

Growing Up Mormon: Family and Early Faith

John Dehlin [00:06:41] Yeah, Well, I. My, My dad was born in Salt Lake City. My mom was born in Preston, Idaho, which is famous. Franklin, actually, which is famous as the place where Napoleon Dynamite was filmed.

Ray Purcell [00:06:54] Oh, yeah, that's right.

John Dehlin [00:06:54] Which is a very Mormon. Yeah, you know, film. But I'm like a sixth generation Mormon. My ancestors were literally new Joseph Smith and crossed the plains. My grandmother was the daughter of a Third wife. So, I mean, I knew my grandmother and she was the daughter of a third wife in a polygamous marriage. So that's how Mormon I am, af Mormon.

Ray Purcell [00:07:17] Af.

John Dehlin [00:07:17] Mormon. Af. I like that. I like that. I grew up in Texas, however, so I grew up in Katy, Texas.

Ray Purcell [00:07:25] Where's Katie?

John Dehlin [00:07:26] Katie is a suburb of Houston. Okay, west, like 30 minutes west of downtown Houston, as I recall. And yeah, I was just a skinny, tall Mormon kid and. But the church meant everything to me. My, I was the youngest of four, raised totally devout, reading the scriptures every morning and going to primary and learning all the songs and everything. My parents did get divorced when I was in middle school and they each have, you know, my dad's been married five times, my mom's married three. So when things were really, when things got crazy, the church was kind of like what I clung to. So I went from being like a directionless middle schooler to like super focused in high school. And I became like captain of the varsity basketball team, student body president, you know, just like, you know, I graduated 11th of my class, got a full ride scholarship, like, and it was the church that like, you know, so like I had a girlfriend named Tracy. Hi, Tracy. She, like, we were, you know, dating and she, she grabbed my hand and she put it, you know, like, hey, you know, I don't do that.

Ray Purcell [00:08:40] Was she Mormon?

John Dehlin [00:08:41] No, no, no. You know, high school, I had like four or five Mormon kids.

Liz Cannon [00:08:45] Yeah, I was going to ask in high school. I mean, obviously this didn't affect you too much because you just expressed, you know, your popularity in high school. But did you ever have people who like, hated you because you were Mormon? I asked that because I went to a Catholic school here in Utah.

John Dehlin [00:09:01] Oh, judge.

Liz Cannon [00:09:02] No, Juan Diego.

John Dehlin [00:09:03] Oh, okay. Okay.

Liz Cannon [00:09:04] Yeah, I didn't graduate from Juan Diego, but I went there for three years, mostly through middle school. And I one day I had a kid come up to me and said, you know, I hate you because you're Mormon. Literally. So. Did you ever, you know, have anything like that?

John Dehlin [00:09:17] Yeah. So when I was, when I was going to high school in the 80s, a movie came out called the God Makers. Have you guys heard of the God Makers?

Liz Cannon [00:09:25] I've heard of it, but I don't know what it is.

John Dehlin [00:09:26] So it's this, it's this super anti Mormon movie made by a guy named Ed Decker who I've actually had on the podcast. And it's about a two hour movie and it's kind of weird because it's, it's out to destroy the church. And it mentions, you know, Joseph Smith and his peep stones and as the kinderhook plates and polygamy and just all the problems. It mentions LGBT suicides. It was actually a movie in some ways ahead of its time. It's got this creepy 15 minute cartoon that's like the Mormon plan of salvation. And it talks about, like, God having multiple wives and all these wives living for eternity, having babies. Like, I need to watch. Anyway, it's on the Internet. The full thing's on the Internet. But it came out while I was in high school and the local Baptist church in Katy released it and they had like a weekend seminar called Mormons and Other Cults. So all these kids came to school like, John, I heard about your church. You know what I mean?

Liz Cannon [00:10:21] What year in high school were you?

John Dehlin [00:10:22] Oh, I, I, you know, freshman. Freshman year.

Liz Cannon [00:10:25] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:10:26] And it was a Baptist town, so I was. I was popular, but in a box. I was also in a box because in Katy, football was king and basketballers were kind of second level. And so I was on the football team. And so, like, I had a place, but it was more kind of with the smarter kids. I felt like I didn't belong, but I was trying to be one of the smarter kids. I was an athlete, but I wasn't like, you know, the cheerleaders wouldn't date me. Actually, I. I've told the story before, but I did date Renee Zellweger. She was in my.

Ray Purcell [00:10:59] Listen to that backdoor brag.

John Dehlin [00:11:01] I know, I know. Whenever I can, sometimes people email me. Why do you always have to mention Renee Zellweger? It's like, hey, how many Oscar. How many Oscar winners have you dated? You know, like, I mentioned it every time I can. But yeah, we dated all through high school, but she would only see me. She would have me come to her house or talk to me on the phone, but she would never, like, go to the dance with me because she

Ray Purcell [00:11:23] didn't want people to see her. With the Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:11:24] No, no, no, no. It wasn't that. It was more that I wasn't like the football stud.

Ray Purcell [00:11:29] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:11:30] You know what I mean?

Liz Cannon [00:11:31] So she was a popular girl.

John Dehlin [00:11:32] I'm assuming she was super popular. Yeah, she was.

Liz Cannon [00:11:35] To maintain that image.

John Dehlin [00:11:36] She was great. She was like. She was. She was a cheerleader, she played basketball, she ran track. She was popular. She was great. She was super fun. We had a lot of fun together. But anyway, yeah, high school was great, but I was like, super mormon. Never. I'm in Texas, right? Never tried beer still to this day, haven't never tried a cigarette, never tried any drugs. Was a virgin when I got married. Like to answer how Mormon I was, that's how Mormon I was.

Liz Cannon [00:12:03] Yeah, yeah, we say Mormon.

Ray Purcell [00:12:04] Mormon.

Liz Cannon [00:12:05] I like to say the most. Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:12:09] Yeah, I was Mormon.

Ray Purcell [00:12:10] And it's. It's funny, like, we were raised in Utah, both of us, and Mormonism is your identity. In Utah, it's your identity. But in Katy, Texas, Mormonism was your identity, but it was your identity in a completely different way than it is being a Mormon in Utah.

John Dehlin [00:12:24] It's kind of cool to be a Mormon outside of Utah. Yeah. Because it makes you different. It gives you an identity. And you're being taught. You're like Saturday's warriors, saved for the last days to usher in the second Coming, and you get your patriarchal blessing. And you're just like. You feel like a soldier for Jesus. You don't think of it that way. Soldier. Soldier for the Lord.

Ray Purcell [00:12:42] Y.

John Dehlin [00:12:43] And so I loved it, but I was also a bit of an odd duck, but I had a great high school experience and. But I was super Mormon.

Liz Cannon [00:12:51] Okay. And then after high school, did you serve a mission?

John Dehlin [00:12:54] Yeah, yeah, I went to byu. Went to the. Went to Oz. You know, like, Dorothy Provo was like, Oz. I wanted to meet the wizard. And. Yeah. BYU honors dorms. Went on a mission to Guatemala. Yeah.

Liz Cannon [00:13:08] And how did you like byu?

John Dehlin [00:13:11] I freaking loved byu, you know, until the end. But it was like Elder Holland, president. Elder Holland, now the. One of the apostles, was president of BYU at the time. I was in a Book of Mormon class with Elder Holland, and I, you know, got to.

Liz Cannon [00:13:30] Did it live? Sorry to interrupt you.

John Dehlin [00:13:32] No, no, no.

Liz Cannon [00:13:33] Did it live up to your expectations? Because I know. I mean, growing up in Utah, BYU is like, if you're a member of the church, that's your goal. Right. I mean, I worked crazy hard to get into byu, and I think I was. I had a pretty good idea of what BYU would be like because I grew up in Utah. But I've heard from people that, you know, didn't grow up in Utah, come from outside of the state and attend byu. Sometimes they're disappointed it's a different version than what they had anticipated. Was it everything you hoped it would be?

John Dehlin [00:14:03] It was more. It was better than everything I hoped it would be because not only did they have faithful professors, but they had super smart professors at the time who were also liberal. And so they would, like, teach evolution as being true. And they would say, you know, no is not a true Story and the age of the earth is billions of years and not 6,000. Like, it was blowing my mind, but in a cool way. But there were cute girls. You know, I'd never been around so many cute Mormon girls, so I could date like a storm and have these cool professors that were brilliant. I had a lot of fun. I had a. I had a blast at byu. So that was my experience. But, you know, I know it's different for everyone.

Ray Purcell [00:14:45] So you said, love, Bill. It was great until the end. What happened in the end that changed.

John Dehlin [00:14:50] I mean, by the end, it feels a little bit like a meat market. Like you're just trying to find someone to date and you're dating different people and you got to. I felt like I. I had been accepted to law school, but I felt like this was my last chance to get married. So I was dating two or three or four girls, trying to decide which one I would propose to, and it just got stressful and just too Mormon and too. Yeah, I needed to. It felt like a box after a while, but it was everything I wanted and needed at the time. But by the time I was done, I left with Margi and we were just like, we're out of here, man. It's time to go live.

Liz Cannon [00:15:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:23] The real life. But it was great.

Liz Cannon [00:15:25] So where did you go?

John Dehlin [00:15:28] We got married in the D.C. temple, and I got a job with Bain Company, which is this management consulting firm that Mitt Romney started. Helped start. And I, you know, so I was in management consulting, and then I got into the computer industry, ended up at Microsoft. And so that's. That's kind of where things got serious for me, church wise.

Liz Cannon [00:15:49] Yeah. So that, I mean, segues perfectly into my next question. So here you are. This. Because you have a master's degree in instructional technology.

John Dehlin [00:15:58] Right.

Liz Cannon [00:15:59] So this educated professional working for Microsoft, how do you. How did you transition from that world to the podcasting nonprofit world? You know, tell us about the inception of the Open Stories foundation and what inspired you to start Mormon Stories.

John Dehlin [00:16:16] So I always had. So I was super devout, but I was also kind of a questioning kid. And so, like, early on in high school, I remember I was in seminary all four years, seminary president, all that stuff. But, like, you know, I was. I was being raised Mormon during the Bruce R. McConkey type Mormonism. And your listeners will have no idea what I'm talking about.

Ray Purcell [00:16:35] But I feel. And the spirit seems to recall the most poor, powerful story I can tell, and the most powerful testimony I can bear is one of the. Atoning sacrifice of Jesus.

John Dehlin [00:16:46] There we go. That Bruce Army Congress, There we go. Somebody else's Mormon or another Bruce Armaconk, who's a super ultra conservative Mormon apostle. And he wrote this book called Mormon Doctrine that now people have never heard of it. Back then it was like the fifth book of Mormon scripture. But I was taught growing up that black people were black because in a previous life as spirit children, they weren't as valiant, they weren't as righteous in this pre existence. And so they're sent to earth with this dark skin because of a curse, because of their wickedness. So that's the type of. The gay people were evil, that gay people were dirty and filthy and loathsome. Like, that's the kind of Native Americans were cursed too, with dark skin. Like all of that. That was the type of Mormonism I had been raised in. And so like a lot of that just didn't seem right to me. But I just put it on the shelf, you know, Put it on the shelf. I also once divided the number of Mormons in the world by the number of people in the world. I did this in high school and I'm like less than 1/2 of 1%. Like, if we are God's chosen people, he really plays favorites and he's super inefficient, you know, at like what he does. But like, you know, again, put it on the shelf, put it on the shelf. And anyway, I was at Microsoft and I'd been. I was called as a seminary teacher and I felt like I never really understood Mormon history. Like, you know, I had, I had always been taught that Mormons were persecuted. You know, Mormons are always persecuted. And the. Joseph Smith was always persecuted because he was so righteous. And Satan wants to go after the righteous people, you know what I mean? And I'm just like, really? Like, was that all? Is that it? Like they just wanted to shoot us and kill us and we did nothing wrong and Joseph Smith did nothing wrong.

Liz Cannon [00:18:34] But that was so long ago. Barbaric times. We can't even imagine what life was like, you know, 200 years years ago.

John Dehlin [00:18:39] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And polygamy never made sense to me. And so. Yeah. And so I get called as a seminary teacher teaching early morning seminary. This is around 9 11, 2001. And so I start like, I'm like, I'm really going to learn church history. And so I start just really studying it so I could be the best seminary teacher. Seminary teachers teach early morning religious instruction to high school kids. So you wake up at 5 or 5:30, you get to the church by 6am and from 6am to 7am you're teaching these sleepy high school kids. So I was just teaching the high school kids. And. And the more I learned, the more troubled I got. Like, I learned about Joseph Smith's polygamy. I learned about problems with the Book of Mormon. I learned about problems with the Book of Abraham. I learned about racism in the church. And I started becoming more sympathetic to gay and lesbian people. And I, you know, about a year and a half into my seminary teaching, my faith just exploded. And this is about 2001.

Liz Cannon [00:19:39] So where. Where were you learning? Where were you getting this information from?

John Dehlin [00:19:42] Yeah, the Internet existed in 2001, but there was no Mormon stories, there was no CES letter. There's Sunstone was barely online. So, yeah, this is. There's this thing called a book. You have to read it. It's made of, like, paper and, you

Ray Purcell [00:19:59] know, you have to go to this thing called a library.

John Dehlin [00:20:01] You did. You literally had to go to a library. So I check out these books. Like, you know, Michael Quinn has these books, and Simon Southerton had a book called Losing a Lost Tribe about DNA and the Lamanites and Fawn brody, David O. McKay's niece, a Mormon prophet's niece, has a wonderful biography called no Man Knows My History about Joseph Smith. And there's a great important book called, called An Insider's View of Mormon Origins. And it just came out right in those early 2000s. It's about a Mormon CES instructor that spent his life teaching church education only to learn the church wasn't true. And he explains how the Book of Mormon was created, and he explains all the problems with Joseph Smith's first vision story. And. And I had a cousin who's a dermatologist in Orem, his name is Rick Parkinson. And he, Margi and I were visiting him, and he goes, john, did you ever know. Did you ever know that that papyrus that Joseph Smith bought and SETI translated back when they didn't know how to read Egyptian, that later it was discovered when they thought it had been burned in a fire, and they rediscovered it and then they had Egyptologists translate it, and the word Abraham doesn't even appear anywhere in the entire papyrus. You know, and I'm just like, I 31 years old and I never heard this story. It just blew me away. So I had this massive faith crisis. Blew me out of the water. I was depressed for, like, three years. I, like, I didn't shave. I looked like you. You know what I Mean, like. No, no, you look great. I had. That's like a George Michael version. I'm. I'm showing my age. He was a singer.

Ray Purcell [00:21:45] Because I gotta have faith. The faith, the faith. I faith, the faith, the faith.

John Dehlin [00:21:49] That's good. You guys are a good team. This is good.

Ray Purcell [00:21:53] Okay, so real. So real quick.

John Dehlin [00:21:54] Yeah.

Ray Purcell [00:21:55] So for me, raised Mormon, born into the church, raised in the church. So the first thing for me, it sounds like what you were going through in 2001. I still remember my first time ever getting any kind of, like, doubt. I was nine years old. We lived in Samoa, but we lived on a church campus.

John Dehlin [00:22:12] So I talked Samoa, Samoa. I gotta have you on Mormon stories, dude.

Liz Cannon [00:22:16] Yes. Sweet.

Ray Purcell [00:22:17] I've always wanted to be true Lamanites, Polynesian. I'm in it to win it. I would be honored.

Liz Cannon [00:22:24] Really.

Ray Purcell [00:22:24] Anyway, so we're living there and I'm nine years old, and they're teaching. Like I said, they teach religion in or they teach Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:22:30] Yeah, we're Lamanites.

Ray Purcell [00:22:31] Yeah, we're Lamanites. Yeah. Hagoth, baby. That's where all the muscles come from, is from Hagoth. Half Nephite, half Nephite, half Lamanite.

Liz Cannon [00:22:38] Woo.

Ray Purcell [00:22:39] Dare to find someone else that's half Nephite, half lamanite. Anyway, so 9 years old and we're in class. Sister Nona was my teacher, and up until nine years old, all I've ever been taught is, it's not the church is true or false. It's either the church is true or the church is true. That's all there is. That's all it is.

John Dehlin [00:22:58] The church is true.

Ray Purcell [00:23:00] You know, that's good. And so at 9 years old, I'm sitting there in class and Sister Nonu tells a story of her husband. He's out in Samoa and he's tracting and he's knocking on all these huts and he's hot and he's sweaty and the people keep turning him away and he's so frustrated. And he said. And she said. He turned to his companion and he shook his fist in the heavens and he said, joseph Smith, if you're up there and you lied about the Book of Mormon, when I get to heaven, I'm going to punch you in the face. And it was funny, but that was the first time in my life that couldn't be. It may not be true was entered into my brain at nine years old. And from nine years old, from that moment on, there's always that little doubt in the back of my mind when. When Was your first, was it when you're going through and teaching seminary, when you start reading?

Discovering Church History Problems

John Dehlin [00:23:43] Oh, no, no, no, no. I mean I, you know, learning about my grandma and being the daughter of a polygamous family, you know.

Liz Cannon [00:23:49] Yeah. You mentioned in high school you like some of these, you know, issues started to arise and you were questioning them.

John Dehlin [00:23:54] Oh, I mean I was born, I was born nine years before blacks in Mormonism were even able to hold the priesthood. So like for a good chunk of my early years, black people were second class citizens in the church I lived in. Like, I remember when the revelation came that black people could now like be actual legitimate, full members of the church. And I was just like, okay, yay. You know what I mean? Like, you know what I mean? It was like, that's kind, thank you. So I, I doubts all along but, but I was shelved them because like church is true. Like you said, it's true.

Liz Cannon [00:24:35] Ask why did you. Okay, because there's a lot of reasons why people either straight up ignore or try to justify and you know, often a lot of people try to reconcile their doubts. But what was your reason for shelving those doubts? Was it that you, the church meant too much to you, like emotionally? Or were you afraid of discovering the truth?

John Dehlin [00:24:59] No, no, no. I was fully bought into this idea that this was God's one and only true church on the earth, that we were chosen. And by the way, we were Mormon. Just like black people were black because they were less righteous in the pre existence, we were Mormon because we were the most righteous and the most valiant, you know, in the top 1/2 of 1% in the pre existence, we were Heavenly Father's chosen children and we, we were on the earth to be soldiers for the Lord, to usher in the second coming of Jesus. Like I just bought all that and that as Mormons we got to go to the highest degree of heaven, the celestial kingdom. We got to, you know, be, be, become God someday, rule over our own planets. Like that was real to me. That, that was all just, that's it, you know, and it's just your identity, it's just like it gives you meaning, it gives you identity, gives you purpose, it makes you feel superior. Like that. The biggest thing was I felt better than everybody. Like yes, I wasn't a cheerleader, yes, I wasn't a football player, I wasn't the smartest kid, but I was the most righteous kid in the entire city.

Ray Purcell [00:26:06] You're the most chosen kid.

John Dehlin [00:26:08] Yeah, I was more, I was more righteous than all the Mormon kids. You Know what I mean? So it was just this huge ego trip, and. But it was also kind of the sweet, optimistic. Like, I'm good. Like, I'm like Donny Osmond. I am, like, righteous and pure, and I'm like, I'm noble and great. You know what I mean? That's how I felt. I felt. No. And it sounds so prideful and arrogant, but for me, it was just.

Ray Purcell [00:26:31] And I don't feel like it. In a weird way, it is, but it isn't, you know? Cause I felt the same way in a lot of ways. You know, you feel like you're the chosen people, but you don't really go about it in an arrogant way for the most part. But then sometimes you feel like, okay, yeah, I'm better than that black guy. I'm better than. Than that non Mormon. You know what I mean?

Liz Cannon [00:26:52] It's a weird. It's a quiet arrogance.

Ray Purcell [00:26:54] Yes. That's a good way of putting it.

Liz Cannon [00:26:55] To be humble. Right. Like, humility is huge. And you want to be kind to other people and not boast.

John Dehlin [00:27:01] Exactly.

Liz Cannon [00:27:02] But deep down, you're like, yeah,

John Dehlin [00:27:07] like, I'm, like, not swearing. I'm not having sex. I'm not doing drugs or drinking. I'm not getting girls pregnant. I'm not. I'm being nice to everybody. You know, like, what's. What's wrong with that?

Liz Cannon [00:27:18] Right.

John Dehlin [00:27:19] At least you feel that, you know, you're arrogant, but you don't know it. And it's kind of sweet. It's weird. It's weird to be Mormon.

Liz Cannon [00:27:25] Yeah. To say the least. So, okay, so you were. You were living in D.C. at the time?

John Dehlin [00:27:31] No, I was in. Well, no, I was in Seattle working for Microsoft.

Ray Purcell [00:27:37] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:27:37] Yeah. Yeah.

Liz Cannon [00:27:38] So, yeah. You accept this, you know, job as a seminary teacher.

John Dehlin [00:27:42] Yeah.

Liz Cannon [00:27:42] You start researching. I mean, when you really dove into your research, what were the emotions that came up for you? Because when I first, like, it was at byu, like, I have a similar story. I mean, I grew up.

John Dehlin [00:27:57] You've been on Mormon Stories podcast.

Liz Cannon [00:27:59] Yes. Check it out if you want to hear. But, you know, similarly, I grew up. The church was everything to me. Like Ray said. I didn't ask, is this true or untrue? My question was, this is true. So how can I be a better Mormon? Always not. Could it ever be false? I'm losing my train of thought.

John Dehlin [00:28:21] So you're asking, like, when I had the faith crisis.

Liz Cannon [00:28:23] Well, so. Oh, so, okay. So, you know, I'm at byu, excited to be there, you know, fresh eyes. I'm like, Oh, I finally made it. And it was in my first Book of Mormon class that I started to learn things, especially about early church history, that I felt had been taught to me in a different way growing up. And so the point I'm trying to make here is the number one emotion that came up for me was this feeling of betrayal.

John Dehlin [00:28:49] Yeah.

Liz Cannon [00:28:50] And along with that came anger and resentment and all of this. What was it like for you when you first. I mean, when it was like, okay, I can't hide from this evidence any longer.

John Dehlin [00:29:00] Yeah. I think betrayal is the number one thing. You know, it's. It's weird that Joseph Smith had 30 wives. It's weird that he lied to his own wife about it. It's weird that all these scriptures, you know, all these scriptures aren't what they claim to be. Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham. That's all weird and it's problematic. But, you know, like they say with Richard Nixon and Watergate, the COVID up is way worse than the actual crime itself. And once it's. It's one thing to know all these things about Joseph Smith, it's another thing to find out that there's been a book that tells you everything you need to know that's been in existence since 1945. It was written by a prophet's niece, but you were told to stay away from it because it's anti Mormon.

Liz Cannon [00:29:43] What book is this? I'm.

John Dehlin [00:29:44] It's the book. No, it's the book no Man Knows My History by Fawn Brody. It's the best. To this day, it's the best biography on Joseph Smith. It blows. Richard Bushman's rough stone Rolling out of the water. No comparison. And you just realize you've been misled. You, but not just misled, intentionally, systematically misled. Told to avoid the truth, taught a false version, and then you've based your whole life on it. Now what's confusing about me, what's different about my story than like a lot of women that I meet or a lot of other people, is that I was like, I'd worked for three of the top five companies in the world. The three of the most desirable companies in the world. Three of the five most desirable companies in the world. I'd work for Bain, Arthur Andersen and Microsoft like I was making six figures. I had kids, I had a wife, I had a good family. So I couldn't like, go, you know, poor me, you know what I mean? So that's what kept it from, like really causing me. Because. Because some of the people that I meet who go through a faith crisis and they, like, gave up the career they wanted or gave up some of a true love that they wanted, you know, whatever it is, like, or just sacrifice so much of their life. They, they sometimes are suicidal. I never got to the point where I was suicidal, but I certainly felt super betrayed. It felt like your parents raise you as, as, as your own, their own child. You think that they're really your parents, and then you find out they lied to you, that they stole you as a baby, and you, you know, you really, they really weren't your parents. Like, it's like that's, it's just the shock. And then you, you know, you have an identity crisis. You're like, would I have married my wife if I hadn't been? Would I have had these kids? Would I have taken a different career? Who am I now? You know, do I, you know, what, what fun did I give up? You know, how I could have had more fun dating? I could have, like, experimented with stuff like you did. And again, this sounds like first world problems, but I was deeply depressed for

Liz Cannon [00:31:44] years and I, and I think, you know, for listeners who aren't familiar with Mormonism or other high demand religions, there's no way to completely understand what we're saying unless you've been through it. But leaving a high demand religion, it. For me, it was one of the most significantly challenging experiences of my life, on par with the loss of my siblings and my divorces. It was brutal because like you said, it's not just, you know, it's not just your community. Although there's something to be said about losing your tribe and your community. It's not just your faith, which there's something to be said about losing your faith. It is a core component to your identity and like, who you are as a person. And so you do, you, you're kind of, you have to completely reconstruct your worldview, your sense of self. Yeah, I mean, everything. So you're married at this time. Where was Margi at and how did she respond to your doubts?

Leaving Microsoft and Starting Mormon Stories

John Dehlin [00:32:41] So Margi's parents converted to the church in D.C. when she was like 7 or 8 years old. So she was raised Mormon, my wife, but she was never like this pioneer stock, multigenerational thing. And her parents weren't ever, they were always devout, but they, you know, there's a difference between converts and like multigenerational Mormons. And so Margi was committed. She ran cross country, byu. She was an athlete, good student, great human. She was committed to the church. But it wasn't in her bones. So when I went through it, I told her I lost my faith. She cried. But then she was like, well, what book do you want me to read? And, you know, I'm just like, well, read Von Brody. You know, read no Man Knows My History. And she read it. And by the time she's like, okay, what do you want to do? Because I don't believe it either, anymore. So I'm super lucky because, you know, we're like Scientology or Jehovah's Witnesses in the sense that in many Mormon marriages, you say that to your spouse and it's. It's splitsville.

Liz Cannon [00:33:40] It's.

John Dehlin [00:33:40] It's. I'm taking the kids.

Liz Cannon [00:33:41] That was my experience. I mean, that is 101st. My first. My first marriage. That is 100. The basis for.

John Dehlin [00:33:48] You guys still loved each other when you got divorced.

Liz Cannon [00:33:50] Yeah, yeah. I mean, that decision. I've talked about this in previous episodes on the podcast, but that was definitely a decision made on my part out of love and mutual respect for this person, but also recognizing that. And we're going to get into. I'm going to ask you about this later. Mixed faith marriages. But ultimately coming to this conclusion that, you know, this is never going to work if I, you know, choose to be authentic and leave the church. And. And you are so lucky because not only is. Not only for obvious reasons, is it nice that you had a wife that was supportive to you, but for a lot of people who leave the church, they don't have anyone, let alone a spouse. So that is a really. Yeah. Beautiful.

John Dehlin [00:34:32] Is your first still out of the. In the church? Is he still in the church?

Liz Cannon [00:34:36] Yeah, remarried. I bet he has two kids by now. I know he has one for sure.

John Dehlin [00:34:40] But if he ever leaves the church, he's going to be like, what did I do?

Liz Cannon [00:34:45] No, I think every day. I think every day he's like, damn, I dodged that bullet. Look at that shit show. Okay, let's see. Okay, so I appreciate that you brought up the depression and some of the harder aspects surrounding your. Because you've spent the last 15 years interviewing people on their personal crisis of faith. And, you know, for many of us, eventual departure from the church. And so if anyone understands the complexity, it's you. Is there anything else that you want to share as far as what was going on for you during that time or.

John Dehlin [00:35:22] Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I. It took me a long time to answer your question, but. But the. The reason why I started a podcast and left Microsoft, so, like, I'm working at the highest levels of the company, literally with some of the top. With the top presidents, vice presidents of the company making a couple hundred grand a year. Why in the freak would I leave? You know, But I was depressed and I wanted, you know, I wanted a sense of meaning and purpose. And I had lost Mormonism. And so I was just like, what is. What am I here for? Am I just going to sell more software? Like, is that my. Just make a lot of money and sell more software? That was not filling for me.

Liz Cannon [00:35:59] Did you ever question joining any other kind of religion or faith?

John Dehlin [00:36:04] Not at the time, no. At the time, I. Because of my inoculation at byu, where I had these liberal professors, I didn't believe you had to be an orthodox believer to remain in the church. I immediately started reading about these progressive and liberal Mormons that stayed in the church, but as kind of unorthodox believers. I learned about Judaism. I don't know if people know this, but there are different flavors of Judaism. And I learned about, you know, Reformed Judaism, which is actually a form of Judaism where you don't have to believe in God, you don't have to believe in Moses, who's the founder of Judaism, you don't have to believe the Bible's historical and you can have a bar mitzvah about mitzvah and go to temple and, you know, do all the traditions. And I'm just like, well, Mormonism can do that. That you could just not be an orthodox Mormon and just stay in the church. So I. It was another 14 years after I stopped believing that I stayed in the church and then say, 14 years after, after, no longer believe. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. So. So leaving. Leaving was never really an option for me. I was just. I loved it too much and was too committed to it, but I. I was unfulfilled in my job. And so. Did you want to ask a question? You were. You looked like, no.

Ray Purcell [00:37:21] Oh, it was just. I've heard you talk about. Is it the January 6th, September 6th? The September 6th?

John Dehlin [00:37:27] Yeah.

Ray Purcell [00:37:27] Is that the people you're talking about, the professors that you're talking about that you looked up to when you were at BYU?

John Dehlin [00:37:32] So the September 6th. None of them were actually professors at BYU at the time, but they were all excommunicated at the time I was at BYU. So for those who don't know the September 6th when I was at BYU, there were these scholars, these feminists, these historians. They were basically saying, hey, there's problems in church history. Hey, the church doesn't Treat women like they should. The church doesn't treat people of color like they should. And the church was, like, sick of intellectuals questioning the church, causing people to doubt. And so they, they, they picked a month in 1993, in September of 1993, and they excommunicated six scholars all at once. A couple others before and after. And it was just known as this dark day. And it took another 10, 15 years for the Mormon Church to rebound because it basically silenced all the critics, all the intellectuals, all the historians. And it wasn't until Mormon's story started again and some other things happened. The blog blogger NaCl, where Mormons felt like they had enough courage to start asking questions again. So that happened while I was at byu. But it was certainly formative for me when I decided to start the podcast, hit my depression, decided that I was going to leave Microsoft and make this. My cause was going to be like, this is the reason why I'm going to live. I am going. It was too hard to have a faith crisis. Too many people were suffering. There were no resources available. I went to my bishop and stake president. I'm like, help me. What do I do about polygamy? What do I do about the Book of Mormon? They're like, oh, no, it's true. Like, why are you asking questions? And I'm just like, these guys have no clue. So I left Microsoft and started my podcast a year later. And the goal was to not. To. Not to take the church down. It was the opposite. It was to say, look, the church has tried suppressing and punishing doubters and questioners. It's just gonna. It's gonna keep being an issue. They're just. They're punting. They're. Yeah, they're kicking the ball down the field. But there's going to be this day of reckoning where if they don't deal with it now, they're going to deal with it worse later.

Ray Purcell [00:39:35] Let's get it on the table.

John Dehlin [00:39:36] Exactly. Kind of sounds like I'll do the church of favor. I'm going to. I'll do this. I'll just. I'll just start this podcast and I'll talk about all the things that bishops and stake presidents don't want to talk about, all the things the church is excommunicating people about. But I'll do it in a faithful way so that we could all get on the same page, deal with all the heart issues, deal with feminism, deal with racism, deal with sexism, deal with homosexuality. Joseph Smith will deal with it all. And Then when we're done, we'll all hold hands, we'll sing Kumbaya, and the church will be this amazing place that's hospitable for everybody. So I started the podcast in 2005. About five years later, I started the non profit, and the whole idea was just to promote communities of healing, support and growth and content for Mormons in faith crisis, to save marriages, to prevent suicides, to prevent LGBT suicides, to prevent depression, to alleviate anxiety, and then for those who had to leave the church, to help them find meaning and purpose and joy outside of Mormonism. So that's. That's why I did all that well.

Liz Cannon [00:40:49] And I can say, and I know this from firsthand experience, you have accomplished just that. When I was going through my crisis of faith, it was two years prior to the publication of the CES letter, which has been instrumental for a lot of people in leaving. But when I started going through it, I didn't know anyone else that was going through it. I couldn't talk about it with anyone. I told Ray, when I first started researching and looking up that anti Mormon literature, I felt dirty.

John Dehlin [00:41:13] I have to say that in quotes. You have to say anti Mormon literature in quotes.

Liz Cannon [00:41:16] I know, I know, because it's so ridiculous.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] Truthful history. You mean factual history. Yeah.

Liz Cannon [00:41:22] But when I was, you know, when I was looking at it, I felt like I was looking at porn. Like, oh, I have to keep this a secret. And I came across Mormon stories, and your podcast was one of. There are two things that got me through that time in my life, because I was suicidal and I was that level of depressed and discouraged, and the betrayal. I mean, I was just like this bitter, angry person. I kind of still am. But I found your podcast, and it was one of the two things that got me through. So I want to thank you for what you're doing. I know you hear that all the time, but I couldn't, you know, I have to offer you my things as well.

The Decision to Go Public and Its Costs

Ray Purcell [00:41:57] So I think that's when you build. That's how you really build something beautiful. It wasn't. You weren't looking for fame, you weren't looking for glory. You were.

John Dehlin [00:42:07] It wasn't for money. Yeah, it wasn't for money. Yeah. Wasn't to be popular.

Ray Purcell [00:42:11] It was from the heart. And you're like, I found something. Good at it, because you are good at it. And I'm going to be able to help people and change people. And if that is your base and that is your core, that is when you build something beautiful. You know, and I'm hoping that that's something that we can feel.

John Dehlin [00:42:26] That's why I'm excited about this podcast. Yes, I think you guys are trying to do the same thing.

Ray Purcell [00:42:31] But here's the difference, though. You were ahead of your time. You really were. You were ahead of your time when it comes to these things. 2005, even us doing it now is a completely different thing. When you came out, when you started this in 2005, leaders of the church could still lead by saying, because I said so, do it because I had said so. And everybody would just do it because they said so. But now information is so readily available now you can't do that anymore, you know, like in the church. For people that are listening to this that aren't Mormon. When you're a kid, you're like five or six years old, you get up on the first Sunday of the month, and you get up on this pulpit in front of everybody in the congregation and you say, I like to bear my testimony because I know the church is true. You can't do that anymore. Now it has to be. I know why the church is true. Okay, if you know the church is true, tell me why the church is true. I know how the church is true. Okay, if you know how, tell me how the church is true. And you can't just make members, like you said, and I did the same thing. You can't just make members. Put it on a shelf. You have a doubt, just put it on the shelf. God will take care of it in the end. God will take care of it sometime. Like you said, fourth and third, 50. Let's just put this thing away and keep punting it. And keep punting it, you know, but, yeah, you were.

Liz Cannon [00:43:45] And this, you know, like your pioneer ancestors, you have pioneered in a lot of ways, the space for a lot of people. It's interesting to hear you talk about that dilemma that. And that's a light word to place on it, but that you felt when you realized the church wasn't true and you're feeling like life has no purpose, you know, a little bit meaningless. And I think that speaks to just, again, how much our identities rest on the church, our sense of self. Because had you lost your faith, but still felt whole and complete because you had a healthy sense of self outside of that, you might not have had.

John Dehlin [00:44:22] I did not.

Liz Cannon [00:44:23] Yeah. But beautiful. I mean, obviously something really beautiful has come from it. So I can imagine, because again, now, like, kind of I'm reiterating or being redundant, but now it's a little bit easier to talk about your doubts. Oh, yeah, there's this wave of decline

John Dehlin [00:44:44] in membership night and day.

Liz Cannon [00:44:46] Yeah, it's almost like. Yeah, it's like there are established communities. You're not the black sheep of your community. Like, you're gonna have other people you can connect with, resources you can find. But when you first started, that didn't exist, like we've said. So was there any hesitancy or did you fear any negative potential consequences?

John Dehlin [00:45:05] Yeah, because, you know, you mentioned Ray, the September Six. Like, you know, when I was growing up, if you asked questions, if you spoke out publicly, you were excommunicated. This woman, Fawn Brody, I tell you about her book and how amazing it was. She was excommunicated as the niece of the prophet, more Mormon prophet. Like, so, yeah, when I first bought that microphone in 2005, ordered it from Amazon or whatever, I, you know, and I'm like, do I push this button? Because this, you know, I knew and same thing. I recorded my first episode and I'm like uploading it to the web and I'm like, oh my gosh, do I do this?

Liz Cannon [00:45:37] Here we go.

John Dehlin [00:45:38] Because I kind of felt like it was more likely than not that that this would end in excommunication. So you from the church.

Excommunication and Its Emotional Weight

Liz Cannon [00:45:47] So you had. And I want to. And this is the perfect time to bring that up. I want to talk about that. So for listeners, excommunication in the Mormon Church is the process of a member's name being removed from official church records, which might sound.

John Dehlin [00:45:59] Not just that.

Liz Cannon [00:46:00] Well, that's the thing. It might sound.

John Dehlin [00:46:01] It's just the paperwork.

Ray Purcell [00:46:03] Exactly.

Liz Cannon [00:46:03] That's what I'm saying. Like, in theory, that could sound simple, but for those of us who understand just how heavy the gravity of that can be, it's a major, major event. So tell us about your excommunication. What was going on at the time, what led up to it and just generally how you feel about it.

John Dehlin [00:46:24] Yeah. Again, it's going to sound like first world problems to try and describe this, but you just have to. Unless you've been in, you say high demand religion, other people say cold. Like, unless you've, unless you've been in a super high demand religion and have had that mindset, you really don't get it. But, but imagine, imagine believing that you're going to hell and you really are going to hell. Like Mormons have this weird heaven that's different from other Christians heaven. So there's actually four states in heaven. There's Highest heaven, celestial kingdom, middle. You know, that's for like the Mormons, the righteous Mormons. The middle, the terrestrial kingdom is for like the meh people. And then the celestial kingdom is for like, the murders and the rapists. And it's still such an amazing place that you're taught that people would kill themselves to get there. That's how amazing.

Liz Cannon [00:47:21] Which is.

John Dehlin [00:47:22] So for rapists and murderers. But that's the true telestial kingdom. Then there's a place called outer darkness, which is the Mormon equivalent of hell. And that is reserved for people who. What? Who used to believe in the church and then no longer believe anymore, who deny what they call the light of Christ.

Ray Purcell [00:47:41] Let me reiterate that rapists and murderers are, are not in, they're not in outer darkness.

John Dehlin [00:47:47] No, no. But, but, but apostates. Yep. Excommunicated Mormons are worse than rapists and murderers in heaven. Worse than Hitler. Hitler is in a better spot than me. You know, that's like. And, and, but it's not just that you're not with God. You know, you're not going to become a God. And then, and then, yeah, you're not going to be with your wife, you're not going to be with your kids, you're not going to be with your parents or your siblings. You're removed from everyone you love. You're not with God and you're with Satan for eternity. And it, and it sounds like superhero cartoon, like fantasy land, but it is

Liz Cannon [00:48:26] when you're in the church, that's your truth.

John Dehlin [00:48:28] Yeah. And it's the most stigmatizing, shaming, ostracizing, damning, like Scarlet Letter. It's like. And then you live in Utah. It's the most damning thing that could ever be done to you as a human.

Ray Purcell [00:48:45] So how long were you in your head thinking, I am toying with outer darkness? Like you were in your mind, you were thinking, I'm. My toes are on the edge of this thing. I'm about ready to just fall right in.

John Dehlin [00:48:56] So it's weird because. Because I lost my faith before I ever started Mormon stories. I didn't really believe that that was what was going to happen to me. But it's weird to know that that's what they're going to do to you.

Ray Purcell [00:49:09] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:49:10] And that that's what everyone's going to think about you. So that even makes it more weird because it wasn't like I was thinking. I knew that if there was a God, God was pro truth and pro open discussion of hard things. Pro Honesty pro candor. Like, I had lived long enough. I didn't have my psychology PC by that point, but because I saw what happened with my parents and their divorces and, you know, I just like, secrets kill people. Secrets are toxic and they destroy lives. And, you know, I had had some people in their lives and it was because of secrets and shame. And I'm just like, f all that. F shame. F secrets. Do you guys swear on this podcast?

Liz Cannon [00:49:52] Oh, yeah.

Ray Purcell [00:49:53] Yes, you do?

Liz Cannon [00:49:54] We sure do.

John Dehlin [00:49:56] Yeah. I was just like, screw. I was just like all that stuff, right? If there's a God and there may or may not be God's cool with openness and honesty and truth. So I never feared my eternal salvation, but I did fear, you know, Mormons have a history of violence against, you know, enemies. We have a history of both being acted upon by violent people by enemies and acting violently against them and enemies. And so you live in Utah and you walk around knowing that the church considers you an enemy and that at any moment you could be excommunicated. And at any moment some unhinged, orthodox, crazy Mormon in one of the most gun owning states in the United States. You know, it's scary. You always, like, I would go to bed at night and if I was going to get a drink of water, I would turn out the lights before I would go to the fridge because there was a window. And I'm like, well, if the lights are on and somebody's out there, you know, will they see? You know, could they get a shot? You know, I mean, it sounds if I'm running down the road, jogging, a car's coming, I like switch to the other side because you never know it, honestly, you, you have, you're always having those types of thoughts.

Liz Cannon [00:51:20] It's, and this might be a difficult question, but has anything really scary like that happened to you or what has been maybe the most. I don't know if dramatic's the right word, but as far as some of these negative consequences, have you had anything crazy happen to you?

John Dehlin [00:51:37] I, you know, I went for a long time with nothing. Like, like, I would get a thousand positive emails to every one negative one and never anything super mean. Mormons are really nice generally and kind of passive aggressive, at least in my experience. And that's different. The last six months have been super weird. I think just the way that America has gotten so polarized politically. There's this new movement in Mormonism called Desnat, Deseret Nation, and it's kind of these ultra orthodox, kind of violent Twitter, Mormon Males, mostly.

Ray Purcell [00:52:11] Porter Rockwells.

John Dehlin [00:52:13] Yeah, no, but they, like, I've gotten death threats in the last. In the last six months, but it's hard to know whether they're real. You know what I mean? It's just like dudes without shirts on Twitter with a knife. And then in the caption it says, I'm going to cut you up so bad that your wife won't recognize you. You know, and, you know, I went to the FBI, I went to the police, but there's nothing they can do. And it's hard to know how serious to take that kind of stuff.

Controversy, Critics, and Mormon Apologetics

Liz Cannon [00:52:37] Yeah, so tell us about. Because I. I have an idea of what you're referencing. There's this. Can you tell us about what happened recently with Fairmormon?

John Dehlin [00:52:46] Yeah. Yeah.

Liz Cannon [00:52:47] So brief for people who are unfamiliar what you're dealing with right now.

John Dehlin [00:52:51] Yeah. So for a long time, I mean, the. The truth is, truth wins. And even though. Even though the church, you know, the Internet happens, Google happens, Mormon stories happens, eventually the CES letter happens, and the church is getting its butt kicked with truth by truth. You know, Kate Kelly happens, ordained women happens, feminism happens. You know, Dan Reynolds comes out with this movie about LGBT suicides, and Tyler Glenn leaves the church. Like, the church is just getting pummeled and they start having high profile defections. You know, five, 10 years ago, former stake presidents and bishops, even some general authorities start leaving the church. And the church realized it needed to kind of finally do something. So it started out by. By starting to speak honestly and openly about its history. And it did that for a few years. But that actually made the problem worse because, like, when people found out about these gospel topics, I said. And they said, and they start reading like, Joseph smith had over 30 wives, and some of them were married to other men, and some of them were as young as 14 years old.

Liz Cannon [00:54:04] And yeah, us crazy ex Mormons aren't that crazy. We're not lying. We're blowing smoke.

John Dehlin [00:54:09] Yeah, all that anti Mormon literature turns out to be factual history and super problematic. So the church actually, like, it's almost like a Trojan horse. Truth. The church kind of like bought into the truth movement to its own demise. And the church has just been in this free fall, and there's now a stat out there that like 70 to 80% of the kids raised Mormon in the United States leave the church by age 30. So they're. They're just having this massive defection people. The church is hemorrhaging in droves and they don't know what to do. And so they've always had these apologists. And this term may not be familiar to a lot of people, but it's basically people that defend a religious tradition. And the church has always had them. But recently they've discovered YouTube. So the Mormon apologists have discovered YouTube and they made a bunch of videos that were super boring and tedious and no one watched them. So they got these younger kids, 20 somethings out of BYU, paid actors who were like YouTube fans and they start, you know, like yourself on the shelf, but for the church. And they started making these hip, funny, cool YouTube videos where they're like, sit like it's Saturday Night Live where they're sitting at a news desk with like holding papers and they're cracking jokes and they're trashing me and Jeremy Runnels basically saying, these guys are dumb, these guys are liars. These guys are intentionally destroying families for profit. You know, profiting off of the destruction of families. You know, framing, framing what we do in, in a really violent, like a psychologically violent, super dishonest way. And then like trying to explain why Joseph didn't have sex with all of his wives. And so maybe it shouldn't be a big of a problem and he only

Liz Cannon [00:56:01] had sex with three of them or

John Dehlin [00:56:04] 10, you know, but I mean like using super strained, shoddy academics and, and twisted logic to try and justify all the crazy aspects of Mormon history and doctrine, but using character assassination to call Jeremy Runnels, the author of the CES letter and myself, call us liars, call us dishonest and, and honestly inciting violence. So they, they, they retweeted a video. It's from a Quentin Tarantino movie called Inglorious Bastards, which I've never seen, but it's a scene where this Jewish soldier in a movie takes a baseball bat to the head of a Nazi soldier and bashes his head in. And they put my name on the soldier, the Nazi soldier. And like Jeremy Runnels, you know, I'm the guy that gets it next. And it's this guy just bashing my head in and, and these, these fair Mormon apologists are retweeting these videos that, that then encourages these Desnat guys to send me and my family these photos of, of dudes with knives and guns with my name and, and you know, that kind of thing. And so it's just. But like, these videos are a joke. They're dumb, they're not funny, and they're dishonest. They're not. What's that?

Liz Cannon [00:57:25] Not well founded in any sense. No, it's argument is weak.

John Dehlin [00:57:29] The weird thing is they're lying when they accuse us as being liar. Of being liars. They're making a crap ton of money. Millions and millions and millions of dollars have been funneled to these nonprofits. They're making bank while accusing us of getting rich. So it's, it's this weird Orwellian where they're lying, they're making a crap ton of money, they're being violent in the name of Jesus and it makes no sense. And the videos are dumb. And they had to turn off comments and likes and dislikes because the number of dislikes outweighed the number of likes and the number of negative comments swamped the positive comments like 10 to 1. So it's totally backfired. They're. They're running away with their tails between their legs, but they don't. They don't. How do you escape the truth? Like, how do you skip the truth? I really feel sorry for them in a way.

Ray Purcell [00:58:24] But the problem is that's the world that we live in now. That's what the people want. Before, while we were late and for. While we were waiting for Liz's late ass, remember, we were looking at some YouTubers, we were looking at some podcasts and we're watching it, we're like this, like, I showed him a podcast of a girl that made a million dollars this year and it's like this made a million dollars. Like what? That's what they want. They don't care about facts. They don't care about really even right and wrong. They care about being entertained. And if you entertain them, then they're gonna believe it and that it's a, it's, it's unfair and it's toxic, but it's the world that we live in these days and it's, and it sucks.

John Dehlin [00:58:58] And unfortunately, these videos that fair Mormons put out aren't entertaining. So like, it breaks all around. Yes, they're dumb. So. Yeah. So the church is going to try again. Keep trying, church. You're going to figure it out. Keep trying. I believe in you.

Liz Cannon [00:59:13] Okay, so on the record.

John Dehlin [00:59:15] Yeah.

Liz Cannon [00:59:16] What is. How do you respond to critics who say that you generate doubt in order to increase your relative fame or success or even your, you know, a professional

Ray Purcell [00:59:28] clientele to intentionally break up families for profit? For profit.

John Dehlin [00:59:33] Yeah.

Liz Cannon [00:59:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:34] So if I were about money, I would have stayed at Microsoft because I was making 200,000 plus dollars a year. I had met Bill Gates twice. I was, you know, known by the CEO Steve Ballmer. I worked for the number four vice president at Microsoft. I was on the fast track.

Ray Purcell [00:59:49] And think where you'd be now if

John Dehlin [00:59:50] you'd stayed there and yeah, yeah, oh, I'd have multiple, I'd have three or four million dollars at least if I just held onto my stock options, kept my house in Seattle. Like, yeah, if it were for the money. But it's even worse than that. I left Microsoft and did nine years of graduate school. So I did three years of a master's degree in instructional technology, then a six year psychology PhD. You try going to grad school in your 30s and 40s with a wife who doesn't work outside the home and four teenage children and you see what that does to you financially. Like, I'm still driving. We have a 20 year old car and a 17 year old car, a minivan. Like, you know, we finally bought a new car like just a couple years ago. It's a Subaru Outback. We live in a modest home. Like we, I, it will take me 20. I will never be able to make up the money I lost just for leaving Microsoft. I went from $200,000 a year to like $15 an hour. Like that was the sacrifice that I made. Like, didn't do it for the money.

Liz Cannon [01:00:54] How about the fame?

John Dehlin [01:00:55] Yeah, I mean, the fame. Like, I mean, it's been interesting. Like I, I was in a movie that was on hbo. I've been on Good Morning America, you know, I've been on VH1. Is that still a thing? Like, you know, I've been on npr, but you know, I've been in the New York Times, but for my excommunication, like, that wasn't fun. Like, go get excommunicated. Sometimes you get death threats. Like, you, you sit in the hot

Ray Purcell [01:01:17] seat for $15 an hour.

John Dehlin [01:01:19] Yeah. Live in a state that's. Live in a state surrounded by believing Mormons where you walk around every day and people recognize you wherever you go. Your kids are subjected to haters and mean people. Your wife, you know, you do it. You go do it and see how much fun where, where so many people hate you. And literally the church, the church came out with a bubble chart a few years back. And it's like top enemies of the Church and my name is there. It's like, it's like me. It's like me and porn, you know, and Jeremy Runnels and Kate Kelly.

Ray Purcell [01:01:54] You made it.

John Dehlin [01:01:55] Yeah, John, you made it. I know, I know. Like, it's like anybody who thinks I do this for fun or for fame or for money? No, it's crazy. Like, why did I get a 6 year PhD? I didn't even need a 6 year PhD, but I wanted to help people. And if I'm coming to people who are depressed, who are suicidal, who have eating disorders, who have sexual addictions, and I'm saying that in air quotes like, or their marriage is falling apart, I want to be able to help them. And you know, you know, earth to, you know, whoever critics, Tony Robbins didn't get a PhD. Like, you can be a life coach without doing all that. But, but again, no, I'm just here to help people. And yes, now I have a nonprofit that makes. I make a good living now. But I've worked super hard for that. You know, I. 20 years I've been working at this. If you start from the beginning, and I don't apologize, like, we don't question doctors, how much they make. We don't question architects or engineers or, you know, what's wrong with, with earning a living, saving marriages, preventing suicides, keeping families together. That's how I think of it.

Ray Purcell [01:03:03] And doing something that you passionate about and you love, isn't that the meaning of life is to find something that you love and you're passionate about?

John Dehlin [01:03:08] I think it's the best.

Ray Purcell [01:03:09] And if you can make a living

John Dehlin [01:03:09] of it, yeah, it's the best thing you can do is just find a passion that makes the world a better place and do it. And I don't apologize for it. And frankly, I'll do this for as long as my donors support it. The second that they're like, we don't support you anymore, I'm like, okay, check it out, Leo. This is, this is not a joyride. You know what I mean?

Liz Cannon [01:03:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:29] But as long as I'm helping a lot of people and I've got hundreds of thousands of listeners, right? Like millions and millions, millions of annual YouTube views. Like, we're reaching people. The church changes weekly because of what we do on the podcast. Now. There's no, there's no question. So it's the coolest thing a Mormon, ex Mormon can do is kind of like directly improve either the church or the lives of the people that are in the church or the lives of the people that leave the church. You know, it's the best thing ever.

Liz Cannon [01:04:01] So that's a perfect segue to my next question. What do you perceive your influence to be on Mormonism and in regards to Mormon apologetics?

John Dehlin [01:04:10] So before I started Mormon Stories, nobody wanted to talk about the difficult things gay people you know, the church, just for gay people, it was just like, go do reparative therapy, stay celibate, or go marry. Marry a straight person and live a miserable life and go get reparative therapy. Now the church, you know, no longer encourages reparative therapy. No longer, you know, is afraid, is terrorized about LGBT suicides, and has admitted that it's not a choice to be gay and, you know, and is. It is way more friendly and kind LGBT people than they've ever been. So that's kind of. And that's. None of this is all me. This is. I'm one of several people that have contributed to the environment. But I think we've played a role before me. None of the members knew the problematic church history. Almost none. Less than 1% of the members knew the problematic history. And the church excommunicated anyone who talked about it. Fast forward now. The church released Rough Stone Rolling Sells at a Deseret book, which is a biography of Joseph Smith that basically says the same thing that no man knows my history did. But by a church stake president and patriarchy. The church released the Gospel topics essays. The church talks openly and encourages their members in some scenarios to get more educated about its history. That's not in the church. We've. We've made excommunication a sacrament, like an honor. It's gone from being this thing that you're shamed to where, like, it's a badge of coolness to get excommunicated. Because if you get excommunicated in the 2010s, 2020s, it's because you've done something really cool, something badass, like stood up for women, stood up for LGBT people, stood up for truth telling. So now the church is a lot less likely to excommunicate anyone who speaks out. The church is much more liberal, it's much more progressive. It's been. It's friendlier to women now than it's ever been. It's backtracking on all its racist ideology. It's denounced a lot of that racist stuff that we were all taught growing up. The church has started to denounce and backtrack from, like, in some ways, it's the same old church. It's still a gerontocracy. It's still a patriarchy. It's still racist and sexist and, you know, but in so many ways, there's never been a better time to be Mormon ever. And. And I think that I've played a role in helping the church be better. And the Even better part is it's never been a better time to be an ex Mormon because now, now instead of like feeling alone, there's 170,000 people on ex Mormon Reddit that can find community. There's 13,000 members of the Mormon Stories podcast Facebook group that can all like share stories. There's, there's, you know, 20x, you know, there are more Mormon themed podcasts than any other religious tradition. The ex Mormon subreddit is the largest any ex religious. You know, it's larger than ex Scientologists, ex Joe's Witnesses, ex Catholics, ex Baptists. We have a thriving post Mormon community almost any major city in the United States. You can go to a map on a, on a website called Mormon Spectrum and find a meetup group or a Facebook group of, of progressive and post Mormons in that area. You join it, you have coffee, you have meetups, you know, whatever it is you like to do. You can find an ex Mormon or progressive Mormon that, that, that you like and that you can hang out with. So you're not as lonely, you're not as sad, you're not as desperate. You know, it's like, it's been amazing and I'm just super honored to have been a part of all that.

Thriving After Leaving a High-Demand Religion

Liz Cannon [01:07:56] So I think you've kind of already answered this, but I think what I'm hearing you say is it's all been worth it.

John Dehlin [01:08:03] Yeah, no, it's like when I was Mormon, I was trying to be the perfect Mormon. I was trying to like, feel the Holy Ghost and get my testimony and be the best, most spiritual person and feel the, you know, and like, say the coolest, give the coolest talks. As a Mormon, you be the best husband, be the best father. And I just, I was always doing the right things, but I never felt satisfied. Did I go to the temple, you know, monthly? And I would just never feel the spirit like I thought I would and I would pray to get the Holy Ghost. I never quite feel it and I just always felt like I was on this hamster wheel of like trying to prove my worth and trying to be righteous. And I was never feeling super fulfilled. And oddly enough, I become this ex Mormon podcaster and every day I wake up, like at 5 or 5:30, sometimes 3:30, and I'm like, I got purpose, I got meaning. I'm saving the world, I'm helping people, I'm, I, like, I had to get kicked out of the church to feel all those wonderful things that I thought I was going to feel as a Mormon. So not Only has it been worth it? It's been the most. Other than being a husband and a father, it's been the most rewarding, meaningful thing that, that I could, I have ever done. If I, if I died today and then if there's an afterlife and if I was asked, well, what do you think I'd be like, thumbs up, double thumbs up. Luckiest dude. Luckiest dude I know.

Liz Cannon [01:09:36] Oh, and I, I love that you, I love that you express it that way. Because I think it's important for people to know that not only is their life beyond your membership in the church, like, there's life outside of being a Mormon. Because I think, you know, when people are considering leaving, that can feel overwhelming, you know, like, what am I going to do with my life? What's my purpose? Am I going to be happy? Well, you're just one of many who can agree that, yeah, there's life outside of the church and there's like awesome, powerful, fulfilling, happy, joyous life as well.

John Dehlin [01:10:09] Yeah, we were, yeah, we were talking about this before. Like, see, this hat says thrive. Like, thrive is not an mlm. I don't even sell these hats. I don't even have merch. But I have like six of these hats. Because Thrive is an idea when you're in a high demand religion or, and I don't mean to be disrespectful, if you're in an abusive relationship. What does the abusive partner tell you in the abusive relationship? Any of you guys know gas?

Ray Purcell [01:10:34] What do they tell whatever is gaslighting?

John Dehlin [01:10:36] What do they, what do they tell you about how you're going to do if you leave them?

Liz Cannon [01:10:39] That you'll fail.

John Dehlin [01:10:41] You can't be happy.

Liz Cannon [01:10:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:43] Without them. And unfortunately, high demand religions tell you that you can't be good. If you leave us the religion, you're going to become a prostitute, drug, you know, sex worker, drug dealer, you're going to get divorced, you're going to be a cheater, you're going to become a drug addict, alcoholic, you're going to lose all your money, you're going to, your job's going to fail and you're going to live in the gutter.

Ray Purcell [01:11:06] And once all that said and done, you're going to hell.

Liz Cannon [01:11:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:09] And then you go to hell. Yeah. And then you go to hell. And Thrive is just this testimonial because there's literally no one in the world that's counseled more ex Mormons than me. Tens of thousands of ex Mormons have. I counseled, emailed, talked on the Phone with, been a therapist to whatever. And I'm just here to tell you thrive is an idea that says you can have joy as a Mormon if you love the Mormon Church. Thumbs up. I loved it when I was in it. It's in many ways a great way to live. But, but there's so much joy and healing and growth. And I would say in some ways there's much more of an opportunity for healing, for self awareness, for self knowledge, for self development, better relationships. I'm a better, I have a better marriage now than I ever did as a Mormon. I'm a better, I'm a more faithful husband than I ever was before. I'm a more honest person. I've lost 25 pounds. I'm a better father. Any of my kids will tell you, I'm a way better father now than I was. I make more, I make good money now. I'm happy, I'm healthy, I'm fulfilled. I don't even have gray hair. Like, I'm not saying that it's like all jelly beans and rainbows and unicorns. It's brutal to leave a high demand religion because it's like starting over. It's literally like the Truman show where you're like a baby again, you're being born again, but you like don't know who you are. Do I drink? Do I stay faithful to my spouse? Am I gonna lose my, you know, am I gonna be cursed?

Liz Cannon [01:12:46] I always compare Pandora's box where it's just, you don't, you know, everything was off limits and now nothing's off limits. So you have to redefine your personal morals and values.

John Dehlin [01:12:56] And it's terrifying because that conditioning, all those associations of the world and of what true happiness is and you know, all the non Mormons, they don't have the light of Christ and their darker countenance and that they don't have the light in their eyes. And you know, you're not wearing your garments anymore. There's this sacred underwear that's supposed to protect you and will you cheat on your wife if you're not wearing your garments? You know, all this, you know, all this conditioning, it takes years to break free from that. But I'm here to tell you, my hat is here to tell you that there is healing and growth and joy after Mormonism if you choose that path.

Ray Purcell [01:13:35] I like what you said earlier. You said, fuck guilt, fuck shame. I think I'm paraphrasing. I said F. But no, I really like that you said that because me personally, and we've talked about this on other episodes. Mormonism is not my spirituality. Mormonism is no longer my religion. But Mormonism will always be my tribe. It will always be my tribe. You can't leave. You can go to another tribe, but you're still going to be part of that other tribe. And I think if more people could look at it that way when they're trying to resolve their Mormonism in their own personal faith crises, I think that that can be good. But regardless what I am, both good and bad, a whole lot of that comes from being Mormon and being part of the Mormon tribe.

John Dehlin [01:14:21] Yeah.

Ray Purcell [01:14:22] And like I said, I love what you said about fuck guilt and fuck shame. And I've listened to your podcast before and I know in the earlier years, like, you struggle with, like, ah, can I be a good father? Am I being a good father with the things I'm putting my children through? And talking from someone personally, talking personally from someone who grew up in the faith, the best thing that you can give a child as a parent is removing that guilt and removing that shame from the equation as you are teaching them and as you are leading them and as you are being their father. And there's nothing more beautiful than releasing a child from that guilt and that shame.

Liz Cannon [01:14:58] Thank you.

Ray Purcell [01:14:59] So I appreciate that. I appreciate that you saying. I appreciate that very much.

John Dehlin [01:15:02] Yeah, beautiful.

Liz Cannon [01:15:03] Thank you.

LGBTQ Members, Church Policy, and Mental Health

John Dehlin [01:15:04] No, I have a. I have, I'll just say really quickly. I have, I have kids that are queer, you know, either sexual, sexually, non, you know, normative, or gender non normative. I have kids that have tried, you know, marijuana. I have kids that have been sexually active. And I used to think of all that as bad. And even though I don't do a lot any of that stuff, you know what I mean? Now I'm like, huh, SSRIs or a little bit of marijuana? Like, I don't know, you know, it's in same sex attraction or whatever. Like, my kids can come to me and I'm like, are you happy? That's it. Like, that's. I don't, I don't care who you love. I don't care who you sleep with. I don't care what substances are a part of your life. I don't care if you go to college or not. I care if you have joy and happiness and meaning and purpose in your. And your health is healthy as you can be. And even if you're not healthy right now, I still want to love you. And I'm not saying I'm a perfect dad. My kids will tell You. I make mistakes all the time, but I know that's a better. That is such a better environment to raise kids in. Then, like, oh, you. What? You did what? Oh, you know, that's. I know that's not. As a psychologist, as a. As a psychology PhD, I should say that is no way to raise a kid. Shame and guilt don't promote healing and growth.

Ray Purcell [01:16:30] Not at all.

John Dehlin [01:16:31] You know, even if you're right, you know, even if you're on the right side.

Liz Cannon [01:16:34] Okay. So I appreciate this conversation around shame and guilt, because I know that those are real emotions that not only people leaving the church have to wrestle with, but people still that are members and active in the religion deal with all the time. And. Okay, when it comes to suicide, obviously this is a topic that hits very close to home for me. I just had the pleasure of interviewing Lance Lowry on what it's like to lose siblings to suicide. So for listeners, you'll definitely want to check that episode out. But we talked a lot about the statistics here in Utah and especially with teen suicide. So my question to you is, do you think there is a correlation between the high suicide rate, especially the teen suicide rate here in Utah, and the LDS Church?

John Dehlin [01:17:24] Yeah. This is such an important and a complicated question, because sometimes when you. When you leave a high demand religion and you're feeling angry and frustrated, you want to just like anything you can dump on the church to make it look bad, to get back at it, you want to do that. And. And the suicide thing can, in Utah can kind of be used that way because, you know, because there certainly are, you know, in. When you get a Ph.D. or when you study scientific method and statistics, one of the first things you learn is that correlation is not causation. You ever heard that term before?

Liz Cannon [01:18:04] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:18:04] So, like, just because the rooster crows right before the sun rises doesn't mean that the rooster's crowing is causing the sun to rise. You know what I'm saying? And so. So just because two things happen statistically side by side doesn't mean that either of them is necessarily causing the other. It just means they happen at the same time. So there are. There are probably elements of our culture that do contribute to suicidality. Some of that would be a perfectionism culture. Some of it would be a shame culture. Our standards around sexuality, and that's not just LGBT youth and adults, it's also this shame around masturbation and pornography because, like, 95% of men, and let's just say 60 to 70% of women masturbate right and that's including Mormon bishops and Mormon stake presidents and Mormon general authorities. It's just some are honest about it and some aren't. And if you take something so ubiquitous and then you. You label it. In Mormonism, we say that sexual sin is next to, what, murder. Sexual sin is next to murder in terms of severity. So there's murder and then there's sexual sin. Right. And. And then you've got the pervasiveness of porn and masturbation. Like. Like it's just a hot box for shame and guilt. And so there are. I am aware of suicides from people masturbating and looking at porn and not being able to stop, you know, that

Liz Cannon [01:19:32] sex outside of marriage.

John Dehlin [01:19:33] Sex outside of marriage. And they feel shamed or they get excommunicated by the church.

Ray Purcell [01:19:37] I've said this on. On another episode, I started masturbating at a young age, and I was, like, 8 when I started, you know, but. And I thought I was the only little boy in the world, not in my ward, not in my neighborhood, not in my state, in the world, that masturbated. Because it's that. Like you said, it's that perfectionist standard, and it's that guilt and that shame and it's that sexual. Sexual sins are next to murder, like you said.

Liz Cannon [01:20:04] And I had a similar experience. I've also shared this as well. But I. So in my first marriage, we got pregnant, and we'd been trying for, like, over a year to get pregnant, super excited. And then at 16 weeks, I miscarried. And I never told anyone this until we talked about it, but I had looked at porn, like, a few days before that miscarriage. And for years.

Ray Purcell [01:20:25] Causality, like you said.

Liz Cannon [01:20:26] Yeah, for years I believed that that's why I miscarried. So, I mean, it's like, on both ends of the spectrum. Male, female, I mean, whatever. Just in general, there is so much shame and dysfunction surrounding sexuality.

John Dehlin [01:20:41] And literally, other than, like, sleeping, drinking water or breathing or eating, it'd be hard to pick something more ubiquitous, more common than masturbation. And I'm not trying to, like, be obsessed with that topic, but, like, it is so ubiquitous, it is so common that. That it becomes a plague.

Ray Purcell [01:21:02] I can't be the only boy that thought, and he was the only boy in the world that masturbated and for sure not let into that guilt and that shame.

Liz Cannon [01:21:08] So we're talking about suicide now. We're talking about masturbating now to get back to the question.

John Dehlin [01:21:14] Yeah, yeah. So, you know, in five, you know, 5 to 10% of any population is non normative sexually in terms of sexual attraction and or gender identity. So again, you're taking 5 to 10 of the pop to 5 to 10% of the population and saying that there's same sex attraction is perverted, dark, evil, you know, wicked. So like, yes, and the thing about things like porn and masturbation is you can't stop. Like there are probably people in the world that don't masturbate. Of course there are some people, but you could argue that's not even healthy. You could argue that's actually unhealthy to shut down sexually or to never allow yourself to be attracted to who you're attracted to. So like it's this Pandora's box, it's this perfect storm of ubiquity and, and shame that has to contribute to the suicide rates. Because when I was really into this issue back around Prop 82008 and then the November, November 2015 policy, all that stuff that led up to it with the, you know, battle for same sex marriage, suicide rates in Utah doubled and tripled between 2008 and 2015.

Liz Cannon [01:22:24] And I hate to interject, but for our, our listeners who are unfamiliar with what we're talking about, can you just brief us on those two events that you just described?

John Dehlin [01:22:33] The Prop 82008 was when the Mormon Church did an all out war on the attempts in the United States to legalize same sex marriage. So California had legalized same sex marriage. And then the Mormon Church freaks out and really literally thinks that if, if, you know, if we allow, if there's this idea that as goes California, so goes the nation. So if California legalizes same sex marriage, then it's going to sweep the whole country. And if it sweeps the whole country, then either we're gonna have to change, which is a church, means that God's changing his mind again. He changed his mind about black people, he changed his mind about polygamy and now he's going to change his mind. You know, either the church is going to have to change its mind again, which means God changes his mind, or, or the church is going to become a bigot. Like it's going to be viewed as a bigot. It's one thing if everyone's a bigot, that's okay, but if it's just the Mormons that are bigots, that's going to be a problem. So the church was terrified that same sex marriage was going to sweep the country. And so it literally invested tens of millions of dollars like, it went around all the wealthy Mormons in the United States pulled them into these bishops offices, just wealthy person and bishop. It's like, will you give 100,000, will you give $50,000 to support the church fighting same sex marriage? And so the church got BYU students to fill up office buildings, phoning, you know, manning these phone booths to call Californians. They got on the ballot an initiative that would make same sex marriage illegal. Even though gay, gay people had already started getting married. There had already been thousands of same sex marriages. They wanted to undo it and roll it back. And so they. The church spearheaded an initiative to make same sex marriage illegal in California, spent tens of millions of dollars, marshaled tens of thousands of Mormons in. Mormons in California were asked to, like, pick it and go door to door and to, like, hand out flyers to, to encourage voters to vote against, to take away. This is a religion imposing its religious beliefs on a sovereign state in the United States of America when it was already legalized. And they won. So, so in 19 2008, same sex marriage, same year Obama was made president, same sex marriage was made illegal in California. And for the next several years, it was this super dark time for LGBT Mormons and, and LGBT people across the country. And the Mormon Church led the fight, okay? With its money, money, money. Hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars the church has. And so it took, you know, it took seven, eight years. But finally in 2015, the same year I was excommunicated, same sex marriage was legalized across the country. And the church was so angry that it responded with the super draconian policy in November of 2015, where it said if you, it declared same sex marriage as an act of apostasy, which meant you were in the class of John de Lin. If you engaged into a same sex marriage, which meant you, you know, went to outer darkness, kicked out of heaven, would never be with your family, kicked out of the church. It made it, it declared it an act of apostasy to get same sex married. Which again, let me make this clear. It meant that a same sex married Mormon was worse than a Mormon rapist or a Mormon murder. And I'm not exaggerating. You could literally kill someone or rape a child in Mormonism and you would not necessarily be excommunicated. Excommunication was optional for rapists and murderers in Mormonism, but it was mandatory for people that married someone that they loved and made a lifelong, monogamous, potentially commitment to that person. That's. That was the state that's how bad it got. And so, yes, LGBT depression and suicide and homelessness tripled between 2008, when Prop 8 was when the church began its all out war on same sex marriage, all the way through 2015. And that's what caused Tyler Glenn, the lead singer of Neon Trees, to leave the church. It's what it's part of why Dan Reynolds, the lead singer of Imagine Dragons, like tens or hundreds of thousands of Mormons left the church. People in California, it was like this hemorrhaging, this carnage of Mormon faith and testimony, millennials, just like leaving the church in droves. And so even though the church gives this proclamation in 2015, declares a doctrine, so Russell M. Nelson gives a talk and says this, the 2000, November 2015 policy, make no mistake, this is not a policy, this is a doctrine. This was a revelation from God. And then within two to three years of after declaring this revelation, after all the hemorrhaging, after all the protests, after all the suicides, then, then the church goes, oops, we gotta. There's a God. What? What God? Oh, got a new revelation. God said to roll it back to the way it was before. And you know, so that all happened. And so, yeah, anyway, that's what's going on.

Liz Cannon [01:27:45] This is case in point. You know, people love to. Well, especially people still within the church like to argue, well, all these ex Mormons, they can leave the church and they just can't leave it alone. And what's wrong with you? And why do you have to be so angry? And I'm like, again, case in point right here. This is why we can't leave it alone. Because people are dying, people are hurt, people are cut off from their families, people. I mean, it's just overwhelming. Like, no, I'm not going to leave it alone. I'm going to do anything I can because I know, especially personally, the pain of losing someone to suicide. Yeah, you can bet I'm not gonna leave this alone. I'm gonna do anything I can to do my small part in making sure that someone else doesn't have to experience that.

John Dehlin [01:28:23] Totally.

Ray Purcell [01:28:24] And that was just five years ago. That level of bigotry was just five

John Dehlin [01:28:28] years ago, three years ago that they rescinded it. Yeah, it's only been like a few years.

Liz Cannon [01:28:32] How did you feel? Okay, how did you feel when they rescinded it? Because when I learned of that, I was, I was like, furious. The guy was pissed off.

John Dehlin [01:28:40] Well, I was in this weird situation where the church didn't like when they did the November 2015 policy. They didn't, they didn't have a PR. It was just some like, some rogue apostle, like imposed the policy but didn't tell any of the other apostles, didn't tell church pr. And the way that everyone found out about it was through me. So I had just some dude who's in a bishopric somewhere, like his church handbook of instructions just updated and he read it and he's like, holy crap, this is awful. And he like sent it to me.

Liz Cannon [01:29:13] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:29:13] And no one knew it. Like it was just people were starting to whisper about it on Reddit. And so I'm like, holy crap, this is going to be huge. And I'm like, immediately, this, the church is going to regret this. This will not stand. But I'm the one that like first posted it publicly. They said that I leaked it. I didn't leak it because I didn't have access to that. Someone leaked it to me and I published it. And that caught the church with its pants down. The PR department had no idea. And this was like one of the darkest days in the, in the modern history of the Mormon Church. Yeah. And, and yeah, but we all knew this, this could not stand. I mean. Oh, the other thing I forgot there was a second part of this policy.

Liz Cannon [01:29:52] Okay. I was going to mention that.

John Dehlin [01:29:54] Yeah, the child exclusion.

Liz Cannon [01:29:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:55] So they, they also said that if there are children whose either of their parents are in a same sex marriage, that the children could not get baptized into the Mormon Church, could not get the priesthood if they're men. You know, boys, 12, 14, 16 year old boys. And they couldn't join the church until. Get this, hold this. You ready? Okay. They had to wait till they're 18 and they had to renounce their parents, marriage, same sex marriage, to be able to get baptized into the church. That was the other part of the exclusion policy. And we're just like, oh my, this is crazy. This is, there's no way this is going to last. And it didn't. It lasted a few years, but it did so much damage. The church will never recover.

Ray Purcell [01:30:43] Never.

John Dehlin [01:30:43] From the, from the damage it did. It did to itself. You know, and that was self inflicted.

Ray Purcell [01:30:48] I like what you said earlier about the church just keeps getting pummeled by truth. What that brings into my mind is this is gonna age me. Remember Mike Tyson's punch out?

John Dehlin [01:30:57] Yeah.

Ray Purcell [01:30:57] For all you millennials and gen zers, Mike Tyson Punch out was body blow.

John Dehlin [01:31:01] Body blow.

Ray Purcell [01:31:02] Yes, body blow. You're not following me. So you fight all these, you fight all these boxers and they get Better and better. And then at the very end, you get a box. Mike Tyson. Now, the first boxer is Glass Joe. He's this little wimpy guy and anyone can beat him. You don't even have to play the game. You can beat the crap out of this guy. That's the way I look at it. The truth is Mike Tyson and the church is Glass Joe. And this is the problem with the church. They are getting pummeled and pummeled and Mike Tyson is beating him and they're on the ground bleeding, and he's still beating him on the head. And they're ground and they're kind of on the ground, kind of just like punching. And when they're finally pummeled to a pulp, finally, that's when they're like, oh, okay, yep, God, change his mind. And that by then it's too late. It's too late by that point, you know, I hope, I hope that. And what would you do? Let's say finally, 10 years from now, whenever, from now, they come around and they say, john, you know what? Remember that thing you started in 05? I know it's 2035 now, but you were right. We need your help. We need to change. Because that's where it's like you said, like the Mormon Church should be. Like the Jewish community. There's level, okay? If you don't want to believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet, you don't want to believe the Book of Mormon is the word of God, there's still a place for you. We will still. We have good family values. You know what I mean? Like the good things that made me part of what I'm good. Family values, loyalty, humility. All these different righteous things. You know, what if they came to you and said, we need your help. The church has been hemorrhaging membership for years. We finally realize 30 years too late that what you were doing was the right way to do it, come back and help us.

John Dehlin [01:32:38] That's a great question. So let me, let me answer the second half of the suicide question, okay? Just to close that out and then I'll come to that. But it'll, it'll flow naturally. Okay, all of this, to answer your question, Liz, all of this stuff we've talked about does, I believe contribute to higher suicide rates in Utah. But it's not that simple. And I'm going to say something that I hope doesn't piss off a bunch of your listeners. And I'm. I'm not, not. I'm not anti gun. There is, I'VE talked to Harvard, you know, statisticians about suicide. There is another factor that contributes to high suicide rates in Utah and in the Mountain west because Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, they have higher suicide rates. And a lot of those places aren't as influenced by Mormons as Utah. It's the pervasiveness of handguns. Now I am not, I'm proud of second Amendment. I'm not anti gun. My dad was a police officer. I learned how to shoot guns and handle guns from an early age. I am not anti gun, so don't email me and say that I hate guns. But. And this is also from Michael, from Malcolm Gladwell's book, one of his recent books where he talks about it, if you have. He talked about how in the 40s and 50s in Great Britain these homes had these gas ovens with this, with this type of gas that was super toxic. And, and all you had to do was like, turn up the gas ovens and like stick your head in the gas oven and you could kill yourself in just a matter of minutes. And guess what? Suicide rates are super high. As soon as they switch to a different type of gas that wasn't as lethal, suicide rates plummet. So one of the biggest contributors to suicidality is because when people are suicidal, it's almost, it's, it's often not even premeditated and contemplated. Oftentimes you just something really dark happens or you have this chemical rush in the brain and you feel like there's no hope and there's no purpose. And the sadness and the intensity is so painful that you feel like you don't want to live anymore. And so that if that's combined with a super easily accessible means to end your life, that is going to be a huge contributor to, to ending your life by suicide. And so the pervasiveness of handguns is a contributing factor in Utah along with the, the shame culture and the, the toxic, you know, LGBT and rules around sexuality and perfectionism. And by the way, for Mormon women, just this. I happen to be the perfect wife, the perfect mom, perfect figure, look beautiful, serve in all your callings. Like that's, that's an issue. There's a huge depression problem amongst Mormon women in Utah as well. And so there. It's a complex thing. It's not fair to say it's all the Mormon Church, but it's also fair to say that that part of it is the Mormon Church.

The Church at a Crossroads: Future and Reform

Liz Cannon [01:35:46] Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, I know as well as, as you do and many. But oh my God, there's so much gray area. It's unfair to, you know, state any blanket statement surrounding suicide. Every situation is so unique. But I appreciate your.

John Dehlin [01:36:02] And it shouldn't be used as, like, a weapon. It shouldn't be weaponized because that isn't always productive.

Liz Cannon [01:36:07] Right. Yeah, exactly. So thank you.

John Dehlin [01:36:09] Yeah.

Liz Cannon [01:36:10] Okay, so the second half. Yeah.

Ray Purcell [01:36:11] So.

John Dehlin [01:36:11] Yeah. So to get. Thanks for that question, Ray. Here's the trick. I, you know, I met with Elder Holland. So Elder Holland is an apostle now. He's a senior apostle for the Mormon Church. Because I knew him at BYU and whatever. My brother worked for the church.

Liz Cannon [01:36:25] Do you like him?

John Dehlin [01:36:26] Do I like him?

Liz Cannon [01:36:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:36:27] So he's super smart. He went to Yale. He got his PhD from Yale. He's super charismatic. He's very warm and friendly.

Liz Cannon [01:36:37] He scares me. I'm scared. No, no, no. I just. I'm always like, oh, if there's. I know. I asked that question. One of my favorite apostles, I asked that question because in the church, he is kind of this, like, you know, revered. Yeah. People love Elder Holland. They get so excited for his talks during general conference. And he's like this powerhouse.

John Dehlin [01:36:56] Yeah.

Liz Cannon [01:36:56] And I'm sitting back here like, this guy fucking terrifies me. I scared him. I would not want to meet him in a back alley. I'd be scared.

John Dehlin [01:37:03] Well, so what I found is that he's. And I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, what I found was he's smart, he's charismatic. He makes you feel like a million bucks. But he is skilled at making by. By being skilled at making you feel good. He also is skilled at speaking to you in a way. And I do this. I think we all do this to some. He's really good at speaking in a way to where he makes you feel like he gets you and he understands you. And so when I met with him, I told him about my faith crisis. I told him about LGBT problems. This is long before the essays, long before, you know, all this stuff. What year would have been 2010, 2011. He made me feel great. He's like, we need people like you. We want a big tent in the Mormon Church and stay in this church. Shondalin. We need a hundred thousand John de Lynn's in this church. You know, just super made me feel like a million bucks. And he, you know, I understand evolution and you can believe in evolution and be a Mormon. And we don't. We don't have that LGBT thing figured out quite yet. You know, he would have called it that Same sex attraction thing. You know, like he was very empathetic, very understanding, very compassionate, very big tent. But then the very next general conference, he gives this general conference talk where he's like, if you leave this church, you have to crawl under or over or around the Book of Mormon. You know what I mean?

Ray Purcell [01:38:24] That was a really good Jeffrey Holland impersonation.

John Dehlin [01:38:27] Yeah. And it's just like really like, yeah, you made me feel super great that you understand my. And you're, you're acting like the Book of Mormon, like you don't get why the Book of Mormon is like the problem. It's not just like the thing that you have to overcome. It's like the main, one of the main problems with Mormonism. And it just made me feel like he was glad handing me, like he was telling, making me feel good, but kind of duplicitous and would say one thing to one audience and then speak to me compassionately and kind of, you know, that, that left a sour taste in my mouth. But, you know, I, So to go back to your question, like when I was preparing for the, you know, because who gets to hang out with an apostle for, you know, for three hours, four hours? I did. Right. Because my brother and because I was a podcaster and I, it took me weeks. I just thinking, what am I gonna, what am I gonna ask Elder Holland? Is it gonna be like, did Joseph Smith really marry. I knew he had married 30 plus women. Did he. Why did he sleep with Fanny Alger a 14 year old or whatever? You know, and I don't. I knew he didn't have a good answer because there are no good answers. There's no good answer for why a 30 year old would sleep with a 14 year old who was also a handmaiden in his house without telling his wife. There's no good explanation for that.

Ray Purcell [01:39:43] Even in the 1800s.

John Dehlin [01:39:45] Yeah, especially 1800s. I know, like, as if people need.

Liz Cannon [01:39:49] People were more concerned like medieval times. We don't know about that.

John Dehlin [01:39:53] Yeah, but, but I, you know, I knew he didn't have answers for the Book of Mormon and you know, I knew he couldn't betray any beliefs. And so I'm like, what do I. If he asks me, how do I fix this? I literally couldn't come up with a good. Like, I thought, whatever I tell him needs to not only be an improvement, but it needs to not weaken the church. And I literally could not think of a suggestion that would not. For Elder Hollander. For the church, that wouldn't weaken the church because I'LL give you an example. Be more honest and open about your history. Well, guess what? You're going to lose members of the church if you're more on. That's why they haven't been honest about their history. You know, be more supportive to LGBT people. No, then all the, all the Mormons are going to go, well, then all the prophets for 100 whatever years were wrong and they were lying. Right? Give women the priesthood. No, then all the women are, all the intellectuals are going to go, well, why did the women not have it for so long? And is God changing his mind again? Right? And so they're like, be more supportive of liberals. Well, every time the church makes a move in the direction of liberals, they've got all these, these super conservative orthodox Mormons that leave and become snufferites or become, you know, fundamentalist Mormons and join the FLDS church. And so like, you know, let people drink coffee. No, that's like part of the Mormon identity is being unique. That's why I loved it so much. And actually you study sociology and you learn that the high demand religions have higher retention rates, the low demand religions have lower retention rates. And you know, Brigham Young said at some point, a religion that, that doesn't require everything of its members isn't really worth the devotion of its members. In other words, the more you demand, the more people are willing to sacrifice. And that's why cult members are willing to give their lives. David Koresh or Jim Jones, right? Cult leaders are willing to give their lives for their church. That's the type of member you want. You do this weak sauce, hippie, liberal, permissive religion. You get a bunch of Manby Pambi members, They're not going to give 10% of their income. They're not going to show up early to set up the chairs. They're not going to be proud to be a Mormon. They're going to be like, yeah, Mormon. You know, that's not going to strengthen the church. So there is no good answer. It's like, lose 10 or lose 20%. Take your pick. And so, yeah, you can say, be honest. Support LGBT people. Give women the priesthood. You know, don't excommunicate people. Be kind. Give all your money away, you know, to the poor. That's all what Jesus would do, right? But that, that, that, you know, churches that do that lose, like, it's not just the Mormon Church that's losing all its members. It's every religion, you know, except for like the super strict ones. And we actually have an example, a Modern example, the Mormon Church had a competitor when, when the church schismed after Joseph Smith died, there were actually branches of Mormonism. There was the Brigham Young version of Mormonism that came to Utah, but there was the Emma Smith, Joseph Smith III Mormonism that stayed behind. They were called the Reorganized Church and the Reorganized Church, Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints. And in the 60s, they realized that the Book of Mormon wasn't historical. They realized that they were racist and that they were sexist and they were homophobic and that Joseph Smith, they had been denying that Joseph Smith was ever a polygamist and they had realized that he actually was. That the history proved that they knew the Book of Abraham was not a translation. And they like said, what do we do? They're like, okay, how about we tell the truth? How about we give the priesthood to blacks? How about we give the priesthood to women? How about we come, we become progressive, we change the name of our church to Community of Christ. We de. Emphasize the Doctrine and Covenants in the Book of Mormon. We emphasize the Bible, we focus on peace, we focus on love. And guess what happened to their church? They lost two thirds of their membership. So like they're unfortunately, all they can do is the right thing. And the right thing will accelerate people's disaffection because not only are people. Is it. Does it make the church weak sauce. Not only is it going to demand less, but they're going to have to deal with all the people that are like, oh, so you were wrong. For 150 years you were lying. Like God was wrong. You were wrong. You expect us to believe that all of those prophets and apostles were. We're getting it wrong, but now you're getting it right and it undermines what we call prophetic authority, the prophetic mantle. And it just leads people to think you guys were just making this up all along. So unfortunately there's no good answer.

Liz Cannon [01:44:45] So nothing, nothing they can do to mend that divide between not and keep the church strong.

John Dehlin [01:44:51] No. I don't know. What do you think? First of all, you guys are younger.

Ray Purcell [01:44:54] Touche, Bobby Boucher. That was a great answer to that question that I asked. And second of all, what's that, that YouTube channel you talk about that sounds like a shitty AM or FM morning showing?

Liz Cannon [01:45:06] And the mob.

Ray Purcell [01:45:06] I say I listen. You played a clip of them on that little six minute thing that you released a couple of weeks ago. We were talking about at the beginning

John Dehlin [01:45:12] of the podcast, like the. This is, there's. This is the show the By Fair Mormon.

Ray Purcell [01:45:17] Yeah, Fair Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:45:18] So there's. There's midnight. There's midnight Mormons and there's. This is the show. And there's Fair Mormon. So there's. There's a few right now. Yeah.

Ray Purcell [01:45:25] So like you said, they're funded by the church, but they're not directly funded. They go here and then it goes here. If they were directly funded by the church, they couldn't have the same liberal.

John Dehlin [01:45:34] Then the church would be liable.

Ray Purcell [01:45:35] Yeah, the church would be liable.

John Dehlin [01:45:36] It's an arm's length. It's attacking the church. High demand religions, cults, corporations, religions, they all do this. They. They get their rich members to donate to nonprofits that donate to nonprofits that then do the dirty work, you know, so that the church is never accountable, they're never liable, and there's no fingerprints on the bad, the bad stuff that gets done.

Ray Purcell [01:45:57] So I guess the best we can hope for, the best that we can hope for. I don't know why, but I kind of hope for it for you, is that they give you that arm's length. Okay, we need, like you said, Jeffrey Holland was right, whether he meant it or not. The church needs John.

Liz Cannon [01:46:12] We need a 100,000 John Delins.

Ray Purcell [01:46:14] Yes, we need 100,000 John De Lynn's. And I hope that at some point they can realize that and they can at least give you that arm's length. I don't know how you would feel about that, but I hope that they can give that to you because they do. Like you said, they can't directly because of everything you just said there. They can't directly endorse you, but if they're smart, they'd find a way of indirectly endorsing you. I hope that that comes at some point.

Liz Cannon [01:46:35] You know, I don't. I mean, on a lot of levels, I agree with what you're saying, but I can't completely agree because I think. So you asked. You know, where I'm. I should speak for myself here, old guy. I'm a younger generation, right? And I feel like, and maybe this is just coming from personal experience, but like I said, I would have done anything to reconcile my legitimate concerns and doubts with being able to remain active in the church. And I think there are so many people of my generation who feel that way. I think if the church were to come out and, God, I don't even know what this would have to look like, but let's just say they came out like the community of Christ. You know, what was reorganized.

John Dehlin [01:47:19] It started out as reorganized and now

Liz Cannon [01:47:21] it's so, like they did in the 60s, you know, we fucked up. This is the truth. Right. Like, I almost wonder if the church took that approach. I think with, you know, 100%, they would lose the older generations. But I wonder how that would affect my generation.

John Dehlin [01:47:41] What do you think?

Liz Cannon [01:47:41] I think that my generation is one of obviously inclusion and understanding and gray thinking, looking at the bigger picture. We're not so polarized, black and white thinking. So I almost wonder if they would appreciate it. Like, okay, yes, because this is all we've been asking the church to do for so long, is own up to your mistakes, right your wrongs, and take accountability. And I think. I actually think my generation might respond with warmth to that idea because we want. Because we so desperately want to be able to keep our faith. And it's like, I feel like the church is gonna. Like, the church is like, the church is doomed. This is my opinion, because as with every. Like all these other major issues, as far as blacks in the priesthood, the issue of polygamy, if they hadn't radically changed that doctrine, they would be extinct. Like, they have no choice. And I feel that way when it comes to the gay community. And like, gay. Is this the politically correct way to say this? But homosexual temple marriages. I feel like if the church does not eventually permit gay marriage in the temple, it will become extinct as well.

John Dehlin [01:48:58] Yeah.

Liz Cannon [01:48:58] You know, so I'm like, I don't know. I thought so. Like I said, I think the church is. Is going down if they don't.

Ray Purcell [01:49:07] Damn if you do, damned if you don't.

Liz Cannon [01:49:08] Yeah. But I don't think. Damned if they do. I think they're damned if they don't. And I wonder what would happen if they do.

John Dehlin [01:49:13] Yeah.

Ray Purcell [01:49:14] I think, like, like John said, whichever way you go, you're going to lose. You're going to lose some people. You know what I mean?

John Dehlin [01:49:23] That's not just Mormonism. That's really.

Ray Purcell [01:49:24] That's anything.

John Dehlin [01:49:25] Yeah.

Ray Purcell [01:49:25] In general. So we're looking at millennials. And millennials are already leaving the church in droves. In droves. You know what I mean? And they're the millennials.

John Dehlin [01:49:35] Do you have a lot of friends leaving the church, you guys? Yeah. Lots of friends you didn't think would.

Ray Purcell [01:49:39] Yeah.

Liz Cannon [01:49:40] I've been shocked. I was the first, like, every time I see. It's so funny. This is, like, just a personal thing, but, you know, I was the first of anyone I knew to leave. Like, none of my friends did. And I lost every single one of my friends. I'm not shitting you like, nobody talked to me anymore. And now I'm like, five, six years down the road, some of these people are leaving. And I'm like, what do you think about that? Like, you want to be resentful? But I'm like, yeah, I'm definitely seeing people leave, and I've been shocked by some of the people.

Ray Purcell [01:50:10] I am really interested to see what happens when the millennials start becoming general authority, when they start becoming leaders in the church. That's going to be interesting one. But, like, with what John was saying, you're going to lose some whichever way you go. Now you're looking, these older people, they're dead set and they're going nowhere. And they're going to be loyal, and they're going to be loyal to a fault. They're going to be loyal. They'll literally die for the church. Millennials ain't going to die for that church. Millennials ain't gonna do any of that shit. Millennials are gonna be like, eh, yeah, okay, you change your mind, I'm gonna change my mind. I'll change it, maybe I'll change it back. Blah, blah, blah. They're gonna be a lot more wishy washy. So I get going along with what John was saying. I get why they would be trying to appeal to the olders, to the, to the, to the more stalwart.

Liz Cannon [01:50:55] I would say, yeah, that makes sense.

John Dehlin [01:50:57] Older people have more money too. Yep.

Liz Cannon [01:50:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:51:00] So I, I once gave a talk called How. How Mormonism Caused me to Leave Mormonism. So, you know, when I was growing up, I loved primary songs. Like, my favorite part of church was going to primary and singing the primary songs.

Liz Cannon [01:51:17] What's your favorite song? You asked me this on my interview side.

John Dehlin [01:51:20] Yeah, like, you know, how about do what is right, Let the consequence follow. Battle for freedom in spirit and might and with stout hearts Looking forward to tomorrow. God will probably protect you then do

Ray Purcell [01:51:40] what is get up and do what is right. When you hear that song. You know what I mean?

John Dehlin [01:51:44] Yeah. My favorite D. Oh, go ahead. Was yeah, yeah, what's yours?

Ray Purcell [01:51:47] And I kind of wish it was the name of your podcast Book of Mormon stories that my teacher tell to.

John Dehlin [01:51:53] Boom, boom, boom.

Ray Purcell [01:51:54] You can hear the Indian drums, Native American drums just beating as you sing that song.

John Dehlin [01:51:59] Laymanites are badasses. But also there's. There's a dare to do, right? Dare to be true. You have a work that no other can do. Do it so bravely. So, you know what I mean? Like, all these songs out. Be honest, be true. Do what is right? It doesn't matter the consequences. Like truth. Oh, another one was. Was. Oh, say, what is truth? Tis the fairest gem that the riches of world.

Liz Cannon [01:52:31] This is Purdue. I've never heard this one in my life.

John Dehlin [01:52:34] That's a good one.

Liz Cannon [01:52:35] You just aged yourself.

Ray Purcell [01:52:36] You're missing out.

John Dehlin [01:52:36] Millennials. No, but for me, the, the coolness about Mormonism was the truth. We had the truth. It was all about the truth.

Liz Cannon [01:52:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:45] And so encourage and doing what's right, you know, and, and not. The girl puts your hand on her boob and you take it away because that's the cool thing to do. You do what's hard because it's right and it's true. And that's what more. That's why I did what I did. That explains everything that I've done. And I think that's the answer for the church. It may. You may lose money, you may lose member. You will lose money and you will lose membership, you will lose power, but you'll regain some of your integrity and some of your class.

Liz Cannon [01:53:20] Yeah, that's the thing, you know, you'll be.

John Dehlin [01:53:21] Christ, like you'll actually be following.

Liz Cannon [01:53:24] Exactly. You are going down whether you want to face it now or later. You're going down somewhat.

John Dehlin [01:53:30] You're going down some notches at least.

Liz Cannon [01:53:32] So at least do it in a way that is good. For goodness sake. We talked about that.

John Dehlin [01:53:38] Yeah.

Liz Cannon [01:53:38] At least do it in a way that is the least, you know, harmful to people. As far as, like when we talk about the influence on suicide rates here and the shame and the depression and,

John Dehlin [01:53:49] and women, you know, and marriages and families breaking up and patriarchy. And there's so many things the church could do to, to make. Just imagine if it. Like right now. We learned a couple of year ago that the church has 120, $120 billion. That's what the b. Just in stocks, in the bonds, real estate and cash. And that's just the investment. Real estate. That's not the actual. All the buildings, all the temples, all the land it owns as part of its corporate operations. So the church is like a 300 billion dollar entity. It would be in the Fortune 50 if it were. It is a corporation, but in, in 20 years, it'll be a trillion dollar organization. Right. Like, that's so much money and power. You've got people in the Senate, people in the House. You had Mitt Romney, who is a Republican candidate for president, so much power and influence. You could do so much good. You've got a missionary force of 60,000. You've got a worldwide membership of 5 million active members. There's so much good you can do. And one way you turn it around is by just doing good. Doing as much good as you can for as many people as possible. You could turn around your image in 10 years, I think. I think. Right.

Liz Cannon [01:55:10] Mic drop.

John Dehlin [01:55:10] That won't fix all the problems, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just do good with your money and power.

Liz Cannon [01:55:15] Yeah. John, are you good on time?

John Dehlin [01:55:23] I mean, you know, I. I've got a few more minutes here.

Liz Cannon [01:55:26] Okay, we'll wrap up trying to decide which of these. Okay. I'll ask you four more questions. They could be quick answers. Okay, so like you said, no one has counseled more people on a faith crisis or transition than you have. So what are some common mistakes you've found that people make when leaving Mormonism?

Navigating a Faith Transition With Wisdom

John Dehlin [01:55:55] So there. There are several traps that people get caught in that are all not only normal and natural, but they're healthy. So it's healthy to get angry. Anger is a healthy emotion. Makes you feel. It gives you a sense of power. It focuses your attention. It gives you enough power to make a tough decision like leaving a high demand religion and disappointing all your family and friends. Like, anger is healthy. It teaches you a lesson so you don't get fooled again or burned again. There's. There's so much valuable and anger, but there's a difference between feeling anger and processing your anger and acting out in an angry way that's harmful to others, but also harmful to yourself. And so, you know, I want to make sure and sort of normalize and even destigmatize anger and say that one of the things people could do is get so angry that they, like, build bridges, they burn bridges, they alienate their friends and family. They become really, they become as bad as the monster they're running from. So don't become the monster you're running from. That's one rule I have in leaving high demand religion. Be kind, remember kindness. Get a therapist, get a coach, get a. Get friends, get a community, get the support you need. Read good books, learn, listen to podcasts. Whatever you have to do to process it so that you don't get stuck in your anger, so you don't self destruct or implode and burn all these bridges because you don't want to alienate yourself from your parents or your siblings or your best friends if you can. Some are going to get rid of you, but you don't want to inflict damage on yourself and everyone around you. So process it. Get help, manage your anger. I like to say go slowly. Like, you know, a lot of us, a lot of people lose their faith in their 30s or 40s or 50s and it's like, whoa, I never drank, I never smoked, I never tried drugs. I never sexually experimented. Which I'm not, I'm not theoretically opposed to any of that. But you could become an alcoholic, like alcohol. Sure. Fight if you want to do that in moderation. If you want to have fun, whatever. I've had ex Mormons. Think I'll just have a glass of beer with dinner. Fast forward five years, they've lost their house, they've lost their spouse, they've lost custody of their kids, they became alcoholics or drug addicts.

Liz Cannon [01:58:22] Like, and also, also being mindful in your consumption of things like get educated. Yeah. Because a lot of people, they might see it as something that's fun and enticing and exciting and, and they start. And what they don't realize is they're actually using that as an unhealthy coping mechanism.

John Dehlin [01:58:36] Exactly. Yeah.

Liz Cannon [01:58:37] And so it just goes way too far.

John Dehlin [01:58:38] Yeah. So go slowly. Don't just jump into all the scary, dangerous, you know, exciting stuff. A lot of people wreck their marriages. They like, oh, hook up with an old high school girlfriend or boyfriend or.

Ray Purcell [01:58:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:58:51] Experiment with, with ethical non monogamy or even unethical non monogamy. Right. Like, like you can blow up your marriage, you can blow up your relationships, you can disappoint your kids, you can, you know, get in trouble. Right. So keep your wits about you. I like to say go slowly. I also like to say keep the good. So like, if, if, if, you know, you know, I don't drink, not because I think it's bad, but because I think for me, I'm happy and healthy without it. Why start, you know, so that I don't. That's not going to be the decision most people make. That's great. But that's something that I do because for me, I want to not just become the opposite. Because if you, if you become the opposite of everything you were when you were Mormon, you're still being controlled by the church. You're just being controlled as the inverse of the church. And that's still being controlled. It's a good point. Keep the good and then improve on the, on the areas that, that weren't good. But don't be ashamed to, to embrace, like you said, the tribe. Right. You're. I'm still Mormon. I'm never going to not be Mormon. You can't under, under. You can't unmorm in yourself. This doesn't wash off the Mormonism. So embrace it. Find community, get a therapist, get a coach, Go slowly, keep the good, Go slowly with the experimental stuff and then just like, improve, like, become healthier, become psychologically more aware, make your marriage better. If you're married, find a better partner. If you, if you had a failed marriage, find that good love, right? And just trade up. Trade up in every way. You'll become smarter, happier, healthier, have more fun, find a better community, find better friends, trade up in all the areas and fill the holes. Because you lose identity, you lose spirituality, you lose community, you lose a sense of meaning and purpose, you lose your security about the afterlife. You're not going to become healthy by having all these holes inside of you, of all these things that you've lost. So you have to develop a new identity, you have to develop a sense of spirituality. You have to get healthy, you have to find a community. You have to repair your relationships with friends and family or significant other. You have to figure out what you think about death in the afterlife. And you've got to fill all those holes. And until you do, you're going to feel incomplete. But once you do, you're going to feel better than you ever felt before. And that's again, what thrive is about. It's not an mlm, it's an idea that the second half of life can be way better than the first half of life if you manage it it appropriately.

Liz Cannon [02:01:25] Yeah, thank you. I think you just hit the nail on the head with that response. So what is, in your opinion, the best recipe for non orthodox or ex members to maintain relationships with friends and family that are still maybe orthodox members?

John Dehlin [02:01:41] So I have a whole podcast called the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. It's@MormonFaithCrisis.com I there were so many people that wanted to come to me to do coaching or whatever, and I didn't have enough time to meet with them all. And I was so busy doing the podcast that I just, I only can see a couple clients a week at the most. So I just recorded with my wife Margi and this other cool therapist named Natasha helfer. We recorded 70 free hours of coaching and we have episodes on, you know, improving your marriage, improving your sex life after a faith crisis. But we have a couple. One's called Coming out as a non Believer. Another one's called because there's tons of mistakes people make. They write all the problems with the church and try and cram the problematic church history into the faces of all their family and friends. Wrong thing to do. We have an entire multi hour episodes on communicating with believers after a faith crisis. So it's, it's, you know, there's hours of good content there that you guys should all check out and it's all free. But the short answer is make your believing family members and friends feel safe. Don't try and take away their faith. Don't question or nudge or, you know, don't make them doubt, don't poke at their faith. Say to them, look, I love you no matter what. I love that your faith makes you happy and healthy. I promise you, I'm never going to do anything to take your faith away from you. You can feel totally safe. And all I ask is that you don't judge me and don't look down on me and don't try and, you know, make change my beliefs and I'll show you the respect that I want.

Liz Cannon [02:03:16] Yeah. Because a lot of times when people, you know, when we leave and I actually have to be accountable and say that I definitely felt this way and probably behaved in a way that reflected that feeling for a while. But where you, you kind of take on the other side, like the role of the other side of the hip hypocrite coin where you're like, okay, they don't judge or they judge me, they don't accept me, you know, they think all these things about me and then in retaliation you do the same thing and you're just being, like I said, the other side of the hypocrite coin.

John Dehlin [02:03:48] Yeah, yeah. And you can become, sometimes ex Mormons can be worse, way worse than Mormons. Right. Intolerant, judgmental, mean, rude, discourteous. Way more bigoted, frankly. Bigoted against religious people. More, more bigoted against religious people than many religious people are against, you know, LGBT people. And so don't be a dick. Can I say that? That's it. That's a good rule. Just be kind and be tolerant. Be, be, model the respect for them that you want them to show you.

Liz Cannon [02:04:20] Yeah. Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:04:22] Okay, so, and ironically, when people feel safe, like you're not going to judge them and you're not going to try and challenge their beliefs, it often makes them feel relaxed so that they're willing to question their own beliefs. But it's, it's making them safe that allows them to feel. But there's this thing called the backfire effect. When you try and challenge people's closely held beliefs, they actually hold tighter to their beliefs and you actually strengthen their beliefs by attacking their beliefs, and that's just dumb. Why would you want to strengthen someone's bigoted or false beliefs? So don't, don't challenge them. Make them feel safe. And that's your best shot at having them be open. Yeah, it's other points of view.

Liz Cannon [02:05:05] Yeah, for sure. Okay, well, we are going to wrap up by asking a couple of questions that were submitted by listeners. We have a large demographic of post Mormon listeners out there, so these two questions come directly from them. The first is that a number of years ago, you decided to stop Mormon Stories due to the damage you thought it was inflicting on others. What would you say to that former self and what would that former self say to you about the current direction you're going?

The Broader Mission of Mormon Stories

John Dehlin [02:05:34] At first I thought Mormon Stories was just saving. It was saving the church and saving people's testimonies and was going to keep everyone in the church. And for a long time that was true. But then slowly I realized that just learning about the Book of Abraham, just learning about DNA in the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith's 30 plus wives and Fanny Alger and the poly, polyandry stuff, that was going to take people out. It didn't matter what spin you gave it, how positive you were about it, just learning the truth about the church and its problems was going to take people out. And so when they would learn that stuff through Mormon stories, I would feel responsible. And so a couple times I shut it down thinking, wow, okay, if someone left the church and then got divorced, now I am breaking up families. But it didn't take me long to realize that I wasn't breaking up families. It was Joseph Smith's polygamy that was breaking up families. It was the Joseph Smith lying about translating this papyrus when he didn't know Egyptian that was breaking up families. It was the truth that was breaking up families. It was the church's racism and sexism and homophobia that was breaking up families. And that wasn't me. That's the church's legacy. It was the church excommunicating people that was breaking up families. So I realized that if John de Linde didn't exist, if Mormon Stories never existed, somebody else would have created a podcast at some point, CS Letter or something else would have been created and it would just would have been somebody else in this role. So I just realized I'm not. I can't be responsible for that. That's on Joseph Smith. That's on Brigham Young. That's on the church. That's on that, it's on all my ancestors. Right. All I can do is, is try and save families, try and tell the truth. And the truth will cut, as I learned as a Mormon, the truth will cut its own way. Right. So, yeah, I don't, I don't let anybody burden me with that. And, and by the way, the church has destroyed so many families. Like how? By lying about the history and by supporting toxic apologetics when someone leaves, loses their faith. Then, like, believers divorce the non believer thinking that the non believer is wicked and evil and wrong. Like, that's breaking up families when, when the church is telling gay men to marry straight women. And that, that's a ticking time bomb. And then there's children involved. That's destroying families by setting up a family to blow up at some point several years into the marriage. Like, that's not on me. The church is destroying families with, by lying and by, by, by teaching, by hiding its history for so long and teaching a false narrative and by punishing people that have doubts and questions and legitimate concerns. So that's on the church. That's on Joseph Smith. I'm trying to clean up the mess that the church has created. And that's why I got a PhD in psychology, and that's why I counsel and coach people. So I give 70 hours of free coaching away. I give the podcast away, by the way. Nobody has to pay for it. So it's not like, like any money that I've ever made has been through voluntary donations of people who have told me. And by the way, I have tens of thousands of listeners who have said, you saved my life. You saved my marriage. I was depressed, I was lonely, I was sad. My marriage was about to be destroyed. My family was in pieces. You saved my family. You saved my marriage. You saved my life. I've got tens of thousands of those emails. Nobody's going to convince me that I've been a home wrecker. No one can. At this point, I'm confident in the shoes I'm walking in. Does that sound overconfident? Honestly, that's just how I feel.

Liz Cannon [02:09:15] No, it actually just sounds fair.

Ray Purcell [02:09:17] And yeah, I mean, sounds true, like you said.

Liz Cannon [02:09:21] Yeah, I shared this earlier, but it is true for me.

John Dehlin [02:09:24] I ruined your family. I ruined your marriage.

Liz Cannon [02:09:26] Yeah, thanks a lot. No, no, John, you. Like, it's hard for me. I'm not. It's hard for me to get really, like, sentimental or emotional sometimes. But you, I mean, literally, I. And I thought about this as I was driving here. I'M like, do I want to say this? It sounds melodramatic. I don't know. But it's just the truth. Like Mormon stories. Like I said, one of two things that literally saved me from probably dying by suicide during that time in my life. So thank you so much.

John Dehlin [02:09:53] My pleasure. Thank you.

Liz Cannon [02:09:54] Okay, the next question is. A couple of weeks ago you used the phrase we desire all to receive. This is of course a temple phrase and it is sacred to members of the church. Do you think you should be using phrases that to the lds are sacred?

Ray Purcell [02:10:14] What was the context real quick? I don't know the context. I know the phrase, but I don't know the context.

Liz Cannon [02:10:18] I don't either. A listener submitted this. I'm like, let's ask him.

John Dehlin [02:10:21] I did some Facebook post that I wanted people to read and I ended by saying, we desire. I desire all to receive it. And I knew what I was doing. So, yeah, this is a, this is a really, this is, this is a really important question and it's a complicated question because my number one allegiance is to effectiveness. That whole thing I told you about the backfire effect. One of the strategies of Mormon stories is to make it feel safe for Mormons to listen to. Because if it feels like this anti Mormon angry and, you know, thing, then, then the people that I want to reach are going to feel scared and not want to listen to it from the very start. So it is smart to be respectful. It is smart to be diplomatic. And by the way, I posted that on Facebook. I less talk like that on the podcast. I think of Facebook sometimes as kind of like me and just me wanting to be me and have an outlet because I need an outlet just like everybody else. I'm sometimes less likely to say things like that on the podcast. And I think, I think to this day, Mormon Stories is the most balanced podcast still on the in the world because we interview ex Mormons and orthodox Mormons and believing Mormons and people in the middle, and we cover all the issues. Find another podcast that does that with over 14 hours, 1400 hours of content. Nobody has done that. But it's smart to be respectful. And then you add to that the temple is one of the most sacred things about Mormonism. And it's so taboo that no, you don't, you don't mention the temple, you don't disrespect the temple and you don't call the church a cult and you don't make fun of the church. So all of that's true and that's How I've tried for the most part to handle the podcast and to handle myself publicly. So that's that. And it's hard to always, to never be angry. It's hard to never poke fun. It's hard to always be on brand and to always be disciplined. And you know, I've been doing this 15, almost 16 years, 20 years, depending how you count. So you're gonna, you're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna mess up, you're gonna sometimes make a joke or be sarcastic. If you go for perfection, you know, perfectionism is the enemy of good. You know, perfect is the enemy of good. And I learned early that I'm going to stumble, I'm going to say things wrong, I'm going to say a million times, I'm going to disappoint people on either side. So I'm, I learned early on that if I get upset at mistakes I make, I'm just, so I have to just roll with it up, oops, I shouldn't have done that. And then you just move on, literally. So that, and one of the ways that a high demand religion gets power over its members is by making everything sacred, right? Garments are sacred, Sex is sacred, temples are sacred. Everything's sacred. Joseph Smith is sacred. Prophets are sacred. Like, that's how they have power over you. And if you're afraid to ever say anything, you're afraid to criticize the leaders, you're afraid to talk, speak ill of the Lord's anointed. That's also in the temple. You can't speak ill of the Lord, which means you can't criticize them. You can't even if it's true. Like, Dallin H. Oaks is on record. You can go Google Dallin H. Oaks apology. He is on record saying it's wrong to criticize Mormon prophets and apostles, even if the criticism is accurate. So, like, that's bad. Like everything's bad. Swearing's bad. Like, you can't do anything wrong in

Liz Cannon [02:13:48] Mormonism and that's do say, like, yeah,

John Dehlin [02:13:51] like, you can't criticize them. You can't talk about anything, anything that happened. You can't, you can't speak about the church once you leave it because then, oh, they can leave the church, but they can't leave it alone. Like, yeah, that's the way they silence you. That's the way they muzzle you. That's the way they keep, keep power over you. And that's the way they silence. Silence is deadly. Silence is one of their most powerful tools. And this whole sacred Thing is one of the most powerful tools. So the only way you break that hold over you. And even psychologically, like years I wore my garments after I didn't believe because I'm like, I'll cheat on my wife. And like, if someone shoots me, if someone shoots me, the bullet will bounce off me because I'm wearing my garments.

Liz Cannon [02:14:37] You know, you take your garments off and three naked women appear.

John Dehlin [02:14:40] Yeah. Yeah. So, like, the only way to break that conditioning. And it is Pavlovian conditioning.

Ray Purcell [02:14:46] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:14:47] Is to violate it. It's to take your garments off, it's to criticize the brethren publicly, and it's to make fun of the temple. And by the way, in. In 2020, the entire temple ceremony is online. It's on YouTube. You can Google it. Like, we're in a different world now. And half of the temple ceremony is ripped off from the Mason Lodge anyway. Like, those things that were so secret are. Are not even ours. They're somebody else's. They're secret to somebody else, not us. And so, you know, so it's yes and yes, be respectful. Yes, you're going to make mistake, and yes, you're going to make mistakes. And some of the power of liberating yourself is to make fun of those things. And you just have to find the right balance because you're never going to be perfect at all of it. And so I try and do a balance and I'm proud of myself because to this day, I have people telling me I'm too, you know, critical. I have people telling me I'm too kind. And most people tell me I have a good balance and that's where I want to be. That's exactly where I want to be. And so I own it. And I'm not perfect, but I love that. I own that too.

Ray Purcell [02:15:55] Me and my friends have a thread. It's like six or seven of us. We're all non practicing Mormons. And one thing we always say on there just to be funny is you can buy anything in this world with good credit. But that's different between me threat, me sending it out to six or seven of my friends, and you launching it on your platform with thousands of people. The balls on this John de Lin guy, Liz.

John Dehlin [02:16:16] Jeez, don't forget, we will go down. That's another one. Sorry, is that too much for you?

Ray Purcell [02:16:27] No, not at all.

John Dehlin [02:16:28] No. Are you kidding?

Liz Cannon [02:16:29] This is our most tame episode yet.

John Dehlin [02:16:33] Well, now I've really. Now I've really crossed the line. Oh, I'm blushing, Liz, you're blessed no, no, no, no.

Liz Cannon [02:16:43] I'm trying to think. I don't want to conclude. I'm like, oh, we got through the outline, but this is so good. I'm just. I'm so grateful for it. I mean, I. Do you have any. Anything else you want to ask him?

Ray Purcell [02:16:50] This was amazing. This went above and beyond to my expectations.

John Dehlin [02:16:54] Like a Mormon stories.

Liz Cannon [02:16:55] Yeah, I like long.

Ray Purcell [02:16:56] Good luck editing this down 90 minutes, Liz.

Liz Cannon [02:16:59] And this will be two parts. Here we go.

Ray Purcell [02:17:02] It needs to be too far because there's so much good stuff in it. For real? Yeah.

Liz Cannon [02:17:05] Well, yeah, I guess. Really? That's it. Again, thank you so much. It's so funny. Like, how often in life, not only do we get to this. This is going to sound fucking corny, but I don't care. How often do we get to meet our heroes or someone that has, like, had such a huge, significantly positive influence in our life? And then how often do we get to sit down with them and delve into their mind and ask them these hard questions? So thank you so much again for coming on. It was. Yeah, my most. I'm just. I'm so happy. Thank you.

Ray Purcell [02:17:37] Thank you, John. Sincerely, thank you so much.

John Dehlin [02:17:39] No, this is super fun for me, and it's an honor. I. I'm never like, of course they're gonna interview me. I'm like, oh, really? They want to talk to me.

Liz Cannon [02:17:45] Like, me.

John Dehlin [02:17:47] Like, I. I love it, and I'm honored, and this is super fun. So thank you. And I'm super stoked for what you guys are doing. So if I share this on my podcast, I want to let people know what you guys are doing. So can we end by you guys just telling my listeners what it is you're doing and how they. How they can follow you?

Liz Cannon [02:18:05] Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so Our podcast launches January 15, and it's called Maintenance Required. And the idea behind that is that for any relationship to be successful, it requires continued work and maintenance and reflection, and that includes the relationship with oneself. So I know Ray and I, you know, relate a lot in this sense that when we left the church, we felt like we had reverted back to age 16 and had to relearn the real world. And I think for both of us, we're like, no, ignorance is not bliss, and we'd rather uncover some hard truths and experience authenticity and growth than pretend like some of this stuff doesn't exist. So this podcast is kind of our way of making up for lost time. We're going to talk about a variety of subjects, mostly related to things, you know, Young adulthood, relationships, sex, self image, mental health. But we will have a segment twice a month. It's called Sex in the Sacrament. And that is for our post Mormon listeners. You know, we'll be talking about topics directly related to Mormonism and post Mormon life. So.

Advice for Aspiring Podcasters

Ray Purcell [02:19:07] So I had an ex girlfriend. She started a podcast, wildly successful podcast, and she built that podcast on my stories and me and her stories, like. And. Oh, it was. It's hard. Hey, when you have a. When you have a breakup, you want that ex to get ugly and fail, not stay pretty and become famous, you know? So anyway, I listened to that and I'm like, shh, I can do that. I can do what she's doing. I can do that. That'd be fun. That'd be good. And so I actually did her podcast, and I'm like, that I could. I could really do this. But the problem is, I've been saying this for years. I can get my ass. If it weren't for Liz, I probably would never got my ass out of the bleachers and actually jumped into the game. So. But not only that, we started doing these podcasts. And it is. What we're doing, I really feel, is a really good and a really powerful thing. And so it went from me thinking, I can do a podcast, I can entertain people, to being like, holy cow, we can actually make a difference with this thing. And kind of like the way John started his podcast. I don't care if we get a million downloads a week. I don't care about fame. I don't care about money. I care about building something that's beautiful, that's going to help people, and that's what makes me excited about this podcast.

Liz Cannon [02:20:20] Well, and thank you for sharing that, because you just helped me jump. Make the jump from. I'm like, okay, mechanics. Yes. This is what we're doing. Here's my elevator pitch. Here's, you know where you can find us. To the true heart behind the project. So I lost my older sister Lisa to suicide in 2009. And after she died, I knew, you know, when you go through that, it's like, geez, I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. Like, it was. It was brutal. So I'm like, okay, I want to get involved in suicide prevention or do something to help other people. But I was young, I was 17, didn't really know what I would do with that. And then, unfortunately, almost. Well, let's see. It was in 2018, I lost my older brother to suicide as well. And immediately after that, I'M like, okay, now's my time. I'm going to go out there and affect change. And I initially started with a youth suicide prevention nonprofit, but I threw myself into it. I mean, months after he passed. And so when it. When we got to our first couple of events, they were overwhelming for me. Like, I just sat backstage and cried and I couldn't do it. But there's always been this part of me that's like, I have a unique story. I've been through some, you know, really challenging, unique things that, you know, I have something to share and how am I going to do that? And then we just started talking about this podcast and started, you know, recording these fun episodes. And then Ray and I sat down and did our first, you know, more serious episode. And at the end of that, I'm like, wow, that impulse that I had when I was 17 to hopefully affect change, inspire someone, or even. And as cliche as it sounds, help one single person not feel alone or like an outcast or lost, then I'm going to do it. And thus the podcast took off. So that's why we're here. So our website is maintenance required, podcast.com and we plan, we anticipate launching on itunes and a couple other platforms. So. Yay.

John Dehlin [02:22:18] I'm so excited for you guys.

Liz Cannon [02:22:20] Thanks. We'll see. This could either be. I'm always like, this is going to be a hot fucking mess, or this is going to be brilliant. Hopefully it's a combination of both.

John Dehlin [02:22:29] Well, I'll be, I'll. I'll be a little bit condescending or, or whatever, mansplain to you and just say that the biggest secret in podcasting is not giving up. It's. It's. It's doing it weekly and not giving up. And it may take two or three years sometimes to find your audience, but whether it's YouTube or, or whatever, any. Any channel, you. I mean, you're rocking Tick Tock right now. Like, what's your. What's your Tick Tock handle, by the way?

Liz Cannon [02:22:57] My Tick Tock handle is Liz Layton. Eleven. Lots of dances. Those cheesy. I'm like, every time I post, I'm like, am I. I'm too old for this. But whatever.

John Dehlin [02:23:07] For those who haven't, you know, who, who haven't seen it, Liz used to be one of the Utah Jazz dancers. And I've got a whole interview with her. It's a great interview. Check it out. It's under Liz Layton. Not under canon. Yeah, but, but it's great. But anyway, yeah, the secret is. Is. Is. Is consistency and not giving up. Because lots of people are starting podcasts. But you will. You will always find your audience if you're sincere, if you mean to help, and if you just don't give up, well.

Liz Cannon [02:23:34] And I think it's important that people know, you know, what, we like to be rich and famous. Like, I'm like, would I like to be the female Joe Rogan? Well, of course I would, but, I mean, Ray and I are doing this. Like, this comes from such a space of authenticity and genuine just care and concern and wanting to help other people. So this is, like, a passion project for us. I feel like so far, everything's come pretty easily. You know, it's like, I can be confident in saying, you know, our intention is just simply to reach people who may not have been reached or heard before and create some kind of community. It'll be a misfit community of people that feel like they have other people to relate to.

John Dehlin [02:24:17] I love it. I love it. Well, I'm super excited for you guys. And. And by the way, it's okay to quit things, too. Like, if. If something's not working.

Ray Purcell [02:24:25] Make up your mind, John. You tell us to go, and they tell us to quit. What are you, a Mormon?

John Dehlin [02:24:32] No, I'm just saying, if you want to succeed. Yeah, yeah. One of the key things of success is just not good enough.

Liz Cannon [02:24:37] But.

John Dehlin [02:24:38] But it's also okay to give up, and it's. And it's no shame, and you find things, and sometimes you learn by failing. So fail quickly and fail a lot, and then you'll learn more. But anyway, you guys are gonna be great. I'm excited.

Liz Cannon [02:24:49] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:24:50] But it's an honor to be on your show, and so thanks for having me.

Liz Cannon [02:24:53] Thanks.

Ray Purcell [02:24:53] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:24:53] You guys are gonna be great.

Liz Cannon [02:24:54] Thanks.

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