Introduction and Guest Welcome

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 796

John Hamer [00:00:00] Sam.

John Dehlin [00:00:28] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is September 21, 2017, and it's an interesting day for sure. Really, for two reasons. We learned late yesterday that, or at least I learned late yesterday that the LDS Church recently acquired the printer's manuscript of the Book of Mormon for a record $35 million from Community of Christ.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] As I've read a little bit about that acquisition, it looks like it's the most money ever paid for a single document, exceeding the amount of money that Bill Gates paid for Leonardo da Vinci document or manuscript. So it's a significant thing, and it relates both to church history, to what the LDS Church is doing, and it also relates to Community of Christ because this is a document they've held for over a century, I believe, and now they've sold it.

John Dehlin [00:01:42] In addition, completely different news, but also interesting to me is the news today that BYU now going to be serving Coca Cola and caffeinated beverages, which should not be newsworthy in any other universe, but in the Mormon universe, it's actually kind of significant.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] So we are going to be talking about that later on in the show. But without any further ado, I wanted to invite back to Mormon Stories someone who has joined us many, many times before. He's beloved by pretty much all. If he has any enemies, I'm unaware of them, it's the incomparable John Hamer. John Hamer, welcome. Welcome to. Welcome back to Mormon Stories.

John Hamer [00:02:30] Thanks, John. I mean, I always enjoy being able to sit down with you. It's a lot of fun every time.

John Dehlin [00:02:36] All right, and you just got back from a world tour. Do you want us to tell us quickly about that?

John Hamer [00:02:41] Yeah. Well, that was a lot of fun. So this is not something that ever happened to me before. Usually that happens to anybody I know, as far as I know. But last year at Toronto Gay Pride, my bank was off having a drawing for a free trip to Vienna.

John Hamer [00:03:02] And my banker just says, well, nobody, not a lot of people put their names in. Do you want me to fill out a one of these things and put it in for you? And I said, sure. And so then, lo and behold, one. So Mike and I took it as our 20th anniversary trip this last week and it was really nice. So they flew us there. They actually picked us up from the airport in Mercedes limo. They took us to all the fanciest hotels in Vienna. The suite that we were in at the Imperial Hotel, it was two stories tall.

John Hamer [00:03:36] There's just another balcony that's overlooking the Ringstrasse. I mean, it's just kind of this amazing trip that we would never treat ourselves to. So it was a nice way to be able to mark our anniversary. Like I said on Facebook 10 years ago, for our 10th anniversary, Mike took me to Red Lobster. So this was an improvement,

John Dehlin [00:03:58] A little bit of an upgrade.

John Hamer [00:03:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:01] All right, well, that's so wonderful. We want to thank everyone for joining us live on Facebook. We actually pay money out of the Open Stories foundation budget to be able to live stream these events. And we do it because we really want the live participation. We think that that helps make things a little bit more interactive. We can get better questions.

John Dehlin [00:04:28] So we really want to thank everyone who joins us. We've got 50 people already joining us. And for anyone who joins, if you have questions or comments either about the Book of Mormon manuscript sale purchase or about BYU and Coke, we want to encourage you to post those questions and comments so that we can incorporate them in. It just makes for a more fun conversation. Already we've got, you know, Chelsea, who's joined us from the East Coast. We've got Steve Ottison, great guy. Him and his wife Roy in Seattle were very gracious hosts to us during the most recent Seattle Mormon Stories workshop, which was a phenomenal, smashing success.

John Dehlin [00:05:10] We have some events coming up through the Open Stories Foundation. You can go to mormonstories.org events to learn more about them, but in this case, we're going to just dive in to this topic at hand. So, John, how would you feel about giving us a little bit of a background, understand, remind us about the process of the creation of the Book of Mormon, what various manuscripts were involved and where this printer's manuscript fits in.

How the Book of Mormon Manuscript Was Created

John Hamer [00:05:41] So you'll remember from the Church General story as it's told that Joseph Smith largely dictates the manuscript or he's speaking and then he makes use of a number of scribes who are writing down what he says. And, you know, I think a lot of your readers will be familiar with the differences between kind of like some of the early 20th century pictures where essentially Joseph Smith is kind of looking at plates and then Oliver Cowdery's maybe across the table from him writing or something like that.

John Hamer [00:06:19] That hasn't proved to be the actual case from the descriptions. The description is essentially that it's like it's operating more similar to how he operated when he was acting as a treasure seer, which is to say taking one of the seer stones like the ldgs Church has in their vault. And that they revealed last year using that as a spiritual medium might in the same way like you might have with a crystal ball, you put it in the hat in order to obscure light. And so that you're seeing with your spiritual eyes as opposed to physical eyes. The plates then do not have to be present.

John Hamer [00:06:55] And so the plates are largely then a spiritual artifact. Joseph Smith then is speaking. And that's how the text is then written down. And that's what becomes the text. The first time they tried to do that, it was a fairly halting thing. They had gotten through what's called traditionally the 116 pages.

John Hamer [00:07:16] And so there's the first 116 pages of the book. But it's actually, it turns out, as the research has gone on, we don't really know how many pages there were. That corresponds to 116 pages in the replacement manuscript essentially worth of the Book of Mormon. But that had been copied down at that point. Martin Harris, who had been bankrolling the dictation process, really begged to have to be able to take it to his wife. His wife was not on board. His wife felt that he was being defrauded probably by Joseph Smith. He shares that manuscript with her. We don't know the actual what ends up happening with that manuscript.

John Hamer [00:07:59] Most likely scenario is that she destroyed it. And so those initial portion of the Book of Mormon is destroyed. And that set the process back an awful lot. And it made Joseph Smith very not sure what to do to go forward and that kind of thing. And that actually is one of the things that caused him to start what later becomes the process of creating the Doctrine and Covenants. But essentially where he instead of scrying or using the gift and power of God, as he's calling it, to channel a text that is thought of anyway as being an ancient text, he instead prays and dictates what he calls a revelation that is about the present day, you know, so it's not about antiquity.

John Hamer [00:08:47] And so that becomes what's initially called commandments, but then eventually is called covenants. And so that becomes part of what becomes the Book of Doctrine and Covenants. So revelations and anyway, and one of those was to. Instead of going back to where they were and all the part that had been lost, they continued on from that point and started translating going forward. So that's where the dictating. So the portion from Mosiah onward to the end, that's the earliest portion that was dictated of the part that we have. And then when they got to the end, then there's the idea of the small plates. And so the small plates are meant to be a replacement for the text that was lost, which was not then recomposed, you know, from the beginning of it.

John Hamer [00:09:36] And so that becomes the beginning. So I Nephi the first part all the way up through Words of Mormon. And so that's the last portion to be dictated and written down. So that created, in doing that, they created the original then manuscript of the Book of Mormon.

John Hamer [00:09:53] That manuscript. They were very concerned when they were going to go have that printed. They remembered just the amount of work that had gone into making that and the problem that they had when they lost the first manuscript, so the 116 pages manuscript. And so as a result of that, they were very hesitant to give their only manuscript to the printer, so to the Grandin Press. And so as a result of that, they went through the kind of extraordinary and complicated and difficult task of taking the original manuscript and copying it. So hand by hand, page by page by page. And that created what we call the printer's manuscript.

John Hamer [00:10:31] And so the printer's manuscript is then what was used to typeset the original 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon, the other manuscript, the original manuscript being kept for safekeeping. So then fast forwarding real quick, have

John Dehlin [00:10:45] we compared the original manuscript to the printer's manuscript to see what changes were made between those?

John Hamer [00:10:52] So most of the original manuscript is lost. So the original manuscript was kept in Joseph Smith's possession. And what he ended up doing when they found it, the Nauvoo House, this, what was going to be this great hotel, like the Hotel Utah, which is to say the Joseph Smith Building in Salt Lake, that was going to be a very important building as far as they were concerned. It was also ordered to be built by Revelation, et cetera, along with the Nauvoo Temple. So this Nauvoo House Hotel, the remnants of which still exist in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith put the original manuscript into the cornerstone.

John Hamer [00:11:30] But as you'd imagine, when you put paper into a stone, it wasn't a perfectly sealed time capsule. And when it was brought back out, it was simply ruined. And so there were little bits of it and pieces of it, people who venerated the Book of Mormon when they would come and visit Emma and her second husband, Louis Bidemann, sometimes they would be able to acquire pieces of that manuscript. Largely of those scraps that remain of the original manuscript. Those have largely been bought up by the LDS Church and are in the possession of the LDS Church historian's office. Those have been extensively compared to the printer's manuscript.

John Hamer [00:12:14] And so there's a wonderful addition, for example, by Skousen. It was printed by Yale, called Book of the Earliest Text. And then there's also the new edition from the Joseph Smith Papers Project. So we have, like, the. All of the data from all of this has been extensively studied and has been published for a long time. So anybody who wants to see, like, the changes from the original manuscript to the printer's manuscript to the Book of the 1830 Book of Mormon to the later editions, ultimately there's thousands and thousands of changes that especially occur between the 1830 edition and the later editions, some of which are substantive, theologically, most of them are grammatical fixes.

John Hamer [00:13:03] And so there are some changes, too, between the original manuscript and the printer's manuscript, but largely that's in a correction kind of. Kind of phase.

John Dehlin [00:13:13] So we could imagine Oliver Cowdery making spelling or grammatical changes, right?

John Hamer [00:13:19] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:13:20] Yeah. Okay, cool. So keep telling us the story of the printer's manuscript. So the.

The Printer's Manuscript and Its History

John Hamer [00:13:27] So the printer's manuscript, as I understand it, is in the possession then, of Oliver Cowdery, as opposed to the original, which is in Joseph Smith's possession. Oliver Cowdery is kicked out of the church in Missouri in 1838. And so he leaves and he eventually goes to Ohio. He, I think, has probably. We don't know entirely what, you know, was in Oliver Cowdery's head, because we don't. We only have some letters that he wrote towards the end of his life. At some point or other, he probably maybe was thinking that some point or other that Joseph Smith would try to reconcile with him and invite him back, but that never happened.

John Dehlin [00:14:08] Cowdery's falling out with Joseph was that he found out about Fanny Algeria, which was an apparent sexual relationship that Joseph had before he received either the sealing power or The D&C 132 revelation made Oliver Cowdery mad, and so he called Joseph on it, and Joseph kicked him out for accusing him of adultery. Is that right?

John Hamer [00:14:33] Yeah, that's the thumbnail.

John Dehlin [00:14:36] He's a strange security affair or something like that.

John Hamer [00:14:40] Yeah. And that was one of the issues, like unchristian, like conduct or whatever, calling Joseph Smith out for having what Cowdery was calling an affair.

John Dehlin [00:14:52] Okay.

John Hamer [00:14:53] And so Cowdery's a strange. All we have from the High Council minutes of Cowdery's trial on that matter is that Joseph told the High Council, he said he made some very appropriate comments regarding the girl affair or the girl business, which I guess satisfied the High Council which, which ruled that Cowdery was unrepentant. So then along with at that point when that happened, along with the other dissenters, he had to flee Far West. That's when you know, the salt sermon happens where Sidney Rigdon says that the dissenters are essentially like salt that has lost its saber and it's going to be trampled underfoot. And so pretty much they flee for their lives.

John Hamer [00:15:35] They go to Richmond, Missouri, they lose their property. They swear out affidavits against their former co religionists. The Whitmers continue to live. Or David Whitmer, one of the other witnesses and Cowdery's brother in law continues to live in Richmond. John Whitmer, who had been the historian of the churches in Richmond for a while, then he moves back to Far west and he's the one who stays there.

John Hamer [00:16:00] Cowdery, who continues to be very close with his again family members. He's married to the Whitmer sister. After Joseph's death, he decides that he wants to get back into the movement. He writes to David Whitmer and says that all of these leaders, Strang and Brigham Young and everybody have emerged. But he says to Whitmer, the 12 don't have the keys. The 12 have not the keys to lead the church. So he had himself re baptized. He then moved to or went to Richmond to make plans with David Whitmer, presumably to reorganize or start reorganizing a church. David Whitmer ultimately does that. But it, but Oliver Cowdery dies of I think pneumonia or something like that of an illness right then.

John Hamer [00:16:49] So we don't really know what he would have done. His wife and his daughter, his family members end up staying in Missouri with the Whitmers and they end up becoming members of the Church of Christ Whitmerite. So the Whitmerite Church in the Whitmer's possession. The Whitmerite Church's possession then included things like the printer manuscript, the Whitmer various Whitmer seer stones, perhaps Oliver Cowdery's seer stone, things like the Anthon transcript. So if you've seen the characters manuscript with all the different little Book of Mormon characters that all those things then were in the possession of the, of the Whitmer Church or the Whitmer family.

John Dehlin [00:17:31] So Cowdery must have given the printer's manuscript to David Whitmer, is that what you're saying?

John Hamer [00:17:39] I think it's all bought come together from the Whitmer collection is what I'm given to understand. So I think that at some point or other, maybe what happens is that Cowdery's family has put it in the possession of the Whitmer family. And so then. So then as of the early 20th century, when they're all passed away, the collection came up for sale and was offered to both the LDS Church and the RLDS Church. The then RLDS Church community priced and the LDS Church passed.

John Dehlin [00:18:16] Did you say 1905 or something like that?

John Hamer [00:18:19] It's 1903.

John Dehlin [00:18:20] Okay, 1903.

John Hamer [00:18:21] All right, so 1903, apparently, I mean, Joseph. So the two people who are presidents, I think are the church, or at least the person who was in charge of the acquisition for the LDS Church is Joseph F. Smith. And then the president and prophet of the community Christ at the time is Joseph Smith iii. And so they're first cousins. They're not in. They don't actually have a good relationship with each other. Joseph F. Smith apparently felt that because it's Joseph's son.

John Dehlin [00:18:47] Right? Joseph Smith III is Joseph Smith's son.

John Hamer [00:18:50] Yeah. So Joseph the Third is Joseph Smith's son.

John Dehlin [00:18:52] It's kind of crazy. He survives into the 1900s. That's a long time to live.

John Hamer [00:18:57] Oh, yeah, yeah. No, he had a good, long life. He. He survived all the way up until the 19 teens.

John Dehlin [00:19:03] Yeah, yeah. They paid 2500 for the manuscript, right?

John Hamer [00:19:07] Yes, yep. And. Well, the whole. The whole collection.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] Okay.

John Hamer [00:19:10] Including the manuscript.

John Dehlin [00:19:11] Yeah, yeah.

John Hamer [00:19:13] And so then that's been in the possession of Community of Christ ever since. And until yesterday.

John Dehlin [00:19:19] Have you seen it?

John Hamer [00:19:21] Oh, yeah, yep.

John Dehlin [00:19:22] Touched it, whatever

John Hamer [00:19:25] with gloves, you know, you would, of course, you touch an important, valuable manuscript, you don't want to. If everybody were to touch it, you know, it would be. Ruin it, you know, so. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] So it just looks like. What does it look like? Just to describe,

John Hamer [00:19:43] you know, it's. It's what? Trying to think. It's, you know, I mean, it's old paper. That's what it looks like to me. And then it's, you know, it's a, you know, writing. I think you have pictures of it, right. I mean, with the news articles. So, I mean, I haven't looked at it recently. It's been 10 years or something, you

John Dehlin [00:20:01] know, kind of orangish yellow. And it's got a bunch of handwriting. It's got scribbles on it, things written in. Right.

John Hamer [00:20:07] And the punctuation, I think, is kind of drawn in probably, and later by the printer. I think it's been established because it's not originally written with punctuation, so that kind of thing.

John Dehlin [00:20:19] What did it mean to Community of Christ to have that? How was it thought of within the church and then how was it used or displayed or whatever?

John Hamer [00:20:33] I don't think it has been displayed recently. Usually it would be available for a whole long time. It's available for scholars to come and look at. Might be that a page or two was in display in the museum to kind of talk about the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. It's certainly a core part of our heritage. So both churches look back at the early church period and consider themselves to be the early church, you know, so in that sense, the LDS Church and Community of Christ for the first 14 years are the same institution, and then afterwards they are two different continuations of that institution.

John Hamer [00:21:10] And so obviously it's a core part of the church's heritage because. And that's why they were interested in reacquiring it from a different one of the restoration churches, the Whitmerite church. So it has been very important. It would have been at some point or other when the churches were more antagonistic or when we were more antagonistic. And we're trying to use all different kinds of ways of saying that we're the original church and the LDS Church is simply a bunch of apostates.

John Hamer [00:21:43] You know, every single aspect of the original legacy that you have in your possession would be then probably used as a bludgeon in order to try to make that case. And so the more that you, you know, you have, that was probably a very important thing to members in the early part of the 20th century to be, you know, as in the whole litany of different reasons why they would say that the Community of Christ or the RLDS Church was the true church. When we were making that claim more recently, it's just been the focus of scholarly work like we were kind of mentioning. And so, you know, as the churches began to have history departments that had trained historians involved, you know, Beginning in the 1960s, the church historian for Community of Christ, Richard Howard, Dick Howard, one of the main contributions he made to the new Mormon history was to begin literary criticism and textual analysis of restoration scriptures.

John Hamer [00:22:45] And so that was a book that he produced in the early 70s that won the MHA, the Mormon history Association Best Book Award and things like that. Big contribution that kind of showed the evolution of how the Joseph Smith translation worked, how the, how the original, the original revelations that became the Doctrine and Covenants, in other words, how the originals were, how they were published in the Book of Commandments, how those were edited and published in the Doctrine and Covenants. So all those changes, the textual analysis of that, likewise the textual analysis of the Book of Mormon, he also did things like he did comparisons.

John Hamer [00:23:22] So he would take things like, you know, in the Book of Mormon, they'll say, my heart delighteth in Isaiah, and then they'll just, you know, run through a whole bunch of Isaiah. And so Dick went through and said, okay, well, here's what we have as the Book of Mormon's version of that Isaiah passage and how it was affected or how it was changed from the King James original. And then he went to the Joseph Smith translation and said, here's that same passage and here's how that was changed from the King James. And it turns out that they are changed differently. Right. So they don't match up. So it's interesting.

Why Community of Christ Sold the Manuscript

John Dehlin [00:23:51] Okay, cool. There's a lot of questions coming in about Community of Christ's decision to sell this. Maybe I'll just read a couple of the questions and you can get a sense, I mean, sort of in its most benign way, you could say, wow, this is such a sacred document. It's like the Shroud of Turin or something. For, you know, to the Catholic Church, this is among its most sacred possible relics.

John Hamer [00:24:23] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:24:23] Why in the world would Community of Christ ever be willing to sell this, especially to the LDS Church, which historically does not maybe have the best reputation for transparency, although obviously it's trying to restore that reputation. But why? Why sell something so sacred and then this. Why sell it to the LDS Church?

John Hamer [00:24:45] Right. Well, so this is a sad, sad news, actually, for Community of Christ members. And so many people are, you know, just thinking with melancholy about this, you know, because it is something that's quite sacred to our story, our narrative. This is part of our heritage as much as it's part of the heritage of any of the restoration tradition churches, the LDS Church included. And so this is not a decision that, you know, in our case, the Presiding Bishopric and the First Presidency took lightly at all.

John Hamer [00:25:21] It was something that has been considered for multiple years. I know. And you know, exactly what could. What. Among different things that are assets of the church, the church has, is. Tends to be essentially quite land rich, but not income rich. And so we have problems in terms of. We're facing many of the same kind of problems that many churches throughout western Western world are facing, which is to say aging grand congregations, declining membership roles, that kind of thing. And so as a result of that, we have, for example, the same kind of issues and liabilities that are facing corporations like, let's say, General Motors.

John Hamer [00:26:06] So at one point or other, General Motors was a much bigger corporation. And when it had that, it had lots and lots of employees. Those employees have pensions from gm. And also there's liability in terms of all of their health care, all their health insurance. The amount of time that people have lived now is so much more and the amount of cost of healthcare is so much more. And so that is one of the reasons why it's very hard for historic, let's say, institutions to emerge from those kind of issues. And so in Community of Christ, we really are we're facing that specific issue, which is to say all kinds of people that dedicated their lives to service who are now in retirement and for whom there is a huge, specifically like healthcare and other kinds of those kind of benefits liability that the institution has.

John Hamer [00:27:01] And so how are we going to respond to that? That's one of the, you know, that's been one of the core questions. And so in the case of this particular asset, I mentioned, for example, how this hadn't been like, let's say, one of the documents that had been continuously, let's say, in Smith family possession, unlike, for example, the Joseph Smith translation manuscript. That is not to say that that also isn't a possibility that we might see that, you know, there be a buyer at that point, some point with that, too. But there would be a lot more, let's say, hardship with that because there are some very important heritage stories about Emma and her preservation of those documents and how important those particular documents were, as opposed to this document, which is specifically a copy of the original that the Smiths had kept and had been off in the Whitmer hands and that kind of thing before.

John Hamer [00:27:58] And so in that way, let's say this was I would say that this is, let me perhaps be less dear to our particular path and heart than let's say, some of the other like let's say what you're using for that alternate example that the manuscript of the Joseph Smith translation, which is also in Community of Christ dance. So why the LDS church? So the LDS Church has a history, as you were saying, of occasionally, let's say, closing down the doors of the vaults and not letting historians in and that kind of thing.

John Hamer [00:28:33] In the last couple decades, with the establishment of the Joseph Smith Papers Project, there's been a big change and turnaround and the also just an unbelievable investment on the part of the LDS history department to have like, amazing preservation techniques and things like that the documents and everything like that pretty well have already been published. So that was all released last year as kind of a joint effort where we gave total access to this manuscript to the Joseph Smith Papers project. And so, like I say, in that case, it's pretty well already been published. So there's very little that danger, I think, in terms of, let's say, if the vault were to all be closed and no historian would ever be allowed into LDS Church headquarters again, which I don't ever foresee that happening. In any case, the information here would not be lost. It wouldn't have to be. The original hardly needs to be consulted.

John Dehlin [00:29:40] What are the other assets that Community of Christ has that the LDS Church would want to purchase just so that we can sort of if this is just a shoe to drop, that maybe is a forecasting of other shoes to drop. Somebody's mentioned the Kirtland Temple. What are the other biggest documents or assets that Community of Christ has that the LDS Church also has its designs on?

John Hamer [00:30:14] So the I just mentioned the besides the Joseph Smith of the Joseph Smith translation. So that would be at this point, depending on how you think of it, I think it's probably a more substantial one, at least from our standpoint, than the printer's manuscript, since it is not it's the original and it's the only, you know, there is not a not like a printer's copy for the jst. So in that way, that's a pretty important manuscript or actually collection of manuscripts. And that would certainly be the list, I'm sure, of things that the history department would want. The LDS history department. There's all kinds of smaller documents.

John Hamer [00:30:51] Then beyond that, I mentioned the Anthem transcript. So that's that characters document. There's bunches of letters. There's there's just a lot of early, early kind of letters, I presume, journals. There's nothing of this caliber at beyond that, beyond the jst, I think, document.

Kirtland Temple and Other Community of Christ Assets

John Hamer [00:31:14] But obviously you mentioned there are two much larger assets, much more important assets in terms of the actual sites. And so you mentioned Kirtland Temple, which is not for sale, but is obviously something the LDS Church would like to acquire.

John Hamer [00:31:33] I don't know that anybody anyway, it's priceless, of course. And the other, other one of those priceless assets is all of the properties in Nauvoo held by Community of Christ, which you know, of course includes the bones and grave of Joseph Smith himself, which presumably to lots of Mormons would be valuable to possess.

John Dehlin [00:32:00] And then what about land in land in Missouri? I Guess you is that also of interest to the church? Any community of Christ land owned in Missouri?

John Hamer [00:32:14] I guess, but less, I would think. I mean, I don't know. I mean, how excited. I don't know how excited they would be probably more interested in getting the temple lot out of the temple lot. Church. Right.

John Dehlin [00:32:23] Yeah.

John Hamer [00:32:24] I mean the problem with our portions of the temple lot is we have giant. We have the largest temple in the restoration tradition on the lot. Right. So it's not. They don't particularly want our temple because it's different from LDS temples. We have a different idea of temples. You know, same thing. The same thing. The auditorium. So there are properties obviously that are part of the shared tradition, but that's not, you know, I don't know how much they want them. I don't know. So I wouldn't say that those are the big deals.

John Dehlin [00:32:54] So a lot of these questions are coming from our friend Henning Mueller in Germany, who I'm sure you just saw.

John Hamer [00:33:00] Yeah, I was just there. Wonderful to see him.

John Dehlin [00:33:02] He seems maybe he seems a little bit discouraged. Another question he has his around this idea. Do you think the sale of this book of moral manuscript means is in any way connected to community of Christ? Maybe de emphasizing, you know, literal church history as a central part of their tradition going forward? It's sort of like we were all about Joseph Smith, the restoration. We kind of realized a lot of that maybe wasn't what we thought it was. And so now the focus is on Christ and community, where we care about our tradition, but it's certainly not as central as it might have been at one time. Is that fair or not fair?

John Hamer [00:33:43] No, I think that. I don't. I mean, how can you say that's unfair? So I mean, at some point or other when, when you're talking about things that are priceless, making decisions between essentially sacred obligations that you have to people who've devoted their life to service. Right. And then to priceless pieces of heritage.

John Hamer [00:34:09] You're doing these kind of balancing acts. And so is this, you know, does that imply that the church says no? And so it made it very clear in its official statement about the sale that this in no way changes the status of the Book of Mormon, which is part of canon and the community of Christ. And so it is one of the three canonized works of scripture in community of Christ, which are our Doctrine and Covenants, the Book of Mormon and the Bible. And that will continue to be the case. This affects that in no way at all.

John Hamer [00:34:49] I don't actually think that I don't actually see de emphasis anymore in the Book of Mormon. I think that there was a down, a downward trend for a whole bunch of time, but that now that community of Christ in general, I think has a more realistic and more sophisticated understanding of Scripture in general, that it is better able to understand the Book of Mormon and understand its place and role within our canon. So even if we, in many cases, most people like myself for example, don't consider it to be ancient in any way. So in other words, I consider it to be 19th century scripture in that same way.

John Hamer [00:35:28] Much of many books, for example in the Bible are pseudepigraphical. They are not written by the people in the characters who they say so like the Book of Daniel, that kind of thing. They're in fact written hundreds of years after those characters, but they're still part of the canon. We're not taking like Thomas Jefferson and just cutting things out of the Bible.

John Hamer [00:35:50] And I think that, you know, the reason why you want to ever do that and have your scriptures be perfect is because you would be going down this path of trying to worship scripture instead of understanding them as human responses to the divine, full of all kinds of flaws based on their own time and place and contexts. So the fact that we do have that understanding of scripture, I think has allowed us to reinvestigate and re understand the Book of Mormon in a new kind of light. And people, we published works by different members of the Apostles and the First Presidency have written books on the Book of Mormon.

John Hamer [00:36:26] So the members try to be able to approach it again. More books are in the works right now as people are writing about it. So for a while there may have been a sense in the 70s and 80s and 90s maybe that people didn't know what to do with the book. And some members may still not know what to. And some might be quite angry about it or any other thing. But I don't see this as a sign at all that the church is moving away from the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:36:48] Henning clarifies in the comments. He says no, no, not discouraged at all. Quite positive actually. So Henning is not discouraged.

John Hamer [00:36:57] Okay, good.

John Dehlin [00:37:00] Mary says, thank you, John, for providing such great historical background. She really appreciates it. Marty's asking, there's a rumor that the last 116 pages were found and turned over to the LDS Church. Have you ever heard that rumor? And is there any.

John Hamer [00:37:15] That always happens. I mean, Hoffman was saying that he had found it.

John Dehlin [00:37:18] Right? Rumor. All this happens, you're saying?

John Hamer [00:37:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of the things that obviously everybody would love to find the 116 pages that, you know, I mean, Hoffman, Mark Hoffman, the forger had said that he did or had them or he was on a trail of them. And I guess it was just too much work to try to forge 116 pages of it. But, yeah, so I know it's not. They haven't been found. I think the most likely scenario is they're destroyed.

John Dehlin [00:37:45] Yeah, you mentioned that we didn't allow you a proper introduction just because I assume everyone knows who you are. Some of the listeners are asking about that nautilus in the back. Tell us really quickly what you do for community of Christ, your role with them, and what that beautiful thing is behind you.

John Hamer [00:38:02] Yeah, I'm just here at the church in downtown Toronto. So this is the sanctuary of the downtown Toronto Community of Christ Church. And so in the background here is a. It's kind of our light wall that has kind of this nautilus. And in the center of it, you can see the church's peace seal, which has been kind of the symbol of community Christ since the 1870s. Anyway, the Nautilus, if you've ever seen our temple in independence, it's made in the shape of a nautilus. And so part of the idea of that, it's as you are kind of entering into the sanctuary, you're kind of ascending around this circle, which is called the worshiper's path.

John Hamer [00:38:48] And it's symbolizing essentially the role that we all have in life where we are hopefully progressing, but not always linearly. And so it's not necessarily circular where we repeat all of our errors, but hopefully as things are just repeating, but maybe ascending. And also the idea is to, when you get into that inner sanctuary, to be able to commune with the divine there.

John Hamer [00:39:12] And so in the, in the sanctuary here, we have, you know, we have that represented on our wall and a bunch of other places. So what do I do? I'm the pastor of this congregation. And that means that pretty much. It means that. So we have the same kind of layout priesthood in Community of Christ since we're the same original church as LDS church. But essentially it means that at a branch conference, at the congregation conference, the members decide who they want to be pastor. And so I've been able to have that confidence from the different members to that think that I feel that I'm being called to lead this congregation where we're at right now in our history.

John Hamer [00:39:59] And so that's kind of my role. I've also been called now to be a 70. And I'm going to be, let's see, two weeks I'm going to get ordained to be a 70.

John Dehlin [00:40:09] Congrats, that's exciting. And in a 70, community of Christ means what?

John Hamer [00:40:15] So the apostles in the 70 are, are essentially people that are kind of especially called to invite people into the church. So to invite people to build community. So it's essentially an outreach job which I kind of do anyway.

John Dehlin [00:40:37] Will it focus on the seeker program, which is post Mormons, ex Mormons, etc. Will that be your focus as a 70?

John Hamer [00:40:46] So my focus, I have three particular focuses or callings or ministry that I, that I'm involved in. And so the first one is congregational renewal. So how can we take aging congregations like the one we have here in Toronto and how can we take what we have and what is valuable and be able to translate that experience and value to all the people around us in the city, for example, who are non adherents, people who consider themselves to be spiritual but not religious. We can get through the sort of negative things that people associate with organized religion, with Christianity, you know, get rid of them, you know, in as much as they were like maybe simply us worship, worshiping our time and place and kind of various kinds of judgmental idolatry and all the other problems.

John Hamer [00:41:39] Instead get down to bare bones and say this is what's really valuable in terms of being part of a community that is engaged in doing good work and also serving as a forum for people to be able to share life experiences and problems. So that congregational renewal, the second one is outreach or ministry to the unchurched. So talking to people who are not, who are spiritual but not religious, that kind of thing like I just talked about. And then finally like you say latter day seekers. And so that is people of restoration heritage who for whatever reason can't find a spiritual home. For example, if they were grow up Mormon and they maybe they disapprove of the November 5 policy or something like that, whatever the reason being that don't feel that they feel marginalized within their own faith community, that don't feel spiritually nourished within their own faith community to just be able to do just, you know, hospitality.

John Hamer [00:42:45] So in other words, just tell everybody they're welcome and to help people work through that, whether they become members or not, that's really not the objective.

What the $35 Million Purchase Means for the LDS Church

John Dehlin [00:42:54] And if somebody wants, and we're going to now turn to maybe a little bit about the LDS Church and the purchase of the manuscript and what it means really quickly, if somebody wants to paint this as community of crisis going down the tubes and this is one of a few final desperate acts to stay alive, let's just really dramatize it. How would you comment on that sort of characterization?

John Hamer [00:43:20] So it's a hard choice, but it's certainly not the only choice that we have to make. So you know people in the LDS church because of, because of the portions of the church that are shared, which is to say our restoration heritage stuff that seems like that's the whole show.

John Hamer [00:43:40] In point of fact, the community of Christ actually has lots of assets that have nothing to do with restoration heritage. So for example, one of our traditions has been to have what we call reunions where everybody in your entire region, so in my case throughout Ontario and then beyond that in Canada, here we come together. We have four different campgrounds that the church owns which are to say large pieces of property.

John Hamer [00:44:10] Several of these that exist now all over the world actually and all across the United States are extremely valuable. So there, it's not like there's no property. There's. We're not close at all to insolvency. So it's just a matter of there's situations where you have liabilities that are direct and now and so then you're having to deal with things that are essentially assets, that are essentially endowment assets. And so there are plenty of those. And we're not anywhere close to, it's not even any danger at all. So people can wait for a century or something like that and talk to us later.

John Dehlin [00:44:51] So if they get to the point of desperation, like the sale of the Kirtland Temple, you're saying that's 100 years off.

John Hamer [00:44:58] I don't see that happening 100 years from now.

John Dehlin [00:45:01] Okay.

John Hamer [00:45:02] I don't think that anybody's ever made it. I mean for the. Anyway we're talking about priceless stuff. So I was just like talking to people. I was in Vienna at the Habsburgs palaces there and looking at the crown of the Holy Roman Emperors. So thousand year old crown that was used for all the Holy Roman Emperors and everything from Otto the First dawn. And I showed that picture to somebody and they said, well, how much is that worth? Well, how much does it mean? It's infinite. Right. So we know anyway, so.

John Dehlin [00:45:30] But it's fair to say some would say that's true about the Book of Mormon printer's manuscript. Right?

John Hamer [00:45:35] Some would say so. But I mean, I don't think, I didn't say so. So when I was sure, when I went anyway so

John Dehlin [00:45:43] what, what steps did Community for those who are like, oh my gosh, the church is gonna, like, LDS church is gonna do revisionist history. They're gonna, you know, burn pages, delete pages, change pages, rewrite the history because the church could be Orwellian, throw things in the memory hole. What precautions did Community of Christ take to make sure that wasn't possible?

John Hamer [00:46:05] So, you know, we have, you know, complete, high resolution copy of the whole thing that's published too. I mean, everybody has access to this document. So this is specifically not a, I would say that the issue at all with this particular document is not about scholarly access to the document, which has already just been more than almost any manuscript has ever received, at least of this recent of provenance. Right. So there's ancient manuscripts that have been poured over like this one. But anyway, so this has been very well studied and it's, there's really no danger of that information being lost because it's, well widely disseminated and published.

John Hamer [00:46:48] And you can buy, like I say, the books on it from Yale, you can buy it from the Joseph Smith Papers projects, everything like that. We have copies in terms of that maintained ourselves. It just isn't, isn't going to be going anywhere. You have it in terms, I don't know what else you can say Orwellian. So what it, what the value of it is is a, so keeping the collection all together so that it's not actually being split up and bought by, let's say, individual LDS millionaires who might want to have one piece of it, in which case then it would go into, you know, we might have been able to be raised a hundred million because each page might be worth a million dollars or whatever.

John Hamer [00:47:23] Right. So anyway, so that, but that way, in that case, then it really would be lost to scholars because it would just go into individual private collections. And so that didn't happen. And so instead, as I mentioned, the LDS Church has spent an awful lot learning the best preservation techniques. And so it's, it's, as a document goes, it's literally going to be safer, you know, in the, because it's going to be preserved just as long as the LDS Church is in business. I should think so.

John Dehlin [00:47:52] Which will be a long, long, long time.

John Hamer [00:47:54] Again, check back with them in a century, as I say, you know, they're

John Dehlin [00:47:57] not in any, I'd say a millennia. Okay. What do you think about the price? 35 million. Is that too high, too low? Any thoughts on the price?

John Hamer [00:48:09] So I thought that was, you know, quite a reasonable price. The price that. The price that I had thought, you know, that you. Like I said, I mentioned, look, if the individual pages of the collection were broken up, the.

John Hamer [00:48:26] There's a lot of Mormon collectors. And so I'm not a collector. I'm not interested in buying collecting stuff. I'm more interested in the actual information. And so I'm more interested in having the published volumes myself, of all the scholarship. But there are people for whom collecting actual artifacts is like a big thing for them, and lots of them now have lots of money. And so the value, since the 80s and Hoffman was involved, the value of the Mormon antiquities market has just gone up and up and up and up and up. So things like individual Book of Commandments. So that's one of the rarest of the actual published books, Individual Books of Commandments, which is the precursor to the Doctrine and Covenants.

John Hamer [00:49:03] They sell for over a million dollars each, right? That's because there's not very many of them, but there are more than one. Community of Christ has three or four of those. So there are plenty of those. Each one of them is worth more than a million dollars because collectors will pay that. So how much is an individual page of the manuscript of the Book of Mormon worth as a collector? Who, let's say, if you're a huntsman and you have how many billion dollars would you pay $1 million to have the page that has the best quote from the Book of Mormon that inspires you? Would you pay 10 million?

John Hamer [00:49:37] You know, in other words, sure they would. They have that plenty of money. So how much would Romney pay for a piece of it? So I think that, in fact, the collection I said is probably worth 100 million, but I think 35 million is completely reasonable, especially considering that's the most anybody's ever paid for anything before.

John Dehlin [00:49:57] So it's almost like they went to that Gates document, that Gates da Vinci purchase. It was like, whatever, 30 million. And they're like, okay, 35, you know.

John Hamer [00:50:06] Well, I think that anyway, it was assessed, right? So it's not like we just pull it out of the hats, you know, it was talked so. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:13] But it seems interesting that that's previously the most amount ever paid for manuscript. 30.8 million paid by Bill Gates for the Leonardo da Vinci Codex in 1994. So why not 100 million, do you think? Like, why don't they pull out?

John Hamer [00:50:34] They probably figured they don't have to. They're the main buyer. And so they figured if we'd sell it for 35, which we did, then that's how that kind of haggling works when you're talking in these terms, you know, when you know it's. There's haggling. Right. So it's like with, when you're buying a house, there may be, if you have a super mansion and it may be worth X number of hundred million or whatever in LA or something like that, but you have to find somebody who can actually buy it.

John Dehlin [00:51:00] And so anyway, yeah, that makes sense

John Hamer [00:51:03] between the buyer and the seller.

John Dehlin [00:51:06] Okay. So the LS Church purchases it. Purchases it. And the first thing I notice is that they say they didn't actually use tithing funds, that anonymous donors donated the 35 million and then from that money, the money was purchased. Any thoughts on that?

John Hamer [00:51:25] Yeah, I think that's been the normal, that's been the normal practice in the LDS Church. So I think that that was also happening going back to the 80s. And so I usually, I mean, again, I mentioned, I mentioned just like papyrus

John Dehlin [00:51:37] was purchased that way, the Book of Abraham papyrus in the 60s. Is that right?

John Hamer [00:51:40] Yeah, so I think that's. That they do that as a go to. And so there are, as we mentioned, LDS billionaires. And so a $35 million drop for any one of those guys is probably, I mean, every day money is valuable to everybody. But anyway, it isn't putting anybody back. Too bad if you're a Huntsman or something. I don't know who the anonymous donor is.

John Dehlin [00:52:03] Do you think that's. If some are like, why doesn't the church just own up and buy it with tithing funds? That. That seems like a shell game to always go to that effort? Do you have any thoughts on that?

John Hamer [00:52:16] You know, it's up to the. I don't advise the LDS Church about how it does its policy and spending. So, you know, people were, people on your thread were, you know, were, you know, telling. Arguing with me or something. I commented on one of your threads on Facebook or something like that, and people were telling me, well, they should be spending it on, you know, this and that and the other thing instead of a historical document. And so that's, that's for Mormons to decide, you know, about what the priorities are for the LDS Church and all its massive amount of assets. You know, what, what should its priorities be? But in general, in terms of community of Christ, we are not, you know, spending this kind of money on buying assets like this. We obviously had to sell assets like this for the money in order to continue to do stuff that's more missional.

John Dehlin [00:53:04] Do you think? Do you resonate at all with that argument that a Christian church shouldn't be spending money on artifacts, but instead on feeding the poor and disaster relief and clothing, the naked stuff like that.

John Hamer [00:53:18] I would say that in this case, again, there's so many billions that are actually in the LDS Church's possession. You know, like there was some assessment of what just even the property is worth, that this is. They could have all the cash in the world to do that without even affecting this $35 million. Right. So maybe, yeah, maybe there should be more priorities to do that. I don't know. So that's not. Again, that's the LDS Church.

John Dehlin [00:53:45] Okay. And what do you think the LDS Church is most likely to do? It looks like they're saying that they want to at least put part of it at the church history museum downtown and let Mormons be another. Be sort of another attraction at Temple Square that kind of brings tourists and people to downtown.

John Hamer [00:54:07] Yep. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a perfectly reasonable thing to be doing with it. So I'm sure it'll be preserved and, you know, most. The bulk of it'll be, you know, put away safe. Some of the pages will probably be there under glass, you know, or under very protective glass and things like that. So people to actually be able to see. That'll be important for people who are interested in the history, but I'm sure also for people for whom this is a very sacred document and so for whom that they want to go as a pilgrimage and see this portion of the process. Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:54:42] Any other sort of thoughts or comments just about the church's acquisition of it, the importance of this, what it might mean, what it might not mean, how people might be overreacting.

John Hamer [00:55:01] I don't. Yeah, I think maybe so. I mean, it's obviously became a big, big news thing, but I think that there's a, you know, if you watch the, you know, if you're in the podcast community, the blog community, the ex Mormon community, the other communities that are online, there's.

John Hamer [00:55:18] People are interested when things happen, you know, and there's not. There's not as much transparency for all of the finances and other things on the. On the LDS side. And so maybe just whenever something that is big and newsworthy happens, then it inevitably makes a big splash. I think that, like I was saying, I think that in terms of the actual amount of money here from the LDS side, there's so much. The LDS Church has so much money that this is simply a moment when people maybe are reminded of that fact. And so then you should be in general just coming to an overall thought of what is all that money doing, what's the goal, what's the purposes and things like that as opposed to this one moment.

John Dehlin [00:56:06] Right, that makes sense. Couple comments from our listeners. Spencer writes, I think most Christian faiths are more concerned about feeding the soul more than the stomach. At least as priorities go, I'm sure that's highly justified spending 35 million on old paper. So Spencer's kind of angry. He feels like this was not a good purchase. Any thoughts for Spencer? Like John, if you were running a billion dollar church, let's just say it was a church you believed in that had the ethics and the morals.

John Dehlin [00:56:41] Could you see there being a case made for a church paying millions of dollars for a sacred artifact, that one is historical and deserved to be preserved, but also is just so sacred that to a church with a lot of resources, it's worth spending that money on.

John Dehlin [00:56:59] I'm guessing that if you were in a similar position, you might say a historical document is worth preserving, even if that money could be used to feed millions of people. I could see you maybe, sure.

John Hamer [00:57:11] But I would also be working on, because I would also be working on the feeding the millions of people. Right. So I mean, so you have, you don't have to do one. It's not a zero sum necessarily because there is a, there's in this case we're talking about so much, so much money. But we certainly have that, let's say balancing. I can just, I don't have to have this be a hypothetical because we can talk about it just right here, what I'm doing here in Toronto. Right. So I am in, in the new church that we have here and we spent money to, when we sold the orth church to build this new facility and that's money that could have been spent any other way.

John Hamer [00:57:45] But out of our overall priorities as a, as what's, you know, a relatively small congregation, one of the things that we have been able to do is give a lot of, devote a lot of priority to working on the problems of homelessness here in Toronto. And so the church's charity arm in the city of Toronto has three social housing, apartment buildings where we help, you know, we're part of the safety network where people who are extremely poor, who have mental health conditions are able to have their own space and not be homeless. You know, and so if you have a congregation that let's say Maybe we have 12 to 20 people on a Sunday, but we're able to help house 175 people or so.

John Hamer [00:58:30] That's a wonderful way to be able to balance those kind of priorities. So, you know, you just, you can do couple of the more than one thing. So yeah, I think that we should be preserving our historical documents.

John Hamer [00:58:42] Maybe the collector market brings everything too much, but that's a reality of having ultra rich people. So there's ultra rich people who want have huge amounts of money and they want stuff. And so that makes all the prices high.

John Hamer [00:58:56] But then beyond that, we should be preserving our heritage and we should also be working on doing sustainable efforts so that it's not just feeding the poor, but helping fix the systems that are making people be under housed and malnourished.

John Dehlin [00:59:13] Love it. I think it'd be worth just really quickly. You've talked about this a bit, but can you talk just briefly about at Community of Christ Toronto, just really briefly, some of the things you guys are doing to sort of innovate on a religious or spiritual experience for different populations and how maybe your congregation would be experienced differently than either an LDS church experience or even a modern Community of Christ experience?

John Hamer [00:59:47] Well, yeah, so we are doing a lot of different things. So we have a bunch of different components. So because I think that the old one size fits all model of going to church on a Sunday and having, let's say a sacrament meeting doesn't resonate with everybody anymore. So the entire population isn't necessarily finding that to be satisfying that part of themselves that has a cause and wants to accomplish good and wants to participate in the good and be good. Right. And so that's been a traditional way that's done. And we do that traditionally on Sunday where we have a traditional service like a sacrament meeting.

John Hamer [01:00:27] Although we have some pretty. We have a really good congregation, we have great content. So there's a lot of people who, you know, it's, you know, different people who give talks who are, they're very well researched and well thought out and everything like that. So I stack our content up against anybody and even the traditional service. But we have other ways that we also.

John Dehlin [01:00:51] Kellen asked if you're still live streaming some of your congregational presentations on Facebook.

John Hamer [01:00:58] Yes. So one of the things that we'll do, especially we have our Tuesday night group, which we call our history, theology, philosophy group. And so what we do on that night is that people from anywhere, you'd have to be a member. And usually most of the regulars, even who come every week, are not formal members of Community of Christ. In fact, they come from all different backgrounds and so it's people who are. We have regular members who are regular participants who are Muslim or Jewish, who are Hindu, who are atheist, who are all coming together. And what we. Essentially the idea of it is, is that we are continually learning and growing, which is one of Community of Christ mission initiatives.

John Hamer [01:01:40] So part of our mission is to continue to learn and grow. And we do that by exploring topics, in this case of things like philosophy, theology, history. So what does it mean? What do past philosophers, when they're talking about how to live a good life, how to be good, how to do good, how did that inform us today in 21st century Toronto? And so, and we. And so, yeah, we'll stream those. We'll be better at. That's still a little bit of getting going. And so as a result, we don't publish it the link as broadly as we otherwise would. But generally speaking, if you're my Facebook friend or if you've liked the congregation page.

John Hamer [01:02:20] So our congregation is called Community of Christ Toronto Congregation. You'll get to access that. It's streamed through Facebook. And then we will be putting. We have a couple of them, but we'll be putting the archives of that YouTube. So again, we have a YouTube channel for the congregation. Our website is Community. Sorry, it's.

John Hamer [01:02:40] What is it? I said Centre Place. So our congregation here is called Toronto Centre Place. And so it's Centre spelled the Canadian way. You know, C E N T R E Place Ca. So CA is Canada. So Centre Place Ca.

John Hamer [01:02:57] And then you can access all that kind of information. Yeah. Other things we do are we have our meditation group, so we do mindfulness meditation. So this is a way to get away from this incredible busy city life that everybody has. All the screens that you have in front of you. How do you make time for just having silence, for being in the moment, for what people can think of it as, you know, in the past would be something like essentially hour long prayer. But it's amazing how it doesn't feel like it goes that long. It's actually pretty amazing when you are engaged in it, you have a good person leading that and often it'll be meditating on again, some kind of a thing that's a life issue.

John Hamer [01:03:41] So Leandro, who leads that, will sometimes have people meditate on a Buddhist parable and sometimes on a Christian parable. But when it's like a parable of Jesus, instead of having the normal way that Christians look at those and just make it as if it's an analogy. Parables aren't analogies. They are things that are paradoxes. And so you're thinking about kind of these kind of paradoxes that you're weighing against in life. And that's kind of hopefully giving you a moment again so that you can be thinking about what you're doing in life. Why are we doing all the things we do? So those are kind of things.

John Hamer [01:04:10] And then the activist stuff. Like I say, one of our special ideas of activism in Toronto is the social housing. And the other big program that we have here is we call Encounter World Religion, which is essentially where we are learning about all the different world religions, and then we go to visit them. So it's an interfaith thing. You learn about Islam, we go to the mosque and we talk to all the people in the mosque. You learn about Zoroastrianism, we go to the Zoroastrian temple and we meet the Zoroastrians.

John Dehlin [01:04:41] I can say that just recently, I was invited by Community of Christ Salt Lake City congregation to a homeless shelter in downtown Salt Lake City, where we all got together and we made breakfast for homeless teens and young adults.

John Hamer [01:05:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:02] And it was really. It was powerful for my, you know, for Claire and Winston, my two kids. It was powerful for Margi. And again, I've just never had an interaction with any Community of Christ member that wasn't anything other than just delightful and deeply meaningful.

John Hamer [01:05:21] Yeah. Well, it's a wonderful congregation there, and they're also very committed on issues like that. So, I mean, I've been with them, too, when I've been out in Utah and gone and distributed lunches and things like that in the park that's right by the highway right downtown, that kind of thing. So. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:38] Yeah. Quick question from our listeners. Kelly wants to know, this is not related, but since you're on and people love you, what are your views of the LDS Church's Nov. 15 announcement?

Community of Christ Today and Its Future

John Hamer [01:05:55] We mean that way back when.

John Dehlin [01:05:56] Yeah, yeah.

John Hamer [01:05:57] Yeah. Well, I thought that was pretty. I don't like. I mean, obviously, I'm opposed to that policy, so we wouldn't. I wouldn't. I mean, I think that that's kind of a. It was kind of an amazing one. But on the other hand, it wasn't. I didn't find it to be completely unpredictable because that's kind of how I have seen from the LDS leaders throughout my life. So I kind of felt that that's in keeping with what I would, you know, expectations.

John Hamer [01:06:34] A lot of people, I think, felt that they had been reading tea leaves and they thought things were going in a much more positive direction. But I've been a little more pessimistic with the institutional LDS hierarchy and just the corporate path. And so I don't actually.

John Hamer [01:06:49] I don't actually see the church, the LDS Church, is moving in a progressive direction at all. I think that because everything is moving in society is moving forward in that direction, and the LDS Church even staying still means that it's going backwards.

John Hamer [01:07:05] And so I think that it's actually less, you know, anyway, let, you know, less progressive and all these kind of issues than it would have been, you know, 40 years ago, in a relative sense. So.

John Dehlin [01:07:17] Right. How, how optimistic are you that the religion or something like it can even survive? I know you're doing what I think is a really admirable thing that Oasis is trying to do, that others are trying to do, which is to say maybe we recognize that religions have played an important role in our history, and even though they've made big mistakes and need to change, we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater that we need to preserve community, even preserve spirituality, even preserve a Sunday experience. And so you're on the front lines innovating and fighting that battle while religion in the Western world seems to be in decline pretty much everywhere else. How optimistic are you that innovations can be made where something like Community of Christ or Oasis or other things might even have the chance of growing, of succeeding and growing?

John Hamer [01:08:22] Well, we've had so in our way in Toronto. This is essentially what all of our programs are, essentially prototypes. Right. So this, we've launched these not even, you know, maybe a year and a half ago already. I would say that our meditation group, in terms of regular participants, is larger than our traditional Sunday group. And then our theology philosophy group is about twice as large.

John Hamer [01:08:53] And so from building up from a very small start, we've been able to do outreach in the city here, which is we're, you know, in the heart of what for the United States would be deep blue territory. Right. You know, so very cosmopolitan city. We're in the media downtown. Most everybody, you know, are not in, by and large, adherence. Right.

John Hamer [01:09:20] But so for me, I think that there's a bit of a shame that people have in their. The way they are building community and identity formation, which is giving or exporting so much of it to private corporations. So if you are building your identity based on what brands of clothes you're wearing or how you are, you know, which movie franchise you're watching or talking about or Game of Thrones or something like that, we are doing all of these kind of things and ceding that to people who have proprietary rights over all this kind of thing.

John Hamer [01:10:03] And I think that some of the what happens in religion, traditional religion and things like that is that these are things that are heritage assets and institutions that are empowering, that we can actually take hold of and have ownership of. It's hard for people in the LDS tradition to even see that as a possibility because you have essentially no ownership stake at all, because it's entirely controlled by the leadership. But here in the Toronto congregation, for example, everybody I mentioned that everybody who's a member is a voting member. We can move the direction that we feel called to move, you know, and adhere to the priorities that we want to.

John Hamer [01:10:46] And so this is a way that we're able to do telescoping huge amounts, more than we'd ever be able to do as individuals. No matter how much I might want to have been able to, you know, I go down the street, I see people all the time who are asking me for money.

John Hamer [01:11:02] And if you give people a little bit of money, that's not necessarily even a positive thing in terms of their individual life, because, you know, anyway, just the reality of how studies have gone without that kind of thing. And so that's not affecting anything, certainly systematized wise of that of writing and justice.

John Hamer [01:11:20] No matter how much I would have been able to work on that particular issue, I could never have gotten as far as I have being able to be president of this charity that is part of this inheritance for, you know, social housing. So anyway, so all of those, for all those kind of regions, I think that there is actually lots and lots of potential for this going forward, but it's just a matter of thinking very differently about it. So right now, people tend to think of it at all as being. You have to sign up, you have to believe this and this and this. You have this creed, you have to obey.

John Hamer [01:11:50] You have to be very judgmental about sex or whatever the kind of issues are that are all caught up with it. And what I'm really saying is none of those are necessarily essential pieces of this thing, and we can, you know, throw them off the chassis or whatever. Take the important component of the chassis here, add on what is good, and actually participate in real good.

John Dehlin [01:12:12] I love it, Katie. I'll just read a couple comments and then we're going to change topics and talk about caffeine at byu. Katie writes, I understand the sentimental value of this document and the church's desire to preserve it, but is it necessary to have for building up the kingdom of God and sharing the gospel. We can't take physical and worldly possessions with us when we die. We have digital scanned copies to use and reference at any time. I'm glad the money went to Community of Christ, but really, at the end of the day, I don't see why the LDS Church thought spending 35 million on an old document for their museums was okay. So that's how Katie feels about this acquisition. Diana writes, I love how proactive Community of Christ is. Wonderful service to your fellow men, easing human suffering. Love, John Hamer. I'm a huge fan. I'll listen to anything he puts out.

John Hamer [01:13:05] Oh, thank you.

John Dehlin [01:13:07] And then Brittany Mangelson thanks us for the shout out to the Salt Lake congregation. We're grateful for the support of both Johns. Brittany is a former LDS Church member who she and her husband are very actively involved in the Salt Lake congregation. They're very delighted and thanks for joining us, Brittany. All right, John, any final things you want to say about this document before we talk about caffeine?

John Hamer [01:13:34] Well, I just to say, I mean, I completely understand from all the members on the LDS perspective that maybe they would like to see things done in a different, you know, way. So I'm mostly just representing why the choice was difficult from our side. And so and kind of hopefully, anyway, have said, you know, how our priorities had to line up to have this thing happen.

John Dehlin [01:13:56] Was this something they consulted you on? Steve Veazey or Community of Christ or whoever, the history department.

John Hamer [01:14:02] So on the history team, did you

John Dehlin [01:14:03] know this was coming?

John Hamer [01:14:05] Yes. So I didn't know exactly what particular thing was going to happen or the price or anything like that. But it was announced at the beginning of the year that certain historical assets would be available for purchase if the buyer could be found. And so I anticipated that this would be one of the potential ones. And like I said, I talked to people on the history team a couple years ago and said that my feeling was of the things that we have a hold of that are very valuable if we had to make the hard decision that this would be, you know, something that I would be able to be okay with seeing go if it went, you know, if it was able to be preserved in a proper way and all that kind of thing, but also only if a reasonable price could be had.

John Hamer [01:14:53] And so I would have been sad if this had been, you know, a million or something like that. I mean, that'd be absurd, you know, but obviously at this price point, it made it make sense.

John Dehlin [01:15:05] Got it. All right. Okay. Well, thanks, John, for that analysis and for our listeners who have participated. We still have a lot of people joining us, and we're going to change the topic to a stunning announcement for me, it was announced this morning that Brigham Young University, of all places, is now going to be serving Coca Cola.

BYU Announces Caffeinated Soft Drinks on Campus

John Dehlin [01:15:31] And Jeremy Christensen, a friend of mine, is the one who alerted me to it. And sure enough, I went to BYU's own Facebook page. And about an hour OR so ago, 8:28am September 21, BYU is now serving caffeinated soft drinks on its campus.

John Dehlin [01:15:56] BYU Dining Services has announced that effective today, it will begin offering caffeinated soft drinks on BYU's campus. So that's the announcement that was kind of stunning to me who did attend byu. And you could get decaffeinated Coke or Diet Coke, but you certainly couldn't get coffee or tea or caffeinated soft drinks on campus. And that went on for a while. So I was stunned to see that that changed. And so I learned that there's a business in Provo called Caffeine Corner, and there's a guy who runs it, and his name is Wesley Monahan.

John Dehlin [01:16:33] So we have asked Wesley to join us over Zoom to talk about maybe a little bit of the history of this, why he started his company, and what this means to him. Now we've asked him to join us through Zoom, and I don't even know if his mic is working yet. So, Wesley, can you hear us?

John Dehlin [01:16:52] Okay, so, Wesley, you're unmuted, but I think your Zoom app, it isn't picking up your mic. So see, on the app, play with it a little bit and see if you can get, see if you can get it to work. Just start talking as soon as you can and keep testing it, because there's something that your app isn't working. So, John Hamer, do you remember? And again, interrupt us anytime. Wesley John Hamer, do you remember being at BYU and not being able to have caffeinated beverages?

John Hamer [01:17:24] Well, this is clearly a slippery slope. There's a, we have great, in the, in our LDS Church, they had these great old preaching charts that had the narrow path, you know, and the, and the broad path that is the devil, right? And so it was things like, you know, drinking or whatever led to card playing, which led to dancing, which led to murder. So obviously, you know, the caffeinated pop, you know, I don't actually drink soft drinks. So, yeah, I was at BYU way back in the 80s, late 80s and early 90s. And so it wasn't on campus, but I also wasn't put out by it because I don't drink, you know, pop.

John Dehlin [01:18:13] You don't drink pop at all? Never did.

John Hamer [01:18:17] I don't have a sweet tooth and I don't like sugary drinks like that. So it didn't affect me either way.

John Dehlin [01:18:25] Okay. Do you have a sense for the extent to which this was doctrine or not, the history of it?

John Hamer [01:18:32] Well, I mean, it's obviously there was no caffeinated pop when the word of wisdom is dictated, right. So at the word of wisdom, when you go all the way back to that, that time period, it is in general, just speaking common folk understandings of 19th century America. And so there's talked about hot drinks because the idea of having coffee and tea, these aren't like traditional long drinks that go all the way back in European history. These are things that are newer imports that the newly globalized society, you know, had started to having from Asia, South Asia and in the Middle east and things like that where they drink those drinks.

John Hamer [01:19:15] And so for a whole bunch of folk practitioners in Europe, they felt like, well, if the drink is hot, then that's going to be, that's going to have adverse health considerations. And so I think it originally meant, it originally was talking about the temperature, but also people understood it to be a stimulant. And so as time went on in the LDS interpretation, it people started to think, well, the component here is not the hotness because we do want to be able to have hot chocolate, even though chocolate has something very similar to caffeine. But anyway, so it's the caffeine in particular.

John Hamer [01:19:53] And so then that, and that became, I think, for my understanding of it anyway, for Mormons in general, that there was essentially, that's an interpretation that individual families had that a lot of families or leaders or whatever had, which is that the higher road here is to not drink caffeinated pop. But then some people didn't interpret it that way and they were okay and they were able to get away with that through, through time. So I don't, I don't know that it's entirely doctrine, but I think that it's maybe that you, maybe some people might not have gotten temple recommends over it. I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:20:26] I remember, I remember the Prince family in Katy, Texas, when I was growing up, who they went as a family to AstroWorld, which was like a Six Flags or a Disney World roller coaster kind of experience. And they as a family had a policy of never drinking a caffeinated beverage, but they were thirsty because it was A Houston hot day. And so they decided that they had to purchase soda. I don't know what, you know, water or even if they got water. I don't know if the story is they got Sprite or they got water, but it was still in a Coke cup. It still isn't a cup. So they bore their testimony about how they stood in a circle with their backs to, you know, everyone at the amusement park and drank. Drank the beverages with the Coke cups facing inward of the circle so that they would avoid the appearance of evil.

John Hamer [01:21:33] Yeah, very, very, very pure interpretation there. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I grew up Mormon. In the 70s, my family's policy was we didn't drink caffeinated pop, but that except on trips as medicine. So the drivers could, you know, of a car could take to drink, not coffee, but they could drink caffeinated pop in order to stay awake, you know, for the road. So it was being used as a medicine.

John Dehlin [01:22:06] John, does this. Does this seem. To me. This seems significant. I'm sure to many people it just seems silly. Does this seem significant to you or not really.

John Hamer [01:22:17] Oh, I don't know. I guess I was teasing when I said it's a slippery slope to.

John Dehlin [01:22:23] No, I know, I know. But what do you think? Does this, like so many people, this has been a core part of their Mormon identity, You know,

John Hamer [01:22:34] does it mean that. Next up is that Mormons will be allowed to watch rated R movies and hbo? I don't know.

Interview with a BYU Student Selling Caffeine on Campus

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 797

John Dehlin [00:00:28] So, Wesley, have you ever heard of Mormon Stories podcast before? Do you even know what this is?

Wesley Monahan [00:00:33] No, but as I've been listening the past half hour, kind of getting an idea of what's going on. So I really thank you for reaching out and letting us join you today.

John Dehlin [00:00:44] Okay, so tell us a little bit about yourself. Are you lds? Were you raised lds? Are you a student?

Wesley Monahan [00:00:50] Yes, I. I am currently lds and I actually am an attendee at byu. I still have about a year left before I graduate in the commercial music program. I was a business major before I became a music major. And so my passion for business has driven me to start this caffeine delivery service. But it excludes coffee, obviously, because.

John Dehlin [00:01:17] Okay, wait, don't get there yet. So where were you raised in the church?

Wesley Monahan [00:01:22] Where was I raised? Like geographically? Yeah, Arizona. I'm from Gilbert, Arizona.

John Dehlin [00:01:28] You're from Gilbert. And are you a returned missionary?

Wesley Monahan [00:01:32] Yes, served a mission where I served in Chile.

John Dehlin [00:01:36] Chile, okay. And you've been an orthodox believing Mormon for your whole life?

Wesley Monahan [00:01:42] Sure, yeah, I wouldn't really consider myself otherwise. Definitely had moments of faith testing and faith trying obstacles, but yeah, still. Still a member of the church.

John Dehlin [00:01:55] And are you on BYU campus right now?

Wesley Monahan [00:01:57] I currently am on BYU campus in the world.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] This is the first time Mormon Stories is streamed live from BYU Campus. I love it.

Wesley Monahan [00:02:06] You're welcome.

John Dehlin [00:02:08] Are you in the Cougar Eat? Where are you?

Wesley Monahan [00:02:10] This is. Yeah, it's called the Terrace right across from me. So right behind me is the. Across the little hallway is the Cougar Eat.

John Dehlin [00:02:17] I love it. Okay. So did you. What did you learn about caffeine growing up as an orthodox Mormon in Gilbert, Arizona?

Wesley Monahan [00:02:24] Yeah. So how it works, just to kind of clear up some, any confusion, is that coffee? There are five things that are against the Word of Wisdom. One of them is coffee, the other is tea. Then you have drugs. As far as illegal drugs go, obviously prescribed drugs are not against the Word of Wisdom. And then tobacco and alcohol, those are all prohibited in the Word of Wisdom.

John Dehlin [00:02:52] Now, Word of Wisdom doesn't mention drugs, does it? Or am I mistaken?

Wesley Monahan [00:02:56] So if you look in the Doctrine and Covenants and look in the actual section 89, there is really no, there's really isn't a lot of mention of what the exact things are. So when we, when. When we as members speak of what's prohibited in the Word of Wisdom, we're talking about modern revelation that we have received from prophets and apostles, not necessarily referring directly to Doctrine and Covenants, which. That section will explain things about Alcohol and, you know, strong drink.

Wesley Monahan [00:03:29] And it also talks about what we should do, you know, eating grains and eating meat sparingly and how kind of the health code general that was being set up at the time in the church. But, you know, caffeinated sodas and things like that, you know, all these other confusing parts of the Word of Wisdom were not part of that section because of the time period.

Wesley Monahan [00:03:56] But then you look, you fast forward to now, and then there's things that have been put in the Word of Wisdom as a part of our health code, our health, health and moral codes that specifically state what we should not consume in order to keep a good standing within the church, you know. Now, does that mean members are excommunicated for breaking the Word of Wisdom? No, that's totally up to the councils and local leaders. But as far as caffeinated sodas go, that has actually never been against the Word of Wisdom.

Wesley Monahan [00:04:36] There were. I'd have to go look up the reference. There were apostles and prophets that announced their distaste for Coke and the fact that it was that it had an addictive substance in it called caffeine, and they didn't love Coke itself. And it became part of Mormon culture to shun caffeinated beverages. However, it was never against the church to consume caffeine. It was only against the church to consume coffee. And it so happens that coffee contains caffeine. So, yeah, Then that's why I started my business, Caffeine Corner, because I knew there was a demand for caffeinated sodas on campus. I mean, we're college students. Like heck, half of them live off of caffeine.

Wesley Monahan [00:05:20] You know, we're up till 2am and have to get up at 6am so I started the business in order to be able to fill that demand and deliver caffeinated sodas on BYU campus. Because BYU claimed for the past 50, 60, 70 years that there wasn't a demand for caffeine on campus, which is why they didn't sell it.

John Dehlin [00:05:42] Do you believe that? That there was no demand for it?

Wesley Monahan [00:05:44] Not for one second. We started business back in March. We were only in business for two months. We closed up shop during the summer because there aren't really students on campus. And in those two months, we received such an outpouring of support made me realize there was a demand for caffeine on campus. And if you look at LDS Business College and the Salt Lake, I guess you could say Temple Square, they implemented caffeinated sodas back in March. So it was only a matter of Time before BYU is going to jump on board, you know.

John Dehlin [00:06:17] So you. Okay, so you started a business. Tell us how your business operated. What were you selling? Where were you selling it? What price were you selling it? How were you selling it?

Wesley Monahan [00:06:28] Yeah, so we, we focus on BYU campus. We've delivered to other parts of Provo, Utah and we've also offered, you know, care packages to the mtc. So all sorts of stuff. But our product line was Dr. Pepper, Coke, Mountain Dew, Red Bull, and then possibly soon implementation, Pepsi and Monster.

John Dehlin [00:06:56] But so you just buy cans at Costco or whatever or bottles?

Wesley Monahan [00:07:01] Yeah, and I would buy from whichever retailer was selling the cheapest at the time. So it's Costco, Sam's Club. I got the okay from Bull and from Coke to do that, you know, that I didn't have to buy from their distribution warehouse. And so, yeah, right now we only, we used to do cans. We only sell bottles now.

John Dehlin [00:07:23] How would you deliver? So a student would be sitting there in the Marriott library saying, oh, I really want a Coke. What would they do?

Wesley Monahan [00:07:32] Yeah, so they just text our phone number or they can, because we have a Google voice number that we set up for our employees to receive texts via Google Voice. Or they can give us a call and we would get, we would receive their order and where they are and arrive within, you know, five, ten minutes. Because we're here hanging out on campus with a backpack full of drinks. It's actually an insulated backpack with ice packs and stuff keeping cold. And so yeah, we just, we do bottles now and kind of simplify our product line. We don't do cans. You know, it's easier to carry around just a big pack of bottles instead of double your product line by offering cans too.

John Dehlin [00:08:08] So you've got these employees that carry around bottle, backpack, refrigerated backpacks of bot.

Wesley Monahan [00:08:16] There's our shirts. I'm a caffeine dealer.

John Dehlin [00:08:20] Are you comfortable sharing your volume of sales per month in revenue or is that a trade?

Wesley Monahan [00:08:27] Sure. We're a startup company, so we're nowhere near where we want to be. And just a little side note before I answer your question, what's happening is BYU is implementing Coke and Diet Coke in, in their caffeinated form, which means that our product line, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, Red Bull, Monster, that's still free game and people can still order from us today.

John Dehlin [00:08:53] Have you gone to the cafeteria portion and saw where the Coke is available? Is it now just part of the fountain drinks?

Wesley Monahan [00:09:00] Yes. No, it's available. You walk there right now. I don't think they've implemented it in the fountains yet, but they have it in the vending machines and like in the little stands. You can take a, you can, you can grab a caffeinated Coke or Diet Coke. So. And we can still sell Coke and Diet Coke. It's just whether people, you know, want. Whether they're ordering for the convenience or not.

John Dehlin [00:09:27] What'd you say? What was your price for a bottle? A delivered bottle of caffeinate.

Wesley Monahan [00:09:31] So, yeah, we sell our, we sell our bottles for $2, which really isn't far different from BYU. BYU is actually selling their bottles for $189. So we're only a few cents off. 11 cents.

John Dehlin [00:09:43] Okay.

Wesley Monahan [00:09:44] We charge delivery to out of bounds portions of byu.

John Dehlin [00:09:48] Okay. And do you comfortable sharing your monthly revenue?

Wesley Monahan [00:09:53] Yes. Sorry. So in total, in the, in the four months that we've been in business, we have sold over 300 drinks. About 350 drinks. It's not a lot, to be honest.

John Dehlin [00:10:04] 350 drinks.

Wesley Monahan [00:10:06] 350 drinks. About. Okay, that number. But it's really close. So we've been averaging about 700 bucks

John Dehlin [00:10:15] basically in revenue,

Wesley Monahan [00:10:19] maybe close to that. So I would say about 15 drinks a day is what we've averaged. But you know, there's the occasional day that's slow. There's also marketing. And we've had to face the fact that we need to actually market our business because a lot of times people think we're a joke. They see this flyer that says caffeine on campus and order a drink now and they're like, this is a joke. And there's a lot of people that just didn't think we were serious.

John Dehlin [00:10:49] Okay, so what did it. How did your. Did your heart sink when you heard the news today that BYU selling caffeinated beverages? Were you.

Wesley Monahan [00:10:58] A little bit. Because, you know, it hurts. It hurts business a little bit. And so, yeah, it was like, holy crap. Like the day has come that BYU has finally campus. But does it put us out of business? I don't know. Because we still offer, you know, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper and all those energy drinks. So I don't know. Yeah, it's crazy news. Still trying to figure the future of the business.

John Dehlin [00:11:25] So you're not giving up yet?

Wesley Monahan [00:11:29] Not yet. I'm okay. I'm okay if we eventually have to close our doors because I would like to focus more on my music career instead of other business. But I'm naturally an entrepreneur. I love starting business ventures, you know, so it's kind of just whatever. At this point. But we're going to keep going until, until business doesn't make sense anymore.

John Dehlin [00:11:52] So a couple comments from our listeners and John and you know, both of you were happy to John and Wesley to bring you in if you want to respond. So Nathan writes, there was a stake president that would not allow caffeine in Tennessee when I was on my mission in 1994. No temple recommends if you drink Coke. As missionaries, we could not drink caffeine in that steak, but any other area we could drink it. So that's an interesting thing. Katie says, sorry, brother, check the church history again. The word of wisdom never says no coffee. Coffee is being consumed by LDS prophets, apostles and members well into the 20th century. John Hamer, true or not true?

John Hamer [00:12:38] Yeah, no, that's true. And actually, I mean, like Wesley was saying that, that primarily when Mormons in LDS Church are talking about word of Wisdom, they're talking about Utah church policy and interpretation. If you look at the history of the document, even let's say concerning alcohol, you know, it's specifically a temperance document. So it's actually advocating what the 19th century Temperance movement is all about, which is to say don't have distilled liquor, which is to say stop drinking, drink wine only for your sacraments. So that means during the sacrament or communion service and maybe at weddings, because they drink wine in the early church, apparently during the weddings.

John Hamer [00:13:18] And then, and then it says, of course beer, barley drinks are good. And so therefore beer and other temperance drinks are good. And so it was meant to be not to a purpose of alcohol, but rather to switch from distilled liquor. Like everybody drank in the United states in the 1930s, in the 19th century, people drinking crazy amounts of whiskey and rum and stuff. And so they're trying to move from that to drinking beer. But anyway, that's what the original document meant. But that doesn't.

John Dehlin [00:13:45] The word of wisdom is pro beer. When it says mild drinks of barley, it's basically saying beer is okay.

John Hamer [00:13:50] That's what it's like. Literally. That's what the text means.

Wesley Monahan [00:13:53] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically, when, because Mormons believe in modern revelation and following modern prophets, that would be the big reason why we practice our current policy is because of modern policy, not necessarily because of what older documents would have said. Although we do refer to that document to show the history, of course.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] Totally. There's a quote that one of our listeners shared reference to David Obike and the rise of modern Mormonism. But my but Facebook is no longer showing it. So if somebody wants to repost that quote, I can't see it. There is a question from our listeners for you, Wesley. How in the crud are you wearing a beard at byu? Beards are not legal at BYU unless you have a beard card. So what are you doing?

Wesley Monahan [00:14:48] Illegal.

John Dehlin [00:14:49] What are you doing? Selling caffeinated beverages.

Wesley Monahan [00:14:51] And wearing a beard.

John Dehlin [00:14:53] And wearing a beard.

Wesley Monahan [00:14:55] Holy crap. Yeah, so I gotta go to a quieter place. Give me a second. Yeah, so the funny thing is I was gonna shave this morning and then woke up to the news and had to answer all the phone calls for interviews. And I've even showered. So, yeah, I was gonna shave today, but how it works is that. But BYU. Yeah, BYU's honor codes dread says that you shouldn't wear beards, but you can have. You can wear a beard if you have a beard card. I used to have a beard card. I don't anymore. So I do need to shave.

John Dehlin [00:15:43] How'd you lose your beard card?

Wesley Monahan [00:15:48] Tested the testing center. They would say, hey, where's your beard card? And they would not allow me to take a test until shaved. So that's what that is right now. But I originally had the beard for our Caffeine Corner commercial that we were filming over the past week, and we finished filming that, and so I can. Since I'm not doing the commercial anymore, I should could probably shave. But I don't have a test. I don't have a test in the testing center anytime soon.

John Dehlin [00:16:18] So they let you have a beard card because you needed a beard for the commercial?

Wesley Monahan [00:16:23] No, no, no. I had a beard card for a church production that I was in. And. And they.

John Dehlin [00:16:31] Sorry, you broke up because you're walking. So your audio gets choppy because you're walking. Say that again. You were. You had a beard for church production then. What?

Wesley Monahan [00:16:42] Yeah, so I had a beard for a church production and the church production is over now. So. Okay, that temporary beard card has expired.

John Dehlin [00:16:52] Larry's asking Beard card. You're kidding, right? Are we kidding, Wesley, about a beard cards?

Wesley Monahan [00:16:58] At byu, I am advocate for the beard. Obviously, I'm wearing one. So I. So I would obviously love for BYU to change its dress code policy. But until then, you know, listeners are

John Dehlin [00:17:15] saying, what's a beard card? So people don't know about BYU's beard policy and what a beard card is. Will you explain that to our listeners?

Wesley Monahan [00:17:22] Yeah, so in BYU's dress code, they ask men to shave, to stay clean shaven. So to not wear beards and wear mustaches up to the corners of their mouth. And it's based off of a dress code policy that was issued by Ernest L. Wilkinson back in the 1960s as a response to the. The movement that was happening in the 60s. Like the kind of the rebellious. Shoot. What is the move?

John Hamer [00:17:55] What do you call the counterculture?

Wesley Monahan [00:17:58] Counterculture, exactly. The 1660s counterculture. It was a response to that. Counterculturists would wear beards usually. So we didn't want to. You know, again, it was the whole avoid the appearance of evil thing. And Ernest L. Wilkinson, president at the time, said, you know what? No more beards. It first started out as a. More of a request from Ernest L. Wilkinson until it actually became part of the honor code, part of the policy at BYU that men would shave, unless having some sort of waiver or approval to wear a beard for a production would require a beard card. A beard card can also be issued for health reasons. If you have irritation with shaving, then you can go to the health office and actually acquire a beard card if the doctor approves you. I'm sure I could eventually do that if I wanted, but I'm graduating soon, so.

John Dehlin [00:18:58] Wesley, I'm a little confused by you, because when you talk to me, it's almost like I'm talking to a Mormon missionary. You seem very orthodox, yet it's a little bit rebellious to be selling caffeinated beverages on campus. And you're sporting the beard card. Are you a rebel?

Wesley Monahan [00:19:18] I love to challenge culture. There's a difference between Mormon belief and Mormon culture. And sometimes. Sometimes Mormons love to think that culture is doctrine. And I like to kind of show people the difference between Mormon doctrine and Mormon culture.

John Dehlin [00:19:39] And do you have. What's your opinion of. I mean, obviously, there's no such thing as a picture of Jesus without a beard that I'm aware of. And. Or maybe there is, but it's rare. And even the statue at Brigham Young University or Karl Maeser, you know, our prophets are all wearing beards. What do you think about BYU's previous caffeine policy and current beard policy? Do you think they're wrong? Do you think they should be changed?

Wesley Monahan [00:20:10] Yeah, the caffeine policy. It wasn't that caffeine wasn't allowed on campus. It's just like if you bring caffeine on campus, whatever, it's your choice. But we don't want to sell caffeine on campus because we don't see the demand for it. Now, do I think that demand.

John Dehlin [00:20:24] But that wasn't true.

Wesley Monahan [00:20:26] You don't believe that. Yeah, it wasn't true. No, I don't believe that, and I was in several business classes at BYU that discussed that. Every time we would discuss it, several members in the class would raise their hand like, no, there's totally demand. And why doesn't someone start a business like this? And, you know, it just kind of got to the point where I was like, fine, I'll just start this business. Because we discussed it so often, my business classes.

Wesley Monahan [00:20:49] But, yeah, as far as the current beard policy, I've written. I've even written an English paper. Like, one of my English papers was written 10 pages on the beard policy and how I disagree with it. However I do, that commitment to something is important.

Wesley Monahan [00:21:10] So, you know, like, right after this, I'm probably gonna go home and shave, right? Because the honor. Because I signed a document that says I will abide by the honor code, and that's why I wouldn't stand in line at the testing center and demand, you will let me take.

Wesley Monahan [00:21:28] I'm gonna stand here until you let me take my test. You know, I'm gonna rebel. It's not necessarily that type of rebellion, you know, me wearing a beard around occasionally. No, I don't think I'm sinning by wearing a beard, but. However, I do believe in doing what you say you would do, even if you don't like it. And that includes signing that document that said I will shave when I attend byu.

John Dehlin [00:21:57] But you think it's a. Is it fair to say you think it's a silly or unnecessary rule to keep students from wearing.

Wesley Monahan [00:22:03] Oh, totally, totally. Because it was. It was a response in the 19 6. It was relevant at the time to ask them. Ask men to shave because we wanted to doubt from other schools and that we were part of that counterculture. But the 1960s are over.

John Dehlin [00:22:23] Some are saying this is a slippery slope for you. They're predicting that it's beards and caffeine now that your days of being a faithful Mormon are numbered. Wesley, have you just curious, have BYU students heard of things like the CES letter? Have you heard of the CES Letter of other sort of sources that speak about really difficult topics on Mormon history and that are even critical of the church? Are these things that the average BYU student would know about?

Wesley Monahan [00:22:58] Yeah, I'm actually surprised if there are students that don't know about these things, because now for me to pretend that I know percent everything and done research is. No, but. But yeah, I know the sticky parts of Mormon history. And you learn about it in your religion classes here at byu, at least from the good professors who are doing their Job. They're teaching all about every history.

John Dehlin [00:23:29] What are some of the more difficult aspects of church history that you have heard about at a BYU religion class?

Wesley Monahan [00:23:36] Yeah. So we discussed polygamy. Polygamy is a big issue, especially for non members. They. They don't see how a church could have believed once in polygamy and then rescind that.

BYU Student's Knowledge of Church History

John Dehlin [00:23:49] What about polyandry? Does that word mean anything to you?

Wesley Monahan [00:23:54] Right. So polyam. I'm not sure polyandry was ever part of the church's policy, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was just because polygamy was also part of it. Then. Black not being able to. Blacks not being able to hold the priesthood until the proclamation was issued by. Shoot. Was it Joseph F. Smith or. It was way after him. You probably know better than me. I'd have to go look.

John Dehlin [00:24:26] It was Kimball.

Wesley Monahan [00:24:27] Kimball. Thank you. Thank you. So, yeah, I know about it. And we discuss it all the time. And we discuss. I think that's a big part of being able to understand your beliefs and your determination as a disciple within this church is to know. Is to be a devout member, even under intense scrutiny. Yeah. Heck, I could explain more about my life and all the things in my personal life that have come up against church policy and doctrines, but so many reasons why I have stayed in the church and why my wife and I are faith.

John Dehlin [00:25:22] How did you. How did you personally rec. So according to your understanding, as you learned at byu, how many wives did Joseph have, according to your understanding?

Wesley Monahan [00:25:35] Several. Several. I don't know how many exactly. Not because it doesn't matter to me personally.

John Dehlin [00:25:41] Like 10, 20, 30. Any idea?

Wesley Monahan [00:25:46] I don't know. It could have been 20. I honestly have no idea.

John Dehlin [00:25:49] Okay.

Wesley Monahan [00:25:50] And I probably learned it at one point. I just. It's not something I like. I keep up to date on that stuff.

John Dehlin [00:25:59] Do you have a sense for how young the wives were?

Wesley Monahan [00:26:04] How young the wives were?

John Dehlin [00:26:05] Yeah.

Wesley Monahan [00:26:06] Yeah. I've heard that one of them was like 14. Okay. Yeah. Doesn't seem surprising for that, but yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:17] And then the polyandry, the marrying other men's wives. Did Joseph marry other men's wives?

Wesley Monahan [00:26:28] Yeah, we discussed about that as well. The big one that we obviously promote is the story where Joseph asks another man's wife to become his wife and then ends up calling it a test, not telling the brother that he can have his wife back and they were faithful and so on and so forth. But yes, I do know about that as well.

John Dehlin [00:27:00] So how have you. I'm just curious. I know we didn't call you to talk about this, but it's just, it's too fascinating.

Wesley Monahan [00:27:07] Yeah, I understand.

John Dehlin [00:27:08] How did you work through Personally, Joseph, marrying 30 women, 14 year olds and other men's wives? How did you get comfortable with that?

Wesley Monahan [00:27:20] Yeah, I mean I maybe I personally didn't need to. I know there are other people out there that really. It shakes them. It's. They, they see that and they say oh my gosh, how representative of so called Christ Church do such haunting things. And for me it just was not. I just never really shook my testimony because as much as I believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet, I also don't know which parts of history are Joseph just trying to work through what like his own personal life or what the revelation was supposed or whether it was really by God and if God really did command those things and that they were hard, that, that as much as I mean God can ask us to do difficult things.

Wesley Monahan [00:28:16] Right. I guess I'm just trying to come up with almost like a way that I would need to work through it if I ever had a problem with it. But because I've built a money on the Book of Mormon as well as other faith building parts of my, of my life towards church doctrine is it trumps other, I don't know, it trumps any other doubts that you could have.

John Dehlin [00:28:54] Okay. Did you learn about the Book of Abraham and the papyrus and stuff?

Wesley Monahan [00:29:00] Yes, I would, I wouldn't be the scholar on that to be honest. Like you asked a lot of questions that are for BYU scholar or BYU for church scholars.

John Dehlin [00:29:12] Sure.

Wesley Monahan [00:29:12] Plenty of church scholars on campus that could.

John Dehlin [00:29:15] No, no, that's fine.

Wesley Monahan [00:29:17] Discuss.

John Dehlin [00:29:17] That's fine. One last question about the.

Wesley Monahan [00:29:20] Oh,

John Dehlin [00:29:24] do you believe in the Book of Mormon when it says God turned people's skin dark as a curse? Do you believe that?

Wesley Monahan [00:29:33] Yeah, it says that they put, that he put a mark on them. And I. It's been a couple months since I've actually read that verse. My wife and I had a discussion about it. I can't remember what we spoke about and kind of came up with in our personal thought on that verse. But I know it says that God put a mark on those people. Whether that was a full on dark skin, I don't know. I think it does say later in a verse something about their, their skin being dark. But the first verse that comes to my mind is just the one that says they were. That a mark was put on them.

John Dehlin [00:30:21] So in your mind did God curse Lamanites with dark skin because they were wicked? Is that how you think it happened?

Wesley Monahan [00:30:30] I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:30:32] Okay.

Wesley Monahan [00:30:33] Doesn't totally matter to me.

John Dehlin [00:30:35] Doesn't matter.

Wesley Monahan [00:30:38] Doesn't totally matter to me.

John Dehlin [00:30:39] Totally good. Okay, cool. All right. So back to Coke and what's the future for your company? You're going to keep going strong or what?

Wesley Monahan [00:30:50] We're gonna stay in business until it doesn't make sense anymore. So, yeah, because basically only two of our products are off the much off the map now. We've got Coke and Diet Coke that are being sold on campus. All of our other products in our line are still available. I mean, it's not that we can't sell Coke and Diet Coke if someone just wants it deliver delivered to them for convenience purposes. But I can see that our sales of Coke and Diet Coke are going to go down and all of our other products will stay up.

John Dehlin [00:31:25] Well, yeah, except maybe there'll be students that want the delivery service and don't want to have to walk to a machine. So they may go up. You don't know.

Wesley Monahan [00:31:34] Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, for sure. I can't know until I try it out.

John Dehlin [00:31:40] Somebody wrote, why was this banned in the first place? And BYU PR responded it was never banned. In the mid-50s, the director of BYU Food Services decided not to sell caffeinated soft drinks, a decision that continued on. In other words, it was a BYU Food Services policy. The church had no stake in it. Until more recently, dining services rarely received requests for caffeinated soda. So there is that line again that there was never really demand for it. And then it says consumer preferences have clearly changed and requests have become much more frequent. What do you have? Do you have a response to BYU's narrative in marketing?

Wesley Monahan [00:32:24] Yeah, so what, what has happened? Is that right? It was never banned to have caffeine on campus, which is why you could bring a caffeinated soda on campus whenever you want or order from a pizza company who wanted to for a 2 liter bottle of caffeinated soda.

Wesley Monahan [00:32:41] But to say that there was no demand and that they are only recently received requests that probably I can't assume that it was by company, but I can guess that it was because of my company. As we tagged BYU in a few posts on Facebook and started a discussion saying, hey, BYU sell caffeine on campus. Sure enough, we got 30 comments. That feed is still going strong and still people commenting on it saying like, oh, victory, we have caffeine on campus.

Wesley Monahan [00:33:16] And so their BYU vision to sell caffeine is a response to us. I don't know But I definitely think we were a catalyst in starting a movement for that.

John Dehlin [00:33:30] Perfect. I'm getting a lot of feedback as I look through the comments. A lot of people are mad that I brought you on to talk about coke and that I ended up talking about church history. I had no idea whether you were a member or not, whether you were a BYU student or not. This definitely wasn't an ambush because I just was told you ran a company about caffeine, and I brought you on. I became really surprised that you were calling me from BYU campus that you were a BYU student. And then as we talked about beards and word of wisdom, I just got curious about your faith.

John Dehlin [00:34:02] Are you mad or disappointed that I asked you questions about church history in your faith? I'm just curious whether you feel like that was an ambush because I didn't intend it. But I also hope you didn't feel disrespected, But I also feel like you're confident in your faith. So for those who are mad at me for asking those questions, what's your response?

Wesley Monahan [00:34:23] Yeah, no, I'm. I'm not offended. I understand it's. It's a. Religion's a touchy subject, and. But I. And I also understand that as a Mormon, like, I'm gonna have to go through my life defending my faith. And, yeah, I'm probably not the best offender right now. Like, people are looking at me and probably being like, you need to come up with better answers. But I think you're great.

John Dehlin [00:34:49] I think you're.

Wesley Monahan [00:34:50] I'm sure maybe I'll get better as I go on.

John Dehlin [00:34:52] I think you're great. You're kind, you're nice, you're friendly. You're not defensive. I love it. I don't think you need to apologize at all. That's. That's actually a great saying. I don't know is such a great answer, or. It's not important to me anyway.

Wesley Monahan [00:35:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] I hope you don't feel ambushed, because I did not intend to ambush you. No, I found your kind of refreshing, and I just thought it'd be interesting talk to you about it.

Wesley Monahan [00:35:21] Yeah, no, I appreciate the questions.

John Dehlin [00:35:23] All right, so any other final comments you want to make? Wesley? First of all, someone wants to purchase something from your company. How do they find you? How do they reach out? I think we lost you. Wesley, are you still there? I think when you walk, it freezes up. Are you still there? All right. Oh, Wesley. Okay, just stop walking for real quick. How do people get a hold of you and your company if they Want to buy something?

Wesley Monahan [00:36:00] Yeah. So you can go to our. Right now, just go visit our Facebook page or Instagram. Our username is Caffeine cornerbyu, but our name, official name on Facebook is just Caffeine Corner.

John Dehlin [00:36:13] Okay.

Wesley Monahan [00:36:13] And go on there. You can message us if you want to get in touch with us about any questions or comments. We have a website. We have a website where you can actually. Where there's like an apply button and not apply now button. You can just reach our email, reach out to us, and promise your questions. Order a drink. You can either order online or you can visit our website. Yeah, you can visit our website. I'm sorry, I'm thinking of five things at once. You can order online or you can text our phone number. And our phone number is found on the website or on our Facebook.

John Dehlin [00:36:48] Okay. So the website is Caffeine Corner, BYU.com and the Facebook is. Caffeine Corner.

Wesley Monahan [00:37:02] Caffeine cornerbyu.

John Dehlin [00:37:03] Caffeine cornerbyu.

Wesley Monahan [00:37:05] Yeah, the username has BYU in it, but just the official name is Kathleen.

John Dehlin [00:37:07] And again, your Instagram is what?

Wesley Monahan [00:37:09] Caffeine Corner, byu.

John Dehlin [00:37:11] All right, Any final comments or thoughts about any of this today? Anything you want to share as you say goodbye to our listeners?

Wesley Monahan [00:37:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:21] No.

Wesley Monahan [00:37:22] As far as belief systems go, I actually wish I had more time to talk about it because I've got a few stories from my personal life that

John Hamer [00:37:30] really

Wesley Monahan [00:37:32] fortified my faith in instances where it could have destroyed my faith. Love to talk about it more. Don't have much time, but you're welcome to get in contact with me. Message me, and we can talk about it later. But I appreciate the support that everyone has given for Cafe Corner to show that there's demand for caffeine on campus and, you know, kind of be a part of this movement as well as help keep us in business. So thank you.

John Dehlin [00:37:57] All right, Leslie, it's great having you on Mormon Stories live from BYU campus. Thanks for joining us.

Wesley Monahan [00:38:02] No problem. See you.

Final Reflections on the Manuscript Sale and Word of Wisdom

John Dehlin [00:38:05] All right, John Hamer. That was an interesting interview. I didn't expect it to kind of go that way, but I just. I couldn't resist hearing from a live BYU student talking about their faith and their experiences. And particularly, I was interested in this idea of inoculation that now, you know, the essays have come out. The church is owning its history, and it's incorporating the history into how it teaches. Even BYU students and BYU students are becoming more and more familiar with the issues. I didn't want to grill him, but I just wanted to kind of get a sense or A pulse for what he's heard of and how he's processed it. Did you have any. Was that making you super uncomfortable?

John Hamer [00:38:45] Well, he wasn't. Like he said, he didn't look like he was. He was being uncomfortable. So if he. If he was. If he was, then it would have made me more uncomfortable. He was answering quite earnestly, incredibly. And I think he demonstrated when you asked him about the different things with the polygamy, he seemed to know the general outlines of the issues and everything, so sounds like that information has been disseminated to byu.

John Dehlin [00:39:11] Yeah. That's fascinating. All right, John. Well, we've talked about a lot of stuff today. I always want to give you the final word. Is there anything you want to say more about the Book of Mormon printer's manuscript or caffeine or any other thing? Final comments from John Hamer before we part.

John Hamer [00:39:31] Well, I guess my final comment on the caffeine portion is that I'm very glad that Community of Christ has had a different interpretation of Word of Wisdom so that it's not a test of faith and is instead, especially in terms of coffee, because one of the ways that I'm able to get up in the morning and get all the things done is because I do like coffee an awful lot. So anyway, that hasn't been part of my spiritual practices of avoidance of coffee and tea.

John Dehlin [00:40:03] There are a lot of people really critical that Coke is okay, but coffee and tea aren't. You don't drink soda, is that right?

John Hamer [00:40:11] Yeah. So one of my mentors, Jan Shipps, had spent a whole bunch of time. She's just a great historian from outside of the movement, but is one of the main experts on Mormon history. And she'd spent a whole bunch of time studying Mormons back in the 60s and 70s when people were more strict even, I'd say. And then she met for the first time community Christ historians. So a great historian, Bob Flanders, who wrote Nauvoo Kingdom on the Mississippi. So one of the main important books of the new Mormon history. And they sat down at a conference and. And he had a coffee mug. And Jan, seeing somebody from the Restoration tradition drinking coffee, she just stared at it, you know, and she just couldn't believe it was possible.

John Hamer [00:40:56] And he said to her, he looked at and said to her, you'll notice I wait until it gets cool before drinking it. So in other words, that he was avoiding hot drinks. And I'll just say one more of those.

John Hamer [00:41:11] So I was with my grandparents back when they were alive and we were visiting. So We've been together, I've been together with Mike, my husband for 20 years. And shortly after we got together, we went with my grandparents who are good multi generation Mormons around my old hometown. And my grandfather had been a builder and we went and visited a lot of the houses that he built. And we went to lunch and again Mike and I ordered coffee and we're drinking coffee and my grandparents were like staring at the coffee mugs like the devil was there with them in the booth at the diner. And we've always thought of the strange irony of it.

John Hamer [00:41:53] Here's my grandparents hanging out with their gay grandson and his partner. And they're perfectly fine with that. But then when the two of them drink coffee, I mean, they're gay grandson, then suddenly that's like, ah, you know, the freak out. So it is. Anyway, it's a boundary issue. So this has been.

John Hamer [00:42:14] The caffeine has been at the edge of the boundary and so it's been on the transition. So now maybe the boundaries pulled back just a little bit, I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:42:24] Melissa's asking why coffee and tea specifically were prohibited when it just says hot drinks. Do you have any idea of the history of that?

John Hamer [00:42:33] So yeah, I think that, that those would have been the more common at the time, hot drinks that people were having. And like I was kind of suggesting both of those drinks would have been relatively new in the western societies. And so people were leery of them, you know. And so as a result of that, that's why there was a lot of folk wisdom about that. And even though they even have that, for example, still today in Germany, they're concerned that if you drink water that's too cold, then that'll hurt your liver or something like that. That's not true. But you know, people are just worried about that kind of thing as a folk concern.

John Dehlin [00:43:08] And Ezra wants to know what, what the community of Christ sort of policy is or even culture is around word of wisdom today.

John Hamer [00:43:18] So we just actually had a, we actually just had a long study and discernment process. We had past resolutions here in the Canadian Church to have the first presidency clarify what the policies were about word of wisdom. Because we have a bunch of different things that are old laws on the books. You know how sometimes when you, we, the church is governed by our conference, our general conference we call World Conference and it's actual delegates who are elected to represent all the different mission centers who were elected from the congregations, everything like that. So anyway, they come together and they create resolutions or rules for the church, that's how the church is ultimately governed is by the essentially, in a sense, democratically.

John Hamer [00:44:03] And so there were a bunch of old laws, let's say rules on the books from the 1890s or whatever. And it wasn't entirely clear what the policy was in general. The Word of Wisdom has always been understood to be a word of wisdom, not a test of fellowships. In other words, you are advised to be healthy. And as with any scripture, we tend to interpret, as opposed to interpreting it literally, we tend to interpret the principles. And so the principles behind the word of wisdom, as opposed to the individual folk remedy things that are talked about, the principles essentially are moderation are, you know, listening to the best health ideas and best health science that you have and so trying to live a healthy life in those kind of ways.

John Hamer [00:44:51] And so that still would be important or wisdom for members today. But we did have a new policy review that came out in terms of the, in terms of the alcohol portion. And so the, the First Presidency issued a new church policy. The policy is that you can't have alcohol in church buildings or church properties or a church sponsored events and that members and priesthood holders are urged to avoid drinking intoxicants. So there. But the policy is simply urging. It's not a test of fellowship. So there's nothing like a temple recommend in Community of Christ. So.

John Dehlin [00:45:33] And so. And has that been sort of canonized yet? Will it be?

Wesley Monahan [00:45:38] Well, it's not canonized.

John Hamer [00:45:39] It's church policy. So the canon is the Doctrine and Covenants. So the. It's a different section in our Doctrine and Covenants, but the Word of Wisdom is part of the canon. And there are other. We continue to have new sections, new revelations, new sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. There are later Community of Christ sections that also talk a little bit about it. The historical issue for in community of Christ in the policy has kind of actually always been understanding that as originally understanding it as a temperance policy. And so and specifically there was. There were rules against drinking in saloons. And the reason for it, if you think back to saloon culture on the frontier, if you think of like Wild west movies and things like that.

John Hamer [00:46:28] So there was, there was prohibitions against priesthood holders going and having drinks in saloons and things like that. And so anyway, so that's, that's why like I say, it wasn't entirely clear until recently. It is now a clarified policy which is, you know, no church sponsored activities or on property. And then urge people, urge to avoid.

John Dehlin [00:46:49] So let's just say there were a Pastor or even a 70 year church leader at dinner with some friends where they thought Community of Christ members might be around, would that person feel, would there be enough of a cultural stigma or history to where that church, community of Christ church leader might decide not to drink?

John Hamer [00:47:13] They almost certainly wouldn't drink because of the idea there is that the church leaders have, like I say in this policy document that they've recently released last week, in the last week, they, they, they would, they would want the person to be modeling the behavior that is thinking about the most vulnerable population. So there is a small minority of the population who have issues with substance or brain chemistry or other kinds of issues. And so people are admonished to think of that when they're participating in social activities and also to be cognizant of youth issues. So kids are getting on drugs, are younger and younger and things like that. So thinking about those things, thinking about vulnerable populations. And so that would be the thing that the person would have in hers or his mind as they're thinking about, you know, a social circumstance.

John Dehlin [00:48:17] Makes sense. Final thing I'll just say is that I'm noticing more and more active believing Mormons who are using medical marijuana for various reasons or even recreational marijuana because interestingly, the word of wisdom is silent on marijuana.

Wesley Monahan [00:48:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:33] So we'll need to do some sort of episode on Mormon stories in the future about marijuana use amongst Mormons.

John Hamer [00:48:40] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:48:40] So if anyone wants to participate in that, please reach out. All right. John Hamer, it's so great. Thanks for at a moment's notice joining us for this conversation. I think it was interesting and we'll see what comes from it. But I'm really always just so thrilled and honored to have you on. I love Community of Christ. I love what you're doing. I love the Seekers program and I want to see you guys thrive. So I'll make up excuses to have you talk about Community of Christ if I can find them.

John Hamer [00:49:08] Wonderful. Well, John, I always enjoy it.

Wesley Monahan [00:49:10] Great talking to you.

John Dehlin [00:49:10] Take care. And listeners and viewers, thank you so much for joining us today on Mormon Stories. We really appreciate whenever you join. We loved having those of you on Facebook making your comments and questions available. Thanks for all who support Mormon Stories financially to make it possible. Go to mormonstories.org if you want to donate to make to keep this alive and to support the Open Stories foundation and all. We do sure appreciate it. Take care everybody and please tune in again soon and join us for the conversation either on Facebook, YouTube or@mormonstories.org Take care, everybody.

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