Introduction and Guest Background

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 532

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

Micah Nickolaisen [00:00:43] thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home.

John Dehlin [00:00:53] Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Delinquent, and it is what is the date today? Micah the 21st. April 21st. April 21st, 2015. It's somewhere around 8:20pm we're coming to you live from Utah State University campus in Logan, Utah. And I'm here interviewing someone who I've been wanting to interview for a super long time, and I am so very excited to present to you today Micah Nicolaisson.

John Dehlin [00:01:32] Some of you may know Micah, but my guess is many of you won't know him by name. And so I'll just tell you briefly a little bit about him to hook you into this podcast. Micah sort of burst onto the scene of the Mormon Internet when I put out a call for someone to start a podcast called A Thoughtful Faith, which was named after Phil Barlow's book from the 80s, which was an attempt to, you know, to try and help people find a way to stay in the church faithfully, but also as an informed Mormon. So Micah, along with Sarah Collette, who interviewed me a couple years ago, teamed together to form a Thoughtful Faith podcast. And how many episodes did you guys do, Micah?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:02:22] I think when, when Sarah and I stopped, I think we were somewhere in the 40s, I think.

John Dehlin [00:02:28] Yeah, yeah. So we did at least 40 episodes of a Thoughtful Faith. Yep. Then he, he and Sarah broke off and started a new podcast with a similar kind of focus called Exploring Sainthood, which continues to this day as a thriving, thoughtful, faithful Facebook community. As does A Thoughtful Faith, by the way, which Gina Colvin now runs then ironically. And that'll be part of our fun discussion.

John Dehlin [00:02:56] Micah, after being sort of a poster boy for staying in the church, lost his faith in the church. And so we're going to talk about that. And subsequently to that. Micah has sort of been a major player behind the scenes on at least two major projects. One one was called Strangers in Zion, which was an effort to basically say if the church is going to start excommunicating people who wants to volunteer to initiate their own disciplinary councils. And so Micah went through his own disciplinary council. We could talk a little bit about that. And then recently, Micah sort of made waves by teaming with some other cool cats to launch the Any Opposed initiative, which those of you who are paying attention to the April 2015 General Conference will know. These are the guys. And one female at least, maybe more.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:03:57] No, there's about 50 females.

John Dehlin [00:03:58] A couple females, yeah, who actually vocalized their non support for the first presidency in the Quorum of the twelve in General Conference. And Micah was actually one of the people there who stood up and said opposed. And so, and so we're going to be talking with Micah about a lot of things. We're going to be talking with him about his, his, you know, faith in the church and his, his experiences growing up, his mission and all the things that he loved about Mormonism. But then we're going to talk about these various projects and how he, he went from being a poster boy of staying in the church to leaving it.

John Dehlin [00:04:45] We're going to talk about what that's been like. And then we're also going to talk about the future because Micah is one of the individuals who I've identified, and he's identified me as being people who are really interested in this idea of communities after Mormonism. You can call those secular communities or post Mormon communities or whatever you want to call them, but just this idea of there being a need for even people who lose their religious faith to still be able to enjoy the benefits of community.

John Dehlin [00:05:23] So Mike and I are thinking a lot about that. We're going to just kind of. We're going to brainstorm a little bit about that and reflect on what might be done in the future. So anything I left out, Micah?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:05:34] No, that sounds good. Good intro.

John Dehlin [00:05:36] All right, so. So with that, we're going to just say, welcome Micah to Mormon Stories.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:05:43] It's good to finally be here, John.

Growing Up Mormon in Utah

John Dehlin [00:05:46] All right, so let's just dive right in. Tell us about your Mormon cred.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:05:51] Okay, my Mormon cred. I've got good Mormon cred for, for, for a guy in his 30s, I've got pretty good Mormon credit. Both of my. So I always say that I got pioneer stock on both sides, but my dad always says, no, no, no, you don't have pioneer stock on my side. The Danes were smart enough to wait for the train, but my, my grandma, my mother's mother is on the board of the Daughters of The Utah pioneers. And, and so, you know, Mormonism is a very. A very deep part of my heritage and my ancestry. I was born and raised in the church, served a mission. I spent most of my adult life so far in the church. Got kids, you know, born in the Covenant. And so, yeah, that's a little bit about my cred.

John Dehlin [00:06:48] So you grew up mostly in Utah, I mean, in your kind of adolescent years?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:06:54] Yeah, I grew up. Most of my dad was in the Navy, so I was a Navy brat. Kind of moved all over the place.

John Dehlin [00:07:00] Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:07:00] And. But eventually settled down a little town called Centerville.

John Dehlin [00:07:05] Okay. And, you know, tell us just a bit about your story as it relates to your early years and kind of some stories about what the church meant to you during. During that time.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:07:16] Well, as well as anybody who grows up in the church knows, you know, Mormonism is so much more than just a set of beliefs. It's. It becomes completely intertwined and intermeshed with your identity, with your. With your self worth and, you know, the model that you have for your life and the objectives that you have. And, and obviously that extends beyond this life and goes on forever. And so the church was always everything to me. But even from a very young age, I've always had doubts, and I always, especially when I was still attending church, I always told people that the gift of faith never came easily to me.

John Dehlin [00:08:07] Talk, just talk about some of your. Before you talk about your doubts. Oh, okay. What are, like, did you have some favorite primary songs? Did you have some experiences, a youth conference? Like, when you think of, like, the joy of. Of growing up Mormon. Mormon. What are some of the experiences or memories that you have that reflect that joy?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:08:28] You know, I definitely enjoyed all of the rites of passage that everybody goes through. Well, well, I shouldn't say everybody because I'm male, but, you know, I still remember my baptism very vividly. I remember passing the sacrament for the first time. You know, just being kind of blown away that I was finally doing that as a. As a youth in the church. I think, I think my Trek experience, which I think, you know, back at that time, Trek was still kind of a new thing.

John Dehlin [00:09:02] Tell listeners what Trek is.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:09:03] Okay, so Trek is where all of the. All of the youth in the stake above the age of 14, they. They don pioneer garb and they have hand carts and they go out into the wilderness just like the pioneers, Like Wyoming or. No. Well, where did we go? I don't even know where we went. I mean, it wasn't that it could have been that far Away, I think it was somewhere in Utah where we went. So we didn't go on the actual Mormon trail or anything, but very powerful experiences. And more than anything, just the.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:09:38] The sense of closeness and community that I had with my little. They organize you into families, you know, and a lot of times these are kids that you didn't know before, and there's a husband and wife that are the ma and PA of the family. And so they organize you that way into. Into families and then companies and, you know, just like they did on the. On the Mormon trek. And, you know, it's. It's a physically.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:10:06] A physically demanding experience. You know, it's usually in the summer. It's usually the summer youth conference. And, you know, it's out in the middle of the hot sun and you're. You're pulling a hand cart that weighs several hundred pounds, plus it's got several hundred pounds of all your stuff. And, you know, they. They do kind of interesting things on the trek. You know, for example, oh, all of a sudden the boy. All the men have to go join the Mormon Battalion, and so then the. Then the girls have to pull the hand cart, you know, and, you know, that was. That was a really powerful experience for me, and it really connected me to my. To my heritage. You know, that's something that I go back to a lot and then.

John Dehlin [00:10:49] Do you remember any emotional or spiritual experiences you had on the trek?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:10:53] Yeah, to be completely honest with you, like, I thought Jesus was going to come back while we were there on the track. Like, I was, like I was high on. On the church. Like, it was. It was amazing. And you know, something that. That usually they do on these treks is they, towards the end, after you've had this amazing experience, they have you go off and have time by yourself. I can't remember what they call it, you know, solitude or whatever. And they encourage you to read your scriptures and to pray and to write in your journal.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:11:28] And, you know, just having that experience, being able to reflect on that experience and, and relive all the, all the, all the moments, it was, you know, it, you know, just. It brought me to tears. And it was that. And it was at that point that I, like, looked up and I was like, man, like this. I just feel like we're ready. Like, I thought for sure that the second coming was going to happen soon. Like, it was intense.

John Dehlin [00:11:56] So would you have. Would you have characterized your testimony back then as knowing the church was true?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:01] No.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] So even then you weren't sure?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:04] Yeah, even then I Wasn't.

John Dehlin [00:12:07] So even with the trek experience, I mean,

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:12] like I said, I've always had doubts, just things that didn't add up to me and so did you ever

John Dehlin [00:12:18] have that Moroni 10:4 moment for, you

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:22] know, not from a lack of trying, no.

John Dehlin [00:12:24] But I mean, did you try?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:26] Oh yeah, my whole life, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:28] So like all through high school, you're,

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:30] Since I was eight, you've been what? I've been trying to get an answer to that prayer.

John Dehlin [00:12:35] So you like read the Book of Mormon as a kid?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:38] Yeah, when I was eight. It was actually either right before or right after I got baptized. I, I don't know if I read the whole Book of Mormon, but I read a book, a lot of it, at least for an 8 year old.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:51] And, and then, yeah, like I still remember just the, the earnestness that I had to have that amazing experience. And you know, it, it's hard when you're at church and you see everybody else having this transcendent spiritual experience in connection to the Book of Mormon or when somebody's at testimony meeting and everybody's feeling this thing. Right. And I, I didn't know what it was. You know, I still remember being a small kid and just being on my knees in my room for what seemed like hours because, you know, you're supposed to wait for the answer, you know, and, and it just never came.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:13:38] And that, that had a lot of negative consequences on me, I think, because, because I just kept asking myself what's wrong with me, like, why can't I get the answer that everybody else seems to get so easily, you know, And I really wrestled with that a lot. And you know, I think I probably shown a lot of symptoms of scrupulosity, you know, at that time, just trying like, okay, well, maybe I'm not doing enough. Maybe I need to try harder. Maybe I need to do better so that I can be worthy of this answer from my God.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:14:16] And. But by the time I was 13, my paradigm shift and I still remember the sacrament meeting where this little seed got planted in my head. And it was during, it was during fast and testimony meeting and you know, everybody just kept getting up and just baring their souls and I, I just, I caught myself kind of people watching, you know, I just, I was looking around and watching everybody's faces and watching tears well up in people's eyes and seeing them nod and, and I just realized they were all feeling something that I wasn't. And for the first time I just had this question, what if it's all in their Head.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:15:04] And I remember as soon as that thought popped in my head, I felt guilty, like, oh, that can't be right. But that, like, still just ate at me and ate at me and has my whole life ever since then.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:15:18] And so, you know, and actually shortly after my trek experience, I got. My parents enrolled me in this really odd private school in Salt Lake. And where for the first time in my life, or at least as. As an adolescent, I was in a scenario where I wasn't, you know, where I was just a part of the minority as a Mormon in my school. And the, the high school I went

John Dehlin [00:15:48] to was that Judge Memorial.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:15:50] No, it wasn't Judge. It's.

John Dehlin [00:15:51] It's.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:15:51] It's a school that probably few people have heard of.

John Dehlin [00:15:54] It's.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:15:54] It's got a funny name. It's called Realms of Inquiry. And, and anyway, it's. It was. It was a really amazing experience, but it turned me into an atheist for most of my high school years just because I. I met all these other really smart, thoughtful kids who weren't lds.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:16:13] A lot of them were atheist or agnostic or whatever, and they were also more knowledgeable about Mormonism than I was. And so it was at that age, you know, 15, 16 years old, where, you know, I first heard about Mountain Meadows, and I first heard about, you know, Egyptology and the Book of Abraham. And, you know, it was. It didn't take a lot, you know, for me to just be like, oh, yeah, this is, this isn't right. In fact, I know, I know this friend I'm going to talk. I'm talking about is going to hear this. So this is kind of funny, but one time during high school, we were on this camping trip and it was all the guys in this little rustic cap cabin up near Aspen, Colorado.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:17:01] And it was me and this friend of mine, and we were just getting bombarded with questions, you know, about. About. About Mormonism. And it was mostly Socratic. Like, they were just, you know, they were totally playing with us, you know, well, what about this? Well, what about this? And somehow we got talking about the concept of God having a body, right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:17:26] And one of the kids that was there with us said, okay, so God has a body, like a physical body? Yeah. So that means he exists in space somewhere. Yeah. Well, where is he? Like, where is he right now?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:17:43] And my friend and I was just like, oh, nobody knows the answer to that. All sudden my friend says, we believe that God dwells near a star called Kolob. And I remember being like, what are you. I never heard Anything like that before, I was like, what are you talking about? And then, like, everybody just started laughing, and I just curled up in my sleeping bag, and I was so embarrassed. And it's like with each cackle, I could feel just. I could feel the cracks form in my testimony. And by the next morning, I was just like, yeah, I can't get behind this anymore.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:18:22] So that's when I was, like, 15 years old. And then. So I guess it wasn't that long because it was 17 when I came back. I never left the church. Like, I still blessed and passed the sacrament every week. I still did all that stuff, but I just didn't believe it anymore.

Mission, Marriage, and Early Church Devotion

John Dehlin [00:18:40] And so how'd you get from that to a mission? So.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:18:46] So When I was 17, I had a really good bishop. And at one point, I still can't even put my finger on it, what made me do this, But I just. I think I felt guilty, you know, and I couldn't figure out why I felt guilty, you know, because. Because at that point, I had girlfriends, and since I wasn't much of a believer, I didn't really adhere to a lot of the, you know, the standards that the church has for the youth.

John Dehlin [00:19:17] And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:19:19] And so I think I felt guilty about that. But I. But I was confused as to why I felt guilty, you know, like, why is this affecting me? And there was not a chance in hell I was going to talk to my parents about it, and my friends didn't understand.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:19:33] And so I went and talked to my bishop, and I wasn't sure how that was going to go, but I had, for the first time in my life, aside from Trek, I had this overwhelming spiritual experience with my bishop because I explained to him just how awful I felt. And he went to.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:19:57] I think it's Mosiah 3, where King Benjamin's giving his. His big speech to his people, you know, and he describes how the people felt after he delivered this amazing speech and how they felt lower than the dust of the earth, and they felt in the pits of despair and stuff like that. And so we're reading this in the Book of Mormon, and he. He said, isn't that how you feel? And I said, yeah, that's exactly how I feel. He's like, well, well, let's keep reading. Let's see what they did about it.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:20:28] And, you know, basically, these. These people in Zarahemla, they. They just cried out to their God and said, apply the atoning blood of Christ to our sins so that we can be redeemed. And, you know, then it talks about this immense joy that they felt knowing that they, you know, that their sins have been washed away. And, you know, that was very powerful to me. And I had an amazing transcendent spiritual experience, which I immediately identified as the Spirit.

John Dehlin [00:21:00] And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:21:01] And I felt like I had finally. Finally gotten an answer to that prayer that I've been asking since I was 8. Since I was 8 years old. And so that's all I needed. That's all. That's all I wanted, you know, the whole time. And just that one little peak of spiritual transcendence was enough to made me say, okay, well, I guess I was wrong and I need to get ready for a mission.

John Dehlin [00:21:24] And that was at what age?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:21:26] 17.

John Dehlin [00:21:27] 17. Okay. So. So you had that experiential experience. I need to make sure that you remember to tell us how you process that now, because I'm thinking, wow, you got your answer. But, you know, let's not. Let's not.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:21:42] We'll get to it.

John Dehlin [00:21:43] Yeah, let's not steal that thunder. Okay. So. So. So, yeah. So then how'd the mission come about after that?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:21:54] So I went to the Charlotte, North Carolina mission. I was there from 2002 to 2004.

John Dehlin [00:22:00] So was it. So you go on the mission guns of blazing then.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:03] Oh, yeah. I mean, you got your. I was. I was Kevin Price, man. Like, who's that? Elder Price from Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:22:09] From. Yeah, yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:11] Like, that was a musical. That was me.

John Dehlin [00:22:13] That was me.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:13] I was Elder Price in the mtc.

John Dehlin [00:22:16] You're eating it up.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:18] Okay. And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:20] And unfortunately, that zealotry was rewarded on my mission.

John Dehlin [00:22:23] Yeah, it's positively reinforced.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:25] You know, I. I served in all the, you know, leadership positions that you can have on your mission. And so you were an ap. Yeah, yeah. I did everything, you know, sometimes at the same time, you know, and you're in North Carolina. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:38] Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:40] And I. I had an amazing experience on my mission. I had great companions. The. The whole time. I was. I had a very successful mission because the south has similar baptismal rates as, like, Germany, you know, low meaning, extreme.

John Dehlin [00:22:56] The.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:56] The average baptisms on my mission was 1.8 per missionary permission.

John Dehlin [00:23:01] Whoa.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:23:01] So if you were lucky, you would

John Dehlin [00:23:02] get one a year.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:23:03] Basically, you would get two baptisms your whole mission. And so I had a lot more than that. And so, like, it was all just positively reinforced, you know, like, this is. This is the real deal. And of course, had a lot of spiritual experiences on my mission, too. And so, you know, I walked away from my mission really feeling like I. I was Springboarding into a promising future in the church. And that was something I really looked forward to was, you know, serving in leadership and, and sort of living that Mormon narrative.

John Dehlin [00:23:38] You loved your mission president?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:23:40] Yeah, yeah, I love both of my mission presidents.

John Dehlin [00:23:43] Yeah. Okay, well, that all sounds like full steam ahead then.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:23:47] Yeah. So I got home from my mission and I met my wife Stephanie, shortly after that. And, you know, we got married. I think it was. I. I was just shy of a year of getting home from my mission, and we were. We were married and. And, yeah, we, you know, started following the program, you know, and. But the. And I guess I should. I'm gonna have to backtrack a little bit. Something that always bothered me is how much I hated church.

John Dehlin [00:24:20] Oh.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:24:21] You know, and I know most little kids hate church, but, like, I always have, you know, like, I've just never liked it. I've just never gotten anything out of the meetings. And even on my mission, I hated going to church on my mission, even though it was like a break from, like, tracting. I'd much rather be out tracting than. Than sitting in church.

John Dehlin [00:24:45] Wow, that's saying a lot.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:24:46] Yeah, like, I just, I. I honestly, I've just never liked it. And. And so after getting home and getting married and going. And I had a great time in my singles ward where I met my wife. But after getting home and getting back into a family ward, immediately getting put into callings, it was just like. Oh, like, I still really, really don't like this. But despite that, you know, like you said, full steam ahead. And so we got married in 2005.

John Dehlin [00:25:25] That's a Mormon story started. Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:25:28] Well, how about that? No, sorry, I got home. Yeah, I got married in 2005. That's right. And so then three years later, Prop 8 happened and that. And you know, I didn't recognize this at the time, but looking back, that's really when things started to fall apart for me. Why I was so. I was living in Arizona, and Arizona obviously wasn't affected by Prop 8, but it was by Prop 102, which was its Arizona equivalent. And so I remember hearing about Prop 8 and just being kind of confused by it. I still had very why not?

John Dehlin [00:26:06] Homosexuality is evil according to your mindset at the time.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:26:08] Well, and you know what? It was. It absolutely was, but I didn't understand how we could make a. An argument based on religious tenants in public policy. Yeah, it just, just, just at that basic level, there was a disconnect for me. And of course, that was answer to why. Well, you Know, we only intervene when it's really, really, really, really super important. And this is really, really, really, really super important.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:26:38] And I didn't understand how gay people, you know, how. How gay couples getting married was a threat to society. And I still remember so clearly the reasons that. It was really the newsroom that gave the reasons, you know, that it's going to put, you know, church and state on a collision course. It's going to limit religious freedom, you know, same arguments they. They still make today. And, you know, that was enough to satiate me.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:27:09] But really what got me on board was obedience, which was an important lesson I learned on my mission. And in retrospect, it's really just the Nuremberg defense, which is I was just following orders, you know, the idea that even if the church leaders are wrong, you still have a duty to do what they say. And if it is wrong, the sins on their head, not yours.

John Dehlin [00:27:35] Right. Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:27:37] And so I was like, okay, so In Arizona, Prop 102 was going to pass regardless of whether I did anything, but I manned the phone booths. I voted in favor of the. Of the ballot measure. And it's interesting, like, I still remember the news and seeing, you know, like, demonstrators in front of the. In California and lots of rainbow flags,

John Dehlin [00:28:03] like the LA Temple.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:04] Yeah, all that stuff. And I remember seeing that. Clips of that as. As I heard the Prop 8 had passed, and my heart sank. Like, it was an immediate sense of remorse and guilt, and I wasn't expecting that. I was expecting a feeling of reassurance and validation, but I just felt awful.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:30] And, you know, I just. I remember just an immediate paradigm shift, promising myself that I would never do that again, that I would never. Regardless of who the orders were coming from, I would never. I would never take the Nuremberg defense again, that I would never compromise what I knew was right in favor of. Of the authority of somebody else.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:54] And so that was a very. That was a very conscious paradigm shift. And so. And then also that. That. That motivated me to become educated about LGBT issues, which. That doesn't help either. And so. So that's really when the crack started to form.

John Dehlin [00:29:12] And that's when you first started calling good evil and evil good.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:16] I guess so. Yeah, I guess so. And so. So that was in 2008, shortly after that. So. So I wasn't getting anything out of my church experience. And then I got called as a Sunday school president in my ward.

John Dehlin [00:29:35] And were you in Arizona by this time?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:37] Yeah. Yeah. So I was in Arizona, in Chandler.

John Dehlin [00:29:39] Oh, right. Because the Prop 1 or 2. Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:41] So Chandler, you know I served in Chandler. First word on my mission by the way.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:45] Oh that's right. While you're waiting for your visa.

John Dehlin [00:29:47] No, no, at the end I got sick and I. My last four months I was in. Did we ever channel first word?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:52] It's a different stake. Okay, it's a different stake now. Yeah, that's cool.

John Dehlin [00:29:56] It's a cool area.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:56] The part of Chandler I lived in didn't exist when you were on your mission. So.

John Dehlin [00:30:00] Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:30:01] Not, not to date you in any way. It's just that, that place is just that like yeah, sure, all the way to the, the Indian res. It's from of houses now.

John Dehlin [00:30:09] So. Awesome.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:30:12] So yeah. So then right after that I get called as a Sunday school president. I remember subbing for Sunday for gospel doctrine one day because that's basically what a Sunday school president does. They're just the, the on call sub. And so the lesson was on keeping the Sabbath day holy. And there was this quote from Kimball, I think it was. And he said something to the effect of if you are not getting, if you're not getting anything out of your Sunday experience, it's because you're not putting enough into it.

John Dehlin [00:30:43] Great.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:30:44] And I remember thinking, oh okay, well that's me because I hate this. So I, I must not be putting enough into it. And so, and so I just got this, I just got this second wind, you know like where I went into full missionary mode again. And I was like okay, I'm gonna, I'm going to get off my ass and I'm going to completely light this ward on fire with Sunday school. And that's the problem is if you're somebody that is like wanting to magnify their calling and do all this amazing stuff, being the Sunday school president is like the worst job for you to have. And so, and I was, I had that calling for three years.

John Dehlin [00:31:26] Wow.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:31:27] Yeah, wow. Like it was awful. And so, so. But regardless of that, Scriptures every night, prayers every night, 100 home teaching, family home evening. I was holding. This is embarrassing for me a minute. I was holding workshops on Saturday mornings with my Sunday school teachers to try to make them better. Sunday school teachers.

John Dehlin [00:31:52] That's hardcore.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:31:52] Yeah. Punk 25 year old kid sitting with all these people trying to teach them how to be better, more effective Sunday school teachers. And so, so yeah, and then, and so I just burnt out. Really, really. Well, not really quick. It took me two years to get really burnt out. And then around that same time I had this warty friend of mine that I started Getting really close to. And he started.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:32:24] You know, I. I can tell. I can tell now. He was just testing the waters with me, but, like, when we would hang out, he would, like, just drop little. Little fat grenades on me. Like, I remember we were talking about the Word of Wisdom, and he was like, did you know that Brigham Young owned all the distilleries and breweries in the Utah territory? I was like, what? I'm like, really? He's like, yeah, yeah, look it up. I'm like, oh, I had no idea. That's crazy. And so he's like, yeah. And Joseph Smith was probably drunk when he got. When he got killed. I was like, what?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:32:56] Shut up. I'm like, there's no way, man. Like, what are you talking about? Where are you getting this stuff from? And so I remember I'd go and I'd fact check him and I'd. Like, after he left, I'd go up and get on the Internet.

John Dehlin [00:33:08] And So this is 2010, you think this is.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:33:11] Yeah, 2011. 2010.

John Dehlin [00:33:13] Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:33:14] And so, like, the end of 2010. And so I remember reading that stuff and be like, oh, well, he's right. That's kind of weird. I don't know what to think about that. You know, And I'm somebody who had, quote, unquote, become an atheist and come back. And so I thought. I knew.

John Dehlin [00:33:33] I knew.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:33:33] I knew the real story was different than the one that I got at church. I knew that since I was a teenager. And I thought I knew the real story. Like, I thought I knew all the problems.

Cognitive Dissonance and Early Faith Struggles

John Dehlin [00:33:44] You think, you know, you learn a little bit and you think, you know,

Micah Nickolaisen [00:33:47] you're like, okay, yeah, I knew that. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:33:50] I got the polygamy thing down.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:33:51] Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so. So anyway, he kept kind of doing that, and then he was in this. He was in this little Internet group with some old friends of his when he lived in Utah. And it was like. It was like the school of the prophets. That's what it felt like to me. Like, here are these guys getting together and having these cool discussions about Mormonism. And it really fascinated me. And so he started actually BCCing me on some of their email threads and some of the stuff they were talking about. And. And I was really alarmed by it because that's how. So, actually, the first Mormon blog I ever read was Rock Waterman.

John Dehlin [00:34:38] Really?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:34:39] Yeah, because these. These guys were talking about Rock Watermen, and it was right after Damon Smith's. It was sometime right after Damon Smith's interview with Andrew Ainsworth.

John Dehlin [00:34:50] Right On Mormon stories.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:34:51] On Mormon stories. Yeah. And Rock Waterman was talking about the corporate church and saying stuff that I just never even thought of before. You know, like the lack of financial transparency and, you know, all the problems with the corporate structure of the church. And, you know, I felt like Nephi, hearing Layman and Lemuel murmur, I was just like, this is not good. This is bad. And so I was really worried for my friend, my Wardy. I was like, he's got to get away from these people. And so. Well, actually, can I back up just a little bit before I finish the story? I'm sorry. So sometime in.

John Dehlin [00:35:30] In that.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:35:30] In those intervening years between Prop 8 and all this, I found this book at Deseret, book called Shaken Faith Syndrome by Michael Ash.

John Dehlin [00:35:38] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:35:39] And I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. But it was interesting. So it was that book that taught me what cognitive dissonance was. Never heard of it before. Had always had felt it many times in my life, but never knew what it was. And my. And Mike Ash, in his book, did such a good, concise job of explaining what cognitive dissonance was and what your brain does to try to fight it. Right. To get rid of it.

John Dehlin [00:36:04] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:36:05] And. And also what's funny is. So the first half of his book is kind of like, you know, religious psychology, so to speak, and why people leave and what kind of people leave and the reasons that they leave. And then the second half of the book was his attempt to address kind of the most problematic, challenging issues. And so, like, anachronisms in the Book of Mormon, which I already knew about. But then he started talking about Book of Abraham stuff. And I literally had to close the book because I was finding out new things in that book about the Book of Abraham. And I don't remember what they were now, but I just remember being really.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:36:38] And, oh, that's the first time I heard about the Kinderhook plates. And I was just like, oh, that. Oh, yeah, I really wish I hadn't heard that. You know, that wasn't good. And so, so, so sorry. Going back to my story. So I started typing this email to my friend, and it was just this diatribe. And I said, Nephi calling, calling his brother to repentance. And, you know, I think I can still remember some of the words I use, like talking about these guys, these. These, you know, heretics that he was interacting with. Like, these people get to have their cake and eat it, too.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:37:13] They get to have all the blessings of the gospel without being valiant. Like I was totally laying into them. And right before I hit send, I had this epiphany. I was like, I'm having cognitive dissonance. And I, like, caught myself. I was like, I am having a visceral reaction because I'm feeling cognitive dissonance. And me having cognitive dissonance has no objective, does not leave an objective value on this information.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:37:44] It's just uncomfortable. And I was like, so if I'm going to be intellectually honest and responsible, I can't just dismiss it and, you know, get on my pulpit and preach to this guy? So I deleted the email.

John Dehlin [00:37:57] You didn't send the email?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:37:58] Didn't send it. And so is it still in your draft folder? I actually. I think. I think later on I tried to look for it and I couldn't find it, but.

John Dehlin [00:38:07] Bummer.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:38:07] Yeah. So. So then I went back to the email thread and I went back to Rock Waterman's blog, and this time, like, went through and read it, and then there was a link to the Damon Smith Mormon Stories podcast. And I was like, what's a podcast? And so I clicked on it and I. God, I still remember listening to it on my way from work and just having my mind blown by that podcast. Like, that Damon Smith podcast still to this day is, like, such a trip. But basically you've got a guy who worked for the church for three years and who's a believer still. Yeah, still a believer, even today, you know, talking about the evils of the. Of the modern church.

John Dehlin [00:39:00] And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:39:01] And I realized at that point that I had to make a choice. I either had to make a very compartmentalized distinction between the gospel and the church, or else I just. I wouldn't be able to. I wouldn't be able to manage the cognitive dissonance anymore. And so that's what I did. And so I started actually going out to these. To. To meet with these. These guys. And most of them lived in the highland alpine area. And these guys meaning. So the.

John Dehlin [00:39:31] The school, the prophets guys.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:39:32] Yeah, the school, the prophets. They're going to laugh when you're. But it was totally like that. It really was.

John Dehlin [00:39:38] I bet they're snufferites or they were.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:39:41] I don't think. I don't think. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:39:43] All right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:39:44] But. But I can talk about a couple of them. Do you know Ron and Josh Madsen?

John Dehlin [00:39:48] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:39:48] They run the Mormon Worker blog.

John Dehlin [00:39:50] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:39:52] So both of them were just. Were such key players in this kind of budding part of my. Of my faith transition. And. And they were Both excellent mentors because they were guys that were making the church work, despite their. Their problems. And they're very vocal public problems that they had with Mormon culture and the church. And so they were good examples to me of people that, okay, I don't need to be scared of this, because here are these guys. They're still going to church. They've been in, they've been looking, They've been talking about this stuff for a long time. And so that made the space feel really safe for me.

John Dehlin [00:40:31] Are they still in?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:40:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:32] Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:40:33] I believe so. I believe so. I'm not sure.

John Dehlin [00:40:35] Nice.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:40:35] I'm not sure. I believe they are. I think Ron used to be a bishop, I think.

John Dehlin [00:40:41] Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:40:42] Anyway, so. So I started hanging out with these people, with these guys, and whenever I'd come up to Utah, I'd try to, you know, see if they could get together and meet up and stuff like that. And. But of course, after getting my first hit of Mormon stories, I had to have more, you know, and so, see, I started going back and. And listening to everything that I could.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:41:06] I remember freemasonry was a big concern of mine on my mission because so many of our. In North Carolina, so many of our investigators were part of Freemasonry. And I still remember my trainer trying to explain to me, well, you know, the way revelation works is you find all the pieces that you can, and then God fills in the rest. And Joseph was using Freemasonry. And. And of course, we know it goes all the way back to the Temple of Solomon anyway, you know, and so I'd kind of reconcile that. But, like, it doesn't. But yeah, no, yeah, I know that now. But that was one of your first Mormon stories interviews. Was.

John Dehlin [00:41:39] Was.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:41:40] And so I remember really liking that. And then. And I think, isn't. Isn't it Randy or Bob or one of those guys at infants? They were on. They were on an episode you did on. On Atheism.

John Dehlin [00:41:54] Yeah, that was Randy. Yeah, that was Tyson Jacobson.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:41:57] Yeah, that's right.

John Dehlin [00:41:58] Okay, so Dan Witherspoon moderated.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:42:00] Yes, that's right. That's right. That was Dan. So I still remember. It's so funny, like, because most of the time I listen to these podcasts, I'm driving because I drive a lot with work. And so I still remember I was in between Coachella and palm springs on i10 with the big fan when I first. Yes. When I first heard the word polyandry, listening to that podcast. And I was just like, what? And so that was the first Time. So again, you're talking about, you're having, you have a guy that thinks he knows all this stuff, right? Like, oh, I know about polygamy. And then it's like, oh, I wish I hadn't heard that, you know, like.

John Dehlin [00:42:37] And so.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:42:38] But, you know, because, but because I found guys like Damon Smith and Josh Manson, it really made me impervious to criticisms of Joseph Smith because I had already accepted the fact that he was a fundamentally flawed man and that he, in a very Terrell Givens way approach that he is God owning up on his promise that he would use the weak things of the world to accomplish great things, right? And so it didn't really matter how much awful stuff you told me about Joseph Smith. I would just be like, ah, Joseph, oh, well, you know, you knucklehead, you rascal.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:21] So, so anyway, I, so, but you know, the stuff, I mean, then I learned about like the Hoffman forgeries and the way the church tried to hide them and, you know, just, just, I mean, we could go on forever, right? But, and so, and then all of that, you know, was really sort of the curtain, the curtain for what was really going on in my mind, which was just God, you know, and throughout my whole faith transition, my fear of death and me clutching desperately to my spiritual experiences because again, I had, I had waited so long to get an answer to that prayer.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:44:07] And I didn't ever want to question the answer to that prayer because it was something I was so invested in and I had done so much, so many things pivoting off of that moment in my life, right, where I had finally learned that the church was true. And everything else that happened in my life after that, going on a mission, getting married, you know, moving to Arizona, all that stuff was because of these spiritual promptings. And the last thought I ever wanted to entertain was the same thought I had when I was 13. Maybe it's all in your head.

John Dehlin [00:44:41] And,

Micah Nickolaisen [00:44:43] and so that those are more meta concerns, right, Than whether or not there was horses and steel in the Americas, you know, and so those have always been the things that I've wrestled with rather than. I don't want to call it minutiae, because it's not. I mean, they're real, they're real bad problems, but those have always been kind of at the heart of my, of my concern. And really what's been. Everything else in my faith crisis is orbited around those two things. God and, and, and the Spirit, you know, so anyway, I don't know where to go from there. And I know I've been talking for a really long time, but.

John Dehlin [00:45:28] So. So does that mean you started to deconstruct God at that point again?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:45:35] Yeah, because I'd already done it as a kid.

John Dehlin [00:45:37] So you went for it. So you. You. You stared down the rabbit hole?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:45:41] Actually, no, actually, I take that back. I did, just kind of subconsciously, but I was clutching onto it. You know, I was holding on to that. To that foundation that I had built. But it was. I could feel it slipping away from me. And ultimately, really, the last straw was me finally acknowledging and realizing that transcendent emotional, spiritual experiences are not a source of objective truth. And that happened much later. And I'm kind of skipping ahead here, but that's. Ultimately. That was the domino that just made everything else fall down.

A Thoughtful Faith Podcast and Community

John Dehlin [00:46:24] So what. So when. Where did a thoughtful faith so fit into this?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:46:29] So late 2010 is when I started talking to my friend.

John Dehlin [00:46:34] And you were at the Mormon Stories Arizona conference in 2011. Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:46:38] Was that in 2011 or 2012? I can't remember.

John Dehlin [00:46:41] It was 2012, you're right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:46:42] Yeah, I think it was 2012. So in that intervening in that first year, I found the Phoenix Mormon Stories community, and I was a lurker for a really long time.

John Dehlin [00:46:54] That would have been created in early 2011.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:46:56] Yeah. Yep, yep. So I was there pretty close to the beginning of the group, and then. And then I was a lurker for a while, and so things kind of remained kind of in a state of stasis during that period. Like, nothing really changed. And I thought I had kind of settled into a new paradigm of Mormonism that. That was working for me. And. But then at some point, I think

John Dehlin [00:47:25] it was Ann Peffer who, like, told me that you were, like, volunteering to pay for people's flights to some conference. Right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:47:32] Well, yeah. So. So what happened was that following fall. So fall 2011, I went to my first meet up in Phoenix with the Mormon Stories group, and I was so scared. What are these scary apostates gonna be like?

John Dehlin [00:47:50] Yeah. And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:47:53] And so I went to. It was just a gathering at somebody's house. I don't think there was really an agenda or anything, but it was. It must have been later in the year because they had a dead Christmas tree to burn. So.

John Dehlin [00:48:07] Or maybe.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:48:07] I don't know, maybe it was a Christmas. Anyway, so we. We lit this Christmas tree up in this huge bonfire, and then we just sat around and shared each other's stories. And that was.

John Dehlin [00:48:19] And was Randy there? Like, Randy? I don't.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:48:22] I don't know if Randy had moved by then.

John Dehlin [00:48:24] That's where I met Matt from if it's on Thrones. Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:48:27] So. So is that. It was actually at Scott Rowley's house.

John Dehlin [00:48:29] Who's on if it's on Thrones, who's

Micah Nickolaisen [00:48:30] on Infants on Thrones? Scott and Matt. I met both of them there and then just several, you know, a couple dozen other people. And I walked away from that thinking, these are some of the best people I've ever met in my life. Like, what's going on?

John Dehlin [00:48:47] Those conversations are like magic, because in, like, one hour, you're sharing the deepest, most intimate parts of your life with the total stranger. Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:48:56] And forging deeper connections with them than you ever.

John Dehlin [00:48:59] Than you would have five to 10 years in your Mormon world. Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:03] Not even for me. Like, it was a connection that I'd never had with anybody.

John Dehlin [00:49:07] Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:07] Except for family members.

John Dehlin [00:49:09] In what way? Just.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:10] I don't even know. It was just. It was vulnerable. It was. It was a combination of vulnerability and authenticity.

John Dehlin [00:49:16] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:17] That I just never experienced before. And the. The analogy I always, always give. And it's probably an awful analogy, probably dumb, but imagine if your whole life, all you ever had with dinner are instant potatoes from the box.

John Dehlin [00:49:32] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:32] And mom makes it her special way. Puts the butter on it, puts the salt on it. It's delicious. You love it. You think it's the best thing ever. And then one day you have real mashed potatoes for the first time, and you're just like, oh, my gosh, this is so much better than instant potatoes.

John Dehlin [00:49:48] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:49] And so that's kind of the experience that I had. Um, and really, the only other. The, the, the last time I'd had relationships like that was when I was in high school. You know, when you're with your, your, Your, Your. Your high school friends, you know, and, you know, that. That always bothered me. I always wondered why we didn't have close friends. And I thought, well, that was just. That's what you have at that time in your life. And then you grow up and you get married, and then, you know, you put away childish things like.

John Dehlin [00:50:19] Like real friendship, like authenticity, vulnerability. Right. Because that's, that's. And so childhood childish things.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:50:27] So that experience changed everything for me.

John Dehlin [00:50:30] And. But you. You weren't. You weren't totally in sync with. With the Phoenix Open Mormon. Like, there was a lot of disaffected, you know, or people.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:50:40] Oh, yeah, no, that's the thing is I was the only believer there at that meeting that night.

John Dehlin [00:50:44] Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:50:45] And. But I was Welcomed with open arms just as how I was.

John Dehlin [00:50:51] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:50:51] And, you know, sure, they said stuff like, oh, yeah, you're a believer. We'll see how you are in a year, or, you know, stuff like that. But I was just like, wow, these are my people.

John Dehlin [00:51:01] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:51:02] And, you know, the thing. And, and I've expressed this elsewhere in these, especially in, like, these regional, like, post Mormon groups. It's really hard for the believers because if you're a believer and you're in a group like that, you're obviously not your normal chapel Mormon. Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:51:24] And probably because of that, you don't really have an authentic community in your ward every Sunday. But at the same time, you also feel this disconnect from this group that you really feel connected to because there's a fundamental ideological rift between you and them. And it's hard. It puts you in this really awkward space for. For a long time. And that's where I was like, I really love these people and I really wanted to spend time with them. But I always felt weird because I'd go to parties and I would be the guy that wasn't drinking, or I was the believer. And, you know, and I felt like they always had to watch what they said around me, you know, and stuff like that, which is totally normal.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:52:03] But it was, it was, it was a little awkward, but still so much better than. Than any kind of community I had ever had before in my life. And so. So that was like in the fall of 2011. And then, yeah, the next spring was the Mormon Stories Conference. And so I actually, like, you know, as. As much as I could at the last minute, tried to just real quick

John Dehlin [00:52:25] for our listeners, what we're kind of referring to there, those who weren't there at the time. In early 2011, we started probably 80, you know, Facebook communities all over the world to help Mormon Stories listeners get together. Because I was feeling like I couldn't support everyone who needed help. And. And so we figured, well, let's create, you know, Ann Pepper was helping at the time. Let's create these, you know, communities so that people could. Could support each other. And so we created about 70 or 80 of these. Phoenix is one of them. And then what we started doing is holding these conferences all around the U.S. and so, you know, the first one was in New York when the Book of Morrow Musical premiered. But we also did Salt Lake, Washington, D.C. boise, Idaho, Phoenix, Arizona. And, you know, we did probably, you know, six or eight of these, or maybe 10.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:53:20] Right.

John Dehlin [00:53:21] All throughout kind of that 2011, 2012 time. Period. So Phoenix rolled around probably in February or March.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:53:29] Yeah, it was in February, I think, of 2012. And so, like, I. I flew Dan down for Phoenix.

John Dehlin [00:53:34] You flew down Witherspoon down. Yeah. And. And Jared Anderson spoke there.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:53:39] Margaret Toscano.

John Dehlin [00:53:40] Margaret Toscano. And then a lot of the, you know, the Infants on Thrones guys, you know, Randy Snider, Scott Rowley, and Matt. Matt Wong, some of them actually spoke at the Phoenix Conference. But also, you know, you know, that was. That was when I first met those guys.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:01] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:01] Right. So.

John Dehlin [00:54:03] And there was a. I mean, I remember we did. We did. We did like an evening at whose house?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:10] I don't. I didn't go to that.

John Dehlin [00:54:11] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:11] Oh, no, no, wait. You're right. At the Babbitts.

John Dehlin [00:54:13] At the Babbitts. Nate Babbitt. Yeah. There's a yurt there. And there were hundreds of people there. Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:19] It was huge.

John Dehlin [00:54:20] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:21] And that's where I met you the first time.

John Dehlin [00:54:22] It was really exciting.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:24] And so actually, I think that was one of the first things that I took my wife to.

John Dehlin [00:54:29] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:30] And she was scared to death.

John Dehlin [00:54:31] Yeah. It wasn't. I didn't think it was debaucherous. I mean, Joanna Brooks came.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:36] Oh, no, that was like. That was totally. It was pretty awesome. It was a great. It was a great little get together.

Mormon Stories Conferences and Activist Networks

John Dehlin [00:54:40] The energy there was amazing. It was amazing.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:44] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:45] And so. So, yeah, leading up to that conference, I mean, the worst thing you can do is give me a cause, because I will. I will run with Sunday school. And so I just wanted to help as much as I could. And I was like, oh, I got all these thousands of Southwest points. Maybe somebody needs a flight down from Utah. And so I got in touch with Dan and flew him down. And, you know, it felt great that I was helping out with this cool new thing in my life. And then.

John Dehlin [00:55:12] Was your dad a Stake president at the time or.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:55:15] No.

John Dehlin [00:55:15] Oh, you had been talking to your stake.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:55:17] Okay. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:18] So.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:55:18] Okay. So that's an important part of the story.

John Dehlin [00:55:20] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:55:20] So. So, yeah, it was around that same time. So it was in early 2011. I was listening to a Mormon Stories podcast. It was at the dc. It was the audio from the DC Conference. And Greg Prince spoke in DC Yep. And that was like. So, like, his talk became like my manifesto. It was like my playbook for interacting with the church as a nuanced believer and the advising your capital.

John Dehlin [00:55:50] Like, what?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:55:51] So he said the best way to minimize fallout in your warding in your stake is to build a Good relationship with your priesthood leaders.

John Dehlin [00:55:59] Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:56:00] And so it was right around that time that you had come out with some of the initial stats from your survey about why people leave.

John Dehlin [00:56:08] The survey we did for Marlon Jensen and Hans Matson.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:56:12] And, and shortly before that, Marlon Jensen had given his famous statement at Utah State that we haven't seen this level of apostasy since Kirtland.

John Dehlin [00:56:22] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:56:22] And so I brought that stuff with me first with my bishop, and I just said, hey, I'm really concerned because we are losing really good people. See, look. And I said, we do not have any spaces in the church for, for people that are. That are having this experience where they are potentially losing their faith. And of course, the whole time I was telling about these people, it's telling them about me.

John Dehlin [00:56:49] Yeah, right. Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:56:50] But, you know, I told them how I've. I've met some of these people, and they're amazing. And, you know, I know a guy. I know a guy. I have a friend who really hates going to church. And so, so that was my tactic, and I, I framed it this way. I said, these are people that are part of your stewardship, and they could be here in our ward, and we don't know who they are. And, and, and, and, and things did not go very well with my bishop. Ultimately, I can talk about that in my mission.

John Dehlin [00:57:23] I remember talking to you at the Arizona conference. You're like, I'm really optimistic. I'm having these conversations with my stake president. I really think we're going to become like a pilot stake for.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:57:33] Yes, I remember we talked on the phone about that. Yeah, so. So. But my stake president was much more receptive, and I brought him with the same information, and he was blown away by it. He was like, wow. He's like, well, who. Who, like, do you know other people in our stake? And I didn't. I honestly didn't. Didn't know anybody Today. I could list off at least a couple dozen people from that state that I know.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:57:59] But. And so where was I going with that? So, so, yeah, so I did that. So, and, and ultimately, over time with these meetings, I would talk about my own concerns, and then eventually I would say, hey, one of the main reasons I want to talk with you is so that way you and I are on the same page, and you know where my heart is and where my intentions are. So if somebody from the ward or somebody from the stake says something about me or if they saw me post something on Facebook, which I hadn't done at that point, you know, you will have the context to know where I'm coming from.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:58:37] So that way it doesn't need to blow up into. Into anything big. So. Yeah, let me talk about my bishop for a minute. So I had at least three or four meetings with my bishop like this, and at the time, I was an Elders Quorum instructor. Finally got released from being a Sunday school president, and I was an Elders Quorum instructor. And I think I talked a little bit about how I used to be an atheist when I was in high school.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:03] And I can't remember what lesson this was, but. Oh, I remember what it was. Okay. So. So I went to the Salt Lake Mormon Stories Conference. And that's. That's what you're talking about, where I flew Jana Reese and.

John Dehlin [00:59:18] Okay, this would have been the second. Would have been the second Mormon Stories.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:21] Yeah, so that was in May.

John Dehlin [00:59:24] I don't know.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:25] But so.

John Dehlin [00:59:25] But May of 2012.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:28] Yeah. And I think that's. I think that's when Andrew Ainsworth spoke.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:32] Yeah, Andrew Ainsworth spoke there.

John Dehlin [00:59:34] Yeah. And I think Claudia Bushman spoke actually.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:36] I don't remember.

John Dehlin [00:59:37] Yeah. Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:38] But that was an amazing. So the Phoenix Mormon Stories Conference was awesome, but what happened in Salt Lake just blew me away. Like, it was up at that Wasatch Presbyterian Church.

John Dehlin [00:59:49] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:50] And it's an amazing building.

John Dehlin [00:59:52] Greg Rockwell saying.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:54] Brent Washburn did comedy.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:59:56] Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:57] Yeah. But more than just that, just like, the. The beams and the stained glass, it was. It was a sanctuary, you know, and then up there at the. At the top of the congregation, there's three women sitting in the chairs. Like, ah, it was so powerful. And. And that was Terry Wittenberg and Ann and Katrina.

John Dehlin [01:00:17] Katrina Anderson. Yeah. Jared. Jared's wife.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:00:19] Yeah. So. So, yeah, I felt the spirit stronger at that conference than any other time in my life. What. What I had been taught was the spirit. And I couldn't. I couldn't deny it. I was like, this is the spirit. Like, there's no. Like, there's no mincing out. Like, if. If what I'm feeling is wrong, then all the other times I felt the spirit were wrong too, you know?

John Dehlin [01:00:43] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:00:43] And so, you know, I walked away from that just feeling like, you know what? Because. Because what's funny is at the beginning, you do a lot of checking yourself, like, am I being led astray? Is this Satan? You know, at least I did. I had those thoughts all the time.

John Dehlin [01:01:00] Sure.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:01:00] And so to go to this heretical Mormon Stories conference and to hear, you know, people talk about leaving the church is the greatest thing that Ever happened to them or.

John Dehlin [01:01:12] Stephanie Lauritson spoke.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:01:15] Yeah, yeah, she did. And, you know, people who were, who were gay getting up and talking about their experience.

John Dehlin [01:01:23] Oh, yeah. And you know, the testimony meetings.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:01:25] We had the testimony, and I, I felt the spirit.

John Dehlin [01:01:28] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:01:28] It's like I should not be feeling the spirit when somebody's talking about how great it's been leaving the church

John Dehlin [01:01:36] or

Micah Nickolaisen [01:01:36] how much, you know, how much somebody is fulfilled by their. By their. By their partner, you know, their gay partner. Their gay partner. Yeah. You know, and. And so that, you know, so that put, that put the issue to rest for me. I'm not being led astray by anything. Like, this is just how it is. And it feels amazing. It feels right to me. The same way this feeling has made me feel right about everything else in my life. And so that's actually when I first decided to become public. And I'd kept a private blog during this whole process. It was like my journal. And I did it under an alias, Peepstone. And, and so I created a new blog and just reposted everything and just started putting it on Facebook.

John Dehlin [01:02:22] Nice. And.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:02:25] And. But what started it is I just remember creating a status where I said it was an amazing experience going to this Mormon Stories conference as Steph, as Stephanie and I have been navigating sort of some of our doubts and questions about the church. It was. We've always asked ourselves, we've always kept ourselves in check, wondering if we had been led astray. And this was such an affirming experience because of how strongly I felt the Holy Ghost in that meeting.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:02:56] And so that's really when the lid blew off the first time. So almost immediately I get called into my bishop's office, which is the first time that he had initiated a meeting with me. I was always the one initiating meetings with him.

Difficult Encounters with Church Leadership

Micah Nickolaisen [01:03:09] And so, and, and by the way, just a life hack for interacting with. With priesthood leaders. You know, the crap's hitting the fan when your Priesthood leader spends 20 minutes shooting the crap with you.

John Dehlin [01:03:21] Oops.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:03:23] You know, just like, hey, how's your family? How's your job? How's this? How's that? Great, Great. It's been 20 minutes. What's going on here? Why am I here? You know, and so he. So after all that, he just suddenly says, well, Mike, I'm just going to go ahead and ask you the temple recommend interview questions. And I was like, oh, okay. And. And so we went through them and I answered all of them. And he's like, well, this doesn't make sense. To me, the way you're describing your testimony is very different from what I'm hearing from. From other people. And I remember just my heart sinking like, that's the whole effing point of why I've been meeting with you for the past six months is so that this wouldn't happen.

John Dehlin [01:04:07] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:04:09] And I was like, well, maybe you should tell me what you've been hearing about me so I can understand. And he's like, well, I hear that you're an atheist. I hear that you don't. That you don't respect modern scripture. Like, that you question the brethren, that you don't sustain their pre. Like all this stuff, which none of that was true, ironically enough.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:04:28] And. And so for like 45 minutes, I walked him through what at the time was my very nuanced testimony, you know, and then, you know, he still wasn't getting. And he's like, well, Micah, that's why you can't read that anti Mormon crap that's on the Internet. And I was like.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:04:49] And so I said to him, I'm like, bishop, I'm like, you got to understand something. That stuff doesn't bother me. I know about all the dirt, and that doesn't bother me about church. I'm like, you want to know what bothers me about church? He's like, what meetings like this bother me about church?

Micah Nickolaisen [01:05:09] And so it was. So I had immediately just spun everything around on him. He's like, what are you talking about? I'm like, are you the principal? He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, are you like, the principal of the ward? Like, of the ward? Like a principal at school? He's like, well, I guess so. I guess I kind of am. I'm like, well, good, because I feel like I'm in the principal's office right now.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:05:34] I don't feel like I am a. An adult participating in a honest, open religious community. I feel like I'm being. That people are running surveillance on me, that they are reporting it to you. And I was like, in the whole reason. I'm like, do you remember three months ago when I talked about this? He's like, yeah, yeah, you're right. I'm like, ah. And so the rest of the meeting, I was able to ask some careful questions so I could figure out who it was that was sending him information. It was basically people from ward council, of course.

John Dehlin [01:06:09] Yep. Happened to me too.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:06:10] And so. And I told you about. I have told you this story. So that night. So that was a Sunday night that Night I went home and I sent an email to my home. Teachers, the entire ward council and the bishopric just said, hey, we've been made aware that there are some people in the ward that are, that are confused about what our standing is with the church right now. We would love for you all to come to our home and we can sit and talk about it. We are not going to expose you to any harmful information that's going to. Going to make you question your faith.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:06:50] We just want to be on the same page as you because we love this ward and we really want to make this work. And so, so several people showed up. About eight people showed up. And, you know, long story short, we tried as best as we could to kind of explain where we felt tension with the church and, and all this stuff. I feel like I'm kind of going on too long. But anyway, I'll try to keep. Try to wrap this up. Long story short, my bishop ends up shouting at me and my wife in my house, saying things like, you know, because I told him about, you know, I was telling about all the amazing people that we had met that are no longer in the church.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:07:32] And I tried to explain to him, it's not sad that these people are leaving the church. It's sad that we are losing them. It's sad that we don't have those people here anymore because we need them. They don't need us anymore. We need them, though, to make the church a better place. And so my bishop was like, these people that you think are your friends, they are agents of Satan and they will lead you straight to hell. And if you don't change off this course, I, I will take away your temple recommends.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:08:05] And honestly, if I had had it on me at the time, I would have thrown it at its face. I was so, so upset. And so that's. So that was basically the end of my. Any conversations I ever had with my bishop after that. But my stake president was so much better. He was so much more understanding and empathetic. And he and I met probably quarterly for at least three years.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:08:29] So we had had at least, you know, half dozen to a dozen meetings. And yeah, I started to talk to him about, you know, well, I basically said, we never know. We don't know what Salt Lake's going to do to address this. So why wait for them? Why don't we do something? Yeah, you know, I was like, why don't we try something? I'm like, the whole youth program was started just in some stake in Wisconsin. I think you Know, like, some. Some stake youth leader just started doing it, and then the church adopted it. Why don't we do something like that? And so. But he just.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:09:02] He. He never felt. He never felt empowered to do that, you know, at least as a stake President in the 21st century, you know, like, their hands are so tied, you know, and so. But, you know, and. And then, like, later that year, I, by some crazy accident, got quoted in businessweek. They did a huge story about church finance.

John Dehlin [01:09:28] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:09:28] And they had talked to Damon Smith, and he was featured a lot in the article because that's kind of one of his areas of expertise. And I think the reporter at one point said, well, are there any other, like, kind of regular Mormon people that feel the same way you do? And he's like, yeah, you can talk to this guy Micah.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:09:46] And so. So, yeah, Mike, part of my interview with this reporter ended up in the BusinessWeek article. And then, like, right after that, my stake president calls me in, and I was like, oh, crap. And so he said, hey, somebody showed this to me. And I know it's stuff we've talked about before. He's like, here's the thing, Mike. Here's what's great about how the system works. If you have a concern like this, you can always come to me. I'm your friend, and he is my friend. I still consider him a friend. And he's like, if. And if I can't help you, we will get the answer from somebody else. I will. I will send it up the chain, and we'll.

John Dehlin [01:10:24] We'll.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:10:25] We'll get an answer to this stuff. And I was like, great. And so he got out a pen and paper, and I started just rattling stuff off. You know, why is the church building a mall? Why is. Why did the church stop disclosing its finances in the 50s? What. You know, and just tried to, like, go through it all and. And so. But I would never hear anything back. You know, like, you know, three months would go by, I'd meet up with him, I'd forget about it. He'd forgotten about it, obviously, and. Or he passed it up and didn't get any response, but, you know, that. That venue just wasn't working for me. And so. So it was in. So the Salt Lake Mormon Stories Conference was in spring 2012, and then we launched a thoughtful faith in September of 2012.

John Dehlin [01:11:22] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided provided by the lower lights. When with the wounded heart, anger or malice, I draw myself apart, searching my soul.

Recap and Transition to Part Two

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 533

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

John Dehlin [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home. Hello and welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm John Dehlin, your host, and this is part two of our interview with Micah Nicolaisson.

John Dehlin [00:01:00] We've spent the first hour talking about his early years at the church, his spiritual experiences that sort of led to his deep commitment to the church. After being an adolescent atheist for a time, his hardcore mission, his hardcore Sunday school presidency, his exposure to difficult issues and, and, you know, his conversations with his bishop and stake president that were all sort of really earnest attempts at trying to, at trying to work with his local leadership to address very early on, you know, in 2011, 2012, the growing wave of LDS disaffection that was soon to become more of a tsunami of sorts to the church. And so now what we're going to talk about is Micah's sort of ventures into sort of Mormon activism on a bigger scale.

John Dehlin [00:02:06] And I'll just, I'll set it up a bit. And only that, you know, these conferences and communities, you know, were really strong for about a year to year and a half, and it was really exciting. And then there came a point where things kind of imploded for me and I had, I, you know, I've talked about this before, but, you know, Margi and I started really struggling and, you know, we came close to divorce. This is around August of 2012, and I felt like my family was going to fall apart. I started worrying about, you know, the Mormon stories, you know, brand name from the context of it remaining sort of a safe, you know, brand for questioning and believing Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:02:59] And the community started taking on a life of their own. And just, frankly, I got scared. And so, you know, come around August 2012, sort of the work we had done had fallen apart. I felt like we needed to disassociate our, you know, Mormon stories from the, from these communities somewhat. I stopped the conferences. I had to focus on my, my PhD, my dissertation. And so for, for Mormon stories, you know, August 2012 became a very dark time and for my family as well. And right around that time, just as a crazy initiative, this is like my final attempt to really make the church work.

John Dehlin [00:03:43] This was after stale LDs had come and gone, but I wanted to make one last ditch effort to really see if Mormonism could be a safe place for those who questioned and those who struggled. And so in addition to beginning really earnest discussions that were weekly with my stake president, you know, starting around 2012, I also just put out a call and said, hey, I want to start a podcast. You know, Phil Barlow's book A Thoughtful Faith had really positively influenced me in my university times.

John Dehlin [00:04:22] And I wanted to carry on the tradition of stale ds.com and start a podcast that would be exclusively focused on helping people stay in the church. And so I put out a Facebook call in one of my darkest hours with, with the Open Stories foundation and said, hey, is there anybody interested in starting this podcast and tell me how you remember it? Micah?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:04:50] Yeah, I remember you posting that and just being like, that's me. I'm that guy. Like, I know I can be that guy. And so I, I actually still remember I was about to get in my. I was here, I was in Utah. I was about to get my rental car for work. And I remember stopping because you texted me, you messaged me back saying, okay, let's give it a shot. And I remember just being like, yeah. And so, yeah, that's, that's kind of how it happened. I mean, you, you and I didn't really know each other that well at that point.

John Dehlin [00:05:27] No.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:05:29] And, and actually the thought, a thoughtful face started earlier, before you dissolve the communities. It happened a little bit earlier in the summer because I remember that it was like September when you disassociated with the communities. But I remember working on A Thoughtful Faith, like in July and August.

John Dehlin [00:05:46] Yeah, yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:05:47] Just getting ready to launch.

John Dehlin [00:05:48] That's right. Well, it was when. Let's just say I put that out as I knew that things were, yeah. Starting to unravel.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:05:55] Right.

John Dehlin [00:05:55] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:05:57] And so, yeah, so I'm not an audio guy. I have a little bit of a video background, so I know, I understand non linear editing and stuff like that and basic. You know, I know you need a micro, a good microphone to pick up sound, you know, and what I really, what I, what I was really worried about was getting stifled by upper management, for lack of a better word. But I was really pleased to see that you really just wanted somebody to take it and, and run with it. And so that Made me really happy, but also really nervous because now I was the guy, you know, and I better not mess it up, you know, and then, yeah, during those early weeks, that's when, that's when I found Sarah. She wanted to just help with scheduling.

Launching and Running a Faith Transition Podcast

John Dehlin [00:06:49] Sarah Colette, right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:06:51] Yeah, Sarah Colette. She volunteered to help with scheduling for lining up interviews and stuff like that. And you know, this is a very. And I come to find out this is a normal phenomenon in any time you're dealing with a volunteer organization outside of a religion is. There's a huge amount of attrition, you know, with something like, like this, for example. And I'm sure you must have been worried about this because this happens all the time. Hey, I'm looking for help with this. Oh, oh, I'll help.

John Dehlin [00:07:18] I'll do it.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:07:19] I'll do it. And then. Okay, great. Well, you know, so you meet with them a few times and then you just never hear from them again. You know, it happens all the time.

John Dehlin [00:07:26] All the time.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:07:27] And it's just. It's actually. There's nothing. I don't know. I don't know how to fix it. It's just how it is, you know, when people aren't getting money and you're taking their time, you know, it's really their interest and their passion is what's gonna make them do it, you know, and so if that goes away, you know, then there's really nothing, no skin in the game left for them.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:07:50] So very quickly, Sarah and I realized that we were going to be doing this. You know, it's just going to be us. And so, but you know, we, we knew enough people between the two of us, we knew enough interesting stories that we stacked up what we thought was a very solid, A solid set of interviews to launch the podcast with a couple months later. And then you. You.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:08:14] So I think the first episode we did was Greg Prince. My interview with Greg Prince. And then. And then your multi part series with Phil Barlow came after that. And so, yeah, I mean, the podcast was. Was great. It was a great experience for me. I loved it.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:08:30] I love, I just loved hearing people's stories, you know, like, I love the episode that, where. Where I got to interview Michael Barker and you know, and it was just.

John Dehlin [00:08:44] Was that before rational faiths.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:08:46] It was so rational faiths and a thoughtful faith kind of started at the same time.

John Dehlin [00:08:51] Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:08:52] And so, so really. And, and those projects, at least back then, I'm. I'm sure they still do now. Had a really good relationship, good working relationship.

John Dehlin [00:09:00] Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:09:00] You Know, I wrote blog posts for the Barker brothers and. And so did Sarah, you know, but the podcast was. Was a really amazing experience and still something.

John Dehlin [00:09:12] What were some of your favorite interviews besides.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:09:14] So I really love. So Greg Prince was awesome. Michael Barker. Probably the best one, though, was Bob Reese.

John Dehlin [00:09:21] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:09:23] He's such a good guy and he has such a pragmatic, yet pastoral approach to Mormonism. And you know, the thing, the. For me, what the podcast was about, for me, it's like, okay, you know, when people are going through this faith transition, there are several different landing places where they can end up. A lot of people, their landing place is going to be out of the church. But for many of us, and I thought I was a part of this, you're going to land still in the church, but with some obvious problems and obstacles as a. As, as. As a liberal believer or as a non believer that.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:10:08] That still, you know, either likes to attend or has to attend for other reasons. What models can we find in our community that can be helpful for people to navigate that? And also people who can talk about Mormonism separate from the church. Because for me, and still to this day, I find an enormous amount of value in Mormonism as a. As a set of beliefs and as a theology, I think it works really well. And I wanted to highlight that, you know, and I wanted to. I wanted people to tell me what it is they got out of Mormonism, because I thought that would be fuel for people that would help them hang on, you know, because again, I wasn't as worried about the church losing these people or. Sorry, I wasn't as concerned about these people losing the church as I was about the church losing them.

John Dehlin [00:11:05] Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:11:06] And so that. That was kind of the central mission, at least from. From my perspective of what we were doing. And Bob Reese did such an amazing job.

John Dehlin [00:11:18] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:11:21] And probably the greatest lesson I learned from that interview is he talks about. He gives this great Moby Dick reference where he talks about, there's a part in Moby Dick where the captain nails a gold coin to the mast and each of the crew members get up and they each see different things in it. You know, one. One sailor sees just a worthless piece of metal, the other one sees a promise of wealth and riches, and everybody sees something different. And. But ultimately the coin was just a mirror and they were just looking at themselves. And. And so, you know, applying that to the church and to Mormonism, you know, it just. It's. It's all about pluralism, you know, like, just having pluralism and Mormonism So there's room, you know, big tent, Mormonism. Great, great prince stuff. So. So I think. I think that was. I think that was my favorite interview.

John Dehlin [00:12:11] So it's kind of a heady, optimistic time for you.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:14] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:12:16] And you were trying to keep. Make the church work for you, right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:19] Yeah, and I was having a pretty good experience at church. I was teaching, which I liked, and I was teaching Elders Quorum, which meant. And, you know, I had a good relationship with my Elders Quorum president and told him what I was about, that if I felt like teaching out of the manual, I would, but otherwise I probably wouldn't. And. And I think. I think I did a really good job as an Elders Quorum instructor, and I really liked it. Still had tons of problems. I mean, Sunday was still an awful experience almost every time, especially. I mean, as much as I hated church before, like, the last two years that I went were just awful, you know, because now you're just hyper aware of even more problems, and you get triggered even more. And so it's. It can be kind of grueling and frustrating. And so then, were there any.

John Dehlin [00:13:14] Gets, like, any interviews where you kind of introduced the Mormon Internet to some people that now were kind of a little more.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:13:21] Well, that's a good question.

John Dehlin [00:13:22] You had Nyla McBain, right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:13:24] Yeah, yeah. Sarah interviewed Nylan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was when she was still doing. Is she still doing Mormon Women Project?

John Dehlin [00:13:31] Yeah, yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:13:32] Okay. So. So, yeah, I think that had just started at that point.

John Dehlin [00:13:36] You did Rock Waterman, right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:13:37] Oh, yeah, Rock. That's right. I got to interview my. One of my heroes. Yeah, Rock. I loved interviewing Rock. Oh, yeah. See, it's been such a long time since I've thought about it, so I'm actually having a hard time.

John Dehlin [00:13:48] Like one of the McConkey, the Macanki, James McConaughey. Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:13:51] Yeah. That was Sarah's interview. That was awesome.

John Dehlin [00:13:54] Stephen.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:13:55] Stephen Peck,

John Dehlin [00:14:00] Who was a lot of good stuff.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:14:04] Yeah, we had. I was just surprised how many good people we were able to get on.

John Dehlin [00:14:08] 40 episodes is a lot.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:14:09] You know who else was a really great interview is Andrea Radke Moss.

John Dehlin [00:14:13] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:14:14] Yeah. She's great.

John Dehlin [00:14:14] She's great.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:14:15] Yeah, it was awesome.

John Dehlin [00:14:17] So what's it like being, like, a podcast celebrity?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:14:22] Well, I'd have to ask you that question, because I have no idea.

John Dehlin [00:14:25] No, but I mean, no, people start emailing you and.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:14:28] Yeah, well.

John Dehlin [00:14:29] And people start telling you you're making a difference. Difference in their lives. Right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:14:32] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:33] And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:14:34] Yeah, that was. That was actually really Cool. You know, we, we always got really good feedback from everybody. Just being like, I loved this episode. It really helped me. And it was always great to hear that feedback. The weird part is when you least expect it, where somebody like, recognizes you or like recognizes your voice and you're just like, oh, you know, because even, even at its height, you know, we were not pulling big numbers, you know.

John Dehlin [00:15:01] Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:15:02] It's, it's a very niche podcast, you know, and so I never really worried about any kind of notoriety that way, just because I thought we were such a, you know, it's a small pond anyway. But we were a really small fish in the pond, you know, which I liked. You know, I like that. I like that we were creating an archive of content that people could access, you know, over the years and benefit from.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:15:28] But, but yeah, it was fun and it was fun getting to, you know, getting access to people that I really admired. But, you know, people like, you know, my work with Open Stories led me to doing, helping out with some stuff with Sunstone. I got to meet, spend a half hour talking to Mike Quinn at a Sunstone symposium. And that was awesome.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:15:51] You know, and just meeting all the amazing people that are, that are kind of behind the scenes and the online Mormon community. It's, it was, it was really cool.

John Dehlin [00:16:01] That was great. So just for fun, talk a bit about your, Your decision to, to bail from the Open Stories Foundation.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:16:09] It's okay.

John Dehlin [00:16:09] It's.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:16:10] You might have to edit a lot of this. Well, okay, so. So from the beginning, this is actually

John Dehlin [00:16:17] an interesting story for. This is some insider stuff, but it was, it was a pretty traumatic, you know, couple weeks, months for us. Right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:16:25] Yeah, well, yeah, it'll be interesting now to see how both of us remember this. But, you know, from the beginning, as soon as people. Well, not as soon. A lot of times, as soon as people found out we were doing an Open Stories podcast that we were affiliated with John Dylan and Mormon Stories, like, oh, never mind.

John Dehlin [00:16:45] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:16:46] You know, because, because John de Lynn's dangerous.

John Dehlin [00:16:49] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:16:50] This is 2012, so. Yeah, this is before all the other stuff that's happened since then. And, and so, and, and you know, it was something that really pissed me off. Like it made me mad at the, at the guests that we were trying to get. Like you shallow, like narrow minded, scaredy cats. You're scared.

John Dehlin [00:17:12] But these are like BYU employees, church employees.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:17:15] And so I understood it. But, but, and so, and it, it. The thing I really disliked about it is it made me realize that as much as possible we had to Keep open Mormon you and Mormon Stories at an arm's length as much as we possibly could, even though we're part of the organization. But I felt like we had to brand ourselves differently. Like, we had to have different kind of music. We had to, you know, like, we had to be different, you know, and so. So that way there was a branding distinction that hopefully would, like. Oh, you know who we got that was amazing was. Now I can't think of his name. Sorensen.

John Dehlin [00:17:51] What's his. Yeah, what's his first name? John Sorenson.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:17:53] John Sorensen. Yeah. Sarah interviewed him.

John Dehlin [00:17:56] Archaeologist.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:17:57] So we were lucky with Sorensen because he didn't find out till afterwards that we were affiliated with Stories, and then all we had to do is just convince him to let us post the episode.

John Dehlin [00:18:05] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:18:06] And so. So that was always kind of a background concern. Right. And then. So that was in the end of 2012, then in 2013, really, as a Thoughtful Faith was starting to ramp up. That's when things started to fall apart in your personal life.

John Dehlin [00:18:24] Yeah. And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:18:25] And then I found out retroactively, and I didn't know, so. And again, you can edit this stuff out, but, you know, when I joined, when I. When we started the Thoughtful Faith Project, I had the perception that I was a part of a growing, highly structured, secure organization.

John Dehlin [00:18:48] No, that's how it was.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:18:50] And I think it was that way until 2000. Little did I know that as we started our podcast, things were falling apart behind the scenes.

John Dehlin [00:18:58] No, it's true.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:18:58] Several board members, and I didn't know any about this stuff, and not that you hadn't. You didn't have an obligation to tell me, but I just. I just didn't know. And so when I did find out about the fact that there was only three members on the Open Stories board, and then all the other stuff that was going on with you and your personal life, that's really like, I just. And at that point, I had, you know, put nine months of my life into this project. Right. And of course I felt ownership over it, and so did Sarah, and we were genuinely concerned about the viability of the project because if, If.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:19:40] If it turns out that John De Lynn is even more of an apostate than everybody thought he was, you know, or whatever, it's just going to make it that much harder. And you guys were having problems with. With lawsuits and. And all kinds of stuff, and it just, it. It felt so unstable to me, and I really felt like.

John Dehlin [00:19:59] Just for the record, there was no lawsuits. There was one complaint filed, but no lawsuits. Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:20:03] We can. You can.

John Dehlin [00:20:04] No, it's all right. No, it's all right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:20:05] You know, well, just.

John Dehlin [00:20:06] Just so people don't think it was more than it was.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:20:08] Okay, well. And see, I chose what I know.

John Dehlin [00:20:10] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:20:11] So.

John Dehlin [00:20:12] But perception's everything, right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:20:13] And so. So at the time, you know, it just. It just didn't feel secure anymore. And, you know, maybe I was kidding myself, but I was. I. I thought, you know what? The best thing for a thoughtful faith is if we split off.

John Dehlin [00:20:29] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:20:29] That's what I thought.

John Dehlin [00:20:30] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:20:32] And you. And I think, rightfully so, because it is yours. And as you pointed out, it's the first domain you ever bought, and it was. I think the first three episodes of Mormon Stories were called a Thoughtful.

John Dehlin [00:20:46] That's right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:20:46] That was the original name of the podcast.

John Dehlin [00:20:48] That's right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:20:48] So here's this punk kid coming up to you saying, hey, John, I don't like how things are going around here. I want to break off from you.

John Dehlin [00:20:57] And I tried to tell you from the start that you could not. You would never be able to take it.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:21:02] And I knew that. Yeah, I knew that. But. But I thought I could reason with you.

John Dehlin [00:21:05] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:21:06] Yeah. I could persuade you.

John Dehlin [00:21:07] Yeah. Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:21:08] And. And honestly, again. And just to be clear, it wasn't because of my. Maybe it was because of my ego, but more than anything, it was because I cared so much about a Thoughtful.

John Dehlin [00:21:19] Yeah. And I just.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:21:20] I wanted it to be successful. So. So. And then at that. And so we. So. But since neither Sarah nor I. And I shouldn't speak for Sarah, but I think I'm accurately portraying her. Her feelings. At the time, we just felt like. We felt like we were on a sinking ship.

John Dehlin [00:21:38] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:21:39] And we still had tons of energy and tons of passion to keep doing what we were doing. And so. So we decided to. To.

John Dehlin [00:21:46] Okay, so I'm just. I. And be honest here. When you guys came to me and asked to separate, how did you experience my reaction? Like, what a jerk. Or it makes sense. Or like, I hate this guy. How would you characterize your. You know, my response?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:05] Sarah could probably remember this better than I could.

John Dehlin [00:22:07] I'm.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:08] I know I wasn't happy, and I know just thinking, he's just going to burn it to the ground, you know, just like. Like, I remember what I thought. I'm like, John has such a big ego, and he is more concerned about owning this thing than doing what's best for the thing. You know, he's more concerned about the project being his than the project doing. Becoming the Best thing that it can be. Which, you know, I think shows a lot of arrogance on my part, but that's. That's just how. How I felt, you know?

John Dehlin [00:22:48] And honestly, I. I still believed in the project and I didn't want to see it go. And also my. One of my biggest worries was I'd seen so many people burn out, kind of come and go, oh, yeah, like,

Micah Nickolaisen [00:23:00] what if we split up?

John Dehlin [00:23:01] I give this away and you know what? And you were.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:23:03] You would have been totally right.

John Dehlin [00:23:04] Yeah. And then what? Ends up leaving? Because I think some similar things had happened earlier.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:23:10] Yeah, I'm sure.

John Dehlin [00:23:11] So I'm like, I want the Open Stories foundation to be a repository that takes care of all this stuff even after I'm dead or other people go. Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:23:20] That's what I was no longer. If you no longer own the content or you didn't own the content, that came. So, I mean, just so you know, in retrospect, I get it. I get it all. I don't think either of us were wrong or either of us are right. It was just difference of opinion.

John Dehlin [00:23:34] You know, I tried to be firm, but also to be supportive and respectful. But I understand if you were angry,

Micah Nickolaisen [00:23:44] but, you know, so, yeah, so then I was like, okay, I'm taking all these people and we're starting Exploring sainthood.

John Dehlin [00:23:52] Yep. So you started your own blog and podcast.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:23:56] Yeah, and it started off really great. And we had such amazing, great people like Shan Sullivan and Chris Brewer and Scott Smith and, you know, a dozen other people that I'm forgetting to mention. And I'm sorry about that. And so. And I did a really good job of rallying these people together. Like, I knew we had a really great, solid team. And what was really great is that Sunstone was coming up, and I was going to take some friends with me to Sunstone, and I was like, we'll have a. We'll have a big Exploring Sainthood, like, kind of launch party, you know, because we'd already recorded some interviews. We post some interviews that we recorded for.

John Dehlin [00:24:37] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:24:37] A Thoughtful Faith. And we're going to post them on Exploring Sainthood because we were being assholes. And so. But the weirdest thing happened that summer. So there's a friend of mine that lives in Northern Arizona that found me through A Thoughtful Faith. And he's one of the people I've been telling you about that really, really appreciated what we were doing and really was getting a lot of personal benefit out of it. And he and I had become. Become pretty good friends.

Personal Faith Crisis and Leaving the Church

Micah Nickolaisen [00:25:06] And one day he messages me on Facebook, says, mike, I'm having a hard time. I just listened to this Grant Palmer presentation, and I just don't. None of this makes sense to me anymore. I was just like, okay, I'm like, well, why don't we. Why don't we talk on the phone? So I spent an hour on the phone with. With this friend of mine, and I kind of articulated what I articulated previously, kind of that Terrell Givens perspective on Joseph Smith, because all of his concerns in this Grant Palmer presentation were, of course, circling around Joseph Smith and. And the. An insider's view of Mormon origins.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:25:44] Right? And. And I just said, all of those problems are valid. And any one of those reasons is. Is plenty reason to not trust Joseph Smith. And I don't fault anybody for coming to a different conclusion than I have, because honestly, it's the conclusion that makes the most objective sense, that he was a fraud, he was a con man, that he was a religious genius. You know, I was like. And so. But I just said, but to me, I look at Joseph Smith as God owning up on his promise that he would use the weak things of the world.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:26:20] And then after that, I started telling him all the amazing things I loved about Mormonism. And as I started going through that, like, just in the middle of talking, I had this epiphany. Yes, I love these things about Mormonism, but I don't believe they're real anymore.

John Dehlin [00:26:42] It was.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:26:43] It was just like. It was just as simple as that. And just like a switch went off, and so I had to actually end the phone call with him. And I just remembered sitting back and being like, it's gone. Like, and what's so funny is, you know, one of the mantras of exploring sainthood in a thoughtful faith was I choose to believe. I choose this life. And I remember. I remember saying that in a blog post, and somebody commented, said, okay, why don't you choose not to believe for a day and see what that's like? I'm being like, okay, that's a good point. That doesn't make a lot of sense. And so here I was, having no choice whatsoever over what I believed. I couldn't. I couldn't make myself believe. And. And it was. It was devastating to me. And more than anything, it was embarrassing. Yeah, it was embarrassing because you had

John Dehlin [00:27:42] picked up the mantle of being the poster boy, right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:27:45] It's like, yeah, exactly. And how. How can I. How can I promote this perspective when I'm not a believer anymore? It's just. I just knew, right? Away that it was over. And then I just. I couldn't figure out what to do. I didn't. I didn't know what to do.

John Dehlin [00:28:01] How do you tell that to the Exploring Sainthood people?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:04] I. I probably did in the worst way possible. I waited till Sunstone. I waited till our meeting, so don't want to Sunstone in 2013.

John Dehlin [00:28:13] 13. Okay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:14] And. Which is actually where I talked to Mike Quinn.

John Dehlin [00:28:18] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:18] I'm still so pumped about that. So, yeah, I. I wanted. I wanted to tell him in person, you know, and I wanted to explain it to him. And so I did. And, yeah, they were all bummed out, too. And so I said, you know, I don't know what to do right now. Like, I don't. I. I really can't be involved in this project anymore, but I still think it's a valuable project, and I think you guys should keep doing it. And. And so they did, you know, and it was fine. I think there was some drama in the transition, but, you know, Exploring Sainthood is still doing its thing.

John Dehlin [00:28:53] It's still pretty active community on Facebook.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:56] Yeah, it's a huge. It's a really big Facebook community.

John Dehlin [00:28:58] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:59] I don't know what the podcast is doing.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:01] Yeah. So for all of the people that I have deceived out of the church, I always remind people that I spent a lot of time keeping people in it.

John Dehlin [00:29:10] Sure.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:10] At least trying to.

John Dehlin [00:29:11] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:13] And you can say the same thing, too, obviously.

John Dehlin [00:29:15] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:18] So, yeah, that's kind of the end of the second act. I know it was shorter than the first one, but.

John Dehlin [00:29:22] No, no, no, we're going to. Now we're going to move on to your other forms of activism.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:26] Okay. So.

John Dehlin [00:29:28] So you felt embarrassed?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:30] Yeah, I was embarrassed. And I think anybody would, because, you know, I'd put all my chips on black, you know, like, I had. I had used all of my capital for this project, and it was. At least for me, it was squandered. You know, not to say there wasn't any value in the project, but, like, it ended up being a bad bet for me personally.

John Dehlin [00:29:51] What does that do for you emotionally, to have put your name and your neck out so visibly and then to, like, realize you couldn't do it and you couldn't even support it.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:30:05] Yeah, it was.

John Dehlin [00:30:06] What was that like for you personally?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:30:07] It was painful. That was a hard. A really hard time in my life, because it was immediately after that that we decided to stop going to church. And, you know, these people were my friends, you know, and as much as I was Embarrassed in a public way. I was also. I was more embarrassed that, you know, here I had rallied these people around me and they were counting on me, and I just really felt like I let them down. And.

John Dehlin [00:30:39] Yeah, what about all the people who were in. And you were kind of a role model for them to make it work?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:30:46] Well, and honestly, that's why I wasn't very public about the reasons why I left.

John Dehlin [00:30:51] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:30:51] Because I was. I was worried about that. I didn't want to shatter that perspective. And of course, it had to me. It made me. Had to reevaluate the entire perspective because at least for this guy, it ended up not really working out, you know.

John Dehlin [00:31:06] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:31:07] In the strangest way, you know, like, it was just so random, you know,

John Dehlin [00:31:13] that's how it happens. It's this process that unfolds. You know, I can name so many people, whether it's. Whether it's Andrew Ainsworth or Carson Calderwood or you. There's so many people that started out as apologists or defenders of the faith or protectors of the middle way. Me, Brian Johnston, who. There's just. It's like there's a clock ticking. At some point, you think you're going to be the one to really, you know, to be the bridge. And for so many. Yeah, it falls apart.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:31:48] And it doesn't mean that it's hopeless. But the. I think. I think what people have to recognize and accept is the fact that most people who start the process of questioning their faith, almost all of them are going to leave. Yeah, some people stay, and God bless them for it, you know, and those are. Those are really special people that do stay.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:32:12] I have lots of close friends that. That still go to church and still get a lot out of it, despite knowing just as much or even more than me about Mormon history or things like feminism or LGBT issues.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:32:24] And they stay and. And thank God that they do, you know, because it's people like that that are the hope for Mormonism. You know, I thought I was one of those people. I thought I was going to be the guy that was going to be there, you know, affecting change from within for the rest of my life. But that was a. Yeah, that was just a huge. It was like starting from scratch, you know?

John Dehlin [00:32:48] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:32:49] She's like, well, now what? You know, and so you kind of

John Dehlin [00:32:53] went silent for a while. Right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:32:54] Well, I thought I was done. I was like, okay, well, I'm never doing anything like that again. That wasn't a good idea. And so. So during that summer, a lot of things changed. Obviously. But you know, right at the beginning of a thoughtful faith, you and I had a conversation while I was on the way to work one day and I. It was just a personal conversation between you and me about the struggle I was having in my ward and my stake. And I told you about a lot of these things that, that we're talking about now. And you know, you told me something that, that, that really didn't mean anything.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:33:38] Well, I understood it and I internalized it, but it didn't really hit me until we were thinking about leaving and stopped and to stop attending. But you talked about the hero's journey, you know, sort of the Joseph Campbell archetype of the hero's journey that we see permeating myth, religion, any kind of storytelling in human history. You know, there are these fundamental archetypes and one of them is the hero's journey. And you said, you know, the hero, before he can go on his quest, he has to leave the village.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:34:17] And I remember you telling me, you know, until you can get to a place where you can openly and honestly accept the possibility that it's not true, and until you can, can get to a place where you can leave the village and at least go leave the village behind for a while, because often the hero comes back to the village and the village benefits from that, from the experiences that the hero has had. And I don't want this to sound like I think I'm some kind of hero or anything like that, but that really resonated with me. And, and so there was a night where we were getting ready for bed and our.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:34:59] I have a, an eight year old son and a six year old daughter. So he was six at the time. And he just came into our room sobbing. And we're like, dude, what's wrong? What's going on? And he's like, I'm just so scared.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:35:15] Scared of monsters, I'm scared of bad guys and all this stuff. And he said, and I keep praying for the Holy Ghost to come help me and feel better. And he doesn't come.

John Dehlin [00:35:29] And

Micah Nickolaisen [00:35:33] so we calmed him down and he stayed in bed with us for a little while and then we sent him back. He was fine, but as soon as he left the room, I looked at my wife and just said, nope, that's not happening anymore. And because, you know, I can sit through three hours of boredom once a week. It's not that big of a deal, right? But to see what it was doing to my kids and the false expectations it was giving them and the false paradigms I just. I could not in good conscience let that happen anymore. And so it's the possibility of the

John Dehlin [00:36:07] internalization of the shame. Yeah. That our culture kind of can permeate.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:36:13] Right.

John Dehlin [00:36:13] Well.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:36:14] And, I mean, I felt like I was already doing so much damage control after primary. I couldn't imagine having the emotional or mental energy to do that when they were 14. And young men and young women's, you know, getting even more harmful messages, especially about sex.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:36:31] And I just. And so. So, yeah, that's when we decided that we just can't do this anymore. So I still remember. I. You know, I had. So actually, shortly after you and I had that conversation, I had another conversation with my elders quorum president, and I said, you know what? Someday I might come in here and tell you that I'm not coming back again.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:36:54] And so. But this was a while before. And so, you know, we kind of looked at our. At our calendar, like, okay, when's our last day going to be? And it just happened to be a day that I was teaching Elders quorum.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:37:09] And so on my way to church, I just messaged my elders quorum president just said, hey, I need to talk to you after my lesson. And so I gave my lesson. It was an awesome lesson, by the way.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:37:25] And so afterwards, my elders quorum president walks up to me and said, is this the conversation where you tell me you're not coming to church anymore? I said, yeah, yeah, it is, actually. He's like, well, let me walk home with you. And so. So, yeah, he. You know, we talked about it for a while, and, you know, he was really understanding and obviously hoped that I would come back. But that was the last time we attended church, at least, you know, minus family stuff like baby blessings and mission, homecomings and farewells and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [00:37:57] And that was what month?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:37:59] So I think that was September 2013.

John Dehlin [00:38:01] Okay, so how'd you get from there to Strangers in Zion?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:38:06] Well, like I said, I was just kind of done. At least I thought I was. You know, it's. It's kind of like the mafia, you know, Godfather 3.

John Dehlin [00:38:17] Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:38:17] Every time I try to get out, they suck me back in, you know, and, you know, I met. I've met all these great people that were running all these amazing projects and, you know, like. Like my friend Lindsay park, who runs the FMH podcast and is very involved with. What was that?

John Dehlin [00:38:36] Year of Polygamy.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:38:37] Yeah, the Year of Polygamy series that everybody needs to listen to and Sunstone and. And she's heavily involved with Sunstone and So, you know, so I started doing some work with. With her, planning stuff for. For some of the symposium stuff. And so I. I still was kind of. I kind of had one foot in and one foot out. At one point, I left all my Mormon Facebook groups, only to, like, join them all back, like, six months later, you know, but everything changed when I found out about your disciplinary council.

John Dehlin [00:39:08] So that's June of 2014.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:39:10] Yeah. Like, honestly, that changed everything for me.

John Dehlin [00:39:14] Why?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:39:15] Because I think it's hard for people to remember, but be. And the reason it's hard for people, because it wasn't that long ago. We're talking less than a year ago. Right.

John Dehlin [00:39:26] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:39:28] Nobody ever thought it was going to ever happen again. You know, that the September. Yeah. Everybody thought that that was part of the dark ages of the past and that the church is moving in the right direction and they're not going to revert back to that archaic, you know, form of spiritual violence on dissenters. And so, yeah, when. When the. When the stuff came out about you and Kate Kelly, I was. I had rage. Like, I was a toxic person to be around.

John Dehlin [00:40:00] Wow. Sorry.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:40:01] I was vindictive.

John Dehlin [00:40:03] Yeah. And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:40:06] And sadly, that was a lot of the initial motivation, and I was like, okay, I got to do something. Like. And that's unfortunately my personality. Like, I'm always the person that feels like he's got to do something, you know, I got to do something about this. And. And so the first thing I did was organize the mass resignation. That was last July. And that was made to be specifically in response.

Disciplinary Council and Disfellowshipment

John Dehlin [00:40:33] And that was weird because you didn't resign.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:40:36] Well, here. Here's. So, here's why. So that was. That was what I was organizing. But then Jake abhow. And actually he was the last of several people that proposed this idea to me. He's like, dude, you're doing it all wrong. It's like, don't resign. That doesn't mean anything. They just move your records from one database to another one. Why don't you ask for disciplinary counsel? Why don't we have people do that? I was just like, that's an awful idea. Like that.

John Dehlin [00:41:03] Just.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:41:03] I don't understand how the messaging works for that. Like, but then I just started thinking about it, and I was like, you know what? I actually really like this idea. But at that point, I'd already started organizing the mass resignation.

John Dehlin [00:41:15] So you had planned to resign. Okay, got it.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:41:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:41:20] And since you had started it, you needed to finish.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:41:22] And so, yeah, I finished that. And then. Then, yeah, I went and bought the Domain Strangers in Zion that day. And then Jake and I started planning it.

John Dehlin [00:41:31] And so after the mass resignation, which wasn't huge, right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:41:35] No, it wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't. I honestly, I think it's just because we did it on the 24th of July, which we thought was going to be super symbolic and stuff, but people got stuff to do on the 24th

John Dehlin [00:41:44] of July,

Micah Nickolaisen [00:41:47] and, you know, it's. It's kind of the same thing with Strangers in Zion, you know, I guess, you know, I felt like there was something I could easily handle, like, yeah, I'll send in a letter, I'll go through a disciplinary council, but not everybody's such a glutton for punishment like I am.

John Dehlin [00:42:03] You know, almost nobody wanted to do it. Yeah, I thought that.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:42:06] And so. And so it's interesting. And that was. What was interesting is, you know, before we launched Strangers in Zion, all I ever heard was how bad, how dumb it was to organize a mass resignation, how smart Strangers in Zion was. But then once we launched it.

John Dehlin [00:42:24] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:42:25] It was like crickets.

John Dehlin [00:42:26] Yeah, exactly.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:42:27] And I think there's a variety of reasons for that, but I think more than anything, that's a tall order. That's a. That's a lot to ask somebody to do.

John Dehlin [00:42:36] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:42:36] Especially if you're a woman or if you're gay and you're going in front of this patriarchal body and.

John Dehlin [00:42:44] And they're the representatives of your entire community. Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:42:48] And just saying, here, give it to me. You know, like.

John Dehlin [00:42:51] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:42:52] And I thought the.

John Dehlin [00:42:53] And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:42:53] And so to me, the messaging was much more powerful than a mass resignation.

John Dehlin [00:42:57] But you can't deny that it's masochistic. It's just too painful.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:00] It is, it's.

John Dehlin [00:43:01] It.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:01] And my disciplinary council was eight hours long, so you.

John Dehlin [00:43:06] Yeah, you did request one. And. And they went through with it.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:09] Well, the. The way my stake president framed it was we received your request and we will definitely honor it, but honestly, we probably would have called you in soon anyway.

John Dehlin [00:43:18] Yeah, that was.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:19] That was basically what he said.

John Dehlin [00:43:21] Because your name had been tied to the mass resignation.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:23] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:43:24] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:25] And because of Strangers in Zion.

John Dehlin [00:43:26] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:28] So, yeah, So I requested the disciplinary council, and I had that, and I think in Sep. September.

John Dehlin [00:43:35] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:36] And, yeah, they. So it's funny. And so this stake president is a friend of mine now, somebody who knows me very well, and I know him pretty well. And we had a meeting before the. Tuesday before the disciplinary council, and at the end of it, he was like, do you have any favors you can ask me? And I was like, what is. That's a weird question. I was like, yeah, don't disfellowship me. He's like, wait, what? I'm like, don't disfellowship me. I was like, no half measures, man.

John Dehlin [00:44:06] Interrupt.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:44:07] Yeah. He's like, well, you know, that's a very real possibility. I was like, of course it's a possibility. I just hope it's not what happens.

John Dehlin [00:44:14] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:44:15] And he was like, okay. He's like, well, I don't know what's gonna happen.

John Dehlin [00:44:20] And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:44:21] And so, yeah, so. So it's just kind of funny that they dispell shit me anyway. Or that he disfellowship me anyway.

John Dehlin [00:44:27] So the disciplinary council for you was eight hours long, and how would you describe it? As what, tedious?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:44:33] Yeah, it was incredibly tedious. I mean, it was incredibly thorough. So. And in retrospect, I could have avoided a lot of it by just pleading guilty. Apparently, that would have cut seven hours out of it.

John Dehlin [00:44:53] But I.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:44:54] But I said, no, I want to contest it, and I want to defend myself. And so my stake president had screenshots of blog posts, Facebook, like, anything that it had my name on it. And the thing that took so damn long was it was like being in Sunday school. Like, okay, brother, so. And so will you take the first paragraph of Micah's awful vitriolic rant against the church here?

John Dehlin [00:45:20] And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:45:21] And they would just take turns, and they would. And, you know, I can't fault them for that. I mean, they're being thorough, but that's just what took so long, you know? And then I knew that I was just gotta be one of the most confusing things they'd ever seen, you know, And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:45:36] And I think they were genuinely curious. And so there was a lot of just, like, questions, like, you know, well, how do you reconcile this? How did you get here? You know what I mean? And. And it just took a really long time. The only thing that I felt that was kind of abusive about it was at the end, after he had said, you're disfellowshipped, each member of the stake presidency took a turn, kind of giving some parting remarks. And so my stake president compared me to Alma the Younger, that I was out destroying the church, and that hopefully I would have some miraculous experience that would bring me back.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:46:20] The second counselor. What he said really aggravated me. He said, you know, brother Nickolaisen, I really appreciate you being here and grateful that you've been so open and honest with us. He's like, you know, at the end of the day, I think My biggest takeaway from this is really a warning for the rest of us, which is we see why it's so important to do the little things like read your scriptures and say your prayers.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:46:51] I almost jumped out of my chair, folded up, and whacked him across the head with it. Like, seriously, that's what you've gotten out of this? Out of. Out of eight hours of this, you. You got out that I didn't pray and read the Scriptures, and that's why I'm where I'm at now. Like, ah, I couldn't believe was it blew my mind.

John Dehlin [00:47:09] That's what gets you into trouble, right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:47:12] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:47:14] Yeah. The members who don't read the scriptures and really think about them or pray and really try and get an answer, they're actually safer.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:47:22] Right, Right. So that was. That made me so, so stinking mad. So it's actually around that time that I started talking to Scott Rowley about opposing a conference. It was. It was actually earlier in the summer and we were trying to maybe do something for last October, but we just realized it was just too short notice and we wouldn't be able to organize quickly enough. But after October conference, we started. We started organizing. And then at last year, Sunstone, I met an old friend of my dad's that he grew up with named Don Brager. And he had recently, just within that past six months, had his faith crisis and left, ironically, because of one of the priesthood essays or one of the church essays. The one on blacks in the priesthood.

John Dehlin [00:48:14] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:48:17] And so he started messaging me. He's like, hey, how come nobody opposes in general conference? Like, is that something you would do? And I was like, hey, dude, I'm already way ahead of you. Like, we're organizing this. I'm like, do you want to help us? And he's like, yeah, absolutely. And little did we know that Don was really going to be the one taking charge of it. You know, he needed us for our technical skills and our. And our networking ability. But Don was so passionate about it and hell or high water, he was going to be there in April to. To oppose whether we were with him or not. And so Scott and I both realized, like, well, we need to. We need to get on board with Don. And so. So, yeah, that's when we started organizing any of post.

John Dehlin [00:48:58] And there's a. I have to just refer everyone. There's a really good Infants on Thrones episode.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:03] Where, you know, they were kind of. What's his name?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:08] Don. Scott and me or Matt.

John Dehlin [00:49:10] Matt. Yeah. Matt leads. You guys through detail, the process.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:14] But, oh, yeah, we picked it apart pretty good. So, yeah, if you want more information about that, but just at a high

John Dehlin [00:49:18] level, just for the listeners that are listening 20 years from now or five years from now, here's what happened or who weren't paying attention. Yeah, just give the high level.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:30] So it had been 30 years since anybody had publicly opposed in conference. Some people had raised their hands and stuff like that, but nobody had given a vocal opposing vote. That was noticed by the church.

John Dehlin [00:49:42] And it was era stuff that people were.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:44] Era stuff. Civil rights stuff back in the 70s and 80s.

John Dehlin [00:49:47] 70s and 80s. And they do that every six months, right? They. Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:51] So every six months they present the church officers for a sustaining vote. And after each time they present an officer or a group of officers, they ask for a sustaining vote, and then they ask if there are any who are opposed. And for anybody who knows, you know, a little bit about church history, it was very common back in the early church for there to be tons of dissent directed towards specific church leaders.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:50:17] And I think. I think Joseph Smith even opposed signing Rigdon at one of the general conferences or something like that, like, anyway. And so. But nobody had done it. And it actually. It just kind of confused us. Like, how come nobody's done this? Like, the heat's only increased since then. How come nobody's opposing? Because that's supposed to be the place where you can actually do it without getting in trouble for it. Because that's it. That's what it is. It's to sustain or oppose the church officers.

The Any Opposed Movement and Ordain Women Protests

Micah Nickolaisen [00:50:48] And so what we really had a hard time with figuring out was how. What was the most effective way to do it. And ultimately what we decided to do was to be completely open about it, but to remain anonymous.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:51:01] And we decided to use our website as a ticket exchange where we provided a PO Box where people could secure tickets from their priesthood leaders, send them to our P.O. box, and then we could fulfill requests for those tickets to people who wanted to go and oppose. Because there are so many safeties in place from stopping this from happening, from how to get the tickets, from getting into the conference center to, you know, you name it, there's just. There's. There's lots of layers of security and safeties in place to stop this from happening. And so that was how we figured out was the best way to get it done.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:51:37] And we were completely trans. We launched the website at the end of February, which we. Which we ended up finding out was too late because Stake President, we thought they distributed them in March shows what? Shows what we knew, but we still were able to get. Get a handful of tickets. And we, you know, it's not like we were sending private emails to people. We just posted on our website, hey, this is what we're going to do.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:52:04] If you can't get tickets, go to the standby line. If you can't get tickets to the standby line, go into the tabernacle. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to stand up and we're going to shout opposed to make sure that our votes are noticed. And so that's what we did.

John Dehlin [00:52:17] How many ended up participating?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:52:20] It. Honestly, it's such a hard. We think nine.

John Dehlin [00:52:23] Okay. And what a scary thing, dude. I mean, you're in the conference center with 20,000 guessing other faithful Mormons. It's the majesty. I mean, it's like, if you had done this 200 years ago, you would have been drawn and quartered by your religious community. Because that's.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:52:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:45] It's so antithetical to evolutionary, you know. Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:52:51] It doesn't.

John Dehlin [00:52:51] Best practices to stand up in the middle of your tribe and oppose them.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:52:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:56] Or what was that like, psychologically and emotionally? To stand up and yell.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:53:02] So the last time my palms were that sweaty was at a junior high dance. I was terrified. Like, and even leading right up to it, it was like, are we really gonna do this? Are we really gonna do this? And honestly, like, Laura Pennock, who was in the tabernacle, she was all by herself, and she stood up in a post.

John Dehlin [00:53:22] Wow.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:53:22] I was there with two friends, and I knew Scott was there, and I knew we had a couple other people there. Even at that point, I was like, I don't know if I can do this. And if I was there by myself, I don't know if I would have. You know, like, it's. It was. It was terrifying.

John Dehlin [00:53:40] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:53:40] It took everything in me to stand up and do it. And there's all kinds of things that you don't think about. Like. Like, as I'm standing up, I'm like, wait, how loud do I shout? Like, because I know the conference room is designed to absorb sound from the crowd so it doesn't get picked up in the mic.

John Dehlin [00:53:57] They actually tested the conference center to make sure it could drown out noise from the crowd. From what I understand.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:04] That's what we understand from building it. Yeah, that's. That's what we understand as well. So.

John Dehlin [00:54:09] Meaning they had people come and yell in a simulated exercise. Yeah. To. To ensure that the Voices would be as muted as possible. Right. Based alone on the design of the. Of the building.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:22] Right. And the layers of security that the conference center has, how it's laid out. All of that has one of its primary motives amongst many, to prevent what happened in the 70s and 80s from happening again.

John Dehlin [00:54:34] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:34] At least from the contacts that we had. We had an insider contact that expressed that to us.

John Dehlin [00:54:39] Yeah. Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:40] That. That would certainly have access to that knowledge if. If what he's saying was right. So. And all the advice he gave us up to that point was correct. So we had no reason not to believe him. And so. Yeah. Like, how loud do you yell?

John Dehlin [00:54:56] Opposed.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:54:58] Opposed. Like, how. How loud?

John Dehlin [00:55:00] How do you yell?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:55:01] You know, and. And, yeah, but. And then sitting through conference, as hard as it is.

John Dehlin [00:55:09] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:55:10] Sitting through it after that was. Oh, and the thing that was crazy was after we did it, I looked up and I swear. I swear both Ballard and Holland were looking right at me, and I just remember being like, wow, this. This is real.

John Dehlin [00:55:27] And, you know, and.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:55:30] And then that's when it dawned out on us, you know, and I'm not trying to make this into something that it isn't, but, you know, and we talked about this a little bit earlier today. You know, all of the other stuff that's happened in the past, like ordained women, your excommunication, Kate Kelly's excommunication, certainly, especially in Utah, a lot of Mormons knew about all that stuff. Right. And it was. It was a national news story. But at the same time, there's got to be swaths of active Mormons that just had no idea about any of that stuff. You know, like, think of. Think of. Think of Mormons and, like, in the developing world, you know, like, you think they had any idea who Kate Kelly and John Dillon was? I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:56:14] No.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:56:14] But every single active Mormon on the planet knew about what we did.

John Dehlin [00:56:21] Who was listening to General Conference. Yeah. And paying attention.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:56:24] Right. Or I mean, if they didn't hear it, then they certainly heard it at church on Sunday, or they heard it when they went to dinner, or they. You know what I mean? Like, it. We cut right through all of the bureaucracy that shields people from hearing dissent. And it honestly didn't dawn on me until I was looking at Holland and Ballard right in the face. And. And it was. It was. It was just surreal. I mean, that's really. The. The word that. That encapsulates that feeling of just.

John Dehlin [00:57:00] Did you feel happy after you'd done it or dirty or how did you

Micah Nickolaisen [00:57:04] feel I did not feel how I thought I would feel. I thought it would feel cathartic, and I thought it would feel like a relief, but it didn't. It just. It left a bad taste in my mouth. And I think a lot of that had to do with how they handled it with Uchtdorf saying, go meet with your stake president. I think after he said that, I think I just threw my head back in my seat and I was just like, you got to be kidding me. That's. That's what I get in response. Like you're going to tell me, you know. You know what that's like? That's like having seeing an error on your cell phone bill and calling Verizon or whoever and talking to the sales rep and the sales rep, I'm sorry,

John Dehlin [00:57:44] there's nothing I could do.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:57:45] There's nothing I can do. And then you say, well, can I talk to your supervisor? And then five minutes later, the supervisor comes on hold and says, what's your problem? Well, there's this error on my bill. Okay, all right, well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put you on hold and I'm going to put you back in touch with the other person you were talking to that wasn't able to help you.

John Dehlin [00:58:02] Yeah, right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:58:04] That's basically how I felt, you know.

John Dehlin [00:58:06] Yeah, yeah, that's a good analogy.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:58:09] And I didn't tell you, I haven't told you this yet. I met with my stake president last

John Dehlin [00:58:12] Sunday, and

Micah Nickolaisen [00:58:16] neither he nor I had any idea what was supposed to happen at that meeting.

John Dehlin [00:58:21] Huh. Well, so you took up Uchtdorf, met with your stake president.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:58:25] So I emailed my stake president and said, hey, I opposed in general conference, and President Uchtdorf says that we should meet. When is a good time for you to meet? And so he said, come by 1:30 at Sunday. I said, okay, great. And so I showed up. I hadn't met this guy since we moved, so we were in a different stake now in Mesa. So I didn't. I never. I didn't even know his name. I had to look it up on LDS tools, you know. And so. So, yeah, in that meeting, he was like, so what can I do for you? And I was like, I was kind of hoping you would know the answer to that question, because I have no idea. Yeah, he's like, well, honestly, I don't know either. I'm like, you haven't received any instruction? Or he's like, not about this.

John Dehlin [00:59:06] And.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:08] And it was weird. Then it somehow turned into A worthiness interview again, just like it had with my bishop, you know.

John Dehlin [00:59:14] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:59:15] And started asking me all kinds of weird questions. And so it was, it was, it was very. It was very melancholy and I felt very melancholy and disappointed.

John Dehlin [00:59:26] Yeah. Yeah, Those things can be a huge letdown. I just want to note, and this is just sort of, you know, tying in something that I, you know, that's important to me personally and that's just that, you know, I made a lot. I made a really big deal about my. My perceptions about why I was being excommunicated and why I wasn't being excommunicated. And one of the points that I made is that publicly, even though privately it was explicitly acknowledged that my support for ordained women and for public support for same sex marriage and my podcast, you know, the influence that I had had were the real reasons the church, in all its writings and its letters and its public statements, wanted to make it about my publicly expressed doubts and disbelief.

John Dehlin [01:00:19] And I just want to note again that in addition to people like Neil Ransom, Kate Kelly's husband, and Brian Johnston, who went to his stake president and said, I believe and disbelieve everything Kate and John Dehlin do, they did nothing to Brian Johnston. And, you know, you. Back in September, you know, we're basically saying the same things that I had been saying, and there's no action against you. Well, I mean, you were disfellowshipped, but you weren't excommunicated. Right. Well.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:00:46] And during that meeting with my stake president, he was like, I guess probably the most valuable thing we can talk about in this meeting is what the. What. What's going to happen in the future? And he's like, you know, in terms of your church membership, what do you want to do? Do you want to resign? And I said, well, honestly, I don't know. I said, honestly, it would depend on whether or not you want to hold a disciplinary court on me again.

John Dehlin [01:01:11] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:01:12] And he said, well, you know, is this something that's. That's going to continue with you? And I said, I said, no, like, not anymore. And that, that was something I was somewhat public about on my Facebook account, just saying, hey, you know, it's time for me to move on. And he was like, well, if you're not acting in open opposition to the church anymore, I don't see any reason why we should hold a disciplinary council.

John Dehlin [01:01:40] Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that. That doesn't feel consistent to me.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:01:45] But, yeah, you know, I would have to agree with you.

John Dehlin [01:01:49] Yeah. Thanks for joining us today. On Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights and other sources.

Micah Nickolaisen [01:02:12] Cease to make me whole

John Dehlin [01:02:19] when with the wound in heart, anger or malice I draw myself apart, searching my soul.

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 534

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

Micah Nickolaisen [00:00:43] Leave

John Dehlin [00:00:43] thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home. Hello and welcome back to part three of my amazing interview with Micah Nicolaison. Episode one. We talked about his early years and his commitment to the church and kind of what led to his unraveling of his faith. Episode 2. We talked about his many, you know, involvements in various forms of Mormon activism, both for and against the church, from his participation in a thoughtful faith and exploring sainthood to his disaffection from the church and his involvement in Strangers in Zions Strangers in Zion, which was an attempt to encourage people to request disciplinary councils, which I still think is a really cool idea.

Life After Mormonism and Post-Faith Identity

Micah Nickolaisen [00:01:34] I do too.

John Dehlin [00:01:35] And I think it's way better than people resigning, way more effective than people resigning if the goal is to penetrate as many hearts and minds as possible and to make a difference. So I still like that idea. Maybe some young up and comer can take that mantle.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:01:53] Yeah, bring it on, Bring it on.

John Dehlin [00:01:55] And of course we talked about the any opposed action that Micah, along with Scott Rowley and Don Brager, Don Brager and others participated in, where they vocally dissented at the April 2015 General Conference and the aftermath from that. So that's been. I've loved the history. I, I don't know, I'll be curious if the listeners have enjoyed kind of us really going into a lot of the history in some sense, a lot of your history is Mormon stories history and OSF history and my history. So I'm enjoying this. I hope there's some people out there who are as well. If you are, please go up to MormonStories.org and just say, yeah, John, we're glad you did this.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:02:43] We're still here.

John Dehlin [00:02:44] We're still here. We're still listening. Because I think this is, you know, a lot of people say they enjoy the deep, the deep dives and this is a deep dive. And I think Micah has played an important role in the past few years in all this stuff. So, so now we're gonna now I don't even know totally where this is gonna go. This may be like a 10 minute episode, I don't know. But, but now what I wanna talk about is, is about the future. I want to kind of, you know, I want to hear about Micah, I want to hear from you, but I also want to talk a little bit about where we go from here.

John Dehlin [00:03:21] Because I get the sense that even though you and even I and Kate and others, you know, may be done with a certain slant within Mormonism or with engaging the LDS Church in certain direct ways, I know that I still have this yearning to still be engaged in something. And I'm honestly, I'm graduating in three months with my PhD and I'm honestly willing to spend the next 30 to 35 years of my remaining years trying to create something of value, not just for transitioning in post Mormons, but honestly, if we can, for humanity.

John Dehlin [00:04:08] Because I think that while religion has served us well, or at least has served us impactfully for millennia, you know, it's pretty clear that at least in the developed world, in Asia and Western Europe and in North America, you know, organized religions on the decline, and we're experiencing what's called the rise of the nones. N o N E. If you read the Pew foundation report, as you mentioned in the break or whatever, you know, 30% of the millennials no longer affiliate with any religious tradition. And most of Protestant Christianity is sort of on the decline. The LDS Church even is sort of at best having anemic growth.

John Dehlin [00:04:55] And that's fueled mostly by birth rates, not by conversion and retention. And you know, the only thing in addition to, you know, birth rates that's keeping the LDS Church alive is its explosive growth in the third world, which again, the retention rates there are probably 10 to 20% year over year. And you know, most people realize that that's not financially, you know, productive for the church because it becomes a bunch of cost centers that the church either has to maintain or they need to find a way to make those cost centers self sustaining.

John Dehlin [00:05:32] But certainly the Wasatch front's not going to be able to fund the expansion of the LDS Church into the Third World. So, you know, we're potentially seeing the slowing of growth of the LDS Church, but maybe the beginnings of a decline in the church's presence over the next five to 20 years, in spite of what Quentin Cook said at this last general conference. But, but for me, what's really interesting, I want to start with where you see things going for you, but then I Want to talk about where things might go for people not just leaving Mormonism, but for people leaving any religious tradition and what our options are like.

John Dehlin [00:06:20] We talk so much about the excitement and the energy of what Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation and the blogger Knocko were all doing in 2011, 2012. I, I don't know that we can ever repeat what happened there. And I'm not even sure that's what we should do. In fact, I'm sure that's not what we should do. But I would love to recapture the spirit and the momentum of what we were trying to do then, just building on a foundation that's more solid. Because in many ways I feel like that foundation we were building on maybe was a Sandy foundation in a few ways.

John Dehlin [00:06:56] And so let's start with, you know, Micah and Stephanie Nicolaison and, and let's, let's then expand it to, to post Mormonism and then maybe to even a broader area.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:07:10] Yeah, that's a lot of stuff to unpack.

John Dehlin [00:07:12] Yeah, I know. It's one of my compound questions.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:07:15] So, So, you know, my, my involvement in sort of the progressive and post Mormon community has given me a lot of valuable insight about a lot of things, but mostly about myself. It's been a very, it's been a great process of self discovery and you know, I've had to reevaluate. You know, I was joking with John and Margi a little bit earlier that I still trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up. And I think a lot of people feel that way.

John Dehlin [00:07:55] Especially you're like 35. What? What?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:07:58] 31.

John Dehlin [00:07:58] 31. Wow. All right. Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:08:02] So, and so I've realized that the thing that fuels me is having a cause and working towards something that's bigger than myself. And I think a lot of that has to do with my, my still persisting fear of death.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:08:21] Because if this life is all that I've got, the only way I'm going to live on is by what little impact I can make on humanity while I'm here and more importantly, on the people closest to me, my family and my friends and my loved ones, that's how we know for sure how we can live on.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:08:43] And so, you know, if I think about what inspires me and gets me feeling passionate, I think about my people, I think about all the friends I've met in Phoenix. I think of you, I think of the hundreds and thousands of people I've met in the online Mormon community. And those are the people that mean the most to Me, you know, outside of my family and my friends and.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:09:11] But as somebody that's. Even though I haven't been involved for very long, just a few years, I sort of have a hypothesis about the post Mormon community. And the way I came up with this hypothesis was listening to a book by a man named Scott Peck where he talks about building community.

John Dehlin [00:09:36] Children of the Lie,

Micah Nickolaisen [00:09:40] I think it's called, to the Beat of a Different Drum.

John Dehlin [00:09:43] Oh, that's right. Yep, yep, that's right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:09:45] I think. I think that's what the name of the book is.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:09:49] And so community, I mean, our ancestors, the reason they were preserved and others didn't was because they learned how to work together to get food, to grow crops, and to, you know, build a civilization. And so community is in our DNA. And humans are a species that do not survive well on their own as individuals. And so having community, from all of the evidence that I can see, is a fundamental aspect of having a healthy life and a fulfilling life and a life that benefits the species and benefits the planet.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:10:38] We accomplish so much more together than we ever can on our own. And religion, you know, religion provides such a convenient platform to not only check off the community box that's in the hierarchy of human needs, but so many other ones.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:10:59] Sense of purpose, dealing with mortality, providing symbolism, myth, ritual. And so it's no wonder that religion has done so well over time in providing that for people. And so. And so over the past several years, as I've found this amazing community of Mormons like me, I've always just been so interested in figuring out the best ways to improve that community and to make it better and to as best as we can fill the hole that the church left in our. In our souls, you know, But I think so. So here's my hypothesis, and this is something that Scott Peck talks a lot about.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:11:48] Communities arise in all kinds of different scenarios. They arise in religions, obviously they arise. And hobbies. I almost went to a Star wars convention last weekend because I'm a Star wars nerd, and that's one of the communities that I'm a part of. Communities also arise out of crisis.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:08] If you think of natural disasters or, you know, awful things like 9, 11, you know, you have these catastrophic events that leave people destitute in the wake of them. And so they find each other and they build, they rebuild with each other, and they find community with each other. And it's a beautiful thing, and it's one of the things that makes humanity so amazing, is that we can do that, is that we can lay aside our prejudices and our history and still work together.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:12:43] And we've, we've proven that to ourselves over and over again. The problem is, well, it's not really a problem. It's just a fact that once the crisis is over, typically those communities dissolve. And the reason it's not a problem is because those, the members of that community that was born out of a crisis, they simply just reintegrate into the communities that they had before.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:13:05] And so when reading this stuff by Scott Peck, I realized that the post Mormon community absolutely is a community born of crisis. It's a shared crisis. It's a collective crisis where you have all of these thousands of individuals that are basically having their souls ripped and ripped in half as they, as they try to process their, their doubts and their questions and their concerns about their, their faith.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:13:36] And just like in any other crisis, we find each other and we rebuild with each other and we support each other and we, we provide each other with the fulfilling of needs that the, that the church used to give us. You know, the problem is that like, you know, I look at me, for example, I'm somebody who now has processed his Mormonism and I've come out on the other side as a non believer. And so the crisis is over for me. But there's no longer a community to reintegrate back into.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:14:11] The community I had before was the church, and it's no longer. I no longer have access to that community anymore because of where I'm at. And so I've had to just stay in the post Mormon community. And I'm not saying that to disparage the post Mormon community because again, I've said over and over again it's, it's the most amazing group of people I've ever had the privilege of associating with. But at the end of the day, the post Mormon community is much more like a refugee camp than it is a sustaining, self sustaining, vibrant community. You know, and, and so what I've been asking myself is, is there something that we could build that's beyond all this, that could be the place that we could go to after the crisis is over?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:15:04] Because I think what has been a false perception of mine is that we could turn the post Mormon community into that space. But I don't think that's possible just based on my experience, just because negative

John Dehlin [00:15:19] identities don't work, you know.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:15:21] Well, yeah, that's the thing is like, you can't build a community that is fulfilling and is going to be a positive, not just to the individuals and the community itself, but also to the world around them. You can't build a community on that based on the things that you hate or the things that you don't like or what you're against or the past traumas that you've experienced. You know, that's. Those are things that need to be processed, but they're not things that you can build a scaffolding on or a foundation on for a community. That's my opinion. You know, again, this is a hypothesis. And so what I'm, you know, if you want to know about the future for me, that's what I'm interested in exploring is.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:16:10] And, you know, and I know I'm. This is not an original idea by any stretch of the imagination. I know a lot of people who have. Have made attempts at doing something like this and have failed at it.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:16:24] And there, there are a variety of reasons for why that happens. But, you know, I think, you know, call me a blind optimist or an idealist, but, you know, I think, I think there's a huge need for something that looks like that, a community that people can go to, not just within Mormonism with, as you pointed out, this is a broader trend amongst the developing world.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:16:51] And, you know, certainly there are other organizations like the Sunday assembly that are already attempting this. But, you know, for me, specifically, I'm thinking of my area in the East Valley of the Phoenix metro area. I want to build something that people can come to that will be a built on humanist principles of improving each other, improving ourselves, and improving the world around us. And so those are the kind of things that I'm kind of spinning around in my head right now.

John Dehlin [00:17:27] Yeah. So just to kind of loop in some influences. I mean, the humanist movement has been around for decades, if not over a century. Like, I don't know how long ago it started, but it certainly was thriving in the 60s, I want to say 60s and 70s.

John Dehlin [00:17:48] And that's. I think that's foundational for what they've been trying to do. I think to some extent Reform Judaism has been trying to do this with sort of a Jewish flavor to it. But some of the things that really stick out to me, just, you know, those of you who listened to my John Larsen interview just a couple weeks ago, you know, John Larsen of Mormon Expression Podcast actually tried this. He created something called the Living Community in the Salt Lake City area. He talks about this in his podcast. And while he views it as successful in the sense that good, important things happened, you know, it kind of didn't didn't.

Sunday Assembly and Secular Community Building

John Dehlin [00:18:36] It doesn't still kind of exist in the sense that they kind of folded it up. And, you know, as I remember what John said about that, it was largely because, you know, they could never really figure out how to get people to really be committed, to donate time and to donate money to have the thing be sustainable.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:18:56] Right.

John Dehlin [00:18:57] But, but in addition, it's worth noting, there's a man named Alain Debuton that's D E B O T T O N. I think Alain is a L A I n, I think. But he did a. He gave a Ted Talk called Atheism 2.0, wherein he, he basically said, you know, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, you know, those guys are doing it wrong. That's Atheism 1.0. They're trashing religion, trying to tear it down, mocking belief. And, you know, Alain de Bhutan is basically saying, you know, what we need to do is take all the good plays out of the religion playbook and, and incorporate them into a new sort of secular humanism community where we meet once or twice or three times a month, where we have hymns, we have choirs, we have motivational speakers or inspirational sermons.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] We have all the community aspects of a religious tradition, but it's just not based on any theology or doctrine. And as you just mentioned, there's another organization called the Sunday assembly, which was started by a couple comedians in the London, England area, and they've started having secular community services starting in London. But now apparently it's spread to dozens of cities all over the world. I don't know how really strong and vibrant it is or whether it's kind of starting to peter out.

John Dehlin [00:20:34] But I know that this May 31 kind of weekend in Atlanta in the United States, they're holding an international conference for the Sunday assembly, and they're bringing together, let's just say, thought leaders in this space from all over the world. And Micah, you and John Larsen actually both encouraged me to consider going. And so we're planning on going. You and I and John can't make it, but others are coming too. We invite any of our listeners to join us if they're interested. But so that's.

John Dehlin [00:21:10] Those are some of the early movements in this regard. So is that kind of what you're thinking? Yeah, like I said, are you intimidated by that idea? Are you optimistic about it? Both.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:21:24] Yeah, both. Because, You know, the, the really what we're circling around is the problem of what's going to galvanize people, what's going to be the galvanizing element that's going to get people to show up. And it's tough when you remove the fear of eternal punishment and the promise of eternal reward from the equation. You know, it's. Sometimes it's hard to motivate people, you know, and so.

John Dehlin [00:21:54] And you're competing with the relaxing Sunday where you're eating your bacon and eggs, I mean, reading the paper and going on a hike with your family.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:01] Right.

John Dehlin [00:22:02] Who would choose going to a Sunday activity over, like, relaxing in a camp out or a hike or fishing or.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:10] Right. Well. And there is nothing more sacred to ex Mormons than their Sundays.

John Dehlin [00:22:14] Yeah. You know, it's beautiful, right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:17] Yeah. And nobody knows that more than me. And so. So, yeah, and I was talking to a friend about this, and he was like, yeah, you just got to make it effing awesome because otherwise nobody's gonna.

John Dehlin [00:22:31] You do.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:31] Yeah, it is. How do you do that? And, and I don't know. I don't know the answer to that question. And honestly, if I don't find the answer to that question, it's just not. It just won't happen. It's just. It's just the way it's going to be.

John Dehlin [00:22:43] And so I know the Sunday assembly folks, the fact that they're comedians, they bring a lot of entertainment to those services. First of all, I don't think they. They have it every week. I think the Sunday assembly might, once

Micah Nickolaisen [00:22:56] or twice a month, might make once

John Dehlin [00:22:57] or twice a month just for an hour for the service. It's. Think of it like TED Talks with some music and some comedy. Very entertaining and educational. Right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:23:08] And I don't have any problem with that, but I just don't think it's enough. Yeah, well, there's, there's some, there's some secret sauce that religion has that what you're talking about doesn't have. And I think it's more than just fear. I think there's something else. I don't. I don't know what it is. And I think that's really what the secret is. Like, you know, how. What, what is the scenario where people can have ritual again in their life, have connection with other people, have experienced spiritual transcendence all in one place together and an identity.

John Dehlin [00:23:57] Yeah. I mean, isn't that an important part of it? I'm a blank. Right. And once you've been burned by an identity, it's something that you're going to be loath to ever. You don't ever want to call yourself anything again. Yeah, but there's Something powerful about it becoming a meme or a thing. Right. It's like I'm a this. Because then people understand what that is and then people start taking pride and whatever that thing is, and they start handing it down to their children and grandchildren as something they treasure. Yeah, that's got to be a component in the.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:24:34] Well, I think I definitely understand what you're saying, but, you know, if somebody's proud of what they're doing, they believe in it, they. They're gonna own it. Yeah, yeah. So. So yeah, I don't know. And I don't really have any idea what that all should look like, but I want to try to find it. I want to try to find it if it's already there and if it's not there, I want to try to make it.

John Dehlin [00:25:00] Yeah. So just a couple really, going back to what Sunday assembly is doing. As I understand it, they, they meet once or twice a month. It's just an hour service. It's highly informative, inspirational and entertaining. And then as I understand it, instead of having it be every week in two to three hours, what they do is they form these little special interest groups, I think they call them smoops or small groups. And just imagine like book clubs or playgroups for children, or dinner groups or hiking groups or biking groups.

John Dehlin [00:25:35] And a lot of the community activities are happening outside of the Sunday experience, but in these small groups. And it's at that Sunday service where people can get to know each other. Because in the second hour of their Sunday service, I think they call it like tea and cake or something, but it's just purely a social hour where people are just mixing. And so it's not Sunday school where you're being indoctrinated. It's not priesthood and Relief Society, it's social hour. And it's just people talking to each other. It's there that you meet people, get to know them, learn about the different small groups. And then it's more about having fun and enjoying life with like minded people.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:26:18] Right, right, right. And again, I think that's. And you know, they, they do have a Sunday assembly in Phoenix and I've been there once or twice and it's a great group of people, it really is.

John Dehlin [00:26:34] But.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:26:39] Sorry, sorry, my stomach's groaning.

John Dehlin [00:26:44] That's all right.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:26:46] But the problem is that I just think that they're not thinking big enough, you know,

John Dehlin [00:26:56] and what would that mean? So just brainstorm for a minute on what that means to think bigger.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:27:03] Well, I, you know, kind of playing off what you said about Atheism 2.0, there are so many things that we can extract from the religious experience and repurpose. I don't know exactly how, but, but myth, ritual, symbolism, community. I mean, music, music, you know, any of that stuff.

John Dehlin [00:27:29] Youth programs?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:27:30] Yeah, all. And so you can. So I look at the Sunday assembly and I see them checking off a lot of those boxes, but. And then I go, maybe it is good enough. I don't know. You know, again, I'm. I'm just kind of spitballing here too, you know, But I think that just seems like there's something deeper that could be found together. More so than just getting together, hearing a cool talk and hanging out, you know, I just. I don't think that feels like a tribe.

John Dehlin [00:28:09] Like what?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:10] I don't know. I thought you could tell me.

John Dehlin [00:28:13] Do you mean like a metaphysical kind of thing?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:15] No, I don't mean that.

John Dehlin [00:28:17] So no doctrine or theology?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:19] No.

John Dehlin [00:28:19] No prophets, right? No, no, no cults of personality? No. I mean. Because that's the wrong foundation.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:25] Right, of course.

John Dehlin [00:28:25] That's what got us to where we. We are. Right?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:28] Right. Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:28:29] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:32] Gol. Are you just trying to make me look like I don't know what the hell I'm doing, John?

John Dehlin [00:28:35] No, no, no, I'm just kidding. So, I mean, there are pieces of this. So like, why not have a ceremony for the birth of a child, but have it be a ritual that's. That's handed down from.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:28:50] Right. You're talking about cultural milestones in someone's life, and we always connect ritual to those things. So what. What should our rituals look like? What, what symbols are we going to use to. To teach our children? What myths are we going to draw inspiration and power from in our lives? What, what modern myths are there that we can. That we can use? But like I said, I just feel like there's something. I think. I feel like there's a variable missing to the equation that nobody even knows yet.

John Dehlin [00:29:26] Yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:26] And I just. I just don't know what it is. And maybe I'm wrong. You know, maybe there isn't anything. Maybe, maybe, maybe no matter how hard we try, it's never going to be the same as when we had religion.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:29:38] And that just may. May have to be a compromise we have to accept. And. But, you know, I guess I draw a lot of inspiration from Jonathan Haidt's thinking, where he's a secular person, but sees the value that religion brings into communities and people's lives.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:30:02] And, you know, we don't know what's going to happen. If religion suddenly disappears, you know, will that be a good thing? Will that be a bad thing? Is there something. Can religion be replaced? Can it be augmented? Can it be, you know, so that it can survive and thrive, you know, in a. In what will inevitably be a secular world?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:30:25] You know, and obviously dogma and theology isn't going to survive in that environment. But what else, what else do we have to connect us as human beings that we can draw from, to feel the empowerment and the purpose and the meaning in our life that we used to get from church?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:30:48] I think. I think we'll be fine without it. You know, it's not like the world's going to end without religion, but we have to remember that there's a reason that religion is here. And if you're a secularist and you don't believe and you no longer believe that the reason religion is here is because God gave it to us, you have to ask yourself the question, you know, what other purpose is? Has it been serving us for the past thousands and thousands of years? You know, and, you know, I think it's kind of a mystery when I think about.

John Dehlin [00:31:25] I mean, there's a lot of people out there who are still in Mormonism who know all the stuff that we know, who believe and feel the same way that we do, and they're still in it. And some of them, I will concede that they're in it because of sincere belief and commitment. But I know for a fact that there's a large, large number of people still in for community that either they enjoy the community so much they don't want to let it go. They enjoy the benefits of the community so much, Whether they're dentists or lawyers or doctors or accountants or whatever, their finances are tied to the community of the church, or their immediate and extended families are tied to the church in significant ways to the community they're in.

John Dehlin [00:32:16] And those binding forces are extremely strong, and they keep a lot of people in. And so I really. The truth is, if you look at the LDS Church in 2015, the past hundred years have been sort of an abandonment of fundamental doctrine and theology.

John Dehlin [00:32:39] And really all the church has left, it seems, is sort of authority community. The brethren are sort of forget about everything we said 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago. Forget about the scriptures, forget about what we taught. The most sacred thing in Mormonism is follow the brethren, right?

John Dehlin [00:33:01] Follow us now, don't follow us 10, 15, 20 years ago. That's part one. And then the second is, oh, look at all the benefits you get of being part of the community. And, and so. And so, yeah, I'm with you. I don't think we can just let that go.

John Dehlin [00:33:19] I think that community really is the secret to the progress of mankind and to the enlightenment of mankind and of advanced civilization. And so I'm with you. And the thing that comes to my mind, you and I talked about this. Just sort of coincidentally, I'm reading the biography on Steve Jobs, and I'm reading about, you know, believe it or not, there was a world before the Internet, and there was a world before computers, and there was a time where if you wanted to talk on the phone, it had to be wired to wires to wires that were strewn across the globe, and everything was wired.

John Dehlin [00:34:01] And now you can literally walk around with a wireless device, talk to the device, and say, you know, call Elements Restaurant. It actually recognizes your voice, it recognizes the words you say. It goes up to the Internet, this limitless repository of knowledge it actually understands. It looks up the information that you requested, and then it actually takes action and makes that call for you and a correct call, and, and it does it wirelessly over this thing called the Internet.

John Dehlin [00:34:35] That's the craziest. If you would have told me 30, 40 years ago that that was possible, I would have said, that'll never happen. That will never happen.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:34:45] Flying cars first.

John Dehlin [00:34:46] Yeah, right. But that's, that's, that's the world we live in in 2015. And as I think about, like, you know, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and what they did to get us to where we are now, these guys were just kind of. They were crazy, but they were bold and they were visionaries, and their dreams were complex, and there were lots of failures. There were lots of stumbling along the way. There were false starts, there were egos, there were missteps, there were lawsuits and, and catastrophes.

John Dehlin [00:35:22] But. But they, they had this vision and they didn't give up, and they kept fighting for it. And even if you think about Steve Jobs, Apple, you know, the Apple II was an international success, and the Mac, you know, really took computing to the new level. But within a year or two of Steve Jobs launching the Mac, he's kicked out of Apple. He's completely kicked out. And, and he was like Moses wandering in the wilderness for another 5, 10, 15 years, right? Starting all these other companies that floundered and squandering his. His millions, trying to have his next success.

John Dehlin [00:36:01] And, and I'm so thrilled to see what happened as he didn't give up. We have Pixar, and we have the renovation of Apple Computing, which was on its deathbed.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:36:14] Right. You know, they're about to merge with Sun Microsystems.

John Dehlin [00:36:16] They were, they were about to go

Micah Nickolaisen [00:36:18] bankrupt, which also doesn't exist anymore.

John Dehlin [00:36:20] Yeah. And they were about to go bankrupt. And Steve Jobs came back and, and you know, within what, 10, 15 years of him taking Apple back over. They're the. It's the largest market cap of any corporation in the world. And the iPad and the iPhone and the iWatch and. And iTunes have revolutionized multiple industries, and

Micah Nickolaisen [00:36:47] it's revolutionized the human experience.

John Dehlin [00:36:49] It really has.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:36:51] Like, everything's changed.

John Dehlin [00:36:52] Yeah. And so I do think that this thing that we're talking about right now is actually way more complex, which is saying a lot than. Than what the information technology industry has given us over the past 30 or 40 years. Because I don't think solving this problem of human motivation and of. And of figuring out how to herd the cats that are liberal and progressive and disaffected former religious people that are now secular, I don't think that's a small task to figure out how to organize and motivate these people. But having said that, I think it's like the great human challenge and endeavor for the next 50 to 100 to 200 years. And I don't mean just for Mormonism.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:37:43] Right.

John Dehlin [00:37:43] You know, I think this is one of the greatest endeavors that any of us as humans could embark in, because I don't think the world gets better when everybody is playing their Xbox addictively in their basements in perpetuity. I don't think that's the answer to are our next stages of enlightenment. I think that. I think that we need to continue embracing and leveraging the value of community if we want to figure out how to solve, you know, the radical Muslim problem, the, the economic disparity problem, the racial problems, the gender problems of the global, you know, health, global warming. Those are big problems that are right on the precipice. And I think if we don't have an infrastructure of community, I think we won't be as successful. You know, I don't think we can think any bigger than this, you know.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:38:43] Yeah, well, shoot for the stars, right?

John Dehlin [00:38:46] It's kind of crazy. I mean, are we crazy?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:38:49] I think it sounds pretty crazy. Yeah. I don't, don't, don't mire me down in the details, John. I don't need to think about how impossible it is.

John Dehlin [00:39:00] Right. Yeah, yeah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:39:02] I'm just kidding. But, you know. Yeah. All those things are huge obstacles. And I'm not saying that I'm the guy that's going to figure it out. I'm just saying I'm the guy that wants to try. For my sake, for my family's sake, and for my friend's sake, you know, I just. I think. I think we can. I want to get as much out of this human experience as I can while I'm here.

John Dehlin [00:39:26] Yeah. Yeah. And just to provide a few more inspirational anecdotes. If you watch the Imitation Game, which is an amazing movie that talks about one of the first computers ever created and how they helped crack the Nazi code to help win World War II, and that turned into these huge, massive mainframes that were built on vacuum tubes that took us through the 60s and 70s. But even before Microsoft and Intel and Apple, you had Texas Instruments and you had the Altair and you had all these computers that now no one's ever heard of, but they were important in their day, but they were also spectacular failures,

Micah Nickolaisen [00:40:13] and they were stepping stones.

John Dehlin [00:40:14] They were. And so who knows if in the next one to five to 20 to 30 years we can actually figure this out? Maybe you and I will get burned out in three weeks or three months or three years and just give up completely. But what I would love this podcast to be, the end of this podcast to be, is a call to current and future generations to say, you know, first of all, anyone who wants to.

John Dehlin [00:40:46] Who's crazy enough, who's willing to think different enough, to kind of try and be a part of the creation of that future for mankind, we'd love you to kind of be part of the conversation, to mix it up, to start something, to join either with us or to start your own thing and to start experimenting.

John Dehlin [00:41:10] And if that's not you, and if we all fail and stumble, then those of you who are listening five or 10 or 15 or 20 or 50 or 100 years from now, learn from our mistakes. Learn from our mistakes and try your own thing and build on the shoulders of those who come before you.

John Dehlin [00:41:31] But this is a call in 2015, which feels very modern, but very soon it's going to be ancient history. And it's a call to say, pick up that torch because it's worth. Because it may just be worth fighting for. What do you think?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:41:48] Yeah, I mean, for me, it just feels right, you know? And, you know, it's kind of funny. I had such a hard time building a relationship with my own intuition because it was muddled by, you know, the Mormon concept of feeling the spirit and stuff like that. And, you know, listening to the still small voice. And after I got burned so many times by that, I really started distrusting my intuition for a long time. And it actually wasn't until I started reading stuff by Jonathan Haidt that I realized that. Wait a minute. Our intuitions are what we call our gut. You know, that's a huge intellectual shortcut that our biology has been gracious enough to allow us. And, you know, I don't know. I don't know about any of this stuff, whether it's viable or not, but it feels right.

Resilience, Reflection, and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [00:42:51] Yeah. And how do you. How do you pick yourself up in the morning to try again when both you and I and many other people have stumbled so many times? I mean, think about a thoughtful faith and exploring sainthood.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:05] Right?

John Dehlin [00:43:06] How do you pick yourself up after that and say, I'm gonna. I'm gonna keep trying?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:17] I don't know. I don't. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:43:20] Yeah,

Micah Nickolaisen [00:43:25] I think. I think what happens is you. You process it, you know, you. You come to terms with it, with what happened, and. And then you rebuild and try again. I mean, as long as you can. And maybe you can't. Maybe. Maybe one good knockdown is enough to clean you out, but, you know, as long as there's a little spark of something left in you that you can stoke and can get other people to help you with, you know, I think. I think the possibilities are really endless, you know?

John Dehlin [00:44:06] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've. I've tried to plug into kind of success literature and mental health literature and even sort of business literature and entrepreneurial literature, and the message that I keep hearing is not work hard to avoid failure. The message that I hear is fail often.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:44:36] Right.

John Dehlin [00:44:37] Just fail quickly and learn from your mistakes. And the more you fail, the closer success is.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:44:47] Yeah, well, I think. I think Einstein would agree with that. I think Edison. Edison would agree with that. Yeah, absolutely. Steve Jobs would definitely agree with that.

John Dehlin [00:44:59] Right? Yeah. Yeah. So this is a clarion call or a beacon to current and future generations to carry the torch and to pick it up and to follow this path if it feels like a passion to you. So. All right, Micah, so we're coming up on three hours. We probably won't make a full three hours, but you know very well how we end Mormon stories, and you've laid a lot out on the table, and I just want you to know that not only have I really enjoyed this podcast and you sharing your history with us, but it's really been an honor to count you as a friend, even though I Think today is like, the most time we've ever spent probably together.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:45:50] Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's no doubt about that.

John Dehlin [00:45:53] But it feels like we've been kind of brothers in arms for the past few years, and it's been an honor to have you a part of that. So thanks for your contributions and your friendship.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:46:06] Well, of course, the feeling's mutual, and I'm looking forward to lots of pillow talk in Atlanta.

John Dehlin [00:46:13] Yeah. Listeners, join us in Atlanta, May 31. Ish. Look up Sunday Assembly International Conference and join us. But, Micah, let's end by having you share with us your, your testimony, whatever that means to you. What do you want? What inspiration do you want to leave our listeners with? And feel free to just summarize themes you've already talked about.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:46:34] Okay. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is something I heard Jared Anderson say on a podcast several years ago about the power of the atheist proposition, which is, regardless of what your theological beliefs are or, or the lack thereof, no matter how certain you are that you're going to have this amazing afterlife and that you're going to be in heaven or that you're going to exist at all after this life is over, you will always be more certain that you exist right now.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:47:11] And we should, we should prioritize our lives accordingly. And I guess for me that that's probably what lights a fire under me more than anything else is just the ticking time bomb of death that is looming above all of us.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:47:29] And maybe that's not a very healthy. And I hope to improve my relationship with my mortality, but it's a universal theme. Yeah, but, you know, that's, that's really my testimony is that this is it, you know, and life's too short to, to squander it in, in pursuits that aren't going to make yourself better and aren't going to make the people around you better.

John Dehlin [00:48:01] And, and for those of, for the. There are going to be people who choose this, and I think we would agree it's a totally understandable and valid choice. But for those who say, yeah, man, this is all I've got, and the last thing I want to do is spend a bunch of time and effort trying to hurt a bunch of secular chickens.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:48:19] Well, and I wasn't necessarily talking about that. That's, that's our crazy thing that we're going to try to do. Right. But whatever it is for you, do it. You know, make it happen.

John Dehlin [00:48:30] Yeah. Find a cause, find joy, find happiness. Find meaning.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:48:37] Right, Right.

John Dehlin [00:48:39] Learn to trust yourself. Go for it.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:48:47] That's all I got.

John Dehlin [00:48:48] That's it?

Micah Nickolaisen [00:48:49] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:48:49] That's beautiful. Well, Mike and Nickolaisen, thank you so much for for joining us on Mormon Stories. Thanks again for all your efforts. This has been awesome.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:00] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [00:49:01] And for those of you listening, check us out on MormonStories.org please comment and let us know if you're able to actually finish this episode. I've certainly loved it and I'm grateful to all of you who make Mormon Stories possible. So thanks to all the listeners. Thanks to all the support. Please comment and give us your feedback. And if anyone wants to contribute to kind of the future that Mike and I and others are talking about, we hope to hear from you. So thanks again for listening and and we'll talk to you all very soon again on Mormon Stories. Take care. Thanks, Micah.

Micah Nickolaisen [00:49:37] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:49:44] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights. Cease to make me whole when with a wounded heart, anger or malice I draw myself apart Searching my soul.

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