Introduction and Guest Background

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. It is May 16, 2022, and we are super excited for today's episode. A dear friend of mine and someone who has appeared on Mormon Stories in the past several times, Anthony Miller, is going to be joining us today. You'll be hearing his story in his TED Talk. We'll also be having him here on the episode. But if I can just share what Anthony means to me. I first remember meeting Anthony at a Sunstone Workshop faith Crisis workshop that I held. I think we decided that the year was 2016, so this would have been a year after I was excommunicated.

John Dehlin [00:00:42] I think Gina Colvin and Thomas McConkey were there in the workshop, and this wonderful, thoughtful, slightly scared, tremoring, baldish, kind of, but also redheaded man came to my workshop and. And I was immediately struck with how thoughtful he was, with how kind he was. And it was so great to have him as part of the workshop. And from there, I have just seen Anthony become kind of a real force and a real presence within Mormonism. He became a mentor to so many people in Faith Crisis. He ended up joining the Thoughtful Faith Facebook group. He may have even joined that from before, which now I think is called Waters of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:01:25] But eventually, I think Lindsay Hansen park even recruited him to kind of do onboarding, kind of training sessions for Mormons who are fresh in Faith Crisis. That's not to mention how many people he's individually mentored in their Mormon Faith Crisis over the years. He's blogged a lot, and he's been on several Mormon Stories podcast episodes. He's been on Bill Real's Mormon Discussions podcast several times, if I'm recalling correctly. But most importantly, he is just by far one of the most thoughtful, sensitive, kind, and compassionate voices we have in progressive and post Mormonism. And so I was, of course, thrilled when I learned that Anthony Miller was invited or was accepted to give a TED Talk.

John Dehlin [00:02:11] I should also add that Anthony, we'll be hearing this in the TED Talk, but Anthony also has been a real heavy participant in one of the Mormon Facebook support groups in Montana to help those in Faith Crisis. So Anthony's just an amazing human, and I'm so honored that he allowed us here on Mormon Stories podcast today to kind of provide the global premiere of his TEDx talk, which, you know, was just released a few days ago. But we're honored, Anthony, to have you back on Mormon Stories and. And to premiere your TEDx talk. So welcome. Good brother.

Anthony Miller [00:02:50] Thank you very much, my friend. Thank you for your kind words.

John Dehlin [00:02:54] Anything that I got wrong in that

Anthony Miller [00:02:56] intro, it was close enough. It was very good. Thank you. Very good. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:01] And we'll be covering a lot of your history, both right now and your TED Talk is so great because it covers your story quite completely. So we also want to welcome our live streaming audience. We've got almost 200 people joining us either through YouTube or Facebook. We want to not only invite people to share their comments, to share their questions, to give their reactions to Anthony's video as we show it to his talk.

John Dehlin [00:03:29] We even have the ability to let you join us in video. We'll be sharing the link later and we would love some of you to join us and to share your reactions, to thank Anthony, to express what Anthony has meant to you and to share your reactions. Reactions either to the TEDx video or to just your experiences. And we invite you to share what your experiences have been going through, your faith crisis, to whatever extent they resonate with what Anthony shares as well. So, Anthony, to begin, what do you want to say about you and your life and what led to this TED Talk that doesn't take thunder away from the actual story which you tell during the TED Talk?

John Dehlin [00:04:19] We don't want to be repetitive, but what do you want to tell our viewers and listeners who are just experiencing you for the first time about you or about what led to this TED Talk?

Anthony Miller [00:04:30] Well, about six years ago is when I went through my existential faith and identity crisis. I talk about it in my TED Talk. I talk about it in my Mormon Stories interview that you're linking from. It's about three years ago that we recorded that.

Anthony Miller [00:04:48] I have regularly been a supporter of TedX Billings. When it's happened in Billings, it happened several years ago. A few years ago, a couple years ago, they decided they were going to do it again. And I was invited to submit a proposal to participate and give a talk. And they and the organizers asked me, what could you talk about? And I said, well, I can talk about entrepreneurship and building businesses and working with teams. I can talk. I'm a financial advisor. I've done that for three decades. I can talk about financial behavior.

Anthony Miller [00:05:24] I can talk about those kinds of things. I can talk about life skills that have been important to me. Things like how to overcome perfectionism or deal with perfectionism as a natural tendency. And I said, actually, the other thing I could talk about is I went through an existential faith and identity crisis about six years ago. Well, then it was less than six years ago because this was before COVID and I said I went through it and I developed and created a support group that I co lead now that's an important part of our community. And they said that's what we want you to talk about because our theme for TEDx Billings has to do with supporting and building our community.

Anthony Miller [00:06:09] We think that would be perfect because everyone goes through different kinds of existential stretching or crises at different times during their life. But we think you should talk about that. Initially I approached writing my talk from more of a, maybe an academic or lecture type basis.

Anthony Miller [00:06:34] And the realization that I came to is that that wasn't going to have the effect that I needed to have it have or that I wanted to have it have. So the TEDx billings got delayed because of COVID So it wasn't going to happen until a couple months ago on March 5th and in February. So less than two months before my TEDx talk, I completely rewrote it. I solicited some feedback from active members, inactive members, former members of the church, and decided that I was going to take people on my journey through my faith transition. And I completely rewrote it. And that's what we're going to watch today.

Anthony Miller [00:07:24] To a certain extent, I relived some of the trauma of my faith crisis on stage in front of people, and that was difficult, but I feel pretty good about what I did, even though I was more emotional than I wanted to be. In any event, that's the story behind it.

John Dehlin [00:07:43] Well, Margi and I think that the emotion is part of what makes this video so special and so powerful. And I'm sure that our viewers and listeners are going to, to agree it. Yeah, we'll, we'll save that commentary for afterwards. Anything else, Anthony, you want us to know about this TED Talk before we, we just dive in and listen to it and watch it?

Anthony Miller [00:08:09] Yeah, I mean, one thing that I would let you know is in Billings, Montana, only about 5% of the population are members of the LDS Church and a smaller percentage of that than are active. So at my TED Talk, the vast majority of the people in the audience were people that have never been members of the church. And the response that I got from them was overwhelmingly positive. And I recognized that my story wasn't only the story of a Mormon faith crisis. There's one other thing that I would mention, and I think the viewers will notice this, is that in my talk, I only use the word Mormon in the first sentence. The rest of my talk, it's about my journey and it's not about a Mormon faith crisis, so it could be more universally applicable. So in any event, we'll talk more when it's over.

John Dehlin [00:09:12] Okay. And yeah, I'm sharing the link to the actual TED Talk right now in the comments because we want everybody to not only click on the link and watch it, but also share it with a gazillion people because that's the impact when these TED Talks get a lot of views. There's kind of this compound effect where it gets shared more and more the more people share it. So please don't just watch it here on Mormon Stories. Click on it, watch it again, and then most importantly, share it with everyone that you can. I'm also going to be including right now in the comments the link to the streamyard session because we would love, after we show the actual video to have some live reactions to people giving us your thoughts and your comments and you can join us.

John Dehlin [00:10:02] Make sure and enable your audio and your video when you join streamyard and we'll possibly include you in this show. Kind of like a radio call in talk show. All right, Anthony, so without any further ado, should we show your your TEDX talk From the Billings TEDx? All right, we got that. Thumbs up. Here it is everybody.

Anthony's TEDx Talk on Faith Crisis

Anthony Miller [00:10:24] Absolutely. Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] Here's Anthony's TEDx talk and it's called Thriving and Building Community After a Faith Crisis by Anthony Miller of TEDx Billings. All right, here we go everybody.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:10:45] My parents joined the Mormon Church when I was three years old in Phoenix, Arizona. We were poor. My father had a difficult time providing for us.

Video Clip 1 [00:10:53] We were used to being evicted, but

Video Clip 1 [00:10:55] our church community took care of us. You know how sometimes church congregations adopt a family for Christmas because otherwise that

Video Clip 1 [00:11:01] family might not have a Christmas?

Video Clip 1 [00:11:03] That was our family. My parents divorced when I was a teenager. My father struggled to provide support. So as the oldest of four children, I mowed lawns and delivered pizza while my mother did sewing and alterations out

Video Clip 1 [00:11:16] of the little old modified farm shack of a house we rented.

Video Clip 1 [00:11:19] And we felt grateful. For months, we only had to rely

Video Clip 1 [00:11:22] on our church for help with just food.

Video Clip 1 [00:11:25] My church gave me friends, community and role models. It gave me hope of what a stable family could look like. As a 19 year old, I served two years as a full time missionary in Barcelona, Spain. As I dedicated 60 to 70 hours each week striving to bring people unto Christ through baptism and confirmation. I had many spiritual experiences. As I taught, contemplated scriptures, prayed and performed ordinances like baptisms, I sensed a deep connection in my heart. Love, peace, joy, the Fruits of the Spirit, a swelling warmth in my being. I attributed meanings to these experiences as if they were metaphorical vines that intertwined around my heart. The primary meaning was that these experiences were from God giving me reliable divine

Video Clip 1 [00:12:17] witnesses of the truthfulness of the things I was teaching and reading and that I was doing God's work.

Video Clip 1 [00:12:23] Approaching the end of my mission, I found myself in a deep internal struggle. I needed to know for sure whether the offering of my mission was acceptable to God. So I fasted and I prayed for several days, pleading in prayer for an answer. One evening I found myself sitting on a couch in a small, humble apartment living room of a family we had

Anthony Miller [00:12:43] recently taught and baptized, where I felt like I received my sacred answer from God.

Guest 1 [00:12:49] The mother of the family asked me to read her journal entry of the day of her baptism, and as I read it, I felt a softening in my chest, a warmth in my heart. Tears streamed down my face as almost audible words came to me that for me, the purpose of this life is to live with gratitude for the opportunity to participate in the lives of others, and that whether or not my mission was an acceptable offering was the wrong question, because that was about me instead

Anthony Miller [00:13:20] of about God and others.

Guest 1 [00:13:23] Our ministering presence to this humble family in their time of spiritual need, once strangers but now holding hands as brothers and sisters in Christ, amplified that gratitude in my being. With this experience, I intertwined and interlayered additional vines and layers of meaning around my heart that my church was true, that I was the child of a God who loved me, and I knew

Anthony Miller [00:13:49] my place in the universe.

Guest 1 [00:13:52] For the following three decades of my life, I had many experiences like these. For example, as a Sunday school teacher in preparing my lessons, I prayed to God that I might be an instrument in his hands to touch the lives of my class members on Sundays with with a prayer in my heart, I greeted those class members as they entered the room, and I often felt led by God in the things that I taught.

Guest 1 [00:14:14] Many times members approached me after class to express that they really needed specific things that were part of that day's discussion, sometimes even as answers to their prayers. I experienced a constant positive feedback loop of these kinds of experiences and also some serendipitous experiences that happened during my life for which I continually intertwined and interlayered additional vines and layers of meaning.

Guest 1 [00:14:42] Nonetheless, the primary meaning I attributed was that these spiritual experiences represented reliable divine witnesses of the truthfulness of my church and its teachings. Now, I should say that over the years I encountered many things that challenged my testimony and triggered dissonance for me. Things like conflicts in scriptures that I couldn't reconcile or problematic teachings from church leaders that violated my conscience. Things that I couldn't reconcile with what I understood about science and history.

Guest 1 [00:15:12] I applied critical thinking to other areas of my life, but with regard to my faith, I set those irreconcilable problems aside, as if books on a metaphorical shelf in faith that God would provide me further light and knowledge about them someday. But over time my shelf grew massive. It was heavy laden and sagging.

Guest 1 [00:15:36] Nonetheless, the cumulative intertwined vines and layers around my heart had grown into my heart, offering me such a sense of certainty that it prevented me from allowing my metaphorical shelf to collapse. My beliefs, my community, my roles, my reputation, my family connections, how I made sense of life were completely enmeshed in my personal sense of identity and these intertwined vines and layers of meaning around my heart that eventually became one with my heart.

Guest 1 [00:16:12] Then six years ago, our 22 year old son came out to us as gay. In my church, the only valid paths for him would be to live a completely celibate life painfully absent comprehensive love, or to live in a mixed orientation marriage, also without full capacity for comprehensive love for him or for his wife.

Guest 1 [00:16:33] Deep in my heart, the God I knew wouldn't want my son to live a life painfully absent. The kinds of comprehensive love that my wife and I share, I couldn't make metaphorically shelf that depth of cruelty as coming from the God I knew.

Guest 1 [00:16:48] So that evening I anxiously searched online for resources as to how a believer could support a geishan. In my search on my church's website, I accidentally stumbled across what are called the church History Gospel topics, essays that discuss topics I had always led to believe were anti church lies.

Guest 1 [00:17:09] As it turns out, they weren't lies, they were just history. I consumed the balance of my church's 13 essays that evening, and with that information I recognized that many of my treasured spiritual experiences had confirmed the truthfulness of many partially or entirely false things as I understood them.

Guest 1 [00:17:31] It also seemed to me that during my church's history itself, leaders routinely lack the capacity to discern between their own biases and prejudices and actual inspiration from God. The deepest meanings that I attributed to my spiritual experiences as reliable divine witnesses of truth hadn't only proven false for me, but they also seemed to prove false for the leaders of my church too.

Guest 1 [00:17:58] I also learned that night that the leaders of my church knew this information and and to protect faith they excluded it from lesson manuals and they often took retributive actions against scholars who published about violated my core values. I sensed a deep betrayal in my heart, but the most painful was I recognized that my spiritual experiences weren't what

Anthony Miller [00:18:24] I thought they were.

Guest 1 [00:18:26] This combined recognition shattered my heavy shelf. All the irreconcilable problems and dissonance that I accumulated over the decades lie in a pile of scattered broken pieces on the floor. Also, in those very moments, all the intertwined vines and layers of meaning around my heart that became one with my heart were abruptly and violently ripped from me, leaving my heart a shredded, bloody, tangled mess.

Guest 1 [00:19:02] My very identity in those moments became an empty void. The heavens closed and it was as if the God I always knew never existed in the first place, notwithstanding my cries out to him in those very moments. I later learned that what I experienced that night is often referred to as the dark night of the soul.

Guest 1 [00:19:27] But for me, it was more than one night. For the following three days I consumed large volumes of information to try to make sense of what I had discovered. I anxiously tried to figure out how to make my church true again, but the more I studied, the less true it became for me.

Guest 1 [00:19:43] For the following weeks, I spent hours and hours in prayer, pleading with God for help and nothing. I spent hours in scriptures I counseled with my church leader and he gave me a formal priesthood blessing and nothing. I spent hours every day reading church apologetics, listening to podcasts to try to make sense of things.

Guest 1 [00:20:08] During those weeks, I cried myself to sleep most nights. My wife sometimes found me ugly, crying on our bed, and she enveloped me in her arms to console me. The dissonance was soul crushing. Sometimes it hurt to breathe.

Guest 1 [00:20:28] One day after having attended church, my heart raced and the pain was so severe that I lied down on our bedroom floor with my hands on my chest to try to slow my breathing. And overwhelming thoughts came to me that if I could just stop breathing, maybe the pain could end.

Guest 1 [00:20:50] My mind instantly hatched a plan of how to make the pain end without leaving a mess for my wife so that she wouldn't have to sell our home. It terrified me. I didn't feel like myself, like I was a hollow person. I didn't fully recognize the person in the mirror. Maybe that's why God wouldn't answer me. Am I even the same person?

Guest 1 [00:21:15] I felt like I was going insane. With increasing desperation, I asked people around me for help, but no one seemed to be able to help me, not even my dear wife. She could see I was falling apart and asked me to find a therapist or A group that might help me. But who could that even be? In Billings, Montana, with all the anguish of my soul, God, I need you.

Guest 1 [00:21:45] Help me. There had to be someone. Where were they? I became an unsafe person for my church community because I asked questions about those essays. Several members of my community started referring to me as the apostate. Others spread rumors that I had committed some grievous sin and that I was under Satan's power.

Guest 1 [00:22:13] Maybe my wife should leave me. While there were a few who reached out to me to see if I was okay, most didn't. It was devastating. My heart, a shredded mess. My God abandoned me and I lost my community.

Guest 1 [00:22:32] Then one day I stumbled across a Facebook support group that might be able to help me. And I introduced myself with vulnerability. And like in the parable of the Good Samaritan, with me as the wounded traveler, members of that group reached out through the Internet to hold me in my grief. It just so happened that a member from that group named Lindsay was visiting her best friend in Billings, Montana. Lindsay messaged me and she invited me to breakfast the next morning. And so over breakfast, I sat with Lindsay and I shared my full story in person for the very first time with someone who could fully hold it.

Guest 1 [00:23:15] And like a good Samaritan with a ministry of presence, Lindsay held my story as if it were the most important she had ever heard, even though she had heard hundreds like mine. She didn't try to fix me. She didn't tell me I was wrong. She didn't try to reconcile the irreconcilable. She just offered a grace and ministry of presence.

Guest 1 [00:23:41] Lindsay assured me, you've got this. You've got all the tools. It feels like you're sinking in quicksand, but you're actually standing on solid ground. The grief you feel is what will burn the ground to prepare for new growth. And you get to decide what that is.

Guest 1 [00:23:57] And somehow I believed Lindsay and she gave me a temporary reprieve from my 7 week long dark night of the soul. I later learned that Brene Brown refers to what Lindsay did as the ministry of presence, or holding the hand of a stranger. I didn't know this at that time. All I knew is that what I experienced with Lindsay that morning is something that needed to exist in the world. And whatever it was, not only did I need more of it, I needed to be a part of it.

Guest 1 [00:24:32] What Lindsay did hinted ever so slightly at that moment of grace from my mission. That answer, that gratitude, the holding hands. About a month after I met with Lindsay, I Drove to Salt Lake City to attend a dinner with members of that Facebook group, where she found me.

Guest 1 [00:24:55] At that dinner, I asked my new friend Jera Lee, will I feel it again? Will I feel God again? She said, I don't know, Anthony. Everyone's journey is different. But regardless, we are here for you. The next day I attended a faith crisis support workshop. And for the balance of the week, I attended a symposium. Going to every session I could related to things I had been experiencing, experiencing.

Guest 1 [00:25:22] And I found people just like me. And I found more of that ministering presence. Strangers who held my hand and they held me in their arms just like Lindsay did. And things began to shift inside of me as my heart began to heal from the trauma and I began to feel that transcendent connection and grace in my being once more.

Guest 1 [00:25:52] But it was too triggering to call it God. So I didn't intertwine any vines or layers of meaning to it. I drove home from that week completely out of my three month long, dark night of the soul. I wished that my church community could have done for me what that week did for me. But they couldn't.

Guest 1 [00:26:15] I soon discovered that I wasn't alone in Billings, Montana. Several of my friends were traversing the same thing I was. So I created a local support group that continues to grow to this day. Members of our group, we've each put in significant work to understand what happened to us, and we strive to support each other with grace and a ministry of presence.

Guest 1 [00:26:40] We support each other across an entire spectrum of belief without any agenda of where individual faith journeys will end in our group. Regardless of what we each leave behind or the depths of the unknown, we have traversed as we each step forward into human experience, with exploration and discovery, we are not alone.

Guest 1 [00:27:08] While for me, my process is ongoing and there are scars, with the help of others, my heart has healed. For me, my choice. Rather than intertwining new vines and layers of meaning, I allow my transcendent, connecting, grace filled experiences to exist in their

Anthony Miller [00:27:30] purity with curiosity and with gratitude.

Guest 1 [00:27:35] This work of supporting others, it's how I thrive now. In some ways, it links back to that moment, half a world away. Sitting on a couch in a humble apartment living room, reading that journal entry, I strive to live my life with with gratitude for the opportunity to participate in the lives of others with grace, with ministering presence, and to hold the hands of strangers. Thank you.

Reflecting on the TEDx Experience

John Dehlin [00:28:17] All right, well, Anthony, that was super powerful and super beautiful and we may have had a few people on the YouTube live stream. It looks like YouTube didn't like that we were resharing that talk in totality. I guess that might be a community violation, but I don't know. We meant to do good and. And we were doing it with your. Your permission, but let's just go ahead and continue. Anthony, what are your thoughts or reactions as you were watching that video?

Anthony Miller [00:28:51] I mean, to a certain extent what I did is I walked people through. Rather than saying I experienced these things, I walked people through my experience. And in preparing my talk and in giving my talk, I actually relived some of those experiences, even though they were five to six years ago.

Anthony Miller [00:29:14] And in great part that's why they were so emotional for me. But I really wanted to share my journey in a way that would be safe for believing members to watch, that could connect with people who have experienced an existential crisis and other things.

Anthony Miller [00:29:40] After my talk, the response that I received from these mostly non never church member people in the audience was just overwhelming. A woman came up to me and shared that she was in existential faith crisis as well. She had grown up in a very conservative Baptist Protestant faith with an abusive spouse that she eventually divorced. And she ended up being not allowed to go to that church anymore because divorce is prohibited. And then that is what crashed her shelf. So she was in faith crisis.

Anthony Miller [00:30:22] I had another person share with me that they experienced something similar with regard to their Catholic faith. I had one friend who was there explain that she had always grown up with this idea that she was going to get married and have children and live in the house with the white picket fence.

Anthony Miller [00:30:43] And as she got older, she went through an existential crisis about the meaning of everything and what was her purpose because she had always thought that this is what God wanted her to do. And so I came to the realization even deeper that what I shared was to a certain extent connecting to the experiences of many people. I have one friend that was very appreciative that I walked people through what the experience of a situational suicidal ideation is and how people come about that, as well as disassociation, the experience of disassociation.

Anthony Miller [00:31:28] So I thought that I was going to have a really bad vulnerability hangover after sharing my journey that vulnerable on stage, knowing that it was being videoed. But the response that I had from the people that were there in the audience, like I said, mostly never members of the church was so touching to me. People I'd never met before that held me in their arms and cried that there was no vulnerability hangover. I was just very grateful to be Able to share that experience

John Dehlin [00:32:07] that's so powerful. What do you want to share with people about what it's like to do a TED Talk? I'm another person in the, you know, progressive or post Mormon community who has given a TED talk. I gave mine back in 2013, but it was hard and it was nerve wracking and it was vulnerable and it was stressful. Do you want to talk anything about that process of like writing the talk and revising the talk and practicing the talk and, and then how scary it is to actually deliver it?

Anthony Miller [00:32:42] Yeah, it's all of those. I mean, I. I've given presentations, business presentations in front of hundreds and thousands of people. I've, you know, over the years in church, I've spoken at conferences, state conference, and served on the High Council, spoke in wards every month at different places around our stake.

Anthony Miller [00:33:07] I never felt adrenaline before giving a talk like I did with this one. It was pretty vulnerable and stressful. The process of writing the talk was painful in that it made me realize that some of these experiences that I had gone through I hadn't fully processed. Even in spite of all the work that I've done.

Anthony Miller [00:33:35] Speaking with friends at sessions, at Sunstone, doing podcast interviews, speaking at conferences like Thrive. In spite of all that, there were some things that I included in my talk that I hadn't totally processed. And so it was a very emotional journey just to go through writing it and then condensing it from something that could easily be much longer than 17 and a half to 18 minutes long to have it be in that period of time.

Anthony Miller [00:34:19] When you give a TED Talk, they generally, there's different ways that they suggest, but generally they want you to have a pretty good memorization of it and they want you to have rehearsed it at least 60 to 100 times prior to giving it.

John Dehlin [00:34:36] Wow, that's a lot.

Anthony Miller [00:34:37] Yeah. And I rehearsed it over and over and over again, and every time I would give it, Maybe there'd be six or 12 words that were different, and sometimes I said lie instead of lay and so forth. But in the end, the vast majority of what I gave there was text that I wrote, rewrote, refined, and then rehearsed well over a hundred times before I gave it. And even in spite of that, there was quite a bit of adrenaline that day that I gave it.

John Dehlin [00:35:17] Yeah, I also had rehearsed it many, many times. But there's nothing like the lights are on, the timers counting down, the audience is there, you know that you're. You feel like you're carrying the stories of thousands or tens of thousands of your own people. And the pressure makes it so hard, makes it so hard to not stutter or freeze or get confused or disoriented. At least that's how it was for me.

Anthony Miller [00:35:51] Yeah, I mean, I was concerned. Probably my biggest concern was that I would get so emotional that people. That I wouldn't be able to be clear that people couldn't understand what I was saying. So there were a few times in the talk that I paused to kind of try to gather myself so that I could continue to talk.

Anthony Miller [00:36:11] There are some things that I would point out in the talk that. That maybe are explicitly apparent or maybe not. Like I mentioned earlier in this episode, I only used the word Mormon in the first sentence because I wanted to share that this was about my journey more than it was about Mormonism. I shared my experience of how much I loved the church and how enmeshed in my identity, my spiritual. The meaning that I attributed to my spiritual experiences were my connections, my roles, my reputation, my community. It was all so completely enmeshed. And I worked on quite a few different metaphors for it. And where I ended up landing was the vines of attributions of meaning that I interlaced and intertwined around my heart that grew into my heart and became one with my heart so that people could understand that a faith crisis, at least an acute faith crisis, is just as much an identity crisis as a belief crisis.

Anthony Miller [00:37:26] It's not like, you know, changing gyms, you know, or leaving your favorite recreational group or something like that. It's also enmeshed in your identity. I'd point out a few things that maybe aren't apparent. One is the parable of the Good Samaritan was significant because in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Levite and the priest are the ones that step aside and don't minister to the wounded traveler. And it's the apostates, the Samaritans actually, or those considered apostates by the Levite and the priest who minister unto the wounded traveler.

Anthony Miller [00:38:12] And in a recent episode you did with rfm, he talked about when he was in his faith crisis period, that it was interesting that it was actually the post Mormons that were trying to help him figure out how to stay in the church. And it was the more literal believers that were just telling him that he ought to just leave.

Anthony Miller [00:38:35] And I had some of those kinds of experiences too, as I was going through this. I've done an episode with sunstone fireside discovery with Lindsay about faith transition work is often considered grief work. And that real discussion really resonated with me when I was trying to understand how significant for at least for me, for how I'm built, to have people to talk to, to sit with my story.

Anthony Miller [00:39:12] The words from Brene Brown about the ministry of presence and holding the hand of a stranger really stood out as well as those who are trained in psychology would know that the process of active listening to someone who's processing grief and trauma, that in and of itself, I understand, is very significant in helping people process and recover from grief and trauma.

Anthony Miller [00:39:44] And so I wanted to include something else like that in there. I wanted to include that. It's not explicit, but the heroes of my story are actually mostly women. My mother was my hero in providing for our broken family.

Anthony Miller [00:40:06] The woman on the convert from my mission that asked me to read her journal entry of the day of her baptism where I felt like I received a significant answer to my purpose in life is a hero for me. Lindsay was a hero. Jera Lee was a hero. My friend Sarah, who co leads our local Mormon Spectrum group.

John Dehlin [00:40:35] Is that Bozeman or Billings? Is that Bozeman or Billings?

Anthony Miller [00:40:38] That's in Billings, Montana. Sarah Hughes Zabawa co leads the group with me. She's a hero. And I wanted to point out that while I have friends and there are men, that really helped me in my journey, in my story, in my TED Talk, my heroes are women.

Anthony Miller [00:41:00] So I wanted to point that out too. I also, toward the end of my story, what I wanted to express, the underlying foundation, a significant part of my healing is the secular application of Buddhist type of principles and not from a religious sense, but a secular sense. And part of that is to be able to sit without rushing to attribute meaning to things and to sit with experiences of mystery and connection, with curiosity and gratitude and just accepting the mystery and the wonder of those experiences. And so I wanted to communicate that as well. So there's a lot of underlying things that I was working to express in my TED Talk.

John Dehlin [00:41:53] And when you were done, Anthony Miller, how satisfied were you? How happy were you? Were you disappointed? Were you nervous? Yeah. What was it like when it was all over?

Anthony Miller [00:42:08] All of those things, The tendency for perfection and for perfectionism in me was I'm like, oh, I said led to believe instead of. I've always been led to believe. Those were anti church lies. And I used lied down instead of laid down. And I was disappointed that I got so emotional. But once I started talking with people after I gave my talk. None of those things really mattered because of the things that they I was just overwhelmed with gratitude just for the opportunity. I mean, those words so that they're part of me. The purpose of my life is to live with gratitude for the opportunity to participate in the lives of others. And I got to do that that day. And that made it all worth it.

John Dehlin [00:43:08] Good. What would you like to share about so the video has been released for just a few days. What would you like to share about the responses and the reactions to the video so far that you haven't already shared?

Community Response and Ongoing Impact

Anthony Miller [00:43:25] I guess, yeah. I mean, so far I've just experienced an overwhelming experience, experience of gratitude for the comments that people have shared that they felt like they had experiences similar to mine, that they were appreciative that I did this. So it's something that they could share with friends and family to express that their experiences are in some ways similar to mine. I've been really touched by my active believing friends and the way they've responded to it. I was concerned that I would alienate friends and family who are active believing members, but the response that I received from them has just been very kind and supporting as well. So I I would mention that when I was in the dark night of the soul and when I was in the anger stage of grief and unpacking and asking questions to try to figure out what was going on, there were some relationships with local friends

Guest 1 [00:44:48] who were

Anthony Miller [00:44:48] believers that got stretched. But over time those relationships have largely been mended. They're not the same as they were when we were both active believers, but to a great extent I've been able to rebuild and reconstruct relationships with a lot of those people that for a period of time were stretched. When I was in my faith crisis, I hold grace that those who reacted called me the apostate, spread rumors that, you know, I must be stealing from my clients or cheating on my wife, maybe my wife should leave me kind of thing. That they were reacting probably out of concern or fear or disorientation or, you know, based on what they've been taught or understood or it could be any other number of things.

Anthony Miller [00:45:46] And I want to hold grace for the way they reacted. But I do want to say that those relationships are still important to me with many of those believing friends. And the kinds of feedback that I've got from those kinds of friends has been very positive also.

John Dehlin [00:46:05] Beautiful. Well, good. Well, I can just say as someone who who's tried to hoe my own little row in the Mormon faith crisis kind of realm that I, I. It's hard to think of someone else who I'd rather be, you know, trying to communicate their story or this kind of message in a TED Talk than you. So I'm just really happy that, that you got hopefully the first of what will be many people being able to share a talk like this, but it was certainly a fantastic one and I'm honored to have it shared here.

John Dehlin [00:46:48] Let me ask you, Anthony, my guess is your work isn't done, that this is kind of just the beginning. I know that you've thought about writing a memoir or a book. I've heard you kind of brainstorm or noodle a little bit, maybe on a podcast or YouTube channel. Channel. We always love having you participate here, but we also know that sometimes there's other ways to make big differences. So do you have any future plans that are starting to simmer that you would want to share with our audience?

Anthony Miller [00:47:21] Yeah, there are ongoing conversations that I would like to participate in and continue to participate on on episodes on Mormon Stories and Mormon discussion and other places too. But I've decided to go ahead and develop my own YouTube podcast channel and hope to do joint episodes with you and other channels as well as have conversations with people that for one reason or another, it doesn't work for them to go on your channel or Bill's channel or whatnot, that I think that I would be important to the conversation. So, for example, if someone's an employee of the church or something like that, I understand that there's a restriction that they can't, they're not supposed to go on your channel.

Anthony Miller [00:48:20] So, you know, in any event, I've decided to go ahead and do that. I was writing a memoir, but came to the realization that I have people in my life who are very private people and it would not be helpful to them or my relationships with them to do a memoir due to how private they are. And they're so much part of my story story that I don't know how to do a memoir without including them in the story.

Anthony Miller [00:48:52] So I will, I'm still going to do a book. It's just not going to be an Amber Skora book or a Megan Phelps Roper or Mirva Torvis type of book. So.

John Dehlin [00:49:07] Okay, well, we'll take whatever Anthony Miller we can get.

Anthony Miller [00:49:15] All right, so it looks like we. So this is, this is because we.

John Dehlin [00:49:20] The Facebook stream is great. The Facebook stream is great. And this will be released in audio format. So we should just have that. That's what this Is. And that's going to be great for all the people that are able to check it out there. We'll embed this entire video, the Facebook version of this video, in the blog post. So the whole interview will carry on uninterrupted.

Anthony Miller [00:49:45] Oh, perfect. All right.

John Dehlin [00:49:46] Yeah.

Anthony Miller [00:49:48] Very good.

John Dehlin [00:49:48] Yeah. So any final words you want to share? Let's just say to two groups. One would be to believing Mormons who just happen to tune in any advice you want to give to believing Mormons about how to support their loved ones who are in faith crisis. And then if you want to turn that around and give any final feedback to Mormons in faith crisis about how to. How to consider navigating that. Any. I know we can do entire episodes on this. And you have, and we will. But for those who are just joining us now, any final words? First, for believers,

Offering Grace During Faith Transitions

Anthony Miller [00:50:30] I mean, to hold grace for people who are processing a faith transition, because it's often an experience of significant grief. And whether or not you agree with how people are reconciling or not difficult topics, whether they're church history or social, cultural issues or things like that, these friends and family members of yours who are processing a faith transition, they are experiencing significant grief. So that extent that you can help them and support them by sitting with them and expressing love to them, that's what's to be most helpful to them.

Anthony Miller [00:51:28] I'll share the experience. I have one friend who's very much an active believing apologist member of the church. He's written a book about Mormonism and the Apocrypha. His name is Ken. And I grew to become friends with Ken over time to the extent that. That when I've traveled down to the St. George area, my wife and I spent a long afternoon with him and his wife and had lunch together.

Anthony Miller [00:51:59] And one thing that I expressed to Ken is that what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to support other people as they're processing significant grief, as they're experiencing an identity crisis. Not everyone, everybody's journey is a little bit different, but it's common. And that sometimes when people are in severe grief and they're processing these things and people are reacting to them poorly, they're experiencing additional trauma. To the extent that when people are experiencing severe trauma, they can do things that end up. They end up later regretting. Maybe they even blow up their lives.

Anthony Miller [00:52:44] For a person to test behavioral boundaries, for example, when they're in college and they're single, that's different than when they're in their 40s and married with kids, and they're processing severe grief, and they decide to try drinking for the first time.

Anthony Miller [00:53:06] So to the extent that we can help people and support them when they're processing these things, then we can relieve suffering. And one thing that Ken has expressed to me, and I don't think that he minds that I share this, is that even though we very much disagree on a lot of different things with regard to biblical scholarship and church history, what Ken has expressed is love and appreciation for me, and that he knows that people who are processing a faith transition, they need support to help relieve suffering and loneliness and grief. And so to the extent that you and I and other people can do things to help people who are processing that, he thinks that there's divinity in that.

Anthony Miller [00:53:55] And I experience a sense of connection and transcendent grace in my being, with participation, participating in those things too. And for me, that's an example of a believer who can hold space for someone who's going through a faith transition, who's striving to make a positive difference in the world.

Anthony Miller [00:54:16] For those who are processing a faith transition, I think it's helpful just to recognize that a lot of what we're experiencing is grief. A lot of what we're experiencing is deprogramming. Luna Lindsay Corbden's book Recovering Agency, for example, was extremely helpful to me in understanding what my experience was and why I was experiencing what I was experiencing.

Anthony Miller [00:54:45] Brene Brown's work, other work that talks about existential crisis, processing, grief, things like that, those things are very helpful as well. But one thing that I would express is that regardless of where we are in our faith transition, as we're moving forward and we're making choices in our life and we're pulling the best that we can from secular Buddhism, from Brene Brown, from poetry, art, from community, from whatever sources that we're drawing from that are feeding us and helping us to thrive and grow.

Anthony Miller [00:55:28] To the extent that we can do things to move forward where our believing friends and family might call what they're experiencing with us the manifestation of the fruits of the Spirit in our life, we might not use those words if they're triggering for us, but if we're doing things where our believing family or experiencing spiritual connection with us, that's going to relieve some of their concerns as well, and it helps us move forward as well.

Anthony Miller [00:56:02] Kyle Ashworth, in a discussion with him, he's explained that a faith crisis is like having a big oak tree tree in your front yard ripped from the ground. And it leaves a big hole in the front of your house. And if you don't plant something new, eventually, over time, things accumulate in that hole where the tree was and it can be a lot of garbage or we can rework it and put in the work to create and grow something new there.

Anthony Miller [00:56:35] And I love that analogy to so there's hope for those of you who are early in your faith crisis or faith deconstruction process, but seek out community. Seek out people who can sit with you in your journey. Have patience and grace for yourself. John Larsen once expressed that he felt like it took at least one year for every year someone was a fully active, believing member to fully feel like yourself again. So for me as a 49 year old, when I went through my faith crisis, that would mean four to five years.

Anthony Miller [00:57:15] And sure enough, John Larsen was right. It took about four to five years before I fully felt like myself again. It took about 18 months, plus or minus, to not routinely revisit the stages of grief on a regular basis. And that was with a lot of help from other people. And it took about four or five years for me to fully feel like myself again.

Anthony Miller [00:57:41] So there is light at the end of the tunnel. So those are the things that I would share with post Orthodox believers as well as believers.

John Dehlin [00:57:50] I love it. I'll just add that Natasha Helfer and my wife Margi and I have been doing workshops and retreats for Mormons in Faith Crisis for, I don't know, 10 years or more. And we've had so many positive responses, so many lives changed and helped by those events that we started a podcast called the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis, which can be found@mormonfaithcrisis.com where we've provided 70 hours of free coaching on Mormon faith crisis issues. Things like grieving, stages of grief, emotion regulation, healthy sexuality, how to communicate with believing family and friends, how to communicate with your kids after a faith crisis, you know, rules for healthy marriage values, creating new rituals and, and I only mention all this because it's a resource that's free.

John Dehlin [00:58:50] There's so many people that can't afford coaching. There's so many people that don't know about these resources. And I just, I've had many, many people tell me these, these, this content has saved their lives or changed their lives. We even, thanks to the generosity of Clint and Jenny Martin, we recorded an entire retreat, a Mormon Faith Crisis retreat, with me, Natasha and Margi and, and we recorded the whole thing and shared the whole thing on the Internet. So you can go to mormonfaithcrisis.com, search for the retreat there, and you can watch an entire weekend's retreat that doesn't just include, you know, the stuff that I shared, that Margi shared, that Natasha shared.

John Dehlin [00:59:29] And it shares all the participation of the retreat participants with high quality audio and video. It was an amazing investment of time and money and resources and, and we know it helps people. So we're not doing many workshops or retreats these days. Maybe we'll bring them back at some point, but we do want those resources to be known and to be made available because we've been trying to help people for a long, long time in this regard. And that's how I met you, right, Anthony?

Anthony Miller [01:00:04] That's right. That's how we met at one of your faith crisis workshops.

John Dehlin [01:00:09] Yeah. All right. Well, we do have one viewer, listener that has joined us and it's Justin. And Justin is important for a lot of reasons, but he is important at least one reason, because he helped us create our Discord Server, the Mormon Stories Discord server, which almost has a thousand members at this point and is an amazing resource for progressive and post Mormons, Mormons in faith crisis that are looking to find friends, looking to chat with people, even do video chats, even to play games together to create community. So, Justin, thanks for joining us. Any reactions you want to share about Anthony's video or anything else you want to share?

Guest 2 [01:00:55] Well, I just want to share, like, just want to say thank you, Anthony. I've actually met you at one of the Thrive events and just getting to meet you and see that somebody who is well thought out and somebody who in all, for all intents and purposes, feels like somebody I would meet at church and see as like a good member, that they too can look at the stuff that I've seen and be like, there's an issue here. It validated my experience and so I appreciate that and I look forward to finishing the rest of your TED Talk.

Guest 2 [01:01:26] Also, per Discord, one of the things that's really helped me in my transition is the content that John made on Gifted the Mormon Faith Crisis. And people like to consume things different ways. For some people, Discord won't be for them. And that's fine, though. It really is neat because we link to that. You can get it on John's site, but then you can also we have special channels where you can stream that content and we even have a community around there if you, if you need to talk to somebody like real time about that. Just if you just Need a friend? We have faith crisis like CH chat rooms or even video chat rooms where you can talk to somebody right now if you're having a rough time or rough day.

Guest 2 [01:02:04] We're not therapists. We're just friends. And we're just here to, you know, validate you. Sometimes people refer to burn it all down and that it's important to pay attention to that anger that sometimes we have. But there are important or better ways to manage those, manage the anger that we feel, like Mr. Rogers used to tell us. And so as a community, we're there to help you feel heard and validated through those angry phases so that you can maintain those relationships and gain tools around maintaining those relationships through some of John's content that we syndicate. So definitely feel free to drop in if it's your jam.

Guest 2 [01:02:41] If not, there's thrive and all sorts of other things. But this is something that's really helped me through my process, like being there and helping other people. So

Anthony Miller [01:02:51] thank you so much.

Guest 2 [01:02:52] Thank you, Anthony. I appreciate it. And thank you, John.

John Dehlin [01:02:55] My pleasure. And thanks, Justin, to all your work and to everyone else who helps you run and moderate the Discord server. We will share a link in the Show Notes to the retreat, and we will also share. Share a link in the Show Notes to the Discord channel. But you can also find the Discord channel just by a Discord server. Sorry, not channel. Discord server. You can find a link to that if you go to mormonstories.org and in the top left there are a bunch of, like, social media buttons, and one of them is the Discord. And you can click on the Discord link and it'll take you to the server.

Guest 2 [01:03:40] So one more thing I want to touch on is that Anthony brought up that sometimes, like, if you're working at church headquarters and you feel alone, you can't talk to anybody. You don't want to lose your job. One great thing about Discord is you can manage your identity a lot easier. So if you're not ready to come out, we have a lot of people who listen to Mormon stories who go by, like, these fun nicknames on the server. And you can go at your own pace. You don't even have to talk in voice chat. So you can. You can manage it if it's not safe for you to be like, fully be out. So show up. I use my name and my picture, say, hi, I'm there to be a friend if you need one.

Anthony Miller [01:04:18] That's pretty cool. That's a good resource.

Guest 2 [01:04:20] Yeah, we'd Love to have you on sometime, Anthony, and hear more from you.

Anthony Miller [01:04:24] Thank you. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:04:26] Thanks Justin. Great to have you.

Guest 2 [01:04:28] Bye.

Resources, Community, and Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [01:04:29] I also want to mention, and this is something that's been important to you, Anthony, is that over the years there have been directories made to help people find a local community near them. So the one that's been created most recently is the Thrive Community map. If you want to find a community in Ogden or Cache Valley or St. George or Phoenix or Boise or D.C. or even London, one website you can go to is thrivebeyondreligion.com and groups. And there you can find a list of a bunch of Thrive groups that have been created. They're free and they're active and that's one way to find community.

John Dehlin [01:05:20] And then a long time ago I worked with several friends to create another directory of in person support groups at Mormon Spectrum. So you can go to mormonspectrum.org and then click on the MSIP map. It's the Mormon Spectrum in person map basically.

John Dehlin [01:05:40] And that's where I went to find the Billings, Montana group because it wasn't obviously available, wasn't immediately clear how to find that on Facebook. But that's where you can find the Faith Journey meetups group for, for post Mormon women, the Waka worldwide women of a certain age group for women 40 and above that also includes women under 40 and so many other cool support groups. Anthony, do you want to say anything about those in person face to face support groups?

Anthony Miller [01:06:14] I mean they're probably one of the most important part, at least for how me and how I'm built, was to have in person support. I mean it was one thing to have Facebook support groups and other online resources which were really helpful, but, but to have someone sit with me in person, listen to my story and for us to basically minister to other people by sitting with people in their stories, there's just something very powerful about being in person. Well, there is another, in addition to these other groups on ex Mormon Reddit, there's a pinned post for weekend or virtual meetups that gets updated every week. And so if you're visiting a place that has a lot of members of the church like Utah, there's probably some sort of a Saturday or Sunday weekend meetup even that you can usually go and attend there too.

John Dehlin [01:07:19] Yeah, and that's a great point, Anthony. Like just the ex Mormon Reddit group is an amazing, amazing group with what is it? Over 200,000 members at this point. And it is the largest ex religious community on, on Reddit, 237,000 ex Mormons at this point. Right now there's 1.4 thousand ex members of the ex. Of the Ex Mormon Reddit there checking out what's being posted.

John Dehlin [01:07:50] And one of the benefits of participating on the ex Mormon Reddit is that you don't have to use your real name. You know, on Facebook you use your real name and you know, on some of the other platforms people can kind of easily dox you or find out who you are. But the ex Mormon Reddit community, like on Twitter, I guess you can, you can participate anonymously and there's positives and negatives to that. But overall the Ex Mormon Reddit is for sure one of the most important communities in all of ex Mormonism. So we'll include a link to that in the show notes as well. Well, Anthony, you're a treasure. We're so grateful you would again come on Mormon Stories. Any final thoughts you want to share?

Anthony Miller [01:08:38] No, I just really appreciate for the opportunity to do this episode today and I Hope that my TEDx talk is helpful for people. We'll figure out how to edit it or whatever so that you can do a YouTube video. I would hope too.

John Dehlin [01:08:54] I don't think they'll let me share your full TEDx video.

Anthony Miller [01:08:59] Maybe you could just share 5 minutes of it or 3 minutes of it and then throw in an edit saying if you want to watch the rest of the of it, go here.

John Dehlin [01:09:08] Something like that. Yeah, but, but if people want to watch it, they should go to your link. And so let's end by that. Let's just make sure that people can watch it directly because there, there's a real value in having the view count on, on these TEDx videos kind of get high like, like lance, Lance Allred's TEDx talk called what Is yous Polygamy? Received millions of views. My, my TEDx talk on being an LGBT Mormon ally is probably got a couple hundred thousand, but we want these to get as many views as possible. So I'm going to, I'm going to share a direct link to your TED Talk right now in the, in the Facebook comments and we'll include that in the show notes and we'll just encourage everybody to both click on it, click on the link, watch it yourself, and then share it with the gazillion people.

John Dehlin [01:10:08] Personally, I'd rather you share Anthony's original TEDx talk than the Mormon stories links to the TED Talk. I think you'd agree with that, right?

Anthony Miller [01:10:19] I think it'll affect a lot of people and there'll be more views if people go to the TED website or to the YouTube channel for Ted.

John Dehlin [01:10:28] Yeah. All right, Anthony, you're the best. Thanks for all your support. Thanks for your support of me and of Mormon Stories over the years. And we would love to collaborate with you whenever you have something that's worthy.

Anthony Miller [01:10:44] Thank you. I appreciate that.

John Dehlin [01:10:45] All right, Anthony. Take care, brother.

Anthony Miller [01:10:48] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:10:49] And thanks everyone again for joining us today on Mormon Stories Podcast. We love having you. Please share Anthony's link to his TED Talk with as many people as you can. Please. We welcome your comments and feedback@mormonstoriesmail.com or in the Facebook stream or on YouTube when we have one. You can also go to our blog@mormonstories.org and make comments there.

John Dehlin [01:11:16] And yeah, we really appreciate when you follow us on TikTok@mormonstories podcast or Instagram or Twitter or Facebook. Look, that makes a big difference in the social media algorithms. And of course, we couldn't do this without your financial support. So if you want to join like the 1500 or so donors, we have well over 100,000 viewers and listeners every year and about 1,000 to 1,500 donate every year. If my memory is correct. We would love to have those of you who value this content become supporters. So you can go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button above, and become a monthly donor. We're transparent in our finances.

John Dehlin [01:12:01] We publish our 990s every year after the IRS makes them public. And yeah, it's tax deductible in the US and every dollar you donate, we work really hard to make sure it goes towards financial, sorry, informed consent within Mormonism, with people investigating the church, with people in the church, but also supporting people in transition and helping people who have to leave Mormonism find healing and growth on the other end. Our goal on Mormon Stories has always been to save families, to prevent divorce, to heal anxiety and depression, and to just bring light and truth and healing to the world. So we're going to keep doing that for as long as you'll support us.

John Dehlin [01:12:52] So please do so again. You can also find a local community either at thrivebeyondreligion.com or at mormonspectrum.org or you can start your own and you can go to those websites to find out how to do that. So thanks for all the support, everybody. Love you. Please be good to each other.

John Dehlin [01:13:12] Please be kind to each other and thanks for your support and just we have many, many good episodes in the works in the coming weeks, months and years ahead. So we hope you'll join us again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you soon.

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