Welcome and Introducing the Panelists

John Dehlin [00:00:21] Hello everyone, and welcome to the inaugural episode of Mormon News Podcast, sponsored by Mormon Stories Podcast and the Open Stories Foundation. This is a new thing that we're experimenting. It's not even in beta form yet, it's in alpha form.

John Dehlin [00:00:39] But basically what I think Mormonism's been needing for quite some time is a weekly podcast that brings in a panel, hopefully a diverse panel, to discuss the week's Mormon news. And so we happen to own the domain mormonnews.com we're not really launching the website yet because it's not ready, but we just wanted to start doing a weekly one hour long episode on Mormon Stories to discuss the week's news. So that's what this is.

John Dehlin [00:01:17] It'll first be released as part of the Mormon Stories podcast feed, but over time it'll probably have its own podcast feed. If we're able to get this off the ground really quickly, the vision of this, this is something that the newest hire to the Open Storage Foundation, Tim Corey and I have been noodling on and we hope to have, let's just say 10 or 12 panelists that rotate in.

John Dehlin [00:01:46] So we're not going to always have the same hosts every week, but we hope to have familiar faces that rotate in. Occasionally. We'll want to bring on an expert to discuss an issue in depth. We always want live listeners to get your feedback and questions and participation.

John Dehlin [00:02:06] That's the model. Again, we want to have a diverse point of view, so we're going to always try and get a good mix of people to be a part of discussion. And with that, today, I'm going to be introducing our panelists for today. Our panelists today are John Hamer. Many of you in Mormon Stories will know him, Christy Kimball and Tim Corey. And I'm going to have each of you reintroduce or introduce yourselves so that our listeners can get to know you a little bit. So because John Hamer, you've been on Mormon Stories podcast before, why don't you go ahead and briefly introduce yourself?

John Hamer [00:02:44] Sure. I'm excited to be back and excited to participate in this. Like you say, I think this has been a real need and I'm excited you're launching this podcast. My background in this, I've been a blogger and a podcaster on Mormon stories, a lot on Infants on Thrones, other podcasts. I'm also a historian of the movement. And this weekend, for example, we're hosting a Sunstone, Sunstone Toronto. And I also serve as a church leader in Community of Christ, which is the former reorganized church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And I have the calling of 70 and also serve as the pastor or presiding elder of the Downtown Toronto congregation, which I'm joining you from.

John Dehlin [00:03:32] Well, welcome, John Hamer. It's always a thrill to have you on Mormon stories. Kristy Kimball, why don't you introduce yourself? You are, I'm guessing, an unfamiliar name and face to many of our audience. So tell us about yourself.

Kristy Kimball [00:03:49] Well, I'm sure that's true. I'm Kristi Kimball. I'm an attorney. We specialize in health, law and life sciences. So there are plenty of legal issues that are kind of outside my scope, but when it comes to those issues, I'll be well versed in those. Mother of three kids, serious kind of social activist and feminist.

John Dehlin [00:04:13] All right, well, Christy, it's great to have you and we look forward to having you in future episodes. Thanks for having me and Tim, my partner in crime, on this project. You've been so great to help get this off the ground. Tim, tell us a bit about yourself.

Tim Coray [00:04:27] All right, my name is Tim Corey and I'm a born and raised Salt Lake boy. I had a brief period of time that I spent up in Alaska as a schoolteacher, but I'm back in Salt Lake now and am loving working for Open Stories foundation as a project manager. And I'm here today to hopefully contribute about the LGBTQ experience within Mormonism. And also I'll be fielding questions that viewers might pose on Facebook. So viewers, send us your questions as the opportunity presents itself in the conversation. I'll work them in and hopefully we'll have a good discussion.

McKenna Denson Case and Motion to Dismiss

John Dehlin [00:05:11] All right. Well, there's never really a dull week in Mormon news, and we have a lot to cover today. So I'll do my best to kind of tee off each little topic and then we can discuss it. And again, we really want our listeners to share insight and questions and thoughts with us as well. So the first piece of news we're going to cover today, it was reported in the Deseret News and in the Salt Lake Tribune that the LDS Church is filing to dismiss the lawsuit of McKenna Denson. So for those who have been on an island without access to news or the Internet over the past month or two, McKenna Denson is the former Mormon missionary who was sexually abused by Joseph Bishop, the president of the MTC, back in the 1980s.

John Dehlin [00:06:10] And it took her a while to feel comfortable speaking up about the abuse. But eventually she recorded an audio confrontation with her and Joseph Bishop where he pretty much admits to the abuse of not Just her, but of other people. This was shared on MormonLeaks, and then we released the audio recording on Mormon stories. And most of you have listened to all that? Well, it comes out this week that the church files to have the lawsuit dismissed because they're saying it falls outside the statute of limitations. So, Christy, you're an attorney and you care deeply about these sorts of issues. What sorts of commentary do you have about this news?

Kristy Kimball [00:07:00] Well, I did pull up, actually, the complaint and the motion to dismiss and read through those, and there are actually some really interesting information in there that I don't think has come out in the news. But in regard to the motion to dismiss, representing Bishop is actually an old friend of mine, a really good attorney, but he's. It's normal that you would file a motion to dismiss regardless of whether or not you think that's even going to be considered by the court.

Kristy Kimball [00:07:24] I'm guessing that that's what's happening here. But when you look through the various claims that are being filed in this case in the complaints, and you've got things like, you know, negligent infliction of emotional distress, intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud, fraudulent concealment, the motion to dismiss is basically just saying what the statute of limitations in Utah has run. Usually those are going to be no more than three to four years in these kind of situations. But I think the key thing here in regard to those motions to dismiss is that when it comes to, let's say, fraud, it's normally when you, the statute starts to run when you knew about the fraud or when you reasonably should have known.

Kristy Kimball [00:08:09] And then in regard to intentional infliction of emotional distress, I've kind of pulled up some case law to better understand what the courts are going to be looking at there. And as long as there was one incident that's happened, right, that intentional or negligent infliction of emotional distress, as long as there was one incident that's happened within that statute of limitations, period, the courts in Utah, it looks like a rule that you can pull in and you can still bring that claim. So. So I think to the extent that these plaintiffs can show that they didn't know what the church was doing in terms of they had no idea how much knowledge that the church had about these incidents, and they just learned in the last few years about the church's, you know, whatever activities they may have taken to cover up and not really address this issue or to the intent that they can show that it's just been in the last few Years that they've, you know, learned or there's been an incident of when the church has taken actions which has caused them more harm, more infliction of emotional distress.

Kristy Kimball [00:09:12] And they can make out those legal arguments, I think that they can probably survive that. Those are matters of fact that the court's not likely to just throw out based upon the defendant saying, hey, statute of limitations is run. They're going to be some factual issues I think here to be really tweezed out. And that's going to really take further litigation. And I don't see the court throwing that out at this point.

John Dehlin [00:09:35] Okay, so Christy says she's not sure the court's gonna throw this out. John Hamer, what about the court of public opinion? It's one thing to engage in legal maneuvers, but we've also got just kind of the optics of all this. Do you have any thoughts on that?

John Hamer [00:09:52] Right, yeah. I talked to a friend of mine here in Canada who is a canon lawyer for the Catholic Church and who has for the past 20 years been talking to the media, essentially analyzing what the Catholic Church did in its own sex abuse scandals where leaders were abusing kids and everything like that. And then the church's response to that, which was for years and years to try to hide it, cover it up, move the people around.

John Hamer [00:10:23] Every time there was an actual case, they would try to settle it out of court with a settlement to the victim, but with slapping a huge non disclosure on top of it. And that, I think, has been in the bigger picture here. That's the same playbook that the LDS Church has been doing. And so I think that in this particular case we're probably dealing with, it's making news and everything like that. It's a. But it's a kind of a tip of the iceberg kind of thing where we know that there's going to be just so many more of these. There's so many that have unfortunately happened that have been able to be covered up because of the deep pockets.

John Hamer [00:11:05] The church is able to aggressively try to stamp these things out. But again, like I said, my friend Pete Veary, who's a canon lawyer for the Catholic Church, he says no matter how deep you think the Mormon Church's pockets are, and they are, the Catholic Church has more money still. And at a certain point you just can't go down this route. And what they ended up finding was they soured an entire generation, more or less in North America on their church and they're still trying to recover from that. You lose your credibility when you do this. And so I think we're just at the very beginning of all of these, unfortunately.

John Dehlin [00:11:43] I saw the movie Spotlight. It's one of the most important movies I've ever seen. John Hamer and, you know, part of what's hard about all this is the Catholic Church still, you know, continues plugging. They're still going strong. And you even hear about, you know, celebrities converting to Catholicism. And so I do think religions are remarkably resilient. And, you know, many of us think that there will be some big day of accountability and it may cost them money and time and be a bit of a PR head, but it's hard to know whether it does significant, has a significant impact or just kind of around the margins.

John Hamer [00:12:24] I mean, in that way, like you say, it's like there's a certain amount of, you have to do a certain amount of crystal ball about how many more of these are going to happen, how big a scandal, how much ultimately it affects. Then like you say rank and file members. And it's in general, some of this cost is down the road because it's younger people who are maybe not wanting to say, sign up and say, okay, I'm standing up and for this anymore. But like you're talking about institutionally, that doesn't affect you for a long, long time in terms of how much money or political power you have, because as long as you have the people who are at the prime earning levels that are still in the pews know it's your generation away from any kind of financial hit. So

John Dehlin [00:13:13] it looks like we got a question from our audience. Do you want to read it or do you want me to?

Tim Coray [00:13:17] People are appreciating your comments, Christy and Joey asks if you could explain the interplay between the Utah state statute of limitations and the fact that the suit's being filed in a federal court. Does the federal court act on Utah state law when it comes to the statute of limitations or how does that work as a federal case?

Kristy Kimball [00:13:37] Yeah, so I haven't looked at the complaint in minute detail, but normally you're going to bring a claim in a federal court. There are several reasons when you have to bring a claim in federal court. And here I think it's because you've got a plaintiff that is not a Utah resident, and then you've got them filing suit against Utah residents in that case. Normally when you've got residents, different states, then the federal court is the proper court to bring that claim in. So that's why it was brought here. But then they would be applying the applicable law. And here it looks like the applicable law is Utah law. So that's why they're looking at Utah's statute of limitations. What qualifies for a claim here.

Tim Coray [00:14:21] Great. Thank you. And thank you, Joey, for the question.

John Dehlin [00:14:23] Tim, do you have any extra insight you want to give on this case?

Tim Coray [00:14:27] I'm interested to see if charges are dismissed, which will be. Because my understanding is that there's a variety. There's the abuse, there's fraud, there's concealment, and possibly others. So if there is dismissal, will it be sweeping or will it just be on a case by case, charge by charge basis?

Kristy Kimball [00:14:50] So let me try and answer that. And again, litigation is not necessarily what I do. So there are plenty of people that could better speak to this. But keep in mind, this is a civil case. And so I just want to be clear when you're saying charges, these aren't criminal charges. This is a civil case. So someone bringing a civil action and filing claims that they can make out under that state's laws and that state's case law as to what constitutes a claim that they can get relief, I think in this case, and there are several different claims that are being asserted in the complaint.

Kristy Kimball [00:15:21] And of course, different statute of limitations apply to each of those. And I think you will see the judge go through each one. I think it's more likely there's certain claims in there that I think, oh, yeah, the judge is probably going to dismiss that. But when it comes to this fraudulent fraud and fraudulent concealment, when it comes to these infliction of emotional distress, I think those are the claims. You're going to have a better argument that there have been activities in recent years that still are going to be encapsulating and be able to bring those, and they still are within the statute of limitations.

Kristy Kimball [00:15:56] A couple other things that I think are really interesting about the complaint itself that I think people might be interested to know. There's something in the complaint where they've called it six calls of action, affirmative injunctive relief, and policy changes. Now, this isn't actually a claim that you can bring. It's kind of improper for them to have thrown it, I think, in the complaint, but I think it was done maybe as kind of this PR move to try and get this information out there. But basically they've got this claim that they've put in and they're asking for all these policy changes and they're giving quotes from the different church handbooks about what the church is supposed to do in these situations and saying, you've got to change this, right?

Kristy Kimball [00:16:34] This isn't actually a normal claim of action that you're going to see, right, like breach of contract. They're basically saying, hey, Mormon Church, here's what your current policy is. We want to see it change. And this is how you should change it. And it talks about how the church's policy is called the church hotline, when in every state there are these mandatory reporting laws in regard to abuse. And most of them, you know, there are certain exceptions that are carve out, but you're supposed to when you definitively know of abuse. Again, there are exceptions to this and there are exceptions for pastors in certain scenarios, but you're supposed to call the authorities.

Kristy Kimball [00:17:09] And one of the things that they're arguing in this complaint is how the current policy is wrong. The third thing I think is just really important that I want to point out about this case. I want people to understand this when it comes to childhood abuse. Most states and Utah just recently passed something where they're saying if you were a victim of childhood sexual abuse, they've greatly extended the statute of limitations. I haven't looked at the, you know, the recent Utah legislation, but I think it's saying like 35 years. So basically, you know, from the time that you turn 18. So they're trying to give people who are abused as children the right far down that road to go back and bring action against the perpetrator.

Kristy Kimball [00:17:47] The tricky part here and why that doesn't apply is because, you know, these appear to have been adults, adult women, you know, they were in the mtc, they were adult women. And so those statutes don't apply. So I want people just at least understand that differential here and why there is a short statute of limitations that would apply when it comes to the rape, the battery, you know, any kind of sexual misconduct against these women.

John Dehlin [00:18:12] I love it. What are your comments? Just as a. Let's just say as a woman and as a feminist, Christie, separate from the legal.

Kristy Kimball [00:18:20] Well, I think it's really disconcerting when you read, especially if you read through the entire. All the allegations in the, in the complaint, especially going back to when Bishop was a mission president that he had. There's kind of some allegation that he believed he was kind of possessed by an evil spirit or something to that effect. And he went and confessed basically all of the. Any everything that he had done as far as these sexual improprieties, whether it was, you know, rape or molesting of women, going back some time and that nothing was done about it. You know, that's pretty disconcerting. And I think, you know, Utah, there's, I think, some evidence to support that we have higher rates of sexual abuse and of rape.

Kristy Kimball [00:18:59] Right. Than other states. And so culturally, there's something going on here. But when you're covering up, when you read through the allegations and you realize that there were very top, potentially very top church leaders that were aware of this abuse, aware of this, that this person was a perpetrator and kept them in positions of power over women, it's really troubling. And that certainly just has to change. And I think one of the things that will lead to the church changing, they've got to fill it in the pocketbook, right? So it's like West Virginia. There was just a huge settlement, but they've got to feel some bad press from these things, and these details have to come out, and then they have to monetarily, I think, fill it. And when that happens, I think that's when you'll see a shift in policies.

John Dehlin [00:19:42] It's also a little bit disconcerting to know that Joseph Bishop is serving currently in his Sunday school presidency of his local ward in Arizona. And the church can move very swiftly when they want to and when they need to. And it's just so weird that they don't take a case like this so seriously that they wouldn't, you know, take him out of that calling and excommunicate him. But instead, as far as every report I've heard, he's still a member in good standing, and he's still serving in a calling where he has influence and, you know, connection to youth. And this isn't just an isolated incident.

John Dehlin [00:20:19] I have hundreds of emails sent to me where perpetrators, abusers were protected at the expense of victims. Victims weren't believed. And we've just released a couple of those episodes recently, and we'll keep doing that, but it is kind of just a troubling thing. And this whole buying people off is also troubling. Christy, would a corporation ever ask to have something dismissed but still settle as a show of good faith? Does that make sense, even for PR reasons?

Kristy Kimball [00:20:51] So would they have filed this and then still settle the case?

John Dehlin [00:20:55] I mean, I'm just trying to figure out a way where they could do this humanely because, let's say it is past the statute of limitations, but they still want to be humane to someone who is hurt. Is there a way to do that?

Kristy Kimball [00:21:07] Well, I think there's always a way. I think you can Always come to some agreement even without a lawsuit being filed. Right. You enter into settlement agreements between parties that are having disputes without a lawsuit ever being filed. So you don't need a lawsuit to enter into some kind of settlement agreement or issue some kind. I think here, you know, be nice to have an apology, but here I think good lawyers, and certainly the church has good lawyers, Bishop has a good lawyer. Their job is to represent their clients. Filing a motion to dismiss based upon the statute of limitations running is just what a good lawyer is going to do.

Kristy Kimball [00:21:39] So I think in some ways you can't fault them for just doing their jobs. They're doing their jobs. But I don't think you'll see all of the claims be dismissed. And I think it's something like 97% of all litigation ends up being settled before it gets to trial. I can't imagine that this isn't one of those cases that eventually settles out in some manner.

John Dehlin [00:22:02] Yeah. Well, our heart goes out to McKenna and we hope that justice is served somehow and better accountability and processes are implemented.

Kristy Kimball [00:22:14] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:22:15] Thanks to everyone. Okay, the next news story. The Mormon Church cuts a hundred year relationship with Boy Scouts of America. And I won't read the Mormon Newsroom announcement other than to say that it seems like they're pinning this on the fact that this is a worldwide church. And because the Boy Scouts of America is not a worldwide organization, it doesn't meet the needs of a worldwide church. And so we have to discontinue that relationship. John Hamer, does that cut it with you? Do you think that's what's going on here?

Church Ends Century-Long Relationship with Boy Scouts

John Hamer [00:22:51] Well, no, I don't think that was the reasoning. I mean, I was raised Mormon and was a Mormon Boy Scout and Mormon Eagle Scout. And for a whole long time, the Boy Scouts in the Mormon Church were on the same side of a political and cultural war spectrum where they were allies against having gay leaders and also discriminating against gay scouts and things like that. Over time, that ceased to be able to be a position that the Scouts were going to be able to hold on to in the United States. And so having left that coalition of hardliners, it just shows that I think that the Mormon Church has staked out some turf in its very serious opposition to LGBTQ human rights, that it's going to leave it increasingly isolated and lonely as organizations move on.

John Hamer [00:23:50] I mean, I'm presuming that they'd already. I'm here in Canada. Scouts Canada, long time ago integrated. And so there's both boys and girls that's a very progressive organization. So I presume that the Mormon Church already hasn't had a relationship with Scouting in Canada for a long time, and so that's probably just had to go that way.

John Dehlin [00:24:08] I think most of the people I talk to say this is about the church allowing gay, lesbian leaders, allowing, you know, gay and lesbian scouts to participate, who are gay scouts to participate, who are open, and then removing. I think they moved recently towards removing the name Boy. They just want to become kind of a scouting organization for. For boys or girls. I think most of us think that that's what this is really about. Christy.

Kristy Kimball [00:24:37] Well, I just wanted to mention it kind of makes me laugh a little bit, and obviously we could see the writing on the wall coming with this, but it kind of makes me laugh in a way, thinking about how, you know, the church, you know, despite the fact that it has such, you know, some would argue, very anti lgbtq, you know, positions. Yeah. That they stay in when they are going to openly allow, you know, these kids to be part of the organization. They end up staying in even though they're gonna allow gay leaders. But, like, the buck stops when you're gonna allow girls in. I think that might show the pecking order, you know, and might. Might shed some light on the church's positions and where that greatest threat is to them. Not girls, not women.

John Dehlin [00:25:21] No, it's not just the church. Like, black men received the right to vote before women receive the right to vote. Women are always last in America, and it's really sad and hard and confusing.

Kristy Kimball [00:25:35] Yeah. But just too bad, because it's a great organization, and I think if girls and boys are both included, fantastic. I would have always loved all these years when the Boy Scouts came knocking on my door. It was always a thorn in my side that the church was raising so much money for the scouting organization. And in every word, the budgets, right. For these boys was so great because of scouting and all the opportunities that they got. But girls, it was, you know, kind of begging and pleading for funds, but how great would it have been if they just stayed in but allowed, incorporated both the boys and the girls, you know, to be part of this organization?

Kristy Kimball [00:26:07] But regardless, you know, even if they didn't, all these years, I thought, well, why don't they, you know, have all the girls participate in Girl Scouts and make the church leaders volunteer for Girl Scouts? And. And there just needs to be some equity. And for lots of reasons, I think it's good that they're out because I think there'll be a little more Equity.

John Dehlin [00:26:25] Some who really love the Scouting program are really excited because there's always been this perception that Mormon Boy Scout troops aren't really in it because they care, aren't really in it because they are true Scouts. But instead they're just all kind of doing it as assignments. And so they really don't uphold the Scouting standards. There's this rush to get your ego by the time you're like 13. And some say the moms do it for a lot of the kids. And so I guess there's a lot of Scouts. Maybe they're sad about the financial implications, but they feel like maybe the average troop quality might go up after this. Tim, what do you want to add to this discussion?

Tim Coray [00:27:04] I was a Boy Scout and loved my time in Scouts, but I very seldom saw a clear separation between what was a Scout activity and what was a church activity. And I'll be interested to see what the church comes up with as a replacement for this program. And it wouldn't surprise me if they really seize upon this as an opportunity to create more curricula, more testimony building opportunities for kids. Because we know that the church membership is just hemorrhaging millennials and the generation that follow behind millennials. So I think that this will be a double down on doctrine, really at the end of the day, maybe with some camping and s'. Mores.

John Dehlin [00:27:52] One of the funnest things I've seen over the past couple years is when early announcements were leaked that the church might start its own version of a scouting program. All the fake merit badges that got created on ex Mormon Reddit

Tim Coray [00:28:08] Cleaning the Church was my favorite.

John Dehlin [00:28:10] Which one? The Cleaning the Church merit badge merit badge. And there was the Book of Mormon Evidence merit badge, which was like a blank patch. If you ever want to have fun, Google ex Mormon Reddit merit badges and you'll have fun.

Kristy Kimball [00:28:28] I think something that might be nice that will come out of this is non members, especially in Utah. I've wondered when I've gone to these Scouting programs for my son and talking about Joseph Smith and it's all church history and it's kind of like this is just like church on a, whatever Wednesday or Thursday night.

Kristy Kimball [00:28:46] And I remember when my son was little, talking to him and saying, you know that the Scouting Boy Scouts of America is not a church organization, right? And he was shocked. He was like, what are you talking about? Right. Because those two things seem so closely intertwined to him. But we would have conversations about, you know, how sad is it if you're not a member of The Mormon Church. Would you feel comfortable coming to the Scout troop and to the conversation? Do you think that would be appropriate? This is just. And he'd be like, oh, that would be so sad. You know, and I think maybe there have been a lot of kids, especially in Utah.

Kristy Kimball [00:29:15] I know it happens down in. I hear down in the South, Right. In Texas, that it's Southern Baptist, that they're teaching their own thing as part of Scouting, But I think where it's a secular organization, it's important to teach to those core values of the Scouting program. And hopefully this will allow people from all faiths, all backgrounds, now, genders, to really participate and get the benefits of the Scouting program.

John Dehlin [00:29:39] Looks like we got a couple comments.

Tim Coray [00:29:40] Yeah. Jonathan says that social issues are a good way to get members to agree with decisions that the church makes. So seizing upon the LGBTQ social issues can be a way to just direct membership in thinking. Thanks, Jonathan. Michael says that abandoning BSA is a really hard turn to the right for the church, and it's a step towards fundamentalism with indoctrination coming along with it. Good comments.

John Dehlin [00:30:14] Yeah. And Rachel agrees that she always saw Scouting as a Mormon thing as well, and it's not. I just have to say a shout out to the Girl Scouts. Some are concerned that as the Boy Scouts of America start incorporating girls, that it could hurt the Girl Scouts. And the Girl Scouts is this amazing, progressive, feminist sort of organization, and we don't want the Girl Scouts to be heard in this. So our best wishes go out to the Girl Scouts and also Christy. Gabby is saying Christy makes such great points. So you've got a fan in Gabby Christie.

Kristy Kimball [00:30:48] Gabby's my daughter. For those that don't know,

John Dehlin [00:30:53] love to Gabby. All right, so let's move on to a real tempest in a Mormon teapot that's emerged today. Apparently, today, leaders from the NAACP have come to Utah to have, I think, a quarterly board meeting of sorts, and in that event, they've met with the First Presidency and they issued a joint press release.

The Fake Apology on Racism Exposed

John Dehlin [00:31:26] But what's interesting about that is somebody got word, somebody out there, and I know who it is, but we're not releasing the name yet because we don't have permission to release the name. But someone out there knew that this was going to be happening, and he or he, along with other people, created this fake website that basically announced, as if it were church headquarters, that the LDS Church is officially apologizing for.

John Dehlin [00:32:03] Apologizing for its history of not treating people of color well, for being racist. And it's A really creative thing. So if you went to mormon-newsroom.org you know, it looks exactly like the church's own newsroom website. It's designed to look identical and then it's written in this really clever way to sort of be the apology that all of us kind of wish the church would offer. And immediately, you know, my brother shared it. I had a heads up, so I didn't fall for it. But, you know, all sorts of my friends are sharing this and are all excited that the church is apologizing only to find out that it was a spoof, it was a parody, written to kind of take advantage of what's going on right now. And Tim, apparently some people are really upset that this parody happened. Can you talk about that, Tim, what you've read?

Tim Coray [00:32:58] Right before we started this call, I was noticing on Twitter that there were a few lively conversations going on that expressed concern that this isn't parody, that this is really, at the end of the day, damaging to people whose hopes were buoyed for a moment only to be dashed later on. And I wonder if that's part of the point of the creator of this, to let people see what a true apology might look like and then when that's discovered as fraudulent, to be extra frustrated. So who knows if this will push the hand of the church to respond to this or direct future conversations.

John Dehlin [00:33:45] John Hamer, what's your take on this fake news and this attempt at satire?

John Hamer [00:33:51] Well, like you say, the bunch of people were sharing it. I followed it from a friend of mine who's gay who had posted it and said that they hoped that the church did something similar for gay people in the future.

John Dehlin [00:34:03] He was believing it when you wrote that.

John Hamer [00:34:05] He was believing it, in other words. Yeah, that he read it and thought that was really wonderful. And so anyway, so I followed it without looking at the dash or not on the site. But it was, you know, it was very uncharacteristic. I wouldn't have imagined that such a thing would have been possible because essentially they went through all the steps of an actual apology of saying that they were going to even talk about the actual history and the manuals. And that seemed a little fishy. So anyway, but yeah, you contrast it to then the actual statement, which is more or less it's a non apology.

John Hamer [00:34:41] The statement is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints continues to affirm its fundamental doctrine and our heartfelt conviction that all people are God's precious children and therefore brothers and sisters, said President Nelson. So it doesn't acknowledge that anyway that fundamental doctrine has changed on the one hand, or any error, or that different things had been preached from the pulpit from particular leaders, Brigham Young, other leaders who could be singled out and who should be mentioned as teaching false doctrine or whatever. And then we can, therefore, from setting that record straight, you could actually issue an actual apology. But what I've said a lot of times on these things is that by refusing to actually admit error and have true repentance and then learn from error, you inevitably fall back into sin because you can't learn from your mistake if you simply delete it and pretend you never did it.

John Dehlin [00:35:39] Yeah. Christy Elder Oaks is famous. President Oaks is famous for saying we neither give nor seek apologies.

Kristy Kimball [00:35:49] We.

John Dehlin [00:35:49] I've always wondered if that comes from his lawyer background, that somehow if you apologize, you increase legal liability. Am I making that up? What do you think?

Kristy Kimball [00:36:02] Well, I guess, yeah, I don't see it that way because I think you can apologize in ways that doesn't admit guilt or doesn't admit wrongdoing, and it can go a long way to basically make reparations, even between parties.

Kristy Kimball [00:36:16] And, you know, you being the psychologist, when you know that from all of your training, right. If somebody can just have some humility and say, I'm sorry, you know, the defenses go down, the walls go down, and people can really bring people together.

Kristy Kimball [00:36:28] And I look at. I look at it from a legal perspective. There are even laws in certain states when it comes to medical malpractice, where physicians, because they know through studies that if there's been something that a physician has done wrong, the physician, you know, can apologize in some manner and say, I'm sorry. That. That goes a long way to keep a plaintiff from actually bringing suit. You know, just a doctor saying I'm sorry, you know, and so that there are laws in place that can protect doctors in certain scenarios from that being used as liability against them. If somebody brings suit because it's supposed to, it's trying to help foster that sense of just, you know, saying sorry.

Kristy Kimball [00:37:04] And I do think that, I mean, it could be from his legal training, but in my mind, I think that's just more a personality perspective and some hubris.

John Dehlin [00:37:15] Hubris. That's exactly what I was about to say. Tim, we've got some comments from the listeners. Do you mind? Do you want to share some.

Tim Coray [00:37:22] Lots of great comments. Sarah suggests that people look to Sistas in Zion for a response to it or for a look at how the church's racial past continues to inflict so much hurt. Which also might get to a point that Rachel brought up, that changing the Book of Mormon would really be what would be necessary for racial issues to be resolved. Because there seems to be quite a

Kristy Kimball [00:37:52] bit of

Tim Coray [00:37:55] racial issues baked into the Book of Mormon. So it's not necessarily just about the priesthood and access to temple ceremonies, but core doctrine. Great comments. Probably don't have time to get to all of them. Daniel was tipped off to the fact that it might be a little. A little fake. He said, I thought it was very strange that the article referenced the Gospel topics essays. There's usually a conscientious distancing from them in official writing.

John Dehlin [00:38:26] I thought that's hilarious. That linking to the Gospel topic essays is a sure sign of a fake. And then another comment by Ted. Ted says, what clued me to being fake was that it was an apology.

Kristy Kimball [00:38:48] And it's so funny. I mean, I think everybody agrees that the church would just be more apologetic about some of these things and say, oh my, you know, we're so sorry. Whether it comes to opposing Equal Rights Amendment, the civil rights, all these things, I think people would feel better. I think overall they'd lose less members. So it's counterproductive in my mind, but obviously we're not in that role.

John Dehlin [00:39:10] But God doesn't make mistakes. That's the problem.

Kristy Kimball [00:39:14] Interesting.

Tim Coray [00:39:16] And to circle back to the idea that it is causing a lot of pain for people and it's not been just a funny ha ha experience for people, people who read it and believed it to be real. Amy says the satirical piece is causing a lot of pain among people of color in the church. It's very sad. So as this plays out, hopefully there's some positive movement that leads to a real conversation.

John Dehlin [00:39:40] Also, shout out to Heather, Savannah's mom, who writes it was extremely painful to see that it wasn't real. And she can't imagine how that must have felt for people of color. So we don't want to trivialize the pain that people are and anger. The only other downside I saw to this is what happens if a bunch of True Believing Mormons see this and go, oh, see, the church is good. They've apologized. And actually this is believed by True Believing members as being legitimate. It makes a bunch of people think the church has made a reconciliation that they haven't. That's the first downside that occurred to me.

Kristy Kimball [00:40:15] They don't recognize the fake news.

John Dehlin [00:40:18] No. A lot of people still, even when I told them it was fake, they didn't believe it because it looks so real.

Kristy Kimball [00:40:22] I'm teasing. Right? Making fun of our current atmosphere.

John Dehlin [00:40:28] Yeah. All right, well, on to our next topic. We'll see how that unfolds and maybe we'll talk about who it was that released that next time on Mormon News Podcast, we got to talk about cannabis a little bit. We did have a recent episode with Andrew and Allison Jolly where Andrew talks about going from a Mormon to a cannabis grower and dispenser.

Church Fights Utah Medical Cannabis Initiative

John Dehlin [00:40:53] But the church kind of took its gloves off this past week and is openly fighting the Utah Cannabis initiative that is trying to make the ballot. What we know for sure is that Curtin McConkie wrote this huge memo giving all the reasons why Utahns and Mormons specifically shouldn't vote for this measure. Some feel like that memo was basically just spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt with not a lot of credibility.

John Dehlin [00:41:29] We also know that the Eagle Forum and some other organizations are running around Utah trying to figure out who signed this petition and get them to read this memo and to withdraw their signatures so that somehow they can get it decertified, I guess, so that it doesn't appear on the ballot. So the church is really freaked out about this and it looks like they're doing everything they can to fight it. And of course, those who are cynical feel like the Eagle Forum, the Utah Medical association, even the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, these are all just fronts that the church uses to do its kind of dirty work when it doesn't want direct footprints on what it's doing. So, Tim, do you want to start on this one and give any point of view on the cannabis stuff in Utah this week?

Tim Coray [00:42:20] I was just pretty surprised when I read the Curtin McConkie brief. I couldn't see it as much more than Reefer Madness. It didn't really give enough credibility to what we know about the medical benefits of cannabis for people suffering from a variety of illnesses. Instead, it just really capitalized on the fear that this will be the end of any sort of control of cannabis in the state. So I was disappointed that it was such a one sided hit piece on it. And at times, honestly, I felt like when I read it that whoever wrote it or whatever committee that wrote it wouldn't know the difference between a pot leaf and a maple leaf if they looked at them.

John Dehlin [00:43:15] Yeah, I want to direct everyone to a website, libertasutah.org as I understand it, a lot of the people that run this site, it's sort of a libertarian Utah libertarian website. They did a rebuttal to the Curtin McConkie analysis of the Utah Medical Cannabis Act. It's a really good rebuttal and a lot of these guys and gals are faithful Mormons, as I understand it. But maybe Tim, in our show notes we can include a link to that because I think it's important to combat fear, uncertainty and doubt. John Hamer, what do you think about medical cannabis, Utah Mormonism? Why would the church care about this? What

John Dehlin [00:43:56] we understand is that in Utah and Colorado and even Washington, where both medical and even recreational cannabis is legal, members are not only using medical marijuana, but they're actually selling it and growing it. And so the church is not disciplining anyone for either using or, or selling, dispensing medical marijuana. So why do they care in Utah?

John Hamer [00:44:24] I guess I would say it's probably, it's a legacy habit of fighting on this particular side of the culture wars and all these things. And so I mean we're here in Toronto, Canada wide, cannabis is gonna be legalized. I think it's July 1st. So just in whatever two months from now. And the way that they're going to do it is it's going to be incredibly regulated here in Ontario where all sale of it is going to take place in government stores just like you have in Utah for liquor. So we have the same system here in Ontario where everything's sold through the liquor control ford of Ontario facilities.

John Hamer [00:45:03] And so that's just going to be. Cannabis is going to be added into that. And so it could be ultimately, I think ultimately that model is probably what could be done in Utah without any kind of trouble. But in the meantime there's just going to be this slow fight that happens. I think I've read an analysis that essentially when things are going like this, state by state, there's a tipping point in a trend line where it ultimately gets to the Supreme Court and it goes through at a certain point. And so there's probably this little bit of kind of effort that they're doing now is only just a, a brief, let's say within 10 years or something like that. It's all just wasted effort probably.

John Dehlin [00:45:44] I want to refer everyone to the episode with Andrew Jolly about medical marijuana cannabis. There's so much good that medical marijuana can do for people with epilepsy, for people with cancer, for people who are addicted to opioids, for pain management, for sleep management. I've never tried cannabis or marijuana. So even though I've been talking about this, it's not that I'm. It's some personal thing or it's just there's so much good that this natural plant can do for people who are in need medically. And then there's so much awfulness with the war on drugs around incarceration of people of color, of the violence, of the wasting of the time of law enforcement officers to, you know, in the judicial system to try and convict these people, you know, all the way to the way it affects Latin American countries. Christy, what would you want to say weighing in on this issue?

Kristy Kimball [00:46:43] Well, I would say that overall, certainly, you know, Curtin McConkie is the law firm that the church uses. Right. So it was their law firm that's drafting this memorandum. And I think that the, the memorandum, or at least, you know, the response to it that you can find on the Libertas website, it goes through it pretty well. There's some, like, legal aspects and some, you know, some finer points that aren't really pointed out there, but they give a really solid rebuttal, I think, to a lot of the things that are in Curtin McConkie's memo. But I think just overall is that it's so fear based, you know, and what's happening, I think right now trying to get people taking their names off of the ballot is so dominated in fear and in kind of these crazy exceptions to the rule and painting a broad brushstroke, it feels a lot like, to me, from what I've seen and read, it feels a lot like what was happening with Prop 8 out of California.

Kristy Kimball [00:47:38] You kind of really rally the troops to get what you want. But I think people just need to really. I would encourage people to read everything that you can, and I would read the rebuttal. But ultimately this is a ballot initiative. It's about what the people of Utah want. And if enough people have signed that signature to get on the ballot, I think it's a little bit frightening when you get people going out trying to then manipulate and get people to remove their names from the ballot.

Kristy Kimball [00:48:06] I guess a couple other things that really strike me is that again, when you read through the memorandum and you read through the rebuttal, if you flip it and really insert and think about opiates, right, and this opiate epidemic that we have in this nation, how many people are dying in this state alone from opiate abuse and opiate overdose, if you go through and read it in that light, it seems incredibly silly, especially because people aren't overdosing from medical marijuana and there are controls in place and what they're trying to do, where this is only for a medical need and Will there be some people that end up getting one of these medical cards that don't really need it?

Kristy Kimball [00:48:48] Absolutely. But guess what? Right now, most people, if they want to smoke marijuana, they're smoking it. They want to get an edible. I mean, it's so prevalently available. That's happening now. I think the important thing is there certainly are risks associated with things. And for me as a parent of kids, young kids, I don't want my kids smoking pot. I want their brains to evolve and develop, fully form before they're ever exposed to anything like that. Because there are some studies showing that it can, especially in youth, if there's a family history, let's say of mental illness, that it can potentially trigger mental illness. And so I want my kids to be happy, healthy adults.

Kristy Kimball [00:49:25] So I would rather that if they're ever going to expose themselves to that, that that's later on down the road when their brains are fully formed. But the important point is people can get this now in ways, but we're going to give people with medical issues a way to get to that, that substance a little bit easier, their control methods. But right now, I mean, I just don't think people should buy into a fear based approach. I think people really need to think about this and what the purpose is and what the controls are and then make that decision for themselves and let the people speak.

Kristy Kimball [00:49:52] The whole point of a democracy is let democracy speak. And if enough people have signed the signatures to get this on the ballot, let it go to the ballot and let the people decide.

John Dehlin [00:50:02] I love it. Tim, you want to bring in some of our listener comments?

Tim Coray [00:50:05] Yeah. Michael says the amount of tax revenue coming in from cannabis in states like Colorado is incredible, with a huge portion, which a huge portion has gone back into education. I know many people that run across the border to Nevada and Colorado for cannabis or cbd. Utah is going to lose out on a lot of tax revenue with this ignorant position which could go to education.

John Dehlin [00:50:28] Right? We have one of the worst dollar per child education records in the entire United States. States were the lowest funded per child. Why not use this money, capitalize on it and use it to improve our school system?

Tim Coray [00:50:41] Right? And Utah's pretty surrounded right now by states on both sides and up and down where individuals can go get it if they need it for their family or for their medical conditions. And I see it as unfortunate because I'm sure there are a few, maybe a lot of faithful LDS folks who are using medical cannabis for their health issues. And now they're stuck in this strange battle of how will their bishop interpret the word of wisdom? How will their bishop interpret the church's standing on things? And I think that it puts people, unfortunately, in the middle of an already tough situation.

John Dehlin [00:51:24] Yeah. Brandon Campbell, the bass player of Neon Trees, his son has the this very significant illness and medical marijuana is the only thing that they've been able to find to help their son. It's a big problem. And I'm really frustrated the church is doing this, especially given, like you said, Christy, the opiate crisis that is plaguing Utah and the entire country. It's almost unconscionable. But we don't have time to I also just want to shout out to our listener Drew, who says medical cannabis saved his life. Thanks for sharing that, Drew. All right, We've got two more topics to cover and we're trying to end. We have a commitment to end in one hour less, which is unheard of on Mormon Stories podcast. But we're going to try. We've got Denver Snuffer declaring Brazil Plates fraudulent John Hamer, can you tell us about what's going on with Denver Snuffer in the Brazil plates?

Brazil Plates Fraud and the Swedish Rescue Update

John Hamer [00:52:23] Yeah. Well, this was interesting news for listeners who haven't heard about these Brazil plates. This has been kind of on my radar for maybe six months or more because maybe a whole year, because in the broader Latter Day Saint tradition, so the other churches that are not the LDS church, there's been a lot of excitement and news among, for example, the people who we call restorationists, which is to say people who are from the Josephite or Community of Christ RLDS tradition, but who are no longer members of the RLDS Church or Community of Christ. They are now members of churches like the Remnant Church, the Restoration branches.

John Hamer [00:53:05] There's been a lot of excitement about these Brazil plates. And I think that there's also been there's awareness of it in, for example, the Temple Lot church, if you know about them, the bigger tonights, the church that is on the temple lot.

John Hamer [00:53:16] And so anyway, also now in the not to be confused, the Remnant movement, which is Denver Snuffer's movement, that is from the mainline LDS church. There's been a lot of interest in them from them. So essentially what these plates are is there's a group of people who have their own restoration Tradition church. The leader of it is a guy named Mauricio Berger in Brazil who was a convert to the big mainline LDS church but has subsequently left. And as his own group, he's announced multiple times that he, the Angel Moroni has come to him and given him the gold plates and specifically to work on the sealed portion of them and other artifacts too, like the Sword of Laban.

John Hamer [00:53:59] And so different pictures of this has been. There's been kind of like a slow unfolding as he's used social media, private channels to send like, images onto, you know, like via, anyway, cell phone pictures and things like that. And so people have been able to see, not publicly, they're not on any. Posted on any website, but through kind of these private channels, pictures of these artifacts that he claims are the real Book of Mormon. And so Denver Snuffer has now kind of like, listened to the story. He has his own analysis about why he doesn't think it holds up in terms of the history. So, for example, he's pretty committed to the idea that it's not that the Moroni being the name of the angel comes late in the historical record.

John Hamer [00:54:44] And so he thinks that any angel coming with the gold plates should be the angel Nephi. And there's a case you can make for that. And that's kind of his. I think one of his sticking points where he said that he's determined that these Brazil plates are a fraud. But from the actual images of them, you can say more conclusively now that they're a fraud, because the person who made them, probably very accidentally, they were not aware that there are two versions of the Anthon transcript. So if we know what that is, the idea is that there's this Book of Mormon characters. Joseph Smith wrote them down.

John Hamer [00:55:20] He gave them to Martin Harris to show Professor Anthon the real Anthon transcript or the one we call the Anthon transcript. The real characters document is owned by Community Crisis in the Vault. But Hoffman the forger decided to make a realer one.

John Hamer [00:55:38] And so that one better describes or better fits the description that Martin Harris used or that Anthon used. And so that, though, is a Hoffman forgery. And so anyway, that's available on the Internet. You can see what Hoffman forgery looks like. It's very beautiful.

John Hamer [00:55:53] And those characters from the forged document have been used in the exact same order and sequence. And the kind of vertical columns, as opposed to the horizontal columns of the real one. And those are copied onto the Brazil plates. And so I think that Denver Snuffer is quite right that we can say pretty conclusively that these are yet another fraudulent gold plate.

John Dehlin [00:56:15] But what's obviously ironic about this is how do we know? How do you determine what type of spiritual claim or mystical claim is credible versus not can we say that Mauricio Berger's claims are any less credible than the LDS Church's claims?

John Hamer [00:56:33] Well, we can say specifically that his text, you know, is depend. His Book of Mormon artifact that we have is dependent on the Hoffman text. And so therefore. So that one we can say conclusively. You can say a bunch of things about the Mormon Church's claims. I mean, you can say that specifically the Book of Mormon text as we have it is certainly literally dependent on the King James Bible and so therefore was written afterwards. So that's, I mean, you can conclusively say that. So we could say those kind of things, but what we can say specifically about this artifact is it's textually or visually dependent on the Hoffman fraud.

John Dehlin [00:57:11] Christy, what would you add to this case?

Kristy Kimball [00:57:15] Oh my gosh, I don't think I have much. I think John just covered it all.

John Dehlin [00:57:21] I just think it's always a tricky thing for religion to claim personal revelation that the heavens are open, that God reveals himself to people. And then charismatic leaders like Denver Snuffer or Mauricio Berger or take your pick, they sort of invoke that as well. And that just raises the question of legitimacy overall. How do we ever know if God is appearing to or speaking to or revealing to Fred or Susie or Tony or me or Joseph or Mauricio or Denver? And for me, what I've come down is to just say if God wants to talk to me, he's going to come talk to me. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. When you're ready, Heavenly Father. I've been waiting for about 48 years and I'm still waiting until you talk to me.

Kristy Kimball [00:58:10] John, I think we have to say it's a double edged sword, right? The church wants to say, hey, there's this personal revelation. But then that can be a really scary thing when people personal revelation that doesn't comport with what you want them to have personal revelation about.

John Dehlin [00:58:23] Totally.

Kristy Kimball [00:58:24] That can come with people saying really outlandish things and it can come with people just saying really sound things that are true and good, but for which you don't want to acknowledge or have

John Dehlin [00:58:33] to totally love it. It's like Hiram Page, right? John Hamer, Wasn't he one of the first challengers to Joseph Smith?

John Hamer [00:58:40] Sure, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:58:42] I get revelation for my seer stone too.

John Hamer [00:58:44] Right, Exactly. Yeah. And so then it's a complex question of that tension between like you say, personal revelation and the one, one man ruler, you know, the person who's called to receive revelation only for the church or something like that. And so that tension has continued throughout the whole movement. And it's felt especially in the smaller churches, because anyway, they have their. They have less, let's say, corporate legitimacy that is holding on, you know, holding everybody to an obedience line. You're more in a front lines, like you say, of, let's say, a new emerging charismatic leader. So the problem for this one, and so Denver Snuffer even actually made the point, he normally doesn't want to intervene and poo poo other people's revelations or something like that is what he's saying.

John Hamer [00:59:31] But I guess for me, and I don't like to do that either, but I'm saying in this particular case, when you have somebody who's very directly made an artifact like this or this particular one, you're pretty close to a person who is engaged probably in conscious fraud. And so this is going to also be leading very directly to further fraud being perpetrated against people who are going in as very earnest believers, the people who are joining, let's say, this movement or that movement. Whereas it may well be for other people who may believe very strongly that some spiritual impression that they have, they may very consciously believe that as therefore not being fraud.

John Hamer [01:00:19] Right. So there could be somebody, they believe that they have had this kind of manifestation. They interpret it this way. They themselves are the first believer. I'm just concerned in the case of a. An artifact that was deliberately made by somebody. We're not very far away from the deliberate fraud.

John Dehlin [01:00:34] I'm just surprised that in 2018, anybody believes any of this kind of stuff about angels and plates and witnesses. And I guess I shouldn't be surprised at all, but for some reason I am. Tim, do you want to add anything on this? And then we'll just close with the Swedish story.

Tim Coray [01:00:50] I just would echo what Daniel recently commented. He wants to remind us that the Brazil plates are fake. Kinderhook plates are fake. Strange plates are fake. But Moroni's golden plates are totally legit. Like, for realsies.

John Dehlin [01:01:05] For realsies. We got to get. We got to bring Daniel on as one of our commenters. Yeah, Daniel's always a loyal and insightful commenter. So shout out to Daniel. He's awesome. All right. The last. The last story that we're going to be covering today is kind of near and dear to my heart.

John Dehlin [01:01:25] Those who follow Mormon stories will know we helped break the news about the Swedish rescue where so many saints in the church in Sweden were falling away years ago, and Marlon Jensen and Richard Turley were sent out to rescue Sweden and they gave us private Fireside, the secret fireside that was recorded and the audio was shared where they give all these explanations about the major problems of the church history.

John Dehlin [01:01:53] Just Google Sweetest rescue and you can actually hear the audio from that recording on Mormon Stories and it was a fascinating thing. Hans Mattsson, you will also remember he is one of the highest ranking people we've ever interviewed on Mormon Stories podcast. He left the church, did a New York Times article and did a Mormon Stories interview where he and his beautiful wife Brigitte and brilliant wife Brigitte, they shared their story about leaving Mormonism. Well, Hans has come out with a new book in Swedish. I don't even, I can't even say the title because it's in Swedish, but Hans has come out with a biography about leaving the church in Sweden and it's sort of been taking Sweden by storm in a negative way.

John Dehlin [01:02:36] Apparently. He's been on TV shows, etc. So shout out to Hans and Brigitte. We're really happy for their book they've come out with. But recently Elder Dale Renlund, we found out from a listener, visited Sweden on April 29, 2018 to help stem the tide, to help do Swedish Rescue 2018.

John Dehlin [01:02:58] And so he gave a talk to the Swedish members in Swedish called Faith in Doubt. And we will be sharing on the show notes the original talk. The Google translation. I actually have a translation from Hans himself that corrects some of the errors in the Google translation of the document, but some of the highlights or lowlights depending on your point of view. He compares criticizing and leaving the Mormon Church to an old man who's the church rescuing someone on a boat who is lost and drowning at sea. And I guess that's the human race. And then the person who's on the boat who has been rescued turns and criticizes the boat as old and dilapidated and he criticizes the old man.

John Dehlin [01:03:46] And eventually he asks to be returned to the ocean to drown. And the implication is that anyone who leaves the church, including Hans Mattsson and those of us who left the church are dumb and ungrateful. That's kind of the core metaphor that he uses. He goes on to say that having questions is good, but choosing to be a doubter is bad.

John Dehlin [01:04:07] He goes on to say that investigating doubt with the incorrect sources is bad. So don't look at bad sources. Apostates are hard hearted and misled by Satan, whereas members who stay are inspired by God. If questioning members don't get answers to their prayers, it's because they're not asking with enough sincerity. Members, many people have left the church, are now coming back and even tries to bolster this old Swedish Mormon myth of a second harvest. Some old general authority at some point prophesied there'd be a second harvest in Sweden where there'd be this huge influx of Swedish members like there was in the olden days. And he says, Renlund says there's great reason for optimism about the church in Sweden.

John Dehlin [01:04:48] There's never been a time in church history when we could be as optimistic as we should be now. And anyone who sees the stats for Sweden, Sweden is in pure decline. It's in free fall, as is most of Western Europe and as the United States is sort of set to become outside of Utah.

John Dehlin [01:05:06] And then finally, he pulls the apostolic witness card. He says, I know in a more powerful and reliable way than my five senses can discover and express that Joseph Smith saw what he saw, said he saw, blah, blah, blah. And then finally he refers to people who leave the church as dark and people who return having light. He says many, like Stephen, someone he references in the story, have returned to the church, remained, and have reclaimed the priesthood and temple blessings. The light comes back when they choose faith, and so they go from darkness to light. So it's a bit of a triggering talk on Reddit, Kirsty, as I describe, and maybe you haven't had time to read this talk, but as I describe the highlights or lowlights, as someone who has left the church, how's your dark and loathsomeness?

Leaving the Church and Closing Thoughts

Kristy Kimball [01:06:04] Wait, John, was that a question? To me, yeah.

Tim Coray [01:06:07] Wow.

Kristy Kimball [01:06:10] Well, I have to admit, when you were reading that, it made me think of the. The Hafiz poem, do you know what I'm talking about? Where it says the great religions are the ships, poets, the lifeboats. Every sane person I know has jumped overboard anyway, and it goes on. But yeah, I guess there's a different interpretation that we can all have about that. But again, playing into fear.

John Dehlin [01:06:32] Do you feel like your countenance has darkened since you left the church?

Kristy Kimball [01:06:37] Well, I wish it would because I'm a little too white. I would like this melanin to be a little darker, to be honest. But, you know, people have their own interpretations, right? And anyway, I certainly think there's certain people in my life that are still active in the church that would argue that's the case, and other people that would say that, you know, my life's gotten much better and much happier. So I just think people can't play into fear and manipulation. And people have to live their life and not, you know, not give in to this.

John Dehlin [01:07:07] John Hamer, the lighting of your current video view is a little bit shady. So. So how's your doctor look from this?

John Hamer [01:07:14] It's dim here in the library here. I don't know. I was struck. One of the things that he had in the talk is that he played on the Original Joseph Smith first vision quotation from James. He quotes James 1:5 if any of you is lacking wisdom, ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly and it will be given you. And he says, but you go to the next verse and it says, but ask in faith, never doubting for one who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by wind. And so I guess that's teeing him up for his analogy of the drowning person.

John Hamer [01:07:51] But again, I think this, his entire his theology and the church's theology here is totally, totally wrong. Which is to say that what James even or whatever, what the scripture here is advising is that if you prayer is open to everybody, you can do like you just did, John, and ask God for to answer you.

John Hamer [01:08:14] But James is then suggesting that you should do that in a sense of really attempting to doing it seriously. In other words, your intention here should be earnest when you're doing that. But it's not to then have faith in and never doubt some human person, you know, or some institution on the planet. That's not the idea. In other words, you don't doubt. Don't doubt leaders, don't doubt an institution, don't doubt church. You know, that's not even what this is. That's the worldview, unfortunately though, of the LDS Church, which claims to have exclusive authority from God on the planet. And everybody else is wrong. So it's something that can't be credibly maintained, in my view. I think it's a theologically abhorrent position, but they're consistent in saying it.

John Dehlin [01:09:06] Tim, what are our listeners saying to this report?

Tim Coray [01:09:11] Some commentary on the light and darkness imagery. Bill says darkness and light. Do you think these terms are somehow Mormon? Read the Bible. I don't mean to be harsh, but to put this light you speak of through the property prism. So it's not exclusively a Mormon analogy to use lightness and darkness. And Steve says the water is shallow and warm. Come on in.

John Dehlin [01:09:42] Joey reminds us that darkness is not always bad and lightness is not always good. I sure want a dark room when I'm going to sleep, that's for sure. Yeah, and I just think I just Think it's. This is, you know, we can make light and it's fine. But, you know, there is a sad element to this. I know for a fact from my research with the LGBT community that the highest outcomes, the best outcomes in terms of quality of life, depression, you know, sexual identity distress, all sorts of positive and negative indicators. The best outcomes for LGBT people come from when they leave the church.

John Dehlin [01:10:26] We don't want them committing suicide. We don't want them being depressed. And some people also victims of sexual abuse and physical abuse, sometimes the church is very triggering for them if the church was the context within which they experienced their abuse. And then there's just all sorts of people for whom the church doesn't work. And so it's just really sad when.

John Dehlin [01:10:47] And honestly, it's a little bit cult like. I've been really studying up on Steven Hasson's bite model of cult sort of techniques. And if you go to mormonfaithcrisis.com there's a blog post there where I posted an analysis of cult tactics as it relates to Mormonism. And absolutely, one of the cult tactics is to tell members of the culture that bad things will happen to them if they leave, and that it's, you know, and having this metaphor of you being drowning at sea if you leave. I think it just. It's a tactic that is really not only harmful, but it's kind of cult like. And I wish the church would really stop, because so many people leave the church and are happy and healthy and happier and healthier, they go off their medications, they have a better marriage than they've ever had before in some cases, or their marriage ends, but then they find happiness after their marriage ends, or they go to Community of Christ, like John Hamer and many of his followers or Community of Christ supporters who leave Mormonism go to Community of Christ and have a wonderful faith experience.

John Dehlin [01:12:02] So we don't have to trash Mormonism as being awful, but Mormon leaders don't have to trash being non Mormon as awful. And that's kind of all I have to say about that.

Kristy Kimball [01:12:11] John. Yeah, Just maybe think of one last thing that I wanted to mention. Many years ago, somebody taught to me about this concept of like, spiritual abuse, right? Because there's all sorts of forms of abuse, but, you know, psychological abuse and spiritual abuse. And I think so many of these things you're talking about when people feel kind of isolated and are depressed, whether it's LGBTQ people, right? Maybe it's, you know, people of color, you know, anybody that's really an outlier within any community, but that includes the Mormon Church, can really suffer. But it seems to be a common tactic where you say, there's something. If you don't feel good about this, if you're not happy, there's something wrong with you.

Kristy Kimball [01:12:48] It's your problem. There's something wrong with you. And if you pray harder, if you. And there's some of that language in the statement, right, Saying that, you know, if you're doubter, you have questions and you're praying and you're not, you know, then you just, there's something wrong. He actually says, there's kind of something wrong with you in a way because you're not asking with enough sincerity. There's something wrong with you if you're not getting the answers that you need. And I think people just need to recognize that. And no matter what it is, when you've got somebody telling you when you don't feel good about something or you're in distress, you're being harmed and you're speaking out about that and trying to address that with someone, and they say, well, there's something wrong with you, I think it was really liberating for me.

Kristy Kimball [01:13:26] Years ago, a dear friend, finally, he was the first person to say, you know, there might not be something wrong with you. There might be something wrong with this institution and what they're telling you. And that's a really liberating moment. But there's language in this statement that's troubling because it's pointing the finger back at that individual saying, there's something wrong with you if you don't feel good about this. And I think that's really wrong.

John Dehlin [01:13:50] Yeah. And by the way, the BITE model stands for behavior, information, thoughts and emotion. And each one has a set of criteria under emotion. One of the actual explicit criteria of a cult is make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leaders or the group's fault. It's just classic control that isn't useful. All right, well, we have spectacularly failed in wrapping up within an hour. But an hour 14 still is probably a land speed record for Mormon stories podcast. What I want to do before we end, first of all, I just want to make a quick shout out. We do not want this panel to be sort of an echo chamber.

John Dehlin [01:14:34] We want it to be a diverse panel. We want straight people, we want LGBT people, we want women, we want men, we want people of color. We want this to be diverse. But we also want it to be diverse in terms of church participation and faith. So if there is a really resilient, confident, thoughtful, believing or active Mormon that wants to be a part of our rotating panel or several, we do want to invite you to write us@mormonstoriesmail.com and we'll vet you. And if we can find a really good person who's not going to just kind of be a strong person, but instead is going to be a credible, legitimate contributor, we just really want to invite people to volunteer themselves because we want this to be a diverse and representative but lively and entertaining panel.

John Dehlin [01:15:28] Now, to close, I just want to give everyone a chance to give a final thought. I didn't give you guys preparation for this, so I'm going to stall and I'm just going to ask you to give a closing thought. You can give a shout out. You can point people to a new story, to a resource, to a charity, to an event, whatever it is you want to give a shout out to, I'll just give mine. I did recently on MormonFaithCrisis.com which is a website I've been putting together. I've mentioned this before, but I did an assessment of the Mormon Church using Stephen Hasson's bite model for cults.

John Dehlin [01:16:02] It's not ever useful to tell someone who's in an organization that they're in a cult or to call the organization a cult. So I don't recommend that. But for people processing a faith crisis, understanding the techniques of cults can be very helpful in helping them see how maybe they've been conditioned in unhealthy ways. And I also want to give a shout out to the documentary Wild, Wild country. If you want a phenomenal documentary, six hours long, about Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and the cult that he established in the early 80s in Oregon. It's one of the best six hours you'll ever spend television. So that's my shout out. Tim, do you want to give a quick shout out to close?

Tim Coray [01:16:41] Yeah. I watched the press conference between President Nelson and the leaders of the NAACP today, and I thought that there was a good message in there of bridge building and being united in common interests and just loving, loving our neighbors. And so while I'm at times critical of what I see the church has done or might be doing, I do want to acknowledge that there are at times efforts made to reconcile. And even if it's not exactly what we would like it to be like or sound like or be an apology, bridge building should always be acknowledged. And I appreciated that today.

John Dehlin [01:17:29] All right, thanks, Tim. John Hamer you want to give us a final shout out or thought?

John Hamer [01:17:34] Yeah, I do. If anybody is around in Eastern North America, what we've been talking about right now is almost all of these topics. This is what we're talking about tomorrow or sorry, Saturday at Sunstone Toronto. These discussions continue with love to have you come and participate. You can find out our whole program presenters@sunstonetoronto.com there's plenty of space, so we'd love to have you come join us. And if you're not able to, I'll also see you at the main Sunstone in Salt Lake this summer. So I'm looking forward to seeing you all.

John Dehlin [01:18:09] John, feel free to post a link to that Sunstone announcement in our comments here and then maybe give it to Tim and he can put it in our show notes.

John Hamer [01:18:18] Perfect.

John Dehlin [01:18:20] But we, we, we love you, John Hamer, we're so glad you're here and we hope you'll come back often for Mormon News Podcast. Christy Kimball, what's your final comment or thought or inspirational moment?

Kristy Kimball [01:18:34] I'll try and pull one out, but I think for me it's just, you know, I hope that people understand that I don't think that anybody on this panel, certainly me, I would never want anyone to think that I was being, you know, necessarily critical of anyone or anything in a, in a really malicious way. But I think what's important is that for all of us, I think every human being has an obligation to try and move the needle forward when it comes to issues of social justice, equality, making the world a kinder, better place. And having conversations like this and talking about issues like this is what helps that move that needle forward.

Kristy Kimball [01:19:08] And so I hope that people can recognize that that's how progress, you know, comes along and that's how all institutions, all people make progress. And these conversations certainly are part of that process and getting the church to reconsider, consider and think about issues in which they need to really, you know, make some changes and make some policy. Policy moves.

John Dehlin [01:19:27] I love it. Well, Christy, it's been so good to have you on Mormon News podcast and we're really glad you joined us and hope you'll come back.

Kristy Kimball [01:19:34] Thank you, Tim.

John Dehlin [01:19:36] Any news, any business matters before we close out?

Tim Coray [01:19:41] We are working on a website that we'll have up and running pretty soon where we will post these episodes and

John Dehlin [01:19:48] in a podcast feed. Right.

Tim Coray [01:19:50] In a podcast feed and show notes. So look for that shortly. We'll probably promote that on the Open Stories foundation website and through Mormon Stories as well. And we're always interested in tips. If you've got a heads up that you think we ought to have for a news story, please let us know and we might be able to include it in the future.

John Dehlin [01:20:12] Yeah, feel free to send tips to mormonnewsmail.com Again, if you or someone you know is a believing, active member who is resilient and intelligent and thoughtful, we'd love to include them in our panel. If you've got other ideas for panelists, we want to hear it. And if you just like this format, or if you don't, if you think this pollutes and disrupts the Mormon Stories Podcast feed, you can tell us that. But if you also, if you like this format, please let us know. And we just want to thank all our listeners who joined us live and gave us commentary. It's just always so nice to have you joined us today.

John Dehlin [01:20:52] So thanks to everyone. Again, thanks to our panelists, thanks to our listeners, thanks to our supporters of Mormon Stories. If you like this type of programming, Please go to MormonStories.org make a recurring regular donation. 10, 20, 50, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford. It's tax deductible. It goes towards the mission of our organization. It's tax equipped in the United States and we're here to help make the world a better place for Mormons, liberal Mormons, post Mormons, all types of Mormons.

John Dehlin [01:21:20] So please support us. And thanks to everyone who made makes this possible. All right, everyone, you guys take care and we'll look forward to seeing you again next Thursday for another episode of Mormon News Podcast. Take care everybody.

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.