Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Co-hosts: Carah Burrell, Gerardo Sumano
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Welcome and Show Introduction
Carah Burrell [00:00:04] Welcome to Mormon Scoops with your Mormon Scoops host, me, Carah Brell, and your other Mormon Scoops co host, John De Lynn.
John Dehlin [00:00:14] Hi, guys.
Carah Burrell [00:00:15] And your other Mormon Scoops co host, Gerardo Samano. Tonight's top stories for you from the world of Mormonism. We have the BYU Black Student Union confronts Brad Wilcox. We want to talk about what they said, what they didn't do, because there are some people speculating. We're going to get into that BYU forces an end to gender affirming voice care. We're going to talk about what that means, what it means for BYU's accreditation maybe in the future. And then we also have kind of a leaked video from a Ksville, Utah devotional for sisters featuring Mormon Apostle Elder Renlund, his wife, some other women that are in different leadership positions in the LDS Church.
Carah Burrell [00:00:57] We're going to talk about the good, the bad of the things they went into. Show a couple clips, make it light hearted, make it fun. So thanks everyone for joining us. Thank you to John. Thanks, Gerardo. And without further ado, let's get into it.
John Dehlin [00:01:09] All right, everyone. Hey, thanks, Carah. This is fun. We're trying this new setup for those watching visually. We are trying to use our Studio 2, which we use traditionally to do in person, live Mormon Stories interviews. We're trying to do Mormon Scoops through our studio. And we've officially added Gerardo to our first presidency of Mormon Scoops. Gerardo.
Gerardo Sumano [00:01:34] Hey, John. Hey, Carah.
John Dehlin [00:01:36] Your audio and lighting looks fantastic.
Gerardo Sumano [00:01:40] Thank you. Thank you. I'm, I'm pretty excited of being here. I'm usually at home, my home studio. It's nice being in the Mormon Stories studio again.
John Dehlin [00:01:52] Yeah. And I like the idea of a first presidency. And Carah, I'm, I'm, I think your president, you're your prophet, you're president of our first presidency.
Carah Burrell [00:01:59] And that's why I get to dictate what the theme song is going to be, which is. I'm just trying to cut costs here at Mormon Stories. We don't need to hire any musicians. It's all right here.
John Dehlin [00:02:09] And then, Gerardo, you're your first president. I'm going to be the counselor. First counselor. And I'm going to be second counselor. Is that okay?
Gerardo Sumano [00:02:17] Sounds good.
John Dehlin [00:02:17] All right. All right. Now that we've got the hierarchy established, what we're going to do?
Guest [00:02:22] What?
John Dehlin [00:02:23] You know, we're just playing with different formatting. We're playing with different video and audio options. And yeah, we're trying out different things. And so what we're going to do today Also we're going to welcome Jen. Jen's behind the scenes helping to moderate comments. Jen, we love you. She helps us in so many ways. Anyway, what we're going to do, we're going to start out before we hit the main stories, we have a feature that we're going to try and do called Kitty Cones that Carah, that was your name, is that right?
Carah Burrell [00:02:50] Yeah, I'm just running with the scoops theme. I'm like scoops, those are full grown adult like topics for the news story. And if we just want to sprinkle in other things that's been happening in the news, those are the Kitty Cones. What do we got, John?
Kitty Cones: Missionaries Evacuated from Ukraine
John Dehlin [00:03:02] All right, so for our Kitty Cones today, these are just a few news stories that we think are worth mentioning at least briefly. The first one, Carrie, you kind of felt like it was important to mention this that, that Mormon missionaries have been evacuated from Ukraine. So Carah, why did you feel like that was other than it being like the global news story of the world right now, why did you feel like that was important to mention?
Carah Burrell [00:03:25] Oh, I just wanted to see if it was something everyone else was interested in, if the missionaries are okay and what the status of the church is in Ukraine. And so if you have anything you want to add to that, we're going to be highlighting comments throughout the program. I can throw your comment up there even if it's not a super chat. So if you have any more information, maybe you know someone who is serving in Ukraine, we can throw that up there. And are we also making this a call in show towards the end?
John Dehlin [00:03:49] Well that's a great point. We are. So we are going to be adding to the description a way to join us in Streamyard once we get to that point. So for those of you who want to join us to add comments, to add criticisms, to add color will be, will be the second half of the show will be Collins video Collins. So we look forward to that.
Carah Burrell [00:04:09] Yeah, everyone's really like that. So I've loved it. All right, what else we got?
John Dehlin [00:04:13] Okay, so, so yeah, not, you know, not to be about this Ukraine thing. Like I don't know, I, I, I guess some people would say this is the type of and, and our goal, I should say this, our tone goal. We got a lot of feedback on Mormon Scoops about tone. Some loved it, probably the best, maybe 90% said they really loved it on
Carah Burrell [00:04:36] the community tab of YouTube and they said, we asked was it too irreverent? Not irreverent enough. Like 70 said just right. Amounts of spice. Some people wanted more spice, and only a few people said I. Caliente. No, no.
Guest 2 [00:04:52] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:04:52] But.
John Dehlin [00:04:52] But also a lot. You know, if I'm trying to deep dig down deep in my soul and make sure that Mormon stories doesn't get lost in a chase for views or revenue or whatever, I. You know, one of the hallmarks of Mormon stories traditionally has been that we've tried to stay as neutral as possible. We've tried to stay respectful so that we don't operate in an echo chamber and so that even faithful or orthodox or believing members can feel, quote, safe enough to. If they're at least questioning or courageous, can feel safe enough to listen. So that's. That's where I think all three of us want to keep Mormon stories and Mormon scoops. Is that. Would you agree, Gerardo, do you have thoughts about that?
Gerardo Sumano [00:05:38] No, I totally agree with it. Yeah. I think we add a lot of value to. Not only to our ex Mormon community, but also to new people who might start listening to the program for the very first time if we can just keep a balanced conversation.
John Dehlin [00:05:55] Yeah. Yeah. Carrie, do you have anything to add?
Carah Burrell [00:05:58] No. I will therefore be not talking. Just kidding.
John Dehlin [00:06:03] No. We love you for your.
Guest [00:06:05] What we're.
John Dehlin [00:06:06] What we promised each other, we do off screen is if one of us gets too spicy, the other two are going to drop into devil's advocate kind of faithful mode and press the other one. Is that fair? Gerard, are you okay with that?
Guest 3 [00:06:16] Yep.
Gerardo Sumano [00:06:16] I love that.
John Dehlin [00:06:17] And Carah.
Carah Burrell [00:06:18] Yeah.
Guest 4 [00:06:18] All right.
Carah Burrell [00:06:19] I love putting on, like, my Mormon thinking cap and reverting to three years ago and being like, I actually believe something completely opposite. So I'll. Any opportunity to fight with you, John, Take that.
John Dehlin [00:06:30] Yeah. So with this. With this Mormon missionary thing, I think that there might be some critics of the church or even progressive or post Mormons that would say, man, wouldn't this be a good opportunity for a profit seer revelator to kind of see ahead of a potential war? Is that. What do you guys think? Is that expecting too much? Is that unrealistic? Is that even relevant?
Gerardo Sumano [00:06:50] Actually, I was just thinking about. So I was telling you earlier that my mission president. Well, there was two messages combined today. As some of you know, my. My dad was called as a bishop recently and he copied and pasted on. On our family group just kind of like a letter that he wrote to the Word.
Gerardo Sumano [00:07:13] And one of the points that he was mentioning, you know, it's about the calamities that are gonna happen before Jesus comes again. And I. I actually was just Thinking how, I mean, some of us, some ex Mormons, including, like, people that are just experiencing a faith crisis. This might be kind of like, even. Even if they stop believing in the church, there's still some, you know, programming in our psyche about fear, about, like, you know, is it. What. What if it's. This is all true?
Gerardo Sumano [00:07:47] You know, and then that, again, got combined with a message that my mission president sent me. So I'm just thinking right now, is it something that we maybe would want to just talk about briefly? If some. Some of our listeners are just feeling some, I don't know, PTSD about, you know, like, things that are happening and how the church has talked about it and used this rhetoric of war and rumors are war you to incite fear. Does that make sense?
John Dehlin [00:08:23] Let me see if I understand what you're saying. You're basically saying that if. If the New Testament mentions wars and rumors of wars as a sign of the times, that when a war actually starts to break out, people like Julie Rowe and, you know, End of Timers preppers start feeling agitated that maybe we're getting close to the end.
Gerardo Sumano [00:08:45] Yeah. Well. And then also, like, as exmor. Me personally as an ex Mormon, and I don't believe in the church anymore, obviously, like, I don't believe the basic tenets of the church, but in some way, like, psychologically, there's still some, like, little voice in my head, you know, just reminding me about this. Stories that I was told when I was a believing member.
John Dehlin [00:09:09] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:09:11] So I don't know.
John Dehlin [00:09:12] Huh. Carried everything to.
Carah Burrell [00:09:15] About responsible rumors of wars. Yeah, that's kind of like the old, like, throw a dart at the wall and, like, you'll hit everything of, like, there's always wars going on. There's always rumors of wars.
John Dehlin [00:09:27] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:09:28] It's like if I had to write a prophecy that made me sound like a prophet, the number 1:1, I'd be like, people are gonna fight and not get along. Bingo. Prophecy fulfilled.
John Dehlin [00:09:38] Humans will die. The sun will rise. The rooster will crow.
Carah Burrell [00:09:41] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:09:41] Earthquakes and wars happen every year.
Gerardo Sumano [00:09:43] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:09:44] So, I mean. Yeah, you're. You're right. It's just. It's so ubiquitous. What is there any value to it?
Carah Burrell [00:09:49] But then on the other side of it, same thing happened during COVID where people were being called into areas that they would have to soon evacuate and move around. So anyone who's been called to Ukraine in the last few months, it makes me wonder, was that actually, like, a prophetic calling of that's where God was trying to send them, if now they're being reassigned. And then further questions about what is the prophet going to do? Are we going to have a fast, Are we going to send humanitarian aid?
Guest 3 [00:10:13] Right.
Carah Burrell [00:10:14] But I was looking at like the faithful, you know, tweets and subreddits and some people think that this means that if Russia annexes Ukraine, oh gosh. That will fulfill a prophecy that Russia will one day have a temple.
Guest 5 [00:10:28] So.
Gerardo Sumano [00:10:29] Yeah, isn't that interesting how how high demand religions sometimes use what's happening in the world, like Covid or, or war and use it to instate fear on their members?
John Dehlin [00:10:41] Yeah, I love a comment from one of our, one of our listeners. Yeah, it's Jonathan Sawyer. He writes Gerardo. I grew up with the major end of the world rhetoric, so I hear what you're saying. Appreciate you bringing that up. So I think he's a Joe's witness. So anyway. Okay, well, that's the first. That's the first little kitty cone. Is that what it's called? Carah Kitty cone. The second is kind of exciting. What's that? Trademark?
Carah Burrell [00:11:10] Do I need to trademark that?
John Dehlin [00:11:10] Yeah, trademark.
Guest 2 [00:11:11] That's. All right.
Under the Banner of Heaven Series Discussion
John Dehlin [00:11:12] The second little bit of news is that there's a, there's a new movie or series coming out on Hulu based on Jon Krakauer's book Under the Banner of Heaven. And it's going to be apparently a star starring Spider man himself, Andrew Garfield. And this is, you know, this book, under the Banner of Heaven is one that I read back when I had my faith crisis working at Microsoft. Jon Krakauer wrote Into Thin Air and Into the Wild. One book about climbing Mount Everest, one book about that kid that goes to Alaska, lives alone and ends up dying. But he also wrote this book called under the Banner of Heaven and it's about, I think it's about the Lafferty brothers and some murders that took place, I think including a pregnant woman getting killed.
John Dehlin [00:11:59] And it, it basically just, it takes, it talks about Joseph Smith and all his prophecies and polygamy and stuff. And then it talks about the implications of believing Joseph Smith's teachings and how some of these fundamentalist offshoots can, can end up doing some pretty horrific things in the name of Joseph Smith, like Warren Jeffs. And then it asks the question, what's the difference between Joseph Smith and Warren Jeffs or the Lafferty brothers? So we thought it would be fun to just go ahead and play the clip. It's a one minute clip. For those of you just listening on the Mormon Stories podcast podcast feed, you'll have to bear with one minute of hearing the audio of this trailer, but not actually seeing it. So please forgive us for that.
Carah Burrell [00:12:41] Forward 15 like second button is also at your disposal. We won't be offended.
John Dehlin [00:12:45] Yeah, we won't. So here's the Here is the trailer to under the Banner of Heaven.
▶ Video Clip 1Video Clip 1 [00:12:55] This stays between us.
Video Clip 1 [00:12:59] This case I'm working on is a double murder. So far, what we've found isn't pointing outward.
Video Clip 1 [00:13:08] The evidence points to things and to
Video Clip 1 [00:13:11] beliefs that I've only ever heard whisperings about.
Video Clip 1 [00:13:34] I wonder
Video Clip 1 [00:13:37] how something so horrific
Video Clip 1 [00:13:41] could
Video Clip 1 [00:13:42] have come to pass.
Video Clip 1 [00:13:50] Foreign
John Dehlin [00:13:53] it's also probably worth mentioning that Dustin Lance Black, I think, is involved in that movie. And I think he did the movie Milk about Harvey Milk. Anyway, people are, people are kind of excited about that series. It's going to be on Hulu, I believe. And check it out. When it airs, I think it's going to be epic. You guys have any reactions to that?
Guest 3 [00:14:15] Carah?
Carah Burrell [00:14:15] Yeah, it looks good. I don't watch anything except for Mormon Scoops Every Thursday at 7pm Other than other than this program coming, I think everyone should check out that one.
John Dehlin [00:14:23] That's a good one. Rodo, anything you want to add?
Gerardo Sumano [00:14:26] I. It was, it was my first time watching it. It's pretty interesting now. I'm excited about it.
John Dehlin [00:14:32] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:14:33] I'm excited about it. Pretty cool how they had a scene where they're blessing a baby.
John Dehlin [00:14:41] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:14:41] Yeah. I think it looks like they're doing a scene of like washing and anointings in the temple too.
Gerardo Sumano [00:14:45] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:14:46] So I wonder if it'll kind of be like showing the temple ceremony what that would happen to.
Gerardo Sumano [00:14:53] It will be the teaser to the new Elder Bedner video of the temple ceremony.
Carah Burrell [00:14:58] Wow. The church's production quality is really up. That's their new. Yeah. Temple prep class.
Guest 3 [00:15:04] Cool.
Guest 2 [00:15:04] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:15:04] All right.
John Dehlin [00:15:06] I'm. I want to. From a viewer, Frederick Willis writes. Hey friends, the episode that aired earlier today was the best Mormon stories podcast episode I can recall in a long time. Really well done. What care do you want to tell? You want to tell listeners what and viewers what Frederick's talking about?
Guest 2 [00:15:22] Sure.
Carah Burrell [00:15:23] I was like trying to hype it up on all of the social media platforms too, because I think it's so important. From the moment they sat down, it was Cami and Colby Reddish, who are a couple from an Idaho ward who were faithful believing Latter Day Saints up until just a few, I would say even weeks ago, maybe months ago, just blessed the their oldest child, very faithful believing people with a concern for children. And when they found out that their bishop had been removed as a serving bishop with no thank you, that people started to talk in the ward. And it turns out that he was a trigger warning a child molester.
Carah Burrell [00:16:00] And the ward in the state kept it very, very hush hush. And as they were trying to say, can we acknowledge this? Can we talk about this? Can we see if there's any other victims in the ward, Their stake president and the different leaders in the ward really shut down and any kind of talk or discussion while they were just trying to have the children of the stakes best interest at heart. So it's a really heartbreaking story of a couple who are trying to do their best by the children in their stake and being thwarted from different ward members being told some of the worst things about their intentions when they were trying to do their best.
Carah Burrell [00:16:31] So it's a really good inside look at how systemic problems are really, really tough for people to at a ward level address without higher people in leadership wanting to come to the table and reform things. And so. And then Part two was going to air tomorrow about what that did to their faith and their faith journey from that point on. So it's a huge, it's a really, really important one look that looks in like to the conformity to like the authority and the leadership and the patriarchy. I can't recommend it highly enough.
Listener Stories and Early-Return Missionaries
John Dehlin [00:17:05] All right. Yeah. Thanks to those who called that out and are expressing support. We are proud of that episode. Hara.
Gerardo Sumano [00:17:12] I watched it the other night and I kept messaging John about it saying like, oh my. My jaw keep. Kept dropping. It was, it was insane. What was like the story of what was going on at the part where
John Dehlin [00:17:27] the, where the stake president testifies to the person complaining about the bishop being called as a child sexual abuser and the stake president saying, I have a testimony that God.
Guest 6 [00:17:39] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:17:40] Told me to call him as bishop even though he was a child molester.
Gerardo Sumano [00:17:43] Yeah, yeah.
John Dehlin [00:17:44] He bore witness of that.
Gerardo Sumano [00:17:45] Yeah. I was telling you. Well, because the problem is that he doesn't only throw himself under the bus, he would throw the whole first presidency under the bus. Because I was telling you that. Well, first of all, stake presidency usually don't work the same as bishops. Usually the two counselors in most decisions, especially big ones like calling a bishop have almost the same voice and power as the state president.
John Dehlin [00:18:14] Veto rights.
Guest 3 [00:18:15] Right, right.
Gerardo Sumano [00:18:15] So they would all have to be in agreement. So. So you would have to say that three stake presidency members were wrong about this. And then, and then once they decide on the name, they send it to the First Presidency and the First Presidency praise on the name, and then they send a response. I was telling John that it's not uncommon for the First Presidency to reject names. Like, I know my dad told us several times when he was on the Stake presidency that he had several names rejected by the First Presidency to become bishops. So the fact, the fact that the First Presidency prays over the name and you know, they called it child molester, that's pretty shocking, right?
John Dehlin [00:19:00] What's, what's not shocking is that Larry Davidson says Gerardo has the best hair in Mormonism. And I will fight anyone who disagrees. Well, thank you. Thanks, Larry, Larry, for that, for that support Gerardo for sure. Yeah, yeah. It's. It's really. Mormons keep throwing God under the bus. So God is going to call a child molester as, as a bishop for his wise purposes. Mormons, please stop. Please try to stop throwing God under the bus. It really ruins God for so many people. That's why over half of ex Mormons become atheist or agnostics. Because I think the Mormon God ends up being kind of a jerk. Caramel being too harsh.
Carah Burrell [00:19:46] You're not representing my atheism. Maybe somebody else. I was in love with Jesus. I was like, whatever the Mormon God is, that is this kind of like D bag. I'm fine. Some people can worship him. I never did worship that guy. I was like, our leaders are very much imperfect. My. My lack of God belief comes from a different source.
John Dehlin [00:20:04] Okay. All right. Well, our next. Our next kitty cone is a note from the field. So I love. One of the things I love most about our job is that we get tips from people out in the field. And so one of the features of our kitty cones is going to be just sharing some of these tips. And I got a really cool tip from someone outside of Utah that apparently is in the same ward as a daughter of a current Mormon apostle and a son in law.
John Dehlin [00:20:31] And, and this, this viewer listener wanted to share the following. He wrote to me. John, we've recently had three missionaries come home early. Leaders in the ward and stake of those missionaries claim it was for mental health reasons. I personally know the families and they have told me the real reason these missionaries came home early was because they no longer believed in the church. For those of us who really suffer a mental health condition, this is insulting. Quote, let's blame anxiety and depression instead of addressing the real issues. I think this is referring to our recent Our Last Mormon scoops about the insider who leaked to us that like a third of the missionaries in the stake are coming home early.
John Dehlin [00:21:14] So this is someone who's saying, you know, his ward is reflecting the same sort of missionary attrition. Any, anything you guys have to say about blaming, blaming missionaries, losing their testimony on anxiety and depression.
Gerardo Sumano [00:21:28] I mean it could, I mean a faith crisis can definitely trigger depression and anxiety.
Carah Burrell [00:21:32] Living with cognitive dissonance, definitely. Yeah, trigger all of that as well. But yeah, that just shows that they, they'll never actually be able to say how many people are in faith crisis. Yeah, they want to sweep that under the rug. They want to blame. But that, that people are having a problem with the truth claims of the church. The last thing that they actually really want to acknowledge on a stage, I
Gerardo Sumano [00:21:52] think in real Mormon theology doesn't really allow for the loss of faith or loss of a testimony based on facts.
Carah Burrell [00:21:59] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [00:22:00] And my, my mission president remind me of that. Like basically his message was because so what happened? I posted, I finally responded to one of his posts on, on the mission Facebook group and I just posted kind of like my main reasons why I stopped believing. So his response to me was like, basically none of those are valid because you had a testimony and you felt the spirit and blah, blah, blah. So I mean, I kind of understand why they would say that faith crises are not a real reason to lose faith or you know, or information are not real reason because I mean they believe that feelings are way more important than facts.
John Dehlin [00:22:43] Right.
Carah Burrell [00:22:43] Yeah. And it says a lot of somebody is like completely enveloped in the service of the Lord. You're doing nothing. But you know, you're, you're a missionary and you're probably not outstanding in the world. You're like, you've got the mantle of being a missionary for the Lord. If that's, that sends a really bad, bad signal to people around that if somebody is doing the work of the Lord and they still are just like, I cannot with these truth claims anymore. I cannot teach something I do not believe in out of my own conscience. Like if somebody that just seems like it would be an obvious sign of somebody being very consistent with their values and not the opposite. As opposed to somebody who's just like a high school student that chooses to fall away from the church or something, you know?
Gerardo Sumano [00:23:21] Yeah, that's true.
Guest 3 [00:23:22] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:23:23] Well, if that weren't cool enough, there's more. So this, this tipster wrote in another thing is that in our ward there's a couple, they are empty nesters and she is the daughter of a current apostle. Neither of them have Held recommends for some time the couple, not the apostle father. So I mean that they're basically saying that at least one daughter and son in law of a current Mormon apostle is. Is, you know, at least not holding a temple recommend or probably not believing or worthy. One of the two goes on to write, I heard with my own ears the son claim that the change to eliminate.
John Dehlin [00:24:02] I'm assuming this is the son in law. The son in law claimed that the change to eliminate the use of Mormon was an attempt to rebrand the church as there is too much negative association with the term Mormon. He said that his father in law, the current apostle, basically confirmed this when confronted about the change.
John Dehlin [00:24:21] He says, I don't want to give too much information, but his family are very well known and have donated a lot to the church. I don't know if we can guess who that would be, but it continues.
Carah Burrell [00:24:29] Name a wealthy Mormon family apostle.
John Dehlin [00:24:32] Right. Then it goes on. This occurred in an elders quorum meeting with the week after the announcement. And I have only seen him at church maybe two times since then. Just a few FYIs for you coming from an active but non believer. Also, this is not in Utah. So, you know, we've, we've theorized on Mormon stories that, you know, the podcast Mormon stories, you know, Mormon think. You know, so many different social media platforms or podcasts or websites have kind of come to dominate the use of the term Mormon in search engine optimization or SEO. So the church got tired of losing the SEO battle to the word Mormon.
John Dehlin [00:25:17] Plus, I think that just they did polling and just found that the term Mormon is really unpopular, that Mormons are generally unpopular. So this is basically someone confirming through an apostle that they literally abandoned the term, not because it's a victory for Satan, but because of marketing and branding reasons. Is that a surprise? Not a surprise.
Carah Burrell [00:25:38] Not a surprise.
Gerardo Sumano [00:25:39] Not a surprise.
Quick Scoops: Church Name, Leader Salaries, and Upcoming Conference
John Dehlin [00:25:39] Okay.
Guest 7 [00:25:41] All right.
Gerardo Sumano [00:25:41] Well, and then also we should say, I mean, we know that President Nelson has had this idea of the name of the church, you know, not being Mormon for, for a long, long time.
Carah Burrell [00:25:52] So it's been a pet peeve.
Guest 3 [00:25:54] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:25:54] When he got into power, Wendy Nelson's like, he's been. This has been on his mind for a long time. He's like quiet. Supposed to be a revelation.
Guest 2 [00:26:02] Correct.
John Dehlin [00:26:02] Yeah. All right, Well, I love to get confirmation of our theories. Sometimes. The. The next one quickly. The next kitty cone is. Is another note from the field. This is one that I got directly. I spoke to someone who has been directly involved in providing mortgages to Mormon first presidency Members and or apostles. And the intelligence that I got from them was that Mormon apostles are reported to make around 300k a year in total income because they had to determine average annual income to be able to assess what the mortgage, you know, to be able to help an apostle qualify for a loan. So you know, you hear that a lot. We know that like rank and file general authorities make at least 120k just in salary, not to mention benefits.
Gerardo Sumano [00:26:57] Oh, and that was like years, that was years ago.
John Dehlin [00:26:59] Yeah. And now we're hearing, and this is alleged, this is reported, this is not confirmed. For those of you who want to know what Mormon apostles make, we're getting reports that it's leased around 300k. And that's not counting the million dollar signing bonus that allegedly or reportedly through Grant Palmer and his sources, which was in emeritus first quorum of the 70 presidency member who passed away recently. We're told that Mormon apostles get a million dollar signing bonus when they become apostles. Did you know that, Carah?
Carah Burrell [00:27:36] I didn't know that. Do you think, audience, do you guys think that's too much or too little for people like Holland who are sifting the wheat from the tears with his
John Dehlin [00:27:43] musket talk like there's throwing it down care just threw down.
Carah Burrell [00:27:48] Yeah, that's some, that's some hard work. Sifting over. That's a manual labor.
Gerardo Sumano [00:27:54] But I've heard about a lot of believing Mormons say that a lot of these apostles had careers.
Guest 3 [00:28:00] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [00:28:01] Like before and yeah, we're really successful and they're entitled to that.
John Dehlin [00:28:08] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:28:08] Generous stipend or no.
John Dehlin [00:28:12] I mean if you, if you look at it from a corporate perspective, this is a 3,400 billion dollar corporation and it's literally corporation and the CEOs or the know, the C level executives of any 3,400 billion dollars corporation are going to make a lot more than that. So you could, you could probably argue from a corporation standpoint that they're underpaid.
Gerardo Sumano [00:28:34] Yeah, yeah,
John Dehlin [00:28:37] go ahead.
Carah Burrell [00:28:37] I was just going to say somebody said maybe it's, you know, dirty silence money. Do you think that people become church broke at a certain point and they rely on the church's income and then they can't, you know, stand up against the authority because at some point you become so ingratiated into this like the upper echelons of the church that if that is now your income source, you're not going to do anything to speak out against problematic things that you see. Whereas maybe if it was, you had a chance to get out of it there's no such thing as like saying, I don't agree with somebody else in the quorum and then being. Being ousted. Like, it really adds to this whole problem of like the authoritarianism of the top echelons, the church. I would argue that just adding kind of money into it makes you wonder if change will ever actually occur.
Gerardo Sumano [00:29:22] And that there's also the. I don't know why in Latin America, in Mexico, I always heard this theory or not theory. We were taught about this as a fact. And in fact, my dad just confirmed this just recently that general authorities that are paid like apostles, when they get called as apostles, they surrender all their assets and put them in the name of the church. And then. And then after that, they. They start getting kind of like a monthly stipend. I mean, we know that's not true at all because Stevenson, you know, he holds businesses and. And now it's. They're breaking the policy and letting him hold assets that in companies. We know it's not true, but I don't know why that goes around in Latin America a lot.
John Dehlin [00:30:14] I mean, we just. I think it would be great if the church could just be transparent in its finances.
Gerardo Sumano [00:30:19] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:30:19] And just be open and honest about it. But. Yeah. Grant Palmer mentioned that term church broke, which meant that they were so beholden to the church at the point of becoming an apostle, they could never leave it or. Or become whistleblowers because they're. Their income and pensions just would all be at stake. I think that again, if we look at it from a corporate perspective, maybe they're underpaid. But if we look at it from a New Testament perspective, didn't Jesus say to his apostles, sell everything and just follow me and take no thought for the morrow kind of stuff? So it seems inconsistent with what Jesus told us.
Gerardo Sumano [00:31:00] It seems like we want to compare the apostles to the scripture apostles. Whenever the scripture apostles made mistakes and say, hey, look at Peter, he made a mistake.
Guest [00:31:10] And.
Gerardo Sumano [00:31:11] And so our apostles can make mistakes, but they don't want to compare them when it comes to, like, how they lived.
Guest 8 [00:31:18] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:31:18] Without person script.
Guest 3 [00:31:20] Right, right.
John Dehlin [00:31:22] All right, last. I think the last mini scoop we have is just for you guys to know that there's a new conference coming up February 26, Saturday, 2 to 6pm called Rescuing the Restoration. And if you actually look at who's attending, it's. It's people like Matt Lohmeyer, who. We've had a Mormon Stories Denver snuffer. It's kind of like the resurrection of the. Kind of the prepper vibe. And yeah. So, Carrie, you said you'd love to attend that I would.
Carah Burrell [00:31:55] I went to the Book of Mormon evidence conference and I would love to go to any place and just talk to anybody.
John Dehlin [00:31:59] What do you guys think about the restoration? Needing a restoration? Like saving.
Gerardo Sumano [00:32:04] It needs saving, right? Isn't that what it's called? What's it called?
John Dehlin [00:32:07] It's called rescuing. Rescuing the rescuer. Like, I'll just say this for me, it was hard enough to think that God was the all powerful, all omniscient being. He sets up his one true church with Jesus and then it immediately falls into apostasy for another 1800 years. And then when it gets restored, it's restored to this really obscure church in upstate New York. And for then another 150 years, it has to fight and bleed and suffer just to reach like 5 or 6 million active members. And then according to snufferites and preppers, it again falls into apostasy. It needs to be restored again by like a bearded lawyer from Sandy named Emmer Snuffer and, and a prepper woman who's been excommunicated. You know, it's just at some point, like, it makes God look foolish. I think that's how I see it.
Guest 5 [00:33:03] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:33:04] I think a lot of members of the actual, like the church would agree that it's kind of foolish.
John Dehlin [00:33:11] Yeah, Carah, foolish. Not foolish.
Carah Burrell [00:33:13] I wasn't paying attention. I was reading the website because I wanted to, I wanted the listeners to actually know what we're describing. She's buying a ticket. I'm buying a ticket. Can I have your credit card? And yeah, because the, if you go to the website, it says, are you concerned about the direction the church is taking? Your church is taking. Is your religion changing so rapidly? It's becoming unrecognizable? And they're talking about in the smallest of like, progressive, like, teeny, tiny, little, like, left areas. They're not saying, is it unrecognizable? Like, like, oh my gosh, is it? Anyway, that's just kind of funny. So they're saying it's just unrecognizable. Do with you will with that.
John Dehlin [00:33:52] I mean, it's true. Would, would Joseph Smith recognize and endorse the modern Mormon Church? Maybe he would.
Gerardo Sumano [00:33:57] Probably not.
John Dehlin [00:33:58] He'd love, he'd probably love how rich it was. And powerful.
Gerardo Sumano [00:34:02] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:34:02] I mean, not to be cynical, but like, who doesn't love being rich and powerful? I mean, some people might not, but anyway, I, I, I, I guess, I guess the one thing is Worth noting is just that report again from the last Mormon scoops, where it was reported that the preppers and the anti vaxxers and the. And the Trumpers.
Carah Burrell [00:34:23] Some factions of. Some of that.
John Dehlin [00:34:25] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:34:26] Want to make sure.
John Dehlin [00:34:26] Yeah, yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:34:27] We don't think that everybody. These are generalizations because there's factions within them that are kind of grouped.
John Dehlin [00:34:32] Kenny, that basically politically conservative or religious fundamentalist disaffection far outweighs the disaffection for truth claims or LGBT issues or women's issues, those sort of things. So I imagine this conference is going to be well attended.
Guest 3 [00:34:50] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:34:51] So. So viewers, listeners, please, if any of you are. Are inclined, where is this conference? I'm guessing it's in Rexburg, but.
Carah Burrell [00:35:00] No, it's in.
John Dehlin [00:35:02] Where is it, Carah?
Carah Burrell [00:35:04] Oh, it is. It's in Meridian, Idaho.
John Dehlin [00:35:06] It's in Meridian, Idaho. I think that's Boise.
Gerardo Sumano [00:35:08] Yeah, Boise.
John Dehlin [00:35:08] I think that's Boise area. So if any of you are near Boise, Saturday, February 26th, please go there, attend the conference, record it all, send us the recordings. We want to know what's being said at this conference and. And let us know what's interesting. Is that all right?
Gerardo Sumano [00:35:23] Yeah.
BYU Black Student Union Confronts Brad Wilcox
John Dehlin [00:35:24] Okay, now it is time for the main event. The main topics for today. And the first topic is the BYU Black Student Union confronts Brad Wilcox. And we even have a photo here. Carah, this is kind of your story. Do you want to lead us through it a little bit and let us know what's going on and what you think?
Carah Burrell [00:35:42] Yeah. This photo popped up on Reddit and I can't see the name of the Redditor that because it's too small on my screen.
John Dehlin [00:35:48] It is Master Mahan Jr.
Carah Burrell [00:35:50] I want to give a shout out to the Redditor that posted this photo. And yeah, if you want to describe
John Dehlin [00:35:56] the photo for those who can't see
Carah Burrell [00:35:57] it, it is Brad Wilcox looking very sh.
John Dehlin [00:36:01] Shaken in a mask.
Carah Burrell [00:36:02] In a mask in front of his. What do you call it? Classroom, basically outside his classroom, holding a walkie talkie with two members of the BYU's Black Student Union. One's wearing like a beret and they're all just. Actually, they both are dressed all in black.
John Dehlin [00:36:20] Yeah. And the berets are significant. I'm old enough to remember the Black Power movement of the 60s and 70s and, you know, the Black Panthers and that sort of thing. And the beret is a symbol of Black power. So the fact that the Black Student Union at BYU is kind of organizing, wearing apparel that hearkens back to the Black Power movement, the Black Panther movement and that they're starting to organize. And there's an amazing TikTok channel. I wish I had the name.
Carah Burrell [00:36:46] The Black Menaces.
John Dehlin [00:36:47] The Black Menaces. Yeah. Yeah, Shout out to the black menaces. TikTok channel. And I think they probably have an Instagram channel, but we're. We're cheering them on, and please support them. Maybe in the show notes we can include links.
Carah Burrell [00:36:58] Yeah, definitely.
John Dehlin [00:36:59] To their. To their pages.
Guest 7 [00:37:01] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:37:01] Oh, so what did. What else did you want to say about.
Carah Burrell [00:37:04] And then if you want to just go to the video, I thought, who better than. I think it's the president of the Black Student Union. His name is Nate. We can just play the video of them talking about their confrontation with Brad Wilcox.
John Dehlin [00:37:18] Love it.
Guest 3 [00:37:18] Here you go.
Carah Burrell [00:37:19] Do it in Nate's words.
John Dehlin [00:37:20] Nate Bird. Is that right? That's what you have on the slide, Nate Bird.
Carah Burrell [00:37:24] Yep.
John Dehlin [00:37:25] Okay.
▶ Video Clip 2Video Clip 2 [00:37:25] So today, members of the Black Student Union dressed up in all black, and we, you know, to represent solidarity. And we went down to Brad Wilcox's class in the Jesse Knight Building. When we got there, we were met with security outside of his classroom door. We just wanted to go inside and sit down and kind of start a dialogue with him, but we were met with security at the door, and so we waited outside for his class to be over. So in total, we were there for, you know, about an hour and a half, two hours, waiting for his class to be done. We were in the hallway, and we talked with a gentleman who is Brad's boss. His first name is Sean. I forget his last name at the moment.
Video Clip 2 [00:38:07] I think it might be Hopkins.
Video Clip 2 [00:38:09] But we talked with him in the hallway. We voiced some of our concerns, some of our frustrations, and we also expressed that we were just there to have a dialogue, to talk with brother Wilcox and to help him understand some of the impact of his actions on this class. At the end, although he was very nervous and very worried about what we were going to do, I suppose we were able to talk with him and communicate with him that we just wanted to sit down and meet. He wasn't comfortable meeting at the time because he didn't want any of his. His. His words to be misconstrued.
Video Clip 2 [00:38:40] And so we sent him an email, and he and his office did respond, letting us know that they would get back to us. Us with the time that we could meet. And so we are currently waiting to hear back from them about that.
Video Clip 2 [00:38:51] But there have been some rumors going on, going around online from clearly prejudiced or racist individuals, whether they're consciously Racist or unconsciously racist doesn't matter. They have said that we were there trying to force our way in, that we were, you know, they, they have this perception that we were there. They in, in violence or in, you know, high energy, high emotions, what have you. But we were waiting calmly outside the door.
Video Clip 2 [00:39:18] We did not cause any disturbance and anyone is who was there can vouch for that. So before you believe what you see on the Internet from prejudiced racist individuals, please know that we did what we were supposed to do and we did what black people in this country have been doing for decades.
John Dehlin [00:39:38] Hi Carol. What, what are your initial reactions to that video?
Guest 7 [00:39:43] I.
Carah Burrell [00:39:44] My first instinct was to think about how like historically the way that black people, when they're asking for any kind of equality, something as simple as can we talk to you about that really racist thing? If you guys don't know. We obviously did an episode about it. It was all over the Internet a couple weeks ago about Brad Wilcox saying like, instead of saying why didn't blacks have the priesthood, why don't we ask a different question? Why did the whites not get it until such and such year? And something that obviously like black Latter Day Saints should be able to talk to their leaders about and have an actual honest dialogue and kind of root out racism even up to a systemic level of somebody who holds such a high leadership calling and is a professor at byu.
Carah Burrell [00:40:26] So like super huge thumbs up and kudos to to yeah, like you just said, like Nate said at the end of the video, doing what black people have historically done is trying to fight for their rights and having equality when it comes down to just the basic institution that they're trying to get an education from and making themselves feel safe. And while I think that's a great thing, it's unfortunate if people want, like he said, we're starting to create rumors and circulate things that come from a very like old long time established racist narrative that people just trying to fight for their rights are inherently, they're violent, they're pushy and that wasn't the case at all. And so I'm glad that he was able to speak to that.
John Dehlin [00:41:06] I thought I read somewhere that they notified Brad ahead of time that they would be appearing at the classroom to do so peaceably, just to dialogue. And the fact that security was called in response to them being notified that they're intent was to have a peaceful conversation for some was offensive because it was almost like, well if people of color are going to come talk then they must be have like you Said have violent intentions. And so we got to call security.
Carah Burrell [00:41:34] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:41:35] Did you hear that? Did you hear.
Carah Burrell [00:41:38] I didn't hear that necessarily. No. But it's okay if I highlight one comment real quick?
John Dehlin [00:41:42] Yeah, yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:41:43] Mo said, if Wilcox wants to talk about the issues, why is he so scared to talk about the issues? And, um, black people in this country, people who have ever always been marginalized, they have to be the ones who are always having to talk about the issue that they don't actually want to talk about. So Brad's the one who, who wanted to bring up the issue about like, the priesthood and the way that black people have been marginalized. And if Brad wasn't going to be able to do it in a kind, well rounded manner and actually respect people, then I think it is within the rights of people to, you know, show up to his classroom and say, hey, this issue affects us in every way possible.
Carah Burrell [00:42:22] And let's have, let's have a little discussion about it. So I think they did an incredibly brave thing and should not have any kind of negative consequences from it. That's my opinion.
John Dehlin [00:42:31] Yeah. A couple really good comments. One, one viewer writes, point of comparison, I'm white, and when I was at byu, I occasionally popped in on classes to sit with friends to see if I wanted to take a class. And I never had security stop me from mentoring. That's a good point. And then Keiko's confirming. Keiko Narita music. Yeah, security was called and that was upsetting to hear. Gerardo, did you want to add, add any, anything to that?
Gerardo Sumano [00:42:59] No, I, I, I think the video speaks for itself. Okay.
John Dehlin [00:43:02] Yeah. Carah, you had another slide that you included. Do you want to read it and talk about why you thought that was significant?
Carah Burrell [00:43:09] Yeah, I'm just trying to, you know, pass the mic to people that are actually in this group community. So this is on Reddit. I hope she doesn't mind that I'm sharing. This is from a girl named Taylor. That said, I'm still reeling from the effects of knowing that in preparation for a group of the blacks coming to have dialogue, that security was called as a preparation. At byu, we are seen as inherently violent. I'm tired. Written in all caps. Glad that they can protect one professor, but not students.
John Dehlin [00:43:37] And that's the dictatorship or Taylor Munlin. Right?
Carah Burrell [00:43:43] Yeah. So I don't know what the experience is to be, to be black. So I just wanted to get as many people that are actually affected by Brad's words, the mic that we can. So also we're going to try and make this a call in show if you're personally affected by the things that Brad said, whether because of the color of your skin or anything else. Let's try to add some more comments to the end of the show.
John Dehlin [00:44:07] And, and if any of you know any of the students from the. The Black Student Union at byu, we. We should reach out and see if any of them are. I mean, honestly, I would want. I wanted to reach out to them and invite them on Mormon Stories Podcast. I guess I'd be.
Carah Burrell [00:44:21] I have things in the works.
John Dehlin [00:44:22] Okay.
Carah Burrell [00:44:22] Don't you worry.
John Dehlin [00:44:23] I was just. I was worried that the BYU could kick them out of the university if they came on the podcast. But anyway, well, if. If. If any of you are part of the Black Student Union or are students of color@ BYU or you know someone who is, and you think that there might be anyone who wants to come on Mormon Stories and. Or it's safe to do so, we'd love to hear from you@mormonstoriesmail.com and Carah says she's got something in the works.
Carah Burrell [00:44:52] Yeah, you have our love and support.
John Dehlin [00:44:55] Yeah. Huge shout out of support to the Black Student Union and to. What's the name of the Instagram TikTok channel again? Black menaces.
Carah Burrell [00:45:04] Yeah, the black menaces on TikTok.
John Dehlin [00:45:05] All right.
Carah Burrell [00:45:06] Hilarious and a little bit sad as well, but they make some good content.
BYU Ends Gender-Affirming Voice Care for Trans Students
John Dehlin [00:45:11] Okay, the next topic for today is BYU forces end to gender affirming voice care for transgender students. And this has been a big story in the news the past. The past week or two.
Gerardo Sumano [00:45:27] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:45:28] It's been covered in Q Salt Lake Magazine and in the Salt Lake Tribune. I'm not sure if the Desert News covered it. No, Gerardo, you didn't. You didn't see it covered.
Gerardo Sumano [00:45:37] They did not.
John Dehlin [00:45:38] That's interesting.
Gerardo Sumano [00:45:39] As far as I know.
John Dehlin [00:45:40] Yeah. So I'll just give kind of a rundown. The byu. BYU has a department of Communication Disorders, and they have a speech and language clinic. And the way these clinics work. I worked in the clinic when I was getting my psychology doctorate. These clinics provide a community service to students and members of the community at a discounted rate. And what you get in return for your discounted payment or free payment is you're supporting the training of new graduate students. And so they're the speech and language pathologists at byu. Bachelor and master's level students that are training to become speech and language pathologists. And they work in this clinic, and they're supervi.
John Dehlin [00:46:27] By. Supervised by professors that are speech language pathologists. So that's how universities train new professionals. So byu, their, their Speech and language, their Department of Communication Disorders and the Speech and Language Clinic has been providing gender affirming voice care to at least three transgender students at BYU recently.
John Dehlin [00:46:54] These services are considered vital to the health and well being of transgender individuals. I'm not in any way an expert on transgender experience, but when, when, you know, there's this idea of passing that's often discussed, which is if you're a trans, if you're a trans female, for example, oftentimes your goal is to be able to pass as, as a non transgender female. And that would be both in your appearance and in your voice. And so voice becomes a very important part of your transition. And that would be the same thing for a trans male. And so, you know, we all know that, that both, whether it's it's transitioning or sometimes surgeries that may be involved.
John Dehlin [00:47:44] And of course, this type of voice therapy is associated with decreased anxiety, decreased depression, positive mental health. These are all just very important parts of supporting someone's transition, and they're considered to be vital. And of course, if you are going to become a speech and language pathologist out in the world, being able to provide these types of services to transgender individuals is one of the basic forms of speech and language pathology service that these professionals will provide.
John Dehlin [00:48:22] So to continue the story, recently, out of the blue, the BYU administration decided to cancel these gender affirming voice care services to these three transgender students. A spokesperson for BYU said that the students were made aware of other providers And I think two local providers include the University of Utah, Go Utes and Rocky Mountain University, and that the BYU offered to assist with the coordination between students and providers.
John Dehlin [00:48:57] I have it from a source close to this department that students and faculty were incredibly upset. They were so upset that for at least one full day, courses had to be canceled in the Department of Communication Disorders because the students were upset and the faculty were upset and everybody was just disturbed by this change. It is not known where the original complaint came from. Was it a graduate student that was a faithful, orthodox graduate student that was offended or disturbed that they had to provide speech and language?
Gerardo Sumano [00:49:36] Yeah, because these things are supposed to be confidential, right?
John Dehlin [00:49:40] Yeah, exactly.
Gerardo Sumano [00:49:42] So, like the transgender students were, are not out as transgender.
John Dehlin [00:49:46] Right. It's a violation of the HIPAA confidentiality that it's disclosed what, what, what a, what a client would be receiving.
Gerardo Sumano [00:49:56] So even the university finding out it's
John Dehlin [00:49:59] a problem, it's a violation of HIPAA laws from what I understand.
Gerardo Sumano [00:50:02] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:50:03] Yeah, Great point, Gerardo. So it's not known where the original complaint came from. Was it one of the graduate students or undergraduate students there? Was it a faculty member that was bothered? Who knows? Was it someone from the student body?
John Dehlin [00:50:18] It is assumed that the decision ultimately to cancel services was. Was approved by Kevin Worthen, the president of byu. I don't have a confirmation about that. It's not known whether the board of directors or even the quorum of the twelve Apostles were aware that this decision was made. I am told that the department is almost unanimously in support of providing these services and that the vast majority of the faculty in this department are outraged. I understand that some might even be considering, you know, resigning or transferring to other universities.
John Dehlin [00:50:54] I don't have confirmation of that, but that's a question. I think that's probably a safe assumption to make. And then. And then there's a really, you know, it's worth mentioning kind of what the Mormon Church's policy is with reference to transgender individuals.
John Dehlin [00:51:12] The Family Proclamation to the world says that gender is an essential characteristic of individual, premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose. So somehow some people interpret that to mean that. That a. A person who was assigned female at birth can't transition to male, or vice versa.
Gerardo Sumano [00:51:32] Elder Oaks clarified. Well said that that's the interpretation.
John Dehlin [00:51:37] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:51:37] On General Conference.
John Dehlin [00:51:38] But the proclamation doesn't specifically say that.
Guest 2 [00:51:40] No.
John Dehlin [00:51:41] So that was an oversight in the revelation. Revelation. If it was a revelation at all.
Gerardo Sumano [00:51:44] Well, Elder O received the revelation.
Guest 3 [00:51:47] Right.
John Dehlin [00:51:48] Which we know these days can be rescinded, like the November 2015 policy.
Guest [00:51:52] Right.
John Dehlin [00:51:53] You know, and even the. The proclamation on the family hasn't been canonized yet.
Gerardo Sumano [00:51:57] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:51:57] And there's a lot of apostles I hear that aren't in support of it being canonized. So this is always messy, right?
Gerardo Sumano [00:52:03] Yep.
Guest 2 [00:52:03] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:52:05] You know, today's. Today's revelation is tomorrow's antiquated opinion, you know, policy. Right.
Gerardo Sumano [00:52:12] Yeah. Cultural theories advance in the past.
John Dehlin [00:52:15] Yeah. Folklore, whatever it is. Anyway, the Church does counsel against sex reassignment surgery. The Church also counsels against social transitioning. And the Church defines social transitioning as changing dress or grooming or changing a name or pronouns to present oneself as other than his or her biological sex at birth. It is worth mentioning that speech therapy is not expressly listed at this time as part of the handbook's description on transitioning. So I would expect an update to the Church Handbook of Instructions someday to include now speech therapy.
Gerardo Sumano [00:52:54] And this is all new from what I remember.
Guest 3 [00:52:57] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [00:52:57] This is a 2020 update.
John Dehlin [00:52:59] Yeah, that's right. 2022 update. Right, or 2021. Yeah, pretty recent. Yeah. And then the church does not grant exceptions. Yeah, the church does. This is also a contradiction because the church does grant exceptions for transgender individuals to receive hormone therapy if it is prescribed by a physician to ease gender dysphoria or reduce suicidal thoughts. So we'll get. We'll get to that contradiction later.
Guest 2 [00:53:24] Interesting.
John Dehlin [00:53:24] Why are you laughing?
Carah Burrell [00:53:26] Isn't there like a study that's been done that, like, the number one way for people to not have suicidal ideation is to have all of those things that conform with their gender identity?
John Dehlin [00:53:38] Yeah. Yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:53:39] So it's just like, well, okay, everyone through the door. And.
John Dehlin [00:53:42] And it's weird that the church is, you know, the church has a policy which allows for exemption, some hormone therapy, not surgery. But it doesn't say anything about speech services. But now they're.
Gerardo Sumano [00:53:55] But you would assume speech therapies is not in the level of hormone therapy, right?
John Dehlin [00:54:01] Yeah, but somehow it's. It's forbidden. So this is all really a cluster. What's the word, Carah? Cluster fudge. Is that the Mormon equivalent? Cluster fudge.
Carah Burrell [00:54:10] Oh, that's a new item on our Mormon Scoops, the cluster fudge topping.
John Dehlin [00:54:15] Cluster fudge topic. Yeah. On this. On the Sunday. Anyway.
Guest 2 [00:54:20] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:54:21] But the last thing worth mentioning is that a transgender Mormon can face church discipline. So to add to the confusion, a transgender Mormon can face church discipline for transitioning. And I'm assuming they mean for sex reassignment surgery, but I don't know. Anyway, it's a mess and it's just so. It's so disheartening that these are among our most vulnerable. If you think about Jesus and what he cared about, these are among our most vulnerable humans right now in 2022.
Guest 2 [00:54:46] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:54:47] And the church has to, like, if we ever had a. A call for a prophet, seer and revelator, seeing ahead of time and coming up with a policy that. That would be really. If we could have a clear, succinct, powerful policy that was compassionate towards a very vulnerable population. If ever there was a call for a prophet, a need for a prophet, seer and revelator, this would be the time. But instead we have just a very confusing, disheartening, and disturbing set of policies and procedures, and it's really disheartening. Anyway.
Carah Burrell [00:55:16] Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest 3 [00:55:18] What?
John Dehlin [00:55:19] Were you going to say something when you're finished?
Carah Burrell [00:55:20] I have something to say.
John Dehlin [00:55:21] Go ahead.
Carah Burrell [00:55:22] I wanted to move to a new segment I just invented just now. Is that okay.
John Dehlin [00:55:25] We're not in the middle. There's still.
Carah Burrell [00:55:26] There's still more on this topic, on the trans thing.
John Dehlin [00:55:29] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:55:29] Okay. Yeah. Finish up this segment. I just wanted to invent.
John Dehlin [00:55:32] No. Okay, so. So if we continue, we read from the BYU Communication Disorders Department that their department is certified by the speech. The American Speech Language Hearing association, or asha. And the big news that we wanted to cover today is that asha, which is the association that sort of endorses all speech and language pathologists, they issued a specific statement on BYU's decision.
Gerardo Sumano [00:56:05] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:56:05] So this national body, this national certification or endorsing, you know, organization, issues a policy, and we're just going to read it because it's really powerful. So they. They issued this. February 11, 2022.
Gerardo Sumano [00:56:18] They issued a statement.
John Dehlin [00:56:20] A statement. What did I say? A statement. Sorry. Thank you. And the statement reads. This is called the ASHA Statement on Brigham Young University Administration Decision to Deny Speech Services for Transgender Clients. We're going to read the whole thing. So from Rockville, Maryland, the decision by the. By Brigham Young University administration to require their Department of Communication Disorders to end all voice and communication services at its speech and language clinic for transgender clients is in direct opposition to practice expected of American Speech Language Hearing association members, or ASHA. And contrary to the OSHA Code of Ethics to 2016, ASHA recognizes gender affirming voice and communication services for transgender and gender diverse populations within the speech language pathology scope of practice.
John Dehlin [00:57:10] ASHA members provide vital clinical services to gender diverse populations who may have voice or other speech language disorders unrelated to their gender, as well as services to individuals whose voices do not reflect their gender. Transgender individuals who attempt to modify their voice without a trained speech language pathologist risk permanent damage to their vocal cords and without appropriate services, are at increased risk for related mental health challenges. Ensuring treatment for all individuals in need of speech, language, hearing, and related services, including transgender individuals, is consistent with OSHA's Code of Ethics Principle 1. Rule C of the OSHA Code of Ethics states the following, quote, Individuals shall not discriminate in the delivery of professional services or in the conduct of research and scholarly activities on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, religion, national origin, disability, culture, language, or dialect.
John Dehlin [00:58:17] Therefore, BYU is putting its certified speech language pathologists in an untenable position. These employees are now being directed to act in a manner contrary to their responsibilities under the ASHA Code of Ethics. So basically, BYU is asking their professors in this department to violate their own code of ethics by refusing, by discriminating against transgender students. Carah.
Gerardo Sumano [00:58:44] Yeah, and the students who are going to receive a degree based on the certification.
John Dehlin [00:58:49] Right.
Carah Burrell [00:58:50] Be less apt to help people in their actual career moving forward.
Guest 8 [00:58:54] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:58:54] Because of the school that they chose.
John Dehlin [00:58:56] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [00:58:56] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [00:58:57] Is it Chris? That's a great spelling wrote. I think it's important to note that this wasn't an administrative decision and not a clinical decision. So upsetting administration, usurping clinical.
John Dehlin [00:59:09] Yeah. And this ties in a hot Shelfer Parker's experience where she's like a marriage and family therapist. She is a licensed sex therapist. She's giving, you know, empirically supported recommendations to Mormons and to the Mormon Church publicly, and the church excommunicates her. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that. Thank you. Thank you, Chris, for. And Carah for that. We'll go on to keep reading.
John Dehlin [00:59:34] So Asha strongly believes the principles set forth in the Code of Ethics, including principle and rule C, are considered as. As essential to the practice of speech language pathology. BYU's decision can in no way be supported or justified by the ASHA Code of Ethics. There are areas of concern to be addressed for the university to take such action. The transgender clients protected health information would have been provided to the BYU administration, which, Gerardo, to your point, is a violation of the HIPAA privacy rule. The rule requires appropriate safeguards to protect the privacy of protected health information and sets limits and conditions on the uses and disclosures that may be made of such information without an individual's authorization. I mean, I guess these students would have a right to sue BYU or its administrators on. On a HIPAA violation.
Gerardo Sumano [01:00:27] I was talking to a lawyer just earlier, before we started this episode, who. It sounds like it's a very gray area that hasn't really been challenged on the court courts. So, I mean, I think you're going to talk about this later. Yeah, but, but, but, I mean, Asha is already pointing out the major, major issues that BYU could really get in trouble if these students decide to either file a complaint or a suit.
John Dehlin [01:00:56] Yeah, absolutely. All right. This goes on to say, this is. This is an interesting part. They Asha is reminding the LDS Church how this change violates its own policies and procedures. So that's kind of cool. So they go on to write, B. Way's decision does not align with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints's policies and guidelines. According to section 38.6.23 of the General Handbook Serving in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, quote, transgender individuals face complex challenges. Members and non members who identify as transgender and their family and friends should be treated with sensitivity, kindness, compassion, and an abundance of Christ, like love.
Gerardo Sumano [01:01:38] Wow.
John Dehlin [01:01:39] What do you think? What do you think about that?
Gerardo Sumano [01:01:42] That's crazy. I mean, they're quoting that.
John Dehlin [01:01:45] The church's own policy.
Gerardo Sumano [01:01:47] Yeah, well, and they handbook of instructions. You know, like, that's. That's a big deal.
John Dehlin [01:01:52] Well, why are you laughing here or smiling?
Carah Burrell [01:01:55] Because it is like the ultimate courtroom at the end with, like, a special witness that comes in and busts open the doors. And it's like the church's own handbook is here to tell you. And then, like, judge, jury, off to prison. Just like this feels like case closed, like your own church. Not only is it not ethical and not smart and none of the things that we stand for for you to be able to get this accreditation, it's also against your own policy to do this.
John Dehlin [01:02:21] Yeah. Yeah. Because, I mean, it's. It's worth asking, like, was this, you know, were these transgender BYU students treated with sensitivity, kindness, compassion, and abundance of Christlike love?
Carah Burrell [01:02:35] Were their pronouns respected? I wonder.
John Dehlin [01:02:36] I don't know. But you could ask them whether they felt respected. And I think the Salt Lake Tribune article makes it very clear that they were very disturbed by being cut off from services, Correct? Yeah. All right. Well, if that weren't enough, there's more. Moreover, the General Handbook acknowledges and provides latitude. We mentioned this previously. For other forms of medical care to be provided to transgender individuals. Section 38.6.23 of the General Handbook states, quote, some children, youth, and adults are prescribed hormone therapy by a licensed medical professional to ease gender dysphoria or reduce suicidal thoughts. Close quote. It is incongruous that voice and communication services would be singled out for elimination, especially with the positive impact of gender affirming practices.
John Dehlin [01:03:22] So they're basically saying, why? Why is hormone therapy okay, but we're going to single out voice services as not okay. That seems incongruous and problematic. They go on to write. The Master's Ms. Education program in Speech Language Pathology at Brigham Young University is accredited by the Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech Language pathology, or the CAA. The CAA's accreditation standards require academic programs provide content and opportunities for students to learn to practice in a manner consistent with recognized standards of ethical practice and relevant, relevant federal and state regulations, and that students are prepared to understand the healthcare and education landscapes and how to facilitate access to services.
John Dehlin [01:04:10] Students graduating from CAA accredited programs must understand the impact of their cultural and linguistic variables on the delivery of effective care, along with the impact of those variables for their clients. CAA accredited programs must ensure Students show evidence of care, compassion, and appropriate empathy during interactions with everyone served. Asha strongly urges BYU to adhere to asha's code of ethics as well as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints's policies and guidelines cited above, reverse its decision and restore voice and communication services for transgender clients. So they're kind of throwing it down, right?
Carah Burrell [01:04:53] Yeah.
Guest 8 [01:04:53] Wow.
John Dehlin [01:04:53] Yeah. Yeah. So that's Asha throwing it down. And just some final thoughts. You know, there's been some feedback from the academic community. One professor from Kentucky called this an ethical injustice. Another called it transphobic policy. There's a former BYU student who graduated from this department who said, this is RJ Resueno, and he writes, by denying services to transgender individuals, BYU is preventing their student clinicians to embrace a core component of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Loving their neighbor. He said, in return, a community in need is left without access to essential services. You know, we've talked about BYU's exemptions, right, Gerardo, from federal guidelines. And BYU and the Mormon Church fights super hard to ensure that BYU is exempted from federal laws prohibiting gender based discrimination and that they are guaranteed the right to deny health care if it wants, based on a person's identity.
Gerardo Sumano [01:05:58] But it really gets tricky because this is a clinical matter. So while byu, I mean, BYU is going to want to pose that they have the right to do it, I, I, I still think there's a big, big argument way, way, way stronger than, you know, honor code violations, gay same sex dating and stuff, because it's a clinical matter. So. And again, sounds like this hasn't been challenged in the courts. So there, it's a little bit of a gray area and the odds are not, doesn't, wouldn't look very good for the church.
John Dehlin [01:06:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it's worth wondering, you know, whether this is the exact sort of thing that Jeffrey R. Holland envisioned when he gave his famous musket speech at byu. And Gerardo, we had you prepare the clip from that musket speech and let's hear what he had to say back then. I guess he's serving as a prophet right now. He's prophesying in this musket speech that certain departments or programs might be threatened with accreditation.
Guest 2 [01:07:10] Right.
Guest 3 [01:07:11] Is that right?
Gerardo Sumano [01:07:12] Yeah, correct. He, I mean, he's in the board of trustees of byu.
Guest 3 [01:07:16] Byu.
John Dehlin [01:07:16] So, so, I mean, either he's being a prophet or the lawyers, Kurt McConkey, advised him that this was going to be happening soon.
Gerardo Sumano [01:07:23] Right?
John Dehlin [01:07:23] Yeah. But here, here's what he said at the time. If at a Future time. That mission means foregoing some professional affiliations and certifications. Then so be it. There may come a day when the price we are asked to pay for such association is simply too high, too inconsistent with who we are. No one wants it to come to that, least of all me. But if it does, we will pursue our own destiny. Pursue our own destiny of denying Speech and Language Pathologies Pathology services to transgender. To vulnerable transgender individuals at BYU who need those services to become healthy and well.
Carah Burrell [01:08:15] Yeah, it's a price is just not willing to pay.
Gerardo Sumano [01:08:18] So sad.
John Dehlin [01:08:20] Yeah. Yeah. So some questions remain, I think. You know, I'm. I'm curious. Was this Approved by the First Presidency, the Quorum of the 12, or the BYU Board? Do they even know about it? I think that's worth. I mean, I'm curious to see whether it gets rescinded or not. What's the effect going to be on byu? How many, you know, how many of these faculty members might leave? Will the department lose its accreditation? Will they have to just shut down this actual entire. My, my sister in law got a master's from BYU in Speech and Language pathology. Wouldn't it be a bummer if BYU had to just kill this entire department?
John Dehlin [01:08:56] You know, but that's possible. They do that. They kill departments. Yeah, you know, sometimes they do. And then it's just, you know, is this really, you think We've talked about this recently on Mormon stories. Like, think of all. Can we name 10 things that we would love? Jesus is one true church to be focusing on in the world.
John Dehlin [01:09:15] Right? Like clean water, famine, disease, poverty, sex trafficking, literacy, literacy, you know, malaria nets, you know, all the things that you could focus on. This is what, you know, apostles are really caring about these days.
Carah Burrell [01:09:33] What a hill to die on. And then the polling says that like, you know, Gen Z has the highest percentage percentages of, you know, LGBTQ people right now. And like the, the rates are probably going to be between 5 and 10% of like adult populations is what I've read in polls.
Guest 9 [01:09:50] Right.
Carah Burrell [01:09:51] So, like, this is the hill that you're going to die on. Like all of the hills. Not only is there better things you'd be spending your time.
Gerardo Sumano [01:09:56] Well, I think Gen Z is like almost 20%, isn't it?
Carah Burrell [01:09:59] Yeah. Like it's just.
Gerardo Sumano [01:09:59] Well, and currently at BYU, it's 18.
John Dehlin [01:10:02] Yeah. Yeah. And I'm seeing more and more kids come out as transgender or as gender non binary. I mean, gender non binary is a subset of transgender. But this is, this is. I don't know if it's going to become as prevalent as being gay or lesbian or bisexual. But it's becoming very common.
Gerardo Sumano [01:10:19] Yeah. But I think to Carah's point, like the more population there is that, that identifies that lgbt, the more acceptance of, you know, the whole popul, the, the whole LGBT population is, you know.
John Dehlin [01:10:35] Yeah. Yeah. It's just the church basically committing slow suicide.
Gerardo Sumano [01:10:40] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:10:41] I mean, I think.
Carah Burrell [01:10:42] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:10:43] At least in the United States.
John Dehlin [01:10:44] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:10:45] Yeah. And there's lots of different parts of, you know, the church that, where people are breaking the law of chastity or breaking the rules of the church. Like all the football players who don't get thrown out of school for having sex. Are we going to shut down the football department? Byu, there's a whole, there's a whole hotbed of people doing things that are against the church rules. There's but the one area where people need something and it's literally like, like life ending care on the line. That's where they draw the line. Anyway. I just think it's always just this hypocritical mix.
Gerardo Sumano [01:11:14] I've never told this, I never told this story before, but while I was at byu, Idaho, I had a. So I studied graphic design.
Guest 8 [01:11:23] And
Gerardo Sumano [01:11:26] this girl who was graduating that semester, she stole my like a whole, like her whole senior project that she had to present for this class that you need to graduate. She stole her whole project was literally my like something I had done in the past. Like she grabbed my images from my website logo that I have done literally and she presented as her own and it got to the honor code office and they didn't do anything about it.
Guest 10 [01:11:57] Really.
Gerardo Sumano [01:11:57] Yeah. I was called into the honor code office to like, kind of like to tell them because I was making a huge deal. I was so mad that the department chair was not doing anything. I was sending emails and I was super, super. But isn't it interesting because that's what kind of honor codes do in normal universities, right? Those are the kind of things that they regulate in non religious universities. But it seems like they would rather regulate whether Charlie Bird can date or not.
Carah Burrell [01:12:25] Or like if you have a five o' clock shadow and you need to go take a test or anything.
John Dehlin [01:12:31] How about this? Like, I'm just trying to think this through. Like BYU has a counseling and psychological services where they treat students with, with depression or anxiety or ocd or scrupulosity. Right? Well, they're treating, they're treating students who masturbate and look at porn. Should, should BYU shut down caps Counseling and psychological services or should they Deny treatment of.
Gerardo Sumano [01:12:54] That's a good point of.
John Dehlin [01:12:56] Of students who are masturbating and looking at porn. Because. Because, like. Because that's. They're not living by the church with
Carah Burrell [01:13:04] the principles of the gospel.
John Dehlin [01:13:05] And I mean, I guess they would, but. Yeah, because I know. I know for a fact that those therapists would not be telling BYU students to stop. To stop masturbating. Yeah, they would. They would be saying, you know what? It's actually normal and healthy. Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:13:21] Yeah.
Guest 8 [01:13:22] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:13:22] And so if those stud. So if some of those students had scrupulosity.
Gerardo Sumano [01:13:25] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:13:26] They would be treating them to become accepting of their masturbation and pornography or homosexuality or. Yeah, right. If. If there's an LGBT student, they. They're not going to be advising those students to get conversion therapy.
Gerardo Sumano [01:13:39] Right.
John Dehlin [01:13:41] So, like, are they going to shut down counseling and psychological service? I don't know. Maybe that's not a good analogy, but
Carah Burrell [01:13:46] it just calls into question when you mix religion with accreditation and what is.
John Dehlin [01:13:50] And professional services.
Carah Burrell [01:13:51] Professional services. And like, the actual.
Gerardo Sumano [01:13:53] What about nursing, you know, and treating transgender people or.
Carah Burrell [01:13:58] Yeah. If anyone knows what's the nursing department
Gerardo Sumano [01:14:00] like, you know, what about, like a homosexual in. In, like a gay student at BYU who goes to the student health center to get an SCD test?
John Dehlin [01:14:15] Yeah, you know, that's a good one. Yeah. It's fun to think about all. I mean, let's invite our viewers and listeners if you can think about analogous services being offered at BYU that technically violate the Church's doctrine of theology or policies. Write in, make comments here on YouTube or on Facebook, email us, and maybe for the next Mormon scoops, we can include a list of all the inconsistent applications of this sort of policy. Does that make sense? I don't know. The point is, this is just super disturbing that the Church of Jesus Christ is doing this to very vulnerable populations, denying them services that they need so desperately.
Guest 2 [01:15:02] That's what it really comes. Yep.
John Dehlin [01:15:05] All right, well, that's. That's all we have. That's just the kitty cones. No, wait, no. That's the second topic.
Carah Burrell [01:15:12] Yeah. Did you want to quick break for Carah's brand new segment that she's inventing right now? Because we're running with this ice cream shop theme right now, as you can tell. And so I'm gonna do a segment where if we get a comment from somebody, I'm a little T. Troll. Uh, let's say somebody has come into the shop and I'm going to call them. Instead of like, Karen, we'll call it a Kyle Kyle's coupons. And Kyle brought in a coupon and they say that it's valid and this is a point that we should be taking issue with. And they called the manager and me, and I'm going to give you a real self talking to Kyle with your coupons.
Guest 7 [01:15:46] Okay?
Carah Burrell [01:15:47] So I just wanted to highlight this comment by Scott. Scott, what's. What are you doing here?
John Dehlin [01:15:53] Well, read the comments. Oh, okay, okay. Sorry, sorry.
Carah Burrell [01:15:56] I am the manager at Rank. You one of my subordinates over there. He's only a supervisor. Okay, Scott, I want to talk with you. Scott said if the black students wanted dialogue, they could have gone to his office hours. It was not the time or place to disrupt his class. So I just want to give you a little, little tip for coming into our ice cream shop here. The best way when approaching something where, uh, there's. There's different marginalized people, you know, kind of in the mix especially, it would probably be the, A better option for you to get the service that you wanted. Instead of throwing a fit about what they should have done.
Carah Burrell [01:16:32] Maybe ask a question. Maybe ask a question, get curious and ask the question. Like, did they come in during his office hours? Did they come in during his class? And if so, that would have been maybe the. A more appropriate time. So maybe just like take a backseat and listen and do a little googling. Maybe listen back to the clip that we played again, because if you did, you would have heard that they indeed came at the end of Brad Wilcox's class instead of in it. So it is. It's a very dangerous, a very dangerous section that you're treading on there, Scott. And I, I just want to counsel you that if you want to come into our shop and you want to be welcome here, be really careful and, and just get curious instead of saying things like what a marginalized community should be doing now.
Guest 9 [01:17:14] Now go.
Carah Burrell [01:17:15] Go to Chipotle and go get a sample over there. Back. Back to the program. Thank you very much.
John Dehlin [01:17:20] What's that segment called, Carah?
Carah Burrell [01:17:22] This is called Kyle's coupons or what the fudge.
John Dehlin [01:17:25] Karen's coupons.
Carah Burrell [01:17:27] This is talking to the manager. All right, back over to you guys.
John Dehlin [01:17:31] Thanks, Carah. All right, one really quick shout out to our Discord server. Our buddy Justin, along with some really cool supporters and admins, have created. Created a Mormon stories Discord Channel. I think there's over 600 people who are members and they're doing really good work over there. They're probably watching and talking about this episode right now on the Discord Channel.
Gerardo Sumano [01:17:52] I think I'm gonna be in it next Monday.
John Dehlin [01:17:53] Oh, you are. And Carrie, you were there. You were there last.
Carah Burrell [01:17:56] The Discord is so cool, you guys. I just did like an AMA on the Discord and you can like do it through audio and so I'm able to talk to everybody and I didn't have to get out of bed.
Guest 7 [01:18:06] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:18:06] And people get to talk back and we get to like, they get a raise their hand and like we had probably 30 people and had a bunch of different questions and it's like a really lighthearted, fun conversation. I got asked in the AMA if I wasn't doing this, what I would do. And my answer had to even have to think about it, it'd be making Simpsons content. And then we got to talk about the Simpsons and how it relates to Mormonism. So that audio is still available on the Discord. If anyone's go back and listen to it. Super fun. Huge shout out to Justin and all the other admins and all the other mods and stuff that are helping with that. It's a really fun little community. I'm super impressed with how much they've built already.
John Dehlin [01:18:39] And for kind of older folk like anyone over 20 who, who's never used Discord before, think of it as a way for you to have real time communication. So like if you think about Facebook, you post something and then you wait for someone to answer and then you come back later and you read it.
Gerardo Sumano [01:18:54] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:18:55] Discord allows you to chat with people, real time people that are on the server, real time, both in text and if you want, in video. It would also allow you to kind of play games with other people. And there's also an Exmoor Gamers Discord Channel that I highly recommend. We'll include that in the show notes. But if you go to any of the descriptions, maybe Carrick can include a link to the Discord Channel in the comments. Right now she can get that from Slack or from any other past description. But we'll start including a link to the Discord Channel in all our descriptions of each episode.
John Dehlin [01:19:29] And we just encourage you guys to check it out. If you're looking for friends, if you're looking for community, these Discord members, they don't even always, they don't even talk about Mormon stories episodes very much. It's just like a bunch of people who share a similar background making friends and forging community. And it's, it's something the younger people are doing anyway. Check out the Mormon Stories podcast Discord Channel. Shout out to Justin and All his admins for making that possible.
Introduction to Leaked Apostle Devotional Video
John Dehlin [01:19:53] All right, it is time for the third topic. And I, I'm starting to think about these scoops episodes. We probably tried to cover too much content in one episode, didn't we? Because we're like an hour. I'm just speaking honestly. We're like an hour and 20 minutes in and we haven't even hit the main. I know the main topic.
Gerardo Sumano [01:20:11] We gotta go fast.
John Dehlin [01:20:12] Either that or just prepare less content for next episodes. What do you think, Carah?
Carah Burrell [01:20:17] Never. No, I, I. The last ones I did time codes on so people can jump to whatever they want. And if you guys want us to be shorter and more succinct and we can try that too.
Guest 2 [01:20:27] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:20:27] Comments and feedback is welcome, but we're
John Dehlin [01:20:30] just having a good time and we're experimenting with stuff. So we've still got this one last topic and then we're gonna still take in Colin questions and comments. I mean, this will be a three hour episode, but that's okay. We'll. We'll learn as we go.
Carah Burrell [01:20:42] I'm paid by the hour.
John Dehlin [01:20:45] Don't ask me or Gerardo. Okay. All right, well, the third topic that we're going to be covering today, and this is, I think this is kind of a big deal because we love it when we get secret insider video that we can leak or share.
Gerardo Sumano [01:21:01] It's leaked because it's deleted now.
John Dehlin [01:21:03] Yeah, yeah. So someone from the Utah Kaysville stake or area shared with me the internal private video of a devotional, four sisters, featuring Mormon apostle Dale G. Renlund. Is that, Is that his name? Carah Del G. Renlund.
Carah Burrell [01:21:25] Like, I talk to him on the phone every day. Like, how do you pronounce your name? No, I'm doing my best guess.
John Dehlin [01:21:29] So we are, we're breaking news here of an internal conversation devotional that, that a Mormon apostle had with a bunch of Kaysville sisters and her.
Gerardo Sumano [01:21:40] Some sisters too. Like, I think general Relief Society precedent. Right, Kira?
Carah Burrell [01:21:46] It'll say it in the slides once
Gerardo Sumano [01:21:47] we get to it.
John Dehlin [01:21:48] Okay.
Carah Burrell [01:21:48] They're labeled.
Guest 2 [01:21:49] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:21:49] So who, who wants to set this up? Gerardo or Carah? Who wants to talk about kind of what we're going to be seeing here? Should we just jump to the first.
Gerardo Sumano [01:21:57] I think we can just jump to the jump right in.
Elder Renlund on What Stops the Spirit
John Dehlin [01:21:59] Okay, so who wants to set up this first, this first segment? What is this first segment? It says, Elder Dale G. Renlund, what stops the spirit.
Carah Burrell [01:22:10] Oh, yeah, I wrote that. What stops the spirit? So language, apparently.
John Dehlin [01:22:13] So what should, what should we be looking for here, Carah? Why did we single out this clip.
Carah Burrell [01:22:18] Why did we single out this clip? Because it's just a really interesting look at how the church talks about how the Spirit is so helpful at everything in our daily lives, except for all of the ways that it can be thwarted, which are a lot. And it's like, geez, this all powerful God sure had some, like, oopsies in the planning here of how to not be able to communicate with us.
John Dehlin [01:22:40] So what he's about to say is people with anxiety and depression sometimes can't feel the Spirit. Is that what he's about to say?
Carah Burrell [01:22:45] Amongst other things.
John Dehlin [01:22:46] But we don't want to dissect it. I just want to introduce it to
Gerardo Sumano [01:22:50] the context is that this seems to be a really prevalent topic in the church. Every time apostles talk about feeling the Spirit, Spirit and recognizing if it's the Spirit or if it's myself, who. Who are, you know, thinking about something. It seems like apostles are always saying that. That's the question they always get. And we have admissions, I think, at least by two apostles saying that even them, they struggle with recognizing what is the Spirit and what's their own thoughts. And I mean, the church promises that people are going to be feeling the spirit the whole 100 of the time once.
John Dehlin [01:23:33] That's the value of the gift of the Holy Ghost is that you get it all the time.
Gerardo Sumano [01:23:37] Yeah. So now they have to face the issue. Oh, why do some. Why do. I would say most people say they don't feel it.
John Dehlin [01:23:44] Why are so many Mormons saying they don't feel the spirit?
Carah Burrell [01:23:46] Right.
John Dehlin [01:23:47] Okay, so this is Elder Dale G. Renlund talking about when some Mormons don't feel the spirit. Should we roll the clip?
Guest [01:23:54] Yep.
John Dehlin [01:23:55] All right, here we go.
Guest 2 [01:23:58] The influence of the Holy Ghost can be obscured by strong emotions such as anger, hate, or fear. That's what happens to me. If I have those emotions, it's very hard for me to feel the spirit. It's sort of like trying to savor the taste of a grape while also sucking on a jalapeno pepper. The one flavor overwhelms the other and you can't sense it. So behaviors that distance us from the Holy Ghost for me, including sin, make it difficult to perceive God's love for us. Similarly, our sense of God's love can be blunted by challenging circumstances and physical or mental illness, among other things.
John Dehlin [01:24:52] Okay, so who wants to go first in saying what they didn't like about what we just heard?
Gerardo Sumano [01:24:57] Did we miss a part? Part of it?
Carah Burrell [01:25:00] I don't know which part Were you
Gerardo Sumano [01:25:01] thinking of where he says mental illness? Did he mention.
Carah Burrell [01:25:04] He just said mental illness at the end?
Gerardo Sumano [01:25:06] Okay.
Carah Burrell [01:25:06] Circumstances.
Gerardo Sumano [01:25:07] Oh, physical and mental.
Carah Burrell [01:25:08] Physical and mental and. Yeah, mental illness. And that's a pretty ubiquitous thing that most of us have to deal with at some point in our lives.
John Dehlin [01:25:16] So what was, what was disturbing about that?
Carah Burrell [01:25:19] You can go first.
Gerardo Sumano [01:25:22] Well, I think he's trying to solve a problem.
Guest 2 [01:25:24] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:25:24] And he decides to do it by blaming the people's situation on them and saying that's. That's why you can't feel the spirit, because you have either mental or physical illness. Let's see. Seems a little bit discriminatory. I hope God is not discriminatory of persons, no matter if they're facing physical or mental illness. So the fact that God can't, you know, make his power strong enough so people with those challenges feel it, I mean, makes you wonder, is God really powerful?
John Dehlin [01:26:11] It's kind of a weak sauce. Holy Ghost that can't break through depression or anxiety. I mean, God's the creator of the universe. Jesus and God are the creators of the universe. The Holy Ghost is part of the Godhead. It's kind of a weak sauce member of the Godhead that can't break through anxiety and depression to reach God's members that have been promised the gift of the Holy Ghost, you know, when they, when they were confirmed, you know, after their baptism. That's the. That's one of the value propositions of being a member of the church is you, like you said, Carrie, you get the Holy Ghost constantly. Brad Wilcox said that's, you know, one of the. One of the bonuses of being a Mormon, unlike those pitiful non Mormons who only get the spirit occasionally. We get it all the time. Unless you have anxiety and depression and then you're kind of Sol, as they say.
Guest 7 [01:26:58] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:26:59] It's like an asterisk on the end of a drug commercial at the tv where it's like people who experience anxiety,
John Dehlin [01:27:06] depression, addiction, diarrhea, Diarrhea, headaches.
Carah Burrell [01:27:09] Yeah. Should not be able to take the spirit. The spirit is not actually going to be helpful in your life. Yeah, it's like terms and conditions apply and completely makes the entire.
Guest 6 [01:27:18] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:27:18] The value proposition irrelevant at the end of the day.
John Dehlin [01:27:20] Enjoy the Holy Ghost. Unless you experience diarrhea, depression, anxiety, or anger or sin.
Gerardo Sumano [01:27:25] John, do you. I've been listening. I've been. I'm almost done with Stephen Hassan's book on Colts. Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:27:34] Combating Cult. Combating Cult. Mind control.
Gerardo Sumano [01:27:36] Right. And he talks about.
John Dehlin [01:27:37] We can include that in the show notes.
Gerardo Sumano [01:27:38] Yeah. He talks a lot about this organ, like high demand, unhealthy organizations teaching its members to not feel like that anger is wrong, that feeling strong emotions is wrong, and that they should turn them off. Do you want to talk a little bit about why that could be problematic? Why teaching. Why the church teaching its members that anger is bad, that strong emotions are wrong. Why is that problematic?
John Dehlin [01:28:11] Well, it's. It's kind of this idea of keep sweet. Right. Warren Jeffs would always tell the women who weren't super happy about polygamy. I think he wrote keep sweet on his shoes. And when they came in to complain about him, he would put his shoes up on the desk and they would read keep sweet on his shoes. And it was just this reminder to know your place. Telling Mormons, telling any member of a high demand religion or cult that anger is bad is a.
Guest 4 [01:28:38] Is a.
John Dehlin [01:28:39] It's a form of thought stopping. It's a way to say, okay, you may feel disturbed, you may feel like you've been harmed, you may feel like something's wrong, but turn it off. Turn off your conscience, shut down your emotions, swallow it, suppress it. Keep sweet. And that's what. When the church teaches that anger is of the devil, that anger is a bad emotion. It's a way to kind of unplug our short circuit, our moral conscience, our. Our own internal voice of moral authority and get us to just pay, pray, and obey.
Guest 10 [01:29:12] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:29:13] And it's just a dangerous technique.
Gerardo Sumano [01:29:14] Yeah. And he talks about strong emotions or, like, things that make us feel uncomfortable. And I think Stephen Hassan mentions that this later translates. So when members of high demand religions get information that would create cognitive dissonance with what they believe, they suppress it, and then they're able to. And then thought stopping becomes almost like an addiction where, like, they're so used to do it with their strong emotions that is very easy to turn off when they are confronted with information that could challenge their beliefs.
John Dehlin [01:29:55] Yeah. Or disturbing information, like, oh, my gosh, a child is being sexually molested. Maybe we need to call the police. And then the Kurt McConkey says, Don't call the police. And you're like, okay, yep, I'll stop my conscience. I'll stop my moral outrage. Anyway. Yeah, so that's an interesting thing. Everyone needs to read that book, Combat Equal Mind Control.
Gerardo Sumano [01:30:17] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:30:18] Carrie, you want to show it to the audience because you just grabbed a copy. There it is. Combating cult mind control. I think Jen is doing show notes so she can add those to the show notes.
Gerardo Sumano [01:30:27] What's crazy is that he wrote that book without any knowledge of Mormonism. Really?
Guest 2 [01:30:32] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:30:32] The first edition, it was until this. This last edition, when he included.
John Dehlin [01:30:36] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:30:36] A couple mentions of.
John Dehlin [01:30:37] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:30:38] The Alias Church. But.
John Dehlin [01:30:39] Well, not everyone thinks the Mormon Church is a cult, Gerardo.
Gerardo Sumano [01:30:43] And that's fine.
John Dehlin [01:30:43] Just offensive people.
Gerardo Sumano [01:30:44] That's fine. I definitely think that not everybody experiences it as. As, you know, as a cult.
Guest 2 [01:30:51] Yeah.
Renlund on Fallible Leaders and Prophet Worship
John Dehlin [01:30:52] Okay, well, let's go to the next comment made by Elder Renlund, who wants to set this up. The title of the slide says, sister Sharon Eubank, first counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency, comparing President Nelson to the Hubble Telescope. Should we just play it?
Guest 6 [01:31:09] Yep.
John Dehlin [01:31:10] All right, here's the clip.
Guest 7 [01:31:13] You can also rely on a more powerful lens, like the Hubble that's rotating around the sun. The prophets will not give us poor vision. They can see things because of where they're placed, that we will never see ourselves. And we can trust that data as it comes back to us that it's a faithful representation. God will not allow his prophets to teach us false doctrine. So their testimonies are trustworthy.
John Dehlin [01:31:43] Oh, my gosh. I already have so many problems with what she just said. Like, what about the Adam God theory? Did Brigham Young not teach the Adam God theory? That's false doctrine.
Gerardo Sumano [01:31:52] And Bruce Ramakanki is on record admitting that Brigham Young taught that.
John Dehlin [01:31:57] Yeah.
Guest 4 [01:31:58] Or.
John Dehlin [01:31:58] Or all the like. Didn't the Gospel topics essay on race in the priesthood admit that prophetess and revelators taught false doctrine about blacks being unworthy to receive Priestess?
Gerardo Sumano [01:32:09] Those were theories that bounce in the past.
John Dehlin [01:32:10] No, but I'm saying, like, they absolutely do teach false doctrine.
Gerardo Sumano [01:32:14] Yeah, for sure.
John Dehlin [01:32:15] So, I mean, that's ridiculous. But also this idea. I don't mean to just hammer on her, but, like, this idea that they see things ahead of times, did they see, you know, the. The need for women to vote ahead of time? Did they see the civil rights movement ahead of time? Did they see the Equal Rights Amendment ahead of time? Did they see this LGBTQ crisis ahead of time? Like, they've been behind 10 to 20 to 30 years of any major social justice movement. Like, what is it that they're seeing ahead of time? Can you tell me, Carah, what are the home church.
Carah Burrell [01:32:46] I told you guys I was going to argue with John. I'm going to. I'm going to be four before the prophetic revelation, home church, and that's it. That's all I got. And then the COVID came, and then they were like, perfect.
Gerardo Sumano [01:32:58] Oh, that's true.
John Dehlin [01:32:58] That's good.
Gerardo Sumano [01:32:59] Yeah, that's good.
John Dehlin [01:33:00] Nice one.
Carah Burrell [01:33:01] That ends my arguments. I have no other example.
John Dehlin [01:33:03] Nice one, Carah. No, I mean that's, that's a really, it's. If anything, in 2022, we're wishing that the prophet series and revelators would prophesy see and reveal.
Gerardo Sumano [01:33:14] Anyway, if you think about what Joseph Smith was doing, you know, during his time, like he would see a pile of rocks and say, oh, that, that's the altar where Adam offers sacrifice and some skeletons and say, oh, like he was, he was receiving revelation all the time. People would come to him. Like Emma would come to him and say, oh, do you want to ask God about this tobacco chewing thing? And he would receive, you know, the revelation on the word of wisdom. It seems like prophets today are very reluctant to be asked questions that they can't answer.
Carah Burrell [01:33:52] Yeah, yeah. And going back to the, the cult mind control thing, one of the, you know, I, the letters of the bite model is information control. And people like us who hear that, who have understand the information, our brains go to a place like John just listed off a bunch of things where we go, oh, they weren't prophesying very well at X, Y, Z. It's because at a certain point When I'm 30 years old, I'm finally confronted with this information that I didn't have before. So if you asked me when I was like 28 years old in the church, I would have gone like, yeah, they're so good.
Carah Burrell [01:34:19] And I could only think and cherry pick all of the reasons why the prophets have always been like, yeah, word of wisdom, 100% tobacco bad. I could have like listed off all those things. But I have been exposed to too much information to know that there's about this many things that they'd had like a good prophetic like ability. But I have two. I have a whole truckload of books and sayings and understandings of the opposite. And once you're confronted with that information, it's really, really hard to put your faith in that Hubble telescope of the prophet anymore. Some people do it and it's, there's. Maybe they say they're still better than, than nothing.
Carah Burrell [01:34:56] And I was there for a while, but just. Yeah, they can only say those kinds of things like she just said when they have information control.
John Dehlin [01:35:04] Yeah. Well, we've, we've, we've included some additional clips to provide some further analysis.
Gerardo Sumano [01:35:09] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:35:10] Does someone want to set up this Keith Erickson clip?
Gerardo Sumano [01:35:13] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:35:14] So. And why we're sharing it.
Gerardo Sumano [01:35:15] So Keith Erickson is the Sorry, can you put up this.
John Dehlin [01:35:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:35:20] So he's the director historical of the Historical Research and Outreach of the. Of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That's what it says on LinkedIn.
John Dehlin [01:35:31] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:35:32] So he's an. He's employed by the church. He has a book contract with Desert Book. So what he says is, I think has quite. Quite a bit of weight. And so he gave recently speech at the Ensign College during their weekly devotionals and it was really interesting. It was titled something like the misconceptions about following the prophet.
John Dehlin [01:36:01] Expectations of a prophet.
Guest 4 [01:36:02] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:36:02] Expectations of the. And basically was the misconceptions that LDS people, LDS members have regarding prophets. So.
John Dehlin [01:36:10] So let's hear what he had to say about. About prophets.
Gerardo Sumano [01:36:13] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:36:13] All right, here we go. This is Keith Erickson.
Gerardo Sumano [01:36:16] Latter Day Saint doctrine does not include a provision that a prophet is infallible. We should also not expect that prophets do not get tricked.
John Dehlin [01:36:31] Okay, so what's the contradiction there?
Gerardo Sumano [01:36:34] Well, if they can't teach false doctrine, then they can get tricked. How does that work?
Guest 2 [01:36:39] Right.
John Dehlin [01:36:40] So is it. Is it a Hubble telescope or can they get tricked? Which. Which is it?
Gerardo Sumano [01:36:45] Well, let's watch the next. The next one.
John Dehlin [01:36:46] Okay, so what's this next?
Gerardo Sumano [01:36:47] Even better.
John Dehlin [01:36:48] What is this next clip about?
Gerardo Sumano [01:36:49] Can you put it up as I can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is Wendy Nelson telling us about what should we do with when the prophet talks?
John Dehlin [01:37:00] Okay. Speaking to the Saints in Europe.
Carah Burrell [01:37:02] It is true today it can be difficult to know who speaks the truth.
▶ Video Clip 3Video Clip 3 [01:37:07] But my testimony is that prophets of God always speak the truth. For this new Year, let's put an exclamation mark after every statement from a prophet and a question mark after everything else we read.
Video Clip 3 [01:37:23] See?
Video Clip 3 [01:37:24] Or.
Guest [01:37:26] Or.
John Dehlin [01:37:27] Or what?
Gerardo Sumano [01:37:28] I can't remember.
Carah Burrell [01:37:29] Come across on Mormon Scoops live Thursdays at 7.
John Dehlin [01:37:34] We gotta test each clip we make.
Guest 11 [01:37:35] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:37:36] Sorry, that was my fault.
John Dehlin [01:37:37] No, it's okay.
Guest 2 [01:37:37] It's okay.
John Dehlin [01:37:39] Yeah. So which is it? Is it that. Is it they're a Hubble telescope that they can see things clearly and predict the future? Or it's a misconception that they can't make mistakes.
Guest 5 [01:37:50] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:37:51] Or get tricked.
John Dehlin [01:37:52] Yeah. Or infallible.
Guest 6 [01:37:55] What?
Gerardo Sumano [01:37:55] What's the meaning of the word infallible?
John Dehlin [01:37:58] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:37:58] Inability to fail.
Guest 3 [01:38:00] I don't know. Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:38:01] So inability maybe of teaching false doctrine. Of teaching false things. Right.
Carah Burrell [01:38:06] It's even worse. It's incapable of making mistakes or being wrong.
Guest 3 [01:38:10] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:38:11] So, I mean, Keith Erickson says, like, prophets are not infallible. But then Wendy Nelson is saying that they're incapable of teaching something, that it's untruth.
John Dehlin [01:38:21] And this is Luna. Lindsay Corbin talks about this idea of double speak.
Gerardo Sumano [01:38:25] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:38:26] High demand religions, or in some cases, cults, they always want to have everything both ways. So on the one hand, they want to have everyone follow the prophet and believe that they're perfect. And at the same time, they. They want to make sure that when they have mistakes, that everyone is programmed to cut them slack to give Brother Joseph a break.
Guest 3 [01:38:48] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:38:48] Why are you laughing so hard?
Carah Burrell [01:38:49] Dying.
John Dehlin [01:38:50] Why are you laughing so hard?
Carah Burrell [01:38:51] Hey, I have to find the comment. I just lost it.
John Dehlin [01:38:54] Okay.
Carah Burrell [01:38:54] Oh, no, wait. Nick Durrington has my favorite comment of the year. Hubble telescopes these light from the past.
John Dehlin [01:39:02] So you like that?
Carah Burrell [01:39:05] Yeah. Yeah. The Hubble telescopes. It is seeing light from the past. So if you want to make that comparison. Sure.
John Dehlin [01:39:11] Apartment Hella apartment From, like, gazillion years.
Carah Burrell [01:39:14] The light that they're getting is from. From a billion years ago. I couldn't think of a better comparison. Yeah.
Guest [01:39:19] Okay.
John Dehlin [01:39:20] Thank you for that, Carah. Thank you. Okay, Gerardo, you were saying?
Gerardo Sumano [01:39:24] I. I can't remember what I was saying.
John Dehlin [01:39:26] No, it's fine.
Gerardo Sumano [01:39:26] Oh, yes.
Guest 5 [01:39:27] The.
Gerardo Sumano [01:39:28] The double speak, it makes it so that members, when they're confronted with different information from either side, they are able to justify it to themselves, because in their mind, they put both things together, and they are not able to see the cognitive dissonance between both. That both arguments are contradictory. Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:39:48] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:39:48] Yeah. So it keeps them in.
John Dehlin [01:39:50] Yeah. All right, well, we got more from Keith Erickson here. What's he going to be telling us here?
Gerardo Sumano [01:39:56] Prophets don't teach us to follow them.
John Dehlin [01:39:59] Okay, so that. That. That's interesting. I could already. I could already see where this is going. So. So Keith Erickson is. Is telling us how prophets don't teach us to follow them. Okay.
Guest 2 [01:40:09] Prophets do not urge us to follow
Gerardo Sumano [01:40:11] or imitate them, but to follow and imitate the Savior. George Q. Cannon served as a counselor in the first presidency to Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and Lorenzo Smith. Do not, he counseled, put your trust in man, though he be a bishop, an apostle, or a president. If you do, they will fail you. At some time or place, they will do wrong or seem to, and your support will be gone. But if we lean on God, he will never fail us. We must not elevate the childhood game of follow the leader into a false template for human imitation. Stated another way, the prophets do not teach us to follow them, but to hear him.
John Dehlin [01:41:12] What the.
Carah Burrell [01:41:14] I Can make up word salad lives too globally.
Guest 5 [01:41:17] Clip global.
Carah Burrell [01:41:20] What are you saying? Are you. Have you ever been to this church?
Gerardo Sumano [01:41:23] No. I think it would be really impactful if you play the next clip without commenting yet.
John Dehlin [01:41:28] Here we go. Here we go.
Gerardo Sumano [01:41:29] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:41:30] So are you telling us that it's important to follow the prophet?
▶ Video Clip 4Video Clip 4 [01:41:35] Yes.
Video Clip 4 [01:41:36] Why
Video Clip 4 [01:41:38] it's important to follow the prophet?
Video Clip 4 [01:41:40] Because if we didn't follow the prophet, we could start to, like, stray away from the church and not do as
Video Clip 4 [01:41:46] many things to, like, read the scriptures every night.
Video Clip 4 [01:41:50] If we stop reading the scriptures, we
Video Clip 4 [01:41:51] would stop really thinking about the church
Video Clip 4 [01:41:55] and any other time the church and
Video Clip 4 [01:41:57] it would just become kind of, like,
Video Clip 4 [01:41:59] annoying to go to the church and
Video Clip 4 [01:42:01] you might eventually even stop.
Video Clip 4 [01:42:04] That wouldn't be good, would it? Any other thoughts?
Video Clip 4 [01:42:08] Why do you follow the prophets? Why is that important? Yes, Nathan.
Video Clip 4 [01:42:14] So it's important because you can follow
Video Clip 4 [01:42:18] him, and if you follow him, you can, like, live in the celestial kingdom and you'll be happy with your families and you'll be super happy and you can live forever.
Video Clip 4 [01:42:30] President Nelson, would you ever lead anyone astray? Oh, no, that's not what prophets do, is it?
Video Clip 4 [01:42:39] Some of them have said, if the
Video Clip 4 [01:42:43] president of the church should ever lead
John Dehlin [01:42:45] people astray, God would take him away. So I like to stay here. And I won't lead you astray. Do you know what the word prophet means? He speaks for God. And so God won't lead you astray, and the prophet will not lead you astray. I just have no words. Yeah, like, I was laughing at first, and then I'm just like.
Gerardo Sumano [01:43:17] It's really creepy a little bit.
John Dehlin [01:43:20] And then the fact that, I mean, we all know we. We don't have a clip of it, but we all have heard the song, the primary song. Follow the prophet, follow them.
Gerardo Sumano [01:43:29] I thought this was more impactful because it is.
John Dehlin [01:43:31] There it is. Yeah, but he's saying it himself. Right, Right.
Carah Burrell [01:43:35] People are confused. If you don't believe it, go on.
John Dehlin [01:43:38] What's the news? We can be direction all along the way if you heed the prophets. Follow what they say, Follow the prophet. Well, I mean, that's where every primary kid sings that song at least once or twice a month.
Gerardo Sumano [01:43:51] But that's a kid stuff, not the prophets.
John Dehlin [01:43:54] Yeah, yeah, but there's pro. There's President Nelson actually saying it and,
Gerardo Sumano [01:43:59] well, agreeing with them.
John Dehlin [01:44:00] Yeah, but then. But then Keith Erickson is saying that the. The church doesn't teach that and the prophets don't teach that. It's just. It's not true.
Carah Burrell [01:44:07] Yeah, I Want to give kudos where kudos are due. If that is this nuanced new approach that the church wants to go with thumbs up from me, not taking the things the prophet says too seriously and understanding that they're fallible beings. And if what Keith is saying is like the new rebrand of what profits are. Got a thumbs up from me on that.
Gerardo Sumano [01:44:25] Well, the thing is that I think this devotional is being given at the same time, you know, so who do we listen to? Keith Erickson or Elder Renlund and the Relief Society president or the prophet himself. Right.
Carah Burrell [01:44:37] Who says.
John Dehlin [01:44:38] Right. I would literally never, never leave you astray. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:44:43] And I just want to drill this home because what Elder Runlund was saying. Sorry, not Elder Run. Who was. Who was just giving that clip. I forgot already.
Gerardo Sumano [01:44:53] The sister.
Carah Burrell [01:44:54] The Sister Sharon Eubanks.
John Dehlin [01:44:57] Joy Jones.
Gerardo Sumano [01:44:59] That was the. With the primary.
John Dehlin [01:45:02] Okay.
Carah Burrell [01:45:03] The point is this idea. Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:45:06] Sharing Eubank.
Carah Burrell [01:45:07] Yeah. In real terms of. Oh, no, actually, I wanted to speak to what. What Keith was saying.
Guest 6 [01:45:13] The.
Carah Burrell [01:45:13] The way that Keith was talking about, at some point these. These leaders are going to fail you. And he had that quote from George Q. Cannon. Right. That would be lovely if it was actually applied because we just had an episode on Mormon stories that just aired today about very fallible leaders putting a child molester in a. As bishop. And so if we could actually apply that in real terms, what happened to the couple, what happened to the registers today, Colby and Cammie that were on the podcast? What happened when they said, this leader who put this person in this position is fallible? This person said that this case is closed and we're not looking into it.
Carah Burrell [01:45:50] We're not going to alert anyone in the stake about this bishop being a trial monster. This has real, actual consequences in the lives of people. So when they're saying, hey, this leader is. Is. Just because they're a leader doesn't mean that they made the correct position or the correct assessment of the situation. And all of the Reddishes Ward members are heaping hate upon them for not following the counsel of what the stake president said, that it was. It was done, it was a case closed. And then they're completely, like, ostracized for them, for their community. So that's one example of some. I think we could all think of one.
John Dehlin [01:46:21] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:46:21] Like, why can't we actually apply this George Q. Cannon idea that when they are fallible, what do people do about it? Are they welcomed? Are they saying, like, you're right, maybe there's a little bit too much strict Authoritarianism here or do they. Are they ostracized from their community and ousted for not following the direction of their leaders? Yeah, because that's, that is. It's a really simple fix. Like, let them be questioned a little bit more anyway, because now this couple was thrown into an entire faith crisis over it. Like, it's a real simple fix. I honestly.
Gerardo Sumano [01:46:51] But what happens, the whole system in which the. The church is built up on, you know, that the, the. What makes people really give 10 of their income and stay really loyal, like give vast amount of their time starts. Starts fading away. Because if the prophet can be wrong, then that means that maybe I don't have to listen to everything he says.
Guest 2 [01:47:14] Right?
Carah Burrell [01:47:15] Yeah. Like if, If I'm allowed to have some independent thought. Oh, no, don't want that. Also, shout out to Colby, what's up, dude? Said care's drumming up inches for tomorrow, which I am.
John Dehlin [01:47:27] Colby's in the house. Colby Reddish.
Carah Burrell [01:47:30] Thanks again for sharing your story today, guys.
John Dehlin [01:47:31] Yeah, we love you, Colby. We're. We think you and your wife are super courageous. So thanks for joining us. Okay, well, we're not done. We have more. Well, yeah, I like what you said, Carah. Like, if the church is starting to back off this idea of prophetic infallibility, that, that prophets, you know, that that is one of the biggest problems, I think even. Yeah, even like Jim Bennett calls that idolatry. Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:47:58] Like, I love it.
John Dehlin [01:47:59] Mormon prophet worship is idolatry. Everyone comes by it honestly, but it's a problem. So kudos to the church for working to walk that back.
Gerardo Sumano [01:48:09] Yeah. I love that he says that. That it's a false doctrine. Jim. Jim Dennett Bennett says that, like profit infallibility is a false doctrine.
John Dehlin [01:48:17] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:48:18] Problem is that we have the prophetic himself promoting that idea.
John Dehlin [01:48:21] Yeah.
Guest 7 [01:48:22] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [01:48:23] What's that? That old saying from like Martin Luther King Jr. Or sometime where you always like to say, John, that power often does not really English itself.
John Dehlin [01:48:32] Voluntarily.
Carah Burrell [01:48:33] Voluntarily.
John Dehlin [01:48:34] Yeah. It must be forced. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, well, we'll see if. We'll see if that dude Keith Erickson has his way.
Guest 2 [01:48:44] Right.
John Dehlin [01:48:44] He's kind of a. I wonder if he's a little bit off. Kind of like off. I wonder if he's a little bit off.
Gerardo Sumano [01:48:50] It was interesting that the Church News had it posted the same video on their website.
John Dehlin [01:48:55] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:48:55] I mean, they made an article about it, but then when you go and click on the video, it's. It was taking off the website. I mean, I was able to find it on the Ensign College YouTube channel,
John Dehlin [01:49:04] but yeah, it's hard to find. Well, I hope when the brethren started saying that at general conference.
Gerardo Sumano [01:49:10] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:49:10] Take everything we say with the grain of salt because we may totally have it wrong here at general conference.
Carah Burrell [01:49:16] Yeah, I have. I have a TikTok that because Keith Erickson has given that speech a couple times before on like that Latter Day Saint podcast that LDS Living does called that. I can't remember, but he's done it before. And I'm really glad because I listened to it in my bathroom and I was like, you know in your bathroom where there's like usually no lights, I actually turned it out and the gaslighting that came from my phone playing that podcast lit up the whole room really bright.
John Dehlin [01:49:39] I want there to be a flashing asterisk at the bottom of general conference that says mileage may vary.
Guest 7 [01:49:45] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:49:46] These things being said are not necessarily
Carah Burrell [01:49:48] prophecy, just a big neon sign that says, like, speaking as a man, speaking as a prophet, and just they can turn it on and off because it's really important to know the difference.
Elder Renlund on Same-Sex Attraction and LGBTQ Issues
John Dehlin [01:49:58] All right, all right. So the next. The next statement from Elder Renlund is about having same sex attraction. So, Gerardo, we're going to expect you to, you know. No, actually that's rude. We shouldn't expect minorities to represent all minorities. But I am interested, Gerardo, knowing what you think about what Elder Renlund says about having same sex attraction. So let's roll the clip
▶ Video Clip 5Video Clip 5 [01:50:24] that having same sex attraction is not a sin. Bullying, belittling, ridiculing someone because they have same sex attraction is a sin. And the Lord's very display pleased with that. As a church, we are not the ones that take and say, even for those who are behaving contrary to God's law of chastity, we're not the ones condemning them to hell. In fact, we believe that the honorable people of the earth will receive a degree of glory in the hereafter that equals or exceeds that which other Christian denominations consider heaven.
Video Clip 5 [01:51:10] Wow.
Video Clip 5 [01:51:11] So just. We reach out with love and understanding. Among the youth. The things that are really hard on a youth who is same sex attracted is loneliness, isolation, and helplessness. As a church, we can help with those things.
Gerardo Sumano [01:51:32] He was going good, he was doing good.
John Dehlin [01:51:33] What'd you like? And then what'd you like? And then what did you not like?
Gerardo Sumano [01:51:37] Most of it was really good. I mean, calling people who bully or belittle people with same sex attraction, calling them the sinners, that's a big deal. That's good.
Carah Burrell [01:51:52] In your. In your experience, there's there's more like big T bullying and then like the soft, more shunning version. And so would you consider it, though, belittling and bullying if somebody doesn't view your marriage to your husband as equal to, like a heterosexual marriage, if you were to attend church just if they did not recognize your marriage as a true marriage?
Gerardo Sumano [01:52:13] Yeah, Yeah, I think if that's the church's standard. Yeah. I think someone calling it. What do they call it in the church?
John Dehlin [01:52:20] Fake marriage or sham, you know?
Gerardo Sumano [01:52:22] Yeah, there's a word. But anyway.
John Dehlin [01:52:25] Yeah, careful. Yeah, but you like that he's calling out bullying of LGBT people.
Gerardo Sumano [01:52:30] Yeah.
Guest 3 [01:52:31] Yeah.
Guest 2 [01:52:32] Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [01:52:32] So I wish this. I mean, this should be a quote that should be out there, you know, jointly with those. I mean, I can count at least five other quotes that are pretty big out there, like apostles calling out homophobic statements or.
John Dehlin [01:52:50] Anyway, has that ever been said at a general conference that you're aware of?
Gerardo Sumano [01:52:53] No.
John Dehlin [01:52:54] So you'd like to see that.
Gerardo Sumano [01:52:55] Yeah, for sure. Most of this type of quotes are never said at general conference.
John Dehlin [01:53:00] They're said behind the scenes to select audience.
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:02] Right. They're. What comes out of a general conference is usually more a little homo. Like. No, like homophobic statements.
Guest 9 [01:53:09] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:09] Elder Oaks. Elder Holland. So, yeah, I wish this was said at general conference. I think it's a. It's a pretty good concept to teach the membership.
John Dehlin [01:53:20] What about it? What about him saying that same sex attraction isn't a sin? That a bone. Was he throwing you a bone there?
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:26] I mean, that has been the church's teaching for decades.
John Dehlin [01:53:33] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:34] So, okay. I mean.
Carah Burrell [01:53:37] Yeah. What about how he said that we're not like other Christians where, like, we condemn.
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:42] Oh, that one was really.
Carah Burrell [01:53:43] They actually get a higher level to glory.
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:44] That was really good.
John Dehlin [01:53:45] I thought you got thrown a bone that you, you'll, you'll. What was he saying?
Gerardo Sumano [01:53:50] Well, he's saying. He's saying, as members of the church, we cannot say that gay people who are in a same sex relationship are going to go to hell. In fact, our doctrine is more expansive and they. They may even achieve a higher degree of heaven than we might think. So we're not the ones that are going to judge. So that one's really good, too.
John Dehlin [01:54:13] So LGBT Mormons aren't the lowest. They may not make the highest rate.
Gerardo Sumano [01:54:17] Well, he doesn't say which one, Right?
Carah Burrell [01:54:20] Yeah, but it seems like a softer way of, like, rhetoric around LGBTQ issues. Yeah, it's like, it's not actually that bad. Like, it's bad, but it's not that
John Dehlin [01:54:30] it's not the worst thing. It's bad, but it's not the worst thing.
Gerardo Sumano [01:54:32] Yeah, well, and he's. Well, what he's saying is like, church members should not condemn LGBT people who decide to, you know, enter into same sex relationships. They members should not condemn them to hell because we really don't know what's going to happen to them. That, I mean, those kind of statements I've only heard from people like Jim Bennett and, you know, like, really progressive apologists. So coming. Coming up, like, coming from an apostle, I think that's a big deal.
Guest 4 [01:55:06] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:55:06] Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [01:55:08] Yeah.
Guest 7 [01:55:08] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:55:09] Now, however, he then says that the church will help people with same sex attraction when they feel lonely. And what else does he.
Carah Burrell [01:55:20] Yeah, he said that some of the challenges the LGBTQ youth and the church face are loneliness and isolation and that the church can help with that.
Gerardo Sumano [01:55:30] Yeah, that statement. I mean, we all know it's. It's false. The.
John Dehlin [01:55:36] I think they're basically. I think they did some survey at some point of, like, LGBT youth because they're trying to dispel the myth that the Mormon church causes LGBTQ suicide.
Gerardo Sumano [01:55:47] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:55:47] So they quote some study that basically says LGBTQ youth who have no church and no support.
Gerardo Sumano [01:55:53] It was in Utah, maybe do worse
John Dehlin [01:55:56] than LGBTQ Mormons that at least have a church to attend.
Gerardo Sumano [01:56:00] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:56:00] Isn't that what he's trying to say? He's trying to make the argument that.
Guest [01:56:04] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:56:05] That the LDS Church is healthy for LGBTQ youth.
Gerardo Sumano [01:56:08] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:56:08] That's a stretch.
Gerardo Sumano [01:56:09] It's a, It's a stretch even by the people who perform the, the, the study. They would say that's a huge stretch from the results they got because they really don't know. I mean, it was in Utah and the study was done in Utah.
John Dehlin [01:56:25] Right.
Gerardo Sumano [01:56:26] Where, you know, a big part of the population is either very conservative politically or are LDs. I mean, we know, you know, like the transgender bill that is trying to be passed right now about transgender students and schools and stuff like that. So it goes beyond that in Utah. It goes beyond the LDs, like trans, transphobia, homophobia, goes beyond the church and that. I mean, there's no way to know that the results that this study provided or gave are not affected by things like that, by people being highly conservative in Utah.
John Dehlin [01:57:13] Yeah, well, I mean, I'm trying to think this through and like, let's just say Utah is a super homophobic state.
Guest 3 [01:57:18] Right.
John Dehlin [01:57:19] Then none non Mormon or non churched LGBTQ youth in Utah are going to do worse than LDS LGBTQ youth because they Live in a super homophobic state. Yeah, that is super homophobic, largely because of the predominant religion in the state. So the church doesn't get brownie points that LGBTQ youth do a little bit better by going to church, the Mormon Church, than. Than non Mormon LGBTQ youth in Utah that are just suffering from LGBTQ homophobia in Utah because of the Mormon Church's influence. I don't know. That's my way of.
Gerardo Sumano [01:57:58] Yeah, that's exactly how I'm thinking about it.
Guest 4 [01:58:00] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:58:01] All right, well, there's more. There's another clip that Elder Renlund makes about LGBTQ people. Should we just play it?
Carah Burrell [01:58:09] Sure.
John Dehlin [01:58:10] All right, here we go.
Guest 2 [01:58:13] Whatever is unfair in this life will be made right because of the atonement of Jesus Christ. How that's done, I don't know. When that's done, I don't know. But I know that it will be made right through the atonement of Jesus Christ. And I think that. That as a church, we help each other. We help those that struggle in any way. We reach out with love and compassion, never with hate, never with judging. And we teach the doctrine.
Carah Burrell [01:58:57] And we teach the doctrine. So it almost feels there's a couple things to say there, but it's like we reach out with love. Great thumbs up. And teach the doctrine. And like, he comes back down to drop down the hammer. Because the doctrine, no matter any way you want to nuance it, it's still not inclusive to people of different gender identities.
Gerardo Sumano [01:59:15] Yeah, it's homophobic. It's a homophobic doctrine. But I mean, that was like. I mean, okay, so the church has wrestled with this issue for a while. Really. There's only. I'm aware of two, one official and one semi official statement regarding if homosexuality will be cured or disappeared in the next life. One of them was by Elder Wickman on his interview with Elder Oaks.
Gerardo Sumano [01:59:48] It's on. Can find it in the church news website. It's a pretty famous interview as well where Elder Oaks talked about not inviting your LGBT son or daughter to family gatherings because they might influence other kids. I mean, Elder Oaks, that makes that infamous. But anyway, in that interview, Elder Wickman says that homosexuality or same sex attraction is not going to exist in the next life.
Gerardo Sumano [02:00:18] I think the church has gotten a lot of heat regarding that statement because some people think it. It causes lgbt, including David Archuleta, by the way, because he mentions it on his one hour video where, like, it makes LGBT people want to commit suicide or die by suicide, because then it would, you know, let's just Go to the next life. If this life is too hard to
Carah Burrell [02:00:44] endure, this will be taken away from you.
Gerardo Sumano [02:00:45] Yeah, exactly. So the church has never address that issue again. And I think Elder Renlund is. Is that's what he's talking about, that he's not sure how it's going to be made right. The fact that LGBT people have this quote unquote challenge, but he, he believes he's gonna made right. And so it's profits again. Saying like, we don't know. We're prophets. We're supposed to be receiving revelation about these things, but I guess we don't know.
John Dehlin [02:01:21] Yeah. So how are you, how are you feeling overall about Renlund's LGBTQ rhetoric?
Gerardo Sumano [02:01:28] There's positives and negatives.
Guest 2 [02:01:30] Okay.
Gerardo Sumano [02:01:30] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:01:32] All right. Okay.
Guest 5 [02:01:35] Really?
John Dehlin [02:01:35] Were you gonna say something? Care.
Carah Burrell [02:01:36] All I was gonna say is it just reminds me of, like when you're in primary and the church is really good at giving you, you know, the roadmap of how to live a happy, successful life. Do these things follow the prophets? You're a child of God. All of the basic things that you learn in Primary and those little testimonies, things that help you throughout your life and then you grow up and maybe you discover that you are not straight or something that makes you not be able to live out that blueprint that God had for you. And it's really this. This awful struggle. Struggle that so many people like Gerardo and other like LGBTQ Mormons have had to face is you have your entire life put into this, like on this roadmap, on this covenant path.
Carah Burrell [02:02:15] And then when you don't fit within it, like, where do you even go? What do you do? Because this was your identity as a child of God. And it just, it's. It almost is like spilling the beans, letting the cat out of the bag. When you hear apostles say, remember how we gave you that identity since you were a kid, that you're a child of God.
Carah Burrell [02:02:34] Again, terms and conditions apply. We don't actually have a whole lot of extra data about it because it turns out the way that you're a child of God, the way that you, like, have a certain sexuality, it's. It's confusing us. So just stick with the identity that we gave you as a child of God. Any extra and. Or questions will be answered in the next life. Don't ask us. We're busy, busy people. It just is, really. You give someone an identity and then when you. They can't ask follow up questions about a core identity that doesn't fit within that covenant path. That's crazy making behavior. So the fact that he just admitted that we don't know is wild.
Guest 8 [02:03:07] Like.
Gerardo Sumano [02:03:08] Yeah, I agree.
John Dehlin [02:03:10] Yeah. It just begs the question, really, what is the value of a prophet, Syrian revelator on something that's literally leading to depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, or death by suicide? It's. It's destroying the church, literally dismantling the modern Mormon Church. Like, it would have been nice that they could have actually saw that ahead of time and came out with some. And God could have included that in the Book of Mormon. Maybe he could. You know, the Book of Mormon was written for our time. Was it? Was the Book of Mormon written for our time? Really?
Guest 3 [02:03:42] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:03:43] Was the Doctrine and Covenants written for our time? They're silent on. On LGBTQ issues, and so, you know, have most of the prophets and revelators. Anyway, I'm. I have just now pasted into the comments the link to join us over video, so. And we pinned it to the top of the YouTube channel, at least. Gerardo, I don't know if you want to pin it or paste it in descriptions or elsewhere real quick, but we. We've just got a couple more clips to play.
Gerardo Sumano [02:04:10] Wait, so you did it on the. On the comments?
John Dehlin [02:04:11] I did it in the comments.
Gerardo Sumano [02:04:13] Okay.
John Dehlin [02:04:13] Yeah. If you want to paste it elsewhere, that's fine, but any of the viewers want to join us, we would love to invite and get some of our viewer and listener feedback. You can join us on streamyard. Make sure and enable your camera and your microphone before beforehand, and we would love to take some of your calls. We've got a few more quick clips to play. The next clip is entitled Speculative Reasoning Can Lead to Deception. So I'll go ahead and play that next
Guest 2 [02:04:49] Mother in Heaven, and it'll take you to the gospel topic essays, Mother in Heaven. And if you read what's there, you will know everything that I know about that subject. Speculation won't lead to greater spiritual knowledge. Demanding revelation from God is both arrogant and unproductive. Instead, we wait on the Lord in His timetable to reveal his truths through the means that he's established. And please remember that reason can lead to revelation, but can't replace it. Speculative reasoning can lead to deception or divert our focus from what has been revealed.
John Dehlin [02:05:34] All right, what did you guys find interesting about that clip? Carah, do you want to go?
Carah Burrell [02:05:37] Yeah. Before we started, Gerardo and I were talking about how kind of the. The tradition of the way that a lot of revelation that has been given in the LDS Church wouldn't you say has been done by starting with some speculation or starting by people demanding, like the prophet pray about it.
Gerardo Sumano [02:05:55] That's literally how a lot of the revelation from Joseph Smith's timing, Joseph Smith's
Carah Burrell [02:06:00] time, and it feels like all the way up into the civil rights era of people like demanding something and then oops. And just so happens, like people can have the priesthood that are from African descent now. You know, like, I feel like people demand things all the time and the church has to acquiesce. That seems like the way that, that it goes. So again, this goes back to like the idea of like information control. You might think that that's true or.
Gerardo Sumano [02:06:22] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [02:06:23] Unless, you know, you know, the way that the church has actually done things that you can get revelation, quote, unquote, revelation to change through demand. But what do you have to say on that?
Gerardo Sumano [02:06:32] Well, there's so many examples, like the reversal of the November 15 policy, even
John Dehlin [02:06:39] just putting a declaration too. How about the polygamy reversal? Right.
Guest 5 [02:06:42] It's.
John Dehlin [02:06:42] It's the federal government.
Guest [02:06:44] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:06:44] Bears down, starts putting our profits in prison, starts seizing our assets. Oh, look, a revelation. And it's not a revelation to like predict something in the future. It's a revelation to rescind something in the past that's become problematic based on the federal government or citizen outrage. And again with the, with the, with the reversal of the priesthood ban, the church's tax exempt status was possibly being threatened. There were universities that were protesting when they would play basketball or football against byu. Like, we don't get revelation in this church. We respond to public outrage or federal government, you know, protestation.
John Dehlin [02:07:30] And that's all revelations are these days. Other than that, what's a revelation? Even the proclamation of the family. Number one, it has been canonized. Number two, wasn't it a legal brief that got developed and then turned into a declaration after it was drafted as a legal brief to, to provide a bolstering of our attempts to defeat same sex marriage in the United States.
Gerardo Sumano [02:07:52] Yeah. I mean, that's the reason it was created.
John Dehlin [02:07:54] Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [02:07:54] So. And that's what it's used, literally, what it's used for.
John Dehlin [02:08:00] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [02:08:01] And I also, I could make the argument that he just said that. The exact sentence I think he said, correct me if I wrong, was speculation does not bring forth revelation. And so think about somebody who's in a faith crisis and they need revelation. They need an understanding of, you know, something Joseph Smith did, and they're looking for a revelation. Where do people normally look to? They look to Mormon Apologists who are speculating, who. It's their job to speculate. And by the way, I just want to read. The definition of an apologist is a reasoned argument or writing and justification of something. Typically a theory or religious doctrine is what the definition is.
Carah Burrell [02:08:35] It is just a speculation of a theory that helps you kind of like feel more comfortable with something, you know, in a religious doctrine or historically in the Mormon Church. So for people to be able to, to feel like they have a place in this church, they have to look to speculators instead of going with like sometimes what the data says or what the actual historical record says. It's like this church would die if that actually, if they actually followed that advice of no more speculation, this church would not function anymore, in my opinion.
Gerardo Sumano [02:09:04] That's true.
Guest 2 [02:09:05] Yeah.
Final Clips from the Devotional and Listener Reactions
John Dehlin [02:09:07] All right, well, we've got one or two more clips and then we're done. This next clip, we've got some people waiting, so we're excited. For those of you who are going to be joining us on the video chat, this next one is entitled Sister Renlund, New Feminist Icon with Hearts, I'm assuming.
Guest 6 [02:09:24] Yes.
Carah Burrell [02:09:24] You guys, I, I, there are actually a couple different really nice clips within this. And Sister Runlund, who is Elder Renlund's wife, obviously she, I cut it out at the beginning of this clip because it was like three minutes long. But she talks about how she, when her, her husband was like going to med school and he, they had like a three year old child and she decided that she wanted to go to law school. And I was like, damn, monster inland. That's like, you know, wow.
John Dehlin [02:09:49] Let's roll it.
Carah Burrell [02:09:50] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:09:50] Is that the clip we're about to see?
Carah Burrell [02:09:52] No, that, that's before she says that. And then she, I'm just setting up the clip because it was a little bit too long. But anyway, she starts talking about how she had to make a list of how she was doing too many things. Too many, like gender role things. Interesting. So that she would be able to attend law school. So that's why I called Sister Enlund a feminist icon.
John Dehlin [02:10:10] All right, let's, let's roll a clip and see what she says.
▶ Video Clip 6Video Clip 6 [02:10:13] That I did is I took a close look at some of the things I was doing and decided I'm not going to do them anymore and I'm not going to feel guilty about them. I took out a pencil and paper and I wrote down some of the things I was no longer going to do and not feel guilty about. I'll tell you what was on that list. I Mean, it started with ironing.
Video Clip 6 [02:10:40] Okay.
Video Clip 6 [02:10:41] Not going to feel guilty. My husband's shirts didn't look great. Don't look at me. I, I just said, I'm not going to feel guilty about this. I don't have time to do it. If it's important to my husband, he'll do it. Then I made a list of things that were not going to fall through the cracks. Things only I could do, and I would be there to do them.
Video Clip 6 [02:11:05] Okay.
Video Clip 6 [02:11:06] I decided it didn't matter who fixed the food if it was all frozen food out of the freezer. It didn't matter. We had food to eat. What didn't matter was that I was there to read story time for my daughter and that we would have scripts, we'd read scriptures, we'd do a story and we'd have prayer. That was important. I wouldn't miss that. I would always be at sacrament meeting and I would accept a church calling.
Video Clip 6 [02:11:35] And I do my best with the time that I had. So there were certain things I said. I have to, I'm going to do these. It matters. This matters that I personally am the one that does. It matters for me, it matters for our family. And there were other things that didn't. And I can tell you it was liberating once I wrote it down and. But the caveat is, you have to say, am not feel guilty about not doing it.
Carah Burrell [02:12:02] She's teaching Women's Lib 101. So in a Mormon context, obviously of saying that I'm still going to put the church first in all the ways. But I love how she said that she's putting her family first and like her education first and being a career woman potentially. I don't know what she did with her law degree, but that is some like some hyper rebellious stuff there, sister. So I thought that was pretty cool. I wanted to include it because here at Mormon Scoops, you know, some people, they want pistachio flavor too, so we have to throw that in. It's just one of the many offerings. Pistachio is like the, the pro Mormon flavor.
Gerardo Sumano [02:12:38] I, I love that for sure. That's really different from what I heard growing up, you know, so.
Carah Burrell [02:12:46] Definitely. Yeah.
Gerardo Sumano [02:12:47] I wish it's not, it was not just on case.
Guest 2 [02:12:49] Bill.
Gerardo Sumano [02:12:50] They were saying this in general conference.
John Dehlin [02:12:51] Can you imagine if, if they. Over general. Over the pulpit of General conference. They're like wives. You don't have to iron and you don't have to.
Gerardo Sumano [02:12:57] Yeah. You don't have to feel guilty about
John Dehlin [02:12:59] it and don't feel Guilty about it. I mean that. But that really would be assaulting gender roles. And the church wants to make it really clear gender is eternal. And of course, we gen gender ify home chores. Right. And so. Yeah, yeah, but, but, but let's just say in good faith. Carah, you felt good about that?
Carah Burrell [02:13:19] Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like, that is. That is like a small win for somebody who's that. Like a wife of somebody that's that high in leadership saying that. Just want to make sure to highlight, you know, the good things. And already people are getting mad at me for bashing pistachio. I used to work, and not a. An ice cream shop, but actually a rice pudding shop, and our least popular flavor was pistachio. So it was the first thing that came to my mind. All right, it's data. Don't argue.
John Dehlin [02:13:45] All right, well, Sister Renlund, step up and give that talk at general conference. We urge you to. Why not?
Gerardo Sumano [02:13:52] Wives of apostle wives.
John Dehlin [02:13:54] Don't speak.
Gerardo Sumano [02:13:55] Don't speak.
John Dehlin [02:13:55] I jumps. Oops. All right, well, anyway, that's. That's the clips we have for today, thanks to our leaker or leakers who shared with us, because guess what? That talk is no longer available. But we have the full version available. If anybody wants to see it, we'll share it with you. And that's our show. And now we have the special segment of Collins where you, our devoted viewers and listeners, get to call in and share your opinion. So we're excited about that. And I kind of have to first invite our dear. Our dear friend Justin. Justin, unmute yourself really quick.
Guest 10 [02:14:38] Quick.
John Dehlin [02:14:38] And we told you about. Is our discord. One of the leaders of our new Mormon stories. Discord Channel. Hey, Dustin.
Guest 8 [02:14:47] Hi.
John Dehlin [02:14:49] How's it going?
Guest 2 [02:14:50] Good, good, good.
Guest 8 [02:14:51] I have to first acknowledge the authority in the room, Carah, since she's the presiding president in of the first presidency there. Okay, yeah, yeah.
Carah Burrell [02:15:02] Respect. Go on with your comment.
Guest 8 [02:15:05] There you go. Yeah, I just wanted to thank you for covering that. That topic about presiding about the. Them doubling down on. On profits like never being wrong and having special sight. Because a lot of my friends now are like nuanced and they're like, you don't have to listen to everything. And it's just good to highlight that. That that still is like the marching orders. That's one of the reasons why we have been running a program on the Discord Channel called Nevermost Sunday School. And it's really cool because like, I'm the only one that was former Mormon that's on the panel. But we have a Panel of like all Nevermos who are studying like the.
Guest 8 [02:15:48] What you actually learn in Mormon Sunday School. But they also, we're, we're also going over a bunch of things that people have a. Authoritatively said as prophets. Like one of the messed up things we're studying this Sunday is the Mormon concept of a pre existence. And in that we're saying, well, you also have prophets who said that some were less valiant who were like mentally handicapped and stuff. And that's not great. But you need to keep that in mind anytime you're claiming to be infallible.
Guest 11 [02:16:18] So.
Carah Burrell [02:16:19] Yeah, right on.
John Dehlin [02:16:20] I love it. Tara, what do you, what do you think?
Carah Burrell [02:16:23] Yeah, yeah. If you, if you have any kind of authoritarian structure that is just entrenched in dogma that can do a lot of harm to people while also serving people, the best way is letting the people who are served by that system speak up and saying, hey, I'm not okay with this or hey, this hurts someone close to me. Going back to what the black Student union at BYU are trying to do. It's just, it takes small and simple measures of people within the church without outside of the church. Like Mormon scoops Thursdays at 7pm Just doing their best to keep the church accountable. So yeah, that's one great way. Everyone go join the Discord. The link is right there in the chat right now. So thanks so so much Justin.
John Dehlin [02:17:02] And Justin, just really quick, for those who don't know what Discord is or why it's cool or how to use it, you want to give like a 30 second elevator pitch for why it's cool?
Guest 8 [02:17:11] Yeah, sure. So I like to describe it like Thrive's done a really good job giving people places to come and show up and, and find community. The problem is, is Thrive still expanding? They're doing a great job, but they're not everywhere yet. What's great about Discord is all the setup work you have to do to create a in person group. You have to do once and maintain it once. And it's still a lot of work but it's now accessible to people everywhere. If you have an Internet connection, we have people and we have a lot of people who are nevermost who are finding support there because they've left a very highly orthodox group and just like deconstructing it within a Mormon context and seeing what we go through really helps them.
Guest 8 [02:17:51] But then also if you're, if you are living in the middle of Provo, Utah and everybody's Mormon and you're the only one who's out, you can come on and you can make friends. And it's unlike Reddit, it's unlike Facebook, because you're gonna run into the same people again and again and. And make friends and. And form connections. So it's a really good way to build community.
John Dehlin [02:18:10] Community digitally.
Carah Burrell [02:18:13] Yay. Thanks so much for. Yeah. Taking the charge to be the mod on that. And so many people have stepped up to help moderate that and keep the community going and stuff. And I'm so excited. It's just like another good, good place to build community. Thanks so much.
Guest 10 [02:18:26] Yeah.
Guest 8 [02:18:27] Come by and say hi. Well, I mean, you did, but I always do.
John Dehlin [02:18:30] I'm always out there. I. I check in when I can.
Guest 8 [02:18:33] Oh, you do? Yeah. John's always popping in and saying hi.
John Dehlin [02:18:36] And Gerardo's going to be featured. What, Monday?
Guest 8 [02:18:39] Yes, Gerardo is going to be there on Monday. I think John is actually in the queue. John Sawyer, him and Gerardo are gonna be on a panel. So I'll. Yeah. Come out.
John Dehlin [02:18:50] Well, Justin, you have been a wonderful volunteer. You just volunteer your own time. You're not getting paid for this. You just care about our community and want to provide support and all your. All your fellow mods. So just a shout out to you, fellow mods. There's over 600 members of the Discord Channel, last I looked.
Guest 8 [02:19:09] Yeah, there's always something going on. It's not like the church where you have to go to everything, just show up, check it out. If it's of use, you know, continue going. If not, that's cool, too.
John Dehlin [02:19:19] All right, thanks, Justin. Thanks for checking in.
Guest 8 [02:19:22] All right, bye.
Guest 4 [02:19:23] All right.
Live Caller Lacy on Leaving the Church
John Dehlin [02:19:25] All right, next. Next we are going to have Lacy. Lacy, thanks for joining us, and welcome to Mormon Scoops.
Guest 2 [02:19:36] Hey.
Guest 9 [02:19:38] Oh, it's so fun to be on here. Yeah. So pretty much what I kind of wanted to mention as, like, I'm 18, so I'm.
Guest 6 [02:19:46] What?
Guest 9 [02:19:47] Yeah. And so just
Carah Burrell [02:19:51] what I've noticed all
Guest 9 [02:19:53] these things, like, what?
Guest 3 [02:19:53] The.
Guest 9 [02:19:54] The black students and the transgender students not getting the therapy that they need, just all those things where even if they are, like, in BYU and still part of the church and believing where, like, in past generations, I feel like people will just, like, slowly put these things on the shelf and kind of, like, work with the church to make it more progressive. I feel like my generation, like, if anything is coming at your mental health, you like. I guess we're just more inclined to take a break from it. And so I feel like people will even fall further from being, like, trying to make it progressive to just, like, Completely quitting and like cutting it all out.
Guest 9 [02:20:33] And so I don't know, I'm pretty optimistic about my generation and I'm, I'm happy about that. But yeah, I feel like the whole route that this is going to take is going to be, I don't know, I think we expect everyone to be it, to get exponentially more progressive, but I think it's also just going to be an exponential amount of people just completely leaving.
Carah Burrell [02:21:00] Wow, Hot take. Let me ask a follow up question though. What do you have to say if somebody heard that and they just take that response is like, oh, that's like Elder Holland when he's like, what kind of taffy pulling patty cake testimony is that? Like you just take a break and you leave. You know, right when you're 18, you don't push through, you don't actually stick it out. And I, I see what you mean by like, the younger generation is like, nope, we out. Like, I don't have to put up with this yet. But if somebody were to say that, what would your response be? You think?
Guest 9 [02:21:29] Here, let me think.
Gerardo Sumano [02:21:31] You put her on her.
Guest 9 [02:21:33] I mean, it's fair. Like, I don't know, especially like, if you are more inclined to like cult like thinking or just anything very high demand, you're more likely to stick it out. But I don't know, it's a fair assumption to just, you know, say that we're kind of like weak and quitting, but anything. I feel like we're just anything that costs our mental health is too expensive and it's just, I don't know, it's like we're okay with it. It's like, yeah, I quit.
Carah Burrell [02:22:01] But yeah, yeah, maybe they're just more in tune, knowing their worth.
Guest 9 [02:22:05] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:22:07] I'm just curious. I'm just so. I'm so happy to have you here, Lacy. So are you comfortable sharing where you're calling from or would you rather not? No pressure.
Guest 9 [02:22:16] Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm in Virginia.
John Dehlin [02:22:18] Okay, that's cool. And then you're 18, like number one. When did you. At what age did you lose your faith? And then at what age did you start listening to, reviewing more Mormon stories? How did that even happen? I'm just curious.
Guest 9 [02:22:30] I was 16, so it was about a year and a half ago. And I think it was only about a year ago that I ever told anybody. I was too scared. I was using like burner YouTube accounts to watch Zelf on the shelf and stories because I was so afraid anyone would see my name. So, yeah, it's only been recent that I've been kind of like, talking about it. But yeah, I was scared.
John Dehlin [02:22:55] Are you able to, like. Do you have any other family members that are in the same place as you? Are you the only one?
Guest 9 [02:23:00] Yeah. So I'm the youngest of seven and my sister and her husband just left, I think maybe almost a year ago. So that was super exciting because I finally had some support.
Gerardo Sumano [02:23:12] Nice.
Guest 2 [02:23:12] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:23:13] And what has it meant to have kind of YouTube channels or, you know, podcasts or whatever? I imagine you maybe felt alone for a while.
Guest 9 [02:23:21] Oh, yeah. It's everything to have just social media in general, just because, like, I was still going to church and things. And over time I became more vocal about my disagreements, but they just kind of shut it down. And then with COVID like, we stopped kind of getting together, so I lost more of my support group from, like, young women's and things like that.
Guest 2 [02:23:45] So,
Guest 9 [02:23:47] yeah, it kind of fell out pretty quick. But also. Yeah, yeah, just kind of. I'm trying to remember what you asked.
John Dehlin [02:23:58] Do you worry that by leaving the church, you're leaving everything of value behind? Do you worry about that?
Guest 9 [02:24:03] I do sometimes. Just because I. It's always constantly reinforced to me that like. Like, people will say to me, like, oh, Lacey, like, you say you hate all these things about the church, but, like, look at all the good in it. Like. Like, look at the support group that you have if you go to college in Utah and all that stuff like that. And it's like, I could be losing everything. But in the same way, it's like what I knew to be everything. I don't know, I guess just kind of rebuilding everything and learning what I was missing is just kind of like, oh, I'm not. I'm not missing anything.
Carah Burrell [02:24:41] It's just.
Gerardo Sumano [02:24:42] Yeah, it's a big statement.
Guest 2 [02:24:44] That's good.
John Dehlin [02:24:46] Well, I. You know, how many of us who are listening, there are lots of comments coming in about how smart our. Our fellow viewers and listeners think you are. Like, how many of us wish we figured it out at 16, not because we hate the church or think that it always harmed us. I think many of us. I know, Carah does feels like the church, and I do feels like the church was good for us in so many ways. But having said that, there's so many decisions you make when you're orthodox in the church in terms of mission and marriage and kids and career and education and stuff. And there are just so many people that wish they'd figured it out when they were 16. So, yeah, that says something. About you, Lacey. So good. Good job.
Guest 9 [02:25:35] Thank you.
John Dehlin [02:25:37] All right, well, we'd love to have you back sometime to tell your story, but we're so glad you.
Guest 9 [02:25:40] Oh, yeah, that'd be super cool. Thank you so much.
Guest 3 [02:25:42] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [02:25:43] Thanks for calling, Lacy.
Guest 8 [02:25:44] All right.
John Dehlin [02:25:45] You take care. Okay.
Guest 9 [02:25:46] Yeah, thank you.
Guest 2 [02:25:47] You too.
John Dehlin [02:25:48] All right, we'll see you soon. Thanks for. Thanks for joining us. All right, let's go to. Let's go and go to John Sawyer. He was the first to first to join us. Hey, John.
Live Callers on Queer Identity and LDS Doctrine
Guest 5 [02:26:00] Hey, John. Hey, Carah. Hey, Gerardo. Great to be here. Awesome show tonight. So as a queer identifying person, I'm both a former evangelical of particularly potent hellfire and brimstone, particularly vehement homophobia that I experienced from a very young age and, and ended up converting to the LDS Church at age 15, which was nicer in doctrine, if you will.
Guest 5 [02:26:34] But one of the things that I wanted to bring up, you know, to Gerardo's comment earlier, is that the doctrine can be nicer. And for me, that was like a relief. I was like, oh, you know, I wasn't being threatened with hellfire anymore actively.
Guest 5 [02:26:50] But the culture ignored my identity. And, you know, I'm reading books about homosexuality being equated to second with murder and those kind of things, which left a very, you know, harmful impact on me. Long story. Ended up, you know, leaving activity in the church after the November 15 policy debacle.
Guest 5 [02:27:15] And that was very difficult because there was so much about the church that I loved and there were so many people in the church that actually helped me to be able to come to the point where I was able to say that I'm a queer identifying person.
Guest 5 [02:27:32] And so I just wanted to put that out there. I think the other thing that I wanted to mention is, you know, I'm going to be on a panel with Gerardo on our Discord server server on Monday night.
Guest 5 [02:27:42] But as a result of my experiences with high demand religion, I've started studying education policy. I'm in a PhD program, the university of Colorado, Boulder. And I'm looking at the intersection of education policy and anti discrimination law. And I'm particularly looking at religious exemptions and separation of church and state and how all that plays into sort of the politics of religion.
Guest 5 [02:28:08] And I think sometimes in, in like post Mormon or ex fundamentalist circles, we can lose sight of how powerful religion still is in America. Not that that's wrong, but there is a strong allegiance of the religious right with groups like the LDS Church, with groups like evangelicalism and all its many varieties, with Conservative Catholics and others. And I think, you know, the gender affirming therapy ban at BYU is just a perfect example of how enmeshed the church is with political activism, particularly conservative political activism. And as Gerardo mentioned earlier, I think there's a long way to go in the court system and in policy to be able to really affirm individuals.
Guest 5 [02:28:55] Like, you can believe all day long that marriage is between a man and a woman and have your religious doctrines, but when it comes to harming individuals, that's where the line has to be drawn. And the courts and advocates and activists need to get involved to address these things. So thank you all.
Gerardo Sumano [02:29:13] Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I, I, I, I was thinking, so when we were playing Elder Renlund's clip about how he, he feels like the LDS Church is a lot, it's a better place, you know, for LGBT people. I was thinking exactly what you're saying about evangelical groups and even other groups like, like, like Catholic Church, where they're less organized and there's not a set doctrine of beliefs. There's not like a people, you know, person on top, like, who sets doctrine. It gets a little bit more confusing and sometimes harder to accept from, for, you know, people from, from these groups because they don't have, like a set of guidelines like the LDS Church.
Gerardo Sumano [02:29:57] If you find a homophobic person in the LDS Church, I mean, you're probably gonna have a, pretty good, you're, you're probably going to be successful at maybe changing their views a little bit once that you show them a few quotes from apostles. Yeah, but you don't have that in, in other churches and you have abusive.
Guest 5 [02:30:18] I shared a story on another podcast of I was at a Pentecostal Bible college and was actually subjected to exorcisms and what they called deliverance prayer to try to cast gay demons out of me, which was physical and psychological abuse. That's taken a lot of therapy over the years to work through. And, you know, you don't find those things in the LDS Church. It does not mean that the, the doctrine and that the culture is not harmful. I'm just saying that there's, there's a little bit of a distinction between some of the really acute harm that happens in some organizations. That may not happen as much in the LDS Church, though. I can see that it's still there.
Gerardo Sumano [02:30:57] Yeah, I agree.
Guest 2 [02:30:58] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:31:00] John, this isn't your first time to be calling in. This is your second time to call in, Right?
Guest 5 [02:31:05] Yeah. And I've been watching you, John, since like 2008 or something. So I'm a long, long time person and actually you, your, your podcast in some ways contributed me to getting re baptized at one point back when you were having people like Terrell Givens on and Richard Bushman and I was really getting into that kind of the nuanced Mormon phase and, and it's just part of my journey. So I've appreciated watching your journey over the years and I've, I've chosen to stay on church records for, for personal reasons. Not anything to do with fear, but just for personal reasons. But I'm no longer would call myself a believer in the church or its doctrines, so.
John Dehlin [02:31:46] Well, you're a smart cookie. So please join us anytime. John.
Guest 5 [02:31:50] Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
John Dehlin [02:31:52] Good luck with graduate school.
Guest 5 [02:31:53] Thanks so much. And you all come to discord. It's a great community.
John Dehlin [02:31:57] Thank you.
Carah Burrell [02:31:57] We'll do it for the shout out.
John Dehlin [02:31:59] All right, thanks, John.
Guest 5 [02:32:00] Bye bye.
Live Callers from the Mormon Community
John Dehlin [02:32:01] All right, I think, I think next in line is the Maven. Maven, of course is one of the kind of co hosts now of Mormonism Live with Bill Real and Radio Free Mormon. That show I think appears at 6:20pm Mountain time every Wednesday. We intentionally never broadcast on Wednesday night out of solidarity, love and support with Mormonism Live. And Maven is a new sort of co host. So Maven, thanks for joining us.
Guest 10 [02:32:38] I, I do typically am the behind the scenes person, but they do invite me to pop on as I, I hope it's okay that I bring this up. But just the quote, Carah, that you shared or just bringing up Sister Renlyn, I, I wasn't even gonna come on because I came on last week, but I was just like I have to. So if it's okay. I don't know if. Yeah. So if this is visible.
John Dehlin [02:33:00] This was a quote so, so amazing. She's adding content to our, to our own presentation.
Guest 6 [02:33:07] It was already up from, like from
Guest 10 [02:33:08] our episode last night and so that's, I just hadn't closed the tab even. So that's why it's there. But this was, this is Sister Redland saying one thing I've always felt strongly about is that there's no one way to be an LDS woman. Each has a right to personal revelation and is expected to use that. It should be personal and we shouldn't let other people's comments shake our direction. I think women are particularly susceptible to that. And on our episode last night we had a guest who is still an active member. She was the one that found this quote and it was this. And just, you know, a few Other things that we brought up just as, as pain points for us growing up in the church and trying to do and live the doctrine the way that we've been told.
Guest 10 [02:33:51] And so when the church will hold up. Sister Renlund with quotes like you shared, Carah, and quotes like this. I mean, on the one hand they're great because they are more feminist, but on the other hand, they're very, very gaslighty for those of us that, you know, didn't. I mean, it was the other guest that got married quickly, like she was supposed to had children right away, even though she didn't feel ready, because you're not supposed to delay children, you know, and, and not work outside the home and just the struggles and the consequences that come from that. So, yeah, so I don't know. I, I, I feel bad.
Guest 10 [02:34:29] I'm not trying to plug our episode last night, but it just was relevant and so I just felt like I wanted to chime in about that. It, I, like, I'm really glad for the younger generation that they're catching on to this better and they're, they're disregarding a lot of the more harmful messages that we got. But that also doesn't mean that like, that we didn't get those like us women that are a bit older. You know what I mean?
Guest 9 [02:34:57] Right.
Guest 10 [02:34:58] Yeah. I was gonna bring up a video of Ezra TAF Benson, but he's very clearly says, like, women should be in the home and they don't belong outside. So Sister Renlyn was definitely in the generation that got that, you know, and, and sometimes I feel like it's actually a matter of privilege. You know, when you are wealthier and when you are more connected like she is to higher ups, then the rules just don't necessarily apply to you as much. That's all I wanted to share.
Gerardo Sumano [02:35:21] Wow.
Carah Burrell [02:35:21] Yeah, It's a good perspective.
Guest 9 [02:35:22] Thanks.
Carah Burrell [02:35:23] And I. You don't want to plug it, but I do. I just wanted to make sure to leave. I feel bad. No, it's good. I can't wait to listen to it. The role of Women in the Church with Bill and RFM Mormonism Live episode 64. I posted that in the show notes and in the, the chat just now. So everyone go check out their episode.
John Dehlin [02:35:40] Yeah, we, we don't. Look, we don't have a scarcity to model scarcity to Model Mormon Stories podcast. We think a, a rising progressive and postmormon tide lifts all ships. So we, I love Bill and, and, and RFM and you and we want them to be succeed and we do better when they do better, and vice versa. And most importantly, everyone who needs support does better when there are multiple voices. So my question, Maven, is how do we hire you in the Open Storage foundation without making Bill real super mad? Is there a way to hire you and keep Bill real happy? That's my question. What would you.
Guest 10 [02:36:16] I'm sure there is. I'm sure we. If we think really hard, I'm sure we can figure something out.
John Dehlin [02:36:20] All right, well, don't get. Don't let Bill Robick get mad at me, but we want. You know, we want some synergy here. We.
Carah Burrell [02:36:26] The synergy is coming. You know, Marco said, I'm still waiting for RFM and Carah to chat with each other. Not only does RFM call me on the phone every once in a while when he goes on a walk, so I've chatted with many.
John Dehlin [02:36:37] Does he call you too? Maybe he calls me at 7am yeah.
Guest 10 [02:36:41] Oh, not at 7am yes.
Carah Burrell [02:36:44] So I make time to talk to RFM, but I am going to be on more Mormonism Live. I think, like, March 16th. I'm gonna throw it out. I think it's somewhere around there.
Guest 10 [02:36:51] Coming up.
Carah Burrell [02:36:51] Yeah. So we. This energy is happening, John. So Maven's on our show. I'll be on their show in March.
Guest 3 [02:36:58] And.
John Dehlin [02:36:58] And Maven, just. It's so wonderful to have another female voice in the Mormon, you know, post Mormon universe. So just. We adore you and keep up the good work, and thanks so much for all you're doing.
Guest 10 [02:37:13] Thank you. Thank you so much.
Carah Burrell [02:37:14] Thanks, Maven.
John Dehlin [02:37:14] All right, thanks. All right, take care, Maven. Okay, next. He's been waiting patiently. He was the second to join us. We have a Crisco bike. I assume that's not your legal name. Is that true?
Guest [02:37:28] It's how everybody in these chats know me. My real name's Christian, but everyone knows me as Crisco. I have to do a shout out to my cousin Carah, so absolutely love you. Love everything about this. She's. She is the shining light of our family, so it's awesome. And I can't believe you made me follow Maven. There's no following Maven, so I'm devastated. She's brilliant and amazing, but. Yes. No, I wanted to call with a couple really fast things since you all were so impressed with the Hubble Telescope comment. It's important to remember that when the Hubble telescope was first activated, it actually had to be repaired because it was dramatically nearsighted, so it couldn't even see far away. And yeah, it was an extremely expensive repair, very difficult to do. So. Yeah. Lots of reasons why. The Hubble telescope analogy is actually pretty spot on.
Gerardo Sumano [02:38:25] So using it and there was Denver snuffer and saving the restoration.
Guest [02:38:30] There you go.
Carah Burrell [02:38:32] Was there any, like, Hubble telescope apologetics of why that was, or did they just, like, go in and change it? Were they like, it's not always perfect. You have to see it through a certain lens, or they just like, let's get to work and actually fix it?
Guest [02:38:44] The process to create one of those lenses is actually insanely difficult, and it's one of the most precise operations that there is in all of engineering. So it's actually very complicated. Common to screw up telescope lenses. However, you would hope that the Hubble telescope being the most expensive telescope ever invented by man, would be one that they would put extra effort into getting right. But if you've seen any of the photos, they. They got it right.
Guest 8 [02:39:14] So.
Guest [02:39:15] Anyways, but no, John, I'm. I'm. In case it's not clear, I'm very interested in science. I'm often the one that's like, let's do a episode on. On environmentalism in the church. The last talk I actually gave in church was the last Sunday before the lockdown began for Covid, and I got permission to actually speak on the church's stance on environmentalism. And so I had to research all the quotes from all the brethren for the entire time the church was founded about our obligation to care for the environment. And I even look into what. Well, why have they stopped talking about it? There's some really interesting stuff there.
Guest [02:39:54] But anyways. No, the real reason I called, though, was this whole thing we've talked about, about prophets and just, why can't they give us clear answers? Why can't they pray and just settle a lot of these weird debate things, you know, come out and be like, the Lord has spoken to me.
Guest [02:40:14] Yes. LGBTQ people. God has made them that way. He. He loves them equally. Let's get this straight, you know, you know, climate change is real. We have to take care of the planet that God gave us, etc. Etc. You know, why can't they get these things right? And honestly, it was probably the biggest thing that broke my shelf and drove me out of the church. I just couldn't.
Carah Burrell [02:40:36] Wow.
Guest [02:40:36] Take the insanity anymore.
Gerardo Sumano [02:40:38] So.
Guest 3 [02:40:41] All right.
Carah Burrell [02:40:41] Yeah. What's the point of a prophet sometimes? I know. A little bit rough.
Guest [02:40:45] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:40:47] Well, I. I would just say you guys have unrealistic expectations.
Gerardo Sumano [02:40:53] Keith Erickson says, yeah, I should have Never Seriously. That's what he says.
Carah Burrell [02:40:57] Should have never been taken to primary at three years old and sang that song, all my expectations. It was my fault for attending primary and singing that song.
John Dehlin [02:41:05] It's called Blame Reversal. Where you get blamed house. I was with. Don't you say that.
Guest 7 [02:41:10] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:41:11] That's always wins.
Guest 2 [02:41:12] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:41:12] Well, Chris, go bike. Thanks for joining us. We always love your comments. You're one of our most faithful commenters and supporters, so. And. And a friend, a family member of Carah's is a. Is a family member of ours. How's that?
Carah Burrell [02:41:26] Yeah, yeah. His wife's name is Sarah Burrell. And so my name is Carah Braille. It's literally one. One. One letter, different letter. One little, like, hook of a calligraphy thing. Different. So. Love you, Christian. Thanks for always participating, just being a good supporter.
Guest [02:41:43] Oh, and anybody that ever gets called into the BYU honor code office, just say that you live the honor code and the law of chastity, as well as Joseph Smith set the example for. And then just stop talking and see
Carah Burrell [02:41:57] what they say and moonwalk out of there.
Gerardo Sumano [02:41:59] Exactly.
John Dehlin [02:42:01] All right, Christian, thanks for joining us. Please join us again soon.
Guest 8 [02:42:04] Thanks, everyone.
John Dehlin [02:42:05] Hey, brother. All right, we've got three more and then we're going to be ending. Jody has been waiting patiently. Jody, where are you calling from?
Guest 6 [02:42:15] I am calling from Walworth County, Wisconsin. And I learned the significance of that because I'm a nevermole. And I learned the significance that from the John Larsen episode where he talked about a beaver island and he talked about Walworth county where the. Help me with the word Strang lights are.
John Dehlin [02:42:34] Strangites.
Guest 6 [02:42:34] Yeah, Strangites. And they're about 30 miles from me. And so come summer when the snow was melted, I'm gonna take a little trip over there and see what that's all about.
Guest [02:42:44] Fun.
John Dehlin [02:42:45] I just. I love it. I love. I love the survey we did recently on YouTube where we discovered that half of our YouTube viewers have never been Mormon. Tell us why in the heck you watch Mormon stories. What are you doing?
Guest 6 [02:43:00] What am I doing? What I get so much out of it is a number of things. First of all, the store. The long. The long. The long stories that people tell when it's a 4, 5, 6 hours and it's so respectful and you really go in depth. So it's not a three minute sound bite. Tell me as quick as you can your whole life story. But it's like it's really listening and caring and reflecting what people are saying. And I don't think. I think we See this on the news that people don't listen to each other. And I like that example of listening and acknowledging people's discussion and acknowledging people's experiences.
Guest 6 [02:43:49] I also really get a lot of the intersectionality between that discusses religious tradition and then the oppression of people based on gender, based on sexuality, based on race. And I think that's a microcosm for what we see in our entire country.
Guest 6 [02:44:11] So I can look at some of the systematic things that you talk about coming out of the Mormon tradition, and then I can reflect that in some of the other and the other systems that we have here in the United States. And that has really helped me kind of think through a lot of these prejudices that we do have in our society and then ways that we can maybe address them. For example, I didn't know about the exemption, the Title IX exemptions for all these universities. And that really bothers me that my tax dollars and, you know, the tax dollars of people who are being oppressed are going to pay for universities that are allowed to discriminate.
Guest 6 [02:44:56] And so the next day I called my elected representatives and I said, you know, hey, I don't want this. Good for you if it happens. So, you know, it's giving me steps to take power for the values that I believe.
Guest 6 [02:45:14] And the third is it's such an important part of US History, the Mormon tradition, and the historical aspects are so profound. And so a couple years ago, a friend and I went and visited Nauvoo, and it was an incredible experience to see the history there, but also the community of Christ and the LDS and the dynamic between the two, would you say, denominations, on how they share that area.
Guest 6 [02:45:44] There's tension, but there's also that sharing piece. And so that's very interesting to me. And then I'm part of Justin's Sunday school, Nomo Sunday School. So, you know, we were having some really good discussions about looking deeper at the Mormon tradition is because it's so unique and it seems to be so based in a lot of what was going on in US History at the time. And that's not a tradition that I grew up in. So those are some of the reasons why, as Nevermore, I find I've started listening and I just can't.
Guest 6 [02:46:16] I can't. I keep coming back. I am, as I mentioned, I'm on the. I do go to the Sunday School, so I'm on the Reddit and I'm Gen X. I'm closer in HGU John than I am Gerardo and Carah. So I just want to encourage people. Gen X, there's a number of us on there too, so people shouldn't be concerned if they feel like, hey, I might be older than the crowd. There's a number of us there. And we're going to have a. For all of us, we're going to have a board game night on Sunday.
John Dehlin [02:46:47] This is on the Discord Channel.
Guest 6 [02:46:48] This is on the Discord Channel. We're going to be playing virtually. We're going to be playing Uno code names and other games, board games of people's choosing. And I'm going to be hosting that. And it's on this coming Sunday, 5:30 Pacific time. So that's 6:30 Utah time. But everybody is. Is welcome to come and play some board games.
John Dehlin [02:47:13] So, Jody, a couple things I'm learning. Number one is you're telling us that we're three of Mormonism's greatest ambassadors to the world. Me and Gerardo and Carah are literally Mormon ambassadors to the world. Is that true?
Guest 6 [02:47:29] I think, I think you're great educators. I don't know about. Not missionaries. Educators, yes. Missionaries, maybe not.
John Dehlin [02:47:38] Jody, you're a true intellectual like you are with thoughtful person. Are you, Are you anywhere near Lake Wobegon? Are you near Lake.
Guest 6 [02:47:45] Well, Lake Wobegon is made up, but my mother grew up in the fictional area, which is like Wobegon, which Garrison Keiller would talk about. So that was my family roots. So unlike the pioneers of Utah, which you talk about. Yes. My heritage is like Wobegon.
John Dehlin [02:48:04] And did you, did you grow up in a religious tradition? Were you Lutheran or what?
Guest 6 [02:48:08] Oh, I was Catholic.
John Dehlin [02:48:10] Catholic, okay, Catholic.
Guest 6 [02:48:11] And then, well, I was, after I went to eight years of Catholic school, when I graduated from university, I. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine. Yeah. So that's very close to my heart right now. And, and then, and then that's where I first met Mormon missionaries because we're Mormon missionaries in Ukraine at the time. And that was my first exposure. But, you know, I haven't had a whole lot of exposure in Wisconsin. I don't know what the statistics are, but it's not something we hear a lot about. So that's also a curiosity of mine.
John Dehlin [02:48:48] Well, I have a new bucket list item and it's to me making give Jody a hug and shake her head. If Jody wants a hug, give her a hug. If not, shake her hand. That's a new bucket list of mine.
Guest 6 [02:48:57] Thank you. Can I give a shout out to Gerardo?
Gerardo Sumano [02:49:01] Thank you.
John Dehlin [02:49:02] What do you like about Gerardo? What do you like about that? Guy.
Guest 6 [02:49:05] Oh, I'm going to tell you why. Because I work in. At a university and I work in international student immigration. I'm the pdso. He knows what that means. The rest won't. And on your story that you shared with us about your personal journey, you were the. I've been in this field over 20 years, and you're the first person who explained totally accurately the immigration consequences and processes that international students go through and the requirements that they have to face on their campus in order to remain in their visa status. So I was just so impressed and blown away by that. So I just wanted to give you a shout out. And I was like, wow, this guy can talk about this so accurately that I mean, I'm always impressed with the things you know. And you know them so well because, you know, you can explain that so well.
Gerardo Sumano [02:49:59] Thank you. Thanks. Thanks a ton. That means a lot to me.
John Dehlin [02:50:04] All right, thank you.
Guest 6 [02:50:05] Bye.
John Dehlin [02:50:06] Jody, you're a delightful human. Please join us again anytime. We're honestly moved in touch that our program would mean something to you and. And you do us such a credit and an honor to. To be a listener and to join us.
Gerardo Sumano [02:50:21] Yeah.
Guest 6 [02:50:22] Thank you.
Carah Burrell [02:50:23] Thanks, Jody.
John Dehlin [02:50:24] And Carah doesn't get a shout out. Carah doesn't get a shout out.
Carah Burrell [02:50:26] I think we talked on Discord the other night.
Guest 6 [02:50:28] Yes, we did. I met Carah the other night, so she's the one who gave me the break. Because, see, I'm older too, so it's like I'm on TV now. I feel a little nervous. And so like Carah was there and I'm like, I'm talking to a celebrity. And so you gave me the strength to call in.
Carah Burrell [02:50:44] You're giving me the strength to keep going. That was like the biggest. That's like a Red Bull. If your comments were Red Bull in caffeinate caffeine to my system right now. Like, that was so incredible the way you just like described the value of Mormon stories podcast.
John Dehlin [02:50:58] Jody, you're better than a taco to Carah, which is. Wait, did I start? Did I go too far?
Carah Burrell [02:51:05] Carah, I eat Taco Bell six days a week. One night off tonight, Jody. Filling my tummy with all the happiness.
Guest 6 [02:51:13] Thank you. Well, you take care and maybe we'll see see some of you at a game night sometime.
John Dehlin [02:51:19] I love board games, so I'd love to join.
Guest 7 [02:51:21] Thanks.
John Dehlin [02:51:22] Thanks. Take care.
Guest 6 [02:51:25] Bye. Bye.
Carah Burrell [02:51:25] Yeah, I want to bear my testimony of making this a call in show.
John Dehlin [02:51:30] Like, it's kind of fun, right?
Carah Burrell [02:51:31] Yeah. I mean, the only thing I have to compare it to is like an wise guys open mic night of comedians or like testimony meeting. And both of those are massive failures. And this is like exceeding all my expectations.
John Dehlin [02:51:44] I'm just waiting for some troll to call in and start saying profanities or awful things. But so far we're 100.
Gerardo Sumano [02:51:51] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:51:51] Yeah.
Guest 3 [02:51:52] Been great.
Carah Burrell [02:51:52] People don't want to show their face too often.
John Dehlin [02:51:55] Yeah. As trolls.
Gerardo Sumano [02:51:56] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:51:57] Yeah. Well, that's good to hear. All right, well, we've got two. Two humans left. Zach, you've been waiting patiently. Zach, if you want to share.
Guest 5 [02:52:06] Where.
John Dehlin [02:52:07] Where are you calling from?
Guest 11 [02:52:08] I'm. I hope you can hear me here. Um, I haven't used this setup in quite a while, but I'm calling from Austin, Texas, deep in the heart of Texas RFM stomping ground.
John Dehlin [02:52:19] Yes, sir.
Guest 11 [02:52:22] And so I appreciate your show tonight. It was a lot of good stuff. The, the contradictory statements about the prophet and all these other things got me thinking. I, I learned that last year a Mormon science fiction author named Dave Wolverton died. And he's. He's notable in Star wars circles because he wrote the Courtship of Princess Leia, which is one of the more popular expanded universe books. And it got me thinking about Star wars and, and there's a lot of Star wars metaphors that get used in wards, you know, the priesthood and the force. And Spencer W. Kimball or Yoda was based on Spencer W. Kimball. That was a common one you hear in the mission field all the time.
Guest 7 [02:53:12] But.
Guest 11 [02:53:13] But it got me thinking about, you know, canon and what happens when you have a long running series, especially a science fiction series that started maybe back in the 60s or 70s, before they really thought about keeping track of all your lore and keeping it all cohesive. And so hearing these con. These seemingly contradictory statements and hearing different people in the church and leadership not quite keeping a cohesive through line on the doctrine.
Guest 11 [02:53:46] You know, this is what happens when you have a franchise that goes on for a really long time and it gets passed around to different authors and there isn't one person, a lorekeeper, who kind of is like, no, you can't, you can't talk about that because that contradicts this thing that was said back in, you know, episode two in 1960.
Guest 11 [02:54:09] And so that's. I see that a lot in the church and it's just, it's a very human problem. But anyway, so that is such a
Carah Burrell [02:54:21] good, like, analogy and comparison that is so good. I'm just thinking of comic Book guy from the Simpsons who would just like called BS on all of the different ways that the different authors and franchisers are not being consistent with, like, the actual story supposed to be told.
Guest 11 [02:54:35] So actually, Ezra Taft Benson once said in his 14 traits of the True Prophet.
Carah Burrell [02:54:41] Yeah, exactly. I know you would completely just. Yeah. Go there with me.
John Dehlin [02:54:46] Are you saying that Mormonism needs a Kevin Phage? Is that what you're saying?
Guest 2 [02:54:50] I.
Guest 11 [02:54:51] Quite possibly. They.
John Dehlin [02:54:53] They need the guy with the Marvel. With the, with the Marvel universe.
Guest 11 [02:54:58] Yeah. Kevin Feige. Yeah.
Guest 3 [02:55:00] He's kind of kept him.
Guest 5 [02:55:01] He's.
Guest 11 [02:55:01] He's kept him on. He's kept him on track. Well, you know, George Lucas was very smart because back in the 90s, they hired a one person that was in charge of keeping all the lore straight. And so all of those novels, you know, hung together. But, yeah, I think that. I think the church should have followed George Lucas's example there and hired a lore master.
Guest 8 [02:55:28] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:55:28] Is it, Is it okay if I, if I, if I flag the nerd alert? Is there a time.
Guest 11 [02:55:34] Oh, absolutely.
Guest 8 [02:55:35] You go for.
Guest 2 [02:55:36] For it.
Gerardo Sumano [02:55:36] Go for it.
Guest 6 [02:55:37] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:55:38] I'm pulling the nerd flag. Can I. But that's the thing.
Gerardo Sumano [02:55:41] But that's the thing.
Guest 11 [02:55:42] But that's the thing. There's so many, you know, you think of Orson Scott Card and all these nerds who have come out of Mormonism. I think there is something that. That naturally fits. That naturally, you know, help. Helps Mormon science fiction authors kind of gravitate towards, you know, science fiction because we're exposed to, like, lore at a very young age. And so fantasy and science fiction is just a natural fit for us that grow up in the church.
John Dehlin [02:56:10] I love it.
Gerardo Sumano [02:56:10] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:56:12] Well, that's a really fun. That's a really fun comment. And, Zach, thanks so much for joining us from Austin. Are you keeping it weird in Austin?
Guest 11 [02:56:20] Oh, weird, absolutely.
John Dehlin [02:56:22] Are you glad that Elon, Musk and Tesla have all relocated down there?
Guest 11 [02:56:28] I don't know.
Guest 2 [02:56:29] I don't know.
Guest 11 [02:56:29] We'll. We'll see how the talk. We'll see how the tax situation goes, so.
John Dehlin [02:56:34] Well, thanks for calling in, Zach. It's great to have you. Hope you call in again.
Guest 11 [02:56:37] Thanks very much. Have a good one.
John Dehlin [02:56:39] It's great to have you.
Gerardo Sumano [02:56:40] Bye.
Carah Burrell [02:56:40] Bye.
Final Callers, Latino Representation, and Closing Remarks
John Dehlin [02:56:42] All right, well, we've got one more person to join us, and then we're going to call it a night. And that's going to be KR Mellow. KR Mellow is in the house. Where are you joining us from?
Guest 3 [02:56:54] Can you hear me okay?
John Dehlin [02:56:55] Yeah.
Guest 3 [02:56:56] All right. So, yeah, my name is Carmelo.
Guest 5 [02:56:57] I'm.
Guest 3 [02:56:58] I'm joining from Bakersfield California.
John Dehlin [02:57:00] Oh, California in the house.
Guest 3 [02:57:03] Nice in here.
John Dehlin [02:57:04] Well, I'm.
Guest 3 [02:57:04] First of all, I've, you know, been listening to you guys for quite a while now. I've. I've had my fall away, you know, with the church about close to three years ago. There's a divorce too. You know, all, all those, all that good stuff. Stuff. But one of the main points that, that really. And, and it's also kind of interesting to me to hear how many people call the channel or go on Mormon stories from BYU Idaho, because that's where I graduated. I did my undergraduate at BYU Idaho. And it just. That name just keeps coming back and back and back. And I have many of my friends that I went to BYU Idaho who basically are almost in the same situation I am right now. Divorce, Divorced.
Gerardo Sumano [02:57:45] Yeah.
Guest 3 [02:57:46] Not going to church. Etc, you know, it's crazy to hear that. And I know Gerardo in there and you know, Zelf on the shelf and all that. Anyways, I think my main thought that I had tonight and I want to be quick just not to take your guys's time, but I remember how. How much of a starstruck experience it was for me to meet general authorities when I first. So I'm from Uruguay, that's where I'm from. I was born and raised in Uruguay and I was called on my mission to Salt Lake City South. So that was very. That was part of my, my story.
Guest 3 [02:58:19] My story too. So when I went to Utah and I remember one time there was an event called Day of Celebration where Gordon B. Hinckley was part of it. And I remember I had Gordon b. Hinckley about 10ft away from me and. And he really felt like I was in God's presence. It was. Was such an experience at that time. Then later on I met Richard G. Scott.
Guest 3 [02:58:43] Later on I shook hands to it. EL R. And it was such an experience at that time, right back when I was still in the church meeting those celebrities, meeting those superhuman type of people, you know. And then once you start in South America and Latin America, you don't learn everything. You got a very whitewashed version of everything. They teach you about the lemonades. They teach you about how the prophets are these perfect people that are next to God, you know.
Guest 3 [02:59:13] And then the more you start reading about their quotes and the things that they've said in the past and the things that they have said in General conference and books and things like that, you really start deconstructing them. You know, say, hey, this. What are these guys even talking about?
Guest 3 [02:59:27] And I think bringing, bringing them down from the pedestal has been a very interesting experience to me, you know, and, and big part of what really made me lose faith in, in the church, you know, that you're taught to, you know, like where you guys were speaking a minute ago, follow the prophet. Follow the prophet, follow the prophet.
Guest 3 [02:59:47] But then, you know, it's like, why don't want to follow people that have said those things or those things, you know, know, taught about, you know, taught discrimination. I remember Mormon Stories episode about Ezra Tef Benson. I remember being a child during the time Ezra Tough Benson was the prophet. And you know, he was the prophet. So I worshiped that guy. And then he started reading all those things about, you know, his anti communism and Birch Society and all those kind of things. They're like, wow, that was, that was the guy that I used to think it was a prophet, you know, and so on.
Guest 3 [03:00:20] So anyways, I think that was, that was interesting about tonight. You know, when you were listening those quotes when people were saying, you know, one on one side they're saying, well, you got to follow the prophet. Doesn't matter what, he'll never lead you astray. And then on the other hand you have some other guys saying, well, you know, yeah, you have to listen to the prophet, but you know, you don't have to follow the prophet. It's like, come on guys, you gotta make up your mind. You can't have it both ways. You know, it's got to be one way or the other.
John Dehlin [03:00:45] Carmelo, what was the, what was the big thing that knocked you, knocked off your, your testimony off its block? What was kind of what started it all? Are you able to share?
Guest 3 [03:00:54] Well, sure, I mean I can, I mean I had, I had some personal issues, you know, and I think when, I think when I needed the most support from the church, the church walked away from me. And I think that's when they really lost me, you know, I mean my family joined the church in South America when I was about nine years old, you know, so I did spend my whole life in the church. I spent my whole life serve a mission, Salt Lake City, many, many, many callings, Sunday school, I mean, you name it. And there was a couple things where, where I had, I was, I found myself at odds with the church.
Guest 3 [03:01:27] And you know, it was really, it was really difficult. And I think, I think the moment when I needed the church the most, the church, you know, walk away from me. So, and then as, as you start learning more, you know, like I said, when you grew up In South America. And Gerardo, I mean, her art is from Mexico. Seems like you his whole life he was really into the church and all that, so he probably studied it better than me. But I remember in Salt Lake City on my mission, that's the first times when I heard such things as the peep stone, you know, the Adam God theory. I didn't even had any idea that Joseph Smith was a polygamist until I went to my church on my mission, you know.
Gerardo Sumano [03:02:07] Yeah.
Guest 3 [03:02:08] Walking down the streets of Salt Lake City and having anti Mormons, anti Mormons yelling at you or talking to you as a. Hey, your prophet was a polygamist. And you're like, no, no way. That's
John Dehlin [03:02:19] what she said. Is a missionary.
Guest 3 [03:02:22] I didn't say that as a missionary. First thing is another great consequence of leaving the church. I got really into it and, and cigars. But anyways, you know, there are so many things that I never heard about. And then when I was on my mission, I heard them and you know, and then somebody teaches you the, the apology, the apologetics for it. It was like, oh yeah, he was a polygamist, but look at this. The Lord commands that when he needs it, blah, blah, blah. So you learn that. And I, you know, I defended that with, you know, with all I had.
Guest 3 [03:02:53] But then when you really started thinking about it, you know, and also when you started meeting people from other, like, ideas and other religions and open your mind, you know, and you really start thinking that there are better reasons to judge people than whether they drink or they smoke or they're drink coffee.
Guest 3 [03:03:12] You know, there's, there's, there's. We're all different people. We're all, we're all who we are, you know, and. Yeah, any, any idea, you know, religion or group that teaches it to discriminate against other people not worth being followed. Yeah. You know, you got. They got to teach you to love people and, and you know, so we all can be happy, you know, and be who we are. Yeah. But anyways, I think this whole thing that tonight and you know, about deconstructing the prophet, you know, like there's this guy that I have to follow and he said if he says something, I say amen.
Guest 3 [03:03:46] It's not, it's not, it's not true. You know, is the, the so many times that we've seen the church flip flop between things based on social pressure or, you know, any kind of threat or anything, bad publicity, you know. So anyways, and I've been joining the discord group too. And I mean, I've been watching you guys for a long time, so. Yeah. Love the show.
John Dehlin [03:04:12] Well, it's.
Carah Burrell [03:04:13] Hello.
John Dehlin [03:04:13] It's so off. Awesome to have you. How. Hey, I have to ask you, Carmelo, how does it feel to. To kind of see Latino representation on Mormon Stories podcast?
Guest 3 [03:04:25] I think it's huge because some of the biggest. The whole laminate thing is. Oh, my God, it's. It's once.
Carah Burrell [03:04:33] Once you really.
Guest 3 [03:04:34] And I think that's when you're in the church and you're. I guess let me put this word out there, but when the indoctrination is so strong, you don't dare to. To doubt it. You don't dare. You do. You don't dare to look at it from a doubting perspective.
Guest 3 [03:04:48] It's always. You always look at it. Even when you have questions, you look at it from a face. You know, there's somebody that quoted like, oh, the, the Egyptologist guy. Right. I start with the question and I, My first thought is, how do I make this fit the church? You know, you train to think that way. How. How do I make this doubt fit my faith faithful view and not make me doubt the church? Yeah, well, you think of it, but then when you really, when you, for the first time ever in your life, you, you, you're able to say, hey, maybe this is not true.
Guest 3 [03:05:20] Or how about I want to think that this is not true. It's a dangerous. It's a dangerous thought. But when you, when you, when you finally get to do that and I guess going back to the whole Latino thing, you know, Laminates Book of Mormon being the origins of the Americas, and I mean, and I'm sorry again, but man, when you start seeing how much that is, like, you just, you just, you know, you deconstruct it. You know, you deconstruct it and you really start seeing it for what it is. So having Latino representation is great because when we, when the church goes and preaches to people in other countries, they don't preach what we know, you know?
Guest 3 [03:05:58] Yeah, they. Well, and in all. In the whole world, to be honest, Preach my gospel. There's nothing in preach my gospel they don't talk about. I don't know if there's a new version, but when I, I came right in the transition between preach my gospel and the old lessons, you know, there's nothing in there. It doesn't talk about polygamy. It doesn't talk about a seer stone. Doesn't talk about anything. You're teaching people a whitewashed lie.
John Dehlin [03:06:19] Yeah, yeah.
Guest 3 [03:06:21] You know, the other day I was thinking about my mission. You know, there's one thing I did on my mission and wow, when I look back, is horrible. We did this thing that we call Pray Now. So basically what we would do is we would talk, teach an investigator, say, hey, you know, here's a baptismal date. And we would. And if they said no, they said, oh, I don't know, I'm gonna. Okay, let's pray about it right now and God will give you an answer. Right?
Gerardo Sumano [03:06:43] Yeah, I did that too.
Guest 3 [03:06:44] And we would now down. And we will pray and we will be on our knees until a person got an answer from God.
Gerardo Sumano [03:06:53] You know, I was really surprised because you know how Jim Bennett says that. I mean, I love Jim Bennett, but some. There's a few arguments that I don't super agree with him. One of them is saying that he says that the. The LDS Church is the only church who teaches to pray about what you're being taught and ask God if it's true. Stephen hasn't talks about.
Guest 3 [03:07:14] Not really.
Gerardo Sumano [03:07:15] Like the Moonies gave him that invitation. Exact same invitation when he was being indoctrinated. They told him, pray to God to ask if what we're teaching you is true. Yeah, I think.
Guest 3 [03:07:26] And I love, and I love the fact that when you watch those videos, you know, about when we. We think our testimonies are so special. Right?
Gerardo Sumano [03:07:33] Yeah.
Guest 3 [03:07:34] But then you watch it. Then you watch a video with persons from 50 different religions sharing their testimony and how the Holy Ghost told them that their church is true.
Guest [03:07:42] Right.
Guest 3 [03:07:44] Oh, then we're altered. Let's just be who we are, you know, and be happy with it.
Gerardo Sumano [03:07:47] Yeah.
Guest 3 [03:07:47] You know, we don't have to convince other people to be like us, you know, but anyways, and. And I remember we. We were having a mission conference where we discussed the Pray now. And the president was really pushing it. And one sister shook her head, she was from Fiji. And he's like, what's going on, sister? And she said, that sounds a lot like manipulation.
Gerardo Sumano [03:08:07] Wow.
Guest 3 [03:08:08] Actually said that. And she got stink eye from, you know, 300 missionaries in the room, like, oh, my God, how dare you say that?
John Dehlin [03:08:18] That is horrible.
Guest 3 [03:08:20] And she, you know, people. So, you know, I guess she got, I think she, like, later got called into a room to speak, you know, for first thing. But she said it. She literally said, you know what? Today I'm like, good for you. That. Because that's exactly what it was.
Gerardo Sumano [03:08:37] That's awesome.
John Dehlin [03:08:38] Well, Carmelo, it is so lovely to have you Call in. You're a smart dude, and we're honored that you follow or listen or watch
Guest 3 [03:08:47] Mormon stories and byu, Idaho graduate, man. We're smart people.
John Dehlin [03:08:54] Well, good luck and congratulations for figuring out what's true for you, and we wish you a happy, healthy life, and we hope you'll call back in again another time.
Guest 3 [03:09:04] Awesome.
Guest 2 [03:09:05] Thank you, guys.
John Dehlin [03:09:06] All right, thanks, Carmela. You take care.
Guest 3 [03:09:08] All right, everybody. Bye. Bye.
Guest [03:09:09] Bye.
John Dehlin [03:09:10] See you, brother. All right, guys. Well, we did it. We did our first Mormon Scoops episode in Studio 2 with. With the four with a three camera shot and the PowerPoint presentation with Jen monitoring comments. What do you think?
Gerardo Sumano [03:09:28] For Jen? Yeah, I mean, we've gone long. It's 10:30.
John Dehlin [03:09:33] Is it 10:30? Holy moly. I didn't realize that.
Gerardo Sumano [03:09:36] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:09:36] Carah, what'd you think?
Carah Burrell [03:09:37] I loved it.
Gerardo Sumano [03:09:38] Yeah.
Carah Burrell [03:09:39] So happy with this setup. I'm so happy that everyone that just there's. We have this amazing group of people that just are always in the chat and that we know that when we turn on these cameras and we live stream that you guys are going to be there. So you guys have my heart, and I just love you guys so much for tuning in. This is just so much fun, and I hope that we had some good commentary, some good calls, and this was well worth your time.
John Dehlin [03:09:59] Yeah. Well, I want to thank you, Carah, for. For coming up with this idea of Mormon Scoops. I want to thank you, Gerardo, for. For joining us for being part of the Trinity, being part of the Mormon stories first presidency. Carah, you're awesome. Jen, you're awesome.
Guest 2 [03:10:17] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:10:19] And. And viewers and listeners, you're awesome.
Gerardo Sumano [03:10:21] So Jen is the Holy Ghost.
Guest 6 [03:10:22] Ghost.
John Dehlin [03:10:22] Jen is the Holy Ghost.
Carah Burrell [03:10:24] She's in the darkness in the background. Can't actually hear, but I can feel her.
John Dehlin [03:10:29] We feel her presence.
Carah Burrell [03:10:30] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:10:30] Anyway, listen, listeners and viewers, we're just. We're just trying new formats. We want to reach as many people as we can. We want to entertain you. We want to inform you. We just want to shine light and truth wherever we can. So please let us know if you like this format, if you hate this format, if you want to see us tweak the format. Some of these changes we made are in response to your feedback. We tried to make it a little bit less snarky, a little bit less irreverent, a little, you know, we separated the cameras out so we're not all crunched together on the same camera.
John Dehlin [03:11:02] Maybe you like it better, maybe you like it worse. We covered a lot of content. You know, if you guys Think we should cover less. Less content. We'd love to hear that. If you think we went too long, we'd love to hear that. But most importantly, we just want to keep providing you valuable content. So cherish with your friends. Share us your feedback if you can.
John Dehlin [03:11:18] And most importantly, just thanks to everyone who stepped up this past year to support the Open Stories Foundation. We couldn't have brought on Gerardo without you. We couldn't have brought on Carah without you. We couldn't have brought on Jen without you. You know, you helped pay for Brooklyn, you help pay for Jennifer, and just this amazing equipment, cameras, lighting. It's all because of you. Even our rent, so in theory, are rent. So if.
John Dehlin [03:11:47] If. If you value this content and you're not able to support us right now, if you like to see Carah dancing a jig and you want to see that dancing continue, if you think Gerardo has the best hair in post Mormonism and you want to see more of it, then please join our supporters and become a monthly contributor. You can go to MormonStories.org click on the donate button. 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford. We're tax deductible in the US we're fully transparent in our finances. And every dollar you spend goes to Carah's, you know, makeup and hair goes to Gerardo's gel, and it goes to this lighting and everything to. To Jen.
Carah Burrell [03:12:30] John, sometimes you act like we have, like, a lighting rent we have to pay. Like, the lighting electrician man's gonna come in if we don't pay him. It's like we paid for the lighting. Come up with a different example.
John Dehlin [03:12:39] The light bulbs. The. The. Oh, man, there's undermining our. Our donor pledge.
Carah Burrell [03:12:45] I. I'm not. I'm just like. I think the people know that we paid for the lighting by now.
John Dehlin [03:12:49] Okay, well.
Gerardo Sumano [03:12:50] Well, we're always buying lights. Like, we're buying. Like, we just bought John Larsen some lights and we're getting equipment for Southern and not this lighting project that we're buying.
John Dehlin [03:13:01] Yeah, yeah. So care. Quit undermining our pitch.
Carah Burrell [03:13:04] Sorry. Just don't point to these lights. And also, Jen, do you want to be on camera at all? Do you want to be on camera?
John Dehlin [03:13:13] Oh, okay.
Guest 7 [03:13:15] All right.
Carah Burrell [03:13:15] I just didn't wanna. I just want to, you know, female representation, you know, all that stuff. I didn't want to be, like, hog in the spotlight.
John Dehlin [03:13:22] Well, anyway, if you wanna. You know, we've got this new series on. On science versus Mormonism with Simon Southerton. We've got the John Larsen episodes. We're trying to help John Larsen get set up. We've got some work to do on that, but a John episode. Larsen. A John Larsen episode is in the works and will be in the works every month. We've got lots of cool things coming up, so please become a monthly supporter of Warmer Stories in the Open Stories foundation. And we'll keep bringing you valuable content to make you happy and to provide you with informed consent and support for healing, growth and community beyond a few faith crisis. So thanks to everyone for your support. Thanks for joining us. Send us your feedback. Thanks, Gerardo. You're awesome. Thanks, Carah.
Gerardo Sumano [03:14:06] Thanks, John.
John Dehlin [03:14:06] Thanks, Jen. And we'll see you guys all again very soon on another episode. Oh, yeah, and of course, Margi episodes. Don't forget to Thrive, the Thrive Stories series.
Carah Burrell [03:14:18] Just trying to get. There's other examples of where the money goes besides Lights. Margi, Simon Southerton. I gotta pay John Larsen. Carah, Jen. Yeah. The team is expanding, all because of the support, because Mormon Stories had the best year ever last year. So if we want to keep everything rolling, the good times rolling, we got to keep having the donations. Thank you very much.
Gerardo Sumano [03:14:38] We're looking into expanding into other languages, so.
Guest 2 [03:14:42] Right.
John Dehlin [03:14:42] To be continued.
Gerardo Sumano [03:14:43] Yep.
John Dehlin [03:14:44] Yeah. All right, everyone. You guys take care. Have a good night. And we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Bye, 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.
BYU Join us live as John, Carah and Gerardo discuss the news topics of the week at 7pm mountain time Thursday night!
Tonight’s topics include but are not limited to:
- BYU Black Student Union confronts Brad Wilcox
- BYU forces end to “gender-affirming voice care” for transgender students
- Utah Kaysville Devotional for Sisters Featuring Mormon Apostle Dale G. Renlund
Show Notes:
- BYU Black Student union
- BYU BSU news article
- Mormonism Live recent ep on women
- Black BYU students tiktok
- Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
- Under the Banner of Heaven trailer
- Steven Hassan, author of Combatting Cult Mind Control
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One Response
Renlund did not say lgbtq will be able to achieve the highest degree of glory. He stated that they would be eligible to receive what other christians consider better than heaven. Oaks said this too. They will get a kingdom of glory just not eligible for the higher kingdoms. He is making it sound like a compliment but he is denying that they can achieve exaltation. They are making mormonism calvinism. LGBTQ did not choose to be that way but they cannot be exalted because not married, therefore people are pre-chosen for exaltation. He has thrown Mormonism back into the days of Calvinism.