Introduction and Welcome

John Dehlin [00:00:09] The depth of your dreams. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Mormon Stories podcast. My name is John Dehlin. I'm very excited to have you with us today. I'd like to thank all of you for your continual support. We're getting about 500 downloads per episode now on Mormon Stories. It's getting to be a problem because actually the bandwidth from my Internet service provider is maxing out each month. So that's my kind of way of saying thank you for listening. And it's also my way of saying I got to figure out how to fix this problem. But anyway, Mormon Stories continues to progress. We'd like to thank those of you who have posted to our new sort of affiliated blog, which is Latter Day Saint Liberation Front or LDS liberationfront.net Shout out to RT and Serenity Valley for their support there. Again, we'd like to just remind you up front, if you ever want to email us, it's mormonstoriesmail.com blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. So with that, we would like to tell you how excited we are to have as our guest, someone who goes by the name of Ann, is an active participant in the New Order Mormon website. She's also a moderator on that on the forum there, and she maintains their website. Some have called her New Order Ann, but she's also posted several places on the Blogger Knuckle as well. But I couldn't be more excited to welcome Ann to Mormon Stories. And thanks for coming on.

Ann's Background and Conversion to Mormonism

Ann [00:01:56] Thanks for asking me, John.

John Dehlin [00:01:58] So if we had to title this podcast, I think it's going to be something like New Order Mormons. We're going to talk about, you know, what, what a New Order Mormon is, what the movement is, what the website's about, what their philosophy is, etc. And that's sort of what this podcast is about. But what I'd love to do before we jump into that is have you tell your story as it relates to Mormonism. And I'll pepper you with questions and interrupt you regularly like I do all too often with my guests. But what I'd love to do is just have you tell us a bit about you and your Mormon experience and what led you into, let's say, alternative Mormonism.

Ann [00:02:36] Well, okay.

John Dehlin [00:02:38] And you can even start with your ancestors if you want to go way back.

Ann [00:02:44] Well, I come from a long line of Irish Catholics. Well, that's on my mother's side. On my father's side, they're German Lutherans with some Hungarian immigrants thrown in for good measure. Mary, a pioneer in the bunch. I'm a convert. I joined the church in 1986. I was tracted out, which I hear is the missionaries made a big deal. Everybody made a big deal about how tracting was so ineffective and only one out of every 1,000 doors ever resulted in a convert. So that actually made me feel pretty special. You know, I was. It was a very big deal. I thought that somebody had come knocking on my door looking for me.

John Dehlin [00:03:33] And what stage of your life were you in when the missionaries contacted you? Were you a child? High school.

Ann [00:03:43] I was in my mid-20s, so now everybody knows how old I am, John.

John Dehlin [00:03:47] Oh, nobody's gonna do the math.

Ann [00:03:49] Nobody's gonna do the math, huh? I was in my mid-20s, and when the missionaries first came to meet me, I was severely pregnant with my older son. I kept telling them to go away because I had a house with no air conditioning and it was July. They came back. They came back after my son was born. And they were great guys. They were great guys. And the timing was really interesting because my daughter had started attending or not attending. My daughter was in kindergarten, and she was going to daycare with a woman who is an evangelical Christian, and she did a lot of Bible stories and things with the kids, and I had no problem with that. But I wasn't an active member at any church. And my daughter started asking me to find a church that we could go to at the ripe old age of six. So we went. I was. I was brought up Catholic, and so we went to the local Catholic church a couple times. And she didn't like that at all. This is a boring church, mom. She would whisper to me, nothing against. You know, I was perfectly happy there. But she didn't like it at all. And, you know, so I was just kind of thinking, well, gee, I don't know what to do about this. And I'm not kidding. Within the month, the missionaries came knocking on my door. This is kind of funny. I think I've mentioned this before. I had seen these guys. They lived in an apartment above a barber shop, just probably not six blocks from my house. And I was always seeing these guys riding around on their bikes, and they always seemed to have packages. I thought they worked for a package delivery service, but it was just that they were coming back from the post office. The post office was on our street.

John Dehlin [00:05:52] Right.

Ann [00:05:53] And they were just riding back from the post office to their apartment. Weren't package delivery guys at all.

John Dehlin [00:05:58] Cool.

Ann [00:05:59] Yeah, they were cute, too.

John Dehlin [00:06:01] Oh, there's always that.

Ann [00:06:04] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:06:05] Okay. And so they Taught you?

Ann [00:06:08] Yeah. And it was a pretty. It was. It was an interesting experience. I was. I. I really. I was converted. The. And it. It changed my life.

John Dehlin [00:06:21] What were the elements that you would attribute to your conversion? Was it just how you felt in the discussion?

Ann [00:06:29] Prayer, particular? Desire. Okay, I'm sorry, I interrupted. Desire. You know, they offered me. The church offered me something that I'd never really had before, which is, you know, a purpose, a per. You know, the purpose of life. You know, where did I come from? What am I doing here? Where am I going? A structure for achieving those things. A compelling story. I. I prayed to know if it was the right thing to do. And I got very strong witness that the Book of Mormon was a scripture and that Joseph Smith was a prophet. And I decided to be baptized.

John Dehlin [00:07:27] Wow. So you're baptized and you were married at this point?

Ann [00:07:33] I was married to a different husband and the one I have now.

John Dehlin [00:07:38] And how was your first husband feeling about all this?

Ann [00:07:42] Well, it didn't really bother him too much at first. I think he figured it was just sort of a whim. I don't think he was expecting quite so much of a life change as ended up happening. It was difficult the first couple of years, trying to maintain a balance because, you know, the church, it isn't just church. It's a way of life. And if you are not conscious of what's happening, it can. Church things can take up all of your time. And I mean, there was a period where, you know, I was doing something at church six times, six days a week, every day, except Monday, just because. And that didn't happen all the time. But I wasn't very considerate of his feelings because I was so enthusiastic about my. My new face.

John Dehlin [00:08:51] Right.

Ann [00:08:52] So that was. That was a challenge for a while.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] Sure.

Ann [00:08:57] We.

John Dehlin [00:08:59] Was it. Was it a big lifestyle change from you on how. How you like, whatever the. Whatever the circumstances were under which you and your husband met and got married and then whatever lifestyle.

Ann [00:09:13] I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt.

John Dehlin [00:09:15] Your first husband and whatever. And whatever lifestyle you led up until you joining, I imagine I'd love to just have you talk now. You don't have to go into details, but tell us about what. What the disparity became between the old and the new life and how much of a shock that was on your first husband.

Ann [00:09:34] Well, things had settled down a lot. I mean, just, you know, when I was pregnant, you know, the wildlife just simply doesn't go well with a little baby or a little baby. You know, in the making the bigger changes happened gradually because, you know, during. Prior to joining the church, you know, we had a pretty. Just normal life. The changes happened gradually, and it's really hard to point out what. What caused the problems. You know, was the problem that I was a Mormon or that he was an alcoholic? You know, those are just not two things that go together really well. He. He blamed absolutely the church for all of the problems in our marriage, and that was very frustrating and in my opinion, totally not true. You know, like I said, you know, there's a poem she. She neglected. She says she nags because he drinks. He drinks because she nags, he thinks. But neither will admit what's true, that he's a drunk and she's a shrew. It's. It's. It's. It was, you know, I don't think I was shrew. I really don't. But, you know, it. There, There is a lot of compassion, I think, missing from me. You know, I had this model. I acquired this model of what a marriage was supposed to be like, and mine wasn't it.

John Dehlin [00:11:34] Yeah.

Ann [00:11:35] And. And the drastic difference between the model and the reality, that was. That was a real problem for us.

John Dehlin [00:11:48] So were you loving your membership in the church and your experiences there? Tell us about.

Ann [00:11:53] Oh, yes, I was a very happy, I think, very faithful and very devout member. I read the scriptures regularly. I prayed nightly, made my daughter go to seminary. It was, it was, you know, it was. It was the focal point of my life. I mean, and I don't. I don't think that that's a. I don't think I'm overstating when I say that the, the church was the, the hub around which everything revolved around my social life, my activities, how my family functioned was defined by my faith.

John Dehlin [00:12:53] And your worldview and your sense of purpose, meaning in the exact. Okay.

Ann [00:12:57] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:12:59] Okay. And. And did things. So when the divorce happened, did things accelerate, stay the same? You know, did. How, you know, did church change at all once the divorce happened in positive neutral or.

Ann [00:13:17] Everything got light years better after my divorce?

John Dehlin [00:13:23] Life got better.

Ann [00:13:24] Oh, immensely.

John Dehlin [00:13:25] And was there only one child from this marriage or.

Ann [00:13:29] Well, I had a daughter before we got married, so I had two children.

John Dehlin [00:13:33] Okay. Two kids.

Ann [00:13:35] And he had. My first husband had adopted my daughter, so I guess we had two. We had two kids. He wasn't very kind to my daughter. That was, that was a. That was a regular source of struggle, for sure. Sure was that. He was not very kind to my daughter.

John Dehlin [00:13:58] So things got much better.

Ann [00:14:00] But once he was gone. I mean, literally, life improved a thousand percent.

John Dehlin [00:14:05] Right. So that was all goodness because it

Ann [00:14:07] was one less person to take care of.

John Dehlin [00:14:09] And the church was very supportive and filling in whatever gaps. Are you comfortable saying what state you were in or.

Ann [00:14:18] I was in Ohio.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] Okay.

Ann [00:14:20] Within central Ohio.

John Dehlin [00:14:21] Okay. So you're in Ohio ward or branch? Just to get a sense.

Ann [00:14:26] It was award.

John Dehlin [00:14:27] Okay.

Ann [00:14:29] I was the first person baptized in my ward after a split.

John Dehlin [00:14:33] Oh, cool.

Ann [00:14:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:36] So when did things start getting complicated for you or did they.

Ann [00:14:42] Yeah, they did. I married into a very large collection of dialogues and sunstones. And yeah, my husband has always been a very thinking, engaged, involved Latter Day Saint. He was a member of the Mormon History association when he was in his teens. You know, one of the first books I borrowed from him when we were dating was Van Wagner's Mormon Polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:15:16] Oh, my goodness.

Ann [00:15:17] And one of the second ones I borrowed was Religion and Sexuality Borrowing, I think, Foster the Mormons, the shakers in the United Community. And I mean, it just. I had no idea. I mean, and people hear that and they think, my gosh, how naive must she have been? But honestly, I had no idea about, you know, post manifesto plural marriage or, you know, polyandry and Nauvoo. All those things were just. I was. I was dumbfounded.

John Dehlin [00:16:04] So you'd be. You'd have been a member how many years by the time you married your second husband?

Ann [00:16:09] 11 years.

John Dehlin [00:16:10] Okay, so you've been a member of the church over 10 years. You meet your husband and he's a dialogue Sunstone guy, and all of a sudden your gets inundated with all sorts of historical doctrinal issues that you'd never heard of before?

Ann [00:16:27] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:16:28] And was he. Was he active at the time? And was he like. Yeah, was he trying. Was he encouraging you or were you just really curious and was he sensitive about what that might do to your faith? And how was that dynamic?

Ann [00:16:41] Well, he thought before we got married, because I'm sort of a curious kind of person and I'm very liberal politically. I mean, you know, one of the things that, okay, this is probably going to be giving way too much information, but he'll just have to deal with it. We met on the Internet. There used to be, and I think still is. This was back in the mid-90s, a board, LDS Friends Worldwide, and they had profiles and you could post a profile about yourself and email people. And a friend of mine when I was what appeared to be terminally single, pointed me to this board, sort of this joke, oh, wow, Check this out, Ann. And I thought, okay, what the heck? And I looked and I thought, well, you know, single adults isn't doing it for me. And so I posted a profile and we started corresponding. And just in the process of corresponding, you know, he found out that I'm a Democrat and so is he. And he thought. And both of us, I think, made a lot of assumptions based on the things that we had in common.

John Dehlin [00:18:09] Right.

Ann [00:18:09] And he thought that I was kind of a Liahona kind of gal when the reality was was that, yeah, I was open minded, but I was also very naive, you know. You know, I had spent my entire church life in, you know, the mission field. And I just took everything that everybody told me about it at face value.

John Dehlin [00:18:42] Right.

Ann [00:18:43] You know, the what, what Laurel Thatcher Ulrich calls the Lusterware Joseph Smith who's, you know, uneducated but not ignorant and, you know, you know, handsome but not vain and, you know, just this fairy tale image of what things are like that maybe that's not the right word.

John Dehlin [00:19:13] I've actually read that article. That's a great article for our listeners. Lusterware.

Ann [00:19:17] Oh, yeah. That's one of my very, very favorite essays.

John Dehlin [00:19:22] Yeah. And so as you were discovering these issues and exploring them, were you getting freaked out and was he getting nervous or were you just getting fascinated and he was digging, helping you learn more stuff? What was the dynamic between you two as you started falling deeper and deeper into this well of knowledge, let's say?

Marriage, Separation, and Church Callings

Ann [00:19:45] Well, he was. He. A lot of it happened not long after we married, we separated. It was for job purposes. It wasn't, you know, know, I mean, it was for purely practical reasons. We lived apart for several months and, you know, he left and moved into a dumpy little apartment in another part of the country. And I stated the house we had rented with all of the sunstones and dialogues and a lot of time on my hands.

John Dehlin [00:20:14] So you were a part during this. Pardon? You were apart during some of this exploration.

Ann [00:20:19] Oh, yeah. I must have read four or five years worth of dialogues in a period of about four months. And that was just. That was a door opening. You know what I mean? That wasn't sort of a. That wasn't a critical time. That was sort of the door opening. That was just like, you know, I've been seeing, you know, you know, a third of the picture. Here's another third.

John Dehlin [00:20:56] Right.

Ann [00:20:57] That I had no idea was even there. I thought I'd been seeing the whole thing and it's like, oh, look, here's this. There's another huge piece that you're missing that you've been missing all this time. And it did, it took me to thinking about some things and of course, I read about other people's problems and maybe took them a little too much to heart. You know, just sort of. That's not right. Shouldn't. Things shouldn't be that way.

John Dehlin [00:21:30] Sure.

Ann [00:21:30] So kind of, kind of responded in that way to these, you know, very difficult things that other people. Other people had, you know, dealt with 10 years ago or six years ago when they had actually happened.

John Dehlin [00:21:46] Right. Let me just, let me break in and ask you a quick question just because I'm dying to know. So a lot of. Sometimes I get an email or a comment from a friend or family that a publication like Sense Owner Dialogue, or even a website, a blog or a podcast that introduces people for the first time to these complex issues and, you know, problems oftentimes is doing a real disservice to people because there's a lot of people who would never otherwise have to deal with these issues because they would be insulated and would otherwise live a very happy and normal, fulfilled, meaningful life. We can talk about this later. We can talk about this now. But I'm wondering, as you look back on those mountains of dialogues and sunstones, do you see them as friends or foes? Do you regret that you had that experience or are you really glad that you had that awakening? And obviously later, when we talk about where it all ends up, you can explore. I'm just curious.

Ann [00:23:06] Well, John, if you know where it all ends up, I'll be really glad to hear. I'll be really glad to know how that, how that works out. No, I. Learned so much. And it really did give such an enormous amount of, I think, depth to my understanding of what it means to be a Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:23:38] Right.

Ann [00:23:39] What it, what it. Not so much what it means to me, but what it has meant for others that, you know, those that experience informed. Informed my view of the church. It formed my view of the church or reshaped it. But I don't necessarily think of that as a negative thing. I think it's good to see things how they are.

John Dehlin [00:24:14] Sure.

Ann [00:24:14] Or at least see things from the perspective of other people. I mean, even if that isn't how they are. Different people have different perspectives, and understanding other perspectives just gives more depth to what you're looking at.

John Dehlin [00:24:29] Did you ever find yourself going, oh, that's what happened, or, oh, now it makes sense, or sort of feeling like the holes were now being filled in for the first time. Did you ever. That's how I felt.

Ann [00:24:45] The Salamander letter. Apparently the whole Mark Hoffman thing happened right around the time I was joining the church. Something along those lines happened in there. And I think it was the publication of the Salamander letter or the fact that the Salamander letter was now known to be a fake or something along those lines. And I do remember very early on hearing people talk about this stuff and being very confused.

John Dehlin [00:25:21] Right.

Ann [00:25:22] And it wasn't like there would be long in depth conversations. It would just be, you know, two sentence comment in Relief Society. And, you know, it went right by me. And now, you know, 10 years later. Oh, so that's what they were talking about. And you. And then knew what they were talking about. It also gave me. It kind of clued me in as to why I would occasionally hear a talk in general conference about come back, feast, come and join in full fellowship with the saints and feast at the table of the Lord. It's like, well, people leave. Apparently. People leave, right? A surprise. So, yeah, like I said, I had a very. I keep using the word naive and I, and I hesitate to use that because it's got some. It's got some baggage with it, but it was a very. I accepted what people told me as the beginning, the middle and the end. I didn't, I didn't. I missed. I missed a lot.

John Dehlin [00:26:47] Sure.

Ann [00:26:47] I missed a lot of things because I wasn't looking for them. And people didn't tell me.

John Dehlin [00:26:51] Right. So how did the spiral, you know, how did it progress? The more and more you learned, where'd you go from there?

Ann [00:26:59] Well, being called as primary president was hard. It was really hard. Hard. I was in a ward that had a we don't have any people mentality. And getting teachers was like pulling teeth, you know, tons of. And nobody. Everybody thinks they don't have what they need. When you're in, quote, the field.

John Dehlin [00:27:21] Right.

Ann [00:27:23] You know it. I don't, I don't know if you've. You've lived outside of the corridor before,

John Dehlin [00:27:29] but most of my, Most of my life.

Ann [00:27:33] Oh, okay. So, you know, everybody thinks that there's not enough people to do what needs to be done and especially in, quote, their bailiwick, whatever that happens to be. I got, I think, a very jaded view of how callings are made. That was, that was very, that was very hard. I had some wonderful experiences when I was primary president too, though. So, I mean, it wasn't like it was all negative, but being called as primary president was quite an eye opener for me as far as how things work. But I think the really big issue was a very serious personal disappointment. There was something, there was an opportunity that came along that I really wanted a lot. And you know, I did everything I knew to do because it was something that wasn't in my control. It was just something that I really wanted to have happen. And I mean, I fasted, I prayed, I pleaded, I begged.

John Dehlin [00:28:47] Is this in your ward? Is this in your personal life?

Ann [00:28:49] No, this was outside. This was in our personal life. This is just another thing, the primary president. That was kind of an eh, you know, you add that to all the sunstone and dialogues and you think, oh, yeah, you know, you pick up all these things about women and stuff and then you then. But I really think the straw that broke the camel's back was this. Well, when I first really headed into a crisis of faith was this personal opportunity that came along that I was just. I wanted so badly. And like I said, I did everything I knew to do. I fasted, I prayed, I begged, I pleaded, please, this has to happen. This really has to happen. And it didn't happen.

John Dehlin [00:29:44] Okay?

Ann [00:29:45] And I got really, really angry. I was really angry about that.

John Dehlin [00:29:55] Was it a righteous desire?

Ann [00:29:57] Oh, absolutely, absolutely. It would have given me a chance to go home, you know, it was, you know, chance to be back near my family, help out with my grandma. I mean, there was just so many good things that I think could have come out of this. And in response to my disappointment, you know, all people had to offer were platitudes, right? You know, oh, the Lord has something better in mind for you. Well, you know what? Apparently God didn't care what I wanted, so why should I care what he wanted? I was really angry. I was really angry. I carried that for. Gosh, it must have been, it must have been a year, a year and a half. It affected my ability to function as primary president. I wasn't able to do it for much more than a few months. After that, I went into another calling that was much more low key. Worked out really well for the time I was in. They put me in the nursery, which was great at that point. I had a little boy who was in the nursery. So it was just. It was just ideal. But it pretty much. It launched me into a depression that lasted for the better part of a year. And it. Things never. Things were never the same again, right? Things were never the same again.

John Dehlin [00:31:38] And this is how many years, this is how many years ago from now

Ann [00:31:44] was about four years ago, maybe. Five, okay. Four or five years ago maybe.

Online Communities and Growing Disillusionment

John Dehlin [00:31:50] Now were you, were you on the Internet during this time at all?

Ann [00:31:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:54] And was. I was, was learning things or interacting with Mormon folk on the Internet playing.

Ann [00:31:58] Oh yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:32:00] Tell us a bit about sort of. Because you're pretty active participant on the Internet now. Yeah, tell us, tell us, tell us about how that ramped up in your life. And if, and I can hear my audience thinking, oh, of course she got on the Internet, she got exposed to all these negative people and negative thinkers, then she has a problem come in her life and because of all this Internet based negativity and cynicism just laid right over what was happening to her and gave her all these negative reasons and excuses to feel disaffected and disenchanted. I'm just trying to think about what my listeners might be asking.

Ann [00:32:39] Yeah, that's interesting. I mean on the one hand you can say nothing good comes out of hanging out on the Internet, but you know, I met my husband on the Internet so I'm very grateful for the Internet. I bet you haven't heard that too much before. I was actually a moderator for.

John Dehlin [00:33:00] I hear it all the time.

Ann [00:33:00] Oh you do?

John Dehlin [00:33:02] Yeah, I do.

Ann [00:33:03] Okay. I was, I was a participant for probably better about a year and a half. I mean this was, this was definitely in the pre blogger nackle days on Usenet, group Soc. Religion Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:33:19] Wow.

Ann [00:33:20] And after, I don't know, maybe a year, year and a half there I was a, they asked me to be a moderator and I was a moderator. It's a moderated group. Moderated for civility. You don't. And there are a few non permitted topics. There are actually very, very few of them. One of them is, are Mormons Christians? That's not a, that's not a permissible topic. And no discussions of the temple ceremony. And then other than that it's moderated for civility. And I was a moderator there for gosh, probably three years. And far from being an anti negative, that was actually a very positive, I think experience for me. I met some wonderful people, some of whom I've met in real life and one of whom I still consider a very dear friend. She's been, she, she posts on, she's posted a bit on the, on LDS ls, LDS Liberation Front, under, On the Stages of Face threads because she's a huge Stages of Faith fan. But Peggy, Peggy Rogers is her name and she's just a very dear friend.

John Dehlin [00:34:49] And you met her, you know, in, in this form.

Ann [00:34:53] Yeah, we met in real life. She's, She's a lot of fun. She's a lot of fun and she's, you know. Anyway, she's been a real good influence on me too, you know, especially as I was. As my level of happiness with my church engagement deteriorated, she was able to a couple of times say, yep. Have you thought about this? And help me make some, some decisions that I think really helped me out, you know, personally. And so I don't think of the Internet as a. As a negative thing at all. But I will say, I will say that, you know, as I was going through this, you know, my level of involvement on the Internet did change over time and I started participating places that I hadn't participated before. And one of those was a place Peggy pointed me to, which was the New Order Mormons discussion board. And that, you know, that's, you know, I hate to Baden out the board because, you know, it's like, okay, I don't know, it's, I hope, run the place now, but it's. If you've got a faltering testimony and you're not sure about. About things anymore, I absolutely agree. Places like that are not a good idea.

John Dehlin [00:36:32] Right.

Ann [00:36:33] You know, it's just. It's just, you know, if, if you really. If people have a concern it that and they're afraid that the consequences might be a loss of testimony or a loss of faith, the Internet really isn't the place to go to build that up.

John Dehlin [00:36:55] Yeah, I mean, it's. I'm just wondering if I were just to put the simple question to you. Sounds like your life was going great until you ran into sunstone dialogue in the Internet. And then all of a sudden all the things that were causing you so much joy all of a sudden became unhappy for you. What would you say to me to keep from blaming sunstone dialogue in the Internet to being the causes for your unhappiness? If I have any people from fair, for example, apologists listening, I know that's exactly what they're gonna, you know, what they're thinking. What would your response to that be? Guilty. Or it's, it's much more complex than that or it needed to happen. What would you say?

Ann [00:37:37] Well, yes, it's much more complex than that. You know, I married a faithful Latter Day Saint with a large collection of sunstones and dialogues, and he is still a faithful Latter Day Saint. I honestly think the problem isn't so much with the information, with how it was synthesized or not. I think that if the complexities, the depth, the variety of experiences that are part and parcel of the LDS experience or something that is nurtured in you from a very early stage in your development in the church, that far from being something that can trash your testimony or rip your faith out from underneath you, that it can be something that adds color to it, it makes it more vivid and alive. One of the things that I have heard is, you know, when people hear about, you know, problematic things with Joseph Smith, one of the responses I have heard about that is, you know, you know, sort of along the lines of the lusterware concept, which is, you know, what more, what could be more hopeful than seeing how God can bring about his purposes with mere humans? You know, I mean, the problem isn't that Joseph Smith isn't the prophet. The problem is that he's a man. And men, women, humans, they have faults, they have failings. And when you have a person who has such a huge impact, such a huge personality, such a huge force as Joseph Smith, their good qualities are going to be the kinds of things that can change the world, but their bad qualities are also going to be magnified and at least in other people's eyes. And you know, I like to. It's not a black and white thing, you know.

John Dehlin [00:40:14] Right.

Ann [00:40:15] Joseph Smith is a Technicolor kind of guy.

John Dehlin [00:40:18] Yeah.

Ann [00:40:19] And you can't. And the problem is that all I ever knew was the correlated material.

John Dehlin [00:40:28] Yeah.

Ann [00:40:29] The flawless praise to the man Joseph Smith. And even under a generous reading, marrying 11 women who were married to other men is complicated.

John Dehlin [00:40:45] Yeah.

Ann [00:40:45] And that's not anything I'd ever heard before. I think if you, if you can sit, synthesize that kind of thing from very early on, look at what God can bring about through mere mortals, through ordinary people like you and me. Because in the end, that's what he was. An ordinary person, just like you.

John Dehlin [00:41:08] So, you know, one analogy that comes to mind is just the saying that with Watergate it was never the burglary, it was the COVID up. And what I kind of hear you saying is you've never ever in all your studies come across any fact or reading that demonstrated to you that the church was false and that Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet, the Book of Mormon was absolutely worthless or whatever. The studies never led to that. What was hard was the shock of the absolute disparity between what your understanding was and what the truth seemed to be and how ill prepared you felt after being a 10 plus year member of dealing with that disparity. Is that fair to say? Did I recapture that?

Ann [00:42:01] Okay, yes, yes, that's a very good way of putting it. Black and white version of the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and, you know, Nauvoo and all of those things just didn't hold up to the things that I was reading. And just listen, that sort of makes you wonder.

John Dehlin [00:42:28] Sure.

Ann [00:42:29] You know, what. What else am I not seeing here?

John Dehlin [00:42:32] Yeah. And just list, if you can list five or ten of the top issues that. That you have struggled with. You know what? Just, you know, for some it'll be boring. For some it'll be completely revelatory. You know, Tell us the top five, 10 issues.

Doctrinal Concerns and Discovering New Order Mormons

Ann [00:42:50] Well, I think the most. The first one that hit me was women in the priesthood and the relationship of the place of women in the church. That. That was kind of frustrating for me. Even, you know, in my most devout period, interestingly, it became. That became more noticeable to me after I got married because now I had a partner, whereas before it was just me and God until I had a partner. So that was kind of. That was. That was a real problem. The Nauvoo period was quite a shock. And I paint that with a broad brush because there's so much of it that was just so. Oh, my goodness, you know, John Bennett and, you know, the marrying and the marrying and the marrying and, you know, land deals and just swamps and it was just sending people off on missions. It was just very. The Nauvoo period is not something actually that seems to be covered very well in church history. When you do that during your Doctrine and Covenants, Church history, Sunday school year, they kind of don't talk about Nauvoo a whole lot.

John Dehlin [00:44:21] Yeah.

Ann [00:44:23] Aristocracy kind of. Kind of bugged me a little. The. I have. I have delusions of grandeur. I don't like that other people are born better than me.

John Dehlin [00:44:36] So the whole pioneer thing.

Ann [00:44:38] Oh, yeah, yeah. That. That. Yeah. The. It was, you know, the. What was it, the sesquicentennial?

John Dehlin [00:44:45] Yeah.

Ann [00:44:46] Just about drove me. And the coming forth of the Book of Mormon was an issue. Finding about the Seer Stone in the hat thing, that really threw me for a loop. That's one of those things that I think may have. I can't say for sure, but I think if I had known about it at the time, might have been one of those deal breakers.

John Dehlin [00:45:18] Right.

Ann [00:45:18] Because it changes. It changes. I think it changes the meaning of translate, you know. You know, I thought translate meant, you know, here's a book, and yes, God helps you, but you convert, you know, this language into this language, like, you know, Spanish To German. But no, that isn't apparently what it meant at all. And yet that wasn't made clear at all. It was more like magic. There are. The occasional nonsense. That's the polite term that you hear about, you know, the curse of Cain and that kind of junk. You know, actually, I feel fortunate to have been able to say on more than one occasion when people have brought that up, oh, I don't believe that at all. In a setting, in a room full of people. That's not something I've ever been shy about saying. That's just nonsense. But. And I know, and it's not something that I've ever. I've ever heard in an official capacity. You know, I mean, it's very easy to say the church does not teach this, because that's true.

John Dehlin [00:46:39] Right.

Ann [00:46:40] You never read anything in an official capacity that says this is what people say. But yet, you know, you hear these mutterings among the members, and nobody ever seems to want to set anybody straight about it. Yeah, the. I think it's one thing that is kind of interesting is, though, is on the other side of that is things that I have no problem with. And one of those is the first vision. I have absolutely no problem with the idea. And I think I actually. Yes, I do. I still believe that Joseph Smith had a vision in a grove of trees in upstate New York. I believe that that happened. I don't know what the content of that was, that there were different accounts of it. You know, if you were to ask me these same questions in three days, I might not give you the same answer. You know, I mean, you know, stories change with time. That's why they're stories. But that doesn't mean that they didn't happen.

John Dehlin [00:47:54] Sure.

Ann [00:47:55] So those are just some of them. There was a straw that broke the camel's back. And that was. I had been reading Donna Hill's Joseph Smith's First Mormon. I had asked my husband for a faithful biography of Joseph Smith. I wanted to read a biography of Joseph Smith by a believing person, which meant I didn't want to read no Man Knows My History. And he said, well, you know, we have a really good one. I have a very large collection of Mormon books. And he recommended Joseph the First Mormon by Donna Hill. And I got to a piece in the book where she was talking about Lucy Smith's account of Joseph Sr's dream about the Tree of Life. And I was just floored. I was just floored.

John Dehlin [00:49:06] The fact that Joseph's dad had a vision, that sounded a lot a Dream that sounded a lot like Lehi's dream in the Book of Mormon.

Ann [00:49:15] Oh, yeah. I mean, there are some differences, but they're minor. And I was just dumbfounded by that. And I mean, literally reading that, it was like the whole Book of Mormon fell apart in my hands. Just. I mean, it was that quick. And. And it was one of those things that, you know, when I talked to my husband about it afterward, he was like, well, you know, there are other explanations for that. Didn't matter.

John Dehlin [00:49:42] I mean, like.

Ann [00:49:42] Like, literally that. There are maybe four or five ways of explaining that, like, why can't.

John Dehlin [00:49:49] Why can't Joseph Senior get the same vision that Lehigh did just before?

Ann [00:49:52] Right. You know, didn't matter.

John Dehlin [00:49:55] Yeah, sure.

Ann [00:49:57] It was like. It was like. It was like erasing a blackboard. It was gone. It was. It was literally. It was like the Book of Mormon fell apart right there for me.

John Dehlin [00:50:07] Sure.

Ann [00:50:08] So if I had to point to a single. A single incident, I mean, and I'm not, you know, there's, you know, straw that broke the camel's back. There had been things piling up, but when that hit, it was just like, now what?

John Dehlin [00:50:26] Yeah. And how. So let's say that that's the straw that broke the camel's back. Tell us emotionally, as you're going down this road of deconstructing, how are you feeling emotionally? And take us to the point where you hit your emotional low and what led to that, and take us to that point.

Ann [00:50:54] You know, about the time I started reading the New Order Mormons board and, you know, wrestling with all this stuff that had accumulated over the course of the past couple years, I thought, I need to do something. I need to, you know, I need to. I need to fix this. It doesn't help. I think that we could just moved. So I was in a new ward. Didn't really know anybody. It was, you know, it was a challenging time anyway. You know, bought a new house and moved across the country. Not as far as I had the first time, but. So there were a lot of other changes going on. New job, big commute every day. It was just. It was very. It was a. There was a lot of adapting going on anyway.

John Dehlin [00:51:47] Sure.

Ann [00:51:48] And I sort of hit a point where I thought, I have to do something about this. You know, I have to. I have to fix this. I can't go on, you know, wondering. And that's when I decided, okay, what I need to do is I need to learn more about Justice Smith. I need to read about him from a faithful person who's going to be able to write objectively. And, you know, this was a good five years, four years before Rough Stone Rolling. So I read what we had and I hit that and the, like I said, the Joseph Smith senior dream. And I mean, I closed the book and I started to cry so angry and I felt stupid. Does that, did that, does that make any. It was, you know, it's not stupid.

John Dehlin [00:52:55] Sure.

Ann [00:52:56] Like, you know, I mean, and it was part and parcel of being angry. How did I fall for this? How did I fall. Fall for this? It was, I think part of that came. Honestly, I think part of that comes from being a convert. You know, this wasn't something that I was born into, you know, and, you know, had my whole life to integrate.

John Dehlin [00:53:24] Right.

Ann [00:53:25] You know, this was something that I had chosen. I had, I had turned from my, my, you know, the faith of my birth, which, you know, I hadn't been an active participant for quite a long time, but, you know, and Esau and Jacob comes to mind, you know, sold my birthright for Mesa pottage. I was just, I was just so hurt and I felt so stupid. And that was a really, that was really tough. That was really tough time.

John Dehlin [00:54:05] Sure.

Ann [00:54:05] It was really hard for my husband, too. It was really hard for him because he didn't know what to do. Yeah, he didn't know what to do. You know, he couldn't, you know, he didn't want to be in the role of defender of the faith, you know, and his body, you know, you know, he doesn't want to. Didn't want to argue with me about this, but at the same time, you know, this is his, this is, this was some, this is something that's very important to him. You know, it was, it was very hard for him. I'm very, very lucky. And that he has been a thing that, you know, loving and supportive and caring and, you know, there for me through all of this.

John Dehlin [00:54:58] Sure. The depth of your dreams, the height of your wishes.

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