18 Comments

  1. High Council February 10, 2015 at 3:31 pm - Reply

    We propose that Brother John Dehlin be given a vote of thanks for his service. Those who wish to express their appreciation may so manifest it by the uplifted hand. [Raising my hand]

    • fred grant March 13, 2015 at 5:16 pm - Reply

      john you are a great good man and i support you 1000 percent..they might of exed you but they will still count you till your 110th birthday..great true church of satan

  2. shane February 10, 2015 at 3:40 pm - Reply

    congratulations on your excommunication!

  3. Wesley B. Castro February 10, 2015 at 3:41 pm - Reply

    Mr. Dehlin, as an ex-mormon (resigned) I believe I know how you and your family are feeling right now.
    It is important to me and my family that you maintain this forum.
    Our prayers and financial support are forthcoming .

  4. steve February 10, 2015 at 3:44 pm - Reply

    Their use of the word love is rather bizarre.

  5. David Macfarlane February 10, 2015 at 3:58 pm - Reply

    The use of the word “teachings” in the letter is really odd. It’s almost like they view John as having set himself up as some kind of alternative prophet leading believers away from the church through deception. This, once again, demonstrates (to me, anyway) that the church treats members as fragile things easily swung to and fro by competing ideas. I don’t think the truth is so easily bruised, but certain truths (e.g., the BoA is not an actual translation of words written by Abraham himself) do tend to bruise the church. So be it.

  6. Joe February 10, 2015 at 4:10 pm - Reply

    It seems most unusual to associate any church with a disciplinary council. The inmate desire for people to seek truth and question cannot be stifled. The Mormon Church is so new in history it has to deal with proven facts. The foundation of the church is a,” House of Cards.” Eventually, the church hierarchy will have to come to terms with that. Then, they can focus on the more positive aspects of Mormonism. If excommuica-tions become the norm for people who question, then that is how the church will be identified. Not good!

  7. Carl Sanders February 10, 2015 at 4:30 pm - Reply

    Love you.

  8. Anna February 10, 2015 at 4:37 pm - Reply

    Sad day but I am grateful you will continue with Mormon Stories. I have just recently been listening to your podcast and really appreciate the variety of perspectives from your various guests. It has really helped me with my faith crisis and helped me to appreciate the positives of the Church while participating in respectful and open dialogue about concerns with Church history and policy. Thank you for the wonderful service you do and for standing up for openness and dialogue in the Church.

  9. Lgaj February 10, 2015 at 4:49 pm - Reply

    I’m sadded.

    But at least they didn’t come after you for priestcraft. When you are settled I would like some counseling for me and my family.

    I’ve waited until now to request via your podcast or a reply to this comment that you provide how to contact you for your professional services. I live in Arizona but I am confident that Internet or phone will suffice.

    John you think you have heard it all but with myself and countless others you will hear horrors unlike any of the issues you have championed.

    Thank you for your efforts. I am a member but I have often had to seek refuge from Michael Quinn’s statement to the effect; that it’s the Holy Spirit of Promise that has the final say on these matters.

    When I was a young boy I collected baseball cards. I had my favorites. There were about 15 that I would never trade. In a more serious vein like yours, you would be one if my choices for inclusion in a different collection of 15. I haven’t completed my choices yet, but I will tell you some of them are not living. You can imagine the interesting choices your listeners would pick for their group of 15.

  10. Brandon Osborn March 4, 2015 at 8:08 am - Reply

    I started losing my testimony after walking out of the Chicago temple after my endowment / sealing session. Chanting “Pay Lay Ale” over a box of paper scraps after being felt up by an old guy and sitting through that ridiculous prequel to Battlestar Galactica was enough to make me start asking questions that were responded to with “…in the fulness of time…” and “…do not question to the point that you create doubt…”, but were never answered. After receiving numerous non-answers to questions concerning archeology, church history, anthropology, discrepancies between “translation” and “interpretation”, I was losing my grip on “knowing” the church was true – and so was my 5th-generation LDS wife. I watched as my (then) wife was excommunicated during a “court of love”, and was very sad, but my belief in the “truth” of the church, gospel, or any sort of deity had already atrophied to the point where her excommunication was not much more to me than a social concern. I resigned from the church six years later for no other reason than to get the home teachers, missionaries, and relief society from stopping by (unannounced) so they could “check up” on me and my kids, and using their own kids to badger my kids into going back to church.

    Whether you still believe in god, the gospel, or the mormon church doesn’t matter to me – your impeccable attempts to ask good questions, to use critical thinking and evidence to evaluate likely answers to those questions, and to encourage other to think and converse on these matters is what I do care about.

    If there is a god out there, I wouldn’t respect it if it did not respect your actions. If the LDS church is, in any sense, a “true” manifestation of the intentions of a deity, the men who represented it in your case most certainly acted in grave error.

    Thank you for, truly, putting your shoulder to the wheel.

  11. Lgaj March 10, 2015 at 1:23 pm - Reply

    PS limited membership still allows one to attend temple sealings.

    If money is involved with repentance and sealings then tithing becomes a form of indulgences.

  12. Diane March 13, 2015 at 3:38 pm - Reply

    John, you will never know how much peace, and understanding you shared through your podcasts. People can see documents or facts that open their eyes to realize of the need to check their beliefs. But then they are alone to readjust their minds to the reality of having used up almost all their lives strongly believing an unreal real. Listening to others going through more or less similar experiences, surely provided some healing to hearts in anguish and helped them get through the moment that life becomes a singular and most miraculous event to be appreciate wholeheartedly. I am one of those. Thanks … thanks … thanks a lot!!!

  13. Diana March 13, 2015 at 4:11 pm - Reply

    John, you will never know how much peace, and understanding you shared through your podcasts. People can see documents or facts that open their eyes to realize of the need to check their beliefs. But then they are alone to readjust their minds to the reality of having used up almost all their lives strongly believing an unreal real. Listening to others going through more or less similar experiences, surely provided healing to hearts in anguish and helped them get through the moment that life becomes a singular and most miraculous event to be appreciate wholeheartedly. I am one of those. Thanks … thanks … thanks a lot!!!

  14. Dani March 18, 2015 at 5:12 pm - Reply

    When I read the transcript of the meeting with Brian King, I see something so moving, and so heartbreaking. I see a lost opportunity for two men to take a moment to see each other’s point of view, to expand the collective understanding of essential divine and mortal matters. What a waste. These are terribly discouraging times for those of us who question, with sincerity, and are shown to the door.

  15. Matt April 5, 2015 at 8:30 am - Reply

    Hi John,
    I think I probably view your situation somewhat different than many posting here. I have lived in 7 different countries and been to 40. I currently work outside of the US,. and I’ve served in 4 wars for the USA.

    As an analytical mind I have found countless problems with the politics and political leaders of the USA. do I want to stay in America and Lap it up like so many mushy minds there who love fox/cnn news? At the moment I prefer to go where I don’t have to live with it.

    You also don’t want to be a part of the church when you are trying to lead others from it. I agree with the excommunication on all grounds stated. Your appeal has little merit in my book, and I wouldn’t consider it.

    Why? Because you don’t join the boy scouts to change it to the gay scouts. You don’t join the girl scouts to change it to boy scouts. And you don’t buy a subscription to Sam’s club if you think they should be more like Costco.

    Does that make sense? Why join the republican party if you don’t like them? Why would you even want to be a part of the organisation you disparage regularly?

    For my part, I grew up in Nauvoo and learned church history pretty much the way it really happened. I’m sorry that the rest of the people didn’t. But your insights on past church events I find for the most-part falsified and misleading — which is what you claim the church to be doing.

    So why do you want to be a part of church you don’t support? You haven’t changed anything. And you won’t.

    Nothing personal…. but as a political studies enthusiast, I wouldn’t want you in my political group if you didn’t have the same beliefs as me. I don’t think the women would want you in the women’s restroom if you weren’t a woman.

    So you’re not a Mormon, so why are you wanting to be a member of the church?

    To me it doesn’t make any sense and indicates to me that you may have deceived yourself. Either you want to be a member or your don’t. But pretending to be a member whilst denying the essence of membership is like being angry that the local health club doesn’t serve burgers, pizza, and potato chips. Or being upset at your wife because you can’t have 4 girlfriends.

    I wish you all the best in what you do, and hope that you will take the opportunity to be unified with yourself that the church has given you. I’m just one man with an opinion, but I truly think that you didn’t realize what you were asking for when you adopted opposing beliefs.

    No man can serve two opposing ideologies. That’s a fact.

    All the best!

    Matt

    • Alice April 5, 2015 at 8:33 pm - Reply

      Matt, Very didactic of course!
      Do you realize that in a page or so you compared the ONLY TRUE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST ON EARTH, GUIDED BY GOD, EVEN JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF, THE LORD AND SAVIOUR, BY REVELATION TO HIS PROPHETS with:
      a) A great country like the US,
      b) youth groups
      c) a subscription,
      d) a political party, to end up with
      e) a women’s bathroom (at least you said “restroom”) and
      f) a nutritionist club or similar.
      Was it to make it a lot clearer? …
      Besides,
      Even if you had listened to all of John’s podcasts interviews, I don’t think is good to suppose his thoughts or say what he should think or be doing.

  16. John B April 5, 2015 at 12:10 pm - Reply

    John, I just wanted to express my support and thank you for your podcasts. I’m not Mormon myself, never have been nor ever will be, but I found your podcasts a few years ago while curious about LDS history. I have found them to be very well-made and interesting to listen to. I wish you well during this time and hope you’ll continue making more podcasts.

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