Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:05] Mormon Transitions Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. Music has been provided by the Saber Rattlers. Please check us out@mormontransitions.org

Guest [00:00:18] brightly beings our Father's mercy From his lighthouse evermore.

John Dehlin [00:00:35] Hello, and welcome to a special edition brought to you by the Open Stories Foundation. What we have today is a discussion about LDS or Mormon faith transitions. I have with me two very special guests. The first is Joanna Brooks. Hey, Joanna.

Joanna Brooks [00:00:53] Hi, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:55] And Brian Johnston. Hey, Brian.

Brian Johnston [00:00:57] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:58] For those of you who don't know, my name is John. I work with Mormon Stories, and many of you will be coming to this audio program because you've contacted me through email or in some other means and I've directed you here or you'll be referred to it from various websites affiliated with the Open Stories foundation of Mormon Stories. But, you know, I'm. I'm excited to be here and just to introduce our two guests. Joanna Brooks is a professor and the chairman of the English department at San Diego State University. She's also a board member of the Open Stories Foundation. She has a website and a Twitter feed, and she writes as Ask Mormon Girl. She has a brand new book coming out. Tell us the title, Joanna.

Joanna Brooks [00:01:44] It's called the Book of Mormon Girl Stories from an American Faith.

John Dehlin [00:01:48] And Joanna is just. She's been around this scene of faith transitions in a Mormon and LDS context for, I don't know, two decades. Does that make you feel old, Joanna?

Joanna Brooks [00:01:58] Loving it. I'm embracing 40.

John Dehlin [00:02:02] Brian Johnston is also a member of the Open Stories Foundation. He's been partner collaborator with me for what, Brian? Seven years?

Brian Johnston [00:02:11] So. Yeah, so several years. I'm trying to remember how far it goes back, but we've worked on a bunch of projects together.

John Dehlin [00:02:17] Yeah. And Brian's done a lot of great stuff online. He's specifically done a lot of work in helping people when they're early in their faith crisis, trying to decide, you know, if they're going to stay, how they're going to stay and if they're not going to stay, how to minimize the damage. He's also done a lot of work with mixed faith couples where, you know, one member of a couple believes and the other doesn't and trying to help them work through that. But Brian's an excellent asset. So thank you both for being with us today.

Joanna Brooks [00:02:48] My privilege.

Brian Johnston [00:02:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] The purpose of this, you know, let's say hour, hopefully hour, no more than an hour and a half discussion, hopefully is going to be just an introduction to the LDS or Mormon faith crisis before we kind of dig into that. I guess we should discuss just briefly what the Open Stories foundation is. The Open Stories foundation was started, you know, as an extension to Mormon Stories Podcast. And the purpose of the Open Stories foundation basically is to help Mormons, you know, members of the LDS Church in faith transitions. We're definitely separate from the LDS Church. We're completely neutral in terms of people's faith journeys and where they end up. We're not pro church, we're not anti church. We have warm soft spots for the church. I think most of us would say we love the church, and most of us basically are active or semi active members of the church. But we're committed to looking at Mormonism in a bit of a broader way, sort of as a culture. And our goal is to do whatever we can to provide support for people who are struggling, whether that be someone who's just started a faith crisis, whether they're in a mixed faith marriage and they're trying to work through the marriage, whether they're struggling with various issues related to culture or history, whether they're thinking about leaving or staying or coming back to the church after they've been away, whether they're angry or sad or happy, whether they're completely true believing, but they just want to be a part of a community that celebrates Mormonism as a culture in a way that maybe is a little bit less correlated. You know, these are some of the things that the Stories foundation is about. Now, Joanna, why don't you jump in and tell me what I've left out?

Joanna Brooks [00:04:38] You left out nothing.

John Dehlin [00:04:39] Okay.

Joanna Brooks [00:04:40] It's a big tent Mormonism.

Brian Johnston [00:04:42] Yeah.

Joanna Brooks [00:04:42] And you know, it's a. Mormonism is again, Open Stories foundation and affiliated projects are not a church, but they are a space where we can process this really fascinating and, you know, significant part of ourselves that is Mormonism. You know, we, most of us who are affiliated with this or come to it as podcast listeners or as members of regional communities, you know, we've invested a lot of our lives in our Mormonism, and we deserve a place where we can, you know, in a supportive environment, sort through the whole range of feelings that Mormonism brings up in us. And that's what this place is about.

John Dehlin [00:05:19] Excellent. Brian, you want to add anything?

Brian Johnston [00:05:21] Yeah. Great stuff so far. I would just add that I think one of the key aspects that we try to provide is a much more open environment to discuss pretty much anything on the table. We try to create spaces where you can talk about the things that you can't talk about at church. You can't talk about with your family. It'd be great if you could, but just this environment that fosters real connection between people and just sharing our stories with each other.

John Dehlin [00:05:56] Beautiful. We could go into a lot of the support resources that we have at Mormon Stories. We're going to save that for the end. Again, the purpose of this next hour to hour and a half is to provide some early guidance and counsel for people who are in crisis. And we could talk about what a faith transition or faith crisis is. If you're listening, you probably know as much or more about that than we are than we do. But basically, I don't know how many you get, Joanna or Brian, but I definitely get three to five or more emails a week. Oftentimes they're four or five pages long, and they're heartbreaking. They're people who usually love the church at one point, maybe still do. They're people who at one point believed very literally and completely in the church and now don't know what to believe anymore. And they may be. Their marriage may be in jeopardy. They may be at risk of losing their children. They may be at risk of either having their membership terminated or deciding that they want to terminate their membership. It's basically the wheels have come off the wagon. The worldview has turned upside down, and the people that contact me just don't know where to turn, and they're desperate. And as many times as I try and have lunches with or have phone calls with or respond via email to these people, I simply, you know, and we simply just can't reach everyone who has need. Joanna, do you get these kind of emails?

Joanna Brooks [00:07:31] I do, I do. And Facebook messages. And, you know, people have a lot weighing on their hearts and, yeah, there's a lot that needs to be said and shared in our community.

John Dehlin [00:07:41] Yeah. And Brian, I know you get a lot of this, too.

Brian Johnston [00:07:44] Same thing. Because, yeah, it breaks my heart when I see these things and people don't know where to turn. And, you know, I think we've all been through that at some point and maybe even still going through it, you know, so I just, you know, like you said, my heart just goes out to these people. And, yeah, that's what it's all about, you know, being there.

Defining Faith Transition and Faith Crisis

John Dehlin [00:08:08] All right, so the first topic that we were going to, you know, start as an introduction was just to talk about what is a faith transition or a faith crisis. It's interesting because, Joanna, you prefer the term faith transition to faith crisis, and I would love to have you frame how we can look at this not necessarily as an instantaneously catastrophic event, but it does.

Joanna Brooks [00:08:31] But it feels catastrophic. I mean, it feels like a crisis when you're in it, when you're in acute phases of it.

Brian Johnston [00:08:39] That's. Acute phases, I think.

Joanna Brooks [00:08:41] Yeah. I mean, if you have invested a huge portion of your heart, of your might, mind, and strength, to use a familiar term in Mormonism, for the first 20, 30, 40 years of your life, you know, you may. I mean, my experiences there, I came to a point, and there were issues that came up for me related to the church where I. My heart just felt like it was breaking. I couldn't do it anymore. I could not continue to attend, to kind of hold things together in the way I had been trying to for years previous. And, you know, it felt extremely acute. I mean, it felt like, you know, the floor came out from under me, and it felt like a real, real loss. And I had a lot of feelings that I could not. And things that I wanted to say or felt I didn't know how to sort out. I didn't even know who to talk to, especially no one within the world of Mormonism. And so that was a very acute phase for me. And so over the years, though, as I've taken, you know, gained a longer view just by kind of surviving it and coming out the other side. And it took a while. For me, my transition was very long because I handled most of it alone. I've come to see it and kind of understand that, you know, life is all about change, and spiritual life is all about change, and we can survive change. You know, there is an other side to this. You know, you will come out another side. So I just try to use the term faith transition when I can, to project that longer view. But I don't want to downplay, you know, the crisis, how crisis it does feel when you're in the thick of the acute phase, when you're starting it.

John Dehlin [00:10:21] Right. And, Brian, you went through a crisis too, right?

Brian Johnston [00:10:24] Yeah. And I really like how Joanna's putting that. You know, the transition kind of encompasses the long view, but, boy, there are really times when, you know, like you said, it. It is a crisis, actually. You know, I mean, for me, you know, at 1.45 years ago, my family's falling apart. Are we gonna get divorced? I mean, my whole life that I built, you know, for 35, 40 years, it's like, wait, everything we've built this, you know, everything we've built is been turned upside down and crumbling apart. And I had. I couldn't talk to. I didn't feel like I could talk to anybody in my normal support network. I actually, like, started hunting down. I hunted down some guy who wrote an article on the Internet and called him on the phone a complete stranger. That was like the first person I could actually find, you know, and he was very nice. But, you know, I mean, it was panic mode. Yeah.

Joanna Brooks [00:11:23] But, yeah, I was pretty much alone with it or went and sat in other faith communities. Like, I went to Quaker meetings and cried. I mean, like, literally for like 10 years until I found Ryan's website stale DS. So anyway, but that's not, you know, that's. Again, there's transition.

John Dehlin [00:11:39] Yeah. And I'll just add, you know, some of the most common emotions that people feel, and we're just going to empathize and make sure you listeners know that we understand. Some of the emotions that people feel range from shock, anger, sometimes rage, sometimes deep feelings of being betrayed and misled by the church, shock over the discovery of historical or cultural issues that are troubling. Sometimes there's this chronic building pain and anguish that people feel as each year advances in their Mormon life. Mormon attendance becomes less and less tenable. Then there's the sense depression. When the wagon wheels fall off the wagon, there's depression, there's anxiety. Sometimes you doubt your sense of purpose in life. Sometimes you doubt the meaning to life. Sometimes you doubt your identity, who you are and what all this means. And it can just spiral to the point where you don't know if you believe in Joseph Smith or the Book of Mormon anymore, then it can escalate to the Bible, then it can escalate to Jesus and to God himself, and. And soon you're sort of staring into the dark abyss of potentially atheism. And oftentimes when people are in their 40s or late 30s, an entire midlife crisis can be heaped on top of this, where you're starting to say, did I waste 20 years of my life? What differences would I. What decisions would I have made if I could have made these decisions differently?

Joanna Brooks [00:13:26] Or did I marry the right person?

John Dehlin [00:13:28] Did I marry the right person? Do I still want to stay married to this person? Do I still want to be a parent? And then, of course, if you're gay or lesbian, it's tough enough to navigate your own sexual identity. Oftentimes, I'd say at least 70% of the time, people who are gay or lesbian suffer this faith crisis on top of trying to navigate their own sexual identity, which can be a, of course, lead to even thoughts of Suicide, in addition. So any other emotions? I've left out that pretty.

Brian Johnston [00:14:01] Just one small, small point. You said the dark abyss of atheism. I don't know if we want to portray it that way, but it feels that way sometimes as you're falling down that rabbit hole of everything, of all your various beliefs falling apart. And also one other emotion, alienation. That was one that I think a lot of people feel like. I just remember walking around church on Sunday feeling like, oh, my goodness, I'm totally. I'm like an alien in this weird culture all of a sudden. And I know something horrible that all these people don't know sort of thing. Yeah.

Joanna Brooks [00:14:38] For women, I'm trying to think if there's any female specific. I mean, women sometimes feel trapped. Trapped in. Because especially if you're an LDS woman and you've been really observant and you haven't developed an identity for yourself or a career for yourself because you were doing the thing you thought you're supposed to do. Women can feel really trapped and may be trapped financially, socially, and not necessarily know that they have a chance to build an independent life for themselves if they. If that's where their, you know, journey takes them. So, yeah, that happens.

Brian Johnston [00:15:09] Very good points. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:10] And, Brian, your point about isolation is just so critical because you. There's this point where you feel like you're the only person in the world who's discovered these things. You know, none of your siblings, you don't know of any of siblings that know of these things. Not your parents, not your spouse, not your friends, not your loved ones, certainly not your ward members. And you feel like, oh, my gosh, if I tell somebody, my parents will hate me, they'll disown me, my spouse will leave me, my bishop will take my temporary come in a way and maybe excommunicate me. My neighbors won't love me anymore. They won't let their children play with mine.

Guest [00:15:44] And.

John Dehlin [00:15:45] And so you can just become solitary, confined, alone and isolated, and you can just pack it down and pack it down emotionally and risk it exploding at some point.

Brian Johnston [00:15:58] Yeah. Some people compare it to, like, zombie plague. You know, you've been bitten. I know it's kind of joking, but, you know, it's a good analogy. You know, you feel like if you get too close to anybody else, you want to reach out to other people, but you don't want to infect them with the same zombie plague that, you know, these same feelings, you don't want to cause somebody else the same pain that's. You Know, happening to you at the same time.

John Dehlin [00:16:22] Yeah.

Joanna Brooks [00:16:23] Or you do. Or you want to sit and bank the wall and say, you know, why didn't anyone tell me this? Or are you kidding? Why aren't we all acknowledging this? You know, like, our community has a very particular way of dealing with uncomfortable issues. Is not unique to Mormons. It's certainly not unique to Mormons. But, you know, if you have. If you're going through a radical period of change and you feel like the only one, there's an urge to, you know, pull. You know, to bring other people into it and make them deal with it, too.

John Dehlin [00:16:53] Shout it from the rooftops.

Joanna Brooks [00:16:54] Right, Exactly. That's an urge that people have. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:16:57] Nail your 99 theses to the wall of the church.

Brian Johnston [00:17:00] There's a variety of responses, like reactions to that experience. And that's the. Know, there's a spectrum there.

Joanna Brooks [00:17:06] So whatever. You're feeling pretty much normal.

Brian Johnston [00:17:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:10] And it's horrible. It's absolutely horrible. Okay, so Brian and Joanna, you guys have put together a list of main topics that we want to try and cover today. Now that we've hopefully established some empathy and some credibility on, you know, our sense of trying to. Trying to show that we have a little bit of a grasp for what you, the listener, might be dealing with. Brian, why don't you just start guiding us through some of the main topics that you think we're all going to benefit from hearing, you know, in this first hour, hour and a half.

What to Know Before Leaving the Church

Brian Johnston [00:17:47] Okay. Yeah, let's just. I'm just going to pick the first bullet item on the list, but. And I thought this was really the most important message to send to people, that it's going to be okay. I know how bad it feels right now, but so many other people have gone through this and are going through it, and they come out the other end. It's like a train tunnel. You know, you're in the dark, and at some point, you just keep walking forward and you. You'll figure it out. It. You know, stuff's gonna happen, stuff's gonna change. Life is messy. But I've also seen so many people, they work through it and they figure out what they want to do. And a lot of people actually say that they're much happier and much more satisfied with life after they have gone down the road a little bit.

Joanna Brooks [00:18:37] Yes. Yes. It's gonna be okay. Yep. And I remember, you know, and. And it's not gonna be acute forever. Like, if I remember when I was feeling the really. The really distressing part of the Transition. And that for me, that distressing part lasted a few years. I mean, and I remember I had a book by Esther Peterson, who's a major 20th century Mormon woman figure, who sort of ended up leaving the. Well, not. Not me staying active in the church. And I was just looking for role models. And I remember finding her faith crisis in her biography, holding it between my fingers, and it was like only 10% of the book. And I looked at the book of her life, and I was like, oh, there's a lot of good stuff that happens after this very painful part. And just holding those pages between my fingers and knowing that that's not the whole book really, really helped me. So it's not gonna. The acute part doesn't last forever. You know, it's okay. People have been through this and they have come out the other side to somewhere new and productive.

John Dehlin [00:19:47] Yeah. I just want to add that there's never been a better time in the history of Mormonism to go through a crisis of faith. We're going to talk about some of the resources that are available, but there are tens of thousands of people out there who have gone through exactly what you're going through. You. And who are available in various ways to help out. I also just want to add that there's clear psychological benefit. As a aspiring therapist, I'm learning that there's actual psychological benefit to normalizing someone's experience. If someone has obsessive compulsive disorder, and you say, oh, well, you have obsessive compulsive disorder. And they're like, really? It's a thing and it's got a cure. And there are people and resources available to help. Just knowing that you're not alone and that other people have been through it and have made it out. The other side can be, you know, 60% of getting better.

Joanna Brooks [00:20:46] And it's not because you didn't try hard enough, you know, and it's not because you weren't good enough. It's just because this religion is complicated and faith is complicated and life is complicated. And, you know, it's not your fault. A lot of people are where you are and have been where you are.

Brian Johnston [00:21:04] Yeah. I think it's also. It's just broadly a very normal experience to go through. Like, not even just for LDS people, but in general in all religions. And some of us are just wired to be this way, you know, and it's just. It's a natural thing that happens. Unfortunately, it gets complicated because of all the social ties and everything else that's going on. But people make it through all the time, and it's a healthy thing to go through, as painful as it is. Kind of like taking your medicine, you know, sort of thing. I don't know if that's a good analogy.

Joanna Brooks [00:21:41] Kind of like having a baby.

Brian Johnston [00:21:43] There you go.

John Dehlin [00:21:45] Or leaving the Garden of Eden. Right. Adam and Eve probably hated leaving the Garden of Eden at first, but maybe at the end of their lives, when they had children and grandchildren and lots of experiences and knowledge, and they probably looked back and said, I'm kind of glad, you know, metaphorically we're speaking, of course. I'm kind of glad that we. That we left that garden, even though it was really comfortable at the time.

Brian Johnston [00:22:07] Yeah. And another. Just one more word of, you know, like, everything's gonna be okay. I want to say that there are some of the most beautiful, loving, compassionate, caring people out there in this broader community. You will find people, as, you know, as soon as you start reaching out that have been through this, that have so much sympathy for what you're going through. And anyways, I have made some of the, you know, best closest friends ever since going through this process.

Joanna Brooks [00:22:35] Yep.

Brian Johnston [00:22:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:36] And, Brian, that's. I was just going to say that, that, you know, sometimes as an LDS Church member, we're so eager, you know, to make sure everyone feels safe and to do the right thing, that relationships sometimes can just kind of hover on the surface. You know, even. Even in a ward for five, 10 years, you can sometimes never really scratch the surface of how people are doing because, you know, you want to always be positive and. And make sure people feel like everything's okay. And the depth and the richness of the relationships that I've formed as I've, you know, as people have helped me through my transitions, and I've tried to help them. These are relationships where we're. We're soulmates for life. And I'm not exaggerating. And the only other thing I want to say is we're finding in our research on why people leave that the types of people who leave, they're not the people who, quote, have been offended. They're not the people who, quote, are weak or want to sin or have sex or have pornography problems or, you know, don't want to pay tithing. What we're finding is that the people that have a faith crisis, transition are most often the people who were assistants of the president or leaders on their missions. These are people who have been relief society presidents. 20% of our respondents have served in bishoprics. We have Stake presidents, mission presidents. We have, you know, as I said, Relief Society presidents and stake leadership, sister missionaries. These are people who, it wasn't that they were lazy and cared little. It was that they cared so much about their Mormonism. They cared about truth, they cared about integrity. They were willing to do what is right regardless of the consequences. And they were courageous enough to speak out about it because they love their Mormonism. And so this isn't a community of faithless, weak, sinful slackers. This is a community of big hearted, loving, honest people with integrity and courage who care enough about their Mormonism in their lives that even when it's painful, they're going to ask the hard questions and follow the road less traveled.

Joanna Brooks [00:25:03] And you should take heart in that because like John said, you were raised to seek for truth and you gave a lot of yourself to that search. And you know, you are capable of figuring this out. You're going to make it through this. You can figure this out. You know, you're going to be okay.

Brian Johnston [00:25:20] Absolutely. The reason it breaks people's heart hearts is because they care enough. I mean, that's, that's really what it boils down to. If it didn't matter, it wouldn't be a transition or a crisis and have sacrificed so much.

John Dehlin [00:25:35] Really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was in a dinner group, just as a really quick aside, I was at a dinner group with like 10 really sharp Mormon intellectuals and about four of us went through this really severe crisis of faith and the other six hadn't. And they were all surprised. They're like, I just don't get why this is so hard for all you guys. And we went around the room and almost to a T, the people that never experienced the crisis of faith were people that in their teenage years and early adulthood, very quickly just sort of distanced themselves intellectually and emotionally from Mormonism. They kind of said, ah, you know, I don't buy this, or oh, you know, these people are full of crap, or oh, I'm not, you know, my heart's really not into this, but I'm just going to go along. Those were the people that never experienced the crisis of faith and didn't get it. When we went around to the people who did have the crisis of F was the people who took things literally, who really believed, who really gave everything they had, took everything they were taught seriously and honestly did everything they could to live it and love it to the fullest. And they were the ones that had the problem.

Joanna Brooks [00:26:49] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:26:50] Yeah, so, okay, I've said it.

Brian Johnston [00:26:53] So.

Joanna Brooks [00:26:54] But I. Go ahead, Brian. No, no, I think we're ready to move on. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people in the thick of things want to hear not only that it's going to be okay, but they want to get to the end of the process and know how it's all going to turn out and, you know, and load themselves up with the big questions. Should I leave? Should I stay? You know, am I going to be in the church, out of the church? And where should you end up? Big question.

Brian Johnston [00:27:28] Well, the basic answer is we can't tell you. And also, just to point out, it may have taken you 20, 30, or 40 years to get to where you are. It might take a few years to figure out where you're gonna end up.

Joanna Brooks [00:27:45] Yep.

Brian Johnston [00:27:46] Yeah, but I mean. But I mean, I hate to, like, you know, be anticlimactic there because, you know, everybody always wants the answer right away, but the answer ultimately is nobody can really tell you. Whoever it is, the person going through it will figure it out.

Joanna Brooks [00:28:05] I mean, you will end up in a healthier place by virtue of having undertaken the journey where. Where that is exactly, we don't know. But you will end up in a healthier place by virtue of having, you know, been willing to take your heart seriously, take your questions seriously.

Finding Your Footing After Leaving

John Dehlin [00:28:21] Did either of you guys experience kind of a boomeranging oscillation as you tried to navigate where you were going to end up? Do you know what I mean by that?

Joanna Brooks [00:28:31] All or nothing.

John Dehlin [00:28:32] Just kind of like, well, here's what I experienced. It was like, oh, my gosh, it's not what it claims to be. I've got to leave. And then it was like, okay, I'm going to leave. Oh, that's going to be too painful. Okay, no, I'm going to study Lowell Benning and Leonard Arrington and Eugene, England. Nope, I'm going to stay and I'm going to make it the best possible thing that it could ever be. And I'm going to. I'm going to totally be an example of how to make it work. Oh, my gosh, this is harder than I thought. This isn't quite working. Maybe I'm not going to be able to stay. I'm going to tell everyone I'm leaving this time. I'm out. I'm going to go inactive. I go inactive a year later. Oh, my gosh. It wasn't like I thought, I miss a lot about it. My kids aren't developing quite like. I thought, maybe I need to go back in. And for me, I don't know. Where I'm going to end up, because I'm still going through it and it's been 10 years.

Brian Johnston [00:29:30] Yeah, I think that's. That's really common.

Joanna Brooks [00:29:33] Well, I mean, this is the thing. I mean, we were raised with a view of faith that, you know, that there were certainties and if you acted a certain way, there would be very certain outcomes. And, you know, my understanding of faith that I've come to is that it's truly an exercise, you know, like there are no guarantees, you know, you can't plot outcomes for behavior. So, yeah, of course, as everything continues to unfold over the course of your life, you're going to go through a lot of different phases of this and many different dispositions as you're understanding changes and refines and expands and your experience base changes. Oh, yeah, it's all changed from here on out. It's all changed from here on out.

Brian Johnston [00:30:14] Yeah. And I think ultimately each person kind of has to go through sort of a cost benefit analysis. And one thing I really want to point out is, I mean, people can choose to, you know, be all in or all out, but oftentimes a lot of people, like you said, John, kind of try out different things. Like, okay, well, I think I'm just gonna go to sacrament meeting and skip the other meetings for a while. Or I might tell a couple of friends, but I'm not gonna tell my family yet, you know, or it's kind of good to kind of explore this stuff slowly. And I'm not sure you just. I'm not sure you have to end up at one spot within a fixed amount of time. And that's the new permanent thing forever and ever and ever. Because we're kind of breaking out of that paradigm. We assumed everything was going to be a certain way, not just for like the rest of our life, but like forever. The eternities, you know, that's kind of the Mormon paradigm. But you know what, it's just sort of like, I don't know where this roller coaster is going, but, you know, sometimes it's fun and sometimes it's scary and it's an adventure either way.

Joanna Brooks [00:31:22] And you can't force to the end. You can't force to the end. So, yeah, you can't, and you can't

Brian Johnston [00:31:28] think your way there.

Weighing the Costs and Benefits of Staying or Leaving

Joanna Brooks [00:31:29] Do you want to say more about cost benefit analysis? Like maybe we should run through reasons, you know, people might leave and reasons people might stay different, you know, parameters for assessing where you're at, maybe what you should do next.

Brian Johnston [00:31:41] Yeah, I mean, what are Some valid reasons to leave because I know there's a big long list of them

Joanna Brooks [00:31:48] and leave. And let's qualify leave, because it doesn't have to mean leave forever. It means like, you know, I mean, can mean leave forever, but, you know, stop attending church, take a break, move away, stop calling yourself a Mormon for a while.

Brian Johnston [00:32:01] Yeah. All the way to resigning membership and never looking back again.

Joanna Brooks [00:32:05] Right.

Brian Johnston [00:32:06] You know, it's a spectrum of things you can. Choices you make. But I mean, off the top, my head, you know, if there's some people that just have a. Let's just face it, there's gonna be some people that have a really hard time fitting in. We've mentioned a little bit the whole LGBT community right now is a really hard time, you know, for folks like that. And so, you know, if you've been having a really bad time at church, probably the best, you know, if you don't enjoy it and every time you go, you know, you're starting to write your suicide note or something. Probably time to cut the ties and take a break, at least for a little while.

Joanna Brooks [00:32:52] John should probably speak to this, but if I, you know, I. Over the course of my life, I've experienced sort of acute emotional health times, you know, serious depressions. If you're in an acute emotional health situation, by all means, give yourself the space you need to get healthy.

John Dehlin [00:33:10] Yeah, Joni, you use the term sabbatical, right?

Joanna Brooks [00:33:14] Take a sabbatical. The root word of sabbatical is Sabbath. You deserve a Sunday from it. Take the day off, take the year off.

John Dehlin [00:33:23] You know, and for those who are believers, we're not encouraging inactivity. What we're saying is that, you know, you've got to be healthy. If you don't, if you're not healthy psychologically and emotionally, you can't enjoy the spirit. You can't enjoy what church means, if that's value to you. And sometimes you need to put everything down, let everything fall, take a break, get some distance before you can decide what you want to pick back up again.

Joanna Brooks [00:33:55] And it's not uncommon that people who feel locked in or trapped in a situation will act out. I mean, there's people who, you know, you, maybe you're doing some self harming behaviors, you know, maybe you're not taking care of yourself physically. Maybe you've had a long term illness, you know, like something that's just escalated, that's causing a lot of problems. Maybe you're having anxiety, depression that's interfering with your daily life. Maybe you're in an Abusive relationship, you know, emotionally, mentally, financially, physically. You know, if any of those things applies to you, you're not in a position to be making delicate choices about your spiritual life until you get healthy. You need to get healthy, and you need to do whatever it takes to get healthy, and then you can begin to figure out religion. But, you know, we oftentimes get locked in and trapped. And if you're locked in and trapped in an unhealthy place, you need to listen to yourself and do whatever it takes to get healthy.

John Dehlin [00:34:50] It's kind of like water. Water is essential for life, and it's even fun for swimming. But when you're drowning, it's time to get out of the water. It doesn't mean that water is bad necessarily.

Brian Johnston [00:35:02] Another comparison?

John Dehlin [00:35:03] Yeah, another. Thanks. Another thing I was just going to say really quickly is one of the real common reasons that people need to consider taking a break or leaving is usually when either they've studied the church history so much in depth that they're noticing how often the history is not represented accurately at church, or they've become sensitized to women's issues, to LGBT issues, to patriarchy issues, you know, male female issues, or something about culture. Maybe they've been abused by someone in their ward or in their church. And in any of those situations, there comes a point where attending church actually causes you palpable anger or resentment or frustration. And every time you go, you go home with higher blood pressure and days and weeks taken off of your life just by attending church. And if it's that serious for you, then in my experience, your only hope, if you value the church. Something that I had to learn, is that my only hope of not hating the church and hating my church experience was to set it down for a while. And that allowed me, a year later, to come back and for some reason, not be angry anymore when I was attending.

Brian Johnston [00:36:34] And let's face it, Mormonism is a very demanding religion. And we're also really, really bad culturally and organizationally with boundaries. I mean, you can get bled completely dry. And if on top of that, you're going through a whole bunch of other stuff, I think a lot of people I've seen that make some kind of separation like that. What really needs to happen is to reset those boundaries. And sometimes the. Let's just face it, sometimes the only way is to make, like, a really clean, swift break and say, okay, timeout. Everything stops now, and, you know, I'm going somewhere else, you know, and then if you decide you want to change things, you've reset those boundaries into kind of like a healthy parameters that work for you or you had time to figure out what that is.

Joanna Brooks [00:37:24] And that's not even a language we're used to using in Mormon culture. Like, no one in Mormon culture says, I need some space for me now. You know, that's not part of our lexicon.

Brian Johnston [00:37:34] Yeah, totally, right.

Joanna Brooks [00:37:35] I mean, I mean, you know, things you can. And we'll get to this later in the discussion, I think, but it's okay to not explain for a while. It's okay. It's okay to say, I need a little space right now. People around you aren't going to know how to interpret that. You know, I need a break. I don't feel like I'm going through some things in my personal life that I don't think I can hold this calling anymore. No disrespect, you don't have to confess everything to everyone around you. You know, you can engineer a space of refuge for yourself. You deserve that space of refuge. You deserve that space of retreat to sort of assemble yourself before you make long term decisions and you don't have to explain it.

Brian Johnston [00:38:19] Yeah, Something I think we could do like a whole three hour podcast just on setting boundaries in the LDS world.

Joanna Brooks [00:38:26] Oh, goodness gracious.

John Dehlin [00:38:28] Yeah, really. And some people feel like they have to say to their ecclesiastical leaders, there's no sin involved. I'm not addicted to porn. I'm not a threat. I love the church. You know, I'm not an adulterer. I just need some time.

Joanna Brooks [00:38:45] Just peace out. Yeah, peace out.

Brian Johnston [00:38:49] That's definitely a skill that people can start to develop over time. And like I said, you could. We could definitely devote. We could probably write a whole book just on that.

John Dehlin [00:38:59] We will, we will. And guys, I want to just add one last thing. When. When people are in that pew ready to explode, it usually, in my experience, cry.

Joanna Brooks [00:39:10] I cried. Yeah, it was ridiculous. I cried like saying hello. It was ridiculous.

John Dehlin [00:39:16] No, it gets that traumatic. And what I found is that for some people, you know, in the church, there's this notion of you're either in or out. You're either with the program and you're living up to it, or you're not. And a lot of these people have been up until the point where they reach this crisis. And because they may have historical things they have a problem with, or cultural things they no longer feel good about, or organizational things that they fundamentally object to, they feel like all of a sudden, these aren't just not my people, these are my enemies. This is an organization that I fundamentally, morally, and ethically cannot support anymore. And it almost becomes for some people, a matter of integrity, that they feel like they're about to explode because they're creating the appearance that they're supportive and with the program of everything that's said and done, when in reality, what they're feeling inside is so different. And so what I've experienced for these people who have taken the sabbatical, what it provided for them is an indirect messaging to everyone in the ward, to family members and everyone else. It's basically a message saying, you know what, guys? I'm not fully orthodox and fully with every jot and tittle that's believed and said at church. I'm not a robot, you know, Mormon anymore. And I'm not saying that everyone who's a believer is. I'm just saying that for these people, they need to sort of come out. You know, there's this analogy with LGBT people of coming out of the closet. For these people, they kind of need to come out as an unorthodox or a non traditional member. Because then if everybody steps back and says, okay, we can't make assumptions about this person, we know that this person's a little bit different. We know that they're not down with everything that's said or taught, even if they don't know the specifics. If everybody knows that, then the person can find a way to re engage someday if they want to, where they don't feel like they're perpetrating deception or a lie or fully supporting parts of the organization that are actually not no longer part of their morals or values. Does that ring true to either of you guys?

Joanna Brooks [00:41:46] Oh, heck, yeah.

Brian Johnston [00:41:48] Definitely.

John Dehlin [00:41:49] Yeah.

Brian Johnston [00:41:49] I have known many people that need to, like, make that break, and it's totally valid. I totally understand. They can list off things that they say. I do not. You know, the organization does this and that harms people, and I can't be associated with it. If I'm sitting in the pews, then that means that I support everything that's going on. I understand that.

Joanna Brooks [00:42:11] So maybe you leave or step away because you need a break to heal yourself, to get perspective on what you're feeling acutely right now, to help you negotiate day to day without losing your cool, to stop a spiral into a depression. Depression. You know, maybe you leave or take a sabbatical because it's an integrity issue for you and you just can't play along anymore. Or maybe you don't. Maybe part of your faith transition experience is that you're going to kind of quietly stick it out. That is a route some people take, right?

Brian Johnston [00:42:44] Yeah. That's kind of a good segue into what are some reasons people decide to stay in the end. Yeah. Even after they know all this stuff and, you know, have picked it all apart. Yeah. There. There's. I. Actually, this is a fun hobby of mine, is finding these people in the wards that. That I attend or go to.

Joanna Brooks [00:43:03] Sniffing them out.

Brian Johnston [00:43:04] Sniffing them out. You know, I put out my feelers.

John Dehlin [00:43:07] Yeah.

Brian Johnston [00:43:07] You know, it's one of my favorite. And actually, I find some of the greatest friends that way. Well, it's my belief that there is at least 4, 5, 6 people, at least in every word like this.

John Dehlin [00:43:18] And the reason. And the reason why this topic is important is because sometimes you. You see no reason why you would ever want to stay. And for you, you're so angry and upset that you just want to write your letter of resignation and just be out of there. And I have seen. We support people who do that. There are people who should do that. There are people who need to do that. There are people who are going to do that regardless of what we think. But I know that there are people who have said to me, john, now I feel like I might have been a little bit hasty. And I've even seen people come back and ask to be rebaptized. So, you know, we want to just spend a little bit of time talking about why you don't want to completely make that decision in haste. Mm.

Strategies for Navigating a Faith Transition

Joanna Brooks [00:44:01] You want to go down to go slow.

Brian Johnston [00:44:03] Yeah, let's jump to go slow. And then we'll come back to maybe the stay or somewhere in between thing.

Joanna Brooks [00:44:09] And that's. I think, what we've been trying to kind of insert this idea of a sabbatical as like, a pause before you make a giant decision, like leave or stay. And that's the theme of go slow, Brian.

Brian Johnston [00:44:20] Go slow. Yeah. And I mentioned this before. It has taken decades to get to where you are right now.

Joanna Brooks [00:44:26] Yeah.

Brian Johnston [00:44:27] You know, it's. It's not totally unreasonable to say, hey, you know what? I could give myself a year, you know, to just really sit down and think about this and try different things. Maybe I'll take. You know, I'll only go half the Sundays or, you know, anyways, maybe I

John Dehlin [00:44:45] won't accept every calling that I'm given.

Brian Johnston [00:44:47] Yeah.

Joanna Brooks [00:44:48] Maybe I won't go to everything. Maybe I. Maybe I need to take time off from all of it.

Brian Johnston [00:44:56] Right. And. But kind of what goes along with that is a lot of Times a lot of other cultural shifts, like, well, I don't believe in the word of wisdom anymore. Am I going to drink, am I going to smoke? And those are all actually very normal behaviors out there in the world. But, you know, these are things like that. A lot of us, you know, if you've grown up in the church in a very, you know, in the Mormon culture the way it is, which is very unique, we don't have a lot of experience experimenting with these boundaries in other areas.

Joanna Brooks [00:45:26] Moderation is not a Mormon gift.

Brian Johnston [00:45:28] Right. Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:45:30] And this whole idea of buffet. Buffet Mormonism. Right. Or cafeteria Mormonism.

Brian Johnston [00:45:34] Yeah. And this sort of stuff, I mean, let's, you know, you're an adult, you might be married at this point, you might have kids and, you know, lots of different things going. You know, you have all these responsibilities and making these sudden shifts. You know, it's just, it's just prudent to sit down and think about it, meditate on it, look at various options. How do you feel about them? And that's why I think like a year, two years, you know, what's that? After 30 or 40 years, you know, of taking some time, I mean, and

Joanna Brooks [00:46:10] as chaotic as I remember feeling during a lot of my faith, the acute period of my faith crisis, I wanted to do big things that would, you know, and you may be feeling like you want to show people something is very different about you, but, you know, go slow, just try and mind your insides, you know, pay attention to what you really need to do. It's very demanding going through a faith crisis. So just focus on like, you know, taking care of yourself, staying healthy. This may not be the time to like go out and get new piercings, for example.

Brian Johnston [00:46:46] Yeah, you may not want that tattoo in a year.

Joanna Brooks [00:46:50] Exactly.

Brian Johnston [00:46:53] But yeah, and the main thing I think is, is our faith in a lot of ways is, you know, especially Mormonism is connected to our family, to our friends, to just. It's this web that connects everything in our life. And, you know, it's just good to think through it.

John Dehlin [00:47:12] Agreed.

Brian Johnston [00:47:13] Okay.

Joanna Brooks [00:47:13] You know, I got an email at Ask Mormon Girl a few weeks ago, a few months ago, from the sweet folks who like, seriously, in the course of seven weeks had like, you know, entered faith crisis, resigned, then decided to quit their jobs, moved, then decided to get re baptized and were considering moving again. Like, you know, each of those component decisions entails a lot of stress. Slow down, just slow down. You know, it's a big transition, faith transition. Maybe try not to compound it with other major Life choices immediately.

Brian Johnston [00:47:58] Yeah, that's kind of a key aspect. It's really easy to kind of also confuse religious issues with other issues in life, other stresses. And if you're not, you know, if you don't take the time to kind of sort that out, like, well, what's the real problem here? It's hard to find sometimes the right solution. And then like you, you know, that just an example you gave Joanna, of somebody who's kind of flip flopped back and forth and maybe that's what they needed to do to kind of get themselves through it. But it's a lot to go through. It's a lot of transition and change and, you know, consequences and all that stuff. But yeah, back to reasons to stay. Alright, what are some reasons people, in spite of everything, decide to hang out, you know, and keep chugging along? I guess I would say, I mean, off the top of my head, I don't really have this so much, but I know, I hear a lot of people talk about this, you know, deep sense of heritage they've got. You know, their family goes back however many generations. And you know, it's, it's, it's not just, you know, kind of out there in the, maybe like in the broader Protestant Christian world. It's not just changing churches, you know, like going to the other one across the street. This is, it's a big deal in Mormonism, you know, you're abandoning maybe your family history, your culture. You know, some people still just happen to like a lot of aspects of

Joanna Brooks [00:49:32] it, you know, when, sometimes when you get out, you get perspective and you heal, you know, and you assess other ways of being in the world. You realize that everybody screwed up, like pick your poison. Like, you know, granted there are some particularly intense parts of Mormon culture and parts that absolutely we need to, as a tradition, sort through and work out. It is not a healthy place necessarily to be for LGBT people, you know, and others too, women, it can be really tough for. But you know, sometimes after you do get perspective, get distance and do a cost benefit analysis, you're willing to come back in because it's home, you know, because it's where you're from and you understand how it works and you have, you can develop your own way maybe of doing it with less harm.

Brian Johnston [00:50:21] Right.

John Dehlin [00:50:22] Some people find it's a, it's a, it's a crucial element of community. Some people find that it's, there's no better way for them to raise their children. Some people, like you said, Joanna, it's just their spiritual language. And some people try other churches and those churches just feel awkward or uncomfortable or not very rewarding. Others find joy in other churches. That's okay too.

Brian Johnston [00:50:49] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:50:51] Yeah. And, oh, there's, you know, some people just the familial or social costs for them at their current moment are just too high. Maybe their kids are in it, maybe they don't want to split up the family in terms of religions or whatever. Sometimes people have jobs where if they were to go inactive, it could affect their employment and that sucks and it's terrible. But that can be a reality,

Brian Johnston [00:51:22] you

John Dehlin [00:51:22] know, And I guess. Oh, go ahead.

Brian Johnston [00:51:24] I was gonna say the real common one that comes to mind immediately is especially like a married couple where one person starts to go through this faith transition. And I mean, let's just face it, people don't always, you know, you get married and you have this, you envision being together on everything, but along comes this sort of thing and you're kind of going at different speeds. And maybe you can't even tell your spouse immediately because let's face it, there's families that get broken up and divorced over this issue. In Mormonism, that's the kind of stuff that just tears my heart out. But there are many people out there, if nothing else, they're just trying to buy some time because they love their spouse, they love their children, and they've actually been told under no uncertain terms that if they leave the church, then they're going to get, you know, their spouse is going to divorce them.

John Dehlin [00:52:22] There's also just the instance of if you have health problems, if you have financial problems, and you seriously need the support network of the church, it's kind of hard to beat the services and the benefits that a well functioning LDS ward or branch can provide. So some people just need the services and benefits of membership, frankly.

Brian Johnston [00:52:49] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:52] So there's lots of reasons. And I'll just say, you know, like Joanna said, some people find that they just want a church in their lives, that God and religion is important to them and they come back to the church eventually just because they can't find something better. Just like Joanna said, other people find incredibly rewarding, fulfilling lives completely outside of the church or religion at all. So we validate both paths.

Joanna Brooks [00:53:17] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:53:19] We just want to make sure people don't close any doors because you'll be surprised, you know, when you think you'll never want to come back, you just may. And so you just don't want to close doors unnecessarily or burnt.

Joanna Brooks [00:53:33] Break when you think you can hold on forever, you might not be able to hold on forever. But I think what's so crucial about the place that conversations like this happen in is that, you know, my experience of coming back and one of the things, you know, to even a Mormon community was, you know, getting to talk with John on the phone about two years ago on a January night and just be. And he's like, where you been? Like, well, let me tell you. And, you know, and being able to tell another Mormon person my full story, you know, like, I feel most at home in communities of Mormons who have all been through faith transition to crisis. Like, that is my spiritual home on the planet. That is my home. And so for me, it's worth staying in Mormonism as a culture, because no one gets me better than other people who have been through faith transition, the good and the bad. And for me, that finding this community and spaces like this conversation and made it possible for me right now to stay and be raising my kids, you know, attending church, I don't, you know, I'm humble. I don't know what the full life will bring, but I know that Mormon Stories is a home. It's a home where I can be honest about the huge investments I've made in this faith with people who can look me in the eyes and say, yep, been there.

Brian Johnston [00:54:56] Yeah, yep, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:54:59] Some people even stay because they want to try and make a positive difference for those who remain. Now, that's a bit controversial because you don't want to subject yourself to pain or sadness or discomfort if that doesn't work for you. But some people just kind of like people. They like the social aspects, and they want to be kind of a leavening to the bread, so to speak. Do you guys relate to that? Or Brian, do you Kind of.

Joanna Brooks [00:55:24] Brian does.

Brian Johnston [00:55:25] That's me.

Joanna Brooks [00:55:27] You've got that Buddha thing going on. You've got that, you know. Bodhisattva.

John Dehlin [00:55:30] Bodhisattva. Right.

Brian Johnston [00:55:33] Well, I don't know about any of that because I'm still pretty screwed up. But I do. I enjoy aspects of being connected still. And I'm just one of those people that feels a sense of I can't leave people behind, not after what I went through and feeling like there was nobody there. I can't walk by that, you know, that person on the side of the road that needs help and needs to be taken to the inn and taken care of, you know, sort of thing. I don't know. But that's just, you know, the path that I ended up taking and I learned, I think I just naturally, my personality, I slough off a lot of the, the stuff that's negative and I'm really good at sender setting boundaries and that's just my temperament. And I can laugh about it and, but, but other people don't have that same kind of temperament.

John Dehlin [00:56:22] It's not for everyone at all.

Brian Johnston [00:56:23] It's not for everyone. It's definitely not for everyone.

Joanna Brooks [00:56:27] You know, we can't really tell you where you're going to end up. You might, you know, leave, you might stay, you might go through 50 cycles in the next 30 years. There is some collective wisdom that's developing among people that have gone through it about, you know, how to get through at least the acute phase with a bit more sense and dignity and, you know, wisdom. And so maybe we'll move on into separating religion problems from life problems. Brian?

Separating Religious Struggles from Personal Wellbeing

Brian Johnston [00:56:57] Yeah, yeah.

Joanna Brooks [00:56:58] And sometimes they all arrive at once.

Brian Johnston [00:57:01] It's, it just doesn't seem to fail that. It's, you know, it's like a midlife crisis combined with a religious crisis, with a, you know, relationship crisis and maybe you've lost your job at the same time and, you know, or having health issues or somehow it, you know, seems like these things can stack up for a lot of people. And I mean immediately. One of the ones that I got involved in early on was, is talking to other people about having, you know, a mixed faith or mixed belief marriage, which is what I found. That was kind of the main crisis moment, you know, four or five years ago for me. And one of the greatest pieces of wisdom that's always talked about in that community, especially like in a marriage relationship, is stop and think and separate. Is this a religious problem or is this a relationship problem like in a marriage? Because those require much different solutions. And that's just one thing that immediately comes to the top of my head when talk about separating these kind of problems as we're trying to figure out where our journey is going to go.

John Dehlin [00:58:20] Absolutely.

Brian Johnston [00:58:20] Anything else?

John Dehlin [00:58:21] Yeah, yeah. I mean, even, even just sometimes, sometimes there are issues that people have psychologically, whether it's just depression that would happen regardless of the church or anxiety that would happen regardless of the church or a bad marriage that really, you know, marriage, you know, the religion may be the battlefield where the battle is waged, but really it's the marriage that has problems, not, not just the religion and the religion just gets blamed on it. And so sometimes you have to delicately tease those apart so that you're treating the right thing.

Brian Johnston [00:58:58] Yeah. Instead of, you know, pouring over, you know, information sites about LDS history, maybe the right step is to go to a marriage counselor, you know, instead. Because, you know, the problem you're having with your spouse is more just, you know, maybe you're not communicating well or whatever else is going on, or, you know, instead of, I don't know, I can't think of another example. That's the one I always harp on all the time.

Joanna Brooks [00:59:24] But I mean, another version because my own experience is different because I'm married to a non member. But, you know, I think that we can have complicated relationships, that Mormonism can foster complicated relationships with our parents, with our families of origin well into adulthood. I think there's something built into our culture that really can make that kind of enmeshment tricky. So maybe you're 40 and you know, one of the things that's a driving crisis is your relationship with your family of origin, with your parents, even if you're an adult, you know, or a young person. And so, you know, if there's something you need to get clear within a family dynamic, whether or not it's marital, you know, it's easy to sort of layer that in with the religion, especially if you were raised to be a certain way and you find you're not going to be a certain way. So try and separate that out too. I mean, maybe you'll be able to separate, maybe you'll be able to sort through your faith issues a little bit better if you get some space you might need from the people who raised you.

Brian Johnston [01:00:25] I'm trying to think of what else. Like maybe, you know, if you're experiencing a lot of stress and anxiety, is it because of the demands at church or is it because the demands at a stressful and anxious or anxiety ridden job, you know, that kind of work, work, religion balance. Because, you know, like I said before this, it can be a very demanding church and maybe you got to reset those boundaries. You know, you could seek some kind of help for that. I'm trying to think things off the top of my head, but no, that's good.

John Dehlin [01:00:56] I think people, I think people get the, that you just need to make sure you tease out other dynamics in addition to the religions so that you're focusing on the right things at the right times.

Joanna Brooks [01:01:07] Don't stay up all night on the Internet looking at church history. If it's also about depression or sexual

John Dehlin [01:01:14] dysfunction or abuse, abuse that you haven't reconciled, right.

Joanna Brooks [01:01:19] Or financial issues, you know, like if it's about something emotional, you know, you don't need to read Michael Quinn right now.

Brian Johnston [01:01:27] Right.

John Dehlin [01:01:28] Yeah.

Brian Johnston [01:01:29] The book will still be there when you come back to it.

John Dehlin [01:01:31] Put down Grant Palmer.

Joanna Brooks [01:01:33] Yeah. And deal with the fact that you might be miserable, you know.

Brian Johnston [01:01:37] Yeah, yeah.

Joanna Brooks [01:01:38] And honor it. Yeah. Okay.

Brian Johnston [01:01:41] Yeah. Just see it and experience it and figure out what you're going to do about it.

John Dehlin [01:01:46] And using a mental. I hate to say this. Well, I don't hate to say it. I love to say it. Don't neglect the use of a mental health professional, marriage counselor, psychologist, medication, psychiatry, if that's applicable. Sometimes that stuff can help stabilize or get you in a place to where you can deal with other things more effectively.

Brian Johnston [01:02:07] Yeah. And speaking of separating things and segueing into another bullet item, of being cautious about sharing disaffection.

Joanna Brooks [01:02:15] Yes.

Brian Johnston [01:02:16] Confusing ecclesiastical religious counseling that you might get from a bishop or stake president with financial counseling, psychological counseling, medical health counseling. I don't want to disparage, you know, the wonderful job that a lot of, you know, volunteer leaders do. Like, you know, bishops and stake presidents are volunteer leaders. They do a tremendous job organizationally, but let's face it, they're not trained, you know, if you're having a serious mental health issue, they don't, they don't know how to help people generally unless that happens to be their profession or sometimes they're not really that great with helping people with their financial budget to straighten out the stress of, you know, readjusting to life. You know, these days, the employment market, you know, you could be laid off or have a change of employment and may have to readjust a lot of things. And anyways, that gets mixed up a lot of times with the religious transition as well. And you're kind of in talking about all this stuff. And one thing we've seen that is just along with going slow is also thoughtfully deciding being cautious about sharing your disaffection with everybody.

Managing Relationships and Disclosure

Joanna Brooks [01:03:37] Very important, very important.

Brian Johnston [01:03:40] Who do you share it with and when and why? A lot of mixed experiences out there

John Dehlin [01:03:46] with people because sometimes you want it. What I wanted to do was tell everyone. I wanted to mention it in elders quorum.

Joanna Brooks [01:03:52] That's right.

John Dehlin [01:03:52] I wanted to get up on fast and testimony meeting and, and talk about polyandry and peep stones. When I was a seminary teacher, I wanted to explore it with all my seminary students so that we could all have a good, you know, immersion in the, in the controversial issues. I wanted to dump it on my spouse, but when I was with the in laws, I wanted to bring it up at dinner and over Christmas and over Easter, you know, when I'm. When I'm talking to the neighbor who's mowing their lawn, I'm like, hey, Shaler, did you know this about Joseph? And I wanted every family get together. I wanted to tell everyone. I wanted to tell the bishop, the stake president. I wanted to mention it in every ecclesiastical meeting that I could. And frankly, there was this phase where I wanted to ruin everybody's day.

Joanna Brooks [01:04:36] That's right. That's right.

John Dehlin [01:04:38] If I was miserable, I wanted everyone to be miserable with me or to help me fix the problem. But I certainly wasn't going to just be silent and use discretion.

Brian Johnston [01:04:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:48] And what happened?

Brian Johnston [01:04:49] Or you get all excited.

Joanna Brooks [01:04:51] How'd that work out for you, John?

John Dehlin [01:04:53] It's absolutely miserable. You. You wreck everybody. Sunday, all these people go to church expecting a spiritual, uplifting experience. You've now spoiled Sacramento Sunday School and priesthood Relief Society for everyone involved. Your kids are embarrassed. Your wife is aghast. Your neighbors don't want to talk to you anymore. Your bishop is thinking about yanking your temple recommend.

Joanna Brooks [01:05:16] But then you start a podcast series and find tens of thousands of people who want to hear you talk about

Brian Johnston [01:05:22] it all day long.

Joanna Brooks [01:05:24] It's just a matter of choosing your audience and of understanding what's in it for you. Because I think what John. Just referring back to what John said, there is a sense if you are in pain, you want other people in it. Why should you have to go through dealing with, you know, aspects of our history that may have been occluded or aspects of the way our church treats women and gay people that no one grapples with? Why should you be doing all that work by yourself? Everyone needs to deal with this. Right? Right. Well, you know, you. You know, we have found collectively wisdom. Those of us who have been through it, you know that it can be good for you to err on the side of discretion, err on the side of discretion until you really know, you know, what it is you want to say and for what purpose. Like someone wrote in Ask Mormon Girl about this and said, oh, I've just got. I get this question so often. How do I tell my parents? How do I tell my parents? I said, well, what you do is you sit down and you write that letter and you tell them everything in technicolor detail. You know, you tell them why you lost your faith, what you no longer believe, how much you've hated it all. You write it all down, and then you put that in an envelope and you seal it and you get it all out on paper. And then you seal that envelope and you stick it in your sock drawer and you chill for about six months and you just continue acting like you on a day to day basis and taking yourself seriously, taking care of yourself, nurturing yourself, nourishing yourself through whatever emotional health issues or, you know, giving yourself the sabbatical space. And then, you know, then revisit the letter, open it six months from now and see, you know, and see if all of this really needs to be said or if there's ways that you can just kind of move through your life on your own terms without having to make a grand announcement. I mean, maybe you will make a grand announcement. Maybe that's really important to you as an issue of integrity. But, you know, err on the side of discretion at first until you know really what it is you want to say and what good it would do. I don't know. That's been my experience. And I don't want to sound like I'm trying to encourage people to closet what they're feeling. That's not what I'm saying. You know, I think people should take themselves seriously. But for now, at least while you're trying to engineer a refuge for yourself, maybe the last thing you need to do is to invite blowback and freak out from everyone in your immediate family ward community. You know, maybe you need to insulate yourself for a minute to get your own head together before you invite other people's reactions in that are going to reverberate and complicate and maybe even frustrate your own effort to create a refuge for yourself.

Brian Johnston [01:07:56] Yeah, those are very wise words. And like you said, you may go either way, but think about what it is that you want to do and then go the right way, you know, sort of thing. And there's an analogy people throw out there. It's like once you've squeezed all that toothpaste out of the toothpaste tube, like you can get it all out, but it's really hard to put it back in, you know, sort of thing.

John Dehlin [01:08:19] Right.

Brian Johnston [01:08:20] And I think just as a word of hope, you can talk to people about this eventually. And this is just one thing that, like, I've had a particular interest in, but I've also spent like several years practicing this. And like, I mean, recently I've gone, I've talked to my stake president about some of this stuff. I've talked to bishops, you know, had fairly frank conversations. But I think pulling that off took like a lot of practice in advance. Like, I've. I'VE tested that out and kind of saw what works and doesn't work. But I was also really calm about it and felt pretty secure about where I was at. You know, I wasn't. I could not have done that if I was in the middle of, like an acute crisis point where the emotions are running high and I'm not really thinking clearly or looking at how the other person is reacting and finding the right person to share the right stuff of my soul with.

John Dehlin [01:09:24] Yeah, And I really like Joanna, the suggestion you made about journaling and writing it all out. And then I think there's some. You can do a gradual thing. Like it may be that your spouse is your best friend and someone who loves you unconditionally and they're the person you first turn to. And it may be that's one of the last people you'll want to turn to first. It may be that there's that uncle or cousin or friend that you heard left the church. And sometimes those people who are estranged can become your closest confidential friends and allies because you know they're not going to judge you, frankly, if you decide you want to leave, then there's always like a next step up from that is just that that friend or partner or whatever that loves you unconditionally. And once you've got a little bit of people to help you keep things sane, to make reasonable steps to put things into perspective, to bounce ideas off of.

Joanna Brooks [01:10:24] That's great advice.

John Dehlin [01:10:26] Then you can step up to, for example, the spouse or the parents or the in laws or the siblings or, you know, the ward members or the bishop or the stake president, and you can take it at your own pace. But what I like to encourage people to do is to get a little. Is cadre a word. Get a little posse of allies who at least love you unconditionally and will be there for you and hopefully even support and can be your advocates so that you're not just hanging out on the edge of a limb with no support as you, as you, you know, subject yourselves to people's responses and that

Joanna Brooks [01:11:08] you can practice, you know, talking about what you're going through. You're probably, you know, people often feel huge sense of isolation, Huge, huge, huge sense of isolation. You know, like talk about what you're feeling with people who are going to be, you know, safe, neutral, supportive. Before you try and challenge yourself to talk about it with people, you know, with whom it could engineer major chaos in a relationship, you need to practice. You need to know what you're feeling before you can communicate it well with someone to whom you're married, you know, to whom you're married or to whom you're otherwise closely related or dependent on. Yeah, you need a cadre, you need a posse. John's right.

Brian Johnston [01:11:46] Yeah, these, these are high emotion conversations to have with people that are very close to you. But there's really, they're not so, they're not so high strung with, especially with other people that have been through it and are more calm about it. They're already aware of all the issues, you know, that those are the people to kind of get some practice runs with and get some feedback. You know, a lot of people have said, you know, well, I tried this and that didn't work very good. And this worked really good for me. And there's just, there's a ton of wisdom.

Joanna Brooks [01:12:18] Should we start again?

Brian Johnston [01:12:18] Other people that you, you know, once you get connected with them.

John Dehlin [01:12:22] You know, Brian, one other thing that I just wanted to add is I've seen people go to the opposite extreme. You know, I had a friend come to me recently who has been suffering in silence for like six or seven years and he came to me last week literally in tears. And this is a full grown man, you know, kind of weeping. And it's because he, he, he'd been holding it in for far too long. He didn't want to hurt his parents, he didn't want to hurt his wife, he was worried about the complications with his children. And he's just this tender hearted guy that just, he's lived his life in a way where he always was willing to take the bullet for everybody else. And you know, I knew six or seven years ago that he was going into this mode. But you know, I'm not going to question what he feels like he needs to do in his situation. I'm certainly not going to push him in directions he's not comfortable. And sometimes for some people it becomes this pressure cooker that just builds and builds and builds to the point where people reach severe levels of depression, hopelessness and sometimes even suicidality because they just stay in the closet forever out of fear or concern. And I just want to just, I want to just sort of advocate for that other extreme which is, you know, it seems like it's going to be terrible and desperate. We talked about this at the beginning, but at some point it's a courageous act, it's a noble act and sometimes it's a self saving act to say, I can't wear the mask anymore, I can't lie anymore, I'm sorry this hurts you, Mom. I'm sorry I can't be the boy that you always wanted me to be, dad. I'm sorry that I'm going to be the one that may, you know, not fulfill all your goals as a parent. Wife. I'm sorry that we made this promise together when we got married or husband. But I can't live a lie any longer. And I have to tell you how things are.

Joanna Brooks [01:14:32] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:14:33] And don't wait too long.

Brian Johnston [01:14:36] Yeah. Don't keep it bottled up. And I've had to have. I'm sure we've all had to have those conversations. I've had to have the. I've had that conversation with my parents, you know, with other people. And, you know, when you're finally ready, I mean, you can't let the pressure build up forever. And I've, you know, you get this stuff out, at some point you're gonna have to face all these things and deal with them in some way, and the consequences are going to be the consequences. You know, obviously what we would like to do is be there and help people minimize the pain and suffering and. But sometimes, you know, there's, there's going to be an element of that no matter what you do. So at some point, I think it's just, it's realistic and healthy and it's even possible. A lot of times you end up with better relationships with some of these people. Once again, those boundaries get reset and sometimes it does end up much, much healthier.

John Dehlin [01:15:39] Right.

Joanna Brooks [01:15:42] Don't live with it bottled up. And, you know, there's people on the other side of your transition. You will find company. You will not be alone in this.

John Dehlin [01:15:50] Not at all.

Joanna Brooks [01:15:51] Not just. And not just other Mormons too. Like, this world is full of kind, loving people. And we are not the only culture, we're not the only religion where people go through this.

John Dehlin [01:16:04] Not at all.

Brian Johnston [01:16:05] No.

Joanna Brooks [01:16:05] So you will find people to walk with you.

John Dehlin [01:16:10] A lot of people. A lot of wonderful people, like we mentioned.

Brian Johnston [01:16:14] Yeah. So make it. You know, my biggest recommendation is make it as well thought of a process as you can. You know, it's going to take a while, but you absolutely are smart enough and are, you know, spiritual enough that people make it. People make it through this. They make it through it all the time. You know, you can figure it out. It's going to work. You know, things are going to play out the way they're going to play out, and you'll make it through it.

John Dehlin [01:16:49] Totally. Totally.

Finding Community and Support Resources

Brian Johnston [01:16:52] So any, any, any tips we can wrap up with you Know, like immediate ideas, you know, because I think one of the biggest things we've talked about is finding people to connect with that understand, you know, So I, I just want to echo the resources.

John Dehlin [01:17:07] Yeah, I want to echo one thing before we end and that's that so often some people's experience in Mormonism is. It's like you look to your leaders or your parents or some external source for validation, for self worth, for even sort of confirmation of what's true and not true for you. And even people get to define for you sometimes what spirituality is and isn't and what meaningful or good or bad is or isn't. And I really like what you guys wrote here in your outline about, you know, it's your journey now and people should feel empowered, like for the first time. Stop and listen to your own heart. Stop and listen to your own spirit. What feels true to you, what feels honest to you, what feels praiseworthy and noble and of good report to you and trust that even if you feel scared. Learn to define for yourself what is healthy and what is spiritual and what is righteous and what is true. Everyone has that in them. And sometimes we become so pre programmed to listen to the words of leaders, to listen to the programming that we get growing up. Some of it is good, but some of it can be damaging. And so I just, I hope our listeners will stop and say, I'm going to tune out the voices in my head, I'm going to tune out the conditioning when it's not serving me well. And I'm going to try and meditate, breathe, yoga, whatever you have to do into a place where you start listening to the speakings and the utterances of your own soul. And even if you have to recreate who God is and what God is, and you know, what communication with God is like, what prayer is like, maybe you don't even want, maybe walking through the forest becomes prayer for you. And maybe God is a, is a woman, or maybe God is just a power or an influence. Just start building and piecing together a spirituality or a worldview that feels healthy and whole and you will be your best guide.

Brian Johnston [01:19:27] I really appreciate you bringing us back to that because along those same lines. Yeah, amen. An analogy that a lot of people talk about or that I like to use is when you start in this process, you're dragging out the wrecking ball and the dynamite and you are blasting that whatever it is that has been built in your soul, you are blasting that stuff away until you find the bedrock, you know, wherever it is that, you know, you have to clear out all the rubble. But the. And that's perceived a lot as like a negative process. It's painful in a lot of ways. But what happens when you get to the end of wherever it is you're going with that is you have solid bedrock to build something new on. And whatever it is that you build at that point, you're not renting it from your parents who gave it to you. It's going to be yours. It's all yours.

John Dehlin [01:20:24] Amen.

Joanna Brooks [01:20:26] I'm trying to think how to gender up that, like, dynamite, big truck.

Brian Johnston [01:20:37] I didn't use kung fu or guns, so, you know, I only stuck to the wrecking ball and the dynamite.

Joanna Brooks [01:20:42] I'm trying to think of like, you know, how to speak to women in this process. And it's just, you know, I mean, we have instincts on behalf of our children, deeply protective instincts, you know, that. And not just women. Men have this too. But, you know, even if, I mean, one of the things as a parent, I've found that, you know, I can resolve to do it right on behalf of my kids from here on out, right? Whatever pickle, whatever stew I was raised with, I can resolve to, you know, do it for. And I can. You can do it for yourself too. You can guide yourself through this. You can lead yourself through this. You have that capacity, that instinct, that wisdom. And some of it comes from the fact that you've invested a lot of yourself in a religion and you have some core skills that will guide you through this because you were raised religious, believe it or not. So, you know, trust that voice inside of you, take leadership in your own life and, and good things will follow.

John Dehlin [01:21:53] Amen.

Brian Johnston [01:21:54] Fantastic. Yeah.

Joanna Brooks [01:21:59] Alright, so if they want to talk to people, I mean, you know, if someone listen this podcast and because, you know, it could be the middle of the night, it could be you could be listening to this while you're exercising on your way to work. And you're going to be hungry, you know, maybe today, maybe next week, to start actually contacting people who know what you're going through and dialing into these communities that I know John Bryan and I have found are really home for us, these other communities of Mormons who have been through faith transition. So let's list off some of the places people might go.

John Dehlin [01:22:35] Should I start?

Brian Johnston [01:22:37] Yeah, go for it.

John Dehlin [01:22:38] Okay, so I'll start and you guys supplement Mormon Stories. And the Open Stories foundation is doing our best to provide support to everyone who is in need. So, you know, there's a Facebook Mormon Stories group, it's a closed group. If you go to Mormon Stories, you can add yourself to the group. That's a place where we're trying to create this nurturing, supportive, affirming environment where if you're struggling with the church, if you're frustrated, if you're sad, if you're a believer, if you're not believing anymore, it doesn't matter. We want this to be an environment where people feel safe to ask any question and there's lots of people there to help you. In addition, we've created upwards of 80 plus regional communities all throughout the world. There's communities in Europe and in Asia and in Latin America and Canada and the United States. If you go to Support communities under MormonStories.org you'll see a list of all the communities that were there, that are there. And you can join these Facebook groups where you can not only ask questions to people that live within your sort of 100 mile, 200 mile radius, but you can even do meetups with them, playgroups, dinner groups, book clubs, and sort of foster face to face relationships. That can be a great way to find people. Some people are doing something crazy and that's their friending me, John Dehlin on Facebook. And they're actually finding siblings, parents, cousins, former missionary companions who are friends with me. And because they would have no other reason to be friends with me other than that they listen to Mormon Stories or a part of these communities, they're able to identify them and then reach out to them and find some type of ally just through friending me or my friends on Facebook. So Mormon Stories is trying to do a lot to provide support for people sort of in a general way. Now there are topical issues and there are more sort of developmental locations depending on where you are in your journey. So for example, in Mormon Stories, we do have an affinity group for LGBT members for gay and lesbian Mormons who are trying to identify navigate that. You can also find that under the Support Communities page. You can join that and talk with other LGBT Mormons and allies about your journey as a gay or lesbian or bisexual Mormon. There's also groups like Affirmation. There's even a group for believing LGBT people called Northstar. And there are other groups that you can find for lgbt. Joanna, tell us what women who are more feminist, you know, sort of feminist inclined. Tell us about the resources we have there.

Joanna Brooks [01:25:34] Well, if you're a woman and especially if you're, well, heck if you're anybody, and gender issues or issues of patriarchy or you know, gender inequality in the day to day operation of the church or even in the temple have been major factors for you or polygamy is a factor for you. You know, Feminist Mormon Housewives is a terrific site. It's been in existence probably six or almost seven years now, started by a woman named Lisa Butterworth who lives in Idaho and embraces an open, robust community. And also a Facebook group where people interact on a more immediate basis, where we explore how to deal, how to deal. And the community is warm and receptive to a range of outcomes. Some of us as Mormon feminists, back away from active involvement in the church. Some of us are able to stay and some of us feel a real calling to pitch in and love and serve other Mormon women, other Mormon feminists. So Feminist Mormon Housewives is a great first step if gender plays a role in your faith crisis or faith transition. And you can also, you know, you can also shoot me. You know, there's a lot of the questions related to faith transition are on my site too@askmormongirl.com not to pitch my own stuff, but you know, some of the topics we've talked about, that's the other thing. We all go through this and faith transition behaves in some similar ways across personal circumstances. So you might find some resources there. There's a category cloud and you can click on the faith transition category and find other people who have faced these challenges too. And you know how we've talked about it at my site.

John Dehlin [01:27:18] Beautiful. And Brian, what if your goal really is to make the church work? You're no longer a traditionally believing Mormon. You may never be able to look at the church sort of as the one true church or exclusive true church again. But you want to make it work. Tell us about what you guys have going on.

Brian Johnston [01:27:37] Yeah, let me talk about that in just a second. One thing I wanted to point out, like the Mormon stories, the regional groups and those Facebook groups, one of the beautiful things about those is that you're connecting with other real people, real identities, people in your local area. I'm really involved in the Washington, D.C. group here and it's, it's, it's wonderful. We have like, we've been fairly consistently doing monthly get togethers and even held a really great conference. The downs, the only downside or one of the downsides is, is it's everybody's real identity and not everybody is comfortable with that immediately, you know what I'm saying? It's like there's, there's, there are some other avenues outside of that. Like some forums where you can actually participate anonymously or using a pseudonym. So that if you need to protect your identity for a while because of various issues that we've talked about, you know, consequences of coming out, you know, being less orthodox, sometimes some of these other routes are better.

John Dehlin [01:28:41] Right? That's right.

Brian Johnston [01:28:44] So that you can kind of withhold a bit until you're more comfortable with the direction you're going. I mean, obviously I fully. I think it's more powerful to have real relationships with real people and no identities and especially getting to meet people face to face. But sometimes there's those other concerns as well.

John Dehlin [01:29:02] So what are the sites where you can maintain your anonymity?

Brian Johnston [01:29:05] Yeah, and that's what I was going to. That's what I wanted to qualify before I hopped into this. There's. There's a spectrum. I call it the faith spectrum. You know, there's a range of them. And I would say, you know, like on the. On the more leaving the church side, going towards staying in the church, start on the leaving the church side, I would say ex Mormon. That group is. Is a support community for helping people get out of the church and kind of purge everything and break away. And they're very, very active. They have, you know, people out there providing support. And these are. These are online forums where a lot of people post and share things.

John Dehlin [01:29:50] They have exit stories. They have an annual conference in Salt Lake City. They have local groups that you can join. Right.

Brian Johnston [01:29:57] Yep. Fantastic resource like that. And I would say a little bit to the side of that is post Mormon. And that's another very fantastic organization. I know they also have some regional support groups, you know, people you can meet up for lunches and all that stuff. Similar sort of thing. But these are people. I would say that the differentiation is post Mormon is people who have left who are still kind of like integrating in a positive way their past. And so it's maybe just a touch more. On the faithful side is not really the right word. But yeah, I'm kind of at a loss for words.

John Dehlin [01:30:42] So I would just want to give a slight disclaimer, and that's that these sites, people, you know, sometimes people feel really angry, and sometimes people feel like they need to vent. Sometimes that's even a psychologically healthy process.

Brian Johnston [01:30:56] Oh, yeah, very much.

John Dehlin [01:30:57] When you go to exmormon.org or postmormon.org you are going to see people raging against the machine. You're going to see people angry, complaining about things, criticizing things, you know, just expressing all their Frustration past, present and future. And you just kind of need to know that that's a value of the community, that they're going to be there and let people vent and complain and criticize and you're going to have to know that that's there. Ex Mormon maybe tends to be a little bit more on the angry, venting, frustrated side.

Brian Johnston [01:31:31] Right.

John Dehlin [01:31:31] Than post Mormon. And you know, the way post Mormon likes to describe itself is it's kind of like I'm leaving it behind. You know, I'm. It was, whatever it was and now it's time to move on post Mormonism into a new life where you can still reflect on it, but you're, you're no longer necessarily going to fully define yourself as Mormon. Ex Mormon is just sort of almost like a no holds bar, anything goes processing sort of place that is pretty critical of Mormonism in the church.

Brian Johnston [01:32:04] Thanks. You explained it a lot better and I just want to reiterate what you said. This is a very, very valuable service and support that they provide to people. Tremendous help.

John Dehlin [01:32:18] ExMormon.org is probably the largest, most active Mormon community outside of, you know, or website outside of lds.org ExMormon.org is probably the most trafficked website in all of Mormondom.

Brian Johnston [01:32:35] Yes, yes. So then moving along the. Sorry, were you gonna say something, Joanna?

Joanna Brooks [01:32:40] Nope. Just. Yep. There's a lot of people who, a lot of people who need that support and need to be heard who have left and there are very few places where the full range of reasons, sometimes good ones for leaving are heard and acknowledged.

John Dehlin [01:32:54] Yeah.

Brian Johnston [01:32:54] Yep, absolutely. So next along the spectrum, I consider New Order Mormon, which is a fantastic support community. This is one that tries to sit more in the middle and often supports people who have to have to make it work somehow. You know, they, they don't want their marriage to fall apart. They may still have to attend church, but they need a place where they can talk to other people that, you know, they can, they can talk about the concerns that they're having or the, you know, the problems or just how it was. It's, it's hard being in the church and there's other people there that are also happy being a part of the church. It's sort of this big sort of broad, fuzzy middle ground. But the, the key aspect to the New Order Mormon community is, is showing respect and tolerance and acceptance and having a very civil tone. So you won't find so much of the angry rants, but you're also not going to find so much of people bearing Their testimony, like traditionally in church either, like those two pretty much get. Those two extremes get pushed out. And then she mentioned Face Diseased in

John Dehlin [01:34:12] addition to Order Mormon, probably. Do you think? Was that on your list?

Brian Johnston [01:34:16] You know, I didn't put that on. That's more of a specialty site that focuses just on mixed belief or mixed faith marriages. And Faces east is filling the niche for the believing spouse in that relationship, whereas New Order Mormon tends to be the spouse going through disaffection. And they're very kind of almost like sister sites. They were found, you know, they're kind of supported by some of the same people. But yeah, Faces east is a really neat group where the believing spouse can kind of talk about everything that they're going through. And that's faceiseast.org faceiseast.org? yeah, and then next along the spectrum, stay lds.com and that site is. It explores. It focuses on a very narrow slice of the faith spectrum. It's if you want to stay in the church, not just because you have to, but because you want to be there and you would like to figure out somehow of making it work in a productive spiritual way, you may not believe, you know, you may not have orthodox beliefs, you may not even literally believe the history or, you know, fundamental or foundational claims of the church for whatever reason you want to, you know, make it work and have it be a part of your spiritual life. Here's a community of people that will talk about it in a positive and productive way and, you know, keep it like an uplifting discussion about spirituality and Mormonism and how to make it work and trying to think of what else. I wish there was a resource out there and I've been really searching for one, but one that is really kind of caters to traditional believing members that just have become aware of issues and want to talk to, you know, traditional orthodox people about it. If somebody would start that site in that forum, I would love for it to exist.

John Dehlin [01:36:15] We would promote it. We would actively promote it.

Brian Johnston [01:36:17] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:36:18] Brian, real quick, I want to go back to Stale DS really quickly. There's an essay on there called why People Know how to how to Stay in the Church After a Crisis of Faith. And it's probably like 70 pages long, but it's definitely one of the most accessed pieces of writing in the Mormon, you know, in the sort of progressive or alternative or Mormon faith crisis world. It's basically a how to manual of staying in the church when you feel like you're about to blow your brains out or you have to stay and you don't know how you can stay, but you want to or need to. And I just really can't recommend that page enough. True.

Joanna Brooks [01:37:00] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Brian Johnston [01:37:02] That one was collected wisdom.

Joanna Brooks [01:37:04] That one was crucial for me.

John Dehlin [01:37:09] Okay, cool.

Brian Johnston [01:37:10] That was accessed. Hundreds of people a month actually read that document still. And yeah, it's sort of like the collected wisdom of people, you know, of having gathered together tips and tricks of how to. How to navigate that whole thing.

John Dehlin [01:37:24] I've had numerous people tell me that bishops and stake presidents actually share that with. With members of their wards and stakes.

Brian Johnston [01:37:32] Really? Fascinating.

John Dehlin [01:37:34] Absolutely. Yeah.

Brian Johnston [01:37:36] And then outside of that, there is. Gosh, I'm just thinking just pure websites that have information.

John Dehlin [01:37:44] Well, apologetic stuff.

Brian Johnston [01:37:45] Oh, apologetic stuff. Oh, and maybe we should explain that Apologia is a. Is a, like a religious studies term meaning a well reasoned defense of the faith. So it's not like I'm sorry, that kind of apology. So these are sites that have defenses of traditional Mormon views. And I guess the classic site for that is called fair. What is it? The Found. I forget what the acronym stands for.

John Dehlin [01:38:12] It's the Maxwell Institute or Foundation for apology.

Brian Johnston [01:38:19] That's it.

John Dehlin [01:38:20] Fair. LDS.org yeah.

Brian Johnston [01:38:22] It's run by believing members who, you know, people who have done tons of research and want to come up with just, you know, reasons, defenses of various positions or historical events in the church.

John Dehlin [01:38:37] Yep. I. Joanna, you got to get your kids to bed.

Joanna Brooks [01:38:42] It's true.

John Dehlin [01:38:43] So we got to wrap up.

Brian Johnston [01:38:45] We do.

John Dehlin [01:38:46] Brian. I'm just going to throw 1 in. MormonThink. I'm not exactly sure if it's think. Org or. But MormonThink.com is an excellent resource for some to find an attempt at neutral examinations of some of the more difficult issues in church history.

Brian Johnston [01:39:04] If nothing else, it's just a fantastic kind of encyclopedia site of all the issues.

John Dehlin [01:39:09] Yeah. And also we just have to add. WhyMormonsLeave.com is a new site we're developing. There's a multimedia presentation on there called why People Leave the Church and How We Can Help that many people have shared with their friends and family and church leadership to help build empathy for the faith struggle that they're all experiencing.

Brian Johnston [01:39:28] Yep.

Joanna Brooks [01:39:29] And you know, and none of this, none of this existed 15 years ago. So take heart. Take heart, brothers and sisters. I'm sorry if that term creeps you out, if you're in truly acute faith crisis, but, you know, we Mormons are doing good things for each other. And you know, you know, we express our love to you in that wonderful, typical Mormon way, because we've been there and we share this experience and we share this tradition. You are not alone. You are not alone. There are people who understand and will walk with you through it no matter what.

John Dehlin [01:40:06] And there's light at the end of this tunnel if you can hang on.

Joanna Brooks [01:40:10] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:11] Beauty and meaningful relationships and fun, fun and enjoyful, meaningful life await you as you work through this process.

Brian Johnston [01:40:22] Yeah. Regardless of where people end up, I constantly hear those that have kind of felt like they've reached that light at the end of the tunnel. Many people just say how even more full life is, how they have better relationships with people. It's just, it's. They, they see it looking back as a blessing in a lot of ways.

John Dehlin [01:40:44] Well, Joanna and Brian, I can't thank you guys enough for taking this time. There's going to be a lot of people who are going to be able to hear this and just sort of get their bearings. And you guys have been instrumental in helping so many people get their bearings. And so I want to thank you for coming on.

Brian Johnston [01:41:03] Glad to do it. Thank you. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:41:06] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Transitions Podcast. You can check us out@mormontransitions.org where we will have more content and questions and answers to help you in your transitions as a Mormon. Music was brought to you today by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out on Facebook. Just type in Saber rattlers.

Closing Thoughts and Encouragement

Guest [01:41:28] Father's mercy from his lighthouse ever more but to us he gives the keeping for the last along the shore let the lower lights be burning. Send a gleam across the way. Some poor, fainting, struggling seaman you may rescue, you may save. Dark the night of safety has settled loudly angry billows roar. Eager eyes are watching, longing for the light, light along the shore. Let the lower light be my name. Send a gleam across the way Some poor fainting, struggling seamen you may rescue, you may save. Sam. Trim your fable lamp, my brother. Some poor sailor tempest tossed, trying now to make the harbor and the darkness may be lost. Let the lower light burning sand gleam across the way. Some are fainting, struggling seamen, you may rescue. You you may save, you may rescue, you may save.

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.