Introduction and Support for Mormon Stories

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 815

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast and Mormon Matters Podcast. This is a joint release of Mormon Stories and Mormon Matters and I could not be more excited today to be here to talk about this interesting and important book published by Greg Coford Books, edited by Blair G. Van Dyke and Lloyd Ericson, called Perspectives on Mormon Theology Apologetics. That's going to be the main topic today. I'm joined by Dan Wotherspoon. Hey, Dan.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:15] Hey.

John Dehlin [00:01:17] Thanks for joining us.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:18] Yeah, glad to do this series. I'm really excited to continue our discussion.

John Dehlin [00:01:22] Yeah, it's good to have you. It is October 26th and and we also have joining us today again, the author of an important chapter in this book, but also the co editor, Lloyd Ericson. Lloyd, welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast.

Loyd Ericson [00:01:36] Hello. Hello.

John Dehlin [00:01:37] You were on very early to Mormon Stories, weren't you?

Loyd Ericson [00:01:40] Oh, yeah, that was a long time ago.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:43] Hey, well, tell us more about yourself, Lloyd. Just besides your work with Coford Books, your background and stuff I'd love to hear.

Loyd Ericson [00:01:49] My background is I went to Utah Valley University, got a degree in philosophy with a minor in religious studies. And that's where I really became interested and began with participating in Mormon studies. And then I went out to Claremont Graduate University to pursue a degree in religious studies there, which Dan's alma mater. And that's my background. And then as I was working there, I started work or studying there. I started working at Clifford Books and eventually kind of started running the show there.

John Dehlin [00:02:20] Good. So happy to have you here, Lloyd. And then also we're joined by Bert Fuller. Bert, why don't you introduce yourself for a second?

Bert Fuller [00:02:29] Hi, thank you for having me on. I did my undergraduate degree at BYU in English with a minor in editing, during which time I worked for the Religious Studies center, that's the publishing house for religious education for the religious faculty. I also worked for the Maxwell Institute under cpart, the center for the Preservation of Ancient Religious Texts. Worked closely with Christian Heale and Carl Griffin there for two and a half years. I did my master's at BYU in comparative literature. And I'm currently enrolled in a PhD program in medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, which I'm finishing remotely while I live in Utah County. And I'm also a recently licensed real estate agent.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:03:17] All right, in other words, somebody to make the money.

John Dehlin [00:03:20] That's great to have you here, Bert. You're super thoughtful and interesting voice, and I'm really happy to have you on the podcast.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:03:32] Yeah, we're glad to introduce you. I think a lot of people who are listening know a bit about Lloyd, but, Bert, you're a fascinating guy and I've enjoyed our relationship and excited to have you make your debut. Debut. Thank you very much.

Announcements, Patreon, and Conference Updates

John Dehlin [00:03:45] So, before we jump into the actual discussion, there are always a few. A few announcements that we need to make. And so I'll make at least one or two, and I'll try and keep it super brief. Mormon Stories has just launched Patreon, a Patreon account, and give me just a second to explain what that's about. So it turns out that less than 1% of Mormon Stories listeners donate. And because we're a 501 nonprofit and we pay Dan and Gina and we have a staff, we rely on the generous donations of those who enjoy what we do. And so Patreon's a way for people to donate in small amounts as we release episodes. Sam Harris and lots and lots of other podcasters are using Patreon as a way to encourage people to make small donations. And so we've implemented Patreon. If you go to patreon.com mormonstories you can sign up there. And basically the way it's set up right now is for every interview that we do, you just pay a dollar. We try and do between four and eight interviews a month. So the least you'll pay a month is probably four, and the most you'll probably pay a month is eight. And you'll only release. You'll only pay as we release interviews. So we just want to encourage people that if they value what we do, to please sign up either through Patreon or To go to themormoustories.org page, click on the PayPal button at the top right. You can sign up for 10 or 25 or 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford. And you can be assured that that money goes to a 501c3 nonprofit that's transparent and that uses your donations for the mission, which is to support people experiencing or impacted by a faith transition. So that's our plea. We also really appreciate it if you follow us on Instagram or on

Loyd Ericson [00:05:45] or

John Dehlin [00:05:45] on Twitter ormonstories, please like us on our Facebook page. Mormon Stories Podcast. We also love positive reviews either on Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook page or on itunes. And then finally, we have a workshop tomorrow on Navigating a Mormon Crisis of Faith. It's in Utah County. It's all day from 9 to 5 again October 27th. You can go to MormonStories.org events to register. We also have a half day workshop November 17th in Utah County. And we're coming to the Bay Area November 9th and 10th again for a Mormon Stories workshop. So any of those events you can sign up for@mormonstories.org events. Dan, do you have any announcements from the Mormon Matters point of view? And I think you're muted. I unmuted. You go ahead, Dan.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:39] There, you got me. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:06:40] Yeah, yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:41] No, other than I hope I get a Patreon account too.

John Dehlin [00:06:44] Yeah, yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:46] So as a, as a potential beneficiary of that, that would be wonderful.

John Dehlin [00:06:50] Yeah, we're testing with Mormon stories, then we'll get you set up and Gina soon after.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:54] No, that would be wonderful. Yeah. We just had a retreat, so I think that's the big thing. The 13th through the 15th we had a fantastic group. There was so much shared and really mind bogglingly powerful moments there, including during our very final session, a husband and wife sharing with us that coming into the retreat they were like 99% likely that they were going to divorce. And that starting with the Friday night, which is just introduction and sharing your stories and everybody being so open about where they are, they were able to begin to have conversations as would drive back and forth about an hour to the retreat. And then the same thing happened Friday afterwards. And then by Saturday they let us all know. We didn't really know that they were struggling that much. We knew about the big differences in faith, but they both said they're 100% committed to making their marriage work. So I mean, it's worth it. And thank you so much to all the donors who donated scholarship monies. We had a great response this time and people, I'd say about 6 to 7 of our couples or individuals or beneficiaries of that. It was wonderful.

John Dehlin [00:08:10] Do you guys have something planned in

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:11] the future, Dan, or nothing? Nothing this year. So definitely we want to do about three retreats and we're going to do some one day workshops next year as well.

John Dehlin [00:08:19] Excellent. All right, one more quick thing about Patreon. The way the Patreon set up is you can kind of give your Patreon subscribers some benefits. And what we're going to do is we're going to be releasing our podcast interviews two days early for Patreon subscribers and also for existing donors who donate through PayPal or donor box. And what we're going to do is we're going to create a secret we're planning on creating a secret Facebook page just for donors. And that can be a way that we disseminate some of this stuff early. So, for example, we interviewed Mike Norton and we interviewed Michael Quinn recently. And what we're going to do is we'll be releasing those interviews early to donors, either through a secret Facebook page or through Patreon before we release it to the general public. So I just wanted to add that that's kind of a little bonus that we give our donors just to kind of thank them for their support. All right, so without any further ado, I'm really excited to dive into this conversation. For those who don't know or didn't tune into our first discussion, just a few Just about a week or two ago, we had a really fascinating discussion to kick off this series on what we're calling Mormon Apologetics or neo Apologetics. And we had Patrick Mason and Brian Birch on. If you haven't listened to that episode, we've gotten really wonderful feedback about it. And just to sort of recant a bit, what basically Brian and Patrick did is they sort of retold the history of Mormon apologetics. They talked about 19th century apologetics briefly, but then we talked about BH Roberts and then Hugh Nibley, and then we talked about the creation of farms that included the work of Jack Welch and the stuff with chiasmus and the work of Hugh Nibley, but also Daniel Peterson and Lou Midgley and all the different things going on at BYU to sort of defend faith and Mormonism from that standpoint. Then we talked about maybe there were some critiques about traditional approaches to Mormon apologetics. And we had talked about how farms morphed into the Maxwell Institute, and then just sort of how all that's played out. And then finally we talked about how today there's sort of a new brand of apologetics led by people like Richard Bushman Terrell and Fiona Givens, Patrick Mason and others that basically tries to take a softer, gentler approach to apologetics, not relying on ad hominem attacks, not trying to make unfounded scientific claims that stretch the bounds of science in ways that don't make sense, that's more pastoral in nature, more willing to acknowledge the problems, but also still very much encouraging and defending faith. And Lloyd, you made some interesting posts on Facebook about how you had concerns or you were intrigued by the idea that on this podcast, not only have you been sort of a critic of some forms of apologetics in the past, but that also maybe you anticipated being put in the position of having to offend apologetics and so defend apologetics. And so what I thought we could start with is sort of your reaction

Defining Neo-Apologetics and Responding to Part One

Loyd Ericson [00:11:50] to

John Dehlin [00:11:53] part one of this series. Talk about what you agreed with or didn't agree with, or how you saw or see Hugh Nibley and Daniel Peterson and FARMS and the Maxwell Institute. And just so that we can know exactly where you stand historically with apologetics so that you're not put in the position of being mischaracterized in any way. Is that an okay place to start?

Loyd Ericson [00:12:22] Which points I want to hit now? Am I unmuted? All right, yeah, yeah, I can go ahead and touch that. There's a few thoughts and I just thinking about in the last few minutes of ways I might want to respond. And one of the first ones is when we talk about apologetics, we're usually talking about a bunch of dudes engaging in, you have multiple metaphors about measuring and whatnot, but really just a bunch of guys and usually like the elites, right? Scholars, church leaders and whatnot engaging in apologetics. And one of my favorite chapters in our book was a chapter by Julian Reynolds. And what she highlights is how much apologetics, how much of apologetics isn't being done by these, you know, these scholars and these men, but ordinary Latter Day Saints who, you know, back in the days of America Online or going on to groups about Christianity and noticing that Mormonism is being bashed all the time and attacked. And so what that chapter really reminded me of is how much of an act of love apologetics is for so many Latter Day Saints, that it's not about going out there and punching and kicking and bruising and trying to win fights and arguments. It's really about for so many, it's just an act of love, of people going in and trying to defend something they care deeply about. And I think that's something we often, and I've completely missed out on when discussing apologetics is, you know, looking at how ordinary Latter Day Saints are often engaged in it in ways that we really don't think about. So there's that point. And I guess the other critique I would offer is when we're talking about old style apologetics and neo apologetics, I Think we're trying. We're creating too much of a dividing line.

Bert Fuller [00:14:13] Right.

Loyd Ericson [00:14:13] And ultimately what I would say is that both of these groups, I would frame it and I think Joe Spencer framed it this way a few weeks ago at a meeting is he called it evidence based apologetics. And so in terms of evidence based apologetics. Right. That's what Forms is engaged in. I would say that's the exact same thing that Richard Bushman, Terrell Givens especially are engaged in. And so in that sense, it's still the old style apologetics just with, as you point out, kind of a different tone. Right. And examining evidence differently than previous groups had in the past. But what you do see kind of emerging, these are things that like Joe Spencer and perhaps Adam Miller and others are articulating is an apologetics that's not evidence based, that is more trying to defend the faith through spiritually, when I say intellectually, in a sense of making it Mormonism interesting, rather than trying to appeal to evidence. And if you. I would say that would be called. Could be called a neo apologetics, though I'm not sure that under how I define apologetics, I would categorize that as apologetics. Hope that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:15:22] Sure. Just to touch on sort of references you may have made about being critical of apologetics in the past, do you want to make a brief either affirmation or disagreement with sort of how we characterized Farms and Fair and even the Maxwell Institute in our last episode? Do you agree? Do you disagree with the critiques?

Loyd Ericson [00:15:45] I largely agree. I think tone is a big issue and I think whether or not people are making good scholarly arguments is a good critique. However, I would add that I think we get too drowned out in those discussions, in those discussions, rather than asking whether or not apologetics, even in general, even if it's utilizing the best scholarship whatsoever, and even if it's got the kindest, most charitable loving tone possible, whether that's even something worth engaging in. And my personal belief and my argument in my chapter is no, like that's apologetics all around is problematic.

John Dehlin [00:16:24] Okay, well, let's dig in. Dan, do you want to lead Lloyd through a discussion of his chapter?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:16:29] Yes, I would. I was intrigued for a second there, Lloyd, when you talked about evidence based apologetics and maybe the neos and the classical ones doing the same thing. I. And again, this is, you know, you and I were in philosophy of religion and theology, so do you consider anything evidence? Do you consider anybody's own change of heart, anybody's own awakening to something higher or what feels to them profound, you know, something that moves them, something that gets them off their chair and gives them more orientation world. Do you consider that as at least a form of evidence for them? I mean, it was sort of let out of that discussion, but I always want to at least make sure we remove that as an evidence.

Loyd Ericson [00:17:18] Yeah. So I guess, as I would call qualify evidence, it would be evidence that could be discussed publicly and in a scholarly.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:17:30] We all have access to it.

Loyd Ericson [00:17:31] Yeah. Something everybody has access to.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:17:33] Yeah.

Loyd Ericson [00:17:34] So what I would call spiritual evidence, I would say that's the sort of thing we ought to be, you know, if you want to. Apologetics. But I would say that isn't actually apologetics.

John Dehlin [00:17:43] Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:17:44] Yeah. Hey, well, take us into your chapter. I'll let you know when I got to this chapter 12 of you yours, this was like the Hallelujah chapter for me because it basically says things that I've been trying to say for five, six years. But you said nicer.

Loyd Ericson [00:17:58] Thanks.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:17:59] And just a little bit language here. But would you take us through the argument about how there's a confusion in just the very act of doing apologetics that I think a lot of people on both sides, both the critics of the religion and the defenders of the religion, don't really quite notice?

Loyd Ericson [00:18:16] Yeah. So my argument, I. I'm heavily influenced by a philosopher by the name of D.C. phillips, who, you know.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:18:23] Yeah. Who you studied.

Loyd Ericson [00:18:25] I was hoping to study with the Claremont. He actually passed away right before I got there. But I've been heavily influenced by his writings and also just found, like, this philosophical brother there and theological brother. And so one thing that Phillips does, and he is a student of Wittgenstein, is he talks about there's certain conceptual languages, there's way we talk about things that have their own kind of rules and can be applied certain ways. And what I argue is that with apologetics and how I'm going to define apologetics is I define religious apologetics rather strictly, which some may disagree with. But I say it's using secular public argumentation to defend or prove religious claims. And by religious claims, I refer to things that are spiritual in nature. And so what I argue in my chapter is that apologetics, this attempt to use secular argumentation, to use history, to use archaeology, anthropology, language, philosophy, anything like that, to defend or prove a religious claim, is trying to weave two different categories of things into one and is ultimately doing. Is doing something they can't do. And then in doing so, this works both ways. Right. It works on the apologist trying to use history to defend the church as well as a critic trying to use history or archaeology to criticize the church. And what I. Or when I say the church, meaning religious claims. And so I guess the basic example is something like the Book of Mormon. Right. When apologists want to say the Book of Mormon is true, they're usually saying, okay, here's some historical or archaeological evidence, therefore, the Book of Mormon is the word of God. And I want to say that jump from one to the other simply can't be made. But you could say, here. Here's historical and archaeological evidence that the Book of Mormon is historical. And maybe, and perhaps, you know, some scholar can come out and actually prove, hey, this text is historical, but it cannot prove that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. You only know the word of God is the word of God. If by reading it, you feel moved, like you feel God working within you as you read the text.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:20:44] No. That's a wonderful way to do it. Especially the idea that a scholarly claim can't affect a truth claim.

Loyd Ericson [00:20:51] That's right.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:20:52] Like the historicity or something like that. Anybody else want to jump in at this moment? Otherwise, I'll take Lloyd through a couple more examples from his piece.

John Dehlin [00:20:59] I mean, I definitely. Bert, I think you may as well. I definitely want to discuss that. But what I want to give Lloyd a chance to do is lay out kind of his main arguments in the book, because I feel like once we start talking about it, we could just start really getting into it and not giving him a chance to kind of lay out his core arguments. Does that make sense?

Secular vs. Religious Claims in Apologetics

Loyd Ericson [00:21:24] Well, that's pretty much the core argument. It's really just that it's one argument that I articulated that there are secular claims that can be proven or disproven. Right. In secular claims would be historicity, whether or not something happened in history. Right. There's secular claims and then there's religious claims. And religious claims is a claim about God's involvement in these sorts of things. And secular claims can be proven or disproven using secular history, secular archaeology, secular studies, scholarship. Whereas religious claims are such a thing that can't be proven or disproven using those things, but are rather proven or disproven through religious tests. Yeah, your own heart, you know, as Alma says, you know, you test it out and does it make your heart swell?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:22:12] Right.

Loyd Ericson [00:22:13] Does it move you? How does it taste? Right. And taste is a great example because. Right. Taste is something. It's very subjective and yet is very real at the same time.

Bert Fuller [00:22:25] Yeah, Right.

Loyd Ericson [00:22:26] And so. And I like. So I like that metaphor of taste because it is something that is grounded. Right. It's not something like something's going to taste good no matter what. Like, no, it either tastes good or it tastes bad. But it's hard to make. To argue about taste with someone else who might have different tastes.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:22:46] Yeah. There's an important piece of your general essay that also is a piece of confusion that we'll often get. And that's when somebody who's a defender of the church or truth claims goes and says, well, you know, through my study, I see that this Joseph Smith is a trustworthy person. You know, I see the goodness, etc. Therefore, though, I realize that I'm not, you know, a lot of people don't actually do that, though I realize this doesn't really affect whether or not the Book of Mormon was, you know, made up or, you know, channeled or whatever it would be, or was ancient. It helps. It helps me. And so I think there's a lot of critics especially will say, well, if I can go after the character of Joseph Smith negatively, that will affect the truth claims of what emerged from him too. So it's a confusion that.

Loyd Ericson [00:23:42] Oh, yeah, yeah. So that's a good point. And that's something. I guess that's actually one of the key points of my arguments that I felt address. And that's. That's the point that by engaging in apologetics, apologists are connecting secular claims to religious claims. They're saying the religious. That the secular has something to say about the religious. And once they. So by. By doing that, they are telling the critics, yes, it is correct that you can prove or disprove religious claims. And so where I see a lot of faith crises happening, to an extent, I think most faith crises actually happen because of spiritual things. But when people look at certain histories of Joseph Smith, their arguments about the history of the Book of Mormon or whatnot, they end up buying into what I would call this false criterion that the secular has something to say about the religious. And so apologetics, by making their arguments, are saying, yes, these two things are connected, which then enable critics to draw on that same connection to critique religious claims.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:24:45] Yeah, I gotta read one line because it's got the great word from D.C. phillips in it from page 212, everything. By joining or establishing the assumption that these religious claims can be proven or defended by scholarly means, they are creating or adding to the fantasy, as Phillips calls it, that religious claims can be disproven and attacked by the Very same means. And so I love that fun language from DZ Phillips, who was an amazing guy, everybody. I got to know him there for my last year or so that I was there. And he was just so warm and wonderful, but also brilliant.

Loyd Ericson [00:25:20] And it was a great loss because Phillips was critiquing Christian apologists in this, from what I'm quoting from. And a lot of these Christian apologists could not stand Phillips because he's basically telling them, hey, yeah, like you think you're defending Christianity, but you're really just playing this game that feeds in to the critics rather than actually engaging Christianity and religiosity for what it truly is.

Friendly Fire and the Critique of Mormon Apologetics

John Dehlin [00:25:50] So, and I there, there's a line you have in your book where you said his primary contention is, he explains in his preface, is that apologetics is guilty of friendly fire when it says more than it knows. And I'm just, I'm saying that because I like this term of friendly fire. Can you talk, Lloyd, about examples of when Mormon apologists, you know, maybe give some specific examples of when Mormon apologists have maybe actually done more harm than good by engaging in what you call friendly fire just to put meat on the bones of that.

Loyd Ericson [00:26:25] Yeah, I would basically say most. Well, I think a great example is the Book of Mormon central. I got lots of great friends out there who are working with the Book of Mormon central. They just released a book and it was based upon on a bunch of posts they've been doing and like 101, 101 pieces of evidence or something that the Book of Mormon is true. And I think that is a perfect example because what they're doing is when Mormon, you know, by saying the Book of Mormon is true, they're not talking about historicity, they're talking about resisting the word of God. And you see that claim being made over and over again, right? So because of, you know, here's evidence about this possible place called Nahum in the Middle east, therefore the Book of Mormon is true, right? Or. And it could appeal to lots of other things that same way. And so by doing that, by the way, that's my dog barking out there. She's in heat right now. But literally missed. But anyways. Yeah. And so, you know, just the title of that book itself, I think leads into that problem because it's now it's tying the truthfulness, right? The Book of Mormon being the word of God to these 101 so called evidences or something that they, that they articulate in this book.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:27:53] And so if those evidences fall They've done harm, you know, because they. Somebody at least them as well as somebody who really believed it. My mom was really big on how the origin of the word rami umtum meant something from two different languages that meant tall tower or something. Oh, brother.

Loyd Ericson [00:28:12] And so like a personal. To get to really ground it. Like, as a personal example, I remember before my mission, driving up to the Sandy City library and checking out a bunch of books and reading things online. This is very much, you know, this is 1990s, early 1998, so very, you know, dawn of Mormonism on the Internet and reading like a critical argumentation like, oh my gosh, Mormonism is false. And then I find something written by farms or something and like, oh good, Mormonism is true again. Thank goodness. And then I read it, a critique of that response. I'm like, oh, great, Mormonism is false again. And bouncing back and forth between these historical archaeological arguments going back and forth and that completely, like, don't even discuss whether or not, like, what I came to finally realize has no bearing on whether or not the Book of Mormon is inspired or, you know, from God or has the power of God within it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:06] Yeah. Now, Lloyd, do you like the term category mistake? You know, I picked it up from, you know, my studies and things like that. And it's the one that I kind of use when I, when I talk about, I guess in this way I'm going to say I'm critiquing initially the critics of Mormonism, the ones who are making the attacks, that they're making a category, they're using a category mistake in asking the certain types of questions that can either yield only historical or, you know, evidence based, as far as hard evidence based kind of question questions of spiritual things. And that, you know, religion and spirituality and things is far more like an art than a science. And so you're kind of asking science y history questions of something that's, you know, more of an experiential, artistic. You know, if you were to take John Ogden's three the good, the true and the beautiful, this would be the beautiful, the personal experience.

Loyd Ericson [00:30:01] Yeah. Category mistake or conceptual confusion. Wittgenstein would talk about language games. Right. So there's this idea that secular. When you're talking about history, archaeology, that's one particular language game. But spirituality uses a different language game that has its own rules by which it's understood. And I think, yeah, there's a confusion or mistake by trying to bridge those. I think critics do this just as much as apologists. And again, my argument is the apologist simply feed into the critical, the critics making that same mistake.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:30:36] Now, the thing is, it's hard for you to then say, okay, if this is in its own spiritual realm, it's in its own personal experiential realm. How can it be tested? How can there be some sort of sense of whether this is good or bad or, you know, this is somebody dissembling versus somebody who's. Who's sharing something authentic? And Ken Wilber is the only person who at least made the biggest impression on me. Probably 15, 16, 17 years ago, he wrote a book called the Marriage of Science and Science and Sensibility. I can't remember what it was. The marriage of something, and it was a science, religion kind of thing. And he says, well, you know, within religious communities, he says, especially the Eastern ones, you know, when you have the gurus and sort of the elders and whatnot, they are able to judge, because they've had the spiritual experiences themselves, whether or not one of the initiates, one of the coming people sort of got it, you know, through. Through those interviews of the koan and the various different things they can sort of tell. And I've sort of, in many ways, through my journey, where I've kind of stepped into a spiritual space that feels a little bit more both. And, you know, I can kind of hold, you know, the myth and the science together in my mind. I'm able to recognize just by my. Just by my heart and my feeling, oh, this. This is a kindred spirit. This is somebody who's had spiritual similar experiences to me. So I can look across religions or whatnot or within my own religion and find people like, oh, this person has mystical experiences because there's clues in their language or whatever it is that, you know, only a mystic could really kind of convey. What do you think about that? Sort of, you know, there is still a way of checking on spiritual experience.

Loyd Ericson [00:32:29] Yeah, I definitely think there could be, you know, just to play on some philosophers, you know, like just basic John Stuart Mill, when you talked about utilitarianism.

Bert Fuller [00:32:37] Right.

Loyd Ericson [00:32:38] Point is, everybody knows what pleasure is. Nobody's like, you know, hey, you know, we ought to achieve happiness or, you know, do things that create pleasure or happiness. No one's like, what is this pleasure or happiness you speak of? Everybody knows what those are. Now, they might have different ways of experiencing it, but we have ways of talking about it. I mean, this is what testimony meetings largely are in the LDS context. If people get up there and they talk about the ways in which the gospel has Blessed their souls. You rarely see somebody get up in testimony, meeting and talking about the historicity of the Book of Mormon or whether or not Joseph Smith had sex with this person or that person. It's Mormonism. Like, blesses my soul. I was. I was reading the Book of Mormon. I was struggling with my how to deal with a family member, and I was reading the Book of Mormon. I was, you know, reading this account. It made me realize, hey, I need to be more charitable. You know, I was depressed, and it brought me joy. And Phillips talks, and I quote Phillips about this, you know, where Phillips says, look, there are ways in which religion can be affirmed or defeated. Right. It's where it, you know, in ways that touches their souls. And so people have their own, you know, whether it be moral or other kind of ways in which to understand spirituality that can be discussed and can be transferred. I think it's kind of fitting in our book that the last chapter by Seth Payne ends with him discussing how he's left Mormonism. He resigned his membership from the church, and he was pretty public about it when it happened. So, you know, it was over the November policy. And for him, it was just like, hey, here's something that just. Was. Just crushed his soul. Like, he could not. It just tasted sour to him. And that was something where it was, you know, it was because it just felt wrong to him.

Bert Fuller [00:34:24] Right.

Loyd Ericson [00:34:25] His spiritual gut feeling that caused him to resign his membership. And so I think, you know, yeah, we feel things and we know how to express those feelings.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:34:37] And you can. Yeah, kind of check beyond yourself. I have one more question, because I don't want to spend the whole thing. I think you've made your argument really well, and I guess it's not a question, but a classic example. And this may upset John and Bert. I don't know how much you've read or how much you've seen the damage. Okay, Whether it's damage or whether it's enlightenment is a question. But something like the CES letter, which is just one after another, factual things or, you know, does this really add up or this stuff and things. But it's all in that area of, you know, stuff that naive church leaders, naive church members, sort of the typical narrative sort of affirms. He's questioning this in that letter, and it has completely, you know, knocked the socks off lots of people. They share it, and it's the category mistake, or it's this conflation of what one's doing versus the other. Does the CES letter feel like a classic Example of what you're sort of saying this is on the critic and not the apologist end, but of confusing those two.

The CES Letter and Elitism in Faith Discourse

Loyd Ericson [00:35:51] Oh, it's definitely, it's definitely doing that. And what's funny is like, and I funny or. And I'm realizing there's a lot of elitism tied into this.

Bert Fuller [00:36:05] Right.

Loyd Ericson [00:36:05] So a lot of times us religious studies types will look at the CES letter and just kind of laugh at it. Like this is. Hahaha. Right. This person is making all these silly mistakes. But I have to remind myself that the reason I'm able to look at the CES letter that way is because of my religious studies liberal arts background. I'm able to recognize here there's this conceptual confusion, this category mistake occurring. But the CES letter only works because there's a long history of not just apologists, but the church making that same category of mistake. And so it's general conference. Yeah, it basically set up the rules, affirm the rules in the CES letter saying, hey, okay, by these same rules, I'm going to now show that Mormonism isn't true. And so. Yeah, and that's a challenge, right? Because there's so much Mormonism, perhaps more than any kind of major religion out there right now, really, in a lot of ways, blends the spiritual and the secular together. Right. It's turning secular claims into religious claims. I mean, you're talking about angels visiting and plates and all these sorts of things. However, I think what we're learning more and more as we do in history is that perhaps we've been wrong to blend those so much. Right. You know, so when we're talking about witnesses to the plates, we have to remember that the scriptures refer to these witnesses as witnessing the plates with the power of God or by the power of God.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:37:30] Right?

Loyd Ericson [00:37:30] So once you're attached by the power of God, we have to recognize, hey, we're talking about something different here.

Bert Fuller [00:37:35] Right?

Loyd Ericson [00:37:35] And what that difference is, who knows? Right. History might be able to help, kind of help us understand what that means. But as soon as you attach by the power of God to a witness or translating by the power of God, we have to recognize, hey, we're talking about something different here and now, because we're talking about something different, we can't pretend it's just a secular thing. And the church is trying to make it a secular thing. And critics and apologists are all trying to say here, this is a secular thing that we can prove or defend through secular history and whatnot. They're making that Mistake.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:08] Awesome. So I want to turn John and Bert loose on your thesis, if they're willing. And then I do want to spend a little more time about the book as a whole. But I would love it. I think you guys have heard Lloyd enough. What are you guys thinking about his argument?

Bert Fuller [00:38:24] I have thoughts about the CES letter, if you'd like to talk a little bit more about that.

John Dehlin [00:38:28] Sure.

Bert Fuller [00:38:29] Okay. So it was introduced to me in 2014, just over three years ago,

Loyd Ericson [00:38:42] while

Bert Fuller [00:38:42] I was working for the Maxwell Institute. I was living in Taylorsville in Salt Lake, and my Elders Quorum president showed it to me and he said, have you seen this? I said, no. As I read it, I had the elitist response that Lloyd describes. I laughed at most of it in large part because I'd been reading

Loyd Ericson [00:39:08] about

Bert Fuller [00:39:09] a number of these issues since I had my own personal religious born again experience at age 15. And I started at BYU at 18, served a mission for two years, got back to BYU, and I always focused on my study in language and literature, but had a side interest in Mormon studies. And so I was familiar with almost all of the issues brought up in the CES letter. The claim about, I think it was the Captain Cook narratives and the city of Camorra or Moroni and the island in Africa. I forget the details. That was news to me. I didn't know that. But most everything else was very familiar. And so I emailed Jeremy and we talked back and forth. And I still have that correspondence for anybody that's curious. And I think Jeremy handled himself very well. And I felt like we had a very civil back and forth. But for me, the point I want to make is that was familiar with these intellectual problems and they didn't really affect me. A year ago, I stopped attending the LDS Church, not for any intellectual thing that I learned, but because of an emotional break I had. And so in some ways, I would say that Lloyd's thesis is absolutely true. In my own experience, I would say that sharing information will not generate or discredit religious conviction. And I find this to be the case not only in, quote, unquote, religious contexts, but in major secular contexts as well, whether it has to do with politics, with certain scientist ideologies, or with economic theories and so forth. And so that is a brief comment that I'd like to make about the CES letter. On the other hand, okay, I will say from talking to many people who have read the CES letter and had a similar experience to my Elders Quorum president three years ago, that experience of reading it made an emotional break for them. And I do not fault Jeremy for putting into one place a lot of problematic issues that need to be confronted that frankly have been poorly addressed either through institutional church channels or apologetics. And when the only difference that I see between me learning these things over time and Jeremy giving it to people in a condensed way is that it distilled on me over a longer period. But even learning it didn't prevent me from the experience of having an emotional break with the church or a spiritual or religious break with the church. And so I do not fault Jeremy. I do not fault others like Grant Palmer or the folks at Mormon Think. I do not fault these people or even going back, Sandra Tanner, whoever, for collecting this material in a single place, because they have every right to do this. And frankly, Latter Day Saints who want to understand the difficulties in their faith, either because, like Tom Phillips, they want to be more effective missionaries or like me, they want to be more effective early morning seminary teachers. And you also want to be familiar with the material that's out there so that when your students or potential converts talk to you about it, you'll be prepared to discuss it. And I personally, the point I'm trying to make is I don't find much value in discrediting what Jeremy did or what many others like him have done when I feel like it's completely their religious right to do so and it's other people's religious right to respond the way that they do.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:43:24] So wonderful. And I hope we didn't come across as saying something other than what you just said there. We were just. I was only bringing it up as an example of the, you know, a question that's asking something in this language game versus, you know, things that.

Loyd Ericson [00:43:44] Right.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:43:44] Yeah.

Bert Fuller [00:43:45] So the irony is, to my mind anyway, is that on the one hand, the CES letter will be criticized by folks like Greg Prince and many others for being non scholarly, for being shoddy in its intellectual arguments. But then on the other hand, it's being accused of conflating the conceptual realms of intellectual discourse and religious experience.

Whether Religious Apologetics Inherently Misleads

Loyd Ericson [00:44:12] Well, that plays into a thesis I've been toying with lately and hope I don't get myself in trouble by saying this, but the thesis is that religious apologetics, evidence based apologetics, exists to affirm ecclesiastical authority where prophetic authority doesn't exist or is lacking.

Bert Fuller [00:44:31] I agree with that so far as you describe it. Right.

Loyd Ericson [00:44:34] And what I mean by this is, at least in my experience, I haven't met anybody who said, hey, like, you know, I find the church completely just like empowering. It's spiritually fulfilling. I feel like these people are led by God. But I'm gonna have to resign because the Book of Mormon isn't historical or because Joseph Smith wasn't honest with this or that or something like that. Right. It's everybody who leaves, in my experience leaves a tie to that is they don't find the church empowering to them. They don't feel prophetic speaking. By prophetic speaking, I'm not talking about like prophesying the future or something like that, but just really hitting on the core social issues, hitting on the important, what they feel is important in the world today. And because they don't feel that they. Right, I'm not saying they're looking for a reason, but these, these evidence based apologetics are what hold, hold them in for a long time, right? So it's like, well, geez, I might not feel inspired necessarily that much by church, but hey, the Book of Mormon is historical. So therefore, like it has to be the truth and I need to stick around with it. But once these arguments come in play and they're like, oh well, I don't feel the prophetic authority there and everything that they're trying to base their ecclesiastical authority doesn't seem as strong as they want to make it to be. Alright, now I got a reason to go. And you see this, right? Because like tad Kallitzer's talk, etc. The book of Mormon is historical, therefore it's the word of God. Therefore Joseph Smith is a prophet, therefore you need to listen to what we have to tell you. And not because not you should listen to us, because you feel inspired by us. Because regardless of the past, you feel motivated, you want to get up out of your seat and change the world. It's because evidence, therefore you must obey our authority. And I think especially newer generations, millennial generations that are very skeptical of authority in the first place, they see that and they're like, oh, all right, well then I'm out of here. And so the CES letter I think taps into that. You know, it says, hey, look, like all your arguments for why I should follow you have disappeared in my mind and you haven't offered the prophetic, the prophetic reason for me to follow you. So I'm checking out.

Bert Fuller [00:46:56] I think that's a fair assessment as you describe it. And one that was, that played a role in my own defection, as it were, because I could find no connection, religious or logical, between my testimony of the Book of Mormon, which I still have, or my testimony of Joseph Smith's prophetic calling, which I still have, or my testimony of priesthood power, which I also have, I could find no connection between these things and the current leadership of the LDS Church. Now, the difficulty here is that when somebody, in my observation, when somebody comes to that crossroads, they oftentimes will take a fundamentalist path on the one hand, or a almost individualist or isolationist path on the other. I have studied fundamentalism somewhat and determined that that would not be a wise decision for me to go in that direction. And so now I find myself on the individualist or isolationist path, and I find other people who have taken this route as well. I find, to use some examples because we've thrown out names in terms of neo apologetics or traditional apologetics or so forth. I, for example, find people like Margaret and Paul Toscano among the individualists. I find people like Josh Madsen or Damon Smith among the individualists, frankly, I find people like Gina Colvin and you, Dan, and you, Lloyd and John. I find you all among the individualists as well, despite remaining active in the LDS Church. And the distinction I would draw is because we come to a point where we make a decision that the general authorities as a collective body, are not speaking or acting in a way that that we find can be legitimated. And so we express our criticisms publicly. Whereas, on the other hand, I found there are one of the distinguishing features of apologists who distance themselves from traditional combative rhetoric. They, I have found, do not critique these illegitimate uses of authority or abuse. And so when it comes to discussing apologetics, and where my concerns lie, it is with the people who will speak to me one on one or will talk to groups that are not terribly public and they will share their feelings. But when it comes to a public forum, such as a podcast or a newspaper or scholarly publication, they enter more quickly into forms of doublespeak that I feel uncomfortable with.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:50:30] Super good stuff, Bert. Thank you. John. Do you want to weigh in on kind of where we were with Lloyd's argument, or should we move on a little bit?

John Dehlin [00:50:39] Yeah, Well, I mean, I'll admit that my, you know, my strength, my background is not philosophical. I do have a PhD, but it's in clinical and counseling psychology. And the emphasis there is literally in sort of coping with the collateral damage of things like a faith crisis, once it hits people's personal lives, whether it's causing anxiety or depression or suicidality, whether it's negatively impacting a marriage or relationships within a family. And so I'm just going to admit that as we talk about philosophy, it's not my strong suit, but what I can do is try and maybe talk Lloyd through some practical examples and try and probe and understand better the implications of his position. So if it's okay, I'll try and do that. Is that all right?

Loyd Ericson [00:51:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:39] So, you know, what I'm hearing from you making is something that I first really thought about. Well, I guess Eugene England's article comes to mind where he did this article called why the Church is as True as the Gospel. And as I remember reading that article, what I heard him say was, the church is a great place for you to learn to be a better Christian. And even the weaknesses of the church are good in the sense that they cause us to go deeper to serve people we wouldn't serve, be with people that we wouldn't normally want to be with. And in that sense, the ward experience becomes a laboratory for developing Christian attributes. So that was my first sort of exposure to what I'm hearing is your argument. And then it extended. When Dr. Dave Christian gave a presentation in New York for Mormon stories back in 2011, he talked about utility versus validity. He said there are some people who look at Mormonism from the standpoint of validity. And what they mean by that is, is it true or is it false? And if it's true, then I want to be a part of it. If it's false, I don't want to be a part of it. And that's the validity approach. And then there's the argument of utility, which is, is it. Does it play a good influence in my life? Does it make me a better father, a better husband? And. And some people don't really care if it's true or not. They just care if it makes them a better person and gives them joy in their life. And if it does, then that's all that matters. And so, Lloyd, if I were to summarize what I'm hearing from your argument is you're basically saying that you can engage with Mormonism sort of in the utility realm, and the validity realm doesn't necessarily need to even matter. Is that a fair summary or not?

Loyd Ericson [00:53:40] I would say no, and here's why. And a big problem comes down to how we talk about is Mormonism true? And I think a good example of this is Book of Moroni's Promise. And this is. And this. And so we've been talking about how secular history says can see nothing but religious claims. Well, it works both ways in a sense that religious claims can't say anything about secular claims. And so what's interesting is when, when missionaries go out and they ask, you know, potential converts, investigators, hey, you know, here's the Book of Mormon, will you pray about it to find out if it's true? And they read them, we're on as promised. And usually what that involves is here, read 35, 11 here read these three verses in Matthew and Moroni and now pray and find out if this book is historical. Right? But what's interesting, if you look at Moroni's, you know, so called Moroni's promise and it, I won't go into the details, I think it's actually referring to, he's really just referring to his little sermon he gives him. Moroni 10 but even at the heart of it he says, you know, think upon what the Lord has done to his children throughout history, right. And so what Moroni is saying is he's saying think about the ways that God works in the world and ask is God still working in this world? Is God still touching the hearts of people? Is God still inspiring people? And that's what he's asking. He doesn't say pray and find out if this book is historically accurate. He's saying pray and ask if God still works in the hearts of people. Is God still there? Because it's, it's responding to deism in a lot of ways. And I think but that confusion happens when then people, because the framework is all put into historicity, right? And these secular truth claims people, when they talk about Mormonism being true, the Book of Mormon being true, they're talking about the wrong thing. And so I would say that Mormonism, if Mormonism is true, it must have a utility. It must and utility in sense of it. They find it betters their life and if it doesn't do that then it's not true at least to them. And people can have different approaches to that. Right. So I was talking about prophetic leadership and not feeling inspired. My parents will listen to general conference and they'll feel inspired through every talk which just does not happen to me at all. I feel quite the opposite. And people will feel different ways but that's really why they stay engaged in it because it's brings meaning to life. I don't, I think very few people would even like the die hard Mormonism true would stick around if they felt like it wasn't bettering their lives.

John Dehlin [00:56:19] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 816

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. So let me just. And this is gonna. I hope it doesn't seem too tedious for Lloyd, but let me just ask you some basic sort of truth claims type stuff, and let's just probe it a little bit. So when I was reading through your chapter, what came to my mind is the following. Let's just say that the Book of Mormon just appeared and there were no. There were no claims about where it came from. Joseph Smith wasn't even in the picture. It was just this text that God dropped into a field and it said, hey, this is a book by God, right? And you can either believe it or not, you know, then that's, you know, that's one way to start, right? Because it's just this book that who knows where it came from? It claims to come directly from God. Well, we can look at it and see if it makes sense or not, or if it makes us a better person or if it enlarges our soul, if it, you know, betters my life, if it tastes good, as you sort of say. But that's kind of not what happened. What happened is there was a person who lived in the material world named Joseph Smith. He made certain claims about the book, like that it was received from plates by an angel, that he translated it from the gift and power of God. He claimed that it was a history of, you know, ancient Americans. And, you know, so as soon as. As soon as the narrative that provides the structure for the. For the production of the book laid out and it's laid out in the material world, then all of a sudden those things are subject to sort of scrutiny from a logical and a scientific perspective. And so it. And so an example would be, you know, obviously with the Book of Mormon, because it's claiming to be a history of Native Americans. That's when DNA, you know, of the Native Americans comes into play. That's when the anachronisms in the Book of Mormon come into play, because its whole framing about Joseph Smith's first vision and the narrative that he tells everyone about what God asked him to do and then what he claims the angel told him to do, and then the way that he claim to produce the book, all of that is grounded in material claims. And so if those claims seem plausible or reasonable, then okay, well, then they seem reasonable. But if they fly in the face of just basic science or basic reason, then it's fair game to ask, well, maybe it's a. Maybe it's the word of God or maybe it's fiction and some dude made it up.

Bert Fuller [00:03:44] Right?

Loyd Ericson [00:03:45] Yeah. So let me take this to more simple version and I kind of address this in a footnote. Mormon history is complex, and I think one of the big problems is we have a hundred and so years of the church trying to simplify it in ways that don't, I think, really touch on how complex it is. And so I want to go back to a comment you made in the previous podcast with Patrick and Brian. And you said some of the effect of either Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove saw God or he didn't. And I'm not sure exactly how you can. What is it? Let me phrase when you're talking about that, right. You could talk about, you know, what does it mean for Joseph to have seen God and all these sorts of things. So let's say you had a, like a video camera was set up there and you saw Joseph actually looking up at two beings and, you know, floating above him and talking to them. That would still, it doesn't mean that you spoke to God. Right. Who are these two beings? Right. How do you would you know that these two beings are God? Right? Yeah. Hey, let's do a scientific test and let's, you know, measure your God energy coming out of you or something. No, right. There's no, the only way that you can say, hey, these two beings are God, is you spiritually, you feel like, hey, there's something divine about what they're telling Joseph Smith or something. Now, on the other hand, let's say you had that camera there and you just look up and there's Joseph just looking into the sky or Joseph passed out on the floor. Does that Ned say he didn't see God? Right. And so it becomes a lot more complex when we're talking about this and now bringing it to the Book of Mormon. As soon as we're talking about angels, as soon as we're talking about translating by the power of God, we're bringing in a spiritual realm, a spiritual way of looking at things. And I don't think historians have done quite the best job of really fleshing out what this all means, in my own opinion, Joseph Smith wrote the book. This is purely a 19th century text. Joseph Smith was an incredible, brilliant genius who had a knowledge of the Bible and that few people have and was able to just write down this text, something he probably been practicing telling his family over the years. And yet in my view, look, yes, it makes complete sense to say that this is a complete fiction. Now, whether or not Joseph believed he had plates is really far more complex. I think again, the Church's narrative has simplified it too much. But whether or not it is, again, the word of God has. It really just comes down to when you read the text, you feel moved by it. Right. When you, when you read. You know, for me, when I read about Ammon's mission to the Lamanites, right, And this act of love and service, I feel empowered by it. And to me, that's when I say the Book of Mormon is the word of God. That's what I'm referring to. And I think that's what most Latter Day Saints are actually referring to. And so, yeah, there's these certain historical claims tied into it, but I think they're far more messier. And in the end we might be able to say, yes, Joseph Smith did not actually have golden plates in his possession. But it still leaves the question completely over whether or not the text he produced was inspired, whether or not it was God's involved in it in some way.

Loyd and Bert on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [00:07:16] Can I respond? So let me just really quickly, Lloyd, so your view is that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon, that there were no gold plates delivered by an angel, that it's not in fact an ancient record of Native Americans.

Loyd Ericson [00:07:31] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:07:32] And the Book of Abraham was not written by Abraham originally. That it's not.

Loyd Ericson [00:07:38] No, in my view is Joseph had a knowledge of the antiquities of Freemasonry, saw these papyrus, saw the effects, and we connected the two. But I think Joseph sincerely believed that he was producing an ancient. Reproducing, translating ancient text.

John Dehlin [00:07:52] Yes. Okay. And okay, good, good. And so do you like? Do you like. And I'm just curious now, so when you look at the Mormon Church, do you view this as like the one true church or you know, exclusive priesthood of the. Come on, John, you're doing what you always do, which is.

Bert Fuller [00:08:10] No, I know.

John Dehlin [00:08:11] Get back to the meta issue here. No, we will, we will. I'm just curious to understand Lloyd's frame because I think that's important.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:19] I think it is as well.

Loyd Ericson [00:08:20] I think it's fair to ask. It's, you know, it's I think it's fair to ask. I just hate to poison the well for further discussion with those, but, yeah, for me, I don't like the term atheist, but if theism is defined traditionally, then I'm not a theist, I guess. And so, but at the same time, I still feel moved. I still feel empowered by the Book of Mormon, by Joseph's teachings, and even by some church leaders. I remember there was a talk Thomas Monson gave years ago about have I done any good? And I remember being incredibly powerfully moved by that. However. But I think in that way there is a prophetic authority speaking to me.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:09:10] But.

John Dehlin [00:09:11] Okay, okay. Now, I appreciate you being honest and vulnerable, Lloyd, and I'm not, I'm not trying to trap you. I do think that that's, I think the words you said five, 10 minutes ago, it's important for our listeners, as we're thinking about that, to understand where you're coming from personally, because the words mean very different things, knowing where you stand with the Book of Mormon, the Book of Abraham and the church overall than if the listeners were thinking that you thought it was a divinely transcribed.

Loyd Ericson [00:09:42] You know, I agree. Right. You know, so when I say I feel God speaking to me through the Book of Mormon, there's, you know, some might say, oh, you know, there's a bearded man up on Kolob, right. That's somehow been involved with this text that I'm affirming that. And, but, you know, I just don't care about that.

John Dehlin [00:10:01] Okay, Okay.

Loyd Ericson [00:10:02] I care about if this text, if I read it, if I, if I feel moved to treat others differently.

John Dehlin [00:10:08] No, I get it. And I still feel moved by Mormonism and by the Book of Mormon in many, many ways. Bert, I want to get you in, but I just want to ask one follow up question. Lloyd. So I get, just like when I read, you know, east of Eden by Jonathan Steinbeck or Rumi, you know, there's all sorts of fiction or poetry or prose that moves me, Right. That makes me want to be a better person. Right. So I get that. And I still feel moved when I hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing or even when I hear the Wright General Conference talk. So I get this idea that there's inspiration that can be found in or out of Mormonism, in or out of Mormon scripture, or even that Mormon scripture in particular can be uniquely powerful. So I get that. What I am trying to get your sense of understanding what's wrong with a Mormon who says, yeah, there may or may not be power in These words, but for me, and I'm not saying me, I'm speaking on behalf of other people. It can't be to call it the word of God. You know, when the missionaries, when missionaries find investigators, they tell a story. And the basic story is a lot of times man thinks that they're left alone on this earth, but really God's speaking to man, and God's speaking to man through these prophets. And these prophets are really special because they get a type of conversation with God that the rest of us don't. And so when I'm sad or depressed or lost, I can't really talk to God as much as I'd like to. But this other guy had that really direct talk, and he can help me understand God's will better. And so the investigators, like, well, I'm interested because there's someone who's able to get more from God than I am. I'm all ears. And so we say, yes, there was this guy named Joseph, and he was able to talk to God in a way that you're not. He was able to get these plates and the angels and the scripture, and it was translated about an ancient civilization. And all of a sudden, when people are either converted to the church or they're in primary and they hear the narrative, what they're being sold is not, hey, the words in here will make you happy. They're being sold on a specific historical narrative, and that's what makes them agree to be a part of it. Right. It's that founding narrative that then they go, oh, well, if that really happened, if that happened the way that I was told, then I'm interested. And so in some sense, Lloyd, I totally even personally feel the same way you do about the power of the scriptures. What's problematic to me about what you're sort of putting down as an approach is that it feels like there's so many people that are sold on that literal narrative, and that that narrative, if it's not what it says it is, then people are really being deceived. Right.

Loyd Ericson [00:13:17] Let me respond to two points. One is. And they'll bridge together, as you'll see. I think so. I've recently heard Elder Oaks make this claim, and this is something that Dan Pearson claim. They'll say, the church is not a social club. And when I hear that, I get frustrated because I think they fundamentally miss something that Joseph Smith understood. And is that religion really is a social club? Religion is religion without community, to me, makes no sense. You need a sense of community. So there's A sense of community that's incredibly important. And that's something I realized on my mission is, in the end, when people join the church, they weren't joining it because of these arguments and claims and whatnot. They're joining it because they wanted and needed and felt a sense of community. Right. When they get baptized, they get up and they look around and they're not their primary thought, at least as my experience was, it wasn't like, oh, I'm free of sin. It's, I am with these people. Right. I am a part of this community.

Bert Fuller [00:14:20] Even when you're confirmed, you're confirmed a member of the community.

Loyd Ericson [00:14:23] Yes.

Bert Fuller [00:14:23] Even before the Holy Ghost.

Loyd Ericson [00:14:25] So, I mean, baptism at the heart of it is initiation into community. In fact, all of our sacraments, right. Whether it's the sacrament, baptism, confirmation to temple, it's all about being a part of the community, initiating and affirming your loyalty and to this community. So that's one part. And the second part is I think we fail to recognize the importance of myth in our lives. I recently finished watching HBO's Leftovers. If you haven't seen that, it's a brilliant show. And it's really. The last two seasons are really just exploring this notion of myth and how we need myth in our lives to kind of not just center ourselves or to find meaning, but just to exist. We always need myth in our lives. And I think one thing that strengthens a community is myth.

The Role of Myth and Narrative in Mormon Faith

Dan Wotherspoon [00:15:12] Right.

Loyd Ericson [00:15:12] When you have a story that you can all unite behind. And myth is interesting because myth, when you talk about whether or not myth actually happened, is, I think, the wrong way to talk about myth. It's rather. Is myth something that is true to yourself? For example, I completely. And positive 100% that there were not two naked people running around in the garden talking to snakes and eating fruit. There weren't. There was no Adam and Eve. And yet it makes complete sense to me to talk about my ancestors, Adam and Eve, and that's where we came from. Because this is a story that helps me understand who I am, helps situate myself in the world. And so I think ultimately, when missionaries are going out. Yes. Are they selling a myth? I don't know why you think it's selling or like convincing or conning someone into a myth, but it's rather sharing a myth with someone. And some people might believe it literally, some people might believe it symbolically, but in the end, it's, here's a story that is the basis of our community. Do you want to be a part of this community. And so then I don't think about selling. Right. And some people might come to realize, I think some people might sell that myth too hard and ground it too hard in that myth. And some might try to dismiss it too much. But I don't think you can talk about the religious community without this myth that kind of unites everyone together.

John Dehlin [00:16:37] Yeah. And I'll just. Bert, I'm gonna turn it over to you, but I'll just say three things. The first is I agree that community is essential. I love it. I love the Mormon community and I miss it. I agree that myth is essential. I think that the book Sapiens makes a powerful case that myth is the defining characteristic or feature of the Homo sapien experience. And it's what's made us in so many ways great. But I come back to this idea that when missionaries, when a little 8 year old is invited to get baptized, when a 25 year old convert is invited to get baptized, they're not told. There's this great community with these great myths that have these words that are going to really make you better. What they're told is this guy talked to God, got plates, the scriptures were translated. They are a record of, a historical record of ancient people. God keeps speaking to these prophets literally. And if you follow these men, you're literally following God. And so that's just a very different thing. And so if the day that missionaries and the general authorities stop overstating what the church is, I think is the moment that so many critics shut up. But as long as they continue to claim that the Book of Mormon is scripture, historical is a historical book, is comes from God, came from plates, came from an angel, that this is the one true church, the prophets do speak to God in some way that humans don't, then people are fundamentally being misled on a very large, large scale.

Loyd Ericson [00:18:20] So, two responses. I agree and disagree. So I agree in this sense of that. I think the church is overplaying the literalness of this myth. But imagine missionaries going out knocking on doors, saying, hey, let me tell you about our myth, right? And our myth, which may or may not be true is this. And our myth, you know, like, here's our story now, whether or not it's actually true, that's not how myth works, right? Myth isn't told as myth. Myth is just told, right? And it's a story, you know, you don't say, here's a story that we have to share with you, but it's rather, here is who we are as a community. Here is how our community came about. And so I think it'd be silly for missionaries to go up and say, here is a myth we have for you rather than just here is our story.

Bert Fuller [00:19:05] Plus, they don't think of it that way themselves. I don't think church leaders think of it themselves. I think there is an age and a stage age development that doesn't let you entertain it. And I don't think it's necessarily bad for the 8 year old or even the in the early 20s person to do it. And I see lots of wonderful people in my ward functioning very well, you know, still in that thing. And so I don't want to really rip it. And certainly it gives a lot of the power to the church when it's able to state them this way. So I always worry, John, when you say they're being that they were deceived or in that great email that we got or the Facebook message from Tracy today, you know, I was on a missionary, I was on a mission, and I was lying about polygamy. That always involves a deceiver and deceitful intent. Lying and lying intent. And so those words are what get me in this. I want to have people be able to come to this richer embrace of myth and recognizing their myths just the way they recognize other religions have myths and America has myths. And every country and every family has stories that are the, you know, the orienting stories. I want to let people get to that on their own without this heavy thing like they were lied to.

John Dehlin [00:20:23] Okay, so. So I appreciate that and let me talk.

Bert Fuller [00:20:28] Eventually he's.

John Dehlin [00:20:31] I'll respond to that and then Bert will turn it over. So. Or at least for this part. So, so, Dan, I'm not. I don't believe that Thomas S. Monson or Dallin H. Oaks or Bednar are sitting there thinking the church is a fraud, the Book of Mormon's a fraud. So I'm going to lie to everybody and fool them. Right. I do think there's a chance that Joseph Smith did that. I do think there's a chance that Joseph Smith authored the Book of Mormon as fiction, either in and of by himself or with others, and tried to pass it off as more than it was and in that way deceived people. So I do think there's a high probability that there was an original fraud or deception. But, you know, reasonable people could disagree about that. But I think this.

Bert Fuller [00:21:17] I hope I'm one of them. Yeah, I'm reasonable, I hope.

John Dehlin [00:21:21] But if we're all sitting here saying, yeah, the evidence pretty much shows the Book of Abraham is not what Joseph claimed, the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be, because all science pretty much shows that it's not, then, but if we, and then we just don't speak up about it, and then we allow that little 8 year old kid to get baptized with the teaching and the understanding that the literal narrative is true, we let those converts join the church with the understanding that the literal narrative is true. All those seminary students making important life decisions about who to marry, when to marry, where to go to college, whether to serve a mission, Whether to get 10% of your income, all of a sudden the stakes get very high because people are making major life decisions based on a literal narrative that they held before they had the chance or even the tools to get a more mythical or stage four, stage five understanding. And then it gets really serious. If a young woman is turning down college or a graduate degree or a professional career because she believed in the literal narrative, or a young gay or lesbian Mormon becomes suicidal because they absorb the negative LGBT messages within Mormonism because they believe the literal narrative. And all of a sudden this literal narrative becomes the chains that bind people to a set of very important life decisions that they probably would have made very differently if they had been told when they were 16 or 14 or 12. Okay, let me just be honest with you, okay? Joseph didn't really talk to an angel and there weren't really golden plates. And Thomas S. Monson doesn't really have any access to God. That's better than you 12 year old. And these things that we teach didn't really happen, but they're just stories that you can consider. And the advice that the prophets and apostles give are just their best ideas or recommendations, but in reality they don't have any more truth than you necessarily or I. And So as you're 12 and 14 and 16 and 18 and 21, yeah, you can take those things into consideration, but don't take them as fact, don't take them as truth, because they're not true, they're mythical, and they're people just doing the best they can. And these things work for some, but they don't work for others. And I'm just saying this literal narrative binds people to paths that can be destructive or harming or at least perceived as being misleading for people for whom the narrative doesn't work out. So that's my reaction to what you're saying, Bert. Why don't you jump in? I'm sorry I haven't given you More time to talk so far?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:24:28] Oh, no problem at all. As somebody who studies literature rather than philosophy, this matters a lot to me. And I don't pretend to speak with any expertise when it comes to Mormon history or anything like that. I think I know just as much as anybody that has looked into these things, but I'm not an expert. I haven't spent five years getting a PhD in American religious history and so on and so forth. But when we talk about myth, it's something that is very important to what I do study, and I think that it does matter. So Lloyd in his essay refers to Wittgenstein's formulation of a language game, Sparshpiel. And the thing about a game is it sounds, and I am not imputing to Lloyd any interpretation of these terms. I'm just pointing to the fact that this concept is brought up in his essay. And if he wants to clarify anything, he's more than welcome to. But games can be benign or they can be lethal. And we could come up with lots of examples of this. One of my favorites is in the 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where the green knight shows up at the Christmas feast in King Arthur's court and said, let's play a beheading game. Any knight in here can take one swing at me, and then I'll be back in one year to take my swing at them. And so Sir Gowain stands up, takes a chop, beheads the knight, the green knight. The green knight picks up his head and says, I'll be back in a year. And so Sir Gawain spends that full year stressing and under tremendous anxiety because he has signed up for a game that he didn't know the rules to necessarily. And I think what you're referring to, John, is that Mormonism is at its base a myth or a language game. I think that Dan and I and Lloyd and even you would agree on that. But what you're coming from is the context of clinical psychology and life coaching and helping people whose lives have been destroyed as a result of playing this game, many of which didn't sign up for it in the first place. And so the way I feel is.

John Dehlin [00:26:50] Yes, you mean sign up knowingly with all the information.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:26:54] Yeah, they didn't know the rules. And there are lots of examples that we could point to how many people have gone to the temple committing to play by certain rules that they were never made aware of up to leading to the temple. But they have to agree, otherwise they won't be going on their mission, or they won't, or they will be canceling their marriage, their wedding.

Bert Fuller [00:27:14] Covenant by ambush is my favorite phrase.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:27:17] Covenant by ambush. Right. And if we want to talk about the literalness that the church hierarchy. And I'm not talking about just individuals, okay. I'm talking about the institutional dissemination of literature, church literature, whether it's in Sunday school manuals or in things like preach my Gospel, missionary tracts and so forth. You know, I have worked. I have experience editing books that use church editorial guides. Meaning, okay, do you capitalize apostle? Do lowercase high council, things like that? And in it, the. The church's current style guide, they specify that you shouldn't say golden plates, which is something that you just said, John. They say you should. You should say gold plates. And I can't presume to know why they make that distinction. Maybe they just want uniformity, but the intent is irrelevant to me. The effect is that when you say golden plates, it suggests that gold. When you say gold plates, it proclaims it. And so this is just one very small example of a broad, broad, broad, literal mindset which pervades, I would argue, the majority of active Latter Day Saints religious experience. And so my critique of Lloyd's argument is not that I think he's wrong. It's that I think he's referring to the religious experience of an. Of a very small LDS minority that if you were to speak to a Latter Day Saint who bears testimony in fast and testimony meeting on the first Sunday, and they say, I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and so forth. And then in the very next hour during Sunday school, when they are discussing the Book of Mormon, if anybody were to say, oh, when you said that you know the Book of Mormon is the word of God, did that. Did you say it that way? Because you don't put any stock in the historicity of the Book of Mormon. And when you start speaking in that way, Sunday school becomes a hostile environment fairly quickly. And I think it's because most people there, even if they're making a conceptual mistake by conflating these categories and they could, you know, come to a more complete understanding, the fact is, is that that is where their understanding is at that time. Those are the rules of the game that they are playing by at that time. And when they have family members or whatever playing against those rules, they start to say foul and they penalize people. That's my basic take. I'm sorry, the dog is scratching. I've got to get rid of him. You'll Excuse me a second, and I'll be right back. And continue.

Audience Comments and Reactions to the Discussion

John Dehlin [00:29:59] So there have been several comments, lots of comments on the page. Maybe I'll just read a couple. First of all, somebody jokes and says, it's Brian Whitney, that Lloyd Ericson is the Keanu Reeves of Mormon studies.

Loyd Ericson [00:30:19] Wait, the Keanu Reeves?

John Dehlin [00:30:22] He means in looks. He means in looks, not intellectual capacity. And then he says, Bryant, Bert Fuller is the Matt Damons. So he's pegging Matt. I don't know who you and I are, Dan, but that's a fun point. Lots of different comments. So there's some criticisms of me that I'll read. So one of them basically says, this is Rich, who says, push button, insert John's mantra.

Loyd Ericson [00:30:52] I apologize for that.

John Dehlin [00:30:54] We get it, John. Bert, I'm just reading some comments from our listeners. Rich writes, push button, insert John's mantra. We get it, John. You always make the same point. It's certainly a valid point. Just not sure why you are always triggered to make this point again and again and again and again. We get it. So Rich is sick of me making this point. I feel like my point's in context of our discussion, but he's saying he's sick of it. Brian Whitney writes, basically, this turned from a typical Mormon Matters episode, more abstract and philosophical, to a typical Mormon Stories episode, True Basing youg Life on Misinformation and Lloyd, from you. In the past, when I've interviewed people and started talking about truth claims and eventually got onto this mantra, I've also sensed that you tire and get frustrated with these same lines of questions. So how do we move this conversation from a typical Mormon Stories interview to one where we actually shed new light or have new ground? Do you guys acknowledge that the point I, and maybe Bert and I are making is valid?

Loyd Ericson [00:32:00] Oh, I certainly think the point you're making is valid. You know, and I guess what Bert's kind of highlighting is that the church over the years and Christianity has done the same thing. This is one of D.C. phillips critiques, has almost created a new game by bridging these, by attempting to bridge these two together. But I think what. What that does is it shows that it's a game, that the rules really don't make sense. Right? So you're getting Chutes and Ladders and Russian Relay or something and trying to say, okay, now let's make a game of Chutes and Ladders and Bullets or something. And it's a game. If you try to play it out, this is what happens. Right? Latter Saints are trying to play this game. And they realize the rules are in conflict with each other. They don't make sense. And then they basically, I'm done. I'm done playing this game. This game's stupid. It doesn't make sense to me anymore. Remind me of like a It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode or something. But for those of you who watch the show, I forget what the game's called. Anyways, but so I think you are highlighting this point. Right. Is people, this game. They're playing a game that you can't really play because the rules just don't make sense. Because it's trying to mix rules together. Yeah. And so they quit. They say, look, this game doesn't make sense. I'm out of here.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:33:23] And you suffer for playing it.

Loyd Ericson [00:33:25] Yeah. And you suffer because it's painful. There's some game, if you ever played a game, where the rules make no sense. It's painful because you have no idea what's going on. You don't know what to do because you find two rules in conflict with each other, and you hope that, okay, the game makers have discovered this. You have to go online and find their. There are additional rules to resolve these things. So this metaphor can go on and on. And so, yeah, so I do think you have a valid claim. And I think that, again, the part of the claim is the church itself has made a confusing set of rules by which the true is determined.

Bert Fuller [00:34:05] But this emphasis. Oh, go ahead.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:34:07] Oh, I was just going to say, in response to what you just said and in light of John's question, how do we move the conversation forward? My personal way of moving the conversation forward is not to attack the church directly. I think there is enough material out there that people can make their decisions one way or another. I think because the church is a living institution, it's not a thing of the past. Strictly, that people should continue to talk about current events surrounding the church and offering their opinions. Absolutely. And within the context of apologetics, I feel like a lot of the critiques of quote, unquote, traditional apologetics have, in intellectual circles at least, these lines of argument have been hackneyed and threadbare. We're bored with them and we don't find much use in them. And so for me, the next fertile ground is to go after what I would call the liberal apologists, which I won't hijack our conversation to explain why. But what matters to me is that on the one hand, John, you have every right to address concerns which remain very present in the lives of thousands and thousands of people and they would feel ripped off. I think if once they started going through an experience that people have been going through for a long time and then the voices out there that could help them say, oh, well, we don't want to talk about that anymore because we've been talking about that for a long time. I feel like, well, it's new to them and it's nice to know. For me, for example, you know, I stopped going to church a year ago and I'm glad there are people still having these conversations. And on the other hand, of what you were talking about, Lloyd, I think that if we do want to talk about new ground, a new area within how we discuss the religion within the church, more people have to do so despite risking being thought a little weird or a little. I mean, frankly, they have to risk job opportunities as well. If they are academics and if they really. My opinion is that if they really do care about their religion more than their job, then they will take those risks. I took that risk from my perspective, maybe you can make that clear as well. But I think that you, Lloyd, and you, Dan, have taken those risks. And again, you share your own perspective on this. But from my point of view, you've had to pay for that materially for doing so, and I commend you for it. So that's how I feel like we can move the conversation forward is when more people take more risks.

Bert Fuller [00:37:10] That was wonderful. If I were to add, this isn't how to move the conversation forward, but I always want to make sure that this piece gets in there just like some of my earlier stuff. But that's that pain, struggle, wrestle. Obviously there's, there's terrible extreme cases of suicidality or marriages that break up over these things and stuff like that. But for most people at that right time in their life, they're going to get called onto a journey into greater depth or something. And if they are and if they go on it after, you know, some adjustment and some sort of grieving of the loss of innocence and the naivete that they, you know, came to, honestly, they're glad for these fights, John. And I think you don't always give credit to that as much. I'd say everybody at that retreat that we just had, even though it was very, very painful, you know, wouldn't go back. You know, the whole a pig satisfied versus a Socrates unsatisfied. I think we get that as human beings. So I just don't always want to say the 12 year old, the 14 year old, these younger Things, these are ages and stages that are great. And honestly, the church is preaching to a center. And if you buy Fowler and any of his stats or, you know, Ken Wilber, now he's doing spiral dynamics and the different color schemes and all those sorts of things, we're looking at 60 to 70 to 80% of adults. You know, that's where they're at. And I think that most of the general authorities are at that same sort of stage. I wish the ones that that weren't would show more vulnerability, would show their own wrestles, would sort of model these things. But on the other hand, I can't call for them to simply go, hey, mythic, mythic.

Apologetics, Institutions, and the Car Analogy

Dan Wotherspoon [00:39:07] Oh, and I forgot to mention, but this idea of myth. On the one hand, we have a defensive myth, but at least in the essay, an attack against fantasy and, you know, somebody that, again, is coming from literary studies, that's an unfair double standard.

John Dehlin [00:39:28] So if I'm trying to tie this to the discussion about apologetics, let me lay out maybe a metaphor and then see if we can use it to talk not only about traditional apologetics, but what I'm calling neo apologetics, and maybe in that way try and advance the conversation a bit. So let's just say that the Mormon church in the 21st century is kind of like an automobile. It's an automobile that in many ways drives around. It gets people where it needs to go. Sometimes people have amazing experiences in it. It's a viable form of transportation. But. There's some information about its safety record or its reliability that has been known for some time that can occasionally lead to death or very unsatisfactory sort of experiences. And so no one's gonna argue that lots of good times have been had in this car, that in many ways it's taken a lot of people to a lot of good places, but that for some time now, information has been available in the public domain that would let people know that occasionally using this car can be fatal, not because of external influences, but because of flaws in the car itself. Right? And. Or sometimes it's got a safety or reliability record that can make it so it's gonna break down or be unreliable in ways that can cost a lot of money and a lot of pain and a lot of time. And then let's just say that we now know that the manufacturers of the car have known about this information, these problems with it, for a long time and have sort of punished people who have talked about these problems or have tried to hide the information so that people won't know about the flaws and instead just keep talking about how wonderful and amazing it is. Is that a metaphor that we can all sort of agree is a reasonable one to then use to talk about apologetics?

Loyd Ericson [00:41:46] I think this goes back to your earlier claim about people who suffer because of Mormonism, who go through issues that they probably shouldn't have had to. And it goes back to this kind of thesis I was playing with about ecclesiastical or institutional authority and prophetic authority and being an institution, Being told, you guys can hear my breathing apparently, I don't know. Being an institution, the goal ends up being any kind of institutional authority is always going to try to perpetuate itself. So you're talking about John as risk analysis right here. We know there's a problem here. How do we statistically. Let's punch in all the numbers, clickety clicky clack, let's get our accountants in here and our anthropologist and everything and let's figure out what is the way we need to go forward that's going to cause the least risk, right? Which is going to cause the least loss of membership and so on. And I think that's just one of, yeah, it's one of the unfortunate and inevitable, I think, results of any institution, especially when you have an institution that is so authoritative, right, because authority is always going to be trying to perpetuate itself. Whereas prophetic authority is risky, right? Prophetic authority, right. Is vulnerable. It recognizes losses might happen. And you know, not to, I won't go into politics, but you see this with political institutions, any kind of institution, right? This, the voice that wants to be authentic, try to create positive change. And the voices that want to maintain their authority because they feel like, hey, and I think church leaders authentically feel, say, look, we are, we are shepherds of this flock and we have a God given responsibility to protect them all. Again, I think this is what drove Packer, right. A lot of people, as I tell people, Packer said a lot of horrible things, but I think he firmly believed, hey, I'm engaging in risk analysis there. I have a responsibility to take care of people. And this is what I think is the best thing to do, to take care of people. But unfortunately that part of that taking care of people always ends up including protecting the authority itself. So I think there's a lot of challenges there that any kind of religious institution is going to face because as you know, doctor says, right. You know, any kind of you give anyone a power, they're going to abuse it. And it's inevitable, I think, right?

John Dehlin [00:44:28] So in the analogy that I used, would you. You know, it starts with this idea that there's this thing that exists that a lot of people are getting value from, but some people are having bad experiences, but other people are having good ones. Okay. And then it extends by saying there's some information that people don't have that's true and possibly really useful. And so there emerges these critics, right, that are, whether it's B S Roberts or Fawn Brody or Juanita Brooks or the September Six or Leonard Arrington or whoever, that are like, hey, hey, these car salesmen are sharing information that isn't the full story, and they know better that the information is available to them and they're selling. And this all gets all the way up to Mormonthink or Jeremy Runnels or Mormon stories or whatever. So I'll ask Dan and Lloyd. Is it. Okay, do the critics who are concerned about 21st century Mormonism, do they have credible and relevant information that they're expressing concerns about?

Bert Fuller [00:45:43] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:45:44] And do you agree with that?

Loyd Ericson [00:45:45] Yeah, I agree. And so let's just go with this car analogy. Let's assume, assuming that the information that they have these cars being dangerous and harming some people is true.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:54] Right.

Loyd Ericson [00:45:54] So we know for a fact, you know, this car's got a malfunction in its airbag, and so therefore, you know, it might fire off in the middle of driving and kill someone.

John Dehlin [00:46:04] Right?

Loyd Ericson [00:46:04] Right. And so, but if they're asking the question, okay, how much if to fix this problem makes it so the car is so expensive that nobody can own the car, right? Then the question comes into, yes, it's going to harm some people, but in order to remedy it, nobody's gonna be able to have a car now. Right. And I think that's the way that some church reviewers are approaching this. Look, yes, there's problems here, but if we address these problems, it's going to make it so that the goodness that we have simply the company goes away, right? Yeah, the company goes away.

John Dehlin [00:46:38] That if we admit that there are flaws in the transmission or the airbag, if we admit that, and if we talk openly about it, we'll have lawsuits for all the people that have been killed from it. And then they'll sue the church or they'll sue the car making company, and then the car company will disappear, and then no one will be able to benefit in these cars. And so instead we need to not talk about the problems and maybe even punish those who talk about them so that as many people as possible can enjoy the cars. Is that kind of what we're saying?

Loyd Ericson [00:47:11] I think that's definitely part of what's going on. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:13] Okay. And so. So critics emerge naturally saying, hey, there are these problems that the leaders aren't talking about. These people are getting hurt. Apologists emerge, and let's just say we're talking about Maxwell Institute or farms.

Loyd Ericson [00:47:28] Right.

John Dehlin [00:47:29] The analogy of what they would do would be to say, for example, the ad hominem, which is, oh, those guys talking about the faulty transmission, they're gay or they're. They're adulterers or they're, you know, they're liars. Right. So that's. That would be the ad hominem analogy. And I think we all agree that that's wrong, right? True.

Bert Fuller [00:47:50] Yes.

Loyd Ericson [00:47:51] Yes.

Bert Fuller [00:47:51] And that's old Maxwell Institute.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:47:53] Yeah, yeah. Maxwell Institute wasn't that way when I was there.

John Dehlin [00:47:56] Right, right. Another thing they could do is they could say, oh, no, you know, the transmission isn't faulty. It's working exactly as it should. And let me invoke a bunch of scientific stuff that will basically claim that the transmission isn't faulty or the airbag isn't faulty. And they try and use science to convince people that there really isn't a problem when we know that there is one. That would be another. That would be another form of apologetics that I think, Lloyd, even you yourself would say, that's not good. That's not playing the right game. Right. Because then, then you could measure how many deaths, you could measure how many times the transmission breaks down. And if the value of the car or the car company is based on something as trivial as whether or not the transmission works, then it could make people conclude that you shouldn't buy the car, you shouldn't invest in the company. And that's not the point. The point is that people have good experiences with the car, and that's what should be focused on. Is that kind of what you're saying, Lloyd?

Loyd Ericson [00:49:02] I'm not sure how far the car analogy plays into my piece, especially when, again, and this is one of the problems is you're assuming that the analogy is one to one with the car problem. Right. You're assuming that it's obviously clear, and this is indubitable, that the church's airbags are faulty. So you're making an assumption there that I would say that people, some people, the Maxwell and Suit and even with FARMS and others would say, no, you're actually misidentifying the problem itself. So I think there's a problem in the analogies. I think you're assuming too much and then carrying it on to this other thing. So, yeah. So if we're assuming that, yes, these things are absolutely false and et cetera, then, yeah, then some of that problem exists.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:49:51] Well, and I think for John, he's not talking about whether it's false, but whether it's faulty. And as a result of it being faulty, people have accidents and people die. And if we didn't want to use the car analogy and take that too far, maybe we could use another vessel for transportation, which is a ship, which is what LDS leaders and early Christian leaders were more than happy to use as the analogy or the metaphor for the church and this vessel. And it seems appropriate to me. And if we're going to talk at the level of metaphor and talk about the level of myth in order to defend Mormonism's claims, whether social or truth claims or whatever, then we also have to be able to talk about metaphor and so forth at a level that allows us to critique these things as well. Because I find metaphor and myth to be fairly amoral, and they can be used to bolster or to criticize certain claims. And in terms of what you're discussing, John, see, this is the problem I see is that when people do tell the truth about certain things, I'm not saying in a general sense, but I think Greg Prince is a good example. He spoke at Salt Lake Public Library a couple weeks ago and spoke very eloquently. I think he's a very articulate and intelligent individual, and one, from what I can tell, is highly invested in the millennial generation, sticking with it as it were, moving into the leadership ranks and hopefully making a difference decades from now after he's long gone. And so in that sense, I find what he's doing entirely selfless. He doesn't need to do it. He really is committed to the betterment of the community. And my question for him was, well, every time you write a book, it seems to encourage swathes of the population to leave, which I think is a natural result of telling truths, is that half the people will be offended by them and they will defect and the other half will be unaffected because they base their commitment to the community on religious experience of the sort that Dan and Lloyd are describing. And so if it is true that people stay in the community because of their religious experience, it seems to follow that when people like Greg Prince or whoever else write books that, despite their. Mike Quinn is another example, they have no intention to write books to get people out of the church. But the Result is that many people leave the church after reading these books, then I don't think that the people leaving can be faulted because they've confused categories. When the categories they have been taught and have been inculcated in their entire church education, whether through seminary, institute, BYU religious education, classes that they teach on Sunday or whatever, is completely geared towards the type of conceptual confusion that, if I understand Lloyd correctly, he says we need to clear up. And I'm all for it. I'm all for cleaning that up. But the only way that I see us being able to clear that up is by attacking it openly. And you do so at great personal cost. Because even if the ship or the car or the vessel is faulty and you point that out, there are powerful people that will not like you pointing that out. And you may suffer defamation. You may suffer an opportunity cost of material wealth that you might otherwise have had. You may suffer a lack of job security. You may suffer being associated with people that you don't particularly have in common. But because your criticisms are vaguely similar, you get. You get bunched and grouped together. And so it's obviously an intractable problem and nobody has the answer. It just seems that people are doing their best. And I think for some, a person's best is rather self serving, and for others, a person's best is more self sacrificing. But that has to be the judgment of every individual. It can't be stated broadly in a general sense.

Loyd Ericson [00:54:30] Okay, I think I've come up with how the analogy works. Run with me here. Right? So dealing with the car, right? So say there's a car and there's a good reason to believe that a. Paul. That it might be faulty. Traditional apologetics would basically say, no, there's no fault in the car.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:54:46] Right? Yeah.

Loyd Ericson [00:54:47] Right. And so people die. Yeah. So people drive it and then die.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:54:51] Right.

Loyd Ericson [00:54:52] Neo apologetics is. John wants to phrase it even, you know, in like Givens Mason. Even like what, the church history department student right now or Mexico Institute, they might say, look, yeah, there is faults, but as long as you only make right hand turns driving this car, everything's gonna be fine. And some people are gonna be like, wait, all right, that works out. But that's not what I bought the car for. I'm out. Right? And me, I'm sitting back saying, well, what does this have to do with how comfortable the seats are?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:19] Right?

Loyd Ericson [00:55:20] And right in terms of just like, you know, if religion is just having a nice comfortable seat. What, what does whether or not you're turning have to do with the comfort of the seat. Right. Maybe we can adjust, fix this or realize, you know, cars are only meant to turn right, whatever. That's a whole other discussion that has nothing to do with the bearing of the comfort of the seats here. So there's how I would play with the analogy.

Neo-Apologists Acknowledging Problems Without Addressing Them

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:42] Well, and the other thing I would say as well, to carry this forward is that in my experience, anyways, when a quote unquote neo apologist will say, yes, there is a problem, but what you need to do is not focus on the problem but on something else. And maybe a nice little piece here is Adam Miller a couple years ago posted about that Buddhist story of a man being shot with an arrow but didn't know where it came from. And he said, well, don't focus on who shot you. Focus on getting better or whatever. I forget the whole story. Yeah. And so I find this to be a common rhetorical move among quote unquote neo apologists because they say, no, don't actually look at the problem, look at how you can put a band aid on the problem or something like that. And I don't find that particularly helpful, honestly. I recognize there's a risk in focusing on problems to the exclusion of what is good or what is beautiful in your life. But I don't feel comfortable this being a general strategy when saying, hey, there's a problem with the car and I'm not going to go into depth what that problem is. That's not for you to know, but you can trust that. You know, I'm somebody who spends my days thinking and reading and writing. I've looked at it and the solution is just, was it don't turn right or only turn right?

Loyd Ericson [00:57:11] Only make right hand turn.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:57:12] Yeah, yeah. I'm not an Ambi Turner.

Loyd Ericson [00:57:15] Right.

John Dehlin [00:57:18] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 817

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:40] Hey, I want to jump in on that. Okay. What you said is great. If that were neo apologist strategy. Don't look here. Well, for instance, I got to say this and then I wanted to loop back to your earlier comment, Adam Miller, and that Buddhist story is completely different from what you're saying here. It's skillful means is what it's the term in Buddhism that says, does this help you towards enlightenment or does it help you towards enlightenment? You're focusing on the wrong thing. You want to know all these other things. Look it enlightenment is realizing I got to get rid of this error. I got to get rid of my craving.

Bert Fuller [00:01:15] Adam Miller believes that enlightenment is looking towards Buddhism instead of towards the general authorities.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:20] Well, I don't know about that, but where you have Adam saying things like Mormonism really points beyond Mormonism. All religion really does that. I even did a podcast on Mormon matters called a Mormonism that looks beyond itself. You know, so it for, you know. And I think pretty much everybody here would say if there's such a thing as salvation, it isn't because of a set of beliefs. It's easy to believe or not believe in all that stuff. It's, you know, who did you become? You know, it's not like did you do all these things to get to the celestial. It's who did you become? Are you able to be a celestial person? I think everybody agrees with that. They just don't think of it all the time. But so I don't want to think that Adam, or mostly neo apologetics neo apologists are saying, don't look over here.

Bert Fuller [00:02:10] But they are, they are. And this is why I'll say that they are. They don't express that. But their refusal to engage directly in public with certain intractable issues, it shows, I think, what basket their eggs are in. And so on the first part of this interview, when John, I don't know if we want to use the word accused of Patrick and whoever else of having quote unquote secret meetings where we're trying to convince people to stay in the church. And they said, well, it wasn't a secret meeting or, you know, whatever. And I would say, well, it's certainly not open to the public, so maybe it's not secret, but it is private. And there are lots of examples of this, whether like I heard again, because it wasn't widely publicized, because people are not supposed to bring attention to themselves as charismatic individuals that are not part of the hierarchy because you get in trouble for that. But I heard that several years ago, I forget where in Utah county, maybe that, you know, like Taro Givens was inviting people who were not strongly in or strongly out, but just questioning and doubting and that they could. And I didn't know how you got an invitation to that. You know, I just finished editing a transcription of Grant Palmer's first Mormon Stories interview where he talks about Richard Bushman doing similar things for missionaries in New England. I don't know the extent of these things, but that's my point. The extent of these things is not known because we do not want to shine bright lights on them. We want to handle this. That, to use a separate analogy, not moving away from vehicles and into buildings. You know, I was talking to John Hamer about this and I hope he doesn't mind that I'm stealing it from him. But he talks about the church as a building and the facade looks alright, but it's been a number of years and things are breaking on the inside. And there are different ways to respond to this. I think the traditional apologetic response would be to say, look, there's not necessarily something wrong here and we need to just build up the outer wall so that, you know, we're protected against attacks, external attacks. Another response would be, and I feel personally that the CES letter or things like that veer in this direction where it says, well, we just need to demolish the whole, load it up with C4 and hit ignite. Another response is what I consider to be the maybe more neo apologetic response is, okay, we are going to go inside the building, us, you know, trained professionals, and we're going to fix things, but we're going to do it in a way that is very careful and fairly quiet. And we're going to do it because there are people in the building that don't know these problems exist and we don't want to upset them and upsetting them would get in the way of our work. And so we're going to do that. And then there's another response which says, look, the building is condemned, there are serious problems, but we're not just going to blow it up. Why don't we use the bricks to build something new? And I feel more sympathetic with that approach. But I recognize that the different people in the different, in the different remodel camps, I guess they have reasons for doing what they're doing and we have reasons to be critical of each other.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:05:46] Hey, I love what you're saying. Let me. Yeah, the secret, all that stuff, I don't know what it is because I think of temperament and you know, whether you're an activist temperament or whether you're, you know, a person able to do it. What when you said earlier, and I think this ties to what you just said now too, you says you can't fault folks for making the decision because you know, this is the way it was presented to them and da, da, da. And there is no faulting. And I agree with that. But what neopologists are doing, at least that you haven't mentioned what I think I'm doing, whether I'm a neopologist or not, John can and I don't count you as I think I'm doing is more like speaking from. And even I think these, these meetings with the Bushman's and the Givens is going around. I think what they're trying to do and say is yes, you're not at fault for having these reactions, honor your emotions, you know, these are valid. These are everything you're saying you have every right to feel. But it's by saying in a broader context as you move forward. I don't ford, you know, in a broader context, just like it took Lloyd years to kind of go through these things, that he wasn't as sudden. And you said within three years, you know, yours was kind of, you know, a little bit quicker. Mine was over 11 year, you know, kind of learning to make peace or something like that. I think what we're doing is not trying again to don't look over here, look over here. Or we're not just trying to like, oh, I hope nobody else notices it but our work because we're speaking from these perspectives that are both and or however you want to say it, you know, conjunctive faith type perspectives. We're just trying to model and be there as guides on the hero's journey, you know, as the mentor or somebody who is ready to take it. And we're trying to destigmatize the problem of being called out of your naivete. We're trying to say this is the human journey. This is what every religion is pointing to go and get it yourself, get the elixir of life, and then still be in your community afterwards. But you're the master of both worlds. You're able to understand inside the myth as well as outside the myth. And you're not, you can handle not being triggered, you know, by people who are still at the literal stages. So that's where I would want to throw in there.

Loyd Ericson [00:08:25] I think to add to Bert's analogy, or actually John Hammers analogy is I think you have to also add that there are people in the building. So if you see 4 the building, if you tear it down, there's going to be casualties, right? And so I think what, you know, I hate the term neopologist, but let's run with it. Neapologists will recognize, hey, there's people in here that find shelter, that find peace, that find protection from the elements. All these sorts of things within this building is if we, if we, if we just blow the thing up, it's gone, right? And they perhaps themselves find shelter in it, right? So they want to maintain it, they want to keep it going. And, but I think you touched on this bird is there's risks, right? They have to in some ways kind of keep it secret. When I say secret or small, it's a tough. They've got to put. They've got to walk on a very thin wire as they're doing this, right? And this, this is exemplified perfectly by Dwayne Boice's recent attacks and interpreter on Givens and Hardy and others, right? Where, you know, it's like, hey, how dare you say that there's any false in here. You're completely wrong. Like, you are a threat. You're the inside, right? This is Ralph Hancock as well with Adam Miller and others, right? Portraying them as the enemy by point, by, by trying to say, hey, look, there's, there's, it's complicated. There's more issues than we're willing to recognize. And so in order to, for them to fix the buildings, they see themselves doing it. They have to do it carefully. They can't just come out and say, yes, church leaders are infallible. Because you make that explicit. The people that you're trying, your efforts to try to fix a building, you'll be exiled out. So they've got to play a very fine line in order to try to fix that which they love. That's why a lot of buildings, we don't just tear down the building, rebuild them. We say, here's a building that we care about. Let's fix it. We have to go in there and do it very carefully. Like the Provo Tabernacle, for example. Right. So they're trying to turn the provo. The burned down provoc Diaberdactyl into a temple.

Internal and External Pressure for Church Reform

Bert Fuller [00:10:27] Right. And. And I will admit the necessity of when you try to make change, you need pressures both internal and external. And when it comes to. Because I think me and a lot of folks that I criticize want very similar thing. And what we disagree is not what we want, but how to get it. So it's a discussion of tactics. And I think that because we disagree, we will possibly in the future critique each other. But one of my critiques is, is that if you're in a situation that's as precarious as that, and it is that precarious. I know people personally that if they spoke their mind, they'd lose their employment, their retirement, their benefits, and it is that precarious. For me, that is an argument against preservation of the building and an argument for using old materials to make a new building. But I also recognize that what I'm saying is my opinion, it's not based in some sort of population study or repeatable experiment or in a well argued thesis with logical coherence. I recognize that it's my opinion, but I think that there are other people with this opinion as well. And.

Loyd Ericson [00:12:01] Oh yeah, I agree, but you certainly agree that C4ing the building. It's easier to say C4 the building because you're not inside it.

Bert Fuller [00:12:08] And oh, I think that's a huge problem.

Loyd Ericson [00:12:11] And you're not, you're not necessarily concerned with keeping the structure itself.

Bert Fuller [00:12:14] Of course that's a huge problem. And look, I recognize as well that the larger context for the precarity of the situation is that each person's individual life is highly precarious. That you risk that each every day that you are alive and that you are breathing and that you are healthy seems to me a lucky day. And it's hard to see it that way sometimes because it's something that can be taken for granted. And so I recognize that the strategy of just blowing things up is not helpful because what are you gonna do once you leave? Once you throw bombs at the church, where are you gonna go next? Are you gonna throw bombs at your family? Are you gonna throw bombs at your employer or your employees? Are you going to throw bombs on other things that you've cherished? And so I do recognize the difficult, the maybe the false start that can create.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:13:20] Loving it. John, do you want to do some steering. We're at the two hour mark.

John Dehlin [00:13:23] Yeah, I love everyone's perspective today and I appreciate you guys trying to go with me on the car analogy. Every analogy is wrong or incomplete or unsatisfactory in a sense. And so it's an act of vulnerability to even try and lay one out there, but it's for the sake of trying to structure the discussion. And so I appreciate the extent to which you guys are willing to go along with that. While you guys were talking, I tried to kind of distill my thoughts as it relates to apologetics specifically, because I do hear the audience, the believers in the audience that are like, yeah, John, we get it, we're sick of your rants. And then of course, I'm also aware that a lot of the ex Mormons are like, you go get him, John. And that in some sense that doesn't help, right? That doesn't get us anywhere better. So what I try to do is distill my thoughts and let me just lay out how. I'll summarize sort of how the analogy, how apologetics, how the past and the present and the future kind of maybe all fit together. For me, for anyone who is a Mormon church leader or someone who speaks out publicly about these problems, here's what I would say needs to happen. This is what. And then I've got some critiques for non believers and critics as well. So here it is. Number one, I think that it's everyone's job to become informed. Whether it's, and this is going to be stating the obvious, but whether it's the Mormon Church leaders, the apostles, the GAS bishops, whoever, I think members, I do think we all have this obligation to become as informed as possible about what we're a part of. But. And in some sense no man knows, my history has been around since 1945. Like a lot of the stuff that's come out really doesn't shed any more light than that book itself. And so you'd have to ask, well, if that information has been out there for so long, why don't we all know it? And I think it's because of problems within the system. And so here are the problems within the system that I think need to stop either at the church leadership level or with apologists. So the first thing that needs to happen is that people need to become informed. The second thing is that victims of when the church does cause harm, victims need to stop being blamed and they need to be stopped being gaslighted. So examples would be when we say that non believers were weak or they were just offended or looking to sin, that's a problem. Or when apologists say, well, there was that one Ensign article about peepstones back in 1982. You should have seen that and read it, that's bad. Whether apologists or church leaders do it, when victims are blamed or when they're gaslighted and told these aren't problems, that's not good. Then anytime a critic speaks up about the problem and they're maligned or punished, that needs to stop. So whether apologists, old school apologists, or people on the Internet now want to take down Jeremy Runnels or me or anyone else for just speaking openly about the problems, or when the church excommunicates or punishes people for talking openly about the problems, or censures them, takes away their temple recommendations or keeps them from being able to attend a wedding or a baptism or whatever, or perform an ordinance, that's wrong. The next thing that's wrong is anytime problems are hidden or denied or people are distracted from them. And so, of course, when Joseph Fielding Smith rips out the page in the book that talks about an alternative version of the First Vision, that's wrong. But also when apologists counter the critics with any sort of information that would either deny or destruct what's going on. So an example would be someone trying to come up with an excuse that basically says that all the First Vision accounts are consistent or Joseph Smith didn't have sex with his polyandrous or underage wives. To me, that feels like either trying to deny that there was a problem or. Or even when Terrell Givens or someone offers poetry or prose or beautiful metaphors that really don't address the problems, but instead sort of say, don't look over here at the problems, look over here at the beauty. You know, anytime an apologist or a church leader does a move that would deny or distract people from the problems, for me, that's a problem. The problems need to be openly acknowledged, and then an apology needs to be made. The church has not. You know, we start with the problem that Elder Oaks has said. We don't make apologies. But even so, the church at some point needs to apologize for what's happened. The leaders need to apologize. There needs to be. The church needs to follow its own recommendations for repentance and acknowledge that the problems are happening, that they have happened, and apologize for them. And this puts the apologists in a really tough spot because in some sense, they're not really apologizing, but they're trying to make excuses or make things right or encourage continued loyalty when an apology should have been made and hasn't been made. The next step is that everything needs to be done to fix the problems and to make restitution. And again, this is something that apologists are actively trying to do. And I give them credit, whether they're working on making the essays come out, whether they're or they're going around in firesides to try and speak as candidly and openly as possible. That's all good. I think apologists are often doing good things there and trying to be constructive parts of the solution. And it's not ultimately theirs to make the restitution, but they're anxiously engaging in attempts to make things right. And I do give them credit for that. Here's the final points about neo apologists that I think are of concern is that sometimes they're not willing to just be completely candid about the problems and just say Joseph Smith's polygamy was irresponsible or the Book of Abraham is not historical, or the Book of Mormon is just simply not historical. A lot of apologists don't want to get in trouble. They're managing their capital and so they don't do often the job that they really should to be a part of acknowledging the problems that are out there. And that's something that I would just like to see neo apologists just be more candid about. It seems like so many neopologists, they're scared of losing their seat, their endowed chair at the university that's funded by believing Mormons. They're scared of getting in trouble.

Candor, Deception, and Scholarly Responsibility

Bert Fuller [00:20:42] They're rightly scared.

John Dehlin [00:20:43] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bert Fuller [00:20:44] Rightly scared, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:45] Or they're scared of being disciplined like me or Jeremy Runnels or other people. And, and so they're shy about being a part of the full disclosure that needs to happen. And if what they do instead is basically people walk away saying, well, I listen to Terell Gibbons, I listened to Fiona, I listened to Richard. They basically said, stick with the church because it's good. Stick with the church because it makes you feel good. Stick with the church because it has a great community. But they haven't become in that process fully aware of the problems, then what I worry that neo apologists do that's unethical is they've basically bolstered the authority of the Brethren and they've bolstered people's ongoing willingness to be obedient to the church and to expose themselves to continued and future risk without being Fully informed of the problems. And I know it's tricky. I know it's tricky.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:21:48] It's not their intent to do that, John. That's where. It's just the intent that.

Bert Fuller [00:21:53] This is where Dan and I agree. Dan thinks that, as I understand that intent is essential, and I don't, because I think that people can intend the best and still end up with poor results. Where, you know, you have the collateral damage like Phillips talks about, I think. And so I'm not as centered and intent as. And maybe Dan, tell me if I'm right, but maybe this is just a deep point of disagreement between you and me.

John Dehlin [00:22:24] When we talk about intent, do you mean neo apologists or church leaders?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:22:27] Dan, Let me get my button on. I was thinking neopologist right then.

John Dehlin [00:22:33] Okay, I did.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:22:34] I'm not saying that it's like they're not being candid enough and not saying, well, it's not historical and stuff like that. Well, that implies to me that in your mind, they believe that it's not historical. Or they. Or they. Or they think this is a subtle question. So for me, for instance, I'm like 95% certain that it's not historical that Nephi and Lehi never lived. But I still have an open question because of internal evidences from the Book of Mormon that seemed to me that would read like a person who was an abridger, leaving in certain parts and taking out certain parts. And there's these amazing little like, whoa, why would that occur to Joseph Smith at this point? You know, where it would. It would see that Mormon would go, dang. I never wrote before about how Nephihah is Alma's brother. So I've got to explain why Alma isn't given the plates to his brother. You know, it's because he died. And, you know, this is like. I mean, I got to think that if I were a neapologist and I was going around there, I wouldn't be. I wouldn't be hiding that, you know, not being candid enough.

Bert Fuller [00:23:43] And I want to bolster Dan's claim that I have total conviction that Joseph Spencer believes the Book of Mormon is historical, but that he doesn't worry about it too much, that Grant and Heather Hardy believe that the Book of Mormon is historical, that Richard Bushman does that. Well, I don't know that Claudia Bushman does, but you just have to ask her that Terrell does. So I really do think that these people believe these things. However, the problem is that it's like when you have. When you're Speaking from a position of academic or scholarly or intellectual authority. And you represent a minority position. Now they represent a majority religious position, but I'm a minority intellectual position because the overwhelming academic consensus is that the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be, that the Book of Abraham is not what it claims to be. For anybody that looks into these things, even, you know, superficially, this is the overwhelming academic consensus. And so for them to present a minority position and to bolster it with their beliefs and their claims is fine. They have every right to do it. But the. I think what, John, you might be pointing to is the fact that they are doing so with their intellectual or scholarly authority and yet do not present all the other plausible positions. I think that is where the intellectual potential dishonesty comes in. And this is a really dangerous rhetorical move to make, but I'll give it a shot anyways, is that there are scientists, legitimate Nobel Prize winning scientists, that deny climate change, okay? And so it seems to me irresponsible for them to not be able to express their opinion. They're more than welcome to. It also seems irresponsible for them to not address their critics when it seems like critics have legitimate responses to their unusual claims.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:25:49] So, yeah, but it would take four hour or at least half day workshops to really do what you're calling for instead of a one hour fireside, you know, so.

John Dehlin [00:25:59] Well, a couple of quick responses, Dan. I'm not sitting here saying that anyone's being intentionally misleading or duplicitous. So I guess what I'm saying is maybe a couple things. One is that we all. There is a level to which I think thoughtful people can look at the Book of Abraham, for example, and we all know, we all know that it's not what Joseph claimed it was. I think the fact that the word Abraham doesn't show up anywhere in that scroll, in that papyrus, you know, it's pretty much undeniable by anyone who's willing to be even partially even an attempt at objectivity to agree that that is not what Joseph claimed it was that he claimed to translate the papyri and he didn't. And so that's something that is that attempting to sort of make some colorful artistic explanation for where somehow the papyrus inspired and to channel God's will. What I'm saying is that's a problematic act. I think it's done with good intent, but I think it's basically denying what's pretty clearly objective reality. And then the move of trying to come up with some explanation is basically what it does is it lets a believer who is still staring the potential harm at the face and they're not really aware that that harm could be coming, it's basically saying to them, in effect, don't worry, everything's fine. Stay in the car, stay in the boat. Which is what many general authorities say, everything's fine. When in reality what should be said is by Gibbons, by Bushmen, by everyone. It should say, hey, we should just all admit that Joseph claimed to translate a papyru and he didn't and it's wrong. And that should be a piece of information that everyone, everyone knows about, right? Because it's pretty much objective fact and it's pretty important piece of information that should inform whether someone decides to be faithful and obedient to the brethren or not. And so anytime an apologetic response either doesn't acknowledge something like that or tries to get people to not worry about that problem, but instead think of an artistic, philosophical, or even a metaphysical alternative to the problem is in some ways empowering the brethren and reinforcing people's obedience to the brethren, potentially to their own harm. Does that not make sense at all?

Loyd Ericson [00:28:58] I've got a few responses here, and they're all tied together. One, when you're talking about objective fact, I think you're saying far more than you're able to know, right? And this is revealed in a couple things. One, I just want to call you out, say you keep saying you're not trying to imply deception, but you are right. You constantly refer to use rhetoric that implies deception, right? When you say that Congress being sold a message, you're implying deception there, right? And just. You are right.

John Dehlin [00:29:28] No, when a missionary.

Loyd Ericson [00:29:31] Well, you're saying that there is deception at some level in institutional church, but not.

John Dehlin [00:29:40] But let me be clear. No, I'm not saying that Thomas S. Monson is trying to deceive people. I think he believes it's. I think he believes it's true. I think the missionary. I think the missionary teaching it believes it's true. So the only one that could have perpetuated a deception in that case is Joseph Smith himself. I think that Joseph Smith probably was a deceiver and probably was a charlatan on some levels. But I don't think that the modern missionary, the modern mission president, the modern general authorities are necessarily intentionally trying to deceive people. No, I don't think that you're clear

Dan Wotherspoon [00:30:15] on that, but you are completely ignoring arguments that Charlie Harrell has laid out and stuff about the nature of revelation and where do you start? Where does God. The end. You know, this idea of Joseph Smith as a charlatan, even though you say it's evidentially obvious, well, you didn't quite make it that strong a claim. But I still think it's very legitimate to not claim that I've had enough spiritual experiences. And it's only as I've grown and moved on that I realized how much of those things were content from me. And yet I still can't deny the power of that experience.

Loyd Ericson [00:31:00] And this brings you to my third point that I want to address. And this is on your list of points you're bringing up. You said that apologists or Mormon scholars, whatever, shouldn't bring up evidence that denies or distracts away from criticisms, right? The distracts, I'm on board with you, right? You shouldn't just, you know, throw out a red herring, say, hey, look over here, you know, move away, don't look, don't look behind the curtain, right? But when you say that they shouldn't bring up evidence that denies the criticism, right, you're implying, right, you're rejecting scholarship, right? You're saying, hey, this view is established, this is objective fact, and now you cannot show me anything. How dare you try to say that this objective fact isn't the case, Right? So for example, right, some critic might say, look, you know, Joe Smith was married to Helen Mark Kimball this young age or sealed to her, you know, and that's all loaded with this notion of, right, that he was having sex with this 14 year old. Now what if a scholar, you know, such as Brian Hales or somebody, any kind of scholar said, look, I have strong evidence that this was a non sexual relationship, right? I have strong evidence that denies the claim that you are making. And you just said, well, no, how dare you bring up evidence that denies that right now, and this ties into my chapter, my paper, because I would say a scholar, as a historian, if they have evidence, they've got a good reason to make a strong case that goes against it. Yeah. As a scholar, they have the obligation perhaps to do so. And you should be saying they shouldn't be doing that. But my criticism, my point would be to say, yes, they might have to do that, but they shouldn't do that, implying that it says anything about Joseph Smith being a prophet, right? And so, yeah, if they have evidence that Joseph Smith wasn't having sex with Helen Mark Kimball, bring it forth, but don't pretend that that means, therefore Joseph Smith, I have defended Joseph Smith as

John Dehlin [00:32:58] a prophet of God, the Challenge I have with that part of your argument, Lloyd, is if John DeLand in 2017 did the things that Joseph did, made the claims that Joseph made, whether it was claim to translate the papyra or produced a book with all the anachronisms in it or proposition people's wives or, or, or, you know, made sexual advances on so many people, people would eviscerate me. They would probably put me in jail. They would probably potentially try and harm me physically or even kill me. Right? But that same standard that you, that you guys would likely apply to me if I made the claims that Joseph made today, you're not willing to hold Joseph to that same standard necessarily. And so for me, if Joseph is propositioning people's wives, potentially sleeping with underage girls, claiming to manifest for scripture that it turns out it, it really wasn't translations as he claimed, that does speak to whether or not he was God's prophet on the earth. And I don't understand why it shouldn't.

Loyd Ericson [00:34:09] Lloyd, I don't even know how to respond to that. That's ridiculous. I don't even know where you're coming with that accusation from. Where have I said there's a double standard?

John Dehlin [00:34:20] No, I'm saying why shouldn't. It seems like you're saying, it seems like you're saying whether or not Joseph was a prophet of God has nothing to do with all the things that he did in his life.

Loyd Ericson [00:34:31] Yeah, I'm saying that.

Bert Fuller [00:34:32] Yeah, he is saying that. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:33] And I'm saying, I'm saying, I'm saying

Loyd Ericson [00:34:36] maybe he should been in jail, right? And so if he did those things, perhaps he should have been in prison. But I'm saying, right, and this is the point I made in my paper. We've got these beautiful psalms, right, that are traditionally written by a guy who raped someone, got her pregnant, and then killed off her husband to protect it. Right. It doesn't mean that. That people do horrible things can come up. It could bring forth something beautiful at

Bert Fuller [00:35:02] the same time, I think. Okay, if I may.

Loyd Ericson [00:35:04] But my point, going back to what I was criticizing for, is you're assuming that all of these things are the case. And I'm just saying, look, if historian says, look, I have good reason to believe that the accusation you're making didn't actually happen, then that's a discussion that should happen. You seem to be saying, no, they shouldn't even bring up evidence that counters your criticism in the first place because it's objective fact.

John Dehlin [00:35:27] No, and this is where there's a difference between scholarship and boots on the ground. Because, yeah, everyone should write all the papers that they can write, publish all the books that they can publish, do all the research that they can do. What I'm talking about is when Givens or Bushman or Mason go to the wards and go to the firesides and members are going there saying, I'm having this really big crisis of faith. I don't know what to do. Help me Right then. It's when these principles apply. I think the ethical and reasonable thing to do is to say there are. Let's just stipulate people in this chapel that are here to see me. Tara Givens. I want to start by saying there are a ton of legitimate problems, and you acknowledge them. You say, here are the problems that are legitimate. The Book of Abraham likely isn't a translation. The Book of Mormon has all these anachronistic and genetic and archaeological problems that seriously question its authenticity as a historical book. It's racist. The Brethren have been racist. You know, the temple ceremony was largely borrowed from Masonic ritual. Let's just acknowledge the problems. The LGBT suicide rates. Let's start by saying this is all the stuff that's legitimate. I, as Terrell Gibbons, or I as Richard Bushman, I acknowledge those problems. Now, having informed you of the legitimate problems and acknowledged that they're problems now, I'll end by saying, here's how I deal with these things. And if they wanted to inject scholarship or personal opinion or a more practical response about how the Church still edifies me or it's a great place for spiritual pursuits or whatever, that's fine. But to not speak openly and boldly and directly and candidly about the former and just to do the latter, which is, I'm not going to talk about the problems, but here let's just talk about the beautiful things about the Church so that you keep paying your tithing, so that you keep being obedient, so that you keep following the Brethren. For me, I'm not saying they're intentionally misleading people, but there's an ethical problem there in perpetuating the obedience and the devotion and even the literalistic beliefs without educating about the problems and the dangers and being very explicit about it.

Framing Church Problems and the Pastoral Role of Apologetics

Bert Fuller [00:38:06] And if I could say the way that you listed the problems, John was highly tendentious saying, you know, the Book of Abraham probably is not a translation the way Joseph claimed it is, and so on and so forth. And if I could just. Because I think what you're saying is fair, but just back it up a little bit and say hey, look, there is a problem with the Book of Abraham. And this is. These are the sides of the debate. These are the different concerns. And I am not going to tell you what to believe about this.

John Dehlin [00:38:37] That's fine.

Bert Fuller [00:38:38] But. But part of that is the fact of what you just said, right? Like the Book of Abraham, there's a high probability that it's not what Joseph claimed it to be. And here are the reasons why. And if they want to say at the end of that, now, that's not what I believe, but those are valid concerns that a person can bring to the table. And I would guess that a lot of the people that go to these different groups are not just themselves experiencing faith crises or transition, but they have family members or close friends who are. And so I feel like if the thrust is to solve the given answer before acknowledging the problem, then they are actually doing a disservice to the people that show up to these things who will be unable to dialogue with their close friends or family members about the difficulties that they're having. Which is my critique of Planted, because it seems like that book was written for two audiences. One, people who are struggling and people who know someone who's struggling. But I felt like, in terms of talking to people who are struggling, it definitely moved the needle in a positive direction, but it didn't really get at the concerns that people have. And so if. If they are concerned about people staying in the boat, whether that's the individuals in attendance themselves or close friends or family members, one of the first things they should say is, hey, you want to know what these problems are, and you're concerned about a family member, ask that family member, right, and see what the. See what the problems are as they perceive them. And. And, you know, I think that that would be a more appropriate response. But going back to the idea of. I think. And I hope you don't take this the wrong way, John, but I think that Lloyd is right to point out that you're implying deception on some level. And I have no problem with that implication. I would even claim it. I would claim there is deception on multiple levels. And so I hope that that's okay, that we can talk in that way. And if somebody wants to come back and say, no, Bert Fuller, you're the liar. I would say, okay, like, you're welcome to claim that. And if somebody is concerned about me being a liar, then they can look at my stuff or they can tell falsehoods. They're free to do so. I'm not claiming to know things for them, I feel

Dan Wotherspoon [00:41:02] that was terrific. And you're starting to have a little bit of Internet problems there, Bert. You're kind of pausing and stuff. Okay, just quickly let me just add this piece again. These firesides aren't for what you're saying there. They're pastoral exercises. And for me, the pastoring that's involved and I think by these people being there and from the self selected audiences that are there, there is already in front of them somebody that acknowledges problems. He or she doesn't need to spell them all out and take that. Well, they did. Well, the time is one is for one reason.

Bert Fuller [00:41:47] Well, they can, you know, again, I

Dan Wotherspoon [00:41:49] need, you need a half day thing.

Bert Fuller [00:41:51] Well, then they can write about it, they can interview on it, they can put up a YouTube channel. The time problem is not as serious as you saying it is, Dan. I don't think it is.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:42:00] Well, in these settings that John's mostly focusing on.

Bert Fuller [00:42:02] Okay, then they can say, hey, just like anything else, I'm a university professor, we're going to get together and we're going to have a discussion for 50 minutes or whatever. Prior to you doing that, do two hours of homework. And these are the materials that I want you to look at. If they, if they wanted to, if they wanted to account for this time problem, they could do this.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:42:19] Yeah, that's good point.

Bert Fuller [00:42:21] And so I'm just saying that it's not in, it's not an impossible problem.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:42:25] All right. Well, anyway, the aspect of pastoral that I wanted to emphasize that I think it's a wonderful one, is to normalize the experience of what you're going through. I do think there's an affirmation that you have rights, that your family have rights to be upset, to be confused and stuff like that. This. But that your. Our time together is going to be as much as any content me modeling for you that with time and the growth into, into new perspectives there, these things don't have to still feel so threatening, so emotional to you and things like that. And you know, I, I don't have very many critiques of those guys doing those kinds of things. But you're right, maybe in their writings and things they have to do it. And that's when all the social capital and the job worries and all that come in.

Bert Fuller [00:43:19] Yeah. And if I were to get personal rather than academic in my critique, it's because these are the people that I ran with for several years and then I became aware of legitimate critiques by people who are not academically credentialed whether It's Brent Metcalfe or Sandra Tanner or Tom Phillips or whoever, and felt like, wait a minute, my academic colleagues have been downplaying these things systematically. And the conferences, the academic conferences that they hold and the things that they publish with university presses, in the podcast interviews they give, in the conversations I've had. And so I felt.

John Dehlin [00:44:00] And in the books they write.

Bert Fuller [00:44:01] In the books they write, in the books they write. And I felt like, okay, there is this complaint about traditional apologists that people who have concerns with the faith, they go on to fair or to wherever to get answers to these questions, and then they are more disturbed by the answers that they find than by the end, than anything else. And that was exactly. Well, because I never. I never really was deeply entrenched with the more traditional approach, the more farms or interpreter approach. I was never entrenched in that I was hired at the Maxwell Institute after the things went down with Dan Peterson getting fired or whatever. And so I was never entrenched in that. And so for me, it felt like a very deep betrayal to come to a point where I thought, wait a minute. There are things that are not openly addressed in the scholarly literature that deserve to be. And there are people who are addressing these things but are discounted. They're belittled because they do not have academic credentials. And so, and I'll give you one example, I was. I was deeply disturbed by several things that Greg Prince says in his book David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, particularly about women's issues, okay. And how the Relief Society used to basically be autonomous, and then it was subjugated to the priesthood hierarchy as one result of correlation in the 60s or whenever that was. And so when I'm out of the church, and a friend of mine, an active LDS professor, invited me to his home to speak about it, you know, issues as to why I would stop going to church. And I didn't bring up a ton of things, but one of the things I brought up was Greg Prince's book. And my friend, my mentor in many ways, basically told me why I don't need to worry about Greg Prince's book. And part of it is because Greg Prince is the most arrogant man he's ever met. Part of it is because Greg Prince is not a historian. You know, part of it is this, that, or whatever. And so. And so at the same time, he felt like he was addressing my concerns by trying to legitimate the source of my concerns. I felt like he was ignoring my concerns and therefore reinforcing them. If that makes any sense, the story I'm telling.

John Dehlin [00:46:25] Yep.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:46:26] Well, an ad hominem. And any of this stuff is absolutely. Their credentialism. And all those kinds of things are absolutely.

Bert Fuller [00:46:35] And he didn't do it publicly. And so, you know, I'm not gonna claim. And this is why I'm not speaking about. I'm not saying his name publicly. Of course not, but. But to me, this was just my thought process as I was sitting there. I was like, this is more evidence of my concern, you know, and so, yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:46:51] And again, I'm not trying to defend any of the people that you said was disappointing, but you know, the realities of what buildings are you holding your conferences in? Who's funding it? Who's paying for the people to come in? You know, who is your audience? All those kinds of things play in a consideration of somebody's colleagues at the Math Hughes Will Institute, not, you know, having their types of conferences that would. We would dream to have these people be at.

Bert Fuller [00:47:19] But you know why I say that the people who are part of the professional defense, intellectual defense of Mormonism, even if they don't work at byu, their social capital plummets. If they were to speak in a certain way, in other words, they would stop being invited to conferences and they would stop being invited to contribute to essay collections. They would be not, not. It wouldn't be because anybody dislikes them individually, but it's because the way that things are set up systematically that they would become iced out. They'd be squeezed out. And I think that that's a real tragedy because it's, it fosters a kind of group think that's not good for intellectual conversation. And it also, and this is just a part of reality. I recognize this. It's not an LDS problem, it's an academic problem generally. But it reinforces the fact that the people who get to keep the jobs and get the publications are the ones that are willing to say things that do not rock the. The boat of the donor class, whether that donor is an institution or a wealthy individual or whatever. And I think part of the reason that Greg Prince is able to write what he writes is because he is independently wealthy. And I think that that is a great thing for him to be able to speak to the facts and to the data as clearly as he knows how to. I think it speaks volumes for the strength of the contribution of his scholarship. And so to me, it's, it's just a sad thing to contemplate that there are people publishing things because they need to pay off their student debt. And I'm not saying that's why they're doing it. I'm not saying that. I'm saying it is a piece of the equation, and it's just. And it is a piece of the equation that is never disclosed to the people who are hearing the voices of these individuals. It is never explained that this is how it works. And I think that they deserve to understand that. Now, it's complicated, it would take time to explain, but they're more than capable of understanding this feature of the whole puzzle.

Loyd Ericson [00:49:48] I think Bert makes an excellent point there. This was a concern I had when I was at Claremont, when we were kind of getting this Mormon studies program there going, was, hey, if we have a conference, there was never any donor that said, hey, you cannot have this speak. That never happened. But I guarantee you, whether at Claremont, whether at Virginia, whether at Utah State, uvu, any of these schools doing it, and I've seen it in multiple schools where a concern they have in their back of their mind is, if we invite this person to speak, if this person speaks on this topic, will that affect donors? Will that affect the board? Will that affect, you know, all these sorts of things? So there always is. And the board, donors, all those sorts of things. Always. Right. You know, it largely points back to the institutional church. It also works the other way around. Right. There's also the concern of if we have somebody speak on this, will our faculty. Right. Will our faculty not like somebody who believes that the Book of Mormon is historical talking, you know, expressing that point of view. Right. So those tensions come from both ways. And it's difficult position to have to balance.

Faith, Academia, and Closing Reflections

Bert Fuller [00:50:56] And I want to be very clear that this is not something unique. This is not a problem unique to Latter Day Saints in academia. It's a broad problem. And looking at cases like whether it's normal Norman Finkelstein or David Graeber or recently Bret Weinstein has been in the news a lot. I mean, this is a serious problem about how academia functions. And it's not something specific to Latter Day Saints. However, it is present when among Latter Day Saints. And it's something that needs to be understood and disclosed, I think.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:51:30] Wonderful. I love the reason for these podcasts. In some ways, we're able to articulate these many, many, many layers. So I'm grateful for these forms. John. I don't know. I don't even know about you guys. Are you guys able to stay a little bit longer? Or how are we going to wrap this up without getting ridiculous

Bert Fuller [00:51:49] in a couple Minutes.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:51:51] Gotta go sell a house, man.

John Dehlin [00:51:52] I think we can all. Maybe we can all just kind of summarize our thoughts or some final points. Just kind of go around the horn a little bit.

Bert Fuller [00:52:00] Yeah. Because I need to go quickly, if I could. A couple brief thoughts is number one. Every single person that I criticize, I hope that I criticize at the level of their work. And I do not criticize them as individuals because I have interacted with a fair number of them and have liked every single one of them. Now, I don't know if that's reciprocal. You know, I understand that they're a little nicer to like than I am sometimes, but that's something I would say. The other thing I would say is that there is a huge contingency of people writing that are very interesting, that are very honest, that say things that are very good and supportive. And I just thought I would. I would list a few names in case there are people that want to follow up on any of them. I've mentioned some during this podcast, so I won't repeat any, but I really like Will Van Wagenen, I like Sam Young, Jay Nelson Seawright, and not only Josh Madsen, but his father Ron, as well. Dennis Potter, I think, is a philosopher at byu.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:53:07] Kelly D. Parter.

Bert Fuller [00:53:08] Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:53:10] She's transitioned.

Bert Fuller [00:53:11] And Darren Smith. A lot of people that have been on Mormon Stories, and then historical people like Sterling McMurran, but also John Charles Duffy, Thomas McConkie. I mentioned you, Dan and Lloyd and Gina, of course. But there are people like John Larsen that I think need to be very seriously engaged. And he's completely left out of academic conversations, but poets as well, not just scholars. Alex Caldiero, Kimberly Johnson, Timothy Liu. John Williams at Yale is a great lyricist with the band Faded Paper Figures. John Sterling Harris. I think there are a lot of people that just do not get included in mainstream conversations about these sort of things, but are fabulous individuals that have very important things to say about the Mormon religious experience that can and ought to be incorporated into what we have to do. Unfortunately, I have to leave, but thank you for letting me be on the podcast.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:54:07] Hey, one of those voices, Brother. Good to have you.

John Dehlin [00:54:12] There's a lot of comments from the listeners saying how much they loved your participation. So let's have you back on Mormon Stories.

Bert Fuller [00:54:17] Okay, thank you, John. Take care, both of you.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:54:19] Thanks, friend. Take care.

Bert Fuller [00:54:20] Bye,

Dan Wotherspoon [00:54:23] Lloyd, you want to go? Final thoughts or whatever?

Loyd Ericson [00:54:28] I think my final thoughts go back to where I started with Julian Reynolds chapter, and that's that I Think we have to. It becomes so easy to talk about apologetics again as men fighting over, you know, trying to be, you know, apologetics and critics just engaging each other as, and on both ends. Critics as well as we characterize it as these intellectual battles of just trying to prove each other right or wrong and trying to win fights. But I think from both ends we fail to recognize how much of these are an act of love. Whether it's an apologist who spends her time on a message board defending what means so much to her or whether it's someone, critic, I don't even like the term critic a lot, who gets on there and is trying to share their reasons for leaving because it's important to who they are. And I think sometimes we miss out on how much love is involved in these things. And you know, of course I stand by my argument. But at the same time I recognize that a lot of people are engaged in apologetics, do so because, because of love, because it's something that's, this they're defending something that, that's brought a lot of meaning, importance and value to their lives. So, and, and it's, I think it's always important for all of us on all ends to recognize that I, you know, to try to view each other in the best faith possible. So recently my chapter is reviewed an interpreter and the reviewer immediately begins lines, Lloyd Ericson attacks apologetics. Right. Which immediately frames the discussion not in terms of debate or discussion, but in terms of violence. And I think we so often, and I probably engaged in this discussion here, we so often view each other in the worst light possible. And I think a lot of benefit would happen if we recognize that that's what we do.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:56:23] Thank you, brother. You know, it's so interesting that, you know, when you plan out a podcast and what we're going to cover and what we're going to do, it never, it never happens. And one of the things we certainly planned was to do more celebration of this book. It really is one of the most important and interesting books that I've read in a long time. And I really credit to you and, and Blair and Coford books for letting voices speak for themselves. That's what's so beautiful in here. You got Dan Peterson and Ralph Hancock, especially Unleashed, you know, and for someone like me, in many ways those are self defeating or self refuting, you know, but they're here. And when you celebrate Julianne Reynolds in here and I'm going to. Huh. That is interesting because she's including mommy bloggers and Others, you know, as apologists, I'm thinking of about the different things. But you know, she's a co founder of fair, you know, and you have them all here along with you and others who are criticizing the apologetic enterprise. And there's just all sorts of discussions in here and then towards the end, very personal voices with both David Bacavoy and you mentioned Seth Payne.

Loyd Ericson [00:57:43] So the best way to celebrate that book is everybody should go out and buy five copies. Woo hoo. So I could take out Angela on a date one of these nights.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:57:52] Nice, nice. Well, dude, I just wanted to celebrate that and I loved the idea that this is out of luck. You know, when I get on these podcasts, John and Lloyd, it seems like so much of my, my activity here is countering extreme language. You know, it's something that felt like it was at this pole. So I naturally almost, you know, polarize and try to bring some sort of balance in it. And I just wanted to share with listeners, you know, if we were to sit down and chat and just do this, I absolutely value love and willing to talk about every one of these difficult issues that, you know, we've been raising. And I think John makes wonderful points and things like that about experience and also, so I don't want to ever make it sound like, oh, he's defending, defending, defending. I'm mostly countering extreme or you know, slightly accusatory or just not thinking the best. Like Lloyd was just talking about those kinds of things. The near apologists, I happen to know pretty much everyone quite well who has been sort of put in this group. And honestly, in person, you would really enjoy these people and you would see I'm not going to say that they're not telling the truth in what they say. Just like I, on my podcast, I believe everything I say. But I am and I admit that I am. I'm putting myself forward how I feel on a good day and not a bad day or not after. I just read a particular piece or something like that. And so these people have great depth that we're kind of putting in this category. And oh, they're fun and funny and we all like just like roll our eyes at various things and whatnot. So I just want to humanize them. But even as I, you know, they have every right to be strategic, to think about all the worries that Bert has, you know, that Bert helped us articulate today about jobs and reputation and being strategic and you know, thinking through a plan on a long term thing. Those are not things that I'm really quick to criticize. So I have loved this, John, and I still hope we'll do a third one. And we I really want to have some women guests and some people from this volume. And again, congratulations on the volume and thank for those. It looks like we've had really 60 to 100 people pretty much tuned in and I don't know how many of them are coming and going or whatnot, but thank you for your stamina and I hope this has been a rich experience.

John Dehlin [01:00:49] Thanks, Dan. And I'll just say again, I also agree that folks should go out and buy one to five copies of this book. It's definitely a worthy read. Lloyd, I want to just give a shout out to Kofert Books and to you and to the good people at Kofert. What you guys do is hard, and I think what you do is important and I think it deserves credit and attention. And because I'm sure you could make a lot more money doing other things. I'm sure Greg Kofer is not getting rich off of Coford Books. I'm sure he could invest that money in other ways and probably make a lot more. And so I do think what you guys do is an act of love. It's probably thankless work many times. It's probably ignored far too often than it should be. And so I wanted to start by number one, thanking you for your work, thanking you and Coford Books for what you do, thanking you for your willingness to come on the podcast. Even though you and I have probably disagreed or felt passionately in different ways. I appreciate you willing to dialogue and to come back on. So thank you, Lloyd.

Loyd Ericson [01:02:02] Thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [01:02:04] And I'll just end by agreeing with you, Lloyd and Dan and Bert. We need more light than heat. We need more. We need less extreme language. We need more understanding. We should have more compassion for all. And I love what you said, Lloyd, about understanding that everybody's coming from a place of love and sincerity for the most part. And I really like that. I hope that today has at least chipped away a bit at some of the thoughts or concerns or opinions or biases that people have. And I hope we can have more and more of these types of conversations where we try and think more clearly. I'll just end by saying I know Patrick Mason, Richard Bushman, Terrell Givens. I've met them. I've seen the work they do, and I have deep respect for what they do and I think what they do is really hard and I respect that what they do is nuanced. And it's subtle and it requires political capital and it's sophisticated. So I don't mean to come off as a harsh critic of them. I just think that, that there's a lot at stake in the decisions people make in their lives. And so we just have to keep doing the best that we can to get as reliable and as accurate information out there as we can to make people as informed as we can and to provide people with role models and opinions and perspectives that allow people as many options and possibilities as are viable. And that's why I'm a big supporter of Mormon Matters and a thoughtful faith and covert books, because they, even though those represent paths that are different from my own, I think people need lots of different role models and paths to choose from. And so I'm glad we're having these discussions. I hope that all these institutions keep thriving. And I just hope in the end people have all the information they need and all the role models and all the paths necessary to be able to make decisions that are best for them. And ultimately, I don't care what decisions people make as long as they're informed decisions and as long as they're decisions that lead to the optimal well being for the individuals involved.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:04:24] Nice.

John Dehlin [01:04:24] So thanks to all of you for being a part of that.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:04:26] Yeah. And let me add a thanks to the listeners who wrote comments. So I hope anybody who's listening to this, we'll go to the Mormon Stories page and find this live feed and look through the comments section because there was a lot of things there that I wish we could have gotten to. I know we had. John shared something from Tracy Austin earlier today that I would have loved to play with a little bit more. My friend Matt wrote me and I shared with John beforehand. I think we got to some of his issues tangentially, but it certainly wasn't our intent, everybody to not be as engaged with your specific questions and comments as we did. And I think it will enhance anybody's listening pleasure to actually go to Facebook and find kind of the running comments. So just wanted to cheer for that.

John Dehlin [01:05:16] Love it. All right everyone, thanks so much and thanks to our listeners. Thank you, Dan. Shout out to Mormon Matters. Love all you listeners there. Please support Dan. Please donate to Mormon Matters because we need to pay Dan and these podcasts have to be sustainable to be able to pay the podcast host. So donate to Mormon Matters. Donate to Mormon Stories. Buy lots of Coford Books. Books. There's a huge library. What's your website, Lloyd? Gregcoford.com all right. And how else can people support Coford Books? Lloyd?

Closing Thanks and Ways to Support the Podcast

Loyd Ericson [01:05:52] Buying multiple copies.

John Dehlin [01:05:54] Okay?

Loyd Ericson [01:05:54] You love a copy. Buy a copy for your friends.

John Dehlin [01:05:56] All right.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:05:59] On podcast.

Loyd Ericson [01:06:00] Yes. Have covert offers on podcast. Come to our events when we have them. Subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of greggcofer.com all right. Try not to spam.

John Dehlin [01:06:08] All right. Thanks, Lloyd. Thanks, Dan. Love you guys. And thanks to all our listeners. Please tune in again for more Mormon Matters and more Mormon Stories. Take care, everybody. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber at mormonstories. Org. Thank you very much.

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.