Introduction and Episode Preview

Carah Burrell [00:00:00] Remember that thing that everybody on the Internet saw where we took one of my friends and told her the truth about Joseph Smith and it flipped her life upside down? How did that impact her and her family? Tune in right now and we're going to talk about it.

Eve Rackleff [00:00:14] Going into that interview, I knew I was going to find out things that were not going to make me happy. Leaving the interview, honestly, it was almost an out of body experience. I. I'm like, is this all a joke? What is my life?

Christa Rackleff [00:00:31] In our life, whenever we're looking at any issue or question, we look at things critically and analytically. And we stopped and like, why have we not ever done that with the church? In the same way, why have we only looked at the sources the church has given us? It's time to look at this and decide, is this true or is this not in a very objective, quantifiable way?

Neal Rackleff [00:00:55] When you are indoctrinated from the time that you're a kid, you suspend your disbelief in the possibility that the church leaders could lead you astray. Because everything you're taught is that the way to return to God's presence is to follow the prophet, hang on to that iron rod, right? Once we became more objective, we looked back and said, how were we not more objective earlier? You know, what in the heck was going on?

John Dehlin [00:01:25] It's not trivial to note that so many super smart, super educated, otherwise very critically thinking Latter Day Saints just shut that stuff off for their whole lives.

Neal Rackleff [00:01:41] I think people may not realize how intense it is serving as a lay minister in the Church of Jesus Christa of Latter Day Saints. We felt like, yeah, we're magnifying our callings and we're doing the right things. But in retrospect, I look back and go, was that really the healthiest thing for a family with four little kids to have that much burden laid on them? And I'm telling you, when they learn in the church that you are good at leading, They will ride that frickin horse until it dies. They ask too much, frequently and don't give people the space to regroup and spend time with their families. Which is ironic for a church whose central focus is the family and spending time with your family.

John Dehlin [00:02:34] Why in the world would a super devout Mormon couple in their late 50s who had spent their whole lives committed to the Mormon Church and who, her grandparents, leave the Mormon Church? I'm John Dehlin. I'm here today. We got the band back together, the other band here with Carah Burrell. Hey, Carah.

Carah Burrell [00:02:51] Oh my gosh. Hey, John Dehlin.

John Dehlin [00:02:53] And we are back to tell one of those epic Mormon faith journey stories with a really amazing couple, former bishop, former Relief Society president, Mormon couple from Texas that was in it to win it today. We have Krista Radcliffe and we have Neil Radcliffe. Hi, guys.

Neal Rackleff [00:03:13] How are you?

John Dehlin [00:03:13] Thanks for coming in the studio.

Christa Rackleff [00:03:15] Thanks for having us.

Neal Rackleff [00:03:16] Very happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:03:17] And we also have their daughter Eve.

Neal Rackleff [00:03:20] Hey.

Eve Rackleff [00:03:21] Hey.

John Dehlin [00:03:22] Thanks for joining us. For the super fans out there, once upon a time, Carah and I interviewed Eve, Carah's friend. This was significant because Eve was right fresh in her Mormon faith crisis and was sort of unaware of a lot of the historical issues that, you know, affect many Mormons. And so Carah and I interviewed Eve and basically just shared with her a bunch of the Mormon history that she had never heard of before about Joseph Smith, peepstones, you know, polygamy, all the tough stuff. And it turned out to be Carah's most popular video by a factor of five. So it's got like, what, 700,000 video views?

John Dehlin [00:04:09] Wildly popular. Well, that wasn't the end of the story because Eve's parents, which are Christa and Neil Rackleff, they. They watched that video and they watched it as devout, faithful Mormons again, former bishop, former Relief Society president, and since then have had their own Mormon journey in connection with Eve's sort of pioneering work within the family. Is that fair to say?

Neal Rackleff [00:04:37] That's very accurate. We have another daughter who was a pioneer as well, but yes.

John Dehlin [00:04:43] So for those of you who haven't watched who are just stumbling on this episode, what we're doing is we're releasing. Re Releasing Karen, my interview with Eve as part one for the first time on the more Mormon Stories platform, even though that interview happened a couple years ago. And that will be part one. So if you haven't watched that yet, just pause this episode, go back one episode, watch Karen and I, our interview with Eve, and then come back to this part two, because this is the rest of the story of how Eve's parents were impacted by Karen Mai's interview with Eve. How did it do, Carah? Was that okay?

Carah Burrell [00:05:21] I mean, yeah. The way I would put it is like, remember that thing that everybody on the Internet saw where we took one of my friends and told her the truth about Joseph Smith and it flipped her life upside down. How did that impact her and her family? Tune in right now, and we're going to talk about it. It's just such a cool story that we even get to have this opportunity to be all together. So come with us on this journey, everyone yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:46] And also, like, it's tender because, Eve, I know that after we did the interview with you, you experienced some rough stuff. Am I right, Eve?

Eve Rackleff [00:05:56] Yeah, it was difficult. I mean, obviously I chose to be there. But I think it was a very unique interview that you have done where you and Carah were telling someone, me all these things. Who didn't. I didn't know these things. Usually when people come on your channel, they know the issues. So, yeah, it was a hard space to be in.

John Dehlin [00:06:24] But would you have ever imagined then that your parents would be where they are now? Do you think? I'm just, you know.

Eve Rackleff [00:06:32] No, I oftentimes, even today I walk around and I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone or something. This feels so. I would have never imagined this happening.

John Dehlin [00:06:45] Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, we're super excited. Thanks for being here, Carah. Thanks for coming back. I'm so happy to have you as co host today. And let's jump in. So who's older, Neil or Christa?

Neal's Mormon Upbringing and Early Faith

Neal Rackleff [00:06:58] I bet six months.

John Dehlin [00:06:59] Okay.

Neal Rackleff [00:07:00] Five months. Right.

John Dehlin [00:07:01] All right, so let's just dig in. So, Neil, a couple questions about your upbringing.

Neal Rackleff [00:07:07] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:07:08] You know where. Tell me just really briefly about your parents. Were they Mormon? Where did they meet? And were you a convert to the church or were you born into the church?

Neal Rackleff [00:07:18] So my parents were converts to the church. They joined when I was three. My very first memory that I can recall was walking into the living room of our home and seeing a little suit on the couch. And I was like, what's that for, Mom? And she said, we're going to go to church. And so that was the beginning. So I was effectively born in the church.

John Dehlin [00:07:37] Where was this?

Neal Rackleff [00:07:38] This was Orange County, Southern California. We lived in San Juan Capistrano at the time, was raised in San Clemente. My parents were Orange county folks. They went to Santa Ana High School. Great parents. I think I had a great family life.

John Dehlin [00:07:52] And do you know what made them join the church? Like, what was going on in their lives? This would have been the. What early?

Neal Rackleff [00:07:58] It would have been the 60s. I was born in 64. So they. So this was around probably 67. They both had real struggles in their. Their own homes, with their own parents, and they were married very young and they set out to go find the right church to join. And the missionaries knocked on my mom's door one day while my dad was at work. And mom's a very spiritual person and she said the spirit just kind of hit her and she knew right away that what these guys were saying was true. And they joined the church and were very dedicated to the church from then on.

John Dehlin [00:08:36] How many total kids did they have?

Neal Rackleff [00:08:39] Four. And then one son that they adopted when I was about 18.

John Dehlin [00:08:43] So. So where are you in the birth order?

Neal Rackleff [00:08:44] Number two.

John Dehlin [00:08:45] Okay. Okay. And so you were super young when they joined, so you probably don't have a lot of pre Mormon memories.

Neal Rackleff [00:08:52] No, not at all.

John Dehlin [00:08:53] For all intents and purposes, you were born under the covenant, even though you weren't correct. But as far as your memory goes, you were pretty much a born Mormon.

Neal Rackleff [00:09:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:01] How, in what ways was your family kind of the typical Mormon family versus atypical in your childhood and teen years?

Neal Rackleff [00:09:09] They were pretty typical. You know, my parents were pretty devout. We, you know, we didn't do things on Sunday that you're not supposed to or by the way my family interpreted the Sabbath day commandment. We were, we were pretty hardcore, you know, although my parents were pretty, pretty chill people. But, but we were, we were very much into the church.

John Dehlin [00:09:31] So like scripture study, family prayers, we had family prayer.

Neal Rackleff [00:09:34] We didn't do scripture study much, but we did engage in family prayer and

John Dehlin [00:09:39] Sunday, three hours of church every Sunday. Yeah, you probably remember when there were two Sunday meetings. You're probably old enough to remember.

Neal Rackleff [00:09:46] Yeah, we would go. And then later when we. I was old enough to go to priesthood, there were three. Yeah, we would go to priesthood and then come back and go to Sunday school, I think, and then sacrament meeting. So. Yeah, and we used to have the sacrament in primary.

John Dehlin [00:10:00] Right.

Neal Rackleff [00:10:00] Back in those days I did junior Sunday school. Oh, see, Chris has got the right term down.

John Dehlin [00:10:06] I forgot they used to do the sacrament in junior. What, in junior Sunday school?

Neal Rackleff [00:10:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:11] I had no idea it was like

Christa Rackleff [00:10:13] primary, but it was junior Sunday school.

Neal Rackleff [00:10:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:15] Okay.

Neal Rackleff [00:10:16] So sometimes you'd have the sacrament, you know, I guess we took it twice in sacrament.

Christa Rackleff [00:10:20] We did.

Neal Rackleff [00:10:20] And in junior Sunday school we were super hardcore.

John Dehlin [00:10:24] Okay. And do you remember in your childhood and adolescent years Mormonism being a good thing in your life?

Neal Rackleff [00:10:31] It was a great thing in my life. Yeah, I remember. I love stories of. In that I learned in primary about early missionaries of the church, you know, Wilford Woodruff and you know, and I love stories about Joseph Smith and, and from a little boy. The one thing I really wanted to do was be a missionary. I might cry a couple of times.

John Dehlin [00:10:57] That's okay.

Neal Rackleff [00:10:58] But I really, really wanted to serve. You know, it was deacons, quorum president and teachers, quorum president, first assistant and the priest quorum and finish the song. I hope they call me On a mission.

John Dehlin [00:11:13] That song framed so many of our early, you know, Mormon lives. Right. Just please let me go on a mission. That's all I want.

Neal Rackleff [00:11:19] Teach and preach and work as missionaries.

John Dehlin [00:11:21] Teach and preach and work.

Neal Rackleff [00:11:24] No, but. But literally, I remember, you know, I wasn't real academically inclined to. I didn't really want to go to college. I ended up going to college and law school and whatnot. But I just. The one thing I really. I didn't know what I wanted to do professionally, but I wanted to be a missionary, and I wanted to be a great missionary.

John Dehlin [00:11:41] Did you? Was sort of your Southern California Mormon experience saturated with, like, roadshows and dance festivals and temple trips and. Yeah, and all those cultural, you know, golden green balls and potlucks and all that stuff?

Neal Rackleff [00:11:56] Yep, yep. Yeah. Roadshows were a huge thing in our state.

John Dehlin [00:12:00] Did y' all have, like, Ward and Stake and regional dances?

Neal Rackleff [00:12:03] Oh, in Orange county, state dances were a huge deal. In fact, Krista and I were both born and raised in Orange county, but we didn't meet till we went to byu, but we're certain we were at some of the same dances. So there were like three or four stakes. There was the Orange steak, the Newport beach steak, the Mission Viejo steak, and like every Saturday you could go to a steak dance. And we would. They were packed. I mean, we would have, you know, a large stake center cultural hall would be wall to wall people. And we had live bands, too, so.

John Dehlin [00:12:33] Live bands at stake dances.

Carah Burrell [00:12:35] Oh, yeah, true.

Neal Rackleff [00:12:36] Yeah. And they would play Led Zeppelin.

John Dehlin [00:12:39] Like, what were they playing?

Christa Rackleff [00:12:40] Fairway to Heaven was always the last song.

Neal Rackleff [00:12:42] Always. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:43] Even though it was a. Ode to

Neal Rackleff [00:12:45] Satan and nobody worried about that.

Christa Rackleff [00:12:48] That passed by the.

Neal Rackleff [00:12:49] Yeah, we. We would even rent out South Coast Plaza, which was a major mall there in Costa Mesa, and have a New Year's Eve dance where they would have three bands. One for young adults, one for youth, and one for adults. This was sometimes called the Church of Jesus Christa Latter Day Saints country club kind of environment.

Carah Burrell [00:13:07] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [00:13:08] Before they had budgetary constraints and people spent a lot of money.

John Dehlin [00:13:12] Were dance cards a thing back then?

Neal Rackleff [00:13:13] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:13:14] Carah, do you know what a dance card is?

Carah Burrell [00:13:16] No. Will you tell me?

John Dehlin [00:13:17] No, Carah. They will, Krista.

Christa Rackleff [00:13:19] Oh. Well, in order to get into the dances, you had to agree to live by the rules.

John Dehlin [00:13:25] It's like a temple recommended, but to go to dances.

Christa Rackleff [00:13:27] Yeah. So if you brought friends who weren't members, they have to go have a little interview with like a bishopric member and agree to abide by all the rules. You Also had to dress like girls had to wear dresses and guys had to wear ties to go to the dances.

Neal Rackleff [00:13:43] And no jeans. No.

John Dehlin [00:13:44] And these would be 70s polyester thick ties.

Neal Rackleff [00:13:47] I'm assuming they were really cool looking.

John Dehlin [00:13:49] They were really leisure suits.

Christa Rackleff [00:13:52] They would have ties provided for you if you need.

Neal Rackleff [00:13:54] Yeah. If you didn't bring one and you were a radical. If you like snuck in without a tie and you'd be like avoiding the chaperones and.

Christa Rackleff [00:14:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:02] I have to ask, what were the top popper rock bands that would saturate your Southern Cal, you know, steak dance experiences? Do you remember? Was it like Eagles?

Neal Rackleff [00:14:15] Was it like the dances they would play? Sticks. What? Zeppelin? So we're talking classic Rock Journey.

John Dehlin [00:14:21] Yeah, classic Rock Journey.

Neal Rackleff [00:14:24] Now we were in that same period.

Christa Rackleff [00:14:26] Be a little B52s thrown in.

Neal Rackleff [00:14:28] Okay. Yeah, that's right.

John Dehlin [00:14:32] You ever heard of Rock Lobster Car

Eve Rackleff [00:14:33] Rock Lobster, of course, that was Born Yesterday.

Neal Rackleff [00:14:37] But we, we were kind of more into kind of underground new music that wasn't played at.

John Dehlin [00:14:44] You liked punk, I saw in your outline.

Neal Rackleff [00:14:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:47] Wave.

Neal Rackleff [00:14:48] When I was about 16.

John Dehlin [00:14:50] So is that like the Clash or.

Neal Rackleff [00:14:51] Who saw the Clash and. But there was a very thriving Los Angeles hardcore punk scene. And it really was underground then. You didn't have the Internet. It was hard. Just like Black Flag and Black Flag, the Circle Jerks.

John Dehlin [00:15:05] X. Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [00:15:06] Agent Orange. And so my brother, My older brother and me and a couple friends, you know, were Mormon kids. We couldn't smoke, we couldn't drink, we couldn't have premarital sex. So we wanted to do. I. I think we needed a crazy outlet. So we would go to these, these, these little dive clubs and, you know, radical parts of LA or in place called the Cuckoo's Nest in Orange County. And, and, and they were nuts. It was, you know, like teenagers going crazy diving off the stage and all kinds of.

John Dehlin [00:15:35] You were Straight Edge before. Straight Edge was cool.

Neal Rackleff [00:15:38] I was straight Edge and, and there was, you know, there were straight edge punk bands. Group that we were really into is Minor threat from Washington D.C. and Krista and I actually saw them together. What? When we were at BYU at a frat house in 1982. Yeah, there was a very cool music scene that we were pretty into. So we kind of go to the dances and be like, ah, well this music sucks. But we still had fun.

John Dehlin [00:16:03] Nice mom also,

Eve Rackleff [00:16:07] just so you know, mom touched Bono's boot and he used her camera to take a picture of someone. So.

John Dehlin [00:16:16] So this is like early YouTub.

Christa Rackleff [00:16:19] They came to, to Utah when this was. I think 83. And I went and saw them in a.

John Dehlin [00:16:26] Was that like October, the October Band, like, album, or.

Christa Rackleff [00:16:30] I think so.

Neal Rackleff [00:16:32] Or. I think it might have been war.

John Dehlin [00:16:34] War.

Eve Rackleff [00:16:34] War.

Christa Rackleff [00:16:35] Okay.

Neal Rackleff [00:16:35] First in October than war.

Christa Rackleff [00:16:37] So I think it was war. Yeah, it was you.

John Dehlin [00:16:39] Why you liked you, too.

Christa Rackleff [00:16:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:41] Eve, you have a freaking cool mom.

Eve Rackleff [00:16:44] She was cool. She had her hair, like. Half of it was short and half of it was longer. She's still cool, but.

Neal Rackleff [00:16:53] Yeah, she's very.

Carah Burrell [00:16:54] I try.

John Dehlin [00:16:54] I mean, I don't mean to say your dad wasn't cool.

Neal Rackleff [00:16:57] I was into you, too, also.

Carah Burrell [00:16:58] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:16:58] Okay.

Neal Rackleff [00:17:00] Boot.

John Dehlin [00:17:00] Okay. Yeah. That's pretty. I mean, anyway, that's cool. Okay, so really quickly, how you know this. This is like peak Bruce R. McConkey era for Mormonism. I'm curious how indoctrinated you were, Neil, in terms of, like, core orthodox Mormon doctrine. Signs of the times, you know, hardcore Mormon, you know, correlated, whitewashed. Bruce. I'm a Conkey, Joseph Feeling Smith. Mormon doctrine kind of stuff.

Neal Rackleff [00:17:34] Yeah. So, you know, my parents weren't. We didn't have a large book collection, but Mormon doctrine was on the bookshelf. And anytime we were given an assignment to give a talk, I would go to Mormon doctrine and I would study it. I also just like studying Mormon doctrine to learn about the gospel. I was very curious as a kid.

Neal Rackleff [00:17:54] I think I was 11, I decided that the church had an awful lot of rules. And I remember thinking, you know, I don't want to live all these rules if it's not true. So I started praying to find out whether the church was true or not. And then I had a series of, like, kind of warm feelings. And I went to my mom and I said, mom, is this the Spirit? You know, and she was, you know, being a convert, she was like, I have a crisis here. So she called a friend and tried to divine whether I was having spiritual problems. It might have been indigestion or something, I don't know.

Neal Rackleff [00:18:28] But I had feelings that led me to believe that the church was true. And from that point on, I was devoted to and got my patriarchal blessing when I was about 16. And that was very helpful for me. You know, I was not academically inclined, didn't want to go to college. But there was a line in my patriarchal blessing that said that I counsel you to go to college, and in your particular case, I counsel you to not be satisfied with less than a.

Neal Rackleff [00:18:58] I think it said with less than a college degree, which to me implied that. That I should probably go to graduate. School, because not less than I was like, oh, this sucks. I don't want to go to college and I sure don't want to get a graduate degree. But because of that, I chose to go to college.

John Dehlin [00:19:14] Yeah. We often talk about kind of the dark side of patriarchal blessings, but sometimes they actually give people focus and direction that's good for them.

Neal Rackleff [00:19:22] Oh, it was great for me.

John Dehlin [00:19:24] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [00:19:24] Yeah, it was really helpful.

John Dehlin [00:19:26] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [00:19:27] I loved my time in the church as a youth growing up.

John Dehlin [00:19:30] And did you have any of those? We, we often, you know, most of the people we interview have some sort of dark, you know, shame. Repentance based experiences with their bishop as a teenager that kind of seals their guilt. Shame, but also their commitment to the church. Did you have any of that type of stuff?

Neal Rackleff [00:19:47] I never broke the law of chastity.

John Dehlin [00:19:49] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [00:19:50] Never.

John Dehlin [00:19:51] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [00:19:52] Never broke the word of wisdom. I lived the commandments.

John Dehlin [00:19:56] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [00:19:56] Now, something that did occur to me when I was young was something that was a kind of sexual abuse as a very young kid, which my kids probably don't even know about. And when I was about nine, I remember learning that, oh, you're not supposed to do this, which was something that was done to me. And so I went to my bishop and confessed.

Neal Rackleff [00:20:21] And I remember going in tears to his office, and he was a very kind man and he was really cool and he was just nice and understanding. It was like, well, this is okay, you know? But I didn't realize then that this was something done to me. But I had just a hyperactive conscience all my life. You know, I just can't lie now, saying that I lie on occasion because anybody who says they never lie is a liar. Right. But my lives might be like, if somebody says, how do I look today? I'm not going to say not too great if I don't think you look too great. But, you know, I just have always. And I didn't know the term scrupulosity until recently, but I have a boatload of scrupulosity.

John Dehlin [00:21:11] For those who don't know, that's basically religious. Ocd, Obsessive compulsive disorder, which. A religious manifestation. So.

Neal Rackleff [00:21:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:18] So that was you?

Neal Rackleff [00:21:20] Oh, totally. Yeah. And I don't know how totally OCD it was, but it was strong. I wanted to do what was right and I did do what was right.

John Dehlin [00:21:28] Nice. All right, so anything else about your kind of childhood or adolescence before we check in with Christa?

Neal Rackleff [00:21:38] No, I'll just say prayer was a big part of my life from an early age. And when I was deciding to go to college, you know, my senior year because I wasn't super academically inclined. But my patriarchal blessing said, you should go to college. I remember we had a guidance counselor said, yeah, if you're, if you all are going to go to college, you need to get your applications. And I'm like, I don't know anything about going to applying to college. Nobody in my family had gone to college before. And so I remember going home and kneeling down and praying and saying.

Neal Rackleff [00:22:14] And it was interesting because before I even prayed, I had this strong impression that I should pray about going to byu. Now, context, I thought BYU was lame. It just seemed to be so stereotypically Mormon. I'd never been to Utah. I imagined it being out in the desert somewhere in some desolate place. I did not want to go to byu. And I had this super strong feeling that I should pray about going to byu. And I did.

Neal Rackleff [00:22:38] And then I just had this strong manifestation that I should do that. And my grades were not good and I didn't do great on the act. I think I went to a punk show the night before the act and did not prepare and was up till three in the morning or something and barely got the grades to squeak by to get into BYU at a time when anybody could get into byu. So, yeah, prayer has always been a big part of my life.

John Dehlin [00:23:05] Beautiful. All right. I think I get a sense for your SoCal Mormon, Orange County Mormon story in the kind of late 70s, early 80s. I'm loving it. Okay, well, let's turn to you, Krista. Tell us a little bit about your Mormon story.

Christa's Mormon Background and Testimony

Christa Rackleff [00:23:21] So both my parents were members, raised in the church. My maternal grandfather was the first stake president in Dallas. And so, you know, some pioneer background on, on both sides. My parents met at Stanford University. My mom was an undergraduate. My dad was getting his master's degree. And I'm the youngest of five. Very, um, very strong Mormon family. My mom particularly.

John Dehlin [00:23:57] What's your maiden name if you want to share?

Christa Rackleff [00:24:00] Fjellstead.

John Dehlin [00:24:01] Okay.

Christa Rackleff [00:24:03] My mom served, like, when I was young. She was 7 years stake young Women's president and then she was seminary teacher.

John Dehlin [00:24:10] Where was this?

Christa Rackleff [00:24:11] In Tustin in Orange County.

John Dehlin [00:24:13] Okay. You. After Stanford, your parents moved?

Christa Rackleff [00:24:16] Yeah, they. They spent most of their time in Southern California. I grew up exclusively in Southern California.

John Dehlin [00:24:23] Okay, yeah. So your mom was stake relief study

Christa Rackleff [00:24:26] president, Steak Young Women's presence for like seven years. She was a relief site present before that, seminary teacher for a couple years, all while raising five kids and being a math Teacher in middle school. So she was amazing. Amazing person.

Neal Rackleff [00:24:43] Very amazing. And I'll just say her mom is. My mom is amazing too. Hi, Mom. Her mom is one of my heroes in terms of being a great leader and just ball of fire energy. Awesome person who's incredibly intelligent but also really down to earth.

Christa Rackleff [00:25:02] Yeah, my. So, yeah, grew up just. My mom's mantra to us was always support the program when she talked about, like, church things. So if there was a roadshow, if there was a dance festival, if there was seminary, whatever it was, we did it. We did everything. You know, we were super all in.

John Dehlin [00:25:22] Was the LA Temple built during, you know, your childhood or adolescence by the time you were growing up?

Christa Rackleff [00:25:27] Yeah, yeah, we would go. We would do temple trips to the. Yeah. Baptisms for the dead up at the LA Temple. We would make trips up there. Yeah, we would. We did it all. My parents, the LA Temple wasn't there when they got married. They got married at the St. George Temple, but we were married in the LA Temple.

John Dehlin [00:25:45] My parents were also married in the St. George Temple.

Christa Rackleff [00:25:46] Oh, cool.

Neal Rackleff [00:25:47] Cool.

Christa Rackleff [00:25:48] Yeah. So, yeah, grew up, hung. Hung around almost exclusively with Mormon kids because, you know, that's, you know, there were so many of us and, you know, you're going to steak dances, you're going to seminary, you're going. Doing all these things. That's where. That's where my friend base was.

John Dehlin [00:26:07] So.

Christa Rackleff [00:26:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:09] What was your testimony development like pre college?

Christa Rackleff [00:26:14] Just for me, it was kind of like you would hear general authorities talk about different types of testimonies, and I felt like mine was kind of that just slow burn of like just kind of. It was always there, kind of always knowing I didn't have a lot of strong. Like, I do remember praying about the Book of Mormon once when I was in college and feeling, you know, just to get more of a confirmation, but feeling like that was. That was true. I remember in the mtc, I went. I served admission in Dallas, and I remember a lot of feelings about Joseph Smith and just feeling like, you know, it was, it was, it was the right thing and I was in the right place.

John Dehlin [00:26:59] What year's were you in Dallas?

Christa Rackleff [00:27:01] On my mission. That was 85 80s. Beginning of 86 to middle of 87.

John Dehlin [00:27:09] Nice.

Neal Rackleff [00:27:10] And one thing I would interject is she went to the mission, the area where her grandpa had been the stake president. He was the stake president for like 16 years.

Christa Rackleff [00:27:19] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [00:27:19] And that was a time when the church was much smaller. And so, you know, they had general authorities and apostles and prophets there. And her Grandma, who she's named after, was a wonderful person who had this rule that all of her four daughters had to get. Had to graduate from college before they could get married, which is pretty unusual in LDS culture back in the 50s.

Christa Rackleff [00:27:42] Yeah, this was in the 40s to 50s, and yeah, I felt kind of a connection to my grandfather by going and serving in the area where he was stake president. And I would serve in little towns outside of Dallas. And everywhere I went, you know, when I talked to people, they knew my grandfather because.

John Dehlin [00:28:03] What was his full name?

Christa Rackleff [00:28:05] Irvin Atkinson.

John Dehlin [00:28:06] Okay.

Christa Rackleff [00:28:07] Because, you know, they had, he had either called them on a mission or, you know, they had, you know, all the older folks and stuff.

John Dehlin [00:28:15] Do you think it was a coincidence you got called to Dallas or do you think you wrote that on your application and they saw that?

Christa Rackleff [00:28:20] I, I don't know. I, I don't think it was total coincidence. I. Whether it was, you know, divine intervention or if it was something on my application. I was the youngest of five. All my other siblings went abroad, and I, I was in New York at the time when I was putting my papers in and living with my sister and brother in law. My brother in law was actually 25 and our. My bishop at the time. And I just had a feeling, I'm gonna go states. I just, you know, everybody else got to go foreign, but I have a feeling that that's what's going to happen to me. But I was surprised when it was Dallas because I'm like, I thought at least I'd go someplace I'd never been before, like Kansas or something. And.

John Dehlin [00:29:13] But I would interpret it as a sign of particular devotion for you to have served a mission in the mid-80s, because back then, Mormon women rarely served missions. Correct.

Christa Rackleff [00:29:26] Yeah, it was starting to get a little more commonplace, you know, but my sister had before me, she had gone to Hong Kong, but yeah, it was starting to get a little more common, but it wasn't as common as it is now.

John Dehlin [00:29:41] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [00:29:43] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:29:44] Uh, so any other, any other things you want to share about your Mormon upbringing? Sounds like you were in it to win it. Super committed, living the Mormon dream. Would you say your Mormon experience up through your mission was positive?

Christa Rackleff [00:29:58] Yes, definitely.

John Dehlin [00:30:00] Yeah, definitely. And the church was true all the way. Yeah.

Christa Rackleff [00:30:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:05] Okay. And as you're thinking about, like, up through your mission, how would you have envisioned your life being in terms of church devotion and commitment? What milestones would you, you have anticipated reaching as you, you know, got progressed in your 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s?

Christa Rackleff [00:30:24] Oh, just you Know, kind of the way it all played out. You know, expected to marry in the temple, have kids, you know, serve and serve and serve some more.

John Dehlin [00:30:34] Yeah. And all your kids would.

Christa Rackleff [00:30:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:37] Do the same thing.

Christa Rackleff [00:30:38] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:30:38] And then when you were old, what would happen? Well, would you serve missions?

Christa Rackleff [00:30:44] Oh, yeah. We always talked about serving missions when we retired. And you know, so you were all that.

John Dehlin [00:30:52] So, so like leaving the church was never on my. As grandparents, that wasn't on your radar?

Christa Rackleff [00:30:58] No.

John Dehlin [00:30:59] Okay, how about, how about you, Neil?

Neal Rackleff [00:31:01] Absolutely not.

John Dehlin [00:31:03] You think, you think leaving the church in your late 50s was kind of in your roadmap?

Neal Rackleff [00:31:08] No, not in any way. And it. And before I came across information that caused me to have significant questions, in fact, I would have served a mission anywhere that I was. That we would have been called. I mean, that's just a couple years ago. I mean, if we'd have been called to go to the most, you know, God forsaken, weird place in the planet with nothing and yeah, we would have gone.

John Dehlin [00:31:32] Yeah, yeah.

Neal Rackleff [00:31:33] And we would have thought it was awesome, you know. No, as a sign of devotion. I mean we, we were, we were. I don't like the phrase in it to win it. To me it sounds like a basketball game. This wasn't a fricking basketball game. This was our lives. We ate, drank and slept. This religion, we loved it. I love the, the church, the people in it, the good things that are done in the church. We were. You know, I see sometimes comments on people's Mormon stories where they say, oh, well, I guess you weren't really converted, you know, because you left. I don't want some 23 year old telling me I wasn't really converted. We were, we were hardcore. We were totally full bore into the whole thing.

John Dehlin [00:32:20] All right, well, Krista, anything else you want to say about kind of pre marriage life for you?

Christa Rackleff [00:32:30] No. I mean we, we met at BYU when we were freshmen. I was.

John Dehlin [00:32:38] Were you in the dorms?

Christa Rackleff [00:32:39] Yeah, we were in the dorms.

John Dehlin [00:32:40] Deseret Desert.

Christa Rackleff [00:32:43] No, that's a.

John Dehlin [00:32:44] That would be when you were Deseret Towers.

Christa Rackleff [00:32:46] Yeah, yeah, we would, we would hang out at the Morris center together and we would. I really liked Neil. I had a crush on him before he, you know, we were just friends. But I remember saying to one of my friends from back home, was I. I could imagine growing old with this guy. And that's when we were just barely kind of sort of dating. Not quite there dating yet, but when we were freshmen.

Neal Rackleff [00:33:18] Yeah, it's very nice.

John Dehlin [00:33:21] So. Okay. And you served a Mission in New Zealand, Right?

Neal's Mission and BYU Courtship

Neal Rackleff [00:33:24] Auckland, New Zealand. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:25] Anything like, super important, your warmer story that you need to say about your mission, or would you say it was a pretty typical mission?

Neal Rackleff [00:33:32] I don't know what a typical mission is. It's pretty nuanced. I think the I was so into being a good missionary that I tried to be perfectly obedient and I really strove to work hard. And when I got to my mission, I was shocked to learn that there were a lot of 19 year olds who didn't follow the rules. I'm like, what? You know, they're not all like, Parley P. Pratt or, you know, what? I've read about the early missionaries of the church.

Neal Rackleff [00:33:59] And so I just shut that out and tried to be as obedient as I could. I remember telling my mission president at one point, I said, you know, because I thought my trainer wasn't working as hard as we could. And I was like, can you give me a different companion? Like some psycho guy on the mission that works so hard that nobody wants to be with him, because that's what I want to do.

John Dehlin [00:34:22] And he's like, who you were?

Neal Rackleff [00:34:23] Yeah, well. And he's like, well, Elder Radcliffe, are you aware that you guys are teaching more discussions per week than anybody in the mission? I'm like, no. He's like, you might be out of the frying pan into the fryer. Anyhow, I, I, I was really, really into it and I taught. I learned so much about discipline, about how to study. So when I got back to BYU after my mission, I got pretty much straight A's. And, you know, college wasn't so difficult.

John Dehlin [00:34:48] The mission turned you around like so many people.

Neal Rackleff [00:34:50] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a great experience for me.

John Dehlin [00:34:52] Even now. Do you regret that you served that mission, even looking back?

Neal Rackleff [00:34:57] No. No, I don't. I did the best I could with the light and knowledge I had at the time.

John Dehlin [00:35:03] But also, it was. Sounds like it was formative.

Neal Rackleff [00:35:05] Oh, totally formative. Yeah. My, one of my mission presidents had been a two star general in the Air Force, was an amazing leader. And the things I've learned about managing people and leading people came from President Laster. He was phenomenal and he loved us. And it was a great, great experience.

John Dehlin [00:35:24] Yeah, beautiful. Okay, so you all met at tt and anything you want to say about falling in love and deciding to get married?

Neal Rackleff [00:35:36] Just courtship, you know, typical, Typical BYU courtship.

John Dehlin [00:35:40] I keep saying typical.

Neal Rackleff [00:35:41] It wasn't typical BYU courtship because we actually knew each other for four or five years before we got married. Oh, which is very atypical, right?

John Dehlin [00:35:49] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [00:35:49] So we. We hung around with the same group of friends that were into, like, punk rock music and stuff. And we. We were really good friends. I had a girlfriend back home that I, you know, so I didn't want to date when I was at BYU my freshman year, which was really stupid. But so Krista and I got to know each other on a very friendly basis. I was like, you know, total spaz around her, not trying to impress her in any way, and somehow she was not repulsed. And so we just. We would dance together, go to social things.

Neal Rackleff [00:36:19] I thought she was the coolest girl out there, but I wasn't into waiting for people on my mission, so I just went on my mission. When I got back, she was about to leave on her mission, had her call, and we dated intensely for a few weeks before she left. And the night before she went to the mtc, I contemplated asking her to marry me. I prayed about it and I got this impression that, like, no, she needs to have this experience and so you shouldn't ask her that. So I didn't. And she went on her mission and. But when she came back, we got engaged within six weeks or something.

Christa Rackleff [00:36:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:58] Okay.

Neal Rackleff [00:36:59] So I think the friendship that we had was a really solid foundation for our marriage. And we're not these byu, you know, stories where you get engaged and married, you know, six weeks after you know each other or whatever the heck.

Christa Rackleff [00:37:13] Yeah, we knew each other for five years, but a lot of that time we were each on mission, so.

Neal Rackleff [00:37:18] Yeah.

Neal and Christa's Marriage and Family Life

John Dehlin [00:37:19] All right. So when you all decided to get married, what year did you get married?

Christa Rackleff [00:37:22] 1987.

John Dehlin [00:37:23] 87. That's the year I graduated from high school.

Neal Rackleff [00:37:26] So you're a youngster.

John Dehlin [00:37:28] I'm a youngster, yeah. And I. I assume, was it explicit, your sort of marriage contract, that it was going to be Mormon all the way? Faithful Mormon, devout orthodox Mormon till the end?

Carah Burrell [00:37:41] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:42] Was it explicit or implied?

Neal Rackleff [00:37:44] Oh, it was explicit. We had discussions about it.

Christa Rackleff [00:37:47] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [00:37:48] And you might talk about the. To the Mothers in Zion. Awesome talk and pamphlet that.

John Dehlin [00:37:53] But that was Holland, right?

Christa Rackleff [00:37:55] No, that wasn't. So while I was surfing my mission, Ezra Taft Benson gave a fireside talk, and then they made it into this pamphlet, this pink pamphlet that came out.

John Dehlin [00:38:09] He would have been president at the time of your marriage.

Neal Rackleff [00:38:12] Right.

Christa Rackleff [00:38:14] And it was called to the Mothers in Zion. And it just was really throwback to 50s style, like June Cleaver.

John Dehlin [00:38:27] Women stay home and raise the kids.

Christa Rackleff [00:38:29] Yes, very much that way, but I really struggled with it. Because I grew up in this family, like Neil explained, where education was, was high priority. My grandmother, my mom's mom, was forced to drop out of school at about eighth grade, which she always resented, to help put her brothers through school. And she, like, was. Had a voracious appetite for learning and just like, was always reading and educating herself. And so she made it a rule for her four daughters that they needed to graduate college before they got married.

John Dehlin [00:39:08] I wonder how your mom as a Stanford graduate felt about Ezra Taft Benson's Talk to the Mothers in Zion.

Christa Rackleff [00:39:16] Yeah, see, by this time my parents were divorced. My mom was married to a now non member.

John Dehlin [00:39:23] They went to a worldly, academic, intellectual university.

Christa Rackleff [00:39:29] She was way into the church, but at this time, there was a little bit of a softening or distance, you know, to that. And she, she probably didn't even know about the talk, you know.

John Dehlin [00:39:41] Wait, your parents divorced When?

Christa Rackleff [00:39:45] Just, just before. A little bit before I went on my mission.

John Dehlin [00:39:49] Oh, that's important wrinkle to your story. So your faithful, devout temple married parents get divorced.

Neal Rackleff [00:39:55] Yeah, the kind of family that nobody ever thought the parents would get divorced.

John Dehlin [00:40:01] And, and did they leave the church, stay in the church? And you said they remarried non Mormons?

Christa Rackleff [00:40:07] My mother remarried to a non Mormon. My. My dad actually married another LDS lady.

John Dehlin [00:40:14] Did your mom kind of go inactive at that point or sort of. Okay.

Christa Rackleff [00:40:18] Her activities? Often, you should say. And so, so I feel like at this point in time on my mission and like, through coming back to byu, my indoctrination became very strong, much stronger than. And it kind of overrode my cultural upbringing of like, you know, education first and do these things. And so I was struggling with this.

Christa Rackleff [00:40:49] You got to get your education, as opposed to this message from the church where I felt they kind of tried to walk both lines. They would say, like, it's super important for women to get educated, but don't wait to get married and don't wait to have kids. And so I'm reading this pamphlet, listening to this talk, and trying to figure out what am I supposed to do.

Christa Rackleff [00:41:11] They're saying this, but they're saying that it doesn't line up to me. And I know in my family education is really important. Anyway, I get home from mission, Neil and I reconnect, and, and we get engaged, you know, and when you have this indoctrination, you feel like you know more than maybe what you've grown up with or what you've been taught by your parents, you know, and so we felt like, no, it's not we shouldn't wait to get married. We should get married now. That's what the prophet's telling us to do. Don't wait. And not that I regret getting married that young. I mean, I'm marrying Neil is the best decision I ever made in my life, so.

Neal Rackleff [00:42:00] And same with vice versa. Yeah. I mean, we have a great marriage and just love each other to death, and we've had a wonderful life together.

John Dehlin [00:42:10] Were you both your parents able to attend your temple wedding?

Christa Rackleff [00:42:12] No.

John Dehlin [00:42:13] Neither.

Christa Rackleff [00:42:14] My dad was.

John Dehlin [00:42:15] So your mom. See, there's something going on with your mom there.

Christa Rackleff [00:42:18] Yeah, well.

John Dehlin [00:42:19] Yeah.

Christa Rackleff [00:42:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:20] Okay, so y' all get married in 87. And how many kids did you end up having?

Eve Rackleff [00:42:27] Four.

John Dehlin [00:42:28] Four kids. And where is Eve in the birth order?

Christa Rackleff [00:42:31] She's number one.

John Dehlin [00:42:32] Number one. Eve, you're number one in the birth order.

Eve Rackleff [00:42:35] I'm number one in general.

Eve's Experience Growing Up in the Rackleff Home

John Dehlin [00:42:38] All right, so, Eve, let's have you take over here for a second and tell us about your family while you were growing up and how Mormon or not Mormon your family was. Let's hear Eve's perspective on this one.

Eve Rackleff [00:42:52] We were completely Mormon. There was no where were you Mormon? Part of this. So I was born while my parents were at school.

Christa Rackleff [00:43:02] Yeah.

Eve Rackleff [00:43:02] So I was born in Provo, and then my parents moved to LA when my dad went to law school at usc. And then when I was three, we moved to Houston.

John Dehlin [00:43:15] Wait, you're a Trojan?

Neal Rackleff [00:43:17] Well, for grad school, you went to law school?

John Dehlin [00:43:20] Usc.

Neal Rackleff [00:43:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:21] That's a pretty good school.

Neal Rackleff [00:43:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:23] Was OJ There then?

Neal Rackleff [00:43:24] No, no, I'm not that old.

Eve Rackleff [00:43:28] So we were in Houston. Yeah, I grew up in Houston.

John Dehlin [00:43:34] Which part?

Eve Rackleff [00:43:36] Well, in high school, we moved to Spring. I went to Klein High School.

John Dehlin [00:43:40] Okay.

Eve Rackleff [00:43:41] So kind of Northwest. Ish. A little bit. But when I was really young, my dad was the bishop, and I remember that that was a very formative thing in my life. And then my grandmother, she was the primary president and the Relief Society president, and. Yeah, there was just no part of us that wasn't Mormon. And then when I went to high school school, my parents specifically moved to an area at Klein High School. There were over a hundred members in the high school. We had two seminary classes for each grade. And I remember they very specifically moved there so that we could be around a lot of Mormon kids. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:33] What steak was that?

Christa Rackleff [00:44:34] Klein.

Neal Rackleff [00:44:35] The Klein steak. It was very close to the temple. We lived about three miles from the Houston Temple.

John Dehlin [00:44:40] Okay, Eve, I'm asking you a hard question, and you have to be honest, even though your parents are Listening. So there's some Mormon families that just put on the appearance of righteousness, but like, behind the scenes, they're a mess. And of course, all families are a mess or imperfect. But like, would you say your family was like, indeed living, you know, walking the walk and not just talking the talk in terms of their Mormonism or. Or was there a real disparity between how they presented publicly and how you guys lived as a Mormon family? I know that's a bold question, but I'm asking it that.

Eve Rackleff [00:45:17] There was no disparity. I think that can be attributed to. My dad has talked about his scrupulosity, a lot of which I suffered as well. Just a very overactive conscience. And yeah, there was no, this is how we are at church and this is how we are at home. It was what you see is what you got, and what you got was very Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:45:43] So, like, again, family prayer, scripture study, family home, evening Sabbath attendance, word of wisdom observance, swearing, our movies, you know, word of modesty. How is, how is all that stuff for you?

Eve Rackleff [00:45:59] We followed all the rules. I heard a lot, just like my mom said. Her mom said, support the program. And I was told that a lot. We would go to all of the activities. We. Yeah, there was a time when my parents didn't drink caffeine for a little bit. They were like, we're not doing caffeinated beverages.

John Dehlin [00:46:19] So like, Even Coke or Dr. Pepper was a no, no.

Christa Rackleff [00:46:24] When they were younger.

Eve Rackleff [00:46:24] That was a very short time. But. And then there was a time when. Want to see any PG13 movies? Like not even R, but not even PG13. I think when Lord of the Rings came out, we changed that rule of the rings. But yeah, it was. And we did scripture study. I mean, oftentimes if people were too tired or whatever, we would quote a scripture. But I remember lots of times sitting down in the evenings, kind of falling asleep with people reading the scriptures. But we do scripture study and family prayer every night. Yeah, basically everything you can think of, we were doing it well.

Neal Rackleff [00:47:11] And I would say too, you know, when President Benson said that we need to focus more on the Book of Mormon and he gave specific promises that would be realized if we read the Book of Mormon daily. From that point on, we started reading the Book of Mormon daily. Now, sometimes it was quoting a verse because we were all really tired and we didn't read, you know, long passages. We had little kids, but we believed that those promises would be realized. And. And we lived that. And. And they seem to be realized. Or there was A quote in there that, you know, children will be more obedient to their parents, parents will be more, like, patient and kind to their children, yada yada. And it seemed like we had a little more peace in our home once we started reading the Book of Mormon every night.

John Dehlin [00:47:59] Eve, let me ask you, were you psychologically on board or were you psychologically rebellious and sort of like skeptical or, you know, unexcited about being on the Mormon train?

Eve Rackleff [00:48:16] I was not rebellious or skeptical at all. What's whatsoever? I mean, I was a seventh generation Mormon. I came from a long line of people who were very intelligent. My mom's side of the family, they're just some really, really smart and successful people and super devout. And I saw these things working for them. And honestly, I think a lot of it was me thinking, these people are so smart, it's blessing their lives. If this wasn't true, they would know it wasn't true. And I just trusted and believed.

Neal Rackleff [00:49:02] Yeah, we weren't trying to live the gospel just to check boxes. For me, there was a very intentional methodology there. Right. I believed that the most important thing that I could do was to stay as close to the Spirit, to the Holy Ghost as I could, because I wanted to be in a position as a father and as a husband to be able to receive any revelation that God maybe might choose to send to me to bless the lives of my kids and my wife and our family. And so my obedience was driven by striving to be holy and worthy, to be able to receive divine guidance. And that was my almost central focus in life.

John Dehlin [00:49:55] Yeah. I'm wondering if you agree with this, but given the context of Eve's interview that you'll see that you, that you will have watched hopefully previous to this episode, this idea of like, smart or, you know, intelligent or knowledge or whatever, education, it's. It's sort of telling, given the whole context of our interview with Eve, was sort of Carah and I sharing with Eve for the first time a bunch of just factual, basic things about Mormon church history that in spite of being a seventh generational Mormon, she had never learned before. And it's compounded by, you know, spoiler alert, that like, Eve and us ended up instructing you two about a church that you both had given your lives to.

Neal Rackleff [00:50:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:50] In spite of you being a usc, you know, graduate attorney, and you being an educated woman whose mom went to Stanford, who, who was also very much into learning and education. Like the irony of this, education, intellect, focus. Given what now your family just in the past Two years has gone through cuts really thick. Does that, does that make sense, what I'm trying to communicate?

Carah Burrell [00:51:17] And I think in Eve's interview that we did, I remember specifically how good her questions were back to us. She's like, where is that written? And I remember you mentioned her receipts. Yeah. That you mentioned to her. Like, I can tell that your father is an attorney because of, like, the way that you're interrogating this and that you're. You're really good at questioning. And I think another reason why that is received so well is Eve comes off extremely intelligent as well as being very devout Mormon. And I don't know what most people think about Mormons out there in the real world, but an extremely intelligent and.

Carah Burrell [00:51:49] And beautiful friend of mine, Eve, just being so on point in so many areas, being extremely devout, dedicating your life to the church, having a family that's dedicated their life to the church. So you're. You have all of those boxes checked, but also very inquisitive at the same time. Having both of those, you know, both existing in concert with each other to then come in front of Carah and John to be presented with this information.

John Dehlin [00:52:13] Yeah. Like, totally shell shocked.

Carah Burrell [00:52:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:15] At what she was learning.

Carah Burrell [00:52:17] Yeah. In 2023, like, embody both of those at the same time in one space is very, very cool.

Eve Rackleff [00:52:23] And yeah, another thing, I think that is very significant too. My grandfather, my grandmother's ex husband, but the ones that met at Stanford, he had a very extensive library of church history. And so, yes, all these people are so, so intelligent. Like, very. My. My uncles are very prominent masters in their fields of science. Like, there's just a lot of intelligence going on. And I knew, like, my grandfather. My grandfather had this extensive church library. I believe he donated some of it to byu. Like, why wasn't this something they were talking about?

John Dehlin [00:53:10] All that intellect, all those books, but, like, how does the understanding not get obtained and passed down is like one of the great mysteries of modern Mormonism. Right.

Christa Rackleff [00:53:28] Well, this is. This is something we talked when. After we watched Yalls podcast with Eve. This is something that we, like, could not believe, like, in our life. You know, whenever we're looking at any issue or question, we look at things critically and analytically. And we, we stopped and like, why have we not ever done that with the church? In the same way? Why have we only looked at the sources the church has given us? Why have we not opened our minds to the. To just like, okay, it's time to look at this and decide, is this true? Or is this not in a very objective, quantifiable way? And it was watching this podcast that brought us to that point and said, okay, now it's time for us to do that.

John Dehlin [00:54:15] Yeah.

Christa Rackleff [00:54:16] And we started it started us on that process.

John Dehlin [00:54:18] We're getting ahead of ourselves. No, no, no, it's me. I got you there. Just. But I'm just pausing to like absorb the ironies here. Yeah.

Christa Rackleff [00:54:28] We have these super educated family members that still, you know, all these books don't find the need to do that,

John Dehlin [00:54:37] to ask hard questions and to dig

Christa Rackleff [00:54:39] a little deeper because we are so indoctrinated and so devoted to this and we're so trusting of the organization and the narrative they're giving us.

Neal Rackleff [00:54:54] That is the key.

John Dehlin [00:54:55] Yeah. So, Eve, I guess the next question I have is if you imagine your kind of high school pre mission self, I assume you did four years of early morning seminary, you know, at Klein, is that right?

Eve Rackleff [00:55:11] Yes, I did. Okay. Tiring.

John Dehlin [00:55:14] Yeah. But, but I mean, I'm guessing by the time you're a senior graduating super devout, super believing, right?

Eve Rackleff [00:55:21] Yes. The only college that I applied to was byu. I didn't even apply to BYU Idaho. I didn't apply to BYU Hawaii.

John Dehlin [00:55:29] What about ut? What about Texas A and M?

Eve Rackleff [00:55:31] No, it just. I. I'm kidding. Education was important, but I was supposed to find a spouse and I thought the place that I would do that would be byu. Jokes on me. I did not find my spouse.

John Dehlin [00:55:47] So I guess I, I guess I wanted to ask like in a million years, if you're channeling your graduating Mormon high school self, could you have ever imagined that you would be leading your family out of the church? Fast forwarding. I don't know. Was that 10, 15, 20 years after graduating from high school? Would you have ever imagined that scenario would be even possible?

Eve Rackleff [00:56:13] That would be impossible. I actually have something quickly that was related to this. Um, I have since I've done therapy throughout my life, but I was working with a therapist and she at one point was telling me, okay, here's this issue you have. Can you go back to yourself as a child and go talk to your child? She was doing like a guided visualization with me to go talk to like 10 year old Eve.

Eve Rackleff [00:56:45] And I remember telling her I could not, like she cannot see me because if 10 year old or even high school or early college, Eve saw me and knew that I was not in the church, her life would explode. She would not be able to handle that. And even to this day, still I thinking about doing that type of visualization. I would never go back, and it sounds so sad, but I would not go back and visit my Mormon self because I would fall apart if I knew that this is where I was, if I was out of the church.

John Dehlin [00:57:30] Krista, what are you feeling when you hear Eve say that? It's.

Christa Rackleff [00:57:36] It's tough. I mean, you know, she was there because of us, but now we're here because of her.

Eve Rackleff [00:57:44] I don't know.

Christa Rackleff [00:57:45] It's a. It's kind of a beautiful thing and a complicated thing and full of a lot of emotions.

Eve's Faithfulness Through High School and College

John Dehlin [00:57:51] How, Neil. Neil and Krista, how would you describe your perceptions of Eve's faithfulness by the time she's graduating from high school? You go. You go first, Neil.

Neal Rackleff [00:58:01] Oh, she was very faithful.

John Dehlin [00:58:02] Was she your Nephi, basically, in your family?

Neal Rackleff [00:58:04] Like, we had 45, almost 2.5, 3.5, 3.5. They were all great kids, you know, and I was the best, by the way.

John Dehlin [00:58:17] Nephi can be presumptuous or arrogant or prideful.

Neal Rackleff [00:58:20] So, I mean, yeah, no, no, we. All of our kids were. Were wonderful kids. Never gave us any serious problems. We didn't have a big divide amongst the kids, you know, like, oh, here's the. Know the crazy ones and here's the ones that are come on the line doing the Mormon thing.

John Dehlin [00:58:37] But today's all about Eve.

Neal Rackleff [00:58:39] Eve was great. She was a leader, always has been super intelligent, strong willed. She's the most like me in terms of being very competitive with sports and stuff like that. The rest of our kids are a little more chill. But, you know, Eve would play soccer and her friends called her the Hulk because the Hulk would come out, you know, in key moments and she'd get really intense. But she was awesome and still is, of course.

John Dehlin [00:59:07] Krista, what about her Mormon faithfulness?

Christa Rackleff [00:59:10] She was very devoted. You know, she was Laurel class president, you know, did all the. Did all the things. Just. Was all in.

John Dehlin [00:59:24] All right. Okay. So, Eve, I'm curious. What made you decide to serve a mission? And what year did you graduate from high school? Did you go to immediately to byu? Remind us about just your path that way.

Eve Serves a Mission and Early Adult Years

Eve Rackleff [00:59:40] Yeah, I graduated from high school in 07, and luckily I got into BYU since I didn't apply anywhere else. And I did go immediately to BYU, but it wasn't until I was 23 that I decided to serve a mission. And that was. Right. I had put in my papers and then that general conference is when they changed the mission age to be younger for women. And I almost didn't go because I already Felt old because the women were going to be 21 and I was 23 and I actually turned 24 in the MTC.

John Dehlin [01:00:21] But what the women get to be 19?

Eve Rackleff [01:00:24] Well, yes, what I'm saying, I already felt old with the women being 21 and me being 23. Now the women were getting 19 year olds and I almost rescinded my papers. But I decided that that change meant there we just needed more people. And even though I was a little bit older, I could still be one of those missionaries. So I went.

John Dehlin [01:00:52] And that's where you met Carah. Were you nannying in Malibu at the time?

Carah Burrell [01:00:57] Yeah, I was living my dream life in la. So me and Aaron were living in Santa Monica and 11th street when Sister Rack left knocked on my door. And other Sister missionaries and other elders had come to my door before, but I had never taken any under my wing as much as I did Eve. I was like, what's your major? Byu Outdoor rec. I like you get in here, let's be new best friends. That's how it went.

John Dehlin [01:01:20] And what type of missionary was, was he?

Carah Burrell [01:01:23] To be honest, all missionaries are a little high strung and scrupulous. And that's also the sense I got from Eve. And I was like, come in my house, let me feed you. Just relax a little bit. You're at the Braille's place, let's just have a little fun. You don't need to worry about anything. Take a load off and anything you need, just let me know. You want me to help you teach lessons, you need to ride somewhere. How can I help you have a more happy mission and serve the people with you that are in our ward and stuff. So we just had like a fun little partnership where I. Anywhere the missionaries went, I just wanted to help them be successful in what they did.

John Dehlin [01:01:58] And Eve, what did you think of young married couple, borough couple with what kids?

Carah Burrell [01:02:04] Don't hold back.

Eve Rackleff [01:02:05] Yeah, I looked up to her so much and it was very, it was a very comforting space for me. I was older. We're the same age. Carah and I were like, wow, a few weeks apart. Yeah. And so she was my same age. I actually was in that area for nine months of my mission. And so I was at Carah's house all the time. I looked up to her a lot. I really admired her testimony of Jesus. She was really hardcore Jesus freak phase during that time. And she would go on lessons with us. We, I, we had a very special relationship at that time. She would make us like little pictures for our planners. She would draw planner covers for me and my companion. She drew a picture of me and my companion that I still have. She made us quilts for Christa. Like, wow, this was. I think

Carah Burrell [01:03:06] I learned how to sew specifically because I just, I literally loved Jesus so much. My whole life was dedicated to Christa and service, and I didn't have, I had enough outlets in our Santa Monica ward, but I needed more outlets. And I was like, anything I can do to show God that I love him and that his servants, I love them. And I wanted just to, like, show up as an embodiment of Christa. So I'm like, anything I can do to just, like, love and serve and bearing my testimony to the families I was nannying for, like, I was on fire for Jesus Christa at this time in my life.

John Dehlin [01:03:35] Can you imagine young, married NuanceHoe making quilts for her missionary friend who's in her area in California? That's the most Mormon thing I've ever heard. Nuance.

Carah Burrell [01:03:48] So it's adorable. Then and now.

John Dehlin [01:03:51] Wait, do you still go by Nuance? So. Or is that dead do we bury?

Carah Burrell [01:03:55] I don't know. The first time I ever walked in this door, you're like, can I not call you Nuance? So, because we're trying to have a, you know, nicer audience here, so. You're the one who's been saying it non stop since I got here.

John Dehlin [01:04:04] Okay, sorry. I just need to know if we have to have a memorial service for Nuanceo.

Carah Burrell [01:04:08] No, I'm the Hoe of Nuance at all times. So in, in conjunction with what you were saying. No, it's, it's my feelings about this post Mormon space. And then, and now it's just this goodness within all of us that wants to love and serve and meet people where they're at. That's what we're all together here doing. Like, it's that same energy that I think I was trying to embody then and, and Sister Rackleff and your companion, which I don't remember her name, Sister Malor and another one that, that came and went. But yeah, Eve was there for like nine months and just, I saw how hard they were working. And I never got to serve a mission, so I just wanted to love and serve the members of the ward, the investigators, and make sure that I could show up best I could for the sisters, not the elders.

John Dehlin [01:04:54] And Eve, I'm, I'm curious. I, I, the audience may get annoyed with this, but channel back your, your missionary self. Could you ever have imagined Sister Burrell becoming one of the most dangerous, evil Sinful ex Mormon influencers on the planet. Could you have ever, could your missionary self have ever imagined that happening?

Eve Rackleff [01:05:16] No. I mean, that's part of the whole point of why I even was open to listen to her. Because if she, she had gone so far as to not only leaving the church, but then being anti Mormon comedian, what. What happened? I don't know.

Carah Burrell [01:05:34] That's right. That's how you get them. You gotta everyone out there be really, really faithful. And then when you leave, people will listen to you more. You gotta have one with the other. Can't half ass it.

How Deeply Committed the Family Was to the Church

John Dehlin [01:05:47] All right. Okay, really quickly, before we start getting to kind of Eve's faith journey, Neil, you wanted to just mention a little bit about just how intense Mormonism got for you guys during kind of those Eve's missionary years and before.

Neal Rackleff [01:06:07] Yeah, yeah. Because I think, you know, you were probing into, you know, how did this religious experience affect you as kids and parents. And I think a really relevant aspect of this, especially for people who are never most. Right. I think people may not realize how intense it is. Serving as a lay minister in the Church of Jesus Christa of Latter Day Saints. So I was called to be a bishop at 34, which is relatively young. And this was a ward where we had very thin priesthood resources. Right. So. So we had 75 single mothers and widows in the ward. We had like 98 prospective elders.

John Dehlin [01:06:49] Is this California or Houston?

Neal Rackleff [01:06:51] This is Houston. This is Houston. It's an inner city ward. A lot of diversity. We had an area called Acres Homes, which is a historic black community in Houston. So we had a lot of cool black members, but we had a lot of poverty. Right. And the church had something they referred to then. I don't know if you've heard this term before called the nurturing ratio, which was the ratio of full tithe paying active Melchizedek priesthood holders to families in the ward. And ideally the nurturing ratio they said was like two to three. Right. We were way beyond that. So for our home teaching program and for Nevermost, the church has a program and it's a little bit different now, but men are paired with a companion and you go and visit the different families in the ward and usually you have two or three families that you visit.

Neal Rackleff [01:07:44] In our ward, the active Melchizedek priesthood holders would have had 11 families per individual, not companionship. So it was a very, very heavy weight. At the same time, a bunch of

John Dehlin [01:07:58] poor people got baptized and then fell away from the church. Right.

Neal Rackleff [01:08:01] I mean, is that there was a. There was a lot of that. But there were a lot of wonderful people who remain faithful to the church. Right. But the churning and the records and trying to keep up with that was insanely difficult because there was a lot of volatility. When I was an Elders Quorum president, there was one summer where we did 26 moves. Not that I was counting. Okay. I was a lot of moves. At the same time, we're a young couple with four little kids. And, you know, and part before I was bishop, I was Elders Quorum president while I was working full time, going to law school at night.

Neal Rackleff [01:08:38] And then Krista was to help support our family, babysitting, like four kids in addition to our four kids. So she was working insanely hard. And then when I was called to be a bishop, I put in at least 20 to 30 hours a week in my calling there. And so the level of service was intense.

Neal Rackleff [01:09:00] I loved it. But looking back, it was a lot. Sundays would start, you know, 7:30am and finish at 5 or 6 at night. And when I would get home, I was so fried emotionally, I'd just lay there in bed and just could barely move.

Neal Rackleff [01:09:18] And then the phone would start ringing. And in our ward, this was not this the country club kind of ward, we would have, you know, real welfare problems, challenges where people are evicted from their apartments if we could help with rent, where they didn't have food or they needed help with employment. And. And that was at one time when I was a bishop. I remember. So Wednesday night, it was mutual night. I'm interviewing a member who is contemplating suicide, and people keep banging on the door wanting to meet, answer different questions. It was the combined youth activity and the. The priest quorum was responsible for it.

Neal Rackleff [01:09:55] And the young man who was supposed to be running it didn't show up. So I get called out of this interview to go and take care of the chaos that's going on in the youth program. In the midst of that, a lady walks in off the street and goes, hey, I heard you can pay people's mortgages if they need help with their mortgage payment. And I'm like, maybe, you know, we did end up helping her. Why do I do that? And I will go take a.

Neal Rackleff [01:10:18] Sit by my office and take a number, right? And. And so I go back to help the person who's struggling here. I honestly, I think for people who listen to your show, and I love the show, but there's so much negative comments about bishops and bad experiences people have had with bishops. It bugs me a little bit because I think for every One of those. There are thousands of really good people that are working their. But butts off and trying to help. And helping. Right. So that's fair. It puts in. In retrospect, I wish I had more time with my family in many of those years where I was serving so many hours in the church.

John Dehlin [01:11:03] Okay, so you. Part of why you wanted to make sure and tell that part was I would say, number one, to show how committed and devoted you guys were to the church.

Neal Rackleff [01:11:12] That's part of it.

John Dehlin [01:11:13] But also to give another side to the positive service aspects and compassionate aspects of being a Mormon bishop.

Neal Rackleff [01:11:23] Yeah. And also for people to understand how much strain there is on members in a system where it's all a lay clergy and you're given heavy responsibility sometimes at a relatively young age. So we were talking about all the positives of the church and I loved my services, Bishop, but boy, it took a lot of time away from my own kids.

John Dehlin [01:11:47] Yeah, a lot. And Krista, I was going to say, what's it like to have him trying to build his career and then also now serving 20 hours a week as bishop, and then you've got four young kids and you probably have your own callings. Like, what was that like for you to be a stay at home mom in that type of context?

Christa Rackleff [01:12:09] It was a lot. But frankly, like being in the church, you feel like I'm doing it, you know, you get a lot of this reinforcement of like, you must be on the right path because look, you're doing all these things that are hard and that, you know, that make you special.

John Dehlin [01:12:27] Yeah, we can do hard things. Kind of vibes.

Eve Rackleff [01:12:31] Totally.

John Dehlin [01:12:31] Yeah.

Christa Rackleff [01:12:32] Like some. When he got called to be bishop, you know, and our youngest was not even 1 yet, and he was 9, you know, and one of the members of the war came up to me and said, how are you gonna do that? You know, like, how are you going to be the mother of the ward? I hated that. I'm like 34 years old. I'm not the mother of the war. Like, how are you going to handle that? And I was, I was offended. Like, I can do this.

John Dehlin [01:13:00] We're Mormons.

Carah Burrell [01:13:00] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [01:13:01] This is what we do.

John Dehlin [01:13:02] I'm a Mormon woman.

Christa Rackleff [01:13:03] I, I can do this.

John Dehlin [01:13:04] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:13:05] Somebody said that to me, I'd be like, righteous, honestly. Yeah, that makes sense. How am I going to do it? But,

Neal Rackleff [01:13:12] and look, I remember one time we had a Stake priesthood leadership training meeting and I had. And I was running late from the law firm to get to the meeting and commuting an hour to get there. And I'm on the cell phone handling problems with welfare issues and church things. Literally sprinting across the parking lot with my cell phone still solving problems. Get into the meeting, and the general authority there has got a PowerPoint presentation, and it shows a slide of a church leader with two phones and looking really harried and like, that's me. And then he has the freaking unmitigated audacity to show another slide that showed a bishop just looking serene and calm, and he said, this is the way you're supposed to look.

Neal Rackleff [01:13:57] It was the only time I left a church meeting mad. I was like, are you freaking kidding me? Killing myself to do the right thing? And you're telling me that's I need to be, like, perfectly Zen and peaceful?

John Dehlin [01:14:10] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [01:14:11] I was not stoked. I was not stoked with that. It was hard. It was very, very hard. And it was kind of like I felt if my car was a body. It was like driving at 120 miles an hour for years with how intensely we served, you know, at the same time, I loved it, you know, and I learned and grew. And we felt like, yeah, we're magnifying our callings and we're doing the right things. But in retrospect, I look back and go, was that really the healthiest thing for a family with four little kids to have that much burden laid on them? And I'm telling you, when they learn in the church that you are good at leading, They will ride that fricking horse until it dies.

Neal Rackleff [01:15:01] And I think they ask too much frequently and don't give people the space to regroup and spend time with their families, which is ironic for a church whose central focus is the family and spending time with your family.

Neal Rackleff [01:15:20] So bittersweet feelings about those years. I love the people in our wards, love the people that we served. I was grateful for those opportunities, but, boy, it was. It was a lot, and it impacted our family.

John Dehlin [01:15:37] Powerful. Thank you for sharing, Eve. I'm curious. I remember a kid in my youth program growing up feeling a lot of resentment that she never got to see your dad did. How did you feel seeing your parents effectively run ragged in the Mormon paradigm? Or were you just so busy being the she Hulk in soccer that you never even noticed how ragged they were running at times in their Mormon existence?

Eve Rackleff [01:16:13] I was just really proud of them. And I. You know, I thought, look how I. I really admired their service to people, because that was what it was about to me, too, is like giving of yourself to others as you were taught Christa would. And it was hard sometimes not having my dad around as much. But for all of that, I still feel like we had a really good relationship with him and I never felt neglected by the lack of his presence. He was very good at connecting with us when he had time with us.

Christa Rackleff [01:16:58] And

Eve Rackleff [01:17:00] yeah, I don't, I wish it hadn't been as hard for them because I am in my 30s now and I look back and I think of all that my parents were doing and there is no way in hell I would ever be able to do all of that. So I. Hurts me to know how difficult it was. But at the time I was just really proud of them and happy to be sacrificing time with my dad so that he could serve other people.

John Dehlin [01:17:41] Still feeling emotional Bishop.

Neal Rackleff [01:17:50] It's just I loved, I loved serving. I loved the people. We were making a difference in a lot of people's lives and I'm grateful and honored to have had that opportunity, but there was a cost, you know, and, and my, with my own emotional and mental health after serving for so many years, just so much and so intensely and, and so, yeah, it's a double edged sword kind of thing. And it's a credit to Krista that while I was AWOL being, you know, church dude, that she held together our family so well and did and parented in a way where our kids didn't feel that, that absence so much. She was a phenomenal mom.

John Dehlin [01:18:51] What are you feeling, Krista?

Christa Rackleff [01:18:53] Just, it was a lot I feel for Neil because it took a far greater toll on him. We were so fortunate. We've talked a lot about my mom in this, but we were so fortunate. They moved down the street from us a few months after he became bishop and lived just down the street from us. And then as soon as he got released and we moved to another house, they moved away. And we felt we were very blessed to have my mom and stepdad live that close and to be such a great support to our family during that time.

John Dehlin [01:19:34] Well, I don't want to break out of the chronology, but I just want to note a couple opposing things I just heard. On the one hand, I heard Eve say, you know, I, I'm so glad I didn't have to work as hard as my parents did because I could have never done it. That would be possibly terrible. But then I'm also, and I'm thinking and feeling on the flip side, isn't that the coolest part about old school Mormonism is they, they asked us like pioneers. It's that Pioneer spirit. They ask us to do hard, if not impossible things, and not only do we rise to the occasion, but we excel and thrive.

John Dehlin [01:20:17] And it makes us the smart, hard working, honest, high integrity people that we often are with great families. And so I don't look at you guys and say, woe was you. I think, yeah, you guys did the Mormon thing and you turned out awesome because of it. And yet I'm hearing Eve say, oh, man, I'm so glad I never had to do what my parents did. Even though your awesomeness created Eve, who's awesome. So I'm just noticing that paradox. Is it bad that you guys went. And again, I want to save the answers to this till the end.

Neal Rackleff [01:20:51] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:20:52] But in my mind, I'm, I'm asking myself, is it bad that they. That Eve's parents were put through all that when it created Eve and three other awesome kids and a cool family and great people? Was that bad or was it awesome? And was that the best part about Mormonism? And then is Eve gonna have a better life because she isn't doing those things, or is Eve gonna have a less cool life because she wasn't held to that high standard? And so, you know, it's going to be sort of this Jonathan Haidt level. Your kids won't be as awesome because you didn't have that structure in that framework and that awesome Mormon upbringing to raise awesome Mormon kids. And again, I'm not, you know, it's a weird world right now, but I hope y' all care. Do you get a sense for what I'm asking?

Carah Burrell [01:21:41] Oh, yeah. That's what I think every single day. Of, like, the structures in which my kids were put under. Of, like the, the, the, yeah. The furnace that I came out of that my Mormon convert parents were forged in, that forged me in the, the support systems that we had. Everything that we talk about with ex Mormon community building, all of that, that I look at my kids of what kind of life are they having? And I have my answers.

John Dehlin [01:22:04] But it's mixed though, right? It's not, it's not clear cut. Right.

Carah Burrell [01:22:08] It's, it's all about the journey, though, of like, we can't control a lot of these circumstances.

John Dehlin [01:22:13] That's right.

Carah Burrell [01:22:14] So, sure, I can't control where I, where I was plopped out. I can't control the information that I came in contact with. All the viewers can't control that the YouTube algorithm kept pumping out Mormon stories, content.

John Dehlin [01:22:25] Oh, wait, it's my fault. It's Bill real.

Carah Burrell [01:22:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:28] Is it Bill Real? That got you out.

Carah Burrell [01:22:29] No, I'm saying the viewers that are watching right now that are here because the YouTube kept showing Eve's thing that's got 700,000 views, like, you guys can't help that the algorithms put this content in front of your face. All I'm saying is things are a mixture of a lot of stuff. And so what do you do with every day and solve the problems right in front of you and that's. That's all you can do. But yeah, the structures that we had that forged us is. That's something that's always on my mind, that I have three little kids, like, how are they going to turn out?

Carah Burrell [01:22:54] Because we have such high standards for ourselves. And that Mormon, you know, that Mormon high standards are still always deep down in there of like, oh, well, you guys don't have young women's programs, you don't have scouting programs, you don't have these kind of things. What can I replace it with so that you'll be awesome like me and your dad?

Neal Rackleff [01:23:10] Well, and look, I don't regret any of that service. It was an honor and a privilege and I loved it. But it was really, really hard.

John Dehlin [01:23:19] And you're crying about it.

Neal Rackleff [01:23:21] Well, look, part of what happened with me too was that a couple years after being released as bishop, I was called to be the young men's president in the Klein Ward, which was this massive ward with a huge youth program. And then I started having some kind of weird heart things that turned out to be anxiety.

John Dehlin [01:23:41] Maybe there was a health cost, you're saying?

Neal Rackleff [01:23:42] I think there was a health cost. That's where I think I was driving my. I see if my car. Body was a car. I was driving at 120 miles an hour for 10 years. And finally it gave out. And I. I went to the hospital with this pain in my chest.

John Dehlin [01:23:55] I see.

Neal Rackleff [01:23:56] And I was like. And they're trying to figure out what it was. And this was after a similar episode a year earlier. And I woke up in a hospital room with the cardiologist in my room sitting there about 4 o' clock in the morning. And I said, have you figured out? You know, because I'm like, lawyer guy, cross examine the crud out of these guys. You know, if you figured out what's wrong, why have that pain in my chest yet? And he goes, I'm not so worried about that pain in your chest, Neil. I'm more concerned about why your heart stopped beating.

Neal Rackleff [01:24:24] And I was like, oh, really? And then I vaguely remembered people kind of running around Me, but apparently my heart stopped beating for some period of time and they had to resuscitate me. So then they put me through every freaking test known to man to figure out what was wrong with me. And finally a neurosurgeon said, Mr. Radcliffe, you are a very anxious person. And I'm like, what do you mean I'm anxious? I want to know what's wrong with it? And he was right. So I learned that I had anxiety, but I think that. And then I took steps to get medication and get better.

Neal Rackleff [01:24:58] But. But I do think that the level of intensity at which I served professionally, church wise, the combination exacerbated that and brought it to a head. So there's a cost. So when church leaders are out there and they find people who are, you know, pretty decent at leading, you know, maybe give them a break every once in a while and not just ride that damn horse, pardon my language, until it practically dies and Mormon stories stop

John Dehlin [01:25:26] dumping on Mormon bishops. Right? Is that what you're saying?

Neal Rackleff [01:25:29] I just think it's a nuanced situation, you know, and look, nobody talks about the positive experiences with bishops because that's not very interesting. Right. And there are a lot of bishops that do stupid things and make bad mistakes, but there are a lot of wonderful people doing good.

John Dehlin [01:25:47] I'm glad you're mentioned. I'm glad you're mentioning that.

Early Cracks in Eve's Testimony

Neal Rackleff [01:25:49] Now, I will say an interesting phenomenon. To me, it's a little bit off topic, but I don't care. It baffles my mind that at the local level, we made mistakes all the time. Right. Every bishop you talk to will talk about how it's hard to get through a weekend, a Sunday, without offending somebody. But then you get to the top levels of the church, and the general authorities seem to believe that they are impervious to making mistakes and that somehow they're graduated to some celestial level where they're infallible. And I don't think that's very. But I'll talk about that more later.

John Dehlin [01:26:21] There's some hubris there. We'll get to that. Okay, Eve, back to you. So you. When did you first start having cracks in your Mormon shelf? That. That kind of. And I know we're kind of covering some of the ground we covered in. In Karen Mai's interview with you. But just for those. Just for those who came to this interview and didn't want to go back and listen, when, at what point in your life did serious cracks in your Mormon testimony first begin emerging for you?

Eve Rackleff [01:26:55] I think there were Things that I put on my shelf prior to me going to my mission. I had a very close friend come out to me and also, yes, and also telling me things that they had found out about church leaders.

Eve Rackleff [01:27:17] I can't remember the very like the specifics of what she was telling me because I shut her down so quickly. I wanted to empathize with her and the experience she was going through. But I also was unwilling to listen to any anti ex Mormon things because I mean, there was even the temple recommend question that asks if you listen to any of that or support that. And I was so scared of those things. And so while I tried to be as empathetic with my friend as I could, I shut down because I wasn't mentally in a space that would allow me to be open to considering those things.

Eve Rackleff [01:28:03] And that's something that I deeply regret. And so that happened before my mission. And then on my mission I always. I had come to a conclusion where I just wasn't as worried if people became less active. And I think slowly over like the 10 years, I just got further and further away from the belief that the church was the only way people could make it back to God or be with their family forever. I, and I mean I was still very in a mind that somehow God would help them accept the truth in whatever way. But I was becoming less worried with all the rules, a little less scrupulous. And then right before COVID my sister also came out again.

John Dehlin [01:29:09] As what?

Eve Rackleff [01:29:11] As bi.

Carah Burrell [01:29:12] And

Eve Rackleff [01:29:14] so there was that experience and I had some conversations with her and I just saw.

John Dehlin [01:29:18] And she been married?

Eve Rackleff [01:29:20] No, she was engaged for a short time to a woman and she was living. So during COVID me and my husband ended up at my parents house in Austin because my parents were supposed to go live in the Virgin Islands for a little bit, but then Covid happened and they didn't. And so me and my husband were supposed to watch their house while they were gone. And then my sister had been in au pair in Spain and she very quickly came back. And so during the pandemic we, we were all in the same house together and I was pregnant and. And then my sister's fiance came and lived with us for a little while. And that also was a time when not soon after that was the musket fire talk and just seeing how much pain.

Christa Rackleff [01:30:14] Yes.

Eve Rackleff [01:30:15] How much pain that caused my sister and her fiance.

John Dehlin [01:30:18] Was her fiance male or female?

Eve Rackleff [01:30:21] A female.

John Dehlin [01:30:22] Okay, yeah, got it. So your, your female sister, who's bisexual, just got engaged to a woman during the Time Jeffrey Holland gave his super homophobic BYU rant.

Eve Rackleff [01:30:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:36] And that was hard.

Christa Rackleff [01:30:36] And she had been a member too.

Eve Rackleff [01:30:39] Yeah. So.

Neal Rackleff [01:30:40] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:41] Oh, the fiance was formerly.

Neal Rackleff [01:30:45] Oh, wow.

Eve Rackleff [01:30:46] And so painful to them, even, like, seeing how painful it was for them, even after they had left the church. It was. I just. That was one of my biggest things is I had people who were close to me who were gay or lgbtq, and I could not reconcile how God could treat them as less than in his church. And also during the pandemic, there were other things, honestly, around, like politics and the Tim Ballard stuff that was going on. And I just was really grappling with how the people that I grew up with, we could have such opposing views but be so aligned in our faith, supposedly. And all of that was really hard for me. And then on top of that postpartum stuff, and then finding Carah's Tick Tock channel and her having, like, a hundred thousand followers, and I didn't even. I had no idea about it.

John Dehlin [01:32:06] Have you lost touch with Carah or not?

Eve Rackleff [01:32:08] I mean, we were as close as you could be, not living in the same state, but, like, Aaron and Carah came out and went to Texas, but right before the pandemic, and they stayed really close to us and we hung out. And so I was still in contact with Carah. And, like, when we both moved back to Utah, I would babysit her kids. I helped her a little bit with some of the renovations on her house that she just sold. I. Yeah, so we had a relationship, and I felt that it was one where she would have maybe told me these things. And, yeah, finding that was another one of those cracks.

John Dehlin [01:32:51] So, Tara, when you went down the rabbit hole before you joined Mormon Stories and started your ex Mormon Tick Tock channel, basically, what did you go to Eve and say, eve, let me just tell you all the things I've learned. Or did you. Were you afraid to do that? Were you hesitant to do that?

Carah Burrell [01:33:10] No, I don't think I had a reason to. Like, well, it's your close friend. Like, hey, you're one of my only Mormon friends. Just letting you know I'm making this content. I don't think I did. I don't think I would have had a reason to think that. Like, one of the last times that I saw her was like, I. Speaking of insemination, I had just gotten pregnant the week that I went out to Texas to visit her. I remember that. And we were in our, like, that new ex Mormon phase of, like, we're allowed to go on that famous street where you go drinking or like street

Neal Rackleff [01:33:43] in Austin, we go to see the bands there.

Carah Burrell [01:33:45] But yeah, yeah. So me and Aaron were drinking. I did not as pregnant yet, obviously, you know, two days old, but. And hanging out with Eve and stuff. But I don't think I was ever in a position to want to shake her faith or say anything about what, where we were with our faith.

John Dehlin [01:34:04] And were you afraid it would harm your friendship?

Neal Rackleff [01:34:08] Maybe.

Carah Burrell [01:34:09] Yeah, I. I also just don't like putting people in that uncomfortable year later though. That was like a year later.

Eve Rackleff [01:34:17] Yeah, this was. This was before she had done her Tick tock channel. And honestly, when she did come out to Austin, it was very new for you, for you finding things out. And you were open with me telling me that you didn't know where you stood. But that was in my mind much different that leaving the church was much different to then going on and

Christa Rackleff [01:34:44] being

Eve Rackleff [01:34:44] on an ex Mormon podcast co host and doing your own channel and stuff. So there was a jump there where I think you were just trying to be respectful of me. Like you had told me some of your concerns, but you didn't need to fill me in on all the little details when I was someone who was still very active.

Carah Burrell [01:35:04] Yeah, I didn't like unload on you all of my thoughts or anything. I don't think I did.

John Dehlin [01:35:09] No, no, that makes sense. I get it. I get it. Oh, and now that I'm thinking about it, is it worth mentioning, Neil, your discovery of the Gospel Topics essays as it relates to care? I think that might be interesting because you, of all the people in this room and on screen, minus myself, I think you were the first to come on the Gospel Topics essays. Is that right?

Eve Discovers the Gospel Topics Essays

Neal Rackleff [01:35:34] I'll think out of this group, other than you. Yeah. So you know, a lot of my work, I was the director of Housing and Community Development for the city of Houston. And so we used HUD grant funding to promote affordable housing and inner city revitalization. And a lot of the communities that we served were historic black communities in Houston. So I got to know a lot of really wonderful pastors in the black community and the issue of blacks in the priesthood really bothered me. And. Oh, and in fact, we were taking this really wonderful man named Reverend William Lawson, who had been a friend and contemporary of Martin Luther King Jr.

Neal Rackleff [01:36:13] And was a civil rights icon in Houston, was really involved in the civil rights movement in helping Houston to not have a lot of the civil unrest and problems that other cities experience. Anyways, we were taking Reverend Lawson to see welfare square and homeless Facilities in Salt Lake and blacks in the priesthood always bothered me. And I stumbled across this Gospel Topics essay about blacks in the priesthood. And I read it and I was like, oh, finally there's some kind of definitive church published explanation as to why this happened. And what I liked about it. Since then I've realized that it wasn't particularly accurate. But what helped me feel better about the situation then was that they pointed out that this was never a doctrine of the church and that this was really a political thing.

Neal Rackleff [01:37:04] And I remember talking to Reverend Lawson about this too, about blacks in the priesthood. And I was telling him about the theory that was sometimes propagated in the church, that because they're the seed of Cain, that there was a curse there and they weren't able to hold the priesthood. And he said, neil, that's not just in Mormon theology. That's in a lot of Protestant theology. And that's a common theme. So anyhow, I had come across that and I think when we were in the car, I was like, hey, I found this cool Gospel topics essay about blacks in the priesthood. And I think was that the first time you'd heard him?

Carah Burrell [01:37:35] So we just remembered that amongst ourselves. Because I forgot that you played a part in my unraveling and in my shelf. And I'm like, that's so funny when you rewind it that I've even like. Because obviously I had no relationship with Eve, but then Eve's parents. Where are you guys? You're off in Texas, but there was a time in which you guys flew into Salt Lake and I picked you guys up from the airport and you were driving down to Provo and I was doing a nice charitable Christa like act and as I love to do for rad. And I remember we got talking about the gospel and you brought up that Gospel topics essay and I'd never heard of them.

Carah Burrell [01:38:05] And I think it's just this very ubiquitous kind of feeling that Mormons have where I. I wasn't really questioning the church. I think Aaron was kind of on his way out of the church. That's probably what we were talking about at the time, like some of Aaron's concerns, my husband. And that when you brought that up, there's this ubiquitous feeling where if you just know that there is. Don't even talk about the CES layer, just a place that there is, the church is offering more information that might tip the scales. It could tip the scales for you to be more faithful. But I just remember thinking when you told me about that and what was in There, that was like, I do not need to know one more thing about this church or I will lose my faith.

Carah Burrell [01:38:46] And I remember now that I look back and I think about when you were talking about that, my thought process was, if I read that, I will lose my faith and leave the church.

Neal Rackleff [01:38:54] Oh, really?

Carah Burrell [01:38:55] It was going. It would just knowing anything because I knew it wasn't going to be faith promoting. I knew I was going to see something seedy, gaslighty. I was like, I need to know less about the church at this point than more. Because, you know, they're written for people who want to have, like, a faithful perspective to dive in to. It has to have some kind of offering from the church about blacks in the priesthood. But from my perspective, I was like, I need to know less things.

John Dehlin [01:39:20] And Neil. And Neil, honestly, I'm surprised a little bit going back to this theme of, like, how educated and intelligent everyone is in. In your respective families, Right? And yet it wasn't until a couple years ago, 20, 23 or whatever, that y', all, the light bulbs started coming on. Thanks to Eve. Like, I've met many, many, many, many people who, when they first read the Gospel topics essay on black people in the priesthood, that's when they lost their faith. Because it's a pretty simple math equation. If the brethren got that wrong, what else have they gotten wrong?

John Dehlin [01:40:01] And you, Neil, were even predisposed to want the church to admit that that was never doctrine to begin with. But. But it sounds like in spite of finding out about that essay, reading it and liking the outcome, you didn't put two and two together to ask yourself, wait a minute, then what are the implications for polygamy and LGBT people and just Joseph Smith and truth claims and Brigham Young? Sounds like that in your lawyer, USC graduate lawyer brain, that those questions never occurred to you, which is. It's kind of telling, right?

Neal Rackleff [01:40:38] I mean, Samuel Taylor Coleridge talked about the willing suspension of disbelief that's necessary to enjoy art and to get into things. And I think what happens when you are indoctrinated from the time that you're a kid, that you suspend your disbelief in the possibility that the church leaders could lead you astray. Because everything you're taught is, is that the way to return to God's presence is to follow the prophet, hang onto that iron rod, right? And so it is like Christa said earlier, once we became more objective, we look back and said, how were we not more objective earlier? You know, what in the heck was going on? Well, and I think it's because we were indoctrinated.

John Dehlin [01:41:30] And that's something. Because when you. It's one thing if you're just a normal human, but if you're like a scientist or an attorney, you're trained to have a critical skeptic mind, to not just believe what you're told, to use logic, to doubt, to be skeptical, to use critical thinking skills. And it's not trivial to note that so many super smart, super educated, otherwise very critically thinking Latter Day Saints just shut that stuff off for their whole lives. Right.

Neal Rackleff [01:42:07] I have a little bit of a theory as to why some of that occurs, particularly with people who've been in the church for a long time. And it's something I don't hear talked about a lot on your shows. And that is that I do believe that there is some kind of revelation and inspiration and that there's a divine presence, that there's a God who, who answers prayers and is watching over us. And I think that what happens in the LDS faith is that if you're in it long enough and you're trying to do what's right, I think many of us have experiences where we feel we've been guided by God in ways that are beneficial to our family, to our friends, et cetera. Right.

Christa Rackleff [01:42:50] Other members of the church.

Neal Rackleff [01:42:51] To other members of the church. Right. And I can give you lots of examples, which I won't take time to do now, where I had thoughts and impressions come to mind as a bishop and otherwise that just could not almost. It would have been statistically almost impossible for them to be coincidences. One quick one. I'm at the Stake center once and at some random. At a stake conference or something, and this thought comes to my mind. Go to Bishop Seavey's office. I'm like, where's that coming from? I don't need to be at Bishop Seavey's office.

Neal Rackleff [01:43:24] Go to Bishop Seabe's office. So I listened to the thought, the prompting. I go to Bishop Seabe's office. The open zero is like, okay, I'm glad that you're here. You were about to start. I'm like, start what? And there was a meeting that had been scheduled with the stake president and him having to do with some kids in our seminary program. But nobody ever got the message to

Christa Rackleff [01:43:43] me,

Neal Rackleff [01:43:45] and I felt prompted to go over there and show up. Now, I've had a lot of experiences like that. What my working theory now is that if I had been a Methodist or a Buddhist or a Muslim or a Jew, and I was trying to help People in my community, I believe that I would have had divine guidance in helping me do that. But I think what happens with LDS people is that you are searching for some spiritual witness to confirm your testimony. And so if you have some experience with the divine in the context of Mormonism, you extrapolate from that, that that means that all the truth claims of the church are therefore true.

Neal Rackleff [01:44:30] You know, and, and that's part of the way prophets have taught us. You know, the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion. If you learn that it's true, all these other truths fall into place. Right. And so I think when you are trying to talk to people who have had years in the church and have had experiences with the divine in that LDS context and you try to tell them that this church is horrible or misguided, a lot of them are just going to be like, I've had good experiences. God has been with me in this organization. But I think we extrapolate too much from those experiences.

John Dehlin [01:45:08] I would agree with you, except I would say that all religions, all people of all religious persuasions do that, not just Mormons.

Neal Rackleff [01:45:16] Oh. Extrapolate that to mean that theirs is the true one.

John Dehlin [01:45:19] I think Methodists and Presbyterians and Catholics and Buddhists and Muslims and Jews, everyone does it. Even secular people have confirmation bias motivated reasoning blind spots and ignore things that challenge their comfort or their worldview and believe or cling to the things that reinforce their comfort or their worldview.

Neal Rackleff [01:45:44] And one of the things, one of the things that was very helpful to me when I was becoming more objective and looking at stuff was a video clip that you played on one of your episodes where it's like five or six different people all testifying that their church is, is the one true church. And they're like Catholic and Muslim and RN or RLDS, you know, like a 17 year old polygamous bride or whatever, or fundamentalists, whatever that when I saw that, I was like, yeah, wow, that, that was mind blowing.

John Dehlin [01:46:16] But just to, just to put a fine point on it, when you read that Gospel topics essays on race in the priesthood, claiming that the priesthood ban, the Mormon priesthood ban on, and temple ban on black people was not doctrinal but was actually just folklore or policy, you didn't for a second question your faith or commitment to the Mormon Church, correct?

Neal Rackleff [01:46:43] That is absolutely correct.

John Dehlin [01:46:44] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [01:46:44] I was like, hey, cool. They're giving me more information, modern day revelation. They're helping me to solve this problem that's vexed me for years area.

John Dehlin [01:46:51] Okay, cool. Okay. All right. So Eve, back to you. We were talking about your, you know, cracks in your. In your faith. And, you know, you started, you. You mentioned Elder Holland's talk. You mentioned LGBT sympathies with your bisexual sister who's engaged to a woman. And then you noticed Carah in Aaron acting differently. And then I'm guessing you stumbled upon Carah's Tick Tock. Her sort of comedic, but also very ex Mormon and sometimes very off color and inappropriate. Just kidding. TikTok. Is that viral?

Carah Burrell [01:47:37] Very popular. A lot of people.

Eve Rackleff [01:47:40] Yeah, I came across those and, you know, I could have had my reaction to, I think maybe anyone else I had known that I didn't. Wasn't as close to as I was with Carah or, like, as respectful. I didn't have the same connection and respect for, like, who she was as a member. I may have just been like, block, I do not need to see this. This is anti Mormon, ex Mormon content and I've been conditioned to stay away from that. And. But it was Carah, and I did watch some of her videos. I didn't watch all of them. I think I was even in some of the videos when you had, like, pictures with you and the missionaries.

Eve Rackleff [01:48:26] And I was just very curious. I wanted to hear from her what made her leave and have a conversation with her. And so at one point I told her, you know, I'm coming out to Utah. I really would love to talk to you and just hear what happened. I hadn't watched her Mormon Stories episode. I hadn't watched Mormon Stories yet.

Eve Rackleff [01:48:55] Actually, I think I may have watched one episode on the Musket Fire Talk. And I just told her, hey, let's meet up and I would like to chat with you about this. And that's when she said, what if we talk on camera?

Carah Burrell [01:49:14] I want to utilize our friendship for

John Dehlin [01:49:16] content, but I utilize our friendship for content. Fresh meats.

Carah Burrell [01:49:22] I know that's.

Eve Rackleff [01:49:23] That's how it can appear, but I

Carah Burrell [01:49:25] was like, I feel like I could pitch you an idea and we could make something magical here, but totally turn me down if this is a bad idea.

John Dehlin [01:49:33] It is the gift of revelation, because It's. We're talking 700,000 views later. Like, there are only a couple videos in the Mormon Stories archive that have surpassed, you know, a million. But yours would be top five John de Lynn related episodes of all time. Yeah, our. Our work with Eve, I mean, it was kind of.

Carah Burrell [01:49:53] It's groundbreaking. It's cool.

John Dehlin [01:49:55] Ex Mormon social media revelation. Really?

Carah Burrell [01:49:58] Yeah, I think so. We were inspired and I do, you

Eve Rackleff [01:50:02] know, want to people to know, Carah gave me an outlined list of all the points that we were going to cover. And she told me, if you want to read this before you come in, like, I just want you to feel comfortable. And if you don't want to do this, we don't have to do this. She told me if after we recorded it and I didn't want to release it, then that would be fine.

Eve Rackleff [01:50:22] But for me, I knew that there would be one point in time where I was finding this information out. So I didn't. I did not read the list. I think I glanced at it, but I thought, what a unique moment for people who are also going through the same thing as me to see this happen and to see my reaction. And, you know, I went in not as someone who had left the church. I knew I was going to ask questions, and that wasn't gonna be my end all be all. Like, obviously I would go and look at things myself.

Eve Rackleff [01:51:05] Yeah. And I was in my 30s. I. I have had people implied that I was taken advantage of, and it. That just really bothers me. I think there is a lot of infantilization of people in the church, and I know that I was a grown woman. I made the choice to be there. I have reasons for having wanted to do that interview, and I'm glad that I did and that we did.

Eve's Mormon Stories Interview and Its Aftermath

John Dehlin [01:51:38] Well, let me ask, since we have your parents here and today is about the interface with your family. Like, where were your parents belief wise during that time you decided to do that interview on Mormon stories. And like the vast majority of people that I've met who would be going through a faith crisis, number one, wouldn't come on Mormon stories so early in their faith crisis. But even if they were 10 years beyond their faith crisis, they would still be petrified or completely unwilling to come on Mormon stories because of what it might do to their relationship with their parents and their siblings and their grandparents.

John Dehlin [01:52:22] What was remarkable about that was, for some reason, in spite of how devout your parents were, other family members, and how early you were in the process, something in your mind said, do it anyway. Even if it might be super hard for your family relationships. Can you talk about what was going through your mind when you decided to do something? Some would say very reckless, others would say very courageous.

Neal Rackleff [01:52:50] That's a good question. I want to hear her answer.

Eve Rackleff [01:52:53] Yeah, I mean, I think there's layers to this. So I had known about Carah's TikTok for maybe a year, and I was newly married, just had a child, and I had multiple conversations with My husband, like years before, like, what if I find things out and what if I leave this? What is this gonna. What could the potential of the fallout of this be to our relationship? And I had finally gotten to a place where I was confident that even if this was a domino that led me out of the church, that our relationship would be okay. And if mentally I had not had that confidence, I would have never gone on Mormon stories.

Eve Rackleff [01:53:52] I hadn't watched a ton of Mormon stories. And another thing, when we're talking about how such intelligent people cannot are not as analytical with the church as they are in other aspects of our life. I think a thing that very much keeps them and shields them from being analytical is not looking at sources out of. Outside of what the church has given. And I've alluded to, there's that temple question that asks if you support or associate with people who are being anti. I don't remember exactly what it was, but when I was going on Mormon stories, I was thinking about that question and that question kept me from all of the Mormon stories stuff.

Eve Rackleff [01:54:44] And I knew that if I went on Mormon stories, the only people that were going to really watch or find it would be people like me who had questions or maybe who had left. And that the people who were as scrupulous as I had once been and were taught to never watch x anti comment, anti content would not be the ones who would be seeing the video or would pay attention to the video. And so that made it feel less reckless to me because of that whole situation, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [01:55:25] So if I just heard you correctly, you just said that you didn't think your parents would end up seeing it.

Eve Rackleff [01:55:31] No, I didn't think.

John Dehlin [01:55:33] Which is super common. Like, I. You guys are laughing. Like, I. We've had two currently serving bishops come on Mormon stories and they're like, oh, no one back home's gonna find out. Like, in both instances, they had like, they had like voice messages from their stake presidents. Like before they arrived home. One of them was released. He was like, from, from another country, came here, did the interview. And that same weekend before he got back home, he was already released as bishop. Like, if you come on Mormon stories, everyone's going to hear. Your parents, your siblings, your in laws, extended family.

John Dehlin [01:56:12] I mean, just. I mean, it's partly that Mormon stories is really big, but really what's going on is Mormonism is really small and people talk and people are connected. Everyone's three degrees of separation from each other. And you're going to have mission companions, former Home, teachers, friends from school, aunts, uncles, cousins. They're all going to find out. But I also. Eve, there's no way we interviewed you, because I do this with every single guest I have. There's no way we interviewed you without telling you your parents were going to immediately find out. Right? Right, Carah? I mean, I don't.

Carah Burrell [01:56:52] It's been a long time that came out in 2022.

John Dehlin [01:56:55] I mean, I'm just saying that I have this conversation with everybody because they're like, well, I'm not sure. I'm just hoping my parents don't find out. And I'm like, all I know is

Carah Burrell [01:57:03] I gave her plenty of times to back out.

John Dehlin [01:57:05] I'm just going to say, I tell people they're going to find out the same afternoon it's released. Everyone's gonna find out.

Christa Rackleff [01:57:11] Well, we only found out because she told us, really.

Eve Rackleff [01:57:14] I think you may underestimate the scrupulosity that shields people from this, because, honestly, I had looked at Carah's stuff, but I hadn't watched any Mormon stories before I went on. And if I, my, like, fully believing self had come across Mormon stories and I had realized what it was, I would have immediately blocked your channel and. And I wouldn't know. And so my perception is that anyone who's very, very devout is not listening to this stuff. And even if it did come across their algorithm, they would take whatever measures they need to, to not see that, because that is one of the temple questions. And if you are supporting or listening to anything that is anti, then you can't go to the temple.

Eve Rackleff [01:58:05] That's how I felt. And so while I do think that you have great reach with your platform, I think there. And I know members of my family who have not watched my episode and people who refuse to watch my episode because of those reasons. So that's another.

Carah Burrell [01:58:28] Johnny.

John Dehlin [01:58:30] No. Well, I don't want to. My point is not at all that Mormon stories is big. And by the way, I still believe that 95% of Mormons in the United States have never heard of Mormon stories. So it's not. I think the bubble's real. I say that every episode, the bubbles real.

Christa Rackleff [01:58:45] And we were definitely.

John Dehlin [01:58:46] Most Mormons are in it. And most Mormons to this day have never heard of me or Carah or Mormon stories or whatever.

Carah Burrell [01:58:52] Speaking yourself, John?

John Dehlin [01:58:54] Okay, maybe. Maybe not Carah, but me for sure. But, but, but my point is, is that when someone does something that's perceived as anti Mormon.

Christa Rackleff [01:59:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:04] Word gets around very quickly, even if it's New York or Connecticut or Texas or whatever. So.

Eve Rackleff [01:59:11] And I felt confident that what I was doing was not anti Mormon. Right. Because I wasn't coming on as someone who had left. I was coming on as someone who was just listening and was gonna ask questions. And I mean. But I mean, there was that point I was watching the episode to prepare for this. There was that point where I break down and I say, am I going to be excommunicated? And you can see that real fear as we're going through the episode within me. I was terrified that that was going to happen to me. I didn't think that before going into the interview, but that was something that

John Dehlin [01:59:52] kind of settled to you. Yeah.

Eve Rackleff [01:59:55] During that interview.

John Dehlin [01:59:56] So, Eve, let me ask you where, if your testimony going into that interview that day, if your testimony was a pie chart, how much of that. What percentage of that pie was still a believing Mormon versus no longer believing? If you had to reduce your testimony the day of that interview into a pie chart?

Eve Rackleff [02:00:18] I think it's hard to quantify, but I would say maybe like 80%.

John Dehlin [02:00:24] I had 80% believing.

Carah Burrell [02:00:26] Yeah.

Eve Rackleff [02:00:26] I had wrong.

Carah Burrell [02:00:28] Yeah, totally.

Eve Rackleff [02:00:29] I had strong doubts. But another thing that had happened with the pandemic was we were all doing, like, the online church. And so that also created space for me.

Neal Rackleff [02:00:41] Yeah.

Eve Rackleff [02:00:42] I would say 80, maybe higher.

John Dehlin [02:00:45] Wow. And I. I think I would have perceived it was lower because I never actually. I would never actually want to intentionally. I know people won't believe this or some won't, but I actually would never intentionally want to pull someone out of the church from an interview. I would worry that that would be manipulative. Manipulative, Underhanded.

Neal Rackleff [02:01:08] Abusive.

John Dehlin [02:01:09] Abusive, yeah. And so I think it would have been my perception when Karen and I agreed to do this, that you were sort of like, pretty much on your way out or out, but you just hadn't processed it. That's just how I think back to it.

Eve Rackleff [02:01:27] I just.

Carah Burrell [02:01:28] I was probably the lying snake in this Garden of Eden in between where I'm like, I have this grapefruit. Both of you come together. She's on her way out.

John Dehlin [02:01:37] Anything for good company.

Carah Burrell [02:01:38] This guy, John De Lin, don't look him up.

Eve Rackleff [02:01:40] He's a nice friend.

Carah Burrell [02:01:41] He's just a friend. He has a studio. It's in a basement. You'll fit right in.

John Dehlin [02:01:45] Okay, well, anyway, so, Eve, I'm super curious now. This is sort of a meta interview, but, like, tell us your reflections of what you were thinking or feeling during the interview and to what extent other, other than sort of wondering in terror, whether you're going to be excommunicated. How is the interview the same or different than what you expected and what was comfortable versus uncomfortable, positive versus negative about that interview experience? We've never really talked about this, so I'm curious.

Eve Rackleff [02:02:21] Yeah. And I would say going in, I was prepared to leave if that was what it came to.

John Dehlin [02:02:30] The interview.

Eve Rackleff [02:02:32] No, I was prepared to leave the church after finding like, not right after that interview, but after doing research and things. Like, I had mentally gotten to a place where I just wanted to know what was true. And I had to get to a place where I could accept that if this isn't true, then it's not true. So going into that interview, it was. I knew I was going to find out things that were not going to make me happy. And that kind of went as expected.

Eve Rackleff [02:03:07] Leaving the interview, honestly, it was such almost an out of body experience because we were in north, like Salt Lake area and then I was driving back down to Provo and the whole time just driving down the road, I'm like, is this all a joke? What is my life? It felt. And my child was projectile vomiting in the car behind me. So it was a weird experience.

John Dehlin [02:03:36] And after the interview you were, you were realizing, whoa, my whole life might have been a lie, basically. You're built. Built on a lie.

Eve Rackleff [02:03:48] Yeah. And that I had. I was a seventh generation Mormon and I don't know, it was a very heavy ride by myself with my 2 year old back down to Provo.

John Dehlin [02:04:04] And do you remember which three of the things you learned? We talked about 10 things, right? I'm sure we did five. We did five.

Carah Burrell [02:04:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:04:11] So I'm sure. What were the five? Do y' all remember?

Carah Burrell [02:04:14] It was mostly stuff that dealt with Joseph Smith's like the end of his life and declaring himself king of the world. And like a big one was Eve, like, do you know how Joseph Smith died and why he was like martyred and the story that we were told as youth versus the real reasons that, you know, that led to him being killed.

John Dehlin [02:04:32] So the Nauvoo Expositor, the polygamy and the Carthage jail and his martyrdom. Yeah, I'm sure we would have talked about.

Carah Burrell [02:04:39] And then polygamy.

John Dehlin [02:04:40] Polygamy was a big one. Yeah, I'm sure we would have talked about Stone in the Hat.

Carah Burrell [02:04:43] No, we didn't.

John Dehlin [02:04:44] Translation the Book of Mormon.

Carah Burrell [02:04:45] No, no, we did because we did a 15 part series and you and I had already did the first 10, so that was just the last five because I always have to think outside the box. And I want to do something different for every single episode. So I was like, for the last five. Can I invite my friend Yvonne and we'll tell her about them?

John Dehlin [02:05:00] Did we do Joseph drinking alcohol? Did we do that one?

Carah Burrell [02:05:03] We might have done that a little bit. We mentioned he drove, drank wine. Yeah. Polyandry.

Neal Rackleff [02:05:09] Oh.

John Dehlin [02:05:12] So, Paulie, wait. Go ahead and say that, Neil.

Neal Rackleff [02:05:15] Polyandry was what blew my mind.

John Dehlin [02:05:17] Tell our viewers and listeners what that is.

Neal Rackleff [02:05:20] Well, here's the crazy thing. I'm 58 years old. I could not have humanly, possibly been more involved in the church throughout my life. It just. There's not enough hours in the day. Right. And I hear this term polyandry.

John Dehlin [02:05:34] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [02:05:35] I mean, I was familiar with polygamy, and I'm like, they said it wrong. What the heck is polyandry? And polyandry is when you have. When a man is married to another woman, who. And that woman is simultaneously married to another man.

John Dehlin [02:05:48] So it's a woman being married to multiple men.

Neal Rackleff [02:05:50] Yeah. And it just blew my mind. I'm like, what? And this is on the church website, and there wasn't just one, and there's 12 or 13. And so I will go into this more later, but that was that. I had church history classes at byu, you know, a couple of them. I've studied church history pretty extensively, read a lot of books, Gospel doctrine, taught gospel doctrine for three or four years. And I'm like, how in the heck am I just hearing that word at 58? And I posed that question to my stake president, which I can get into later, but that blew my mind.

Eve Tells Her Parents About Her Faith Crisis

John Dehlin [02:06:32] Okay, so, Eve, so you're. You're going home feeling like your life may have been built on a lie. I'm curious how long it was before you told your parents that you'd been on Mormon Stories. And. And then I want to process what you coming on Mormon Stories did, your relationship with your parents and your family. Because I remember receiving a message where you were feeling kind of frustrated at the aftermath coming out of that Mormon Stories interview. So just take us through some of that, if you don't mind. Just because I'm curious.

Neal Rackleff [02:07:07] Yeah.

Eve Rackleff [02:07:09] Okay. Where am I starting so immediately? Going home. I. You know, I looked up the CES letter. I looked up a letter to my wife. I looked up the Year of Polygamy podcast. I listened to a bunch of that, and I did that, like, very quickly after returning home. And then I. So I was a Relief Society activities coordinator, and I called the Relief Society president. I Hadn't been in my ward very long, and I just told her, I'm not coming back to church. I can't do this. And I will do this last activity, and then I'm leaving. Please inform everyone. I do not want ministering sisters. I do not want people reaching out to me and talking to me about this. Another thing that I listened to very quickly after was I watched the documentary on the Nexium cult and just seeing

John Dehlin [02:08:12] the parallels there between Joseph Smith and Keith Ranieri. Are those parallels? Yeah.

Eve Rackleff [02:08:19] And the fact that this man could deceive people the way he did in the age of technology, and these people still being deceived that way today, it just made it so plausible to me that how easy it would have been to do similar things to people who did not have cell phones and the Internet.

John Dehlin [02:08:41] Yeah.

Eve Rackleff [02:08:43] And so I don't know when it was like a week after we did the video that Carah then put up the video.

Carah Burrell [02:08:52] And

Eve Rackleff [02:08:54] I remember when she put it up, I was in Houston. We weren't living in Houston at the time, but we were visiting my parents, and I saw the numbers going up on that video so fast. I think it got to, like, 40, 000 views in a couple hours.

Eve Rackleff [02:09:12] And I went. I just felt like at that point, that's when I thought, people are going to see this, and I want my parents to hear from me that I went on this interview with you and Carah and not just randomly have it pop up on their phone or hear it from someone else.

Eve Rackleff [02:09:40] So I went and I told them, and I said, hey, I. You know, I went on this interview, and I was just listening and asking questions. You do not have to watch it, but I want you to know that I did this, and I want you to hear it from me instead of finding out from someone else. And I also, like, texted my siblings and their spouses and told them the same thing. So.

John Dehlin [02:10:10] And what was that like for you guys? Had you had ever heard of any of this stuff, let alone Mormon stories? And what was it like? I. I'm assuming you hadn't. So, like, she's mentioning a podcast that you've never heard of. You have no context. And all of a sudden, we knew.

Christa Rackleff [02:10:27] We knew who Carah was. We'd met Carah. She was worried about telling us, but we were like, no, we want. We want to see it. We want to know what the questions are. And we watched it right away with her.

Eve Rackleff [02:10:40] Yes. Right. When I told them that evening, I mean, we were at their house. Yeah, I told them, and they immediately said, we want to watch it. And we sat down on their couch and we watched it right then. There was no hesitation from them to, like, be open to listening.

John Dehlin [02:11:04] So was there any initial reaction of like, how dare you do this? Or I'm worried about you, or you've

Neal Rackleff [02:11:09] betrayed us, or no, no, you know, anger or any of that stuff? In fact, it was the opposite, right? I had been taught my whole life, don't listen to ex Mormon, anti Mormon content. Don't read it. It's poison. The people who purvey this stuff are evil. They're enemies of the church. They want to destroy your faith. They are bad voodoo, you know, stay the heck away from them. However, when our daughter told us that she had just gone through this experience, I wanted to know what she had learned so that I could help her, right? There was no feeling of anger. And I also. We also said to her, too literally.

Neal Rackleff [02:11:52] We were together when we had part of this conversation, at least, and we were like. Eve was like, you know, well, I'm just worried that you're going to be upset, you know, when you see this. And we're like, it's just information.

Neal Rackleff [02:12:03] We both said that we're adults, you know, we can handle this big deal. You know, we'll. And we love our kids. And from a spiritual perspective, in my mind, this could be spiritually detrimental to my daughter, who I love. And therefore, I'm willing to jump into that potentially spiritually dangerous space because I love her and I want to know what she's going through and I want to help her, you know, and so that was completely the feeling.

Carah Burrell [02:12:37] So that leads me to this question. When you hear something that was coming out of my mouth or John's mouth, and we were quoting sources from church sanctioned sources, as much as we could of, you know, this is what happened. This is what was said. When you hear those things come out of our mouths, what was your initial reaction? Was it like, well, that can't be true, that's actually a lie, or they're making that up, or was it like, oh, damn, if that's true, I need to know more about it? Like, what was your thought process, that last one? So it wasn't immediate that, like, that can't be true, because that's what you hear a lot people just go, no, that's not true.

Neal Rackleff [02:13:09] No, no.

Christa Rackleff [02:13:11] I think we had had things leading up to this time that kind of prepared us for this.

Neal Rackleff [02:13:18] This bomb.

Christa Rackleff [02:13:19] Bomb?

John Dehlin [02:13:20] Like what?

Christa Rackleff [02:13:21] Well, the musket fire talk was one

John Dehlin [02:13:23] big one that bugged you, too.

Christa Rackleff [02:13:24] Oh, Totally. I mean, our daughter had come out not long before that. Like Eve said, you know, her coming out, we had compassion for her. You know, how can this church be teaching that this is so wrong? That musket fire talk bothered me so much. I always felt like Elder Holland had been so kind and loving and. And seeing that just was just very disturbing to me.

John Dehlin [02:13:51] I've heard from many sources that Elder Holland realizes he. He ruined his legacy when he gave that musket talk and that that contributed to the demise of his health.

Neal Rackleff [02:14:00] Oh, I hope not, because.

John Dehlin [02:14:02] And I hear he's on dialysis now, like, but. But I hear that his. His physical health took a nosedive once he realized he had destroyed his legacy with that musket talk. And hearing your story confirms some of that.

Christa Rackleff [02:14:19] It really hit me hard because he just had always seemed so compassionate and loving, and to have that was just so opposite of that was just really hard. The way the church was dealing with some sexual abuse issues in Arizona really bothered me. The. You know, lots of things have been, you know, and for years, we had kind of had a feeling that the church was demanding too much of people.

John Dehlin [02:14:45] Just wearing you out.

Christa Rackleff [02:14:47] Yeah. And just. It was becoming too big and complicated. So we really liked when church cut back to two hours and things like that. We really thought that was inspiration and a good direction to go.

Neal Rackleff [02:15:01] And my reaction was similar to Christa's. I thought Eve handled herself incredibly well. She was asking the questions that I would have asked if I was her. And I was, like, proud of my daughter. The other thing was you both modeled kindness and civility and tenderness towards the daughter I love.

John Dehlin [02:15:28] In the interview or else in the interview.

Neal Rackleff [02:15:30] In the interview.

John Dehlin [02:15:30] So you felt, as parents, believing parents, y' all were actually comfortable with how we treated Eve in the interview.

Carah Burrell [02:15:37] That's, like, a good thing to point out to all the comment section people. Like, they're like, you know, she was taking advantage of or manipulated. I was like, her own parents, believing parents said that we treated her nicely. Calm down.

Neal Rackleff [02:15:47] Well, look, you did treat her nicely. That's an objective fact. There was a point that was poignant to me when you mentioned to her, look, we don't take any joy in tearing down people's faith. And we might joke about this stuff some, because if you didn't joke, sometimes you'd cry. But, you know, we take this very seriously, and it was authentic and it was real. And so I was impressed with the kindness that she showed to her, and I was impressed with the way she handled herself.

Neal Rackleff [02:16:18] But immediately I thought the fact that virtually every point that you made, you said, this is on the church's website. The church accepts these historical facts helped me, because then I said, all right, I'm going to go verify that. Right. And I didn't think, you know, you were lying scumbags or anything. I thought you were nice people. But I'm a lawyer. I'm not going to take your word for it. Right. So I went and started digging through the gospel topics and finding that, yes, indeed, everything that you said there was in fact acknowledged and accepted by the church and on its actual website.

Neal Rackleff [02:16:57] So. But what blew my mind was the degree to which it was buried in the website, like polyandry. I'm like, where's polyandry? You got to go into. It's three clicks down and in a freaking footnote. Yeah, right. And so no wonder I had not heard of that concept before in my life.

John Dehlin [02:17:16] And that made you think, what is an attorney?

Neal Rackleff [02:17:18] It made me it. The red flags just start. Just went through the roof when I watched that and verified that your sources were accurate. Because if you withhold material, relevant information, you are deceptive. You just are in a court of law. In a court of law. Yeah. And in life. Right. You know, in fact, I went and looked in. In Texas, there's a penal code section about falsifying or mishandling evidence. And one of the elements of it is that if you conceal evidence during an official investigation, right?

Neal Rackleff [02:17:53] It's a felony offense subject to a fine up to $10,000 and 10 years in prison. Right? So, okay, that's NATO lawyer guy. Why does that matter? The reason it matters is because the rules of evidence have been developed over hundreds of years of jurisprudence. And what courts are trying to do is figure out how to balance time and efficiency and get the right information so that the truth has the best chance of emerging. Right? So when I'm a lawyer and I say, holy crud, the church has not apprised me of this massive quantity of relevant material information. If this was a court of law, I felt like the church had given me exhibits A through C, all of which were really favorable to their position, but they neglected to tell me there was exhibits fricking D through M, which were awful, right?

Neal Rackleff [02:18:51] And so that just alarmed me, disappointed me, devastated me. Like, how can you guys have been telling me all my life that people who are in this EXMO or anti Mormon space only give you half truths and will twist the facts when in fact and are evil, horrible, venomous, demonic people practically. And then you guys were literally dice

Christa Rackleff [02:19:22] and kind and actually giving us the context and putting everything back into context that they've taken out of context, because

Carah Burrell [02:19:31] we know what it's like to be in that position, too.

Christa Rackleff [02:19:34] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:19:34] Now you guys are kind of on this side. Well, it's like you're speaking to the audience where you know what it's like when things sound a little bit skeezy, that the church has hidden things, but you're willing to investigate it.

Neal Rackleff [02:19:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:47] So micro question, Neil, how long was that period of deep investigation for you? Was it a day? Was it a week? Was it a month? Was it six months? If you had to estimate how much time you were in that sort of deep investigation to try and determine whether these accusations were valid or invalid, how long did that last for you?

Neal Rackleff [02:20:09] Well, it lasted for months. Right. Christa was actually a lot more.

John Dehlin [02:20:14] That was going to be on my

Neal Rackleff [02:20:15] next question, studious and academic, and dove more into the history and whatnot. The process concerned me. Right. And as an attorney, because I knew, look, you could say for some people in the church, they might say, okay, Joseph Smith did a lot of lame things. Maybe he went off the rails or he was an idiot or whatever. But, man, we got modern prophets and apostles and Revelation, and the church is really cool today, you know? So what about that?

Neal Rackleff [02:20:46] That didn't hold water for me. Because even if the facts about Joseph Smith, if you could accept the problems that happened back then, what I knew was that the church today, the leadership of it, was actively suppressing material, relevant information that I had a right to know. And so just knowing that, I immediately went to my stake president. I was serving as elders quorum president at the time. I didn't want to talk to my bishop about this because he was a convert and I didn't want to undermine anyone's faith. Right. Because that's what I've been taught my whole life. I've been taught to fortify people's faith, not to undermine it.

Neal Rackleff [02:21:25] And so I wasn't looking to get out of the church. I wasn't looking to harm the church. But I went to my stake president and I just said, what? What the heck? You know, I had a breakfast meeting with him and the mission president, and we were introducing them to this, a cool friend of mine, Pastor Rudy Rasmus. And.

Neal Rackleff [02:21:46] And after the breakfast, I saw the stake president in the parking lot. Such a freaking baby. But I talked to him in the parking lot. I just said, I've just come across this information. This is just days after I watched her Deal.

Neal Rackleff [02:22:01] What in the heck is going on? What the heck is polyandry? I'm 58 freaking years old and I could not be more involved in this church. And I'm just hearing that word now. And I broke down in tears in the parking lot of the restaurant and I scheduled an interview with him and had a series of interviews with him, one of which was 4 hours ish. And I went in in a complete non argumentative lawyer guy mode, like ultra vulnerable. I went to him and I said, look, you're going to have kids, grandkids, members who stumble across this troubling information like I have, and maybe I can help you minister to them.

Neal Rackleff [02:22:43] Let me be your experiment, you know, your test case. Like, I'm going to come to you with total vulnerability, and I'm also going to give you constructive feedback on how I think you're doing, because I'm not intimidated by you. I mean, I've testified before the United States Senate. I'm not worried about the authority figure of a stake president. But I said, young people are going to vote with their feet. They're going to hear this stuff and. And you're never going to know about it. So my central point with him was I said, I got one question for you.

Neal Rackleff [02:23:18] Tell me how polyandry is, okay? Based on any established doctrine or practice or principle canon of the Church of Jesus Christa of Latter Day saints, including section 132. Because I don't see it. You know, how can you. How can this have been okay?

John Dehlin [02:23:36] How can Joseph have married 12 women who were already married to other living men?

Neal Rackleff [02:23:42] Right? And that number was in the footnote on the church website, too. This was not you guys pumping up some crazy stuff. You know, it was there and acknowledged. So he's a really good man and a good friend, and I love him for the hours that he spent with me. Was very charitable.

John Dehlin [02:24:00] When you first asked that question, had he even heard of the word polyandry?

Neal Rackleff [02:24:04] He's a very educated guy who knew a lot about a lot of these issues. He speaks like three languages. He'd studied church history extensively, but seemingly always from an apologist perspective. He told me, when you look at polygamy, you need to read Brian Hales. And he said, and also, you know, don't go down that polygamy rabbit hole, because I've seen what happens and it isn't good.

Christa Rackleff [02:24:28] Doesn't end well.

Neal Rackleff [02:24:29] It doesn't end well, right? And. And. And so I said to him, I'm going down this rabbit hole to save my daughter. And the analogy that I used with him was, this was not long after the Uvalde shootings, right. In Texas. Right. Where numerous members of law enforcement waited 45 minutes in a hallway while children were killed by a gunman in there. And they were too hesitant for a lot of other. Exactly. Why. The facts are that armed men stood in the hallway for 45 minutes while more kids got killed, and their cell phone messages were saying, people are shooting us, and they didn't go in. And I said, the way I look at this is my daughter is in that class, is in that classroom. She's in spiritual danger. I'm diving into the damn rabbit hole. Screw you. You know, pardon my language.

John Dehlin [02:25:25] Not going to stand in the hall.

Neal Rackleff [02:25:26] No. And so avoiding.

John Dehlin [02:25:29] Avoiding to study.

Neal Rackleff [02:25:30] Right. Just to avoid harming myself some. No. This is. What a cowardly thing to do.

Christa Rackleff [02:25:39] And the truth matters.

Neal Rackleff [02:25:40] The truth matters.

John Dehlin [02:25:42] Where'd you learn that?

Neal Rackleff [02:25:44] Truth is knowledge of things as they are, as they were, and as they are to come. And doctrine and covenants 93, 24.

John Dehlin [02:25:50] Oh, say what is truth is the fairest gem. Right?

Neal Rackleff [02:25:53] Yeah. And so. So he was never able to answer that question, but instead gave me reams of information about how awesome the church is. And I'm like, dude, we're in violent agreement. I get it. It's a great institution. It does wonderful things for all kinds of people. Answer my question. And he never would down to the. The last interview, because he didn't have an answer because there isn't a good answer. And that was. That was a bummer to learn. That was devastating. But he's a good man. He tried his best.

John Dehlin [02:26:30] Wow.

Neal Rackleff [02:26:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:26:33] Okay. And this is a little more than two years ago, basically.

Neal Rackleff [02:26:37] Yeah. The other thing I told him the. And I was praying about this stuff, too. So people think that folks who have questions are just these, you know, people who want to go sin, and. And they're. They're losing their faith. I approached this prayerfully. I remember.

Christa Rackleff [02:26:50] We both did.

Neal Rackleff [02:26:51] We both did. Yeah. I remember driving to his office for the first interview and praying about this. And the thought came to my mind, ask him for a sabbatical. You know, like, professors take time off to re. Energize. And I was Elders Quorum president. So I said to him, I need to be released. The only time I've asked to be released of any calling in my life, except one other in public affairs, when things were awkward with my political job. But I said, I need a sabbatical, dude. I need time to process this stuff. And I need time to study and to learn and to understand what is true and what isn't regarding the church's truth claims. And he was really cool about that. He released me, like the next week. And so the acceleration of this from seeing that podcast, it was only a couple weeks till I was. I asked to be released.

Christa Rackleff [02:27:42] Oh, yeah. It was very quick.

Neal Rackleff [02:27:44] And I mean, the repercussions were swift and comprehensive, far reaching,

John Dehlin [02:27:55] powerful. Krista, I'm dying to hear in parallel, how you were processing both the interview and in the aftermath.

Neal and Christa Investigate Church History Together

Christa Rackleff [02:28:04] Yeah. So like we said before, the interview kind of brought us to this point of, okay, we need to look at this critically. Not like we have before. We need to look at this and really dive in and see what's going on. And so we started off with just, you know, looking at the church's website. We pretty soon decided, let's read Doctrine Covenants 132 with this new kind of information and understanding of Joseph Smith and what he was. He was actually up to and reading doctrine and covenants 1:32 all the way through.

Neal Rackleff [02:28:44] Tell them where we met when we read it.

Christa Rackleff [02:28:46] Well, we. I think we did it at home first, but we also. We decided to go to the temple and read it in the Celestial Room and together. Together. And I'm like, this is not the God I believe in.

John Dehlin [02:29:01] What is it? What.

Christa Rackleff [02:29:02] What was the God that's supposed to be giving this revelation in 132? This is not the God I believe.

John Dehlin [02:29:09] So you read Doctrine and Covenant Section 132 in the celestial Room in the Houston, Texas temple together, and your inspired conclusion was, this is not the God I believe in. Michelle Stone would agree with you.

Christa Rackleff [02:29:20] I. I'm like, this stuff just is. It's awful. It's horrible.

John Dehlin [02:29:25] I agree with you.

Christa Rackleff [02:29:26] It doesn't all make sense. It doesn't all add up. Yeah. For those who don't know, mean and ugly and horrible.

John Dehlin [02:29:33] Can you. Do you have two or three highlights of the most awful things about DNC132? And this is for those who don't know, this is canonized Mormon scripture. A revelation. It's. It's supposedly the polygamy revelation Joseph Smith receives to tell Emma that she needs to let him practice polygamy.

Neal Rackleff [02:29:52] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:29:53] And very vindictive sounding.

John Dehlin [02:29:54] What were some of the worst parts that you remember?

Christa Rackleff [02:29:57] First he talks about that Emma gets to have a say in who he marries, but if she chooses not to accept that, she will be destroyed.

Neal Rackleff [02:30:10] Destroyed?

Christa Rackleff [02:30:11] How does that make any sense?

John Dehlin [02:30:13] And he gets whoever he wants anyway.

Neal Rackleff [02:30:15] Right.

Christa Rackleff [02:30:16] So it just, it doesn't make any sense.

John Dehlin [02:30:18] So it's like consent. Unless she disagrees and then she's destroyed and he gets what he wants anyway.

Christa Rackleff [02:30:23] Plus, I think in the beginning, forgot.

Carah Burrell [02:30:25] I like, haven't been in this. I like, forgot that. That. Gosh, I'm like hearing it.

Christa Rackleff [02:30:29] I'm Eve.

John Dehlin [02:30:30] I'm hearing it for the first time. I thought you had healed.

Carah Burrell [02:30:34] I know.

Christa Rackleff [02:30:35] Gosh. And I also kind of came away with a feeling like this is. This is kind of a country club environment where people come here to and feel very special about themselves. And I don't really want to feel like I'm better than everybody else by coming here.

Neal Rackleff [02:30:57] And I, you know, my feelings were a little bit different, but I literally remember being in the endowment ceremony and just thinking I had to pray about this. Church teaches us to pray about everything. Right. That's the best path to find truth. And so I asked Heavenly Father, I said, is this specifically, is this ordinance necessary for me to return to you the endowment? The endowment, you know, and the attendant ordinances, which, you know, would include the initiatories and temple marriage, et cetera. Right. But specifically the endowment. When I was.

Neal Rackleff [02:31:34] That I was going through and the impression that came to me was, no, but these are good people and they're trying to do good things. And I think that religious rituals can be beautiful and ennobling and teach us stuff, but there's a difference between it being beautiful and ennobling and instructive and absolutely necessary in this church for you to return to the presence of God. Right. And the exclusivity part of it was what I felt was not.

Neal Rackleff [02:32:02] Was not correct. And yeah, when we read 132 all the way through in the Celestial Room, it's internally inconsistent in church. You get little snippets and out of context verses and manuals which are curated to take you to a certain place analytically. Right.

Neal Rackleff [02:32:22] But when you read the whole thing together, you're like, this thing's a mess. It's ridiculous. And this is what we base the key to eternal families on, is this doctrine. And then when you study more and you learn that in the original edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, there was no Section 132. I believe it was Section 101, which explicitly said that the church, as regarding the sins of polygamy and adultery, we declare that one man should have but one wife and that we don't believe in adultery.

Neal Rackleff [02:32:59] And most Mormons do not know that the original edition of the Book of Mormon, which wasn't changed until, like, oh, 1847, you probably know. 60 did not include 132. The church was publicly.

John Dehlin [02:33:13] Doctrine and Covenants.

Neal Rackleff [02:33:14] I'm sorry, the Doctrine and Covenants. The doctrine.

John Dehlin [02:33:16] It was 1870s. It was. I think it was, yeah.

Neal Rackleff [02:33:18] 1868, something like that. That the. The Doctrine and Covenants specifically said the church does not believe in countenance or practice polygamy. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:33:29] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [02:33:30] How did it change? That's a pretty big one.

John Dehlin [02:33:33] No. Depends on who you ask, but. All right. So, Krista, anything else about your. Your process?

Christa Rackleff [02:33:39] Well, so kind of coming to that point, like, you know, we had looked at things on the church's website. We'd looked at the scriptures and just in that much, kind of coming to the conclusion there's big problems here that this isn't all adding up. But I'm sorry. Still in my mind. But what about the Book of Mormon or what about the first vision or what? You know, but. But it's really cracked for us, you know, and we're basically on our way out, you know, because we feel like we're getting answers through our prayers.

Christa Rackleff [02:34:11] But processing that, listening to the whole LDS discussions series. Oh, was hugely helpful for me. It really helped me process through that and see why, you know, get my brain to sync up with what makes sense and how. How this all kind of got spun out into something that it's not. And. And just. Just help me be able to deconstruct the indoctrination and figure out where the truth really was.

John Dehlin [02:34:55] Yeah. I'll just give a quick plug for LDS discussions. We started that a few years ago. It's basically 50 to 60 episodes where this guy named Mike who has a website called ldsdiscussions.com he and Nemo and me and sometimes Julius, sometimes Gerardo would just try to analyze Mormon Church truth claims from as neutral and as unbiased as a perspective as we could. Just saying, you know, what is the evidence? How does it line up with what we were taught? And I think it's definitely one of the top three most important things Mormon Stories has ever done. Is that LDS discussion series. You can find it on Spotify, on Apple Podcast, or there's a YouTube playlist on the Mormon Stories podcast YouTube channel. It's just LDS discussions and people tell me it's. It's life changing.

Christa Rackleff [02:35:46] It was life changing for me. It was. I mean, going through the process and trying to deconstruct this, it was kind of my lifeline to like, okay, okay, I. I am on the right track, like I am saying, like to be questioning this and to be, you know, there are answers that make sense here.

Neal Rackleff [02:36:11] And part of what was so good about that series is that it was assiduously documented and sourced. So there were slides throughout it where you could go to, okay, the Joseph Smith Papers. A lot of really relevant, helpful stuff is available in the Joseph Smith Papers that the church itself has put on, you know, online. Right. And so I would go through and. And say, okay, you know, I'm going to look at this point and that point and that point. And it was extremely helpful. I want to read something that, that encapsulates for me why history and understanding of it is so important. Because sometimes people will say to me, you know, so what if the church's history has got some. Some warts and it's sorted and it's got some issues there who, you know, big deal. This is from the TV show the Foundation.

Christa Rackleff [02:37:04] Just a book first.

Neal Rackleff [02:37:05] Was a book first. But this one, I think was just in the quote, was in the TV show, not in the book. Ask a historian. What was mankind's greatest invention? Fire? The wheel? The sword? I would argue it's history itself. History isn't fact, it's narrative. One carefully and curated. When carefully curated and shaped under the pen strokes of the right scribe, a villain becomes a hero, a lie becomes the truth. What we choose to tell our children and what we censor, what we illuminate and what we gloss over. History is an act of addition and subtraction. A wise man once said, a people without history is like a tree without roots.

Neal Rackleff [02:37:44] What's missing from the wise man's history? When did story replace record? When all the facts fall short of believability? Fantasy feels reassuringly solid. And since this is my history, I get to decide which parts have been subtracted and which have been added. History is the ultimate weapon because it harnesses time itself. Used correctly, the past can alter the present. What other invention can do that?

Neal Rackleff [02:38:09] So is history important? Does it matter if Joseph Smith did things that were wrong, evil, inappropriate? Yes, it does matter. And I would have, you know, the stake president I was going through these interviews with would say, well, you know, anybody can, you know, warp history to their liking. I've read six books on Lincoln and they all have a different take on him. And my response to that is, yeah, perhaps, but all of them are going to agree on essential facts. He was born in what? Springfield, Illinois. Such and such a year. He ran for president. He did the Lincoln Douglas debates. He Was the president during the Civil War, he gave the Gettysburg Address.

Neal Rackleff [02:38:49] So don't tell me that just because history can be manipulated that I shouldn't be concerned about history. You guys have concealed key material historical facts for me for my whole damn life, despite being deeper into this religion as deep as I could possibly be.

Neal Rackleff [02:39:09] That's wrong. And guess what? I am an adult and I have a reasonably intelligent mind, and I want to know the facts and I want to draw my own conclusions from those. And the church uses history to promote its arguments all the time.

Neal Rackleff [02:39:30] But then when you bring up the negative history, oh, well, you can prove anything with history. You know, one Sunday, that was kind of poignant for me. After I was going through some of these interviews and whatnot. I remember I rode my motorcycle to church. I don't think Krista went that day. For some reason, I didn't wear a tie, which is really weird for me because I would never go to church without a tie. It's a scrupulosity thing. And I realized I don't have a tie on. I'm lost in the thought. And I just sat on the corner, the curb in the parking lot and put my head in my hands and was just pondering, like, what is going on here?

Neal Rackleff [02:40:05] And my elders, quorum president, because I'd been released, right, Came out and talked to me and he was a cool guy and, you know, and I told him some of my concerns and he said, well, you know, we don't have a video camera. We don't know what Joseph Smith was doing in those bedrooms or if he was really having sex with girls and whatnot. And I said, yeah, but there's a whole bunch on the church's website, there's extensive historic documentation of his extensive practice of polygamy in very deed having sexual relations. And I said, I'm okay with Joseph Smith being human, you know, with him getting mad at somebody and getting in a fistfight at a high council meeting or kicking a dog or whatever.

Neal Rackleff [02:40:43] Not that I countenance those things. I'm not okay with him being a monster, right? And. And I've got a friend who was a customs agent and worked in the trial, the child traffic or human trafficking arm of that. And he said, basically, when you look at the facts, he's a strong. Was a strong LDS member. If Joseph Smith were alive today doing what he was doing, then he would be likely arrested for human trafficking. This is serious stuff. It's not stuff you can easily sweep under the rug, you know, if you learn the facts you have full disclosure, and you choose to do that, and you want to be all in.

Neal Rackleff [02:41:21] Bless your heart. Go for it. I'm okay with that. And I'm supportive of you. I can't do it, and I won't. I won't accept incomplete truths. If you think it's no big deal, conceal the truth. Here's the hypothetical I came up with. Let's say a guy is, you know, three hours late coming home from work, and his wife says to him, you know, hey, Dave, how come you're coming home late? Well, you know, my friend Mikey, he's having a really hard time, and I just felt like I needed to be with him.

Neal Rackleff [02:41:52] Okay, cool. What if he neglected to tell her that they went to a strip club and did cocaine? You know, that's the way he felt to be with his buddy. Did he tell his wife the truth? Was he honest with her?

Neal Rackleff [02:42:08] I would suggest no. You withhold material information. You are being deceptive. And the church has done that massively. And I think the only thing that changed that was the advent of the Internet and search engines, when they could no longer control the narrative. I don't know if you want me to go into that any or save that for later, but.

Parents Deconstruct While Eve Watches

John Dehlin [02:42:34] No, let's definitely get there, but let's pause for a second now, Eve, I want to check in with you. Were your parents, as they're like, deconstructing, reading the gospel topics essays, talking to church leadership, listening to and watching LDS discussions and I'm assuming other content, maybe even Carah's TikToks, I don't know.

Neal Rackleff [02:42:57] Didn't watch many of them.

Christa Rackleff [02:42:58] Sorry.

Carah Burrell [02:42:59] I'll text them to you later in the group chat. You can catch.

John Dehlin [02:43:03] But, Eva, were you aware that your parents were kind of going down the rabbit hole? Were you in communication with them? And most importantly, how was that for you? How did it feel for you? And I don't know if you remember the message, the direct message I think you sent me on Instagram, where you weren't in such a good spot necessarily, feeling good about the aftermath of the Mormon stories interview. Share with us any and all of. Any of that that you want to talk about.

Eve Rackleff [02:43:33] Yeah, so I exited much quicker than my parents did. And so they spent half a year going over these things, but when it took me, like a week. So I was very grateful and it was nice to process some of that with them, but at the same time, I mean, their process was a little slower and I was ahead of them, and I didn't know where their process would lead them. And when you first start questioning things, you try and be apologetic, but when you're at different phases of this deconstruction, like, if I'm totally out and really angry and they're trying to be apologetic, that's just hard.

Neal Rackleff [02:44:25] So

Eve Rackleff [02:44:27] there was some difficulty there. And when I did reach out and message you, and I messaged Tara, too, I was so grateful to have Mormon stories to listen to, to help process these things. But one thing I did feel was that our interview was just such a unique thing, and it did have the potential to, like, cause a lot of heartache and harm in just, like, personal mental anguish in my life that I felt was different than other episodes that y' all have done.

Eve Rackleff [02:45:05] And the one thing I just felt like I went home. I didn't. I wasn't in Utah with a big ex Mormon community with people to talk to these things about. I did have some friends, and eventually my parents. I. The one thing that I was feeling then was I had wished that, you know, maybe I had just been connected. I know you guys have lots of connections with people who help people transition through a faith crisis or help process some of that. And so my reaching out there, I think I was just a little bit in a place of hurt, feeling alone, and feeling like maybe I could have been connected to some resources or something to help me process those things.

Eve Rackleff [02:45:52] But I am very grateful that as my parents progressed, that, you know, I had that support there and that I was able to process those things with them as well.

John Dehlin [02:46:03] That's fair. And weirdly, I wish. I wish I had thought through it more proactively because Houston has had a robust ex Mormon community for. Since at least 2011. Like, we did a Mormon Stories conference in Houston once or twice during the 2011, 2012 timeframe. Sam Young, you know, is there. The Prince family's there.

John Dehlin [02:46:30] There's so many awesome progressive and post Mormons in Houston. I wish. And you could even go to Facebook or the Mormon Spectrum website. You know, we used to have these huge directories of progressive and post Mormon communities all over the world that that would be aggregated either on the Mormon Stories website or on the Mormon Spectrum website or on the Thrive website.

John Dehlin [02:46:55] But, like, just community building has been so hard for post Mormons that it's been hard to stay up on that. And a lot of the people that were shepherding those communities in the past lost interest and moved on. And we just can't do it all. But literally, I don't even know if the mormonspectrum.com website's still there, but there was a time where you could go to mormonspectrum.com, we would mention it every episode, and you could just go to a map and there'd be push pins of Facebook groups all over the world that you could click on and then join the group and then immediately find community in your local city.

John Dehlin [02:47:37] And it's just so weird that we regress and even in this post Mormon space where. I didn't think to do that for you, Eve, when 10 years ago, I was telling everyone I met to find your local Mormon stories or post Mormon community to get the support you need. But it's just. It's. This space is so difficult.

John Dehlin [02:48:02] But I do feel bad that we didn't do a better job of getting you the support that you would have needed at the time. But thanks for being a good sport about it.

Carah Burrell [02:48:10] I owe you a trip to Greece, Eve.

John Dehlin [02:48:13] Well, you did a Greece trip, didn't you?

Carah Burrell [02:48:15] No, I didn't go on it.

John Dehlin [02:48:17] Oh, that never happened.

Carah Burrell [02:48:18] But I want to still go on a trip, and I want to take Eve because she's a good friend of mine, and I'm saying I owe her my life.

John Dehlin [02:48:25] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:48:26] No, I owe her a special trip somewhere.

John Dehlin [02:48:29] Anyway, Eve, I want to hear what you were going to say, but, Eve, did you. I wanted to make sure you had a chance to respond to that.

Eve Rackleff [02:48:36] Yeah, I just kind of want to conclude that with. I mean, I was in a place that was just hard then. I was postpartum, and I felt like I had immediately lost all my community and connections. And I am so grateful for the sacrifices you and Carah have made to do the work that you do. I know it's not easy, and it's a big help to people who are leaving, and I'm very grateful for that. And I don't want to in any way diminish my respect for the work that you do for the ex Mormon community. Yeah. I just want to leave it on a happy note there.

John Dehlin [02:49:17] So I appreciate that. What were you going to say?

Neal Rackleff [02:49:21] Oh, just. Just that, you know, we were very much communicating with Eve about questions and issues that we had and with our. Our daughter, our other daughter, Karen, who had come out as bisexual. And, you know, I don't want to skip over that point because that was before.

Neal Rackleff [02:49:41] When Karen came out, we felt so bad that we didn't know more earlier about how she was feeling and what she was going through, because we love her, and we felt terrible that we weren't more in tune with where she was right. And she went through. We didn't realize that she had done a lot of studying regarding the church and had come to the conclusion that a lot of things were wrong and had left before any of us had. And I feel really badly that she went through that on her own. Right. Without. Yeah, we kind of went through it together with Eve. We kind of got to.

Neal Rackleff [02:50:27] We. We progressed or progressed, regressed, however you want to characterize it at different rates of speed. But we at least had each other for support. And Karen is amazing. And at a young age went through that process alone. And I really regret that we didn't do more to support her and to help her there.

John Dehlin [02:50:51] Right.

Carah Burrell [02:50:51] Yeah. It's hard to know when. Where the safe space is when you're going through a faith crisis, who you can talk to. And then I went through that with my sister where she went through a whole faith crisis without me even knowing. And I would have been a safe space. I thought of myself at the time, but she didn't see me as that. And it can fracture your relationships of like, I thought that we would be able to talk about these things, but just. You don't know what person's going to be a safe space to always reach out to.

Christa Rackleff [02:51:20] No, and we weren't there. We weren't that for her at that time.

Neal Rackleff [02:51:25] And.

Christa Rackleff [02:51:26] And we have big regrets about that. But luckily we're in a good place now. And she's. She told us she's grateful for that and that if we hadn't come here to this point, she probably wouldn't be comfortable, you know, spending as much time with us or, you know, be as close to us as she is.

Neal Rackleff [02:51:51] So key point here. You know, two of our kids are basically in, two of our kids are out. We love them all equally, support and sustain those who are in fully. You know, our son just blessed our new grandchild on Sunday. And I was honored that he invited me to stand in the circle and participate in that ordinance. It was beautiful.

John Dehlin [02:52:16] So you haven't resigned. You're still, I don't know, priesthood exercise worthy, I guess.

Neal Rackleff [02:52:22] Well, here's my thing on this. I don't know if you remember the episode of the Office where Michael Scott declares he's told he needs to declare bankruptcy. And so he goes and stands out outside and he goes, I declare bankruptcy. Not really the legal way to do it. I kind of feel similarly about that. Like, I don't owe anybody an explanation or a declaration of exactly where I am. I don't like being stereotyped or pigeonholed. So I'm not going to answer that question necessarily. Right. I'm doing what I think is cool and what is right and what is good.

John Dehlin [02:52:53] And, and for you, standing in the circle of your grandbabies was beautiful. Mormon blessing was something you want to be a part of.

Neal Rackleff [02:53:01] Yeah, I was, I was honored that he, that he asked me to stand in. And, and it was beautiful, beautiful to participate.

John Dehlin [02:53:07] So. Okay, so, yeah, let's go back to your faith journey. So you've now catch us up. So where are you in your journey and where does this faith crisis study that actually helped create with some dear friends? How does that come into play in your journey?

Navigating Resignation and Institutional Responses

Neal Rackleff [02:53:22] Okay, so I go see my, my current stake president. You know, I have this series of interviews with him in which I was super vulnerable, a lot of tears, a lot of just listening, you know. And in those interviews, what struck me was that he made all kinds of assumptions about me that were just inaccurate.

Neal Rackleff [02:53:44] I stake president, I don't. He's a good man. I don't think he was listening to me. I don't think he was hearing me. And he seemed to just be focused on dissuading me from looking at anything other than the church's narrative and trying to keep me in as opposed to really even empathizing very much with me and trying to help me get answers. And so then I went to another, the former stake president, who was stake president when I was bishop on the north side of town, who's been a friend and mentor to me for many, many years. Super awesome guy. And I told him what was going on, and I got a very different response.

Neal Rackleff [02:54:27] He was super loving and kind and empathetic. And he basically expressed his love and confidence in me and wanted to help me get answers. And he had a lot of very high level church connections. And he said, you know, Neil, I bet you the general authorities just don't know that this is going on, that there's so many members that are, are coming across polyandry and this crazy stuff and, you know, and are, and are struggling with this the way that you are.

Neal Rackleff [02:54:57] You have spent, you know, I spent a couple of days with President Nelson introducing him to the mayor of Houston and other leaders in Houston for various reasons, which was a really cool experience. And so he was kind of like, you know, you need to talk to the general authorities so that they can understand what's going on and maybe you can help them, you know, figure out how to do a better job administering to people similarly situated. So I'M like, okay, cool, maybe there's a, there's a role for me to help reform the church, you know, and, and then Eve sent me the study, which was the. What was the name of that study again? I don't have it right in front of me.

John Dehlin [02:55:39] The one you just mentioned. Yeah, the one, yeah. So basically fans of Mormon stories will know that in around 2013ish, Hans Mattsson, the Swedish Area Authority, was leaving the church. He called a meeting with Marlon Jensen and Greg Prince in New York with my friend Travis Stratford to basically say, what's up? Actually, this is long before 2013 because it's what led Marlon Jensen to be able. We did a study of thousands of ex Mormons, why they left the church. We came up with a list of why people were leaving. And then Greg Prince and Travis Stratford and Hans Batson gave that study to both Marlon Jensen and Dieter Uchtdorf, which then was used to convince the church to write and publish the Gospel topics essays.

Neal Rackleff [02:56:29] Right? Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:56:30] It's a 80 page, well designed study that the church that influenced the church in pretty big ways back in the

Neal Rackleff [02:56:39] day and Clayton Christensen was part of that very prominent member, passed away a couple years ago, I believe. And so when I read through this personal faith crisis study, there were narratives from people who had been strong, active members of the church who were given a thousand words or 1500 words to describe their situation. And I was reading through these, these testimonials and like, man, that's me, that's me over and over. I could see where these folks were coming from.

Neal Rackleff [02:57:12] But then I looked at the date of the study. Remember, I'm looking for information to help me figure out how to help the church understand that, yeah, LDS Personal Faith crisis. There it is. How the how. What's going on? And my former stake president's like, maybe you can help with this. And I see that it was submitted to the church in 2013, like almost 10 years ago. And I remember I was working out and again, people are going to think I'm just like the biggest baby crying all the time. But that devastated me because I remember breaking down again just in tears thinking, oh my gosh, they know.

Neal Rackleff [02:57:52] They know exactly what's going on to people who are in my situation, in our situation, and they've known for 10 years because that study was really well done and really succinct and clear and it was awesome. I've given it to my stake president and he gave it to members of the I Council and said, hey, I've given it to people saying, look, if you want to understand people going through a faith crisis, read this. It's awesome. But it devastated me because I knew there wasn't anything I could do to educate these guys. They fully knew what was going on.

John Dehlin [02:58:28] And it's worse because they Knew back when BH Roberts questioned the Book of Mormon 1910s and 20s, they knew when Fon Brody released no Man Knows My History in the 1940s, they knew when the Tanners came out in the 1960s and the book of Abraham papyrus were discovered in the 1960s, they knew all through the Leonard Arrington administration when they opened up the church history department, but then shut it down because in 82, because they became uncomfortable with all the uncomfortable history. They knew in the 80s and 90s when Sunstone. They excommunicated the September 6th and warned all the BYU professors to stay away from Sunstone and Dialogue. They've known all along.

Neal Rackleff [02:59:09] Yeah. And I learned that more deeply as I studied more about BH Roberts and other parts of that history. And so what killed me there was I realized they've known about this and they haven't answered the key questions.

Neal Rackleff [02:59:27] I disagree with church leaders who posit that these folks who question the church have an unending series of questions. It's not unending. There are about 10 or 15 that are of primary significance to people with questions. And they were articulated in that study in 2013 very clearly. And so I'm like, maybe the reason they're not answering 10 or 15 key questions is because they don't have the answers. Either they don't care about people in the church enough to make the effort to answer those questions, or they don't have good answers. And I think that. I think there's a combination of the two of those is what I came to the conclusion.

Neal Rackleff [03:00:15] You know what I. What. What struck me after ministering and going after leaving the 99 sheep and going after the one over and over and over in my ministry as a leader in the church. I. In the Hans Matzon interview you had with him, he said, what about the lost sheep? You know, he was so kind and so calm and. And reasonable in those interviews. I was super impressed with him. And. And I just thought, okay, this is the one time in my entire life when I'm the lost sheep and they got nothing for me. And so then I started thinking about how if you want to look at an organization and understand what matters to them, look at two things.

Neal Rackleff [03:01:06] How they budget their money, their financial resources, and their human resources. Right. So I'm thinking more about this. If I have an alcohol addiction or a sex addiction or a drug addiction in the church. The church has 12 step programs that I can go to for almost any kind of sociological or, you know, mental, emotional, whatever. They have resources that they bring to bear to help their members. Here I am. Here we are after 58 years of dedicated, faithful service to the church. And we weren't seeking negative information. We only stumbled across it when we were trying to help our daughter, whom we love.

Neal Rackleff [03:01:48] And we're asking sincere questions, not in a position to tear the church down. I was going to great lengths not to injure anybody's faith. And there is nothing available. They're not training their local leaders to answer these questions. There's not pamphlets that you can read that answer the questions. They do have the Gospel topics questions online, which is a step in the right direction. But after you read a lot of the Gospel Topics and you do additional study, you find that they're often watered down and don't really contain the hard truths that are. That are out there and the facts that are out there. And so I was just stunned by the inattention to those in our situation. And then I thought, okay, let's.

John Dehlin [03:02:42] Intentional inattention.

Neal Rackleff [03:02:44] Intentional intention.

John Dehlin [03:02:45] Because they don't want to spread the virus. So they know there's a virus. They know that people are dying spiritually from the virus, but they have no cure for the virus. And so they just decide intentionally not to tell anyone about the virus.

Neal Rackleff [03:03:01] That's the conclusion, right?

Christa Rackleff [03:03:02] Yeah. And so you feel like you're part of that virus. So they. They really don't want you to be there spreading that virus.

John Dehlin [03:03:10] You know, they want to cut you out.

Christa Rackleff [03:03:12] You don't feel that necessarily from your local ward, you know, like you feel from your ministering brothers and sisters and so forth. They just kind of want to help you.

John Dehlin [03:03:25] And as long as they don't perceive you as a threat.

Neal Rackleff [03:03:27] But here's the thing. One of the things I remember I asked our stake president was, I said, hey, you know, can I just kind of be a mellow member for a while? You know, not have a bunch of callings, you know, and responsibilities and just be chill and I like the hymns and just come to sacrament meeting.

John Dehlin [03:03:44] After all you did for the church.

Neal Rackleff [03:03:46] After all I'd done for the church for 58 years. And this is after him seeing how traumatized I was with all this stuff. And I would assume he would have said, yeah, that's cool. But he didn't. He said, well, you know, it's a participatory church and I'm thinking, are you freaking kidding me? I want to take a breather after 58 years of full bore activity and you're, you're dissuading me from this or telling me that that's not okay.

John Dehlin [03:04:15] What was he thinking?

Neal Rackleff [03:04:16] I don't know. It may have been a moment where he didn't think enough about it because it just was staggering to me.

Carah Burrell [03:04:22] I don't get to take a break. Neither do you.

Eve Rackleff [03:04:24] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [03:04:26] And the maybe there's also like, if

John Dehlin [03:04:28] you're sticking around and not fully with the program and you've been a former bishop and a high level, you know, a server in the Houston area that's like had interactions with area and general authorities, if people start realizing you're lukewarm, they might say, hey, what's up with so bro? You know, what's up. What's up with Brother Ratcliffe? Why isn't he have a calling? Why isn't he really fired up about the church anymore? That could be something that leads to other people questioning or doubting.

Neal Rackleff [03:04:55] It could.

Christa Rackleff [03:04:56] Yeah. And, and you know that they're just in this organization, there just isn't really a way to be lukewarm. Especially like you said, when you've been all in because, you know, as a member, you're always trying to get people to the temple. You're always trying to get people to serve more, to teach, to, to do missionary work, whatever.

John Dehlin [03:05:20] And you're supposed to go, so why aren't the Radcliffe's at Word Temple night? Right, yeah, right.

Christa Rackleff [03:05:23] Exactly.

John Dehlin [03:05:24] Right.

Neal Rackleff [03:05:25] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:05:25] And I didn't mean interrupt.

Christa Rackleff [03:05:27] No, no, that's exactly. You know, it's just there's always going to be a push to be more committed and to more. And so there isn't really a path that way.

Neal Rackleff [03:05:38] And I was struck with, by the fact that there was no safe space for me to, for Krista and I to go and have questions about the hard issues that we're dealing with, there's not a special Sunday school class. It would be so easy for them to do that. Also, with regard to answering the questions that we have, I'm like, okay, you guys can't answer about 10 or 15 vexing questions. You have three universities, the entire church education system at your disposal. Billions of dollars at one point, over $100 billion in one fund. Right. Which is like enough money to buy all of the NBA teams in the country to try to put that in perspective. And you have a small army of demographers and folks that are in the church office building who are constantly serving attitudes and messaging for the church. And you can't answer 10 or 15 questions? Are you kidding me?

John Dehlin [03:06:37] Well, I think they'd say, go to Fairmormon. Fairmormon answers the questions, which is baloney.

Neal Rackleff [03:06:42] And here's why. When I was a bishop, right at the local level, I was the answer man. You ask any bishop. There is this thing in Mormon culture where you have a question a lot of members will ask the bishop about anything.

Neal Rackleff [03:06:57] You know, how to fix their car, financial advice, who should I marry? Who shouldn't I marry? I'm 35 years old as a bishop, and I'm giving marital advice to couples in their 50s who are at each other's throats. And I'm like, I have no training to do this right. But I didn't wimp out and say, I'm not going to try and I'm not going to answer things. So when you have somebody at, say, Elder Renlund's level, that fireside talk that he and his wife gave where he's whining about having to play spiritual, whack a mole, and denigrating people who have sincere questions by making them feel like they're wasting their time.

Neal Rackleff [03:07:41] And when he says, in that meeting, you know, I had a friend who had questions. Well, I sent him with this one question to go see this expert. Another one, really? You're a former university president. You're a cardiologist, I believe, an incredibly intelligent man. You can't do the hard things. You're an apostle. You can't do the work to find the answer. You guys can't take. Assign one of these 10 or 15 questions that you guys identified for them that are the primary issues people have over and over. It's not a thousand questions. It's 10 or 15. You can't do that.

Neal Rackleff [03:08:17] We can do hard things, right? That's what we were taught in conference. Get off your butts and do the work and answer the dang questions and be kind and loving and follow Section121's admonition to lead in righteousness, in faith, and long suffering. This is not difficult. You guys can do this. Now, here's the other thing. How do they allocate their resources? Okay, we're in this place where we probably are perceived as a virus that just they want to have go away. I suppose it's the only answer for why they dedicate no resources to people who have given their entire lives to the church and Simply have a few sincere questions.

Financial Transparency and the Church's Losses

Neal Rackleff [03:08:58] Right. But they had. Where's the number in 2022? According to the 2022 statistical report presented in the April 23rd General Conference, the church had 62,544 full time missionaries. Right. And 27,070 senior service missionaries. So that's close to 100,000 humans that are out there. And what do full time missionaries do? Spend all day, every day answering every conceivable question. Anybody who's never given five minutes of their time to the church will ask them. Right. They are the answer people.

Neal Rackleff [03:09:41] And so on the front end, trying to bring people in, there is this massive allocation of human resources. On the back end, when we've given our whole lives and we've loved our service and we've loved the church and we have one question. Please explain polyandry to me. They can't answer it or choose not to. That is ridiculous. It's not right?

John Dehlin [03:10:09] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [03:10:10] And yeah, it was so devastating and disappointing because I place so much faith in this organization and had so much confidence in its innate goodness. And I think that the members of the church are really good people and there's a tremendous amount of church good done in the church. But at the top levels they are botching this problem of dealing with information from a PR perspective, from a what would Jesus do perspective on almost every possible level. They just seem to be falling short.

John Dehlin [03:10:45] But the problem is they don't have answers. And giving bad answers just makes it worse. And also not having answers makes it clear that they're not quite the prophets, seers and revelators that they tell us they are. So I think the only option is just to ignore it and stay silent and to try and just minimize the number of people getting infected by the truth virus. Yeah, because there's no. If you were in their shoes, what would you do? You know, if you also didn't want

Christa Rackleff [03:11:17] to say what is truth and let the consequence follow.

John Dehlin [03:11:19] I know, but that's a good primary song. That's rules for thee. But if you're, if your job, if you flip the tables and your job is to keep the church strong, it's

Neal Rackleff [03:11:29] not an acceptable answer, John. It's not an acceptable answer. In a normal hierarchical, man made organization, you are going to look at resources and you're going to. Your prime directive is to grow the organization. My friend, Pastor Rasmus, when I was going through this, I reached out to some of my pastor friends for spiritual guidance and one of them says, dude, the prime directive of any church, any Organization is self preservation. And if you get in the way of that, you will be mowed down.

John Dehlin [03:11:56] Absolutely.

Neal Rackleff [03:11:57] And we got in the way in a minor, minor way and we got mowed down. So yes, a normal man made organization that wants to grow and thrive would isolate us as a virus and extricate us. But that is diametrically opposed to the parable of the lost sheep.

Neal Rackleff [03:12:16] You leave the servants of God, leave the 90 and 9 and go after the 1. It's illogical, it's putting the flock at risk, but you do it because you love that sheep. So when we were the lost sheep and we didn't have that love in the sense there were a lot of nice members who said, we love you and we feel for you. But when the church allocated no resources virtually whatsoever to people similarly situated to us, when they knew full well what we're going through is wrong, it is not Christlike, it's not cool, it's not even nice. And so people will often say, well, you know, if they start admitting these things and that could be a problem.

Neal Rackleff [03:13:04] Yeah, so what? Do what is right and let the consequences follow. Years ago, I read something where I think it was Pope John Paul II did this mass apology for wrongs of the Catholic Church. It was in the New York Times or something and I read it and I was like, that's pretty cool that they would own up to the mistakes that they've made, take accountability and actually apologize.

Neal Rackleff [03:13:29] That's what we're taught to do when we do something wrong. Then when you have general authorities like Elder Oaks, who says something to the effect that the church neither seeks or gives apologies, what in the world is that? That is not consistent with what Christa taught.

John Dehlin [03:13:46] True. And Christologists ask you, what do you expect them to do? Stand up and say, sorry, Joseph Smith never saw God. And the Book of Mormon is a 19th century document of Rocky Mountain Bible fan fiction, as Carol likes to say. Oh, right, and Book of Abraham is not, not really a translation. And Joseph was a sexual predator and polygamy was never a revelation from God and the church isn't true and the priesthood was never restored. Like the people don't do that, you know?

Christa Rackleff [03:14:19] Yeah. I mean, is there a path where they can reveal all this and become kind of a different organization? You know, not, not founded on all these lies that have been going on for a couple centuries? I don't, I, I don't know. You know, but the more you look into that, the more you realize that these lies have started from the beginning and have been Perpetuated by how many in the organization are keyed into it? You don't know. Maybe somebody knows, but. But it has perpetuated for, for 200 years, you know.

Neal Rackleff [03:15:01] Yeah, they could. My friend Brandt Johnson, who was. I mentioned something about you, Tim, earlier. He's read. He's still in the church, but he's watched every Mormon Stories episode ever. He's not a non literal believer. He teaches a class in his stake about, you know, hard questions and whatnot. He and I were talking about this once and he said something to the effect of, you know, apologize for the things that they've done wrong, where they've misstepped, particularly with blacks in the priesthood and other really key issues.

Neal Rackleff [03:15:36] Dump doctrines that are false and move on. It isn't impossible. It's improbable. I don't think it's gonna happen, but it's not impossible. But I think the core problem is they don't have the answers. And that's what was crushing to me, is the realization that, oh, wait a second, they're not answering these questions because they don't have a good answer. So they're going to keep stalling and they're going to misdirect. And just like my stake president did, look at this shiny thing here and look at this one over here. And don't listen to John de Lynn because, you know, he actually makes money. I'm like, okay, so these are ad hominem attacks, you know, well, look, I work with nonprofits all the time with wonderful people who do good work and they have to have a way to live and they make money by the way.

John Dehlin [03:16:22] They make a lot of money by the way. More than me.

Neal Rackleff [03:16:25] I know, and I didn't know that the higher level church leaders are paid until, I don't know, five years ago.

John Dehlin [03:16:33] Paid a lot, right?

Neal Rackleff [03:16:34] And here's another thing too, in terms of financial transparency, right? And my job at the city of Houston was to take about 60 to 70 million dollars a year of grant funds and to. And part of that was distributing about 10 million to nonprofits in the Houston area. We funded about 50 different nonprofits.

Neal Rackleff [03:16:54] We would not have funded one of those nonprofits if they didn't provide us. Their financial statements showed us roughly how much revenue they received a year and where they spent that revenue. Why is it that this global church with the sophistication that it has and the massive amount of financial resources doesn't, as a baseline, put out a report every year that says, here's roughly how much we received in tithing, fast offerings, missionary fund, and here's roughly how we spent it. That's bizarre. Right?

Neal Rackleff [03:17:32] And the SEC stuff where the church was fined and Ensign Peak, that is very, very unusual. And I worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development as an assistant secretary to Ben Carson, and I was responsible for about $9 billion a year in funding and another $35 billion in disaster recovery funding after Hurricane Harvey and Irma and Maria and some of these other disasters.

John Dehlin [03:18:00] It's a huge deal, by the way. That's a huge deal.

Carah Burrell [03:18:03] Yeah, I know.

John Dehlin [03:18:03] Yeah, yeah.

Carah Burrell [03:18:05] So, yeah, he's a cool guy.

Neal Rackleff [03:18:06] No, no, no, no. I'm just. No, I'm just. I'm just saying, look, we had stewardship over. Over a significant amount, Significant amount of money. And we were careful in the way we dispersed it. Right. So we wouldn't, when I was at the city with, dealing with these lesser amounts, 10 million. We wouldn't have funded one nonprofit that didn't give us that basic financial information. And yet they don't and they won't. And people think that the federal government so irresponsible with its resources.

John Dehlin [03:18:43] That wasn't your experience.

Neal Rackleff [03:18:44] It wasn't my experience at all. When high level leaders in the federal government are looking at sanctions for, say you're the SEC and you're looking at improprieties, there is a political element of it. So when I was responsible, that's why I went into the amount of money I was responsible for. When there were. There were cities or states or local governments that weren't using their HUD funds correctly, the staff would come to me and say, hey, this housing finance agency in Rhode island is really messing up. Here's a menu of options that you have, Neil, that we can use to address this. We can slap them on the wrist.

Neal Rackleff [03:19:25] We can send them a warning list. We can ask them to pay the money back. We can not send them more money in the future. And you know what, the decisions regarding how you would handle those often were political.

Neal Rackleff [03:19:40] I tried to depoliticize them, but they were often very political. So for people who say, oh, that SEC thing with Ensign Peak was no big deal at all, you know, the church just got smeared in that. I completely disagree. The fact that the federal government was willing to actually level financial penalties against the church with the political ramifications of that, and given how large the church is and how influential it is, is significant.

Neal Rackleff [03:20:12] And it is a big deal in terms of the finance world. If you are not being forthright and how much impact you have on the markets. The reason those SEC disclosure rules exist is so that people know if a big, massive hedge fund, which is what Ensign Peak effectively was, is going to move the market somehow or dramatically impact it. So when you establish myriad LLCs to water down the, the combined or aggregate impact on the market that you have, you are being deceptive. And the folks at the top of the leadership of the church, maybe I'll get in trouble for saying this or somebody will get mad at me.

Neal Rackleff [03:20:54] I really don't care. These are not unsophisticated people. These are very, very smart lawyers, high level business people. And here's the other thing. They acted like, well, our lawyers told us to do it this way. And so, you know, we did it that way. And we just saw the advice of our lawyers. I'm a lawyer. Clients just don't blindly follow me. They don't. I work on multi, you know, $50 million real estate projects. And they, when a problem arises, they'll ask me my opinion and to research and analyze things, that.

John Dehlin [03:21:28] They're the boss.

Neal Rackleff [03:21:29] They're the boss. And they frequently say, yeah, we know there's some restaurant. We don't care. This is what we're going to do. So you cannot tell me that. Guys, these clients that they have, the top leaders of the church are really smart and sophisticated.

John Dehlin [03:21:42] Harvard mba.

Neal Rackleff [03:21:43] So they can't just say, oh, well, it was just our lawyers who screwed up.

John Dehlin [03:21:46] No, that's baloney.

Neal Rackleff [03:21:49] So the lack of transparency bothers the heck out of me.

John Dehlin [03:21:52] Yeah. Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [03:21:54] If you didn't get that from my tone. Sorry. Was that what you're trying to get me to calm down so it ticks me off?

Carah Burrell [03:22:03] Yeah.

Christa Rackleff [03:22:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:22:04] Thank you. That was great. Eve, I want to come back to you now. Like a couple years ago, you sort of innocently came on Mormon stories with and, you know, nuanced channel, shared your story. Now it's two and a half years later, you're sitting here listening to your parents share their full deconstruction story. I just want to hear what that's like for you, how that's, you know, how that's been for you, where that leaves you now, where that leaves you and your relationship with your husband and with your parents and with your siblings. Now are you feeling better off? Are you feeling worse off? Are you really glad you did that episode? Do you wish you could go back and not do it or do it differently? I'd love to now just give you the floor to take some time to, to tell us how this has all

Family Relationships After Leaving the Church

Eve Rackleff [03:22:57] been for you, it has been a lot. Yeah, My. My relationship with my family is good. With my parents, obviously. With my husband, it's good as well. He doesn't feel the need to dive into all the nitty gritty. But we're in the same space in our activity in the church.

Eve Rackleff [03:23:24] I think the hardest thing is just losing the community. It can feel so lonely. But that's why I'm grateful to have. Be close to my parents now and to have them as support. I would not change it at all, even though it was difficult, because one of the things I value the most in life is truth, and I do not want to be deceived. I also feel like the world is my oyster to some extent, that I had my life pictured going very much one way, and now I really trust who I am. I trust my feelings, feelings that I pushed down as a kid when I didn't like certain things.

Eve Rackleff [03:24:16] And I don't need to look to an outside source for what I can and can't do or what I can personally handle or how to live my life. I am a good person, and I can make those judgments myself. And, yeah, I can still raise my child in a good way.

Eve Rackleff [03:24:42] I think, again, the hardest thing is just trying to figure out how to build community outside of the church, when that's basically the only community I've known. But I feel like I'm getting. I'm finding ways to do that, and I'm getting better at that. And, yeah, I'm really grateful for the whole experience.

John Dehlin [03:25:03] So you don't regret learning these things? You don't regret coming on Mormon stories, and you don't regret sort of being a pioneer leader, sort of leading your family and your parents, at least some of them, out of the church? You. You feel good about that?

Eve Rackleff [03:25:28] I do, and I feel like it's appropriate. My name is Eve. I was told not to partake in this information, and I said, to hell with that. And then I told people I can't be here anymore and I'm leaving. And some of them have chosen to follow.

John Dehlin [03:25:50] So there you go into the. If we're going to extend the metaphor into the lone injury world, where there are thorns and thistles and noxious weeds, but you're. You're standing by your decision, Eve?

Eve Rackleff [03:26:04] Yeah, I mean, it is hard sometimes, especially. Especially with the passing of my grandmother and just thinking about my ancestors, I'm honestly more interested in my family history, especially those who were pioneers and people in the church, to just kind of be the. Feel like a nail in the coffin that ends this multi generational decision and way of life. And I'm really grateful for the experience that we had because my son is going to grow up much differently in some ways than I did. And when I'm able to have the conversations with him about, you know, mom and dad met on a mission, I can go back and show him the process of me coming to a knowledge of some of these truths and what that was like. And I'm very grateful for that.

John Dehlin [03:27:05] Powerful, powerful. Eve, how are you? How are you? How are you and care doing in your friendship?

Carah Burrell [03:27:12] Eve, you didn't come see me when you were in town last week.

Eve Rackleff [03:27:17] Well, I didn't have a car and I was with four children, 5 and under, 24 7, so I would have loved to have some time with an adult and flights are cheap for me, so.

Neal Rackleff [03:27:35] Yeah, you're good.

Carah Burrell [03:27:36] Yeah, I love Eve to death. Love you, girl. I'll visit you.

Six Generations of Mormonism and What Comes Next

John Dehlin [03:27:40] Let me. Let me ask you, Krista, you know, we talked about. You're the sixth generation Mormon. Eve is the seventh. We talked about your mom and your, you know, your mom and your dad and your stepparents and just these big dreams you and Neil had when you went on missions and when you met each other and when you got sealed in the temple, when you decided to have all these children. Y' all had this big, beautiful Mormon dream and you lived it into your 50s like no one else, you know, like, you know, no worse than anybody else.

Christa Rackleff [03:28:21] As.

John Dehlin [03:28:21] As good as anyone did. As devoutly, as faithfully, as sincerely, with as much sacrifice as pretty much anybody. How are you doing now, seeing that big Mormon dream take an unexpected turn away from faithful Mormonism? How are you doing?

Christa Rackleff [03:28:43] There's definitely hard days, you know, where being kind of two years out in this process feel like I'm in a really good place. But there are some days where it just feels kind of sad and lonely. But on the whole, I feel. I feel joy in a way. True joy, true joy in a way that the church teaches you you can't. I feel

John Dehlin [03:29:16] someone might say, how could you feel joy? There's no.

Christa Rackleff [03:29:19] I know.

John Dehlin [03:29:21] What would they say?

Christa Rackleff [03:29:23] You cannot feel true joy outside of goodness.

Carah Burrell [03:29:26] Never was happiness.

Neal Rackleff [03:29:27] Yeah.

Christa Rackleff [03:29:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:29:27] We can start. Thank you. Thank you, Carrie. Yeah.

Eve Rackleff [03:29:29] They who reject this glad message shall never such happiness know. We literally sang that on Sunday, this past Sunday for my nephew's baby, Pleasant.

John Dehlin [03:29:45] Yeah. Yeah. You rejected this glad message and never such happiness will, you know. Has that been your experience?

Christa Rackleff [03:29:51] No. And as a matter of fact, I feel like My relationship with Neil is. I feel like we're closer than ever.

Neal Rackleff [03:30:02] Me, too.

Christa Rackleff [03:30:03] I feel like it kind of sheds this veneer of feeling special, of putting off some things because, you know, you've got eternity to be together with your family. It helps put more emphasis on here and now and creating those relationships here and fostering them and how important it is for me to connect with my children and my husband in the here and now, because I'm not counting on eternity to perpetuate those things. It puts you in. It makes the world a more beautiful and special place in a way that I didn't experience before and makes the people around me more beautiful and more special.

John Dehlin [03:30:59] That's how it is for you now. Because it's a big loss. Some would say it's a very big loss.

Neal Rackleff [03:31:06] There's a lot gained, though, too.

Christa Rackleff [03:31:08] Yeah, I feel like there's bigger gains. It was a hard transition, definitely. And there's parts of it I'm still going through. And going through it at 58 to 60 is difficult. And having moved away from the space where I developed all those relationships in the church, we don't. We live about an hour away from that part of Houston, and I feel like I've kind of lost all my friend base, you know, through that. And so it's a hard time of life to make that change. But there's just still beauty, beauty on the other side of it that you don't have in the church.

John Dehlin [03:31:51] How much of the loss of those friendships over decades is A, they don't want to be around you because you've left the church, or B, you don't want to be around them because they're still in the church.

Christa Rackleff [03:32:04] It's a very good question. And it's. It has a lot more to do with the fact that we moved away to Austin, then we moved to D.C. back to Austin, and then to the other side of Houston. So we've just naturally, like, had this separation, and I. It's difficult to reach out to them knowing that you. This is such a big part of your relationship is this commonality in the church that you feel like, an obligation to share where you're at now and what you've gone through, and you don't want to do that to people.

John Dehlin [03:32:40] Kind of like Carah didn't want it to leave.

Neal Rackleff [03:32:42] Yeah.

Christa Rackleff [03:32:42] You don't want to have that. You don't want to bum people out and make them sad, and so you just kind of avoid it.

Neal Rackleff [03:32:50] Yeah. And look, I'm a people pleaser. Right. And so I have that same kind of thing where we have all these friends that we, we worked and served with and love, you know, living not too far from us.

Neal Rackleff [03:33:05] But you know that when you go hang out with them to feel honest and authentic, you feel like you need to tell them where you are. But it's really a difficult thing because you got to drag it up again.

Neal Rackleff [03:33:17] You know, there's the one element of high demand religions or even cults is that it's difficult to leave gracefully. And it is difficult to leave gracefully from the LDS Church. And one reason for coming on this is for me to make a plea to other members. Please be kind and loving and respectful of those who choose to leave because they in all likelihood have not taken it lightly and, you know, and give them grace. You know, the other one thing that's interesting to me, when we deal with people who've been chronically homeless, there's a really wonderful facility in San Antonio, Texas where they, they found that people who had experienced homelessness would have to go miles to go to the different service providers to get the kind of social services and care they needed.

Neal Rackleff [03:34:10] And that every time they went to these different, you know, you might have to go to seven different agencies and every time you have to tell your gut wrenching story of how you became homeless and how difficult that was, and that's traumatic for people. So they instead concentrated all these service providers on one campus and at a centralized intake where you can tell your difficult story once and then they share that with all of these other service providers. So you don't have to be traumatized every time by retelling the gut wrenching story seven or eight times. And I feel that there's an element of that to interacting with our friends.

Neal Rackleff [03:34:48] It's like we love these folks and we were such good friends and we've been through so much with them. But sometimes you don't want to go through the gut wrenching difficulty of having to explain to them that you've left and seeing the disappointment in them and, and, and go through that whole thing. It's exhausting and it's, it's, it's just really hard. So it makes it tough.

Christa Rackleff [03:35:14] So we just go to Astros games.

John Dehlin [03:35:17] What about Joel Osteen? You can go to Joel Osteen Church,

Neal Rackleff [03:35:21] the oasis of love.

John Dehlin [03:35:22] Yeah,

Eve Rackleff [03:35:25] I live literally a block away and I will never go there.

Carah Burrell [03:35:30] So I love you.

John Dehlin [03:35:31] What's wrong with the gospel of prosperity?

Neal Rackleff [03:35:33] Eve?

John Dehlin [03:35:33] Christa, come on. He's bloated and he's smiley.

Eve Rackleff [03:35:37] He is kind of scary.

Carah Burrell [03:35:39] Looking.

Eve Rackleff [03:35:41] I shouldn't comment on people's appearance.

John Dehlin [03:35:43] You're not a Joel Osteen fan?

Neal Rackleff [03:35:45] No, and I'm kind of down on, for me, organized religion. I think that often organized religion seems to co opt like naturally occurring spirituality and try to get you to think that you can only be spiritual the way they teach you or command you to be spiritual.

Neal Rackleff [03:36:06] And then they use that as a way to control you. And I just think that's not cool. I think there are a lot of cool churches that do good things. I also say one thing that came up in that LDS faith crisis study was that when people come across this kind of jarring information, they tend to either leave the church or become non literal believers. Right. So we hit that fork.

Neal Rackleff [03:36:29] And I just want to say too, for people who are fully informed, like my friend Brandt, who choose to stay in the church, I think that's cool. If it works for you and you know the flaws and you know the shortcomings and you're fully informed, that's cool. I bless you, you know, go, Godspeed. But for me, I believe that in virtually every way where you try to magnify your calling as an active church member, you are advancing the narrative of the church, which is so materially incomplete as to be deceptive. You know, you're either trying to help people become more active in the church, which means helping them to more fully embrace the restoration, the whole message of the restoration, the Joseph Smith story, restoration of the priesthood, temple ordinances, trying to get them into the temple, or you're doing missionary work trying to bring people in with a narrative.

Neal Rackleff [03:37:26] And now that I know that the narrative is incorrect and false, I just can't ethically, honestly propagate it. So I don't have a way to go be a non literal believer. I just can't do it. Even though I love the community and I love the fellowship and I like the hymns and all that. But I just, I won't do that.

Neal Rackleff [03:37:53] I will also say too that we're really lucky because we have been joined at the hip and right together in this whole process. And most couples don't have that, you know, I mean, this could have ended our marriage if one of us had been all in and the other one was like, no, I'm see you later. Right. But I think it's a credit to Krista that she listens to me. You can glean how verbose I can be through just this little interaction. She's a great listener, but I love her mind and I love reasoning through Things with her and discussing things with her. And we have just been completely together.

Neal Rackleff [03:38:31] And I'm happier than I've ever been. I just am, you know, I'm experiencing more true joy. A big part of what was hard emotionally for me, that I didn't realize until I stepped away from the church was the notion that I thought I was constantly being tempted by Satan, putting thoughts in my mind to lead me astray. And the Spirit, on the other hand, putting thoughts in my mind to try to lead me to do good. And so what does that mean? You're in a constant spirit, spiritual battle. Right. And that's even talked about in the church. We're in a battle. The adversary is out to get you.

Neal Rackleff [03:39:09] Well, think about anxiety. What produces that stimulus that triggers a flight or fight response? So mentally, if you are constantly thinking, evaluating your thoughts, did this come from the adversary or did this come from Jesus or the Holy Ghost? I would do that constantly, and it is exhausting. And once I got more Zen and into meditation and studied more Buddhism and different philosophies, I realized, hey, I can go. I can take an equanimity path, and I don't have to be in a constant state of battling. And for me, it was never flight, it was always fight. Right. It's just kind of the person I am.

Neal Rackleff [03:39:53] So I have way less anxiety, way more mental and emotional peace. It is really nice to have more time. Having a second Saturday is awesome. Although we were really into obeying the Sabbath day, not sending 10% of my income to an organization that won't even, you know, show me. The courtesy of telling me roughly how much they've received and what they're spending it on is nice.

Neal Rackleff [03:40:26] We've also talked about the fact that, like, we feel. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm correct in saying this. We kind of feel a greater kinship with humanity, which might sound kind of weird, but it's like we feel closer to people who are outside of the LDS community because we don't feel like there's this big kind of dividing line of the wicked and the righteous.

Eve Rackleff [03:40:51] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [03:40:51] And so we kind of feel more love for people we've talked about this and more kinship with them. And that's a beautiful thing.

Christa Rackleff [03:41:00] Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [03:41:01] You know, we don't have all the answers like we used to. And that was vexing for a while, but ultimately, it's a beautiful thing. You know, it's like that's part of the human condition to not know all the answers. And sometimes it can be A crutch to think you have all the answers, so.

Carah Burrell [03:41:19] Or a hindrance, you know?

Neal Rackleff [03:41:20] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [03:41:21] Generation thing. And I was going to say I did an update interview with Eve on my channel a year ago, and Eve, if you want to come back in here, when your dad was speaking about that connection to humanity, it just kind of reminded me of what you were saying in that update interview that we did on my channel about, you know, when you have so much scrupulosity and you have this chosen generation thing and you're serving a mission and you have all this pressure to serve and to do, and then kind of a release of that and just feeling like it's good to not be special. Do you remember talking about that, Eve? Do you have anything else you want to add to that?

Eve Rackleff [03:41:53] Yeah, I. Yeah, I just said almost the exact same thing. And it's. It's refreshing to feel like nobody has the answers and we're all in this together.

Carah Burrell [03:42:10] Do you know that one? It's a really good one.

John Dehlin [03:42:12] That high school is like, 10 minutes down the road.

Neal Rackleff [03:42:15] Oh, really?

John Dehlin [03:42:15] Yeah, yeah. East High School. Yeah. That's fun. Eve, sorry, we didn't mean to cut off your. I love your scene.

Carah Burrell [03:42:21] I was about to go into. Actually put the camera on me. This is millennial time.

John Dehlin [03:42:26] Okay, go, go.

Eve Rackleff [03:42:28] We're all stars.

Carah Burrell [03:42:29] We can feel it.

Eve Rackleff [03:42:30] Me and Carah saw.

Carah Burrell [03:42:33] We did High School is great, actually

Eve Rackleff [03:42:36] produce that East High duo musical. Production of High School Musical.

John Dehlin [03:42:42] No way.

Carah Burrell [03:42:42] And we went to it together. The best.

John Dehlin [03:42:45] That's so meta. East High School doing a production of High School Musical.

Carah Burrell [03:42:49] No.

John Dehlin [03:42:49] Where High School Musical was filmed. What?

Carah Burrell [03:42:52] Anyway, we're almost together. Roll one.

Advice for Families Navigating Faith Transitions

Christa Rackleff [03:42:55] I just want to add something. One of the. One of the reasons I really wanted to. To share this with people is I feel like there's a lot of people in our kind of demographic, our age that have children who've come across, you know, have. Have children like Eve, that have come across this information and have made decisions to leave the church. But so many parents, because of their indoctrination in the church, just refuse to listen to what their kids might have to say or what they've learned. And I think it's really important to not let the church, like, put that. Put that division in your family and sit down and talk to your kids and listen to what they've learned and what they have to say.

John Dehlin [03:43:43] I love it.

Neal Rackleff [03:43:43] Yeah. We've been teaching our kids that they're a royal generation and that they're chosen for this day. They're Saturday's warriors. They're amazing. And we've found that our kids, both those who are in the church and out of the church, are amazing. Yeah. And we're learning so much from them. It's really cool to get to a point in your relationship with your kids where they're teaching you life changing truths and opening up your mind to new experiences and a way to live in a happier, more productive, peaceful way. It's pretty cool.

John Dehlin [03:44:24] Love it.

Christa Rackleff [03:44:25] And. And the other benefit I want to add about being on this side of things is not. It's not focusing on perfectionism and. And, yeah. Always having to be progressing and being better each day than the day before. You know, just.

John Dehlin [03:44:45] Just be well said. Beautiful. All right, Eve, any final words you want to share before and care will come to you too, and ask. Same thing. But Eve, any final words of wisdom or, you know, words of closure now that you've been able to hear your parents tell their journey or what surprised you?

Carah Burrell [03:45:07] I'm interested. What else? Anything else that surprised you throughout this journey?

Eve Rackleff [03:45:11] Well, one thing I will say, when I was a teenager, I thought I knew everything. And then I didn't think I knew everything. But now I kind of think I know everything and that my parents should just always listen to me. Yeah, no, I don't think I know everything. But I am really grateful for this experience and I'm grateful for you and Carah for being kind and allowing us time to process this and share things. And I'm just very grateful. I feel so lucky. Like, how many people my age who go through this have parents who will actually sit down and listen and have an open mind enough so to be wrong? I think that's very, very more uncommon than it should be. And I feel very grateful for the examples of humility that my parents are in being open to learning, no matter how old you are.

John Dehlin [03:46:20] So humility and growth mindset. After 58 or whatever years of.

Neal Rackleff [03:46:25] We're 60 now.

John Dehlin [03:46:26] Yeah. After 60, 58 years of devotion to a very orthodox way of life, saying, hey, we'll follow you, our daughter, and we were wrong and we'll learn from you. That is an amazing testimony. And care. I'm really glad you, you. You brought this entire family to the Mormon stories. Family.

Eve Rackleff [03:46:50] Yeah. Can I say one last thing? Sorry.

John Dehlin [03:46:53] Please.

Eve Rackleff [03:46:54] I just over and over again, I feel like I'm gonna cry. I feel like my biggest regret is that the pain that the church caused people that I love, like, that wasn't enough. Because I look back now and I see how wrong it is and how hard it was for them. And I wish that that had been my breaking point rather than learning historical facts about someone from 200 years ago I never knew. Yeah. And so I just wanna apologize to some extent that that is not what led me out completely.

John Dehlin [03:47:51] So are you thinking of your sister there mostly, or do you. Don't even have to say if you don't want to, but I'm just wondering if there's people you have in mind when you say that, Eve, and you don't have to share.

Eve Rackleff [03:48:04] Yeah. I mean, I spoke of my friend who came to me 15 years ago, who was my best friend, and we don't talk much anymore. My sister and I have other family, extended family members who are of the LGBTQ community. And, yeah, I'm just thinking about them.

Christa Rackleff [03:48:31] So I feel the same way that my biggest regret is that that wasn't. The impetus that led me out, was when our daughter came out to us. That that should have been. I should have been there right there with her.

Neal Rackleff [03:48:55] And I feel that, too. You know, when our daughter came out, we both felt like, look, this is just wrong that the church is not accepting her. We knew how incredibly good a person she was and is and how devout she was, and not that that's the measure of goodness. She was just an incredibly wonderful person. And so we. We talked to Karen about this last night, you know, and that told her that we apologize for not.

Neal Rackleff [03:49:36] Backing her more fully. You know, And I think this is one other point that we didn't touch on, but there was a talk that President Kimball gave years ago about missionary work, and he said that we should indoctrinate, and you use the word indoctrinate, our young men in the church so that they will be raised to desire to go on missions and serve missions.

Neal Rackleff [03:50:01] And I remember even as a young teenager hearing that phrase from the prophet, indoctrinate, and it just rang wrong with me. And this is from, like, ultra, you know, believing obedient teenage kid. Right. That always bothered me. And I think that what. What happens to us in the church, people don't realize it is that we are indoctrinated, because indoctrination, by definition, is getting people to not be objective in their viewpoints. So this kind of comes full circle. We talked about, how do you have all these really intelligent, well educated people in your family who don't look objectively at things they should have, even when they impact people that they really, really love?

Neal Rackleff [03:50:50] And I think it's because we are taught so thoroughly not to go down that rabbit Hole or not to look at any evidence that's contrary to what the church teaches. And last thing I will say is, I know, I know some really smart people in the church who will go, yeah, I'm aware of that issue, the seer Stone issue, or I'm aware of this other issue. There's a huge difference between being aware of an issue. When you're in law school, you take these exams and you got to look at the law and you got to look at the facts, right? And the first step is you spot the issues.

Neal Rackleff [03:51:25] You see, okay, there's a fact pattern they give you and you see, well, here's an issue involving torts or, you know, a breach of contract there. But that's the very beginning of the analytical process. Then you have to be willing to do the hard work to really dig into the law and the facts that supplicate that is the law that's applicable to the facts. And that takes a lot more effort. So I have tons of friends in the church who are wonderful people who. One friend, for example, who spends hundreds of hours doing genealogy and temple work, but he mentioned to me a while back, before he knew I was going through something, that he had a daughter in law who left the church and he was mad about it.

Neal Rackleff [03:52:02] He was like, man, we didn't ask for this, what's that about? And you know, and he literally said, and this is a guy I really respect and love. And he said something to the effect of, you know, I don't have time to look at all those issues, really.

Neal Rackleff [03:52:18] You know, you got hundreds of hours to spend doing genealogy work. Your own daughter in law is kind of bumming you out because now not everybody's at the temple when, you know, for your family activities. And you won't take a few hours at least to dig into what her questions are.

Neal Rackleff [03:52:34] That's bizarre that the church indoctrinates us to the point where we won't take the time and effort to explore these questions, even when they dramatically impact people that we love and care about. And that's happened to us. And I feel bad.

John Dehlin [03:52:50] That's why we talk about informed consent on Mormon stories. And it really does come back to the bite model that Stephen Hassan developed where high demand religions and cults control the information to control your thoughts and they, you know, manipulate you with emotion and fear so that you won't feel comfortable learning and exploring and thinking your way out of their control. And that's really what it comes down to.

Neal Rackleff [03:53:18] That's another thing I keep saying last Thing, but I feel so much less guilt now. I constantly evaluated my behavior and particularly the way I used my time. Am I using my time productively? Am I using my multiplying my talents? I kind of drove myself crazy every day inventorying whether I was living up to what God wanted me to do with my time or not. And that's exhausting.

John Dehlin [03:53:43] And now you go to Astros games.

Neal Rackleff [03:53:46] Now I go to Astros games. And we have second Saturday. We have more time to. Honestly, for your mental and emotional health, having a whole nother day in the weekend to be able to recharge is actually really beneficial.

John Dehlin [03:54:00] Yeah. Yeah.

Neal Rackleff [03:54:01] Lo and behold.

John Dehlin [03:54:03] All right, well, Eve, you're a star and we love you and we're grateful. Carah, anything you want to say to Eve?

Carah Burrell [03:54:08] Eve, thank you for being my friend and being so open to coming in here and trusting me and letting me put this video up there on the Internet for hundreds of thousands of people to watch and help people through their journey and deconstruction. And I just think it's quite the journey we've been on together since we met in 2012, probably it's been quite the journey. And this is such a cool incarnation of a life that I get to live with you guys all together. So thank you. Thank you, viewers at home. Thank you, everybody. This is story.

John Dehlin [03:54:40] We love you. We're grateful for you.

Neal Rackleff [03:54:42] Thank you, Eve. And I want to say.

John Dehlin [03:54:44] Wait, wait, wait. Anything else, Eve, before you sign off,

Closing Reflections and Gratitude

Eve Rackleff [03:54:49] I think Carah and I need to build a little more upon our post Mormon relationship so we can spend more time there and have some fun.

John Dehlin [03:55:02] Fun in the thorns and thistles and noxious weeds. See you, Eve. See Eve. We love you. Thank you so much.

Neal Rackleff [03:55:09] We love you, Eve. Thank you. And I just want to thank both of you as well as Eve, of course, who's just signed off for being so generous with your time. You have a lot of demands on it and a lot of people that want to come on your podcast and whatnot.

Neal Rackleff [03:55:25] And we know how busy you are, and I'm really grateful that you presented the information that you did to Eve in a compassionate way. And in a way, though, that didn't pull punches in terms of putting out the difficult information, because that was the catalyst that has changed my life and our lives for the better in a demonstrable way. We are much happier and much.

Neal Rackleff [03:55:57] We're experiencing much more joy and feel closer, I think, than ever. And this is all cool. It was hell getting here. There's no getting around that. But we're not lazy learners and we did our homework and we learned the truth. And that has set us more free. You think?

Christa Rackleff [03:56:20] Definitely.

Neal Rackleff [03:56:21] So thank you.

Christa Rackleff [03:56:21] I second that.

John Dehlin [03:56:23] Anything else, Krista?

Carah Burrell [03:56:24] Thanks.

Christa Rackleff [03:56:24] No, thank you.

Neal Rackleff [03:56:25] Thank you very much.

John Dehlin [03:56:28] All right, well, Neil and Krista Rackleff, thank you so much for coming on Mormon Stories, sharing such a personal, vulnerable, and thoughtful story. It's been really great to have you both here.

Christa Rackleff [03:56:41] Thank you.

Neal Rackleff [03:56:41] Thank you again, Carah.

John Dehlin [03:56:44] It's been fun to be back in the saddle with you.

Carah Burrell [03:56:46] I'm just happy to be here. Like I said, what a cool journey. I'm just grateful. Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:56:51] Yeah, yeah. It's been. We've missed you around here. But also, we're. We see moving on as a sign of healing and growth. Maybe you've been doing a little healing and growth yourself.

Carah Burrell [03:57:01] If I'm ever irrelevant in the exormon space, that means I'm extremely relevant to my own children, and that's what matters. So you know what I mean, John.

John Dehlin [03:57:09] And husband. And husband.

Carah Burrell [03:57:12] So, yeah, life's good. I couldn't be happier. We sold our house last night. Oh, my gosh. So I've been very busy, but I'm gonna pick up some other projects. You'll see me around. Another stuff.

Neal Rackleff [03:57:22] Thanks for making time for us.

Carah Burrell [03:57:24] Yeah, anytime.

John Dehlin [03:57:25] So you might come back to Mormon Stories one of these days. I.

Carah Burrell [03:57:28] You have my number, you know.

John Dehlin [03:57:31] All right. All right. Thanks, Carah. Great to see you.

Eve Rackleff [03:57:34] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [03:57:34] Thanks so much for having me.

John Dehlin [03:57:36] And thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Please subscribe to this channel. Please like this channel. Please like this episode. Please comment on it. Please share it. All of that engagement really helps get the word out. It makes YouTube and Facebook and TikTok and Instagram. Want to share this stuff more widely.

John Dehlin [03:57:58] Want to thank our donors. We couldn't do this without our donors. So if you're a monthly donor or an annual donor to the Open Stories foundation, thank you. Your donations provide 2/3, 4/5 of our income at this point. Our ad revenue is really small compared to the donation revenue. So thank you for being a donor. If you are a donor. If you're not a donor, the way that you can keep programs, content, episodes like this for being released, keep them being released, is through becoming a monthly donor. Just go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button, and become a monthly donor. And we'll keep doing this for as long as we can. While you're at it, go ahead and subscribe to Carah's channel as well. It's no longer Nuance. Ho is that right. It's Carah Burrell.

Carah Burrell [03:58:46] Call me by my temple name. Yeah, it's under Carah Barrel. Now. I'm doing the Timmy did what Podcast and my Mormon History Hoedown podcast. I just have been selling my house and not doing a lot of podcasts in the last couple months, but I will. So Carah Barrel, YouTube channel, all the other stuff.

John Dehlin [03:59:00] And if people want to throw you a tip or venmo or a PayPal or a little bit of cheddar cheese, how do they support you?

Carah Burrell [03:59:06] Oh, at Carah B. Is my Venmo. That goes to my nonprofit, the Nuance Hug Foundation.

John Dehlin [03:59:12] C A R A H, B. That's Venmo.

Carah Burrell [03:59:16] Yeah, that is. Thanks.

Christa Rackleff [03:59:16] Okay.

Eve Rackleff [03:59:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:59:17] Support Carah. She's awesome.

Carah Burrell [03:59:19] Thanks, guys.

John Dehlin [03:59:20] Yeah. All right. Big thanks to Julia and Maven and Brooklyn for what they do for the Opus Stories Foundation. Thanks to our board. Thanks to, again, all of you, our viewers and listeners. We do this for you, and we hope you benefit from this stuff. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care.

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.