Today we are rebroadcasting an older, classic, episode of Mormon Stories from 2012!
In this episode we interview John and Brooke McLay. John served for 14 years as an employee of the LDS Church Education System (CES). In this capacity he served as: a seminary teacher and principal, an institute teacher and director, a BYU Education Week speaker and an EFY Director. John also served as a member of a stake high council, and was serving in a bishopric during the months leading up to his decision to leave the LDS Church. John and Brooke resigned their membership of the LDS Church in August of 2011. This is their story.
Join us in the next episode where we re-interview Brooke Lark!
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Guests: Brooke McLay, John McLay
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introduction and Episode Overview
John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to a very special edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. I am announcing a two part episode that I think you're really going to love. The first part is a rebroadcast of one of the most iconic, important and epic episodes in the history of Mormon Stories podcast. It's John and Brooke McLay. It's a four part series combined into one that I released back in January of 2012. It was one of the first, it's the first, as far as I can remember, couples that I interviewed on video long before Mormon Stories ever became a YouTube channel. John and Brooke McClay lived in Colorado.
John Dehlin [00:00:42] John was a CES as a church education system seminary, an institute teacher. He was popular on the education week circuit. And you know, if you, if you have learned anything about letter to a CES director. John McClay was a CES director and he and his wife lived in Colorado and were living the Mormon dream. Brooke, of course, was also a devout, faithful Mormon. And John and Brooke began doubting the veracity of the Mormon Church way back in 2012. And John lost his faith while he was working as a CES employee after having dedicated his entire life to, to the Mormon Church's church education system. And so this interview is special for so many reasons.
John Dehlin [00:01:25] Not only is it again the first video interview of a couple chronicling in long form their faith crisis, but also it's before the CES letter, it's before the gospel topics essays. It's while I, John Dehlin, was still an active and faithful member of the church, I was before my excommunication.
John Dehlin [00:01:45] And most importantly, John and Brooke are just a super thoughtful, committed Mormon couple. And you'll just be able to hear the pain and the anguish that John and Brooke experienced. You know, just literally weeks and months after they lost their faith and ended up having to quit working for the church and ultimately, I believe, resigning their church membership. So we're going to combine these four episodes into a single episode for part one of this series and rebroadcast it because I'm very sure that most of you have never watched it. And I think you'll find it to be fascinating, especially because it's 13 years after and so much has changed since then.
John Dehlin [00:02:27] But we'll see. I think you'll find that so much has remained the same. Part two of this series is we brought back sort of as a way where are they Now Series. We brought Brooke back. Spoiler alert. John and Brooke have since divorced and Brooke has led a successful social Media, food, photography, social media, personality, business. Since then she lives in Salt Lake City and we brought her back for a part two, sort of as a, you know, where is she now? What is she doing and thinking now and how is she, how is she doing? We didn't bring John back for a part three.
John Dehlin [00:03:07] Maybe we'll do that in the future. John and I are still in touch. He shows up at Thrive events or Mormon Stories events every once in a while. We love John, we love Brooke, and most importantly, we hope you really love this two part series on the Maclays and let us know if you like this format and if you want us to do it with other interviewees as well. So without any further ado, I give you the John and Brooke McLay four part interview combined into one from January 2012. Hope you enjoy.
John Dehlin [00:03:37] Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. This is a special edition of Mormon Stories podcast. As always, I'm your host John Dehlin and I'm here with two very special guests today, Brooke and John McClay. Welcome Brooke and John, thanks for coming.
John McLay [00:03:56] Thanks for having us.
John Dehlin [00:03:57] Just to let the audience know a little bit about why this is a special interview and why it's interesting, I guess I'll just say it. John McClay was a CES employee, an LDS Church Education System employee for 14 years.
John Dehlin [00:04:16] So he taught, definitely taught, institute, seminary, was an institute director. And as we'll learn, that's not just sort of an individual job and calling and responsibility, but it's also very much something that the couple sort of interviews for and obtains and executes on together. So John and brooke worked with CES or for CES for 14 years and a few months ago, because of crisis of faith and other issues that we'll get into, resigned their membership from the church. The purpose of this interview is to understand the story of Brooke and John, to get to get a better understanding for why someone would leave the church, especially at the level that they were at within the church.
John Dehlin [00:05:07] And then most importantly, we as an organization with the Open Stories foundation with Mormon Stories, have our hearts and our souls with special empathy for those who suffer as a result of making decisions that fall outside the mainstream of Mormonism. We don't believe that there should be such a high social, spiritual, familial, organizational cost to unorthodoxy or to even disbelief. We see marriages dissolving. We see people being driven to depression and anxiety and even suicide over issues that we're going to be talking about today. And for us, the level of Pain is unacceptable. And so if we can create not only a general sense of awareness about these issues, but if we can also create a space culturally for people who fall outside the norm, who fall outside the mainstream, who aren't able to believe everything, or who want to know the full history or doctrine or whatever and make decisions that are different, we want them to be able to do that at a much lower emotional and social cost, not in any way with a desire to harm any faith that's already out there.
John Dehlin [00:06:24] We're in full support of believers and of belief and of traditional institutional participation, but we just want to allow for that and for there to be more space and support and less pain and punishment for people who aren't able to follow orthodoxy or mainstream LDS practices. So that's a really long setup, but I just want to make sure that people understand where we're coming from. Do you guys buy into everything I said?
Brooke McLay [00:06:51] Love it.
John McLay [00:06:52] Yes. Yeah.
Brooke McLay [00:06:53] Amen. We can be done.
Brooke's Early Life and Faith
John McLay [00:06:57] Okay, so let's dive in.
John Dehlin [00:06:59] Sorry for that long disclaimer, but let's start by just briefly covering. Do the checkboxes of your early church years in terms of the rites of passage or the things that you accomplished that kind of led you to the point where you started considering seminary. But let's stop before then so that we can sort of really delve into that portion. But I guess, Brooke, let's start with you just to break the norm a little bit.
Brooke McLay [00:07:30] Okay, so let's see. My early Mormon story is. Let's see, I was born in Northern California. My dad and mom were young law students up in Southern California or in Northern California. And then we moved back to Hooper, Utah, actually, and lived. My grandma has a farm out there. And so my dad has always kind of been a country boy, and my mom a little bit of a city girl. And I think that my mom felt keenly desirous to get out of a country, the kind of the country life. And so we moved to Farmington, Utah. And I always remember singing the song, I see my mother kneeling and believing that that was our family. Like, I really believed that we had that ideal, incredible Mormon family.
John Dehlin [00:08:26] That's love is spoken here, right?
Brooke McLay [00:08:27] Yes, love is spoken here.
John Dehlin [00:08:28] Okay.
Brooke McLay [00:08:29] And so she loves the spirit.
John McLay [00:08:31] You can tell.
Brooke McLay [00:08:32] So when. When we were living in our home in Farmington, a series of events caused my dad to lose his bar in Utah. And so we moved to Southern California. And then my mom had an affair and just completely left the church, and along with that choice, also left our family.
John Dehlin [00:08:52] What year was this for you.
Brooke McLay [00:08:54] That was. I was 16 when that happened, and I was the oldest of six girls. And so, you know, you can imagine in that situation, the only stability that I had was the church. And so I loved. I had great friends. I completely believed in all of the truth claims. And I feel like at that point in my life, I kind of started to switch from just wanting to be a really good Mormon, and now I was going to be a good Mormon. That proved to my mom that she was a bad person. And. And so as I kind of look back, especially this year, as a lot of things have kind of become retrospective, I realized that behind so many of the choices I made was always this.
Brooke McLay [00:09:38] Proving to my mom. You know, I went to byu and I wanted to prove to my mom that I could be more healthy and better than she could ever believe. And I remember on the day of our wedding, my mom had flown in from Southern California and wore a miniskirt to the temple.
Brooke McLay [00:09:56] Shame. And I just was. So rather than putting my arms around her and understanding what it was like for her to have her daughter get married, I just left her outside the temple and didn't even think twice about it. And, well, I did think twice about it. What I thought was, look, now she will see that she has brought this on herself. Shame. I mean, it really, to me, is terrible to review that stage in my life.
John Dehlin [00:10:27] But let's talk about how the church, what it meant to you.
Brooke McLay [00:10:30] Oh, my gosh.
John Dehlin [00:10:31] And what type of Mormon were you in terms of your behavior and your beliefs, you know what, during that time?
Brooke McLay [00:10:37] Well, yeah, I mean, except for always trying to prove everything to my mom and everybody in my family who wasn't in the line. You know, I do feel like the church gave me so many incredible, incredibly good habits and strong connections with family and friends and things.
John Dehlin [00:10:56] So was prayer important to you?
Brooke McLay [00:10:58] Absolutely. Oh, I did. I did the prayer, and I did the whole package because I really list it, believed in it, morning scripture study, morning seminary, prayer in the morning, prayer at every meal, prayer at night. You know, I really. And I think that there were a lot of things that I did not do because I wanted so I knew what I should be doing. And so, you know, when friends would be getting together, I would think, but it would be better for me to stay home and pray or, you know, maybe my sisters would be going and doing something. And I would think, but it would be better for me to, you know, kind of, I don't know, consecrate my time to this thing.
Brooke McLay [00:11:41] And so you know, I was very actively and incredibly involved, and especially at a time when I didn't really have parental support. The church was a gift because I was in leadership positions with arranging girls camp and in leadership positions with my ward. And when I started dating, it was very much a part of who I was. And, you know, if you were going to accept me as a girlfriend, then you needed to accept that I was completely committed to this cause.
John Dehlin [00:12:13] And so did you have any spiritual experiences that are really profound for you, that you look back and say, these were some.
Brooke McLay [00:12:21] Yeah. Just like, you know, I think that I had a lot. I remember especially going through the angst with my parents divorce, which was just terrifically difficult at the age that I was. And then to have not just divorce, but to have it be kind of a terrible divorce where it wasn't.
Brooke McLay [00:12:41] The children were not part of the equation of how can we make this a healthy transition? And so I remember multiple times. Like, I remember one day I decided that I was going to go find my own sacred grove. And so I walked around our neighborhood and finally found, you know, in the middle of Orange County, California, you can't find a lot of sacred groves, but up on the top hill, I found this little patch of kind of forest land. I climbed under these tiny trees and just wept and prayed to Heavenly Father to give me peace. I said I wasn't going to cry.
John Dehlin [00:13:21] Crying's okay.
Brooke McLay [00:13:23] I should have gotten the Kleenex bottle.
John McLay [00:13:25] I was.
Brooke McLay [00:13:29] And I remember every time I prayed for peace or prayed for an answer to prayers, I really believed I got it. And I still do. I still very much feel that.
John Dehlin [00:13:39] So what did you feel when you prayed?
Brooke McLay [00:13:41] Just an overwhelming sensation. Like, you know what? It's all going to be okay. I'm here for you. And so I felt like, you know, in this time where I thought maybe I don't know how to go forward, I always felt like, yeah, I could. I could go forward because I knew that God would take all of it and make it work. And so. And I still feel very much feel that I need to. I feel like I need to make clear that that intervention in my life has not left in any way. But I think that all of the times that I thought God was telling me the church was true, maybe he was just trying to tell me he loved me, you know, But I was so conditioned to believe that every answer to prayer was equals. The church is true, that that's how you process it. Yeah. And so.
John Dehlin [00:14:29] So you were a firm, literal believer in the church.
Brooke McLay [00:14:31] Oh, Very much so, yeah. In fact, right after we got married, I remember having about a month where I just wept almost every day. Like, I really had to struggle through this concept of polygamy because I knew that that would be part of the, you know, our future relationship. And so. Oh, that was a hard month because here we're newlyweds, and he's mine, and I love him so much. And then I. So, yes, I. Very much. You know, and I kind of feel like I have a penchant for doctrine. Like, I can remember because it's so important to me. I could remember teachings and lines and quotes from prophets, and so all of those things were very carefully built into my understanding of my faith and what that made me and who that was. And I definitely have always felt like I have something special that I need to bring to other people.
John McLay [00:15:22] Yeah.
Ideals of Marriage in a Mormon Framework
John Dehlin [00:15:23] And so, because you were raised in a Mormon framework, I'm going to ask you what some would say was a very sexist question, but what type of man did you want to marry?
Brooke McLay [00:15:32] Oh, well, without question, I wanted to marry. No, that's actually a question that I've asked myself a lot lately is if I was the person that I was, would I have married who John was at the time? Because I. And I'm not saying that in an unkind way, but because there is some level of change that starts to happen when you start to take a good look at what you really believe. And I wanted someone righteous. And I remember when I first met John, we got along really well, and he was a really good kisser, and. And so that was really nice. But above all, there was a sense of his stalwartness that I really was attracted to, and I knew that he would never lead me astray.
John McLay [00:16:22] I was working at the mtc.
Brooke McLay [00:16:24] Yeah. Oh, he was. He was working at the mtc. And so I.
John McLay [00:16:27] So that makes me more religious.
Brooke McLay [00:16:29] Yeah. And no. And I have to say that at the same time, underlying all of this, also a family that's not active. And so I kind of felt myself a pretty tolerable. You know, like, as much as I bought into the whole framework, I felt like it was the best thing for me and that everybody else had to go on a path, but ultimately they'd end up in the church. And so, you know, it's not like I was out looking for Moroni, but I wanted somebody who was safe, who wasn't too much of a, you know, skeptic or big question thinker, because I really felt like that was not safe. And I wanted to stay in the boundaries of safety. And so to have someone who worked at the MTC and wanted to be ces, you know, that was a perfectly safe decision. And he was a good kisser.
John Dehlin [00:17:20] All right, John. Well, thank Brooke. Thank you for that. John, let's just do a really quick. And you don't have to talk about your reflections now back then in terms of how you're processing now what you experienced. Then let's just talk about what was your, what are the main bullet points, rite of passages of your early church experience that led up to your marriage?
John's Early Life and Church Upbringing
John McLay [00:17:40] Well, I was born in Las Vegas, and I mentioned that we only lived there a few years, but my dad was already teaching early morning seminary and so we moved to Provo, and then we were in the Provo Springville area for most of my youth. But I think an important part of my story is that my father is CES because he was working for the IRS in Las Vegas and he felt driven and felt compelled to come back to byu where he went through the pre service program that existed. This would have been in the early to mid-70s. And he was hired to teach seminary full time.
John McLay [00:18:17] So I grew up in the church. My father is a convert. My mom is. Her family has been in the church much longer, even some pioneer stock on my mom's side. And I was very devout. It sounds boastful to say that, but the church was very important to me. And I wasn't a perfect person and never have been, and I'm still not. But I did feel a tremendous. I felt a lot of guilt growing up. But I think that as I've discussed even more openly over the last few months, especially with people who have made similar choices as us to leave the church, but even some within the church, I've realized I was really disciplined as a young person.
John McLay [00:19:03] Now, did I make some mistakes and commit some sins? I did. And I would immediately go to my bishop even. Even if it was over the tiniest thing. In retrospect, I think some of those things were tiny and maybe some of them weren't. But I remember the first time I kissed a girl, for example. I was in ninth grade.
John McLay [00:19:24] And she was a good kisser, too, but not as good as you. And I went home that night, first of all, I was ecstatic because it was awesome. It was really, really neat. And by the time I had been picked up from the house that we were at, by the time I got home, I felt. Felt such tremendous guilt. It was almost unbearable.
John McLay [00:19:43] And that's where my father Shines. And maybe it's not typical true believing Mormon because he has, I think part of this is his background. But I'm sharing this to illustrate. I mean, I was weeping because I had kissed a girl and I felt very, very guilty, like I had done something inappropriate. And my dad was great in saying, son, you know, come on, let's put this in perspective. I remember sitting on the porch and him putting his arm around me. But I didn't grow up wanting to be a seminary teacher. I grew up appreciating it. Being reminded very often about how many blessings we got because my father was in the Lord's work.
John McLay [00:20:25] I remember at times in my life wondering why all the products were made by the same company in our cupboards. Because. Because they all said deseret on them. And then as I grew older, I realized what that meant as far as getting some assistance from the church and so very integrated with and a literal believer of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And before my mission I went to Utah State University and I was going to study psychology.
John Dehlin [00:20:53] Go Aggies. Woo hoo.
John McLay [00:20:55] I am a true Aggie. And so speaking of kissing, anyway, I was very interested in psychology and I had law and medicine on my mind as well. In fact, I just had a story pop into my mind since you've asked me about the church and it has to do with Utah State. I went to a youth conference and I must have been 14, 15 years old. And it was at Utah State and it was during the testimony meeting. And I remember sitting there after the leader had said we'll now turn the time over to you. You know, this room full of teenagers in an auditorium.
John McLay [00:21:33] I don't think it was the Taggart Center. I can't remember which building we were in. And I remember my heart pounding. And I think a lot of Mormons and post Mormons people can relate to this feeling of feeling like that's the spirit saying to me, it's time to bear your testimony. But then been feeling conflicted about embarrassment and what if it doesn't come out right? But I was the first person to stand up that day. And I used in my teaching, I often use humor or I try to, to break the ice. And I said something that the crowd kind of responded to. And then I shared my testimony the best I could.
John McLay [00:22:12] But I remember the way the adults and youth reacted to that had a profound impact on me. And the feelings I was left with were one, I'm good at this. People respond well to the things that I said. And the very act of standing and professing my beliefs caused me to feel good about these things that I believe in and about the way people responded.
John McLay [00:22:35] But then I went on my mission to the Portugal Lisbon north mission, had a wonderful two years, 1992 to 1994. I had great companions and great experiences and served in amazing areas and had all kinds of spiritual experiences. And it was kind of on my mission where, again, I had that thought, I can do this. Like, I really love testifying of Joseph Smith. I feel so good, and I seem to have an impact on other people. I remember teaching this man who was Yugoslavian. I was on the island of Madeira, and so it was in English, which, even though my Portuguese was really solid, I think it was pretty good.
John McLay [00:23:14] At that point in my mission, it was nice to teach in English. I thought, wow, this is kind of cool. And after telling about the first vision, and we were talking about prayer and the importance of asking God to know if these things are true, I made just an impassioned plea for him to do that and shared my testimony. And he just looked me dead in the eye and said, what are you going to do when you're no longer called elder? And I said. I was taken aback. I thought, what does that have to do with my testimony? And I said, well, I've thought about medical school and maybe psychology.
John McLay [00:23:48] And he looked me right in the eyes and he said, you should be an attorney. And I said, really? And he said, because you're very convincing. And I thought, oh, well, I'll take that as a compliment. But of course, what did I say? That's the spirit. That's not me. And especially as a CES employee, we are taught to any goodness that this is how I felt. These are all my opinions, and I own them. But I have to give that credit back to God. And if I am successful in sharing a message, it's not my message. It's not my skill. And God gave me this, and it's the spirit.
John McLay [00:24:22] Anyway, but this Yugoslavian, his take on it was, I'm looking at you thinking, you're very good at what you do. You're very convincing. And he didn't, to my recollection, join the church, but he was a very nice guy.
Becoming a CES Employee
John Dehlin [00:24:34] Well, let's jump to the process of becoming a CES employee.
John McLay [00:24:40] Okay.
John Dehlin [00:24:41] Is that all right?
John McLay [00:24:42] Yeah, absolutely. You want me to just dive in?
John Dehlin [00:24:44] Yeah. And incorporate Brooke as she's part of the process.
John McLay [00:24:46] Okay, absolutely. Junior year, Brigham Young University, I transferred after my mission. I didn't share this but it was my mission that I think I mentioned made me start to feel like maybe I could do this for a living. So I thought, what's the next best thing teaching at the mtc? So I had a scholarship at Utah State that I elected to not seek to try to renew. But I wanted to be close to my family. I wanted to save a little bit of money. I could live with my family, but I really wanted to teach at the mtc. And I was fortunate enough to be able to do that.
John McLay [00:25:20] I consider that a blessing. So In January of 1995, I started teaching at the MTC. By my junior year, which would have been 96 is when you enter into the pre service program. Now, for those who may not know, and I'm just going to tell you my experience because that's all I do know. I can't speak for everybody and I don't know exactly how it works now, but there were eight or nine pre service centers when I started this. BYU was one of them and obviously it's one of the biggest. And I went into the first class, which anybody can go into. It's a religion class that basically tells you about seminary teaching.
Brooke McLay [00:25:56] And actually there's kind of been a push to get as many youth in that class as possible. Right. Isn't that one.
John McLay [00:26:04] I recall some over time trying to pamphlets that were printed how do you become a seminary teacher? And I saw some of those, I
Brooke McLay [00:26:12] thought fairly recently though, that kind of the CES call has been let's get as many kids as possible into that class.
John McLay [00:26:19] Even at EFY session director training, that
Brooke McLay [00:26:22] was the class we're supposed to kind of promote that class.
John McLay [00:26:26] So there were at the time, as I counted them, 14 different screenings that you went through. Everything from as simple as taking a class to a specific religion course like Doctrines of the Gospel was required to take when I was at York New BYU to after you go into that class. From that point on, it's a process of elimination. And so there may be hundreds that start this class, but there's only. When I was hired in 1998, if I remember correctly, only 45 people in all of the United States and Canada were hired out of how many do you think tried?
John McLay [00:27:00] Hundreds. They kind of told us, yeah, hundreds and hundreds. Because at BYU alone there were a couple hundred, you know, maybe more because there were multiple classes. And 10 to 15, if I and I could be wrong on this, but 10 to 15 were hired out of BYU. The others came from University of Utah, Weber, there's some in Idaho I think there's pre service in Arizona.
John McLay [00:27:24] The screenings include things like teaching, for me that it was teaching a five minute lesson. And now Brooke was here in on this because, you know, we were married in May of 1996. Did I get that right? And so her involvement initially was to see her husband incredibly stressed over trying to make the right kinds of impressions because I knew how hard it was. I remember one thing that was said and I can't remember if it was a teacher or just a peer said. You know, statistically it's harder to be a seminary teacher than to get into med school.
John McLay [00:28:02] You know, somebody had done the math or that was their opinion or something. And we were repeatedly told, don't put all your eggs in one basket. In fact, at the time, there was no such thing as a religion degree. We were specifically told to have a field of study that was outside of religion so that if it didn't work out, you had something to do.
Brooke McLay [00:28:22] But the process took you right up to graduation.
John McLay [00:28:26] I mean, it's a two year program.
Brooke McLay [00:28:28] And so I think even though we were told to have our eggs in one basket, a lot of us were waiting to see if that was going to work out.
John McLay [00:28:35] Well, I can speak for myself. I put all my eggs in that basket. I don't do things any other way. And so when, even though they were saying, have some backup in my mind, this is what I thought using that analogy, I thought, my eggs are in this basket. This is what I want more than anything. This is my dream job. And if it doesn't work out, I will be devastated. But I will carefully move my eggs into another basket. But I'm going to go out this 100%. It was a great amount of stress.
Brooke McLay [00:29:07] It was kind of like classes at first, but then just like a student teaching job as it kind of becomes more involved. You were teaching at a seminary outside of class time. And then we also started having monthly couple meetings.
John McLay [00:29:23] Monthly couple meetings. Yeah. And that's where I remember. And you can share your feelings about this. But those meetings were tough because it was like looking around at the competition.
Brooke McLay [00:29:31] Yeah.
John McLay [00:29:32] And then we would go home and I would be. I'd be literally terrified about this is never going to happen. First of all, maybe I just have lacked confidence, but I just didn't think I am not as good as all these other men. It really was mostly men. I. I only remember maybe one or two women, almost all of them married.
Brooke McLay [00:29:51] And then if. Yeah, there were a couple of women.
John McLay [00:29:53] Oh. And the pressure to be married was Very. They never. I don't recall overtly saying, if you are not married, we will not hire you. But they did all but say that. It was very clear that the married folks. The one I remember one day drawing up on the board was if we have teacher A and he does this, this and this and this, and we have teacher B who also does this, this, this and this and this, certain level of quality of teaching and teacher A is married and teacher B is not married, who do you think we're going to hire?
John Dehlin [00:30:25] Yeah, in fact, you and I had this conversation before. We have a mutual friend, Mark McConkie, who's a grandson of Bruce McConkie, who went through the Seminary Institute program with you. And he didn't get hired and he wasn't married. And being a McConkie, you got to think that maybe the marriage thing was the thing that kept him out because he's a delightful.
John McLay [00:30:43] He is wonderful.
John Dehlin [00:30:44] He's a delightful individual.
John McLay [00:30:45] And I can tell you he's a great teacher. And I don't know why he didn't get hired. And I can't say for sure that that's it, but I personally believe that that was part of it.
John Dehlin [00:30:56] So what are the most rigorous parts of the screening?
John McLay [00:30:59] I felt, you know, the five day classroom experience when we had to go and, and teach in a classroom and then we were going to be observed. The observations were always stressful for you.
John Dehlin [00:31:11] How much time of observation?
John McLay [00:31:14] It varied.
John Dehlin [00:31:15] Was it weeks, was it minutes, was it hours?
John McLay [00:31:17] Well, I should say that the entire. When I say I've been with CES for 14 years, I include one year of where I was an opt teacher and I was told that stood for Outstanding part time teacher. But maybe the Ackerman acronym means something different.
Brooke McLay [00:31:30] Official part time.
John McLay [00:31:31] But I was at Lehigh junior seminary from 1997 to 1998 where some observations were known and scheduled and we were told in advance, but we were also told we could come at any time, just so you know, we could pop in.
Brooke McLay [00:31:45] And those were stressful, but those were fun years because we had good friends and we, I remember we would spend late nights at the seminary building decorating the room and I mean we. It was a fun, fun job.
John Dehlin [00:31:57] Brooke, did you look at this as your calling too?
Brooke McLay [00:31:59] Oh my gosh, yes. Like I would shop for just the right ribbon for the borders for the. Have you seen your image and your countenance? Remember that when we put that up?
John McLay [00:32:09] She is awesome. She is super creative and helped me to have, I think a beautiful, well decorated.
Brooke McLay [00:32:16] Yeah we would do everything together. And all of your, like, visual aids, we would work on those together.
John McLay [00:32:22] Count me hours.
Brooke McLay [00:32:23] Yeah, we use the little dot matrix.
John McLay [00:32:25] During that year when I was at Lehigh there, first of all, I was still in college, so I'm trying to keep my grades up and I'm getting paid, but it's not a lot, it's just part time wages. But it was not uncommon to stay up till one or two in the morning perfecting a lesson outline just in case they were going to come. And I remember one occasion where I had done that and I had stayed up literally until like 2:30 in the morning getting my lesson.
John McLay [00:32:51] So good. I'm looking at the notes from class and what they're looking for and what is the best way to teach and doctrines, principles, events, and the way they wanted the outline done. And I print it out and it's beautiful. And the next day they made one of those appearances. And I was sure that that was the Lord blessing me, you know. And here's what happened. It was so interesting. He walked in and said, hey, is it okay if I observe you? And actually I saw him coming, knew that he was coming in the building, already had an extra copy of the outline. And when he walked in, I said before he could say, is it okay if I visit?
John McLay [00:33:29] I said, it's so good to have you here. Here's a copy of my outline. And he looked at it and he went, wow, I don't think I need to be here today. And he just left. And I was like, yes, you know, because I felt so relieved one that he wasn't going to be in there. So. So at the end of that year, what happens when I was being hired is. And Brother Dan Bell at the time worked for CES and was part of this hiring process. He had a significant part. In fact, I think his mother used to jokingly say he was kind of like the destroying angel.
John McLay [00:33:59] And there was like, you could. Maybe that's harsh to say, but I remember he referred to himself in that way. He really had a lot of ability because he was to make or break you as a CES teacher because he was the last voice before saying, you're going to get an interview with the general authority or thank you so much for two years of your life. But you know those baskets we were talking about, you're going to want to start going in another direction. So people would start to panic if in February and then March came and Brother Bell had not come because that was a bad sign.
John McLay [00:34:34] There were so many Teachers more than he could visit. And I remember when I found out that he was going to come observe me, I was teaching Alma chapter 26, and I thought, score. Love this chapter, you know, this is killer.
John McLay [00:34:48] But I was still so, so nervous. I can honestly say that. Well, I just. I really, really wanted this. And I think. I think deep down I sensed that I was good at it. But anyway, my wife had written me a note that day. I probably have this somewhere, and it was on my desk.
Brooke McLay [00:35:07] I don't even remember this.
John McLay [00:35:09] It just said that she said something like, I know that you're going to do great. It was very positive. And that, you know, you're going to give a great lesson. And apparently one of the pre service directors who came with Brother Bell that day saw that note on my desk. And so he came in, he observed, I taught my lesson. And then as they were leaving, and I have to tell you, one of the environment was that they were pretty close. They were very kind and very.
John McLay [00:35:38] I mean, these are just good people, good men. But they would not give you clues as to how you did. And the reason they explained is they'd been burned in the past where people had thought, but you said, my lesson was so good and why didn't you hire me?
John McLay [00:35:50] And so they would be very close. And so as they were leaving, this teacher said to me, you can tell your wife that her prayers were answered. And so I remember thinking, this is validation and maybe I'll back up a few months before. I'm watering the lawn of the home that we're living at in a basement apartment in Provo, Utah. Just stressed about, am I going to get hired? Am I good enough? Are they going to like me? Am I going to be able to do this thing that I want more than anything in the world? And I just remember having this feeling that I was going to be hired as I was watering the lawn.
John McLay [00:36:27] That was at that time a spiritual confirmation. And I denied it multiple times since after that especially we'd go to the. Before getting hired, right?
Brooke McLay [00:36:36] Yeah. Then he'd come home from meetings and be like, it's never going to happen.
John McLay [00:36:41] I just, I felt. And I really had great respect for the people I was surrounded with. They were tremendous individuals and I felt like they were such good teachers. But, you know, we did our best to put it in the Lord's hands,
Brooke McLay [00:36:54] you know, I do just want to tell one quick story about one of the couple meetings, because I feel like there was one of the seminary or the seminary advisor's wives. I Remember sitting in a meeting and they were talking about how good the benefits were when you work for the church. And so I'm pregnant with our first baby and I am just wide eyed romantic and this is all going to be wonderful. And I remember going up with a friend to this wife and the friend said to the wife, how does it work with the income and the finances and the budget? And the wife said, I'm not going to lie, it's really hard.
Brooke McLay [00:37:33] And I remember thinking, shame on her for not being more positive. So I said to her, yeah, but it all works out, right? The Lord takes care of you, right? And she goes, it's really hard. And I think, I think now where was I? You know, like this sweet woman. I mean I really.
John Dehlin [00:37:53] She was being honest.
Brooke McLay [00:37:54] Yeah, she was trying to just really be honest about the situation because I think that you get a lot of this. It's so great. There's so many blessings. And here's this one woman in her like three minutes of actually getting to speak to people who's like, I'm really trying to give it to you straight. So you know, it's not like, I mean, I think that there were a lot of different perspectives, but I look back on her very fondly. Even though at the time I was a little bit off put by her, I really appreciate her willingness to be truthful.
John Dehlin [00:38:24] So just to summarize, let's list off all the different requirements, classes, how many?
John McLay [00:38:30] I recall three.
John Dehlin [00:38:32] Three classes.
John McLay [00:38:32] But some of them were doctrinally based. You know, classes that BYU offered to anybody, but too specific to seminary teachers. And then observations along the way of your teaching.
John Dehlin [00:38:43] A year's worth of observations, if you
John McLay [00:38:45] made it that far. There was a year's worth of sporadic observations, but these were like a five minute lesson to your peers. Being observed through glass. Like people watching you filming it and watching you. And then a five day experience where, where you taught in a classroom locally in Utah Valley.
Brooke McLay [00:39:00] Did you have to be invited to that?
John McLay [00:39:01] You did everything from the time you go to the first class, everything after is invitation. So they start to weed out and the class weeds. People come in and they go, they learn about the salary or they ask hard questions like, can you honestly envision yourself working with teenagers for the next 30 years of your life? And some people weed themselves out. Approval from a bishop, approval from your stake president. These are letters that are sent. Those are part of the steps as well that we did mention and that continue throughout your career in ces. Every year you are annually your worthiness is certified.
John McLay [00:39:38] And so after you make it to that one year and you're observed, Brother Bell comes and if he says, yeah, this guy or this woman, which is more rare, we're going to have him do an interview in Salt Lake. And so then you go to Salt Lake and you meet with the general authority.
John McLay [00:39:54] Well, actually, between that interview, there's a phone call that you're waiting for that usually comes from Brother Bell or from somebody else. It came from one of the pre service directors and says, congratulations, you know, you're moving on.
John McLay [00:40:07] And then the one thing that we forgot to mention was what they referred to as the CES home teacher, but it was a man who worked for ces and I don't recall him being a psychologist per se, but he came in and did a psychological evaluation of us as a couple.
John Dehlin [00:40:22] What kind of questions?
John McLay [00:40:23] It was the color. Do you remember? You know, the color one where you fill it all out beforehand?
Brooke McLay [00:40:28] Really?
John McLay [00:40:28] Yeah.
Brooke McLay [00:40:29] I don't remember this. I mean, I remember him coming, but I don't remember filling anything out.
John McLay [00:40:32] I remember filling it out and then coming in and they kind of go over it with you.
John Dehlin [00:40:36] So whether you're a red or a blue or a white or yellow.
John McLay [00:40:39] Yeah. And I remember them saying, well, Brooke scored really high on the creativity.
Brooke McLay [00:40:42] Oh, I do remember that.
John McLay [00:40:44] And I remember going, I think I said something.
Brooke McLay [00:40:46] Oops, sorry.
John McLay [00:40:47] I think I said something to the effect of. I remember thinking in my mind, well, that's good for me, because then I can. We're a couple. Because they said, and I think we should say this, and you already have, John, they hire you as a couple. We were told that repeatedly, even in the hire interview where we signed our contract. We are hiring the McClays. We are hiring you as a couple. So it was very important to me to. To say, hey, if my wife is creative, that's good for us, because her creativity will come into my classroom and in my lessons. And I really believe that because she is very creative because I don't think I scored as high as her on that.
Brooke McLay [00:41:22] And then after that, you are invited to the church office building to meet with a 70.
John McLay [00:41:30] Yeah, it was Elder Dennis B. Neuenschwander for us of the first quorum of the seventies.
John Dehlin [00:41:35] So your interview with the general authority, what. What types of questions did he ask?
John McLay [00:41:39] Well, first I should say he met with us as a couple, and then he very. And we had. Andrew was about a week old.
Brooke McLay [00:41:46] We just had our baby.
John McLay [00:41:48] And while we were waiting for that interview, well, he said he Interviewed us as a couple. And then he said, may I speak to your husband alone, very politely. And Brooke and Andrew left. And then he asked me worthiness questions. He specifically asked me about pornography, asked me about my testimony, had me share my testimony.
John McLay [00:42:09] The feeling is, if you've made it to this point, you've done something right. It's very rare from what we were told, to get an interview with the general authority and not be hired. But his job, as it was explained to us and as it came out, was to certify worthiness, and that's what he was doing with me.
John McLay [00:42:26] So he asked questions about my testimony. I seem to. To recall maybe a couple of the temple recommend questions coming in, you know, that you would hear about your worthiness. And then we were told, head back over to the church. This was in the administration building. Head back over to the church office building on the ninth floor where CES is. And between the time we made that trek, his secretary was going to make a call that was going to be yay or nay, pretty much.
John McLay [00:42:54] So we walked over, and then we went in and met with Brother Bell, and he said that it was a yay, that they'd like to hire us, and that my first assignment would be in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and that I would be the seminary principal. And I remember being so shocked by that. First of all, I'm thinking, where the heck is Colorado Springs? But I thought, surely he couldn't have said principal.
Brooke McLay [00:43:17] But anyway, and I was just so glad that it wasn't Utah, because I remember on the way up, I was like, anything that you taught, anything that you taught. And so it was so exciting.
John McLay [00:43:26] That was the final step. And then afterwards, that day, though, and you can tell me if you want to address this later, but part of what we signed was explained to us that divorce, bankruptcy, not having a temple recommend were all things that could lead to termination. And so there was an understanding. And I knew what it. I knew that we agreed and we fought, fully understood what we were getting into, including the salary. And so as one of my former colleagues once said, you know, when I signed, the bottom line, we feel like we forfeit our right to complain about that. And I don't know how good we were.
Brooke McLay [00:44:03] I think we agreed that, though. Yeah, we agreed we had no problem with those things, John.
John McLay [00:44:08] It was what we wanted. I was just been. I had just been told that you now have your dream job you get
Brooke McLay [00:44:15] to do, and you. You felt that way. You've always loved that job.
John McLay [00:44:20] I was elated. Yeah.
Brooke McLay [00:44:22] Yeah, you Loved it.
John McLay [00:44:23] So it was exciting. But I remember seeing an back to the process of being hired because that's what we're talking about, an advertisement for a car dealership where there was one of their dealers, I guess under a microscope, a giant microscope. And I would just say it was the kind of scrutiny and the way that they look at you and everything. I felt like I had a two year long job interview. That's what it felt like. It was very much scrutinizing and looking at and you know, people are praying over you and asking about your worthiness and you're trying in every way to prove that you are. And when I say that, I guess you could say to prove that you were a true believing testimony correlated deeply, deeply testimony member of the church. Because that's what they were looking for.
John Dehlin [00:45:16] And you were.
Brooke McLay [00:45:16] He was.
John McLay [00:45:17] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:45:17] And you were.
John McLay [00:45:18] She was. Yeah, we were.
Brooke McLay [00:45:20] We were. All right.
Life and Salary as a Seminary Teacher
John Dehlin [00:45:23] So I guess the next phase I'd like to go into is just a brief. I want to ask you some details about what it's like to be a seminary teacher and the then talk about or institute teacher and then talk about the different things that you did just at a high level, just like some of the types of things you did.
John McLay [00:45:44] Sure.
John Dehlin [00:45:46] And so what's the salary structure of a senator, institute teacher, of a CES employee? Just give us a general.
John McLay [00:45:54] Okay, so it's comparable to a teacher, a school teacher in Utah. In fact, I think they usually went to great lengths to make sure that it was not tremendously more because there's great concern about image and not appearing to get more than we need or want. Picture a chart where on one side is your years of teaching and on the top is your level of education. So if you have a master's degree and you've taught for 12 years, you make this much money, it doesn't matter if you're a principal, an institute teacher, a coordinator, it's pretty much the same. There is a cost of living allowance for some areas. And sometimes when you're a principal or director, there's a stipend. For me, when I was a seminary Principal, it was $600 a year that came with that extra work that might be associated.
John Dehlin [00:46:43] So give us a general idea of what you start out at and what it advances to.
John McLay [00:46:47] I started out at about $27,000 when I was hired and then when I left it was about 69,000.
John Dehlin [00:46:57] But talk about like, okay, after a couple years it goes to here.
Brooke McLay [00:47:00] Well, so every year you get a little bit of a percentage of a raise. And then you.
John McLay [00:47:06] It's not merit based. It is just across the board what the church decides they're going to give you.
Brooke McLay [00:47:11] And they like the church paid for you to get your master's degree, which was, you know, like, we always looked at that as such a double blessing because they paid for the master's degree. Plus when the master's degree was gotten, that meant a bit of a raise, more earnings. And so, yeah, so there was always a raise every year that we could look forward to.
John Dehlin [00:47:28] A modest raise.
Brooke McLay [00:47:30] Yeah, it was like what, 3% or something.
John McLay [00:47:32] There was something that happened, significant about. I don't know that it was that high, but about seven or eight years ago and I'm going to get the dates wrong. When the CES decided that they wanted to. This is the way it was explained to me. The church wanted all their employees to be basically the same. So we used to have this nine month salary and then during the summer we had an option, it was SEO, the summer employment option, where we could work for up to eight weeks and make some extra money. I remember my father would build fences, he would do whatever during the summer to try to help make ends meet.
John McLay [00:48:05] Several years ago, the church said, we're going to have our seminary CES guys be year round as well. So they restructured the salary at that time. I remember there was this little bit of an increase, which was nice, but there was also a sense of loss because for some of us that go into teaching, the holidays are the best part. You know, more time off in the summer, two weeks or something during Christmas. And now it was leave days and much more of a traditional structure.
John Dehlin [00:48:31] Okay. So it was in the high 20s to start with. Within five years, you were aware?
John McLay [00:48:38] Well, within five years I got my masters. And so, yeah, it was still fairly low, maybe, maybe high 30s.
John Dehlin [00:48:45] So high 30s.
Brooke McLay [00:48:48] I don't remember exactly like the. I just know that there was always a little bit of a raise that ended up being maybe like a hundred dollars a paycheck. And so of course
John McLay [00:48:58] I think it's important to say I feel funny talking about it because it's kind of guarded.
Brooke McLay [00:49:02] Yeah.
John McLay [00:49:02] Like you're not really supposed to. And then that's okay. I mean, I have no problem sharing this with you. But in CES there's a culture of we don't really openly talk about what we make.
Brooke McLay [00:49:12] Right.
John McLay [00:49:13] And so. And again, it's all relative because I happen to know that there are people who make far less than that and that are really struggling.
Brooke McLay [00:49:23] Although I will Say, as a mother, the pay was always, you know, I mean, we were always so grateful for the job. And of course, we were doing it not for the money. But when my kids started going into school, every year, I would be, like, $1,000 below poverty, like, just below reaching the poverty level. So my kids. So I always felt like we were always scrimping pennies.
John Dehlin [00:49:47] You were always at the poverty level?
Brooke McLay [00:49:48] Just always above it.
John Dehlin [00:49:50] Right.
Brooke McLay [00:49:50] Above the poverty level, yeah. And of course, if it was just the two of us, we wouldn't have been. But because we were multiplying and replenishing, we were doing a really good job of that. And so the size of family that we had always kept us, just to
John Dehlin [00:50:05] start with, in the high 20s, within five years, low 40s within 10 years, you were in the 50s.
John McLay [00:50:12] And then, by the way, they might push in 60. And then these last few years, like I said, it was in the high 60s. I don't want to be in the least bit facetious in saying people were so generous.
Brooke McLay [00:50:26] Oh.
John McLay [00:50:26] Without. And there was not an occasion that I can remember a Christmas or a holiday, especially around the holidays, where people would not. From the earliest time in our marriage, from. And this is, you know, kind of tender to me, because people in the church are really nice. You know, they're. I don't have to tell you this. They're good people. From Christmas trees that were, you know, left on the porch to. I mean, even my hearing aids that I have now are a gift from a member. I think I'm a little emotional, a little sad about it, because I fear that some of that is lost in the decisions that we've made.
John McLay [00:51:09] That my job. It was weird because it was a paradox. It was like they don't pay us enough to be able to really feel like we can just do this ourselves. But. But because we are who we are in this position, people looked out for us.
Brooke McLay [00:51:24] They did.
John McLay [00:51:24] People sacrificed for the Maclays. And I fully acknowledge that. And my deepest gratitude is extended to those people. But I don't want to pretend, like,
John Dehlin [00:51:34] tell some of the moral ways that people would help you out. Oh, well.
Brooke McLay [00:51:37] Every Christmas, monetary gifts. When we would go into tithing settlement, every Christmas, the bishop would say, maybe
John McLay [00:51:43] $100, somebody gave you this envelope, or.
Brooke McLay [00:51:46] Or there would be a knock at the door, and it was. What was that? Money tree. The money tree. Yeah. There was this tree with all of
John McLay [00:51:54] this money plus dollars on there or something, which to us is like.
Brooke McLay [00:51:57] We wept like babies.
John McLay [00:51:58] We had groceries for a month.
Brooke McLay [00:51:59] Yeah. We Had a Christmas tree. Dropped off, actually, twice, I believe I had basketball shoes.
John McLay [00:52:05] I love to play basketball. And I remember.
Brooke McLay [00:52:06] Oh, that was a sweet one.
John McLay [00:52:07] Gave me basketball shoes.
Brooke McLay [00:52:10] That was really incredible. That was a sweet. Because this student, just entirely on his own, said, you know, Brother McClay needs basketball shoes. And they showed up, and he did not want him to know, but the receipt was left, and it had his
John McLay [00:52:25] name in it, had the family name on, because they got. You know. Anyway. And I brought that up at his graduation. I was able to weave that into a talk. But I'm trying to think of what else people can do.
Brooke McLay [00:52:34] Oh, I know. We once lost. We had purchased something on ebay for. It was for a project I was doing. And it was like a big purchase. Like 400. $400? I was gonna say thousands. Cause it felt like so much money.
John McLay [00:52:48] It was. It did feel like more.
Brooke McLay [00:52:49] And it ended up being a fraudulent purchase. And so another man found out about this through the seminary students. I mean, those students were listening and always looking out for opportunities. They're just good kids. And so one of their fathers called and offered me the software that I had purchased, plus enough of a job to pay back the money that I lost. It was incredible.
John Dehlin [00:53:12] Beautiful.
Brooke McLay [00:53:13] Good people.
John Dehlin [00:53:15] Oh, go ahead.
John McLay [00:53:16] I was just gonna say, you know, I was thinking about my hearing aids. And these are very expensive hearing aids. And when I bought them, I don't know that they made any more expensive. And this friend of mine, this good man, when he.
John McLay [00:53:31] And he felt inspired to do that, it came from a conversation in a parking lot at a church building in Colorado Springs. And, you know, he said, I'm only asking one thing of you in return. You know, one favor. And I said, yeah, anything. And he said, just don't tell anybody that it was me, you know, And I thought.
John McLay [00:53:52] And I remember, and I still feel this way. That's the kind of person I want to be. The help that people offered us, the support, and not just in monetary ways, but the feeling that we are behind the maclays. That was very real. And for the most part, that was substantive. And that kind of helps you through, you know, doing what you do. So beautiful.
John Dehlin [00:54:17] That was a great segment. Let's list off all the different things that you're responsible for or positions or things that you did.
Seminary, Institute, and EFY Involvement
John McLay [00:54:25] Okay. My first. And I spent 12 years in seminary. And so when Brother Bell said you were going to Colorado Springs, I was the principal, the teacher, seminary council advisor, the building agent, the budget manager, and a coordinator. They made me an early morning Coordinator for a stake. And so I kind of worked with this other CES man to train and appoint seminary teachers, which was interesting being 24 years old and interviewing people in their 60s. And I remember the first time a man came in and he looked right past me, he said, I'm here for the interview. Who am I supposed to speak with?
John McLay [00:55:04] And I said, that'd be me. And so I was pretty young to be doing this. And I basically did five classes a day, every day, five seminary classes. So that was the main thing, is that I was teaching those five classes. On top of that, I was teaching institute part time, usually one night a week.
John McLay [00:55:26] So the coordinating position came and went. I did that for a little time, and then it went, and then it came back. And same with institute. There were times when I was so stressed getting my master's degree. In fact, when I was working on my master's degree, I was two teaching those five classes a day as a seminary principal with my seminary assignment, I had been called to serve on the high council.
John McLay [00:55:47] And you know, Brooke was pregnant with twins. So at one point, I'm serving on the high council seminary full time, working on a master's degree, and my wife, and we have a four year old, a two year old, and two babies.
John Dehlin [00:55:59] Wow.
John McLay [00:56:00] And so.
John Dehlin [00:56:02] Wow.
John McLay [00:56:02] And I remember going to the stake president and saying, because we were required to sit on the stand as high council members anytime we visited a ward, including our own, which I was assigned to at the time. But I had to ask for special permission to sit with my family to help with the twins when they were newborn. And I got. I got, you know, I got two or three weeks where I was able to sit with.
Brooke McLay [00:56:25] Yeah, you had a lot of help.
John Dehlin [00:56:27] Okay, so was there non Colorado related things that you were involved in?
John McLay [00:56:33] Beginning in the year 2000, I was called and asked to be part of EFY. And the name of the person that called me was Vince Stroud. And I don't know who recommended me, because I. I called.
Brooke McLay [00:56:44] You don't mean calling. You mean phone call.
John McLay [00:56:46] Phone call. It wasn't calling and thank you in the church, but they said, we've heard about you and we want you to. And I kind of said, let me give it some thought. I had some mixed feelings about EFY because we'll probably get into this, but I kind of felt like it was like spiritual Twinkies and that my job as a CES man was to be doctrinally pure and sound and very correlated. And so I had some hesitation, but I had A conversation that led me to accepting that responsibility, which led me to teaching for two years, just teaching. And then after two years, they asked me to be a session director. And so I have been all over the United States and to Canada more than once, teaching.
John Dehlin [00:57:32] So with efy, you would travel around, would you?
John McLay [00:57:34] Yeah.
John Dehlin [00:57:35] You would just present to youth at EFY conferences.
John McLay [00:57:39] A couple different things. So it might be like, if it's efy, the mainstream one, Connecticut, Texas, take your pick. Where it's the week long. And you, Brooke and I would go together if I was directing. And we would be kind of in charge. Not in charge, because there's a whole hierarchy and structure.
Brooke McLay [00:57:58] But you lead the. Yeah, you're like the father and the mother of the session, kind of.
John McLay [00:58:03] These are groups from anywhere from 150 to the BYU groups. 1500 we would have for a week.
John Dehlin [00:58:12] Did you guys do the BYU efy?
John McLay [00:58:13] Oh, yeah. Multiple times.
Brooke McLay [00:58:15] Yeah, several.
John Dehlin [00:58:16] Where are your kids during this time?
Brooke McLay [00:58:18] We hired babysitters or else.
John Dehlin [00:58:20] Did they pay you extra for that?
Brooke McLay [00:58:21] No, they used to. Right before we came into efy, they would allow families to come. And so we have a lot of friends who have fond memories of bringing their families. But when we came, there was kind of a rule passed that families should not come. And then so it was like the wife could be flexible. And so sometimes I would come, sometimes I would get a babysitter and stay the whole week. And then there. It seems like more recently there was kind of this decision that no families and the wife should be there.
John Dehlin [00:58:56] So did they ever pay you to go? You never got paid?
Brooke McLay [00:58:59] No.
John Dehlin [00:59:00] But you were expected to go?
Brooke McLay [00:59:01] Yeah. Like, I got the food and I got to stay with John, but I was.
John Dehlin [00:59:06] So you didn't get paid for the babysitters and you didn't get paid for your participation?
Brooke McLay [00:59:11] Right.
John McLay [00:59:12] And I got paid to go, but not a lot. Now I wanted to do it and I think that's been made clear. This is something that I wanted to do. But it was $750 to be there from Saturday morning until Saturday morning and to speak and teach. Well, 12 or 13 times, from a five minute presentation in a meeting to an hour long presentation to the entire session. And so again.
Brooke McLay [00:59:39] And then we just usually. It usually was a wash, I think because by the time we would pay a babysitter and make arrangements for the kids, we felt like it was just a gift financially.
John Dehlin [00:59:49] It was a wash. Yeah.
Brooke McLay [00:59:50] We weren't doing it for the money.
John McLay [00:59:51] We were never doing it for the money. But I do want to say for EFY and ces, they would pay. If airfare was involved, they would pay it.
John Dehlin [00:59:58] Travel expense.
John McLay [00:59:58] There were meals to pay for you.
Brooke McLay [01:00:00] They would pay my travel expense for her.
John Dehlin [01:00:01] Okay. For a book. Okay. Okay. So you did EFY.
John McLay [01:00:04] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:00:05] Did you ever do Education Week?
John McLay [01:00:07] I did two years, 2009 and 2010.
Brooke McLay [01:00:11] You were invited this year?
John McLay [01:00:13] I was. I was going to do it this year. I had talks that I'd submitted and approved, and I kept. As we were going through this journey, I kept everything in case because I was pretty sure I was going to find out the church was still true. I was pretty sure that would be the result of my really soul searching. So we were at EFY session director training this year in. In April. We were there because my assignment was to go to Florida, and I politely declined.
John Dehlin [01:00:39] Oh, wow.
John McLay [01:00:40] So this is all still very fresh. And maybe we'll talk about some of those if it comes up.
John Dehlin [01:00:45] We will for sure.
John McLay [01:00:46] Some of those things. But best of efy, which is kind of like a mini efy, where they will take teachers out. I did Long Beach, California, Seattle. I've been to youth conferences because stakes can call EFY office and say, hey, who are your. We want some of your teachers to come out. So I remember I did one with Curtis Jacobs in Minnesota. That was great. Stake center right by the temple, and so. And the Education week. And I think that about. About covers it.
John Dehlin [01:01:17] Okay, so you FY Education Week, but
John McLay [01:01:20] countless firesides for stake station nights. Ward fire firesides, my own ward, other wards in the stake, more than I can count. And Brooke sometimes was invited to speak at those often because she's an excellent speaker.
John Dehlin [01:01:34] I bet.
John McLay [01:01:34] I mean, she'd be a better session director than I would.
Brooke McLay [01:01:38] Oh, stop.
John McLay [01:01:39] Even when we were. I got to tell you this. When we first started in ces, we were kind of told, your wife shouldn't teach.
Brooke McLay [01:01:48] Not ces. Efy.
John McLay [01:01:50] My bad. I need to be clear about my acronyms. But efy, it was your wife shouldn't. And I really struggled with that. In fact, I struggled with it to the point where I kind of ignored it because I thought, my wife is very capable. Deeply.
Brooke McLay [01:02:01] Well, I think that you ignored it at my prompting because I'd be like, I have a lot of really nice things to say.
John McLay [01:02:08] But it's funny because in retrospective, I would have an hour, and I would say, sweetie, how about I give you 10 minutes? You did that. But that. I will say that that's kind of changed. And now in efy, sisters, that desire
Brooke McLay [01:02:23] to speak there's space for that.
John McLay [01:02:25] There's space for that. And they're very.
John Dehlin [01:02:28] It'd be even nicer if they paid them for it.
John McLay [01:02:30] It would be nice. Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:02:32] Okay. And then you were gonna just really quickly some other institute stuff you did.
John McLay [01:02:37] Oh, yeah. I was the institute director that in
Brooke McLay [01:02:40] college, that was a year and a half ago. He moved from seminary to institute. And that job is kind of a unique job because there's not a institute building. So it included.
John McLay [01:02:54] I taught at the United States Air Force Academy, which my understanding is the only Monday night class in the church that's authorized. And then uccs. And I was the institute director for all of Colorado Springs. So anybody that was 18 to 30 years old and matriculating in any kind of school, that was our focus. And I was over. The other institute teachers I appointed, teachers I did in services. But I was the go to institute guy for one year.
John Dehlin [01:03:20] Okay, okay. Talk for just a minute on how you enjoyed teaching seminary, how you enjoyed teaching institute, how much you enjoyed, if you did or didn't enjoy. What was it like for you? Just interacting with the students, the whole deal.
John McLay [01:03:34] Yeah. There are pros and cons to every job. And so there were stressful days, and there were days when I thought, I don't know if I can go in and deliver one more time and one more lesson. But generally what it was like for me was awesome.
John McLay [01:03:48] Generally, what it was like for me was I really felt like I connected with these young people, like I was making a difference in their lives. And I think that's a good question because it helps to why this is so hard for me now.
John McLay [01:04:09] I had purpose, and I recognized that I was not perfect. And I constantly strive to improve my teaching and to learn from other people. But I had incredible relationships with my colleagues. Some of them I still consider my closest friends, like brothers to me or like fathers to me. So I used to say to Brooke and to others who would ask me that question, there's hardly a thing about my job I don't like. It's not just what I do, it's who I do it with and why I do it. Everything about it to me was like, it was my dream job. And so, yes, there were stresses and some directors and bosses, if you will, that I got along with better than others.
John McLay [01:04:55] But for the most part, all of my reviews across the board made me feel good about myself, made me feel good about what I was doing. And so I was able to say, this is not about the money. And so I go out, I Remember going, I mentioned Long beach and I gave a talk that I developed for really 10 years, you know, and adding current quotes and perfecting it in my PowerPoint presentation. And I got paid $150 for that, plus expenses to go out there. And I remember thinking, I know the people in the world that do what I do to an audience of probably about 1,000 people at that particular one.
John McLay [01:05:33] They might get paid more, but I get paid in different ways. I get to know that I am making a difference in the kingdom of God. And those types of feelings were the foundation that what I do not only matters to me and my family right now, in that I'm making a living, but that I am truly building the kingdom of God on earth and helping young people and helping the church to grow stronger. So positive, mostly positive feelings throughout my career with ces.
John Dehlin [01:06:06] Beautiful. Brooke, what was it like for you to be the wife of, you know, I. Or what did you love about it?
Brooke McLay [01:06:14] We loved it. We loved all of it. We loved the youth. And to this day we have nothing but nice memories. I mean, those kids at that seminary building in Colorado Springs are some of the most remarkable kids. They come from loving homes, they have purpose, they have light. And you know, there are a few that are crazy or we worry about them, but that all that was all part of the whole story was, you know, just there was so much. There was just so much personality to that lifestyle. And we would have kids stop by crying or they would come by before their prom dates. I mean, we just. I felt, I felt like I belonged to a really incredible.
John McLay [01:07:00] Or they had prom in our house
Brooke McLay [01:07:02] stage of their life. Yeah, we even hosted one of their proms. I mean, it. I felt like I belonged. Yeah, it just. There was a belonging to this very special part of these kids lives, this very formative part. And to be part of that is remarkable and beautiful. We loved it.
What Church Work Meant to the Family
John Dehlin [01:07:21] What did the spirit of being engaged in this work bring to your home, to your children, to your relationship? How. How did it feel?
Brooke McLay [01:07:28] Oh, that's a good question. For me, I've always been a little bit conflicted because I love a lot of the gospel, but I don't like feeling like I'm cramming it down anyone's throats, especially my children. And so often, you know, I mean, our kids, we were. The church was just our second home. We were there for basketball games and for seminary things. And so I think for them growing up, that was always very happy. But at the same time, like, if I would notice a struggle in one of our boys, I would. I remember saying to John, if he does not want to go on a mission, I don't want that to be an issue. And so I was always very careful about making sure that our children knew that this was the life that we had chosen for us, but to also allow space for their own personal growth.
John Dehlin [01:08:16] But I imagine the spiritual high, where you're just always taking together, united with a cause, serving the Lord, teaching, modeling.
Brooke McLay [01:08:26] We were often modeling. But I think that because we held ourselves at a standard, there was also a lot of low times where, like, if we would fight or if we would be upset or if we miss
John McLay [01:08:37] scripture study, I think there was an added measure of so much so, because we are supposed to be the people who lead by example.
Brooke McLay [01:08:46] So actually, behind the scenes, I would say, was not always model. And we tried to be honest about that with the youth that we taught. You know, we would say we fight all the time. We need you to know that.
John Dehlin [01:08:57] What are all the things you did do? What are all the things you did do or tried to do?
Brooke McLay [01:09:02] We would try to do everything exactly like it was supposed to be. Family, home, evening.
John McLay [01:09:06] Family home, evening.
Brooke McLay [01:09:07] Morning scripture study. Although the number of fights that we have had over morning scripture study, because John knew exactly what it should look like and that he should lead out. And if he didn't wake up right before breakfast and lead it out and I let it out, then some sort of a sin was committed. I mean, you know, so there were a lot. There was angst when things weren't carried out exactly the way that it should.
John McLay [01:09:29] Activities.
Brooke McLay [01:09:30] Let's keep listing family activities.
John McLay [01:09:33] We try to pray in the evening. So we tried to pray in the morning and in the evening, as if Family meals together.
Brooke McLay [01:09:39] Service, like going to service projects to help the youth, like Eagle Scout project.
John McLay [01:09:43] The other burden, especially early on, was I tried to attend as many of my student activities as I possibly could. So I was paying, as a young seminary teacher to go to plays and basketball games. And that was fun.
Brooke McLay [01:09:56] We would take the kids along to
John McLay [01:09:58] that because I love sports and I love my students and I. So, yeah, it was. It was our life. The church was our life.
Brooke McLay [01:10:05] Couple prayer and couple scripture study. We would always try to do that. But I'm afraid we weren't very good because often we were tired.
John McLay [01:10:12] Better.
Brooke McLay [01:10:12] We just wanted to watch a movie. But, yeah. And so, like, I think that we were both keenly aware of what we should always be doing. And so even in situations where, like, we might have a few minutes of downtime. I would feel like, why don't we get the kids together and read a friend story? Why don't we get the kids together? And, you know, it was always this anxiously engaged.
John Dehlin [01:10:33] Okay, okay. And how was your relationship?
Brooke McLay [01:10:38] Normal, good and bad and horrible and something bad.
John McLay [01:10:42] I think it was mostly good. And maybe I'll bring up something my father said because it could be a segue and we might come back to this. But when I was explaining to my dad that in June, that I think I said, I think I'm probably going to leave the church. Church, and I'm definitely going to leave ces, he said, I was talking about some of the issues that we're going to discuss later in this podcast. But he said, son, when you go to EFY and you talk about your marriage, don't you put your best foot forward. You don't stand up and tell the kids the bad things or the ugly things.
John McLay [01:11:14] You try to present yourself in the best way possible. And I think he was trying to make, and it was a good point, that why would the church be any different right now? We can talk about those differences later because I think there is a big difference. But what I'm trying to say is Brooke and I never put ourselves out there as the couple to be as the only true and living couple. We had our ups and our downs, but we were happy. And one thing I can tell you consistently throughout our relationship and from these young people that we were teaching. I was going through these letters the other day, but is email or letter or comment after comment of, we hope we have a relationship like you.
John McLay [01:11:51] The way we were viewed is very significant because people viewed us as this ideal couple, an ideal family. And I remember people saying, I want to have the exact same number of kids as you that goes boy, girl, and then boy, girl, twins. You know, people repeatedly. And I hope my husband's like you, brother McLay. I hope I can find a wife like Sister McLay. And that's very flattering. And that feels, I think, also, if
Brooke McLay [01:12:16] I'm being really honest about, if you're asking about how our relationship was, I think that I have always believed, even from the minute that we were married, that we were kind of chosen, that there was this something special about John and Brooke, that God brought us together to do good, that together we would. And so even when we would fight or argue, there was always this knowledge that we were going to not just work it up, but we were going to be the celestial, glorified family. And that was what we were made for. And so I think that that was kind of the underwriting feeling behind a lot of the things that pulled us out.
Brooke McLay [01:12:53] But also that gave us hope and purpose, but also that created angst because there was such a standard that we would hold ourselves to, for instance. And I think that you. I've always been kind of more of the romantic, and he's always been a little more by the book. And so. So, like, once after a fight, I remember saying years ago, you know, John, I think that we should.
Brooke McLay [01:13:16] Maybe we should look into marriage counseling. And John said, oh, we have the scriptures. All that we need to know is within the scriptures. And so that was very much.
John McLay [01:13:26] I said it very gently and lovingly.
Brooke McLay [01:13:27] He did with a little pat.
John McLay [01:13:30] But that's true. I really believe.
Brooke McLay [01:13:32] Yeah. And so that was very much nothing
John McLay [01:13:34] we couldn't figure out.
Brooke McLay [01:13:36] It was very by the book. And, like, early on, even within our sex life, it was very much by the book. I knew what positions were allowed and what was not allowed and what we should say and shouldn't say. And so we held rigidly to those standards. I mean, we were both very obedient, so we held rigidly to those standards, knowing that they would bring us happiness and that we were the chosen ones.
John McLay [01:14:01] We never looked at ourselves as superhuman or somehow special, but I assure you that other people looked at us in that way because we were in ces because of the positions of leadership that we had. It was very much a constant in our lives that you're being watched, and sometimes that was very pleasurable, and other times it wasn't. Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:14:23] So overall. So overall, was there something beautiful about it, about our marriage, about the whole experience?
Brooke McLay [01:14:31] Absolutely. You know, I just think that there is something about belonging and feeling so at home with your people, and they open their arms wide open to you and you give everything to them. And that was. That was our life. You know, it was absolute sacrifice, and it was beautiful. I never, you know, even in the moments where I think I don't want to go to this meeting, I knew that if I went to the meeting that, you know, I would be suckered by the people. And I think that from the very beginning of this faith crisis, we've never had a problem with leaving the church. It's always been losing those people. We love them.
John Dehlin [01:15:19] Thank you, Brooke and John, for you. Beautiful.
John McLay [01:15:21] Yeah. And again, particularly the. The love that I felt in my heart for these young people, particularly efy. I love teaching in the classroom, but there's something about that experience that was so powerful to me of connecting with these young people.
John McLay [01:15:46] And I hold them in the highest regard. And I have such fond memories of these people. And not just the youth, but the people I worked with are good men and good women. And I believe that they love the Lord. And so letting go of that, yeah, it was so beautiful and it was so fulfilling in so many ways that it's been.
John McLay [01:16:18] I think we'll probably talk about that, but it's been brutal because I genuinely feel that I was making a difference and that I was connected to something good. And yeah, I really loved my life in ces. I loved these young people and my association with. I couldn't get enough of it. I told Brooke a couple years ago, if I could travel and speak, like, do this EFY kind of a thing for a living, that's all I would do. I would be fulfilled just if I could make a living traveling and speaking and teaching the gospel and connecting with these people and helping them feel of worth and to recognize the promise within them. And so, yeah, very positive experiences.
John's First Doubts: Polygamy and History
John Dehlin [01:17:13] Now we're going to just spend at least an hour on why would anyone ever in your positions leave the church? And so since John, I think maybe some of your. Maybe both of you have things that stretch back into your childhood. And so let's just start there. What seeds of doubt or concerns sprouted and talk us through the process of you getting to the point where you would ever want to resign from the church, let alone not believe.
John McLay [01:17:42] Yeah, sure. The earliest I think, doubt that I can really say I'm having issues was as a missionary in my first area, and it was specifically about Joseph Smith. And I wrote that off at the time as unpleasant encounters with people of other faiths as I tried to talk about him and evil. You know, I would have. It was the devil.
John Dehlin [01:18:07] But what was the issue?
John McLay [01:18:09] It was just whether or not his story was true at the time.
John Dehlin [01:18:12] Why would you doubt that?
John McLay [01:18:14] I don't know, except that maybe I was thinking and I was having. So I'm sorry, that was rude, but I. No, really, no, I'm very analytical and so I feel like I had to suspend in retrospect. But you're asking the journey and not retrospect. So I'm 19 and I'm seriously doubting that Joseph told the truth to the point of where I finally opened up to my mission companion and he said, it's okay, I have doubts too. And he comforted me and I got a blessing from my mission president, said, I'm having doubts about this. And then I had an awesome mission, and I think I did really well as a missionary.
John McLay [01:18:51] And we've already talked about that. So I'll skip ahead to things that would happen in ces. I actually pulled some notes out. I was going through them the other day, and I can give you a date here because I've got the notes. When Wilford Griggs, who was at the time a teacher at BYU and a former CES man, he came and spoke to us about the Book of Abraham on October 7, 1999. And I have five pages of copious notes.
John McLay [01:19:23] And at the time, it was very important to me to hear somebody who was an expert talk about the Book of Abraham so that I could continue to. Because I was hearing these things that people who really look at it closely hear that the papyrus had been found and that Egyptologists translated it, and it was not nothing like what Joseph said. And so, as a teacher wanting to believe and feeling responsibility to teach other people about this book, this was manna to me. I mean, I sat there and it was. It was probably three or four hours, and I was able to kind of put that concern and let me just voice it.
John McLay [01:20:04] I started to doubt if the Book of Abraham was what it purports to be, but I was able to put it on the sheet through experiences like this.
John Dehlin [01:20:12] I took a class from Griggs, and I think he lectured straight from the Hebrew or, you know, straight from the original language of the New Testament. I went, yeah, Greek. Greek. Straight from the Greek, right?
John McLay [01:20:24] Yep. It's got it right here in my notes. He is very bright, and it was enough for me. And I'm going to say this because it's part of my journey, but smart people in the church do not make the church any more true than intelligent people outside of the church make it fake faults. And I knew that. But like many members, it was important for me. It was my career. And it was also what I truly felt in my heart to have these kinds of encounters with apologists and my own personal studies that could help me say, I may not fully understand it, but I have faith, and my faith will bridge the gap and I'll put it on a shelf.
John McLay [01:20:59] A few years later, polygamy comes up, and in an area meeting, and I overheard somebody. And it's not that I don't think about these things at all, but I have to say that part of my journey is the curriculum that I was teaching. Because I was adamant about teaching from the manuals and the Scriptures and the words of the prophets. I Didn't deviate when I prepared a lesson. In fact, I even kind of, I guess at times use it as a crutch if I was short on time and I needed to really get something done quickly. I had this awesome curriculum. I had lesson suggestions outlined for me, and it was beautiful.
John McLay [01:21:35] And I really relied on that. So it's not that I never thought about these things, but I heard one of the brethren in my area at an area meeting over, he was talking about Todd Compton's book In Sacred Loneliness. And I had not heard of this, and I wasn't even indirectly in the conversation, but he said, this is what I remember hearing. I wouldn't recommend it for any of my students, and I wouldn't even read it yourself unless you feel like you're very comfortable with your faith. And I remember saying, I have faith. I can handle this. This is what I do for a living.
John McLay [01:22:06] You know, I am in. And I never bought the book. I went on, I started Googling and searching and just reading reviews. And then it led me to Wives of Joseph Smith, a website. And then I started reading. And there were times where I would go to what at the time I considered anti Mormon, because as a teacher, I needed to be aware of what the critics were saying. I needed to be able to refute that. And if my students brought up questions or they brought me a pamphlet and said, my friend gave me this, he's a member of the assembly of God or whatever, how do you respond to this? So I was aware of it, but that is when I first began to discover polygamy. And that is part of my concern.
John Dehlin [01:22:48] And so what were the things about polygamy that bothered me?
John McLay [01:22:50] Well, the number of wives that Joseph had. And I'm kind of of embarrassed to say this because there are going to be. I shouldn't be, but there are going to be people that say, you are a teacher and you didn't know this. But John, I think that's part of the story. And that is that I was a teacher and that I was hired and that I was, by the book, the best of my ability, teaching what I was told to teach. And I had to discover these things.
Brooke McLay [01:23:12] Although you knew about polygamy, you just didn't know all the details.
John McLay [01:23:15] I didn't know the number of wives. I didn't specifically know. What did you. When I read Helen Mark Kimball's story, it so disturbed me that I had to put it away. Like, I had to say, I'm not going to get that book, maybe. And then again, I put it on me.
John Dehlin [01:23:32] Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What did you think about Joseph's polygamy before you started investigating?
John McLay [01:23:38] God asked him to do it.
John Dehlin [01:23:39] Okay.
John McLay [01:23:40] It was acceptable in the eyes of the Lord, as it is in the Old Testament. Righteous men have done this, and. And I can't fully understand it because the keys to practice this thing are not on the earth, and I wasn't there, and so.
John Dehlin [01:23:53] And how many wives did you think he had, Emma? You didn't know that he was a polygamist?
John McLay [01:23:59] Well, I knew that he was a polygamist, but what I'm saying is the reflection of my growing up now when I was a missionary and I started learning these things, I knew that Joseph was a polygamist, but I had to come to the realization that I never really allowed that thought to sink in.
John Dehlin [01:24:17] Right. You know, it kind of somewhere in here, but it's not here. Right.
Brooke McLay [01:24:21] I realized, well, weren't you taught as well that polygamy was what he did to take care of the widows?
John McLay [01:24:29] And, you know, I think I had put maybe a mental block or some psychological working in my own head that allowed me to say, this is not a man who is married to another woman who's having intercourse with dozens of other women. This is just a faith test. This is a structural thing. This is a providing thing. This is a godly thing. And then when I would get distraught even the least bit, it was easy for me to say, you just don't get it. You're not spiritual enough. You don't have enough faith. If you had enough faith, you would understand. But the polyandry, I didn't get into it a whole lot then, because it was.
John McLay [01:25:08] This is the way I would describe it. It was imperative for me to put that on a shelf because it was disturbing enough that I wouldn't have been able to do what I've been asked to do as a teacher in ces. So I didn't buy Todd's book. I did not, at that time look into it much further.
John McLay [01:25:24] And I kind of put it out. And what happens for me is I'm so in the church and in the thrust of it. I mean, I'm serving on the High Council, council, I'm in CES and all of these things, that it's not very hard, at least for me at this time, to just say, I'll ask that question during the millennium. You know, when I talk to Brother Joseph, I'll ask him.
John Dehlin [01:25:43] That's got to be what the general authorities do, right? They're so busy.
John McLay [01:25:46] Right. I was very busy in the church, and I think most people are, but this was an extraordinarily busy time in my life. Another the Adam God theory.
John Dehlin [01:25:57] Okay, wait. No, no, no. I'm sorry.
John McLay [01:25:58] Oh, yeah, please ask anything you want.
John Dehlin [01:26:00] So, polygamy.
John McLay [01:26:01] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:26:01] What were. Tell me the disturbing things.
John McLay [01:26:04] The age of some of the wives.
John Dehlin [01:26:06] Okay, what ages?
John McLay [01:26:08] Helen mark Kimball was 14. And again, I know that because I've read a lot and most people listening to this podcast have, and there are some discrepancies about who said what and who can we trust? And that was one of the things I went back on over and over saying, look, history is not a science. So anyway, how many teenagers about approximately, you know, I couldn't say. I think that there were maybe four or five that I could think of, but I don't have the list memorized.
John Dehlin [01:26:41] So lots of teenagers, lots of girls, 14, 15, 16 years old.
John McLay [01:26:45] But those the age, believe it or not, I can't believe I'm saying this, but at the time that wasn't as disturbing to me as the polyandry was.
John Dehlin [01:26:52] What is that?
John McLay [01:26:53] The idea that a woman who is already married to a man and in some instances happily married to active members of the church for any reason whatsoever, why Joseph would have to have between 8 and 11. Those are the numbers that come to mind.
John McLay [01:27:11] Wives, women that were already married to other men and. And in some instances call people or send them on missions and then make the approach to marry this woman while her husband was gone. That was extremely disturbing to me. And when I started reading Rough Stone Rolling, it rattled me. And when I shared this with my father, he said that book strengthened my testimony. So I'm open to that. Some people will read that and say it's a strengthening test. But let me tell you, because I think this is important. I was at the last EFY session, director training. This was in April, because I thought that I would be presenting and teaching this summer because I really did believe I was going to sort through all of my concerns and that the church would remain true and that we would just press forward and be the stronger for having gone through this experience.
John McLay [01:28:02] Anyway, I overheard again, people, actually I was in this conversation and they said one of the men said that their area director and CES asked, and I can't remember if he said gave a copy, but they wanted them to read Rough Stone Rolling. And another brother in the same conversation, in the same group of people said that his area director specifically asked them not to read it. So this book is being received differently by different people. But for me, it led me to have feelings again. Of this is disturbing because the history that I've been told, taught and that I am teaching does not coincide with what really happened.
John McLay [01:28:38] So when Joseph. In the most recent video about Joseph Smith and the restoration that the church has in visitor centers and is now available to the general body of the church, there's the scene where it shows Joseph putting a necklace around Emma's neck. And you see the angst in Emma's eyes and you feel their pain because they went through a lot as a couple. But nowhere in there, and this is where I find it dishonest, is there the explanation or the inclination or the clear picture that some of that woman's angst was due to what her husband, the marriages and the polygamy and the polyandry that was taking place sometimes in their own home.
John Dehlin [01:29:19] How candid was Joseph with Emma about the polygamy?
John McLay [01:29:21] He wasn't. He was dishonest. That's my. These are my words. And of course, everything I'm saying is my opinion. In other words, he hid it from her. And I can't imagine her pain and her anguish. And I guess I began to be as I discovered and as I pondered. And I don't want to digress too much. One of the questions I most commonly asked is, what was it that you're asking it now? What was it the reasons you left the church? But I feel like it's imperative for me to say that you could list bullet list doctrine after doctrine after historical fact and all these different things.
The Shelf Breaks: Accumulating Faith Concerns
John McLay [01:30:05] And that wouldn't directly answer your question, because people want to know, like one member of my former ward said, what was the silver bullet? You know, what was it that did it for you? I don't look at it that way. To me, it is how the information is processed. I mean, if I'm going to bullet list, the Kinderhook plates, Zealph, the countless.
John McLay [01:30:29] The Mountain Meadow Massacre, various prophecies, you know, regarding the second Coming and then not being fulfilled, I guess. And I got to this point where I realized that I was. I was becoming really good at doing what I would call mental gymnastics around some very serious issues in relation to the veracity of the claims of the church.
John Dehlin [01:30:55] What about Book of Mormon?
John McLay [01:30:59] It began to obviously be a concern.
John Dehlin [01:31:03] Were there issues in the Book of Mormon that you studied and struggled with?
John McLay [01:31:06] I struggled with what I would classify as racism. And I'm aware that there is a line of thought that looks at the curse and the dark skin in a different way. And I don't know if you've read or seen any of Marvin Perkins and what he's doing. And there are different ways to say that that's not so much skin color, but I was disturbed by that.
John Dehlin [01:31:28] The fact that God would be cursing people with dark skin because of wickedness.
John McLay [01:31:31] Yeah. For generations and so on. If I'm. As a sociologist. And I started studying sociology in 2000 and then I got my master's in 2003 and then I started teaching in 2007. That's very much a part of this journey for me because I had an aversion to homophobia and racism and sexism and I felt like there were these things in the church. And so it was in 2007 or 2008, I was teaching a sociology class and we were talking about same gender attraction and gays and lesbians. And I hadn't mentioned that my full time job was teaching for the church. This was just my part time job.
John McLay [01:32:15] It came out that that's what I did. Somebody asked me and one of my students said, wait a minute, you're Mormon? I said, yeah, I am very Mormon. I'm actually incredibly lds. And it's not that my teaching was going against the church, but I just left it out of the classroom and I taught what was in the text and we had discussions. And he said, I can't believe that you are saying some of the things that you're saying that seem to be in favor of homosexuality or in favor of same gender attraction and relationships and rights and all the things we were discussing and that you're a Mormon.
John McLay [01:32:50] And I remember something, we talked it through and I can't remember how it ended, but something kind of clicked in me that said deep down I have issues with some of the things that I think are part of the doctrinal foundation of the church, certainly part of our history.
Brooke McLay [01:33:04] Can I add to your list too, that evolution was a huge one for you?
John McLay [01:33:08] Yeah. Oh, because I believe in it. I believe in the evolution of man.
Brooke McLay [01:33:13] And because. Well, because you have that very specific quote as a seminary teacher.
John McLay [01:33:20] Well, they said that there was no death before the fall. And so, yeah, I was reading recently as I was going through my notes, the. In fact, no, I didn't print it. But to honest truth seekers, a letter that President Elder McConkie wrote that just addressed 10 points of how you can keep your faith. And one of the things in there, he specifically mentions that evolution can't be possible. And if you're and these are my words, not his. But if you're one of those people on the fringes who believe that it is, bring yourself back to what the church and the brethren have said. But I, you know, I started about three years ago just having doubts about the existence of God.
John McLay [01:34:05] It was so disturbing to me that I, as a seminary teacher could have these. And you might say, well, what led to that? Educating myself. I started listening to this American Life and Radiolab. And I'm not, by the way, saying that these are evil program. I know that maybe some people are now going to be like, keep your children. I think they're fantastic, I think. And TED watching talks on TED and opening my mind and my heart to other people and other ideas I think was what helped kind of cause me to get to that place. And it was so disturbing though, that after a couple weeks Brooke could tell something was wrong.
John McLay [01:34:44] And I remember she asked, what is going on? Almost like something terrible has happened. And I couldn't even say the words. I was so choked up and it was so difficult. But then I said, I'm having doubts about the existence of God.
John McLay [01:35:00] And Brooke was wonderful. She said, it's okay, you know, people have faith crisis and it's alright. My last year of teaching at BYU Education Week, which was 2010, I gave two talks. One of them was called Dissolving Doubt. And it focused on how the words of the prophets can help us dissolve our doubts. Well, that was a reflection of where I was. That was me preparing a talk that I needed as much as I felt anybody else needed because I was having doubts about the existence of God. And naturally that pushes me to have doubts about the church because the church is all about God.
John McLay [01:35:36] It's all about. And then to go back to my list, the one true church doctrine and the elitism, that's the word that I would use, began to be very difficult for me because I couldn't reconcile what I was discovering historically and doctrinally about the church with this claim that we are the one true church, the true and living church.
John McLay [01:36:00] And more than that, I felt like I felt betrayed by the very people that I had trusted the most. I felt like, just tell me the truth and tell me what really happened at Carthage and then I'll decide for myself, because I'm okay, that really if Joseph had a glass of wine, which he did, and the others there, and somebody smuggled him a revolver, which he fired at the crowd coming up the stairs and killed two people and wounded another, and if he made Masonic signs at the window when his life was threatened. I mean, he's about to die, he's scared. I actually really think that I could have been okay with that.
John McLay [01:36:47] But don't present it to me as it happened this way and make me. Not just present it to me, but literally implant it so deep within me that it's hard for me to differentiate between. I mean, it really was what taught. This is the true church. I grew up, John, thinking that the worst things that Joseph Smith ever did were one, he lost the ability to translate because he got an argument with Emma and that was taken care of by going out and praying by a tree, if I remember. And then the ability to translate came back. And two, he lost the 116 pages of manuscript.
John McLay [01:37:26] But even that was pretty presented to me and taught to me. And I taught it as Joseph was trying so hard to be good and trying so hard to be kind and trying so hard to be inclusive, that even though that was a bad thing and that was sad that we lost those, he's still a rock star. You know, here's this guy that I looked up to so very much. And so I don't know that I finished that point. What the church is and what I taught as a CES man and what was in the current curriculum and that video that shows the angst of Emma and Joseph's tenderness and love, I believe that that was there.
John McLay [01:38:00] But they are, in my estimation, being that the church was being deceitful by leaving out what they left out by not being completely open. And that's where I think Bushman's book started, causing some of us, me to think and to say, now wait a minute, this is not what I was told in private when I was singing songs like genealogy, I am doing it, my genealogy. And the reason why I am doing it is very clear to me. And yet as a six year old, seven year old, I remember thinking, I can't even spell it. I don't know what the hell it is, but it's very clear to me why I'm doing it.
John McLay [01:38:36] And anyway, I started to feel as I. The shelf broke. I couldn't. There was one thing after another when I really opened to the possibility that people are human and that human beings that get power. And that was another thing. Things like Joseph Smith making himself a general in Nauvoo with no prior military experience.
John McLay [01:39:06] That was troubling to me because I always thought that that didn't show a measure of humility that I thought. Thought that I attributed to him, but instead somebody who really liked power. And maybe I started to think, could it be this was the big one for me? Could it be that he, like so many others who have led organizations and group, perhaps became corrupted by the position that he held and that this is just another example of an organization that is created by man?
John McLay [01:39:39] And it blew me away when I started thinking not on a micro level, but a macro level. And I considered the possibility that it is not what it purports to be. And it was. And I don't know if maybe this is not the time to get into this, but it was absolutely devastating.
John McLay [01:40:01] I was physically ill. I don't know that I've slept well for months because of the ramifications of what has happened and what I've discovered and because of how wrapped around that axle I was. Because it wasn't just the emotional and spiritual, the psychological, it was the financial. And it was very much part of our lives. So I'm trying to see if I've left anything else out maybe as if Brooke wants to share her story, then I can supplement it if there are other specifics. But do you have any questions for. No.
John Dehlin [01:40:34] No. So, yeah, polygamy, polyandry, Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, race issues, women's issues, same sex attraction related issues. Did I already say Mountain Meadows Massacre?
John McLay [01:40:51] Yeah, the elitism, the one true church, inconsistencies in the doctrinal presentation, the changing in the temple ordinances. The very fact that I think the temple temple ordinances were created as kind of like an all boys club for polygamy initially, and I know that is harsh and I want to be respectful to my family and my LDS true believing Mormon friends. The temple is a sacred area. And I found I haven't had a lot of conversations because most people won't even ask me what I think and how I feel now. They just kind of avoid it. But when I do bring up the temple, I'm usually shushed or cautioned. But you asked me an honest question. I'm going to give you an honest answer. I take issue with the changes that have occurred over time in the temple
John Dehlin [01:41:37] because why, like the changes or it shouldn't have been changed in the first place?
John McLay [01:41:41] Joseph Smith says in the teachings of him, the prophet Joseph Smith, that it wouldn't change and that it would stand through the millennium. And I know people can mince words and say yes, but the heart of it and the ordinances and however you want to wrap your mind around it. I couldn't because to me it was like with blacks in the priesthood and with polygamy that it seemed more expedient politically and economically and otherwise to make necessary changes. And that's how I now perceive the changes that occurred in the temple. People were turned off by some of the things that were happening in the temple ceremony in the late 80s.
John McLay [01:42:14] And so was it 1990 or around that time, they made some pretty significant changes into what was done. Those things were still there, John. They were still part of it. And the fact that women were initially excluded. And so, yeah, those are the things that I took issue with.
John Dehlin [01:42:34] And it seems like the place where you felt most deeply was in feeling betrayed, deceived, and lied to. Is that right?
John McLay [01:42:40] Yeah, because honesty is important to me. And I kind of felt duped, I guess. I kind of felt like, dang it, you know, I've been presenting this as truth. I've been presenting this matter of factly as the way things happened.
John McLay [01:42:58] And going back to what my father said, which is a good point. Why would you not expect the church to put its best foot forward? Right. Well, there's a difference between a couple who stands up at EFY and tries to put our best foot forward. Although we were very honest about saying, look, we don't have a perfect relationship, there's a difference between that and a church that says and a book that says the most correct book of any on earth, the only true and living church. So this absolute claim. And I was looking at that quote from President Hinckley in 2003 where he. And there are multiple quotes like this, but he says that either Joseph told the truth and the church is true, or it's a fraud and you have to decide.
John McLay [01:43:37] And I quote now, that part I was paraphrasing, but now I quote, there is no middle ground. Joseph Fielding Smith in Doctrines of Salvation said the same thing. Well, where does that leave somebody who discovers these things sees the discrepancy between what I've been told, what I've been taught, what I've been teaching and what really happened. I can't. I couldn't. And part of this was being in ces. But there was no easing off. There was. For me. I didn't feel like I could just go, well, let me just kind of take this slow and see what's going to. It was. There is no middle ground.
John McLay [01:44:09] I haven't been told the truth. And let me use another analogy. I thought when I went through all these layers that I would find a diamond, that all this history and all these doctrines and all these things at the heart of this, I thought that I would discover a diamond and pure goodness that had led to what I now see as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And this is going to maybe sound a little bit harsh, but instead my analogy is that it was dung in that. Is the church beautiful today? In many ways. Has it sprouted and blossomed and become something that benefits people?
John McLay [01:44:50] Absolutely. Are the truth claims that the church made and the historical way that we've presented ourselves and as a missionary that I would go out and tell people about and then as I would train missionaries, is that accurate? I do not believe that it is. And so good things can come out of a lot of different things in life. And the reason I bring that up is people. We met with the stake President in September when we were considering coming back to the church very recently, and he said that Jesus said, by their fruits ye shall know them, not their roots.
John McLay [01:45:28] And I thought, that's a clever way. That's actually a really good thought. You know, I remember thinking almost like, don't worry about the history. Don't worry about the mess and the things that we don't know about and that we can't explain. Look at what it is. Now, the problem with that, though, is that if the doctrinal and this journey for me was about doctrine and accuracy and that is. And Brooke. And I'm going to be quiet so she can talk here because I think I'm talking too much.
John Dehlin [01:45:55] No, that's good.
John McLay [01:45:55] Brooke was a little bit different, I think, in the way that she cared about those things as well. But as a teacher, as a CES man, I felt like it was my duty to be doctrinally clear and pure. And I am not professing to be an expert on the things that I've studied. And I've never made the claim that I am like a great historian. Many people know more than I do. My colleagues are much more well versed. But I am saying this. The things that I encountered, the evidence that I read and weighed that to paraphrase, what's the name of that beautiful woman on that video that we watched?
Brooke McLay [01:46:31] Michelle.
John McLay [01:46:32] Michelle. On one of those I am an ex Mormon videos, like a judge that makes a ruling and then new evidence is presented. I've weighed that, I've considered it, and I'm overturning my ruling. And so some people have said, how can you deny your past experiences? How can you deny the testimony you had of the Book of Mormon and the things that you've said? I don't.
John McLay [01:46:57] Meaning in that moment when I said those things, I fully believed them. It was special to me. I had spiritual experiences. But now new evidence has come in and I can't in good conscience give my life, personally or professionally, to something that I think is not being truthful about what it is and where it came from.
John McLay [01:47:18] And so there are many good people and much good in the church. But if the doctrinal claims about salvation, about priesthood and about ordinances are not what I've always been told that they are, then I don't see really how I can stay. That's me. I don't know if I'll let you talk now.
John Dehlin [01:47:40] Beautiful. Okay, so, Brooke, parallel to this, I'm assuming you were having your own process.
Brooke's Path to Doubting the Church
John McLay [01:47:45] Yeah.
Brooke McLay [01:47:45] So let's see. Well, if we go back to, like, I think BYU was the first time when I was in institute classes. You know, I was always in church on Sundays, but BYU was. I remember a couple of times in institute classes where a little negative history would be dropped. And, like, I remember a quote being mentioned where the professor, institute teacher said, don't you. He offered a quote that essentially indicated that the millennium or the second coming was, like, within a matter of years for the saints. And he said, don't you think that saints have always believed this? And I remember having this, like, dropping feeling, like the whole world was coming out from under me.
Brooke McLay [01:48:34] But of course, I'm sitting at byu, I'm about to be married, so I'm waiting for him to fix everything, put it back together so I can keep going. And so that happened several times with, you know, just little nuggets of history or whatever where I would have that feeling. And then I'd be like, okay, what do we need to do? So I would fix, you know, each issue one at a time, and that was that. And of course, I knew the church to be good and wonderful, and so that wasn't a problem. And then throughout our marriage, there. There have been a couple of times.
Brooke McLay [01:49:07] Like, I remember once a lady was brought by the missionaries to church. And I liked her right away. She just. There was something very real about her. And I went home, and that night John came home and said, she's going to get baptized. And it was the first time she'd ever been to church. And I felt really concerned about that because I didn't feel like she had had enough time to fully understand what being a member of the church was and to understand if that was good for her. And, you know, John was like, well, the missionaries know what they're doing. And so she got baptized.
Brooke McLay [01:49:40] And you know, so little things like that, I just, I didn't like the feeling of someone being coerced. Then again, and I never liked this demand that I needed to always be a missionary, but I was always aware of it. Once John gave me a pass along card when I was going into the dollar store and told me to pass it along to someone. And so right before she came in,
John McLay [01:50:03] I just dropped it on her.
Brooke McLay [01:50:04] I'm like, yeah, I always struggled with that aspect in the back of my head because I always felt, felt like it should be a choice for people. And so maybe in that way the one true church was true for me. But I was keenly aware of the demands it would place on other people's time. And that always kind of sat wrong with me then.
Brooke McLay [01:50:25] So all of this is just kind of sitting there and here and everywhere. And then last year I have a website and had several companies call me to go on trips with this blog. And so I would get together with other bloggers. And a few of them were lds because there's Mormons all over the blogosphere. But quite a few of them were not. And so there was for me, what was probably really the moment where a little crack happened was we had gone at the end of the day to a wine bar and one of the bloggers, there was only one male blogger, and he had sat next to me and we were talking and he.
Brooke McLay [01:51:07] So everybody is progressively getting more, you know, just settling into the night and the wine is flowing and we're approaching midnight, so it's dark outside and I'm not with my family. And then this guy sitting next to me drops that he's gay. And we had really kind of connected. And so, you know, immediately I thought, oh, wait, I have to think about this because all of a sudden something happened. And I now understand it to be the Danish word hygge, which is this. There was this human connection that in 35 years of my life I had never felt. It was like for those hours we were just living for each other and no one was in a hurry to get to a meeting.
Brooke McLay [01:51:52] There was something very real about sitting at that table. And it was midnight. And that feeling was what I would consider a deeper feeling of the spirit than I had ever felt before. And so it really kind of set me back a little bit. And I thought, I have to make sense of this. You know, we're approaching midnight, I'm sitting next to a gay guy, like, by all means, this is not making sense. In My Mormon world.
Brooke McLay [01:52:20] And I wanted that feeling again. I wanted to feel connected to people again in that really honest way, because that was a very new sensation, and it was beautiful. And so, you know, I went home and sat it there and got back into everything. But for a period of time, even before this, I had been craving what I would call true worship for whatever reason. I remember saying once to John shortly after our kids were born, I want to light a candle and kneel in a dark church. And I don't know, you know, I don't know. Was I Catholic in another life? I have no idea where that came from, but I felt a very deep longing for a level of worship that I was not getting in church meetings.
Brooke McLay [01:53:08] And I felt like church meetings were nice and they were familiar and we were busy and we were going from here to here, and da, da, da. So that kind of started to build even more so now that I started to have these connections. And then I started to look at other people, and their lives became very valid to me. I could see that they weren't just 60% wattage happy, they were really happy people, and they were really making choices for their lives based on logic and information, not just coercion. And so all of these things started to really weigh heavily on my mind. And then the gay guy and I became good friends and we started to connect with him.
Brooke McLay [01:53:49] Well, first of all, he and I have a lot of similar background. You know, he was very involved in a church, and so I came to know him as a very moral, kind person. And then we got to know him and his partner, and I was really holding onto that relationship because I was afraid that he would find that I was maybe not Christian. And so I think I started to overcompensate. I really wanted him and this friend Dave to feel loved and to know that, you know, we welcomed them into our lives. And at the same time, you know, I started to really ask the question to myself, how is it that God will let some of these people in my life that are members of the church who are miserable sitting at the dinner table together for 20 or 30 years, who don't even talk to each other, be together for eternity?
Brooke McLay [01:54:43] And yet these two men who genuinely love each other, who have genuinely chosen to be together, they have to be separated for all of eternity? And so that question didn't make sense to me because I think, if we can find a way to make that work in our very mortal world, why can God not find a way to make that work in an immortal world?
Brooke McLay [01:55:09] So all of these things are about. And in March, that was kind of the point where I just. It was church started feeling very rote to me. And sitting through classes, I didn't agree with a lot of what was going on. And so I felt very clearly that I was no longer capable of being this person that I knew that he had married.
Brooke McLay [01:55:33] I wanted my life to be bigger than this constant cycle of church and meetings and church and meetings. And I wanted to travel. I wanted to invite people into our lives on this new level that I had discovered. I wanted to go out with gay friends. I wanted. You know, I wanted our life to be so much bigger than this tiny cycle that we had created. And so I said that as much to John, and I just. I wanted to relieve him of the duty of being married to someone so big as me, you know, I felt like maybe I was being too romantic, and that made sense for me, but it wouldn't be fair to bring him along on that journey because I understood the guidelines.
Brooke McLay [01:56:16] And so I said as much to him on a Sunday night in March, I said, I am not good for you. I know that for you to be the kind of priest and leader that you need to be, within the bounds that we have agreed on, you can't be married to me anymore.
John McLay [01:56:32] And so there may have been some guilt because there's an undercurrent and sometimes very clear statements from the brethren about women working. And so here was Brooke working, and there's some irony there, I think, and loving it, because why is she working? Because we're trying to make ends meet, even though we're ces, and so we're frowned upon to have your wife working. But many of the CES couples I know, they have to be creative, and the women do work outside the home. But not only, yeah, she wasn't just working, she was thoroughly enjoying it, and
Brooke McLay [01:57:00] I was good at it. And it made me a better mom, too. And so that was not making any sense either, because that was supposed to make me a worse mom, right?
John McLay [01:57:08] I think people watching might say, wait a minute, there's a disconnect. How did it get to, suddenly your marriage is falling apart? I had some challenges with the relationship she had with Russell, and it wasn't that he was gay, because I was very content and accepting of the. Because I've long believed that people that are gay don't choose to be gay, they are. And so. And that's been a struggle. And so. But she was emailing and texting and stuff, and so I Felt like there was. There was definitely not going to be an affair, but. But here I was trying to weigh what the church had taught me about being the patriarch and committed relationships and wife. I'm trying to articulate this and it's not coming out very well.
John Dehlin [01:57:51] Well, it's the stereotypical roles. Right, But I want to say you're breaking the mold.
Brooke McLay [01:57:54] Exactly.
John McLay [01:57:54] Yeah, exactly.
Brooke McLay [01:57:56] Well, and that's the thing. Like when I started to find out that my friends actually had like, not just. Not just other girlfriends, but like guys that they'd go hang out with. It wasn't that I wanted to go hang out with guys, but it was kind of like I kind of. I sensed that John was very uncomfortable with this because I felt some jealousy. I can pinpoint it. And it's because we had been raised within the CES culture saying John never should drive, even if his secretary, who is significantly older than him, her car breaks down.
John McLay [01:58:31] He'd never be alone with a female.
Brooke McLay [01:58:32] He should never be. And so I think that we started to build these very clear walls between us and other human beings. And this was what mattered. And everybody else could come for dinner, but that was it.
John McLay [01:58:43] What about Cliff? I mean, just a contrast.
Brooke McLay [01:58:46] Oh, yeah, that's an interesting one. So we had had some friends years before that were our good friends. They had moved out of town and then moved back into town. And he was a stay at home dad and she was working. And so when they moved back into town, they really had moved in to be close to us because we've always been like family to them. And so he said, when does John go to work? Because I'm gonna come by with the boys. And I was like, no, no, you can't come over. And I was so uncomfortable that anyone would think that in any way, you know, and he was so devastated. He was so devastated because he said
John McLay [01:59:20] that was not lds.
Brooke McLay [01:59:22] No, not lds.
John McLay [01:59:24] And that was very hard for him to wrap his mind around why he couldn't come and hang out with my wife, who also had a lot of.
Brooke McLay [01:59:30] He was like, I see you as people that are our friends. I have no desire to make a move. You know, it's just convenience wise, we're both home. Why don't we let the kids get together and socialize? And there was no room in our relationship.
John McLay [01:59:44] The reason I brought that up is unitedly at that time, we agreed inappropriate that would never happen because that's not what we would do. So fast forward and now there's this relationship and I'm having all These feelings of. Even though. And I'm kind of hesitant because I wonder if this is going to be watched by these dear friends of ours. And I don't want to make them in any way feel bad, but I need to be honest about kind of the difficulty I had with that. This was brand new. We're having new thoughts and new experiences, and I feel like my wife is drifting from me.
John McLay [02:00:15] And she was. I mean, by her own admission, she's feeling like this life that we have is not working and I need wings to fly. And I don't need you looking over my shoulder to see if I'm texting Russell or being concerned about this, that or the other.
Brooke McLay [02:00:28] Well, and I think that you felt like you had all the right. Like, I feel like in our relationship, John has always felt like he has the right to manage and control all the little things. So if he doesn't.
John McLay [02:00:40] I've tried.
Brooke McLay [02:00:41] I know. And I'm not trying to be hard on you, but I want to be honest.
John McLay [02:00:44] Right. No, that's.
Brooke McLay [02:00:45] And this is why it came to a head, because I suddenly realized not only did I have a voice, but I had equal capability and I had equal ability to touch other people's life. You know, touch other people's life and reach out. And I felt John pulling the priesthood on me. I'm not comfortable with that. But boom, end of the conversation. And that is always how it's been.
John McLay [02:01:10] I didn't try to do it.
Brooke McLay [02:01:10] Not that you were trying. I know. You had to.
John Dehlin [02:01:13] No, no, no. You don't have to defend yourself. What I would have done would have been nice.
Brooke McLay [02:01:18] Absolutely. It was. And of course I bought into that because that was what I was supposed to allow him to make the final decision. Right. We're equal partners, but if there's ever a question, he gets the final decision,
John Dehlin [02:01:31] he's presiding in a really difficult position.
Brooke McLay [02:01:33] And so. And so I think that for me, it wasn't that I didn't want. I didn't even have guys I wanted to go hang out with, but I just suddenly realized that there was like a more open way for me to conduct my life, that friends could actually feel like family.
John McLay [02:01:50] There was no affair and I wanted
Brooke McLay [02:01:52] that, but I felt like John was not comfortable with that and I didn't want to ask him. It was an emotional beyond where he was comfortable.
John McLay [02:02:00] I sensed a drifting emotionally in a certain direction that felt away from me.
Brooke McLay [02:02:06] And I wouldn't say it was a drifting. I would say it was a full blown run.
John Dehlin [02:02:10] Wow.
Brooke McLay [02:02:11] I was like in retrospect, I see this awesome life.
John Dehlin [02:02:14] Okay, so if I could just summarize. There's this box that, you know, you're supposed to be supporting him. He's the one that does the speaking, but you can accompany him, but all in the context of what he has. Your job is to. To be a mommy and to be the best mommy that you can. And to support his job if you have to work, which the church kind of puts you in a position where you have to. At best, you should feel guilty about it. Right? Yes, right.
Brooke McLay [02:02:38] Right.
John Dehlin [02:02:38] And then this whole idea of being around non member. You're supposed to socialize mostly with members because that's what we do. The ward and member responsibilities, well, they
Brooke McLay [02:02:48] all have 100 wattage anyway, so it's more worth my time.
John Dehlin [02:02:51] Right. And Right. Because these are the light.
John McLay [02:02:53] Because the other people, chosen people are not.
Brooke McLay [02:02:55] Can you hang around the chosen everybody else? Satan might get into the conversation and confuse things.
John McLay [02:03:01] Plus they might even be drinking alcohol. Can you imagine?
John Dehlin [02:03:03] Right.
John McLay [02:03:03] So heaven forbid, there's all these.
John Dehlin [02:03:05] So no alcohol, no late nights, and of course, no working in a way to where you're the voice, where you have something to share, where your light on its own, independently could influence and inspire people.
Brooke McLay [02:03:17] Right.
John Dehlin [02:03:17] And then you're so. And then. And then this whole idea of being around people till midnight and gay people and it's just these boxes. You're in these boxes.
Brooke McLay [02:03:26] Yes. And we absolutely abided the walls of the box until I found out that outside the wall of the box was Technicolor. And all of a sudden I was like, I can't. I can no longer be happy being the voiceless, quiet submissive. Although I think there's space for humility and submission. Absolutely. And in a marriage there has to be this give or take. But I think that I realized what my true potential was. And I feel like if God is who I believe he is, he wants me to see my true potential. And while part of that potential for me is for fulfilling the role of mother, because it's absolutely. I love being a mother. I want to eat my children. I love my children. I love that part. But to also realize that there is so much capability beyond this very tiny border of a country that I had been living in.
John McLay [02:04:27] One of the things that's been said to me and I've been. I don't think anybody's really confronted Brooke directly about this, but I know that my family has. Has felt that she is the reason that maybe I've left. In other words, that there has been some blaming, whether backhanded or directly, of saying that because Brooke was going through this and finding herself. Which, by the way, while it may have been difficult at the time, and having an argument with your spouse is never fun, especially if it leads you to the point where you're like, maybe this isn't going to work out. In retrospect, when I look back on what she's been through and how she's grown, it's beautiful.
John McLay [02:05:04] It's magnificent. And I want to acknowledge that. And I also want to say that my decision to leave the church was mine, and I own that. And I don't. This psychological break or this thing that happened in March that caused me perhaps to dive into things in a deeper level like never before, that was real. That happened, but we didn't make this. I made this decision on my own. What Brooke is saying about the myopic view that we had of the world and the people in it and their happiness and what makes people happy and all these different notions, it suddenly. It just got blown up.
John McLay [02:05:42] And people have been so sorry for us. Like, there have been so many people that have talked about how sad it must be and how tragic and how awful, and it's like a death in the family, and. And there has been sorrow, and maybe we'll talk about that because it's been very real and it's been very painful and difficult. But what Brooke is saying here now, I think is very important. And it's also. It's beautiful. It's amazing to get to a place. And I think we're still on this journey. But these same two people that Brooke's mentioning, her gay friend and her partner, they're now good friends of ours that we have a good relationship with.
John McLay [02:06:20] And I text. I mean, this went from me being. I'm concerned about this relationship and feeling jealousy to a couple months ago, buying a ticket for Brooke so she could go out and be with him. Now, that didn't work out, but it'll. It'll happen.
Brooke McLay [02:06:33] And his boyfriend.
John McLay [02:06:35] But what I'm saying is, and I hope this doesn't sound arrogant or boastful, but there's a kind of growth that can come outside of the church that couldn't have come for us within. I think that's what I'm trying to say. So I'm sorry to catch that.
John Dehlin [02:06:47] That's awesome. Thank you.
Brooke McLay [02:06:48] No, yeah, I like how you said that. And, you know, and I also have to say that that experience in March, part of my frustration with John was Not just this behind the scenes feeling of this priesthood authority and being pinned down, which I know didn't just come from you, so I don't want to just pretend like it is, but because I had suddenly felt fulfilled. Like this fulfillment and growth come from my own career. I desired it so much for Jon. She did I sound like Eve. I desire for you to partake.
John McLay [02:07:24] She began to be love CES as much.
Brooke McLay [02:07:28] Well, and I felt like John had hit a point for several years in CES where he was showing up to work and he was doing it and he loved it because he was supposed to love it. And it was familiar and it was nice, but I didn't see him actually utilizing talents or like waking up every morning, you know, I think it's how you feel about Mormon stories. You love it. And I wanted him to do something that was making him better every day. And I felt like because he was stuck in this curriculum that was the same every four years, and maybe every now and then you would see the added edition of you get to Teach the kids that Joseph translated with a peep stone. It was the same.
John McLay [02:08:11] It's actually not in the seminary curriculum. We can talk about that anyway, you
Brooke McLay [02:08:15] know, so, like, I just felt like he was caught in the cycle of same, same, same. And I really. I totally understand that for some people, same is wonderful, it is familiar, it is comfortable. That is what we aspire to. But I.
Brooke McLay [02:08:32] I just. I wanted him to feel lit up with endless potential. I will say that part of that in March also was me feeling frustrated with John kind of standing still and beating that same drum. The, you know, like we'd already arrived. And I had felt that for again in this longing for a truly worshipful experience that I didn't feel like I was getting.
Brooke McLay [02:08:58] I started. For years, I had been waking up in the morning feeling like I was suffocated. I felt like, oh, my gosh, here we go again. And if this is what life is, is just the same, this is it. We've arrived and we're 35, and it's going to be the same. There was no change in sight. And that was terrifying for me.
John Dehlin [02:09:18] So it sounds a lot like the movie Pleasantville. I don't know if you've seen it.
Brooke McLay [02:09:21] Yes, it was very.
John Dehlin [02:09:23] Where all of a sudden black and white, and then all of a sudden
Brooke McLay [02:09:26] there's a little color.
John Dehlin [02:09:27] It's almost like Lehi's dream. But you get this joy about being outside the box that you want to pursue, but you feel guilty for pursuing it, and then you want to share it with him.
Brooke McLay [02:09:39] Not only guilty, but not just joy, but love. All of a sudden, God could be everywhere. And I didn't have to limit the love that I felt for people based on their labels or who they were or what religion. All of a sudden, I could, like, be open, even with my own mother, wide open to this whole world.
John McLay [02:10:00] With that conversation that you had with
Brooke McLay [02:10:02] your mom, even to my own mother
John McLay [02:10:04] about how it changed the view of the day that we were married in the temple. And going from. That was pretty tender.
Brooke McLay [02:10:12] I think for the first time in my whole life, I finally asked my mom so that I could understand her rather than to help her, help her. And that was a. That was a. And so again, when I get to this place where I suddenly feel more Christlike than I've ever been, I don't understand how I can go back. And I wouldn't have gotten here if I hadn't blown my initial paradigm wide open. And so for me, that's where it started. I started saying that paradigm was. Worked beautifully for a while, but it started to limit me. And so. And that was when I just want
John Dehlin [02:10:48] to just add one thing.
Brooke McLay [02:10:50] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:10:50] The stereotypes are that you. That people who leave the church, they're weak.
Brooke McLay [02:10:55] Right.
John Dehlin [02:10:55] They're lacking faith. They're not doing the basics. They're not doing the fundamentals they want to.
John McLay [02:11:01] They're.
John Dehlin [02:11:02] They're doing pornography. They're dishonest in some way. They're probably even adulterers.
Brooke McLay [02:11:07] Yeah.
John Dehlin [02:11:07] And what I'm hearing you saying is this came from a place of integrity. This came from a place of love and a place of joy.
Brooke McLay [02:11:17] And it came from a belief that God was bigger. You know, like I remember saying, I think God is bigger than I've been giving him credit for. So to suddenly realize that the 13th article of faith, I really could believe in all things. You know, before that had been very limited because I believed I was part of the one true church. And I think it was Bob McHugh who said, When I am taught that all things Mormon are better than not Mormon, how can it be any other way but that I would seek to fill my time and my space with all of these safe things because Satan could be anywhere else.
Brooke McLay [02:11:53] And so, yes, for us, and, you know, for me, that is the greatest sadness, is that so many people who have responded and continue to respond in pushing us out of their lives don't understand that this was a choice about love.
Brooke McLay [02:12:12] You know, it wasn't that we wanted to push them away it was that we wanted to open up wide enough to allow more people in. And so to me, it's sad that it has to be that we would lose other people by wanting to love more fully.
Brooke McLay [02:12:28] But, you know, the system of the church is the way it is right now. And to me, that's devastating that we have people, you know, like, I don't think that a single one of our really close friends has ever asked what I believe in about God or heaven, you know, And I. And I remember saying to John, sister, I still believe in God. I just believe that there's going to be a lot more people in heaven with us. And it was just like, write it off, you know? And so for me, there's great sorrow in that, because you're exactly right. And we know we've had several people telling us there's all sorts of great rumors going around.
John McLay [02:13:07] All of the things you listed. Not one of those things in one way or another, been attributed to us. Yeah, Backhanded. One of those things. To hear that I had an affair, that Brooke had an affair. I mean, one of my own family members, after the news came out, just point blank, was texting me and just said, what is it? Illicit drugs? Are you stepping out on Brooke? What is it? And, you know, we can honestly say none of the above.
Brooke McLay [02:13:31] No. Yeah.
John McLay [02:13:32] It was from integrity, in fact. And I think this is apparent to anybody who wants to try to put themselves in our shoes and think this through. It was easier for the Maclays to stay. Our lives would have been, in many ways significantly easier had we continue to believe what I would now call the myth if we had just bought back into it. So. And I don't want to again put myself on a pit, but.
Brooke McLay [02:13:54] Or found a way to change it so that it. We made it fit.
John McLay [02:13:59] Although I couldn't because of my job and who I was. There really was no middle ground.
Brooke McLay [02:14:03] Right. We wanted to be. We've always lived our faith so openly, and we wanted that to continue. You know, I didn't. And that was, again, for me, I thought, well, well, the church teaches X, Y, and Z, and my beliefs don't align with X, Y, and Z anymore. So it's not fair for me to keep showing up and letting other people think that I believe those things when I don't. You know, I believe that gay people are fantastic and should have a right to deep, meaningful relationships in this life. I believe in a heaven that is not so limited by what you drink.
Brooke McLay [02:14:41] And so for me, I certainly could have stayed in Nuanced things, but it started to become a question of was it worth my time to keep going back into the box when there were so many other things to supplement my life with. So I also have to say throughout the process, of course, then, obviously, doctrinal issues had very little to do with my initial issues.
Brooke McLay [02:15:05] But when I made the connection that we had to pay money to receive a temple recommend, that really did not sit well with me. When, you know, in fact, I had a friend who's an Episcopalian who said, and that never bothered you? And I was like, no, no, I never even bothered.
John McLay [02:15:24] Frame it as a. It has nothing to do with money.
Brooke McLay [02:15:28] Yeah. I just wanted to be the best that I could with the paradigm that I was given, and I didn't ask questions. For me, I think that learning that there was more than one version of the first vision was extremely difficult doctrinally.
Brooke McLay [02:15:44] I once read the story of Wikipedia or on Wikipedia, just the general. The broad history of the early Mormon movement, and I think that was the first time that I actually laughed out loud and said, I. I can't believe what I believed. Because it was very obvious to me that there were people within that community who also struggled.
Brooke McLay [02:16:07] So just starting to kind of connect the dots and look at my belief in the church on a very macro level instead of a very micro level helped me realize that there were some things that I could certainly make them fit when I looked at them one by one.
Brooke McLay [02:16:21] But when I wanted to look at it on this worldview and understand a God who has a worldview, it was going to change things.
Deciding to Leave and Resign Membership
John Dehlin [02:16:31] So each of you, sort of in parallel, got to the place where you said, the church isn't what it claims to be, and I can no longer believe in it the same way that I did. What I'd like to explore now is the journey from that point to resigning your membership.
John McLay [02:16:50] Yeah, tell me what.
John Dehlin [02:16:51] It's what? You're sitting there, you're in ces, you're an institute teacher, you're high profile, you're the spouse of someone who is all those things. You're loving your experience, you love the church, and all of a sudden, for you, it's not true anymore. What's that like?
Brooke McLay [02:17:07] Yeah, good question.
John McLay [02:17:08] That's a very good question. Well, it wasn't all of a sudden. It didn't happen overnight. And I think I've mentioned that I was kind of reserving the right and even had the expectation that I would sift through this as I had in the past when doubts had come and that I would be able to work it through. And so, for example, in April of this year, Mark McConkey, who is a stake president in Colorado Springs, approached me and said he'd like to have me join him on a tour in the Holy Land and that I needed to contact somebody, but I would be kind of a co director.
John McLay [02:17:42] And I've done that before, been to the Holy Land twice with a good friend of mine, and he has a company, and I went in 2005 to kind of learn and experience it. And then in 2007, I helped direct tours there.
John McLay [02:17:55] So in direct answer to your question, I remember when he asked me, these doubts were already brewing, and they were very strong. And the feelings and the conversations that we'd been having, they were very real and I needed to deal with them, but it wasn't. And I wasn't ready to abandon ship.
John McLay [02:18:14] Even though I remember walking away from the Stake center after he invited me to do that and going to my car and thinking if he knew the thoughts in my mind, he probably wouldn't invite me to do that. Not that I wasn't living the gospel I was, but I was having all these doubts and these apostate ways of thinking.
John McLay [02:18:35] And it wasn't long after that that I was in EFY session director training and really torn because I believe in being honest and I believe in having integrity. And so there was a part of me that I said to Brooke, should we take this trip or is the writing on the wall and we are going to be leaving? And so why have them use funds to fly us out? But I really sincerely believe that I would be teaching EFY, that I would be doing BYU education, that I'd probably be making a trip in 2012 to the Holy Land with Mark McConkie. These things were going to come.
John McLay [02:19:11] So I was in this kind of place of back and forth, and we sat in that training, and one of the speakers, I won't use a name because people would probably know it, but I was sitting next to Brooke and feeling that it was one of those talks where it was like, this is how I would describe it. A lot of name dropping, a lot of, ooh, guess who I saw. And my children have met these brethren. And I just. I kind of turned to Brooke after and said, that is one of the. That talk doesn't help me want to stay. It was like, I'm working through this.
John McLay [02:19:47] It was kind of like, I can't keep doing this. It was just reminding me of all of my concerns and this elitism and this one true church mentality. But the very next talk was given by a friend of mine who's another administrator at efy. And it was so good, it made me feel like, I love this, I want to be a part of this. In fact, at the end of his talk, he said, I'd like to conclude by sharing a letter that we got a couple of years ago that was forwarded to us by one of our session directors.
John McLay [02:20:18] And he said, of course, I've removed the names, but the name of the young man was Josh. And I leaned over to Brooke and said, it's Josh. I said, that's one of the boys from my session. He didn't even have to read the letter. And I just knew. And sure enough, it was one of the many letters I received that said, my experience at EFY and my interaction with the Maclays is, I'm going to go on a mission. I'm changing my life. I mean, I'm paraphrasing here, but I still have that.
John McLay [02:20:45] So then I was like, I got to stay. I'm making a difference. I'm. But then in my mind I'm like, if the church is not what it pretends to be, what it says it is, is it really better that they go out and become even more indoctrinated as a full time missionary? Because that's a regiment where if you live that, I mean, you're really going to buy into the church. It really sinks that in deeply. And so to cut right to, because I want to directly answer your question, there was some back and forth.
John McLay [02:21:19] The last time I was teaching in the classroom on a regular basis was May is when the semester ended. And so I was teaching at the Air Force Academy and at uccs. When the semester started in January and this journey really began in earnest, I started feeling like I needed a different career.
John McLay [02:21:37] And I started looking at jobs loosely in January, but by February, March, and then into April and May, May, I was having like, that's when we started discussing, we may not be able to stay.
John Dehlin [02:21:50] Stay what?
John McLay [02:21:51] In CES for sure. In fact, it kind of went like this. I need to get a different job because then I can be objective in my current position. There is no room for us to fade off. Gradually. I felt like I couldn't say to my bishop or to anybody, I'm having these doubts, I'm having these concerns because of who I was and the way that I was looked upon. And if I'm being completely honest, I was worried about damaging the church. I did not want to do anything that would cast a negative light on the church or hurt somebody's testimony.
John McLay [02:22:26] So I remember teaching, for example, EnOS. I can't remember if it was. It must have been a Book of Mormon class, or if I had gone there as a cross reference. And I was having major doubts about the veracity of the Book of Mormon. And as we've discussed, I didn't go into details there, but specifically what I perceived to be plagiarism and what I perceived to be things that were not true and that were inaccurate and the anachronisms, and not just the things that are in there, but the things that are not in there that I feel like should be, if it was more of an accurate book.
John McLay [02:22:55] But in my mind, I was able to say, my undergraduate degree is in English. And I said, it's still of literature that is before you with value, so teach it as such, and so ask the questions that you know how to ask. And students responded and they felt the spirit. That's what they told me. But again, I did, too. I was still. I was tormented and I was struggling, but I never once taught anything than what the curriculum said, said in the scriptures. I was true to my commission as a CES teacher, although some people even recently have questioned me on that or have questioned my integrity, because they've said things like, just going into the classroom is a testimony in and of itself, Brother McLay.
John McLay [02:23:45] So if you go in with doubts or if you go in thinking something else, then you're not being true. But my point in sharing that was the semester ended, and it was kind of like, thank goodness, because I was so tormented and I was so grateful to enter into the summertime. And the last time that I spoke publicly in a church setting was on May 22nd at institute graduation.
John McLay [02:24:07] And that was difficult for me. And I gave a talk that was a little bit recycled from a graduation a couple years ago. But I tried to select things that were reflective of how I felt. But I was also at that time, feeling more and more like, not only am I going to leave ceremony, but I could see the writing on the wall that this is probably going to leave for I'm probably going to leave the church.
John McLay [02:24:30] And I want to say that part of that for me was that I really felt like we felt like we needed to have ownership over this decision. We didn't want to be made an example of. And I felt like if I were to say, leave ces, but stay in the church, because some people have said, why did you resign? You Know, I can get why you left cell. Yes, maybe. But why did you resign? That it might have led to excommunication. I was such a visible figure in the church and I was so.
John McLay [02:25:00] I had had significant callings as a high priest. I was serving in the bishopric. I don't think I've mentioned that through most of this. When was I released? Was it May? I think I can't remember. Anyway, just a few months ago I was in the bishopric and I was very concerned and I think the more I've processed it rightly so that even though it wouldn't have happened right away, and I don't mean to throw priesthood leaders under the bus or say that they're not good men or that they wouldn't have done this lovingly, but I think that they would have said, here we have an apostate, somebody who no longer believes these things and all this time he's professed to believe it.
John McLay [02:25:38] He could be a great damage to the church. We're going to have to deal with this. And it would have happened slowly but surely. And it was important for me when once we. For me it was about mid June when I just went, I don't believe it.
John McLay [02:25:55] I no longer can buy into the truth claims of the church. And for me it was a very freeing realization. But it was also devastating because then I knew what that meant for my life. I think I did. I was beginning to feel what that, what that would mean. Did you want to add anything, Hun, as far as what was it like
Brooke McLay [02:26:18] for you, Brooke, the process?
John Dehlin [02:26:20] How do you go from like, I don't believe it's what it is.
Brooke McLay [02:26:23] Yeah. To like saying we can, we gotta resign. You know, I would say that true to Mormon doctrine, there is opposition in all things. And the process was equal parts fantastic and horrifying between maybe March, April, April and May and probably June and maybe even into July.
Brooke McLay [02:26:50] I literally could barely drag myself out of bed. And it's a really strange thing to go from believing that you're one of the most healthy people, you know, to almost overnight realizing that you may be on the verge of either going crazy.
Brooke McLay [02:27:06] Because so many points in this process. I kept thinking, why am I seeing it this way? I know that the answer is it has to be true. And so there were times where I literally felt like either I was on the verge of severe clinical depression, which is strange because I'm a regularly optimistic person, but I remember the night that I went to bed and kind of as you go to sleep, you start to decompress thoughts. And I realized, if the church is not true, I am not a special. Maybe I don't have this special place that I always thought.
Brooke McLay [02:27:45] And that realization was so. I think that it's been described before, when you're burning new neural pathways, it's literally like burning new muscles. And that was very much what it was like for months. It was so absolutely devastating to realize that some of these things that I had so clung to, even without realizing that I had clung to it, were being ripped from me at the same time.
Brooke McLay [02:28:15] I remember early in the process saying to myself, I wonder what it. Well, because I became very concerned about, like, well, what do other people do? I literally would sit down with people at business meetings and say, how were you raised? What do you do for meaning? And to me, it's so sad that I had been so raised to not give people validation for their life choices, that I literally never knew what life outside of our church could be like.
Brooke McLay [02:28:44] And I honestly believe that these people thought they were happy, but weren't actually happy. And so I had spent months asking people, what do you do? You know, I mean, the CEO of Dole Foods and I had a three hour discussion on how he brings meaning into his life because I could not wrap my head around it. And. So, sorry, what were you going to say?
John McLay [02:29:07] I was just gonna say we kind of went. It was sort of a journey in the summertime, traveling with the family to many different places, in part to meet people and ask them questions about God and religion and about faith. And to be fair, it was kind of like the Avoid Church at All Cost tour. It was kind of like I was in.
Brooke McLay [02:29:27] It was like our own sabbatical.
John McLay [02:29:30] I was so tormented, and I know I've said that word more than once, but I wanted to fulfill my calling with integrity and honesty and be that person that people thought that I was. But I could not deny that there was a real rift in that there was things going on internally. And I remember, if I may just interject, that we went back and forth. We were generally on. I think Brooke once said to me that we've been on the same page. If we haven't been on the same page throughout this process, we've at least been in the same book. And so that's a blessing because as you know, John, and as listeners know, this doesn't always happen as a companionship.
John McLay [02:30:06] And sometimes, and I know of people right now, as do you, where marriages are at risk. And there is great pain because you have somebody who truly believes and Somebody who knows longer does. And it's a hard thing. But I remember once being in the kitchen and Brooke, probably the most common question we asked ourselves was, are we being deceived? Is this the devil? Are we being deceived by the adversary to think these things and to allow these things in. And there was back and forth. But I remember once Brooke saying, we have to stay, we can't. And it was just that feeling of what are we going to do without it.
Brooke McLay [02:30:39] I believed in my. As I looked back, I realized that we had been socialized in the Mormon way and so much of our social fulfillment came from fulfilling these things which we had been told were important. And I didn't know if we would be able to create a new life, foundation or facade or I don't know, whatever you call it that could create fulfillment. Like doing everything that your mom and dad said will bring happiness, even though some of those don't bring happiness back. In my head I have this speech and so I felt like we've already socialized ourselves to it. Why change? And that.
John McLay [02:31:21] Well, but my response on that day was, I think I said, you do what you need to do, sweetheart, but I'm done.
Brooke McLay [02:31:30] Yeah, you did.
John McLay [02:31:31] That was one of the days where I was able to say, if you want to stay, that's okay, but I can't. I had reached that point in the summertime where I couldn't in good conscience continue to live and perpetuate and pay tithing to and contribute my time, talents and everything that I am, all those things to something that I believed was not true.
Brooke McLay [02:31:57] First of all, I would guess that some of the people that listen to Mormon stories are in that phase of just, I don't know how else to describe it except just mind numbing exhaustion you feel. It's literally like discovering a whole new world and you don't know if you're up to the task and you don't know if you're capable. And you know, I would say I was so grateful for the people when I was in that stage who would say, it's okay, be patient with yourself, allow that face to come and go and it will go. It's. You're not there forever. And that gave me great hope that regardless of whether we stayed in the church or not, that I wasn't going crazy, that other people had been there and felt that way and that there was a new space of enlightenment that would come.
Brooke McLay [02:32:46] And I absolutely believe that to be the case now. You know, there are so many people, a couple of Friends who said, I promise it gets better. I can't explain how'd you find these people, but it does. Some of them are like, I have a cousin who left the church that I reached out to early on. And, you know, again, that's the thing, is that the only people I knew that were safe to reach out to were people who had left because I knew that people within the church were going to always tell me that the church, we always had the same final conclusion. So I had to start reaching out to people who I knew were open. So I had quite a few blogging friends from multitude of faith backgrounds that I would reach out to.
John McLay [02:33:25] I just want to say something about the people that we did reach out to. And you tell me if you're, if you remember this differently. By and large, I don't recall anybody saying, leave, get out, run from that.
Brooke McLay [02:33:35] Oh, no.
John McLay [02:33:36] These people said things like, hey, you do what's best for you.
Brooke McLay [02:33:39] Yeah, whatever.
John McLay [02:33:40] If this works for your family. In other words, I never felt like the devil was pulling me from the other side to come over and make this decision.
Brooke McLay [02:33:48] No, they were just.
John Dehlin [02:33:49] You're saying you're not LDS friends.
John McLay [02:33:51] That's right. People that have left the church, that were disenfranchised or that never were members of the church were saying, you know, there's value in this. If you think you want to stay, if it's the best thing for you, you need to do that. And plus your career. I mean, it was interesting to.
Brooke McLay [02:34:06] But at the same time, they were also very willing to say, honestly, their perceptions of what church membership was.
John McLay [02:34:12] You bet. If we asked them.
Brooke McLay [02:34:14] And here's the big side surprise. There are a lot of very well educated people who choose to not become members. You know, and I think that, that because I always thought, well, people don't become members because the Spirit hasn't moved in their lives yet. And so to realize that I had multiple friends who literally, I have one very good friend who's extremely eloquent. And I had reached out to her and she had kind of had a fundamentalist background growing up and just came to a point where, where she said, I knew a lot about the Bible, but I realized I didn't know very much about God.
Brooke McLay [02:34:47] And so she said, you know, she still mourns every day that her kids won't have the flannel board stories, but she feels that in some ways for her, she's discovered that not going to church allows her to be more compassionate because she doesn't get caught up in all of this stuff. And so she very well understood this very difficult choice between buying into it fully and having the support of this community and, you know, the fellowship of believers and then choosing this more personal relationship with a God or with the universe or whatever you call it. And so I really appreciated just the open sounding board that all of these people offered.
Brooke McLay [02:35:25] Not, and John's exactly right, not one of them who said, in fact, they all said, you're very courageous to ask these questions. This would be a very difficult. You know, you're in. Maybe you should stay where you are. You might be happy.
John McLay [02:35:39] I can count on one hand the number of people that are in the church, fully active, believing members that have said to us, maybe I can count it on, like, two fingers. I'm trying to think, who have used words like courage and integrity in relation to our decisions.
John McLay [02:35:58] By and large, our decision, as you might imagine, has been viewed as flawed and that all these pejorative terms come out, we've been deceived, we're broken. You know, when your own parents think that the devil's got a hold of your heart, it's been very pejorative. And so people have tried to fix us and tried to help us to come back, because that's what they feel would be best. But it seems like people that have gone through this or who are outside of it, they have the different perspective, and they will look at us and they'll say, really? You were that involved and you left. Wow, that takes courage.
John McLay [02:36:34] And not that I was fishing for people to say such things, but that, you know, that was one of the first things when you and I first talked, that you said to me, that said, here's somebody, I think, who maybe understands on a level that most people don't, the level of difficulty. It is, it really, really I've been accused of. And I think members, people who leave are accused of taking the easy road. People will say, you just wanted to be able to drink, you just wanted to be able to go have sex with more people, or you wanted to be able to do this.
John McLay [02:37:04] You couldn't. You chose the easy way. It would have been easier for the McClays to stay. And I've already said that in this podcast. But it was a tremendous decision to get to the point to say, not only am I going to let go of my career, but I'm going to let go of my identity.
John McLay [02:37:23] I was completely into the church. I was Brother McClay and everything about me. In fact, I think at points, I felt like anything good that was in me was somehow connected with the church and with God and with my job and my membership. And so it was not an easy thing, mentally, spiritually, or emotionally, to arrive at a place where we could say, this is what we're going to do, and we're going to write the letters and we're going to.
Brooke McLay [02:37:56] With that said, and back to my point of opposition, you know, here's just one example. Early in the process, I remember saying, I'm just going to pretend this week like I'm not Mormon and view the world through Agnes.
Brooke McLay [02:38:12] What would the world look like in that way? And I literally could not believe the switch that happened as soon as I became not important with not a mission. For the first time in the 13 years that we've lived in Colorado Springs, I walked out my front door and every person mattered to me, and I stopped. And I took time to listen to them and to give their very real feelings, very real validation.
Brooke McLay [02:38:40] And so, in that way, it's strange, because the journey is more difficult. I feel like it requires more energy for me to inhabit my space now. But it's so much more fulfilling to live a life where everyone matters.
Brooke McLay [02:38:57] And there's this whole array of emotions. And so in that way, you know, there's a. This beautiful bliss that comes along with stepping outside. And so it was a strange thing. In fact, I think it's Maya Angelou who says, there's something profound about the human spirit, where after an evening, after a night where you think that you might die, we somehow wake up in the morning and someone asks us, how are you? And you say, I'm fine, thank you. And how about you? And I found that I would be so tormented at night, and then I would wake up in the morning and see another human and think, but I can be here for them.
Brooke McLay [02:39:35] And that was a really big shift. And I think that that's the first time I understood what it meant, what Christ meant when he said to pick up the Samaritan and be truly compassionate to another soul.
John Dehlin [02:39:49] There's still. So I get how you get to the precipice of saying, we can't stay in the church, I can't stay in ces, Maybe we're even going to go inactive. But this next step of saying we're going to actually write letters of resignation. You've even told us logically that you wanted to take control.
John McLay [02:40:11] I did. Of the process, create an objective perspective and kind of step back and say, let me analyze this. As a member who's not also in ces, and held up on a pedestal. But.
John Dehlin [02:40:23] Yeah, but how do you talk to us about that process of, like, actually deciding to resign and then doing it, writing the letters, submitting the letters, what the reaction was, and then talk about
John McLay [02:40:36] what's the reaction two weeks later.
Brooke McLay [02:40:38] Okay, so I'll take us up to the point and then you can take us to the reaction. So I think that this was essentially how we saw it from our perspective and come to find out there are a lot of other ways to do this. And so I recognize that the way that we went about this is not the only way, but we felt that we had a pretty clear understanding of what it meant to be a true believing member of the church. And not only did we have that understanding, but we had lived that completely.
Brooke McLay [02:41:11] And so when we started, and so when church membership equals, let's say, the temple recommend questions, that became very clear to me. I would call that kind of the pinnacle of membership when I felt like my opinion on most of those questions varied too much to answer those questions sincerely.
Brooke McLay [02:41:31] And my variations, our variations on those questions were important enough that we would be also teaching our children a different view and perception of some of those things. I don't think that we felt like it was honest for us to stay, that no matter how much we loved the people, no matter how much it pained us to imagine the sort of backlash that we would have to feel, we had lived our faith in such a public way that we didn't know how we could, with integrity, not submit our resignations. Because to sit at an annual temple recommend interview and say that we believed in the God and we know exactly which kind of God they're talking about, they're talking about the Mormon God.
Brooke McLay [02:42:17] We didn't. I just. We were the type of people who had so obviously understood what that meant, that when we came to a different conclusion, we just felt like the only option is to resign. Now, of course, there are things like Stay LDS and all of these other websites that help you find a middle way. And I suppose that for some people, that's a truly profound journey. And perhaps we would have found some incredible value in that journey. But because we feared.
John McLay [02:42:51] And our message is not.
Brooke McLay [02:42:52] It's fellowship.
John McLay [02:42:54] So sorry.
Brooke McLay [02:42:54] No, you're fine.
John McLay [02:42:55] Our message is not everybody should leave. I think for some people, they need to stay and that it works for them.
Brooke McLay [02:43:01] Absolutely.
John McLay [02:43:02] And we completely respect that. But we felt, as a matter of integrity and as a matter of where we were, and to reiterate, Gordon B. Hinckley, Joseph Fielding Smith. There is no middle ground. So where does somebody who really, truly believes that. That the church is the true church on earth? I mean, even as a teenager, I had thoughts that if this church isn't true, none of them are. I mean, this is the one that makes sense, that answers the deepest questions, that these are the. You know, the solemnities of eternity are contained herein. And so when that blew up for me and I realized that it wasn't what it purported to be, I could have stayed. But why? You know, I mean, I really.
Brooke McLay [02:43:44] Some things about our children having to go through the sort of pain that we had just gone through, that was
John McLay [02:43:49] definitely part of the.
Brooke McLay [02:43:50] And so we felt like, again, for the integrity of our own family, that
John Dehlin [02:43:55] they would someday have the same crisis of faith that you did, and that they would turn to you and say what?
Brooke McLay [02:44:00] And say, we're struck. Like, what if they were afraid to tell us that they had come to a conclusion that the church was not true and they thought we were in this very TBM state?
John Dehlin [02:44:12] And.
Brooke McLay [02:44:12] And then we were like, oh, actually, all along, we kind, you know, like just that whole, what if they turn
John Dehlin [02:44:18] to say, why did you guys deceive me? Why were you part of the deceased?
Brooke McLay [02:44:21] Exactly.
John McLay [02:44:22] And we realized that because, again, when
Brooke McLay [02:44:25] we say we're going to be honest, we really. To me, there's one way to be honest.
John McLay [02:44:30] We realize that part of our decision involves conjecture that I was. Like I mentioned, I was worried about possibly being excommunicated. And since I was living the commandments in the same way that I always had through my entire life, I didn't want to be made an example of. Now, could I say for sure that would have happened? I can't. Can we say for sure our kids would have grown up and had doubts? No.
John McLay [02:44:54] So, yeah, we have to. Just like anybody else. We weigh the evidence, we look at what's before us, we consider our personalities, we look at my career. All the different elements kind of came to a head where it. You know, Brooke once said, I don't want to be the family that is not going to church on Sunday and loading our kids in the car to go for a hike, while everybody else who has loved us and trusted us and looked at us this one way is wondering what's going on with the McClays. It doesn't.
Brooke McLay [02:45:22] We almost felt like we owed it to those kids that we had taught to help them understand that we weren't just, you know, saying, eff it to the system, that we had made a genuine choice. That was our choice.
John McLay [02:45:35] Did you say eff it? You're so hardcore.
Brooke McLay [02:45:37] Well, yeah, eff. And so that was a very serious consideration as well. We were like, if these sweet seminary students drive by and see the Maclays not going to church on Sunday, that's not going to compute in their head. And we want them to understand we're now making different choices because. Because we don't view the system in the same way.
John Dehlin [02:46:02] It sounds like it wasn't just a matter of integrity. It was almost an act of respect for the religion.
Brooke McLay [02:46:08] Yes, very much so.
John McLay [02:46:09] That was very well put. I was in a place where if I wanted to send a message that I didn't believe the church was true, I had the form to do that. I could have been the equivalent of shouting in the microphone and then dropping it and walking off the street stage.
John McLay [02:46:24] But even my resignation, which I realized weeks later, put me in an interesting position because I'd never checked into this thoroughly, but I was told I didn't qualify for unemployment because I walked away, which is different than being fired. But what I did was I said nothing. And there are other reasons I said nothing about this, and we've kind of touched on those, but I just said. And it was truthful. And I even recorded some of the conversations, which shows you the level of maybe paranoia or fear that I had, that maybe they would be used against me or misunderstood. But everything I said was truthful.
John McLay [02:46:59] We're moving in a different direction. But what I did was I tried to do no harm. I wanted to be as quietly, to leave as quietly as I could. And I felt the same about our resignation.
Brooke McLay [02:47:12] Well, and so because you could have
John Dehlin [02:47:13] forced them to fire you.
John McLay [02:47:14] Sure.
John Dehlin [02:47:15] Which would have helped you qualify for unemployment, plus would have given you probably better grounds for wrongful termination or some type of lawsuit.
Brooke McLay [02:47:23] Well, and that was exactly.
John McLay [02:47:24] But I didn't want to because, again, I loved these men. I felt like. And I want to be clear, I felt like they had treated us good and that they were. It was a great place to be employed.
Leaving a CES Career Behind
John Dehlin [02:47:34] Real quick, let's. Before we move on to the actual submissions of the letter and the aftermath, what's it like when 14 years of your career, your profession has been dedicated as a Mormon education, you know, church education person. That's your training, that's your resume, that's your income, and most importantly, that's your retirement. What goes through your mind and what things do you have to process into in terms of the sacrifice or the cost of this decision for you?
John McLay [02:48:09] Yeah, it's still hard for me to talk about. But, yeah, I have all kinds of conflicting emotions in relation to that. But I remember cleaning out my office before the person coming in to replace me and was coming. Coming in and just going through talks, just piles of paper and notes, because this is what I did. This is where I devoted my time, and not just personally and with my family, but professionally.
John McLay [02:48:49] I guess the short answer is that it was completely and utterly devastating. And I would try to express that to people and they would say things that they were helpful. They would say, oh, well, John, it's not wasted. You've still developed a skill set. You're a great public speaker.
John McLay [02:49:07] You know, you're excellent in the classroom. And I had the opportunity to teach at a community college and still do, teaching sociology. And I was starting to realize these skills are transferable. I can take these into other places. But the feeling at the time was I went into this so wholeheartedly and so I was so committed to it that to let go of that was extremely difficult. It was heart wrenching and I cried. I don't even think I told many people this, but I wept cleaning up my office.
John McLay [02:49:47] And I felt some anger. I guess I still do from time to time. I'm past it mostly that people perhaps, and this is my perspective in church history, and those who had presented it and made decisions about how it would come down and filter to us had not been honest, had been deceitful in what they've done. And here I was in 2011 with four children and one wife and feeling suffering, really, in a profound way because of things that had, you know, one thing stacked upon another, lies or myths perpetuated, however you want to call it. Now, I feel like I should say that it sounds to me, as I listen to myself, we're painting this picture of that we were so noble and that we were.
John McLay [02:50:39] We don't think of our. I don't think of myself as like the exemplar of how to be. I always have struggled, actually, with my own confidence. And even though in ces, well, trying to find the words for this, it was the only thing in my life that I ever felt that I was exceptional at.
John McLay [02:51:03] I'm a good basketball player. I'm a pretty good soccer player. I think I'm a good kisser. I'm a good kisser. Nailed that. But really, I thought this CES and the speaking and the teaching of young people was the thing like I was born to do.
John McLay [02:51:23] And that God. I believed that God had given me that gift and put me in a place where I could do that. So processing that and letting that go and kind of looking at 14 years and saying for what I cannot believe, you know, there were times when I, like I said that I was angry, but at the same time, here's where I've landed with that, and maybe we'll get there down the road. But I'm not mad anymore about my career. I'm not saying, oh, what a waste of time. I still have those feelings, if I'm being totally honest sometimes.
John McLay [02:51:56] But again, it was very real to me and it was worthwhile, and those experiences were mine and I. And I own them. But the direct answer to your question is that it was wrenching.
John Dehlin [02:52:08] So I'm glad you addressed it from the standpoint of what's it like to walk away from it in terms of your identity, in terms of how much it meant to you, in terms of the time lost. What about the sheer financial and job cost of making that choice as a CES employee?
Brooke McLay [02:52:28] Well, I think, first of all, we are kind of in a unique position because Colorado Springs is largely evangelical Christian. And so and not that every workplace looks at that, but I think that John's resume, we've been kind of surprised at how, you know, he's got a master's degree in sociology, he has a lot of highly transferable skills, and yet he's had two callbacks from.
John Dehlin [02:52:56] So how long have you been searching for a job?
Brooke McLay [02:52:58] Since January of last year.
John McLay [02:52:59] Really? In earnest. March and April. It really.
John Dehlin [02:53:03] So nine to 12 months. You've been looking for a job?
John McLay [02:53:06] Yeah, close to 50 job applications.
John Dehlin [02:53:08] So 50 job applications, I think a lot of people see and two. So let's just.
Brooke McLay [02:53:13] The Mormon.
John Dehlin [02:53:14] Nine to 12 months, 50 job applications, two interviews.
Brooke McLay [02:53:21] Yeah. So it's been kind of a bad market.
Financial and Personal Costs of Resigning
John Dehlin [02:53:23] So financially, what's that been like for your family?
John McLay [02:53:26] Well, let me. I'll just. I'll just be candid about that. It. Outward appearances and even to be totally honest, the Maclays have been doing okay. It's kind of coming to a head right now. The church was very gracious when I, ces, when I left, said, look, why don't you. Because I said, I'm going to go in a different direction. I was very vague about it. But we actually selected August 5th as a date because if I worked into August, then the benefits would extend through August. But in a nutshell, I'll just bullet list what has happened because of my resigning my membership CES and then membership in the church, although this financial part is Mostly the ces, but those benefits expand.
John McLay [02:54:11] And so I lost not only my income that I was. The money that I was making, but the health insurance, which was very good health insurance. And my retirement was never really big. I borrowed from it in the past, but I decided to cash that in. And I don't know if that was good or not. I'm not quite 55 years old.
John Dehlin [02:54:36] You did that because why? Because why?
John McLay [02:54:38] To put money in the bank to live off of during this transition so
John Dehlin [02:54:41] that you could survive.
John McLay [02:54:42] Yeah.
Brooke McLay [02:54:43] Yeah. Because in those early months, we weren't. My website generates some income, and actually, over the last couple of months has been a godsend. Absolutely.
John Dehlin [02:54:55] So God hasn't cursed you.
Brooke McLay [02:54:57] No, indeed. God has not cursed us. However, there's still. I mean, we're kind of facing down. Well, we'll. Our home is in foreclosure because we. So I can cover, like, you know, the daily bills, but that's not covering a house.
John McLay [02:55:13] Yeah. So the retirement is. Is gone. And. And the savings are gone. And the health benefits are gone. The benefits are gone.
Brooke McLay [02:55:22] We did get health insurance, but the house is in foreclosure.
John Dehlin [02:55:25] Foreclosure.
John McLay [02:55:25] The health insurance, though, is catastrophic coverage.
Brooke McLay [02:55:28] It's.
John McLay [02:55:28] It's. So in case something really big head.
Brooke McLay [02:55:30] Oh, yeah.
John McLay [02:55:32] And we're realizing that in retrospect, the health insurance we had with the church was very good. It was very nice. One of my friends referred to it as Cadillac coverage. You know, it's one of the blessings and benefits of working for the church was good coverage. But as Brooke said, the home is now in foreclosure. And so it's been a tremendous cost for us financially.
John McLay [02:55:56] And I think one of the. I don't know if I'd call it a regret, but. And we've already kind of touched on this. I did this to me. I mean, no outside party can look in on this and not say, you're the one who walked away. You know, you're the one. You did well. And people have said that is the truth.
John McLay [02:56:14] I made the decision. I own that decision. But I really felt like by now I would have found a job. I just got an email yesterday. I forgot to tell you that. Another turn down another one that these jobs I applied for that said, thanks, but no thanks. And I'm torn because I don't know if they look at this and go, man, we can't. This guy has all this experience and a master's degree.
John McLay [02:56:40] For a while, I was looking for jobs that really matched my skill set, but now I'M to the point where I'm like, I just, I just want a job. Where can I work? I've applied at local banks, I've considered insurance agencies.
John McLay [02:56:54] I've applied to many higher education jobs at colleges and universities to try to get full time teaching positions or non profits. But the direct answer to your question, without trying to elicit pity, is that it has come at great cost.
John McLay [02:57:12] And there have been some people that have, you know, we have like a wonderful dentist who's been very kind and continues to, and he's lds and both of them are, and they have been very generous to us and they continue to be and there's still some help there. But when I say it's coming to a head, I think losing the home is a foregone conclusion. I think we're going to lose it one way or the other.
Brooke McLay [02:57:38] Well, and I think that just everything that a job entails is gone right now. Like identity and security and stuff to fill your time and give you purpose and meaning. And so, you know, that's not a cost that you count into the monthly budget, but kind of depression or oh yeah, it's been really hard. Well, and then you compile that with like having everybody that you really love go radio silence on you. You, you know, like we've had family members say I can't talk to you. And I'm like, wait, this is really the time that you should be talking to us. And so I think that especially for John, that it's been a particularly dear cost to pay because when he says he lost his identity, he really lost, as far as he knows, his identity.
Brooke McLay [02:58:27] And so when, and also like just the security that a job where a year from now you know what you're doing or you're able to put savings aside, all of that is gone for now. And you know, when you're raising kids, you don't want to be those kind of parents go off.
John Dehlin [02:58:43] So do you ever say I should have handled it differently, I shouldn't have left, I should have just faked it, I should have just lied.
John McLay [02:58:49] Not the lie part, not the fake, I have thought because you know, some advice that was given to me during this process was you're your family is most important and providing for them is paramount. So you do whatever you have to do. But there was such the integrity and the honesty issue and also in principle, because one of our friends asked me once during dinner saying, well, John, if you don't believe, why aren't you telling your students that you don't and Then that made me think about it differently. And that's when I kind of started to realize I can't stay in this. I can't. If I. I'm trying the best I know how to be a person of integrity and honor. And so the. The faking, it wasn't really an option.
Brooke McLay [02:59:34] I wish we could have gone slower, but the job thing made it really unique because we do feel a great.
John McLay [02:59:41] Have we talked about how we. We were going to go back, maybe?
John Dehlin [02:59:44] No, no, no. Well, let's. Yeah, go ahead. And then we'll go to writing the
John McLay [02:59:48] letter, because that's regret. I mean, when you say looking back and saying, would you have done it differently? I've thought about that. I've thought about maybe. Did we resign too quickly? Because I think we're heading into talking about the reaction, and, oh, boy, people did not see this.
Family Reactions and Social Fallout
John Dehlin [03:00:06] Let's do it. Let's go there.
Brooke McLay [03:00:07] So let me just take you to. Writing the actual letter is like pulling the band aid off, you know, going to hurt. And so you just. We just said, we've got to do it. And we had talked to our kids about, you know, we wanted them to write their own letters if they wanted or not write letters. It was. We tried to leave it very open to our children and be transparent to them as well. So when we wrote the letter, we sent one via email to the church headquarters. And I. It would have been nice if that was the only one that mattered.
John McLay [03:00:42] That was hard copy.
Brooke McLay [03:00:43] Oh, okay.
John McLay [03:00:44] To the church and then email to
Brooke McLay [03:00:46] bishop and stake president, Our bishop and our stake president. And then a couple of weeks before this point, John had emailed his parents. And just, you know, because I said, I want them to feel like they're a part of this, I don't want to spring this on them. We love them too much to.
John McLay [03:01:01] It was actually a month and a half not communicate.
Brooke McLay [03:01:04] So that's how. I mean, it was one of those things where we both felt like, there's never going to be a good time to do this, so why don't we just get it out of the way and then move forward from there and breathe.
John McLay [03:01:19] Yeah.
John Dehlin [03:01:20] So you went through that process and then you wrote the letters, right?
Brooke McLay [03:01:23] Well, first of all, when initially John wrote the letter to his parents.
John McLay [03:01:26] Yeah, the letter to my parents, I believe that was in June.
John Dehlin [03:01:31] Whew.
John McLay [03:01:31] That was a tough one. It was a tough one to write. It was a tough one to send. And it was very difficult to deal with the reaction. And my parents are wonderful. I maybe didn't give them enough credit in talking about my youth. But they are bright, kind, hard working people who, you know, I was raised with goodly parents. They're Mormon.
Brooke McLay [03:01:54] They are good Mormon.
John McLay [03:01:55] They're good. I love my mom and dad. And so to have my dad's initial reaction be a knee jerk reaction was hard to take.
John Dehlin [03:02:03] Which was what?
John McLay [03:02:05] Oh, it was. I think I was rereading the. It came in the form of text messages and I guess maybe that was more comfortable for him than calling. And I can understand that. But we've got your letter. It's completely devastated us. And keep your poison away from my other children and don't come around kind of initially. And it hadn't. We hadn't. And I don't think I had had two or three responses before.
John Dehlin [03:02:35] Was this a phone text or.
John McLay [03:02:36] Yes, this is phone text.
John Dehlin [03:02:37] So he's doing it by phone text.
John McLay [03:02:39] And I still have it. I was looking at it again last night and remembering. But it's painful for me to look at. And also my dad has since apologized. He has since recognized that this was not the best reaction.
Brooke McLay [03:02:50] We also have to. I mean, yeah, I was in the interest of full disclosure.
John McLay [03:02:55] Well, one of the things that he said was in this initial reaction and conversation was that both he and my mom felt that because I was very sick as a child with my ear problems and nearly died two and a half, three years old. But he said that it might have been better if I would have died because then at least I could have still gone to the celestial kingdom.
Brooke McLay [03:03:19] So.
John McLay [03:03:20] And it was a lot of where is my son and who's done this to you? And I officially hate Colorado Springs. I mean, it was trying to find the guilty who pulled you away. And I think part of that might have been directed towards Brooke because why would you know our beloved son who was so good and so true? Somebody had to do this to you because otherwise this is inconceivable. And so it was. It was very hurt feelings. And shortly after that led to a pleading for me to come out alone to Utah to talk with my mom and dad. And I remember because alone was in capital letters, just me.
John McLay [03:03:57] And so I didn't want to. In fact, my initial response was, I think we need to. The reason I wrote a letter is because I knew it would be so emotional. I weighed this. I was going to do it in person. I was going to do it on the phone. I went back and forth, but. But I finally said a letter allows me to say what I need to say them to Read it and process it and respond in their time and in their way, and then I'm open to that and we can start this dialogue. But I wasn't going to go out, but I decided to.
John McLay [03:04:23] That was very difficult. I made a trip alone to Utah and dealt with that reaction of just devastation and heartbreak and, and my own. You know, my father, I don't know if I've said this, but he was 35 plus years CES. And so I did say that. I mentioned that in this, in this podcast. But so he was willing to talk to me about doctrinal and historical concerns, and he was open to those kinds of discussions. For my mom, in this conversation, that was a little bit more difficult. She said, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear anything that would contradict what I believe.
John McLay [03:05:02] And I'm respectful, first of all, of my mom, who I love with all my heart, and I'm respectful to people who feel that way. But in this podcast, and I feel like this is important to say that part of this process was breaking out of the circular logic that says that everything that says the church is not true is anti Mormon. In other words, if we define anti Mormon literature as anything that speaks ill of the prophet Joseph or the Book of Mormon or the church, then we have circular logic that always takes us back to the conclusion that the church is true. And it's breaking that circular logic that allows you to process things differently.
John McLay [03:05:39] But my parents wanted no part of that. And one of their biggest concerns was don't tell your siblings. And I remember in the conversation, in other words, don't be specific about why you're leaving the church. Don't give them specifics. And I remember part of that conversation, it kind of, as it came to a head, was, john, to me, you are very persuasive. You're a very good teacher. Don't use those skills to. And even in doing this podcast today, that conversation has come back to me because my mother said, I'm just worried that someday you are going to be one of those people that goes out and tries to.
John McLay [03:06:18] Tries to tell people that the church is not true and that you'll use your skills in a negative way. So I would say to my mom and to you, that's not my intent here. To me, I'm here to share my story. I'm here to talk about where I am.
John McLay [03:06:35] And if I'm being totally honest, I'm kind of seeking a little bit of therapy because I've been holed Up. And I felt very alone through a lot of this. And so I need to talk about where I am, but I have no intent to take my mom or my dad or my brothers or my sister, nor do I have the illusion that I'm capable of doing such a thing.
John McLay [03:06:55] That letter was in June. And then in August 5th, I resigned from CES. And on August 11th was when we sent the letters to Salt Lake and to the bishop. And then the reactions began. And the first one was from my bishop, and it was in the form of an email, since I had emailed him, and it was complete shock. And I think he said something like, the word shock does not do justice to.
John Dehlin [03:07:23] Because you had just been in the bishopric, right?
John McLay [03:07:25] I had. I was his counselor for about three and a half years.
Brooke McLay [03:07:28] Yeah, well. And I feel like maybe we could have been a little bit slower with submitting resignations, but we know how the church works. And they had already switched my visiting teachers to stalwart visiting teachers. You know, I had the bishop's wife coming in. She was asking if I'd just gone for a run because I wasn't wearing my garments. And so we started to sense this, I think, what Joanna Brooks calls correlating each other. We felt the correlation committee coming in, and there was no room for the Maclays to take a sabbatical. We couldn't say we need to step back without having every siren go off.
Brooke McLay [03:08:03] And. And so we felt like the only way that we will get peace from incessant phone calls and visiting teachers is to take control of our story and resign. And if we come to a conclusion where we say we are dumb and we made the wrong choice, then we will be rebaptized, but we have to have some space. And we were. Even as we were quietly trying to find our own space, we were being more and more suffocated. And so I think that that was kind of, for us, one of the reasons that it was like, resign. We felt this, like, everybody, you know, all of this pressure.
Brooke McLay [03:08:36] And then we were like, well, let's just get it all over with, get all the pain out of there. And so I think that that's one of the reasons that it happened so quickly. And I think a lot of people were like, why did you have to take your name off the records of the church? And, you know. And again, it was because we didn't know how else to gain any peace and help explain to other people why we were doing things that were a little bit out of line. So, like, not going to church on Sunday because we were taking the kids for a hike.
John McLay [03:09:06] And along with that reaction was of course, sorrow, dismay, anger. My bishop clearly said, you know, I suppose I'm angry about this. He kind of indirectly cursed our children to the third and fourth generation. At least that's how my wife read it. It was very upsetting to her.
Brooke McLay [03:09:25] You don't talk about my kids that way.
John McLay [03:09:26] And so she responded and I responded, worry about the youth that look up to me that will be affected by this decision.
Brooke McLay [03:09:35] Lots of testimony, bearings. But can I share? I do feel like in this process, every cliched reaction that you can imagine is what we got. But I, I do kind of want to share what I thought was one of the most remarkable responses, because if I was still in the church, I would hope that I would be grown up enough to act this way. But I had a friend who called about a week after our resignations went through and she said, so do you guys, I'm wondering if you guys would like to come to dinner. And I was a little bit stunned because I thought, here we go, I'm really tired, I don't know if I can do this again.
Brooke McLay [03:10:12] And she goes, oh, silly me, you probably think I'm calling to invite you over to dinner to fellowship you. She goes, oh no, that's all bygones. So do you guys want to come over to dinner? And it was such a remark. She is the only person I have yet had respond in that way that literally church membership meant nothing.
Brooke McLay [03:10:33] She has not, she's not changed one ounce of our conversation. And I really love her for her response. And I felt like there was such true Christianity in the way that she responded. And I wish so much that I could have been a member like that. But I have to hand it to those people like her, and they were few and far between who responded with such warmth. It was amazing.
John McLay [03:11:04] And I think we've established that, that Latter Day Saints are good hearted people. But the shock, the horror, the disbelief, multiple pleas before the paperwork was to be advanced for me to meet with the bishop, meet with the stake president. One of the emails even said we can arrange a phone call with the general authority or a meeting with the general authority. Mark McConkie is here in town. Why don't you go talk to him, you know, and, and they bullet list the things I remember in my bishop's initial reaction there was, you know, could it be this? Or this? Or this? I've looked at Adam, God theory and blood atonement or polyandry or polygamy or whatever it is.
John McLay [03:11:42] Kind of like, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Hold the horses. And our polite but consistent response was, thank you, but we know that this is what we want to do. Please forward the paperwork, even though.
Brooke McLay [03:11:54] Even though it's hard.
John McLay [03:11:56] Before they finally. And our stake president, I thought his response was very mature and very loving and with complete respect and saying, you've asked to do this, and I will do that if you want me to. But kind of like, is there anything we can do to change your mind? You know?
Brooke McLay [03:12:12] And when the letters arrived, it made me sick. I just. I put them in. I did put them. The letters saying we had officially. We were officially off the records. They resigned. We got six letters all in one
John McLay [03:12:26] day of mail in the third week of August. Yeah.
Brooke McLay [03:12:28] And I just. I didn't even open them. I just put them away. Because I didn't, you know, because I still and forever and will always be Mormon. It's not like I can flip the switch on 35 years of my life, you know. Oh, I'm not supposed to be emotional.
John Dehlin [03:12:45] Being emotional is okay.
Brooke McLay [03:12:47] You know, I. I feel like I feel nothing but gratitude for who I am today because of all of the good parts of the church. I feel angry and sad and ready to distance myself from some of the less healthy aspects of the church.
Brooke McLay [03:13:07] For instance, it works really well when everyone is obeying and everybody is doing everything that they have to to be a temple member and make an eternal family. But when one person breaks that mold, for instance, your mother, your gay, whatever, sibling, I don't know, all of a sudden, it starts to unravel and fall apart. And again, I don't feel like it's healthy to teach my children that there's only one way to be in a spiritual sense. I want them to be open to the mystery and the wonder and their own realizations and revelations about the world.
Brooke McLay [03:13:43] But still, my spiritual language, my spiritual experiences come from this Mormonism that I have so cherished. And so to say I'm un Mormoned now doesn't sit right with me because even when I sit down with my friends, I'm still very Mormon.
John Dehlin [03:14:04] You still feel Mormon, right?
Brooke McLay [03:14:08] I just don't. I just. I feel like I'm Mormon plus now. And so to feel like the church is trying to take away the Mormon, I don't want to just be plus, I like being Mormon plus. So, anyway, so for you, you're not
John Dehlin [03:14:25] the Mormon hasn't gone away just because you're not an LDS church.
Brooke McLay [03:14:28] Yeah, not at all. Nor do I want it to. You know, I like. I like all of the funny understanding, all of the quirky little cultural things. I get all of that, and I love it. So, yeah, I have my journal, and this was like, maybe a week after, and I said, I've wished over the last two days that we could go back at times that we could just be the people that everybody thinks of us.
Brooke McLay [03:14:59] And so I started to have this, you know, and I think that it's common with any change, you often, whether it's moving cities or the death of a loved one, there's a point at which you say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I feel comfortable with comfort. And we had gone out with some friends one night and had kind of had a couple of interactions with some people who had left the church. And all of them had kind of gone on to make very unorthodox Mormon decisions. As you can. You're allowed to do that whether you're in the church or not. But I think that that terrified me a little bit first, because I started to fear that perhaps the only thing left was for us to become atheists and have no moral authority.
Brooke McLay [03:15:44] And, you know, all of these fear tactics really were speaking to me. And, you know, I came to the realization where I was like, well, you have to do something with your life. And what we were doing with our life was really good. Whether we buy into it or not, this is too scary.
Brooke McLay [03:16:03] There's too much unknown. And so we had gone out with these friends, and by the time I got back home, I just was so tired and so conflicted, and I had fallen asleep. And as I woke up the next morning, I felt like I was just suspended in that place of, like, not asleep and not awake. And my mind was just working, and I could feel it trying to put pieces together. And as I described it to a couple of church members as we came back, you know, I said it was kind of my Alma, the younger experience, where I felt like it was like, okay, well, if everybody doesn't follow, if everybody agrees to not be homosexual and drink coffee and not do all of these things, then we have a single safe place.
Brooke McLay [03:16:44] And so that's how God is showing us his love, is to create all of these boundaries and rules. And I do think that in some way, boundaries and rules create safety. But at the same time, I feel like in retrospect, it was just a very weary mind in a very terrified
John McLay [03:17:05] place when I woke up that morning, and the first thing I heard was, we have to go back. And I said, what? And it was so strong that she said, I want to call the bishop and the stake president right now.
Brooke McLay [03:17:16] And I said, but I wasn't that calm.
John McLay [03:17:18] She wasn't that calm. She was teary eyed and emotional. And it was very real. And I could tell something. And even the night before, myself and our friends, we could tell Brooke was kind of off, that this was weighing on her. And what this was, I think was just a little bit of a break, a little bit of a, what have we done? You know, maybe we did this too quickly because people walk different paths out of the church when this happens. We, like got on a jet plane and went well.
Brooke McLay [03:17:47] And I do have to say that if you can imagine the amount of pressure we were under from John resigning and then us resigning our membership, our lives literally went from being extremely full and bodied with peace that we love and trust and adore to literally no one. Brothers and sisters would not talk to us. And that was always the reaction. I can't talk to you right now. I can't deal with it right now. And leaving us just in silent space.
John McLay [03:18:15] And to be fair, I think they didn't know what to say. There's no language for them in communicating with us where we were.
John Dehlin [03:18:20] But it leaves you feeling alone.
John McLay [03:18:22] It did.
Brooke McLay [03:18:23] So bitterly alone that I honestly. Well, and because. Because these people are people that we had so cherished and still cherish, I thought, why are we trying to reinvent the will? We have our lives peopled, whatever. We'll have to make it work.
John McLay [03:18:37] We can make it work.
Brooke McLay [03:18:38] I remember calling. I called two people that morning. I called one of my very good friends and she said, it's important that you're thinking of these things because these are the matters of eternity. And I appreciated it. But that response scared me a little bit because I wasn't talking about eternity. I was talking about Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. This had nothing to do with eternity because I still had a very different concept of what eternity looked like. But it was about, for me, it was about survival with beauty in my life and a savory survival. And then I called my sister and she said, honey, we've talked a lot over the last couple of months and I'm telling you right now, you're speaking out of fear. And she said, don't do anything out of fear. And I was like, this isn't fear.
John McLay [03:19:30] This is not fear. I think your sister, I think Holly was spot on. And I'm not being critical of You. But when Brooks said, call the President, call the Bishop, I said, I don't think we need to do that. I don't think we should do that. In fact, let's wait, let's give this a few days.
Brooke McLay [03:19:47] Yeah, but I'm not really a waiter.
John McLay [03:19:49] But Brooke, she was very. In fact, I went for a run. I was training for a marathon. I had like a, I don't know, a 14 or 15 mile run that afternoon. And so this was a Saturday, the first Saturday in September. And I went out for that run and I started pondering the possibility because she was very clear, we are going back, we have to go back. We've made a mistake. I'm so sorry. She was even taking blame that I didn't think she needed to take. Saying things like this is my fault. If I hadn't been, you know, doing this and that, and I'm so sorry.
John McLay [03:20:19] Your career was your dream job. This is awful. What have we done? All of those things just in that moment were weighing on her. And so as I ran, I started to ponder coming back. And I will be honest, it felt very good, the idea of being able to go back to Efy, the great prodigal son moment of being maybe like the prodigal son son, you know, object lesson, I'm running thinking object lesson.
Brooke McLay [03:20:43] And we were at this point again, I mean, we'd already gotten to the point where we were like, we don't care what people think. So now again we were like, we just want people to love us again. We just want to get back into that place where we're the healthy couple that everyone's looking at. And so we threw the kids in the car, drove to Utah, called and set up an appointment to talk about the great story of Joseph Smith with Mark McConkie. And then he got us an appointment with a general authority. We went and met with the general authority, an apostle.
John Dehlin [03:21:12] An apostle.
Brooke McLay [03:21:13] An apostle.
John McLay [03:21:13] One of the members of the 12. Yes, but you went really fast there and that's okay. Maybe we needed to.
Brooke McLay [03:21:18] But we showed up at John's parents house, told them we were coming back, decided we were going to come, move to Utah just to get. I mean it was like we were willing to change whatever to just be back into the favor of these people that we love again.
John McLay [03:21:32] And I really wanted to believe again, I've expressed that during this process, I really did believe that I would reach a point at which I could be the same believing Mormon that I always was. And in my head I'm thinking, I'll
Brooke McLay [03:21:46] just keep visiting stale DS and memorize all of those changes.
John McLay [03:21:49] When this happened, I thought, this is it. This is my chance. This is bingo. I'm going to be able once and for all, this is all going to be a faith promoting experience that affirms what I believed. And that felt very good. And I want to express my sincere gratitude for the kindness of the way people responded. And you know, President McConkie, my wife and I don't know how Brooke remembers this phone conversation, but I'll just tell you how I remember it. I didn't say many words when we called over the speakerphone. President McConkie, my wife was the one who was really feeling this and I sort of felt along for the ride, willing to do it. And again, she wasn't dragging me, but
Brooke McLay [03:22:27] I was saying, right, we had nothing to lose.
John McLay [03:22:28] We're kind of riding this out. Right. I didn't say maybe 10 words during that conversation. But near the end of it, Brooke said, we would love to be able to meet with the general authority if, I mean, she asked him point blank. And he said, let me make some calls. And two of his mission companions are now in the 70 and his mission president is a member of the 12. And so he called back either the next day or the day after. And he said, you have an appointment on Tuesday with this, at 10 o' clock in the morning with this member of the 12. And we were blown away and honored.
John Dehlin [03:23:05] How long was the appointment?
Brooke McLay [03:23:06] Wonderful. About an hour.
John McLay [03:23:08] We brought our children and we sat outside, hit each other in the office, know, playing with iPads and ipods and we spent the better part of an
Brooke McLay [03:23:18] hour and he just listened and it was beautiful.
John McLay [03:23:21] It was, and I have to say that a measure of kindness and compassion that I thought was completely genuine and sincere. Now, what were you saying?
Attempting to Return and Walking Away Again
John Dehlin [03:23:32] Our story, you trying to explain in the vein of we want to come back, but let me explain how we got this point so that you will. So that you will forgive us and let us come back.
Brooke McLay [03:23:42] Yeah. Or just so that you'll understand how we got to this point.
John McLay [03:23:45] I was hoping, I'll be honest, I was hoping that maybe some doctrinal things would come up because here was a rare opportunity and we understand that not everybody that goes through this can have this kind of connection. And so we looked at again as God's hand perhaps giving us this opportunity to reconnect and reaffirm our faith and rekindle it. But. But no doctrinal, no specific historical or doctrinal things were discussed. Well, we brought them up as concerns that we had, but his was a listening ear and it was compassion. He really wanted to help.
Brooke McLay [03:24:21] He had a very grandfatherly. It wasn't as though we were sitting down with an apostle. He was just willing and gentle and he said, can we get those letters back? And we said, no.
John McLay [03:24:32] In other words, is it too late? Have you already resigned to reverse it? You know, were officially off the records. I mean, when I say that he wanted to help, I hope that I can say that with all sincerity.
Brooke McLay [03:24:44] He was fantastic.
John McLay [03:24:45] When the interview was done, he gave me his home number and his office number and said, call me if I can do anything. And so I felt very grateful for that. And then we met. Went and met with.
John Dehlin [03:24:59] Didn't he have one reaction though? Didn't he make a comment about the fact that you would come back? Wasn't there a comment that he made something about other people come back or.
Brooke McLay [03:25:10] Oh, yes. Well, I think there was just a general feeling like, yes, either you. The only answer is to come back or they are lost. You know, I mean, that was just the. It was like, those are the two options.
John Dehlin [03:25:25] Did he say anything interesting? Did he provide any help or support other than listening?
Brooke McLay [03:25:30] Good question. You know, I think I felt like there were a couple of things that came up. For instance, the homosexuality thing. And my general feeling from his response was because I said, and. And this is actually one of the things that I regret saying. And I think that this shows the level of despair that I had reached. I said, I see. Now if we approve homosexuality, then everything has to be okay, you know, and like I'm just talking crazy. Imagine that. And I just remember him nodding with a smile like, yes, you're seeing this now. And that actually in retrospect breaks my heart because again, that's, you know, I have friends that are gay and they are good. And I see no problem with that lifestyle.
John McLay [03:26:27] In your defense, I don't think you said it that pointedly. I think you were really.
Brooke McLay [03:26:32] I think I did.
John McLay [03:26:33] I regret too. I think it was a fear based reaction that what we were saying in there. Well, I don't think I'm certain that we were acting out of fear. Fear for what our children might become. Fear for the fact that now that we're out, what if we develop bad habits? Fear that we might create or adopt a lifestyle that is not conducive to healthy living or whatever it might be. And that the church was this safe haven for us to come back to because that's what we knew.
John McLay [03:27:01] We talked A bit about my job and what I had done for the church and. And my involvement. And he said, would you ask. Because he knew that I had a meeting later that same afternoon with some of the higher ups in ces, the administrator and one of the assistant administrators, would you ask as a favor to me if you can have your job back?
John Dehlin [03:27:22] You weren't looking for him to answer
John McLay [03:27:24] questions, more of his pronouncement.
John Dehlin [03:27:25] You were trying to affirm to him your beliefs and help persuade him to help you get reinstated as full members.
John McLay [03:27:35] And I think. I think we're going to be the volunteer, you know. Yeah, Like, I felt some bad. I feel guilt all the time. But especially, you know, I thought, if this is true, if the truth, because I still, at that time, that possibility was in my mind and in my heart again. I wanted it to be. And so I thought, I don't believe it right now, but faith can be developed, you know, if I can reconnect and I can rekindle and I can believe again. I don't know that Brooke was there. I think Brooke was more like, I'll reconnect.
Brooke McLay [03:28:11] But, yes, well. And actually, this is a good question to lead us to what happened next, because I really felt like I still felt very firmly that a lot of the realizations that we had with the opening to compassion and opening to a world of color and kind of stepping outside of this very tiny box, there was no way that I knew I couldn't go back to the box. And so at that point, I was like, maybe I can nuance some of the beliefs. And when I say that I believe in the Book of Mormon, I'll always be able to know in the back of my head that there are still a lot of, you know, like, maybe I can just do this for the greater good. And the following week, when we returned to church, it was very sweet, and people were wonderful, and of course, everyone.
John McLay [03:28:57] Tears were shed.
Brooke McLay [03:28:59] Told us how they had been praying us back.
John McLay [03:29:01] We knew that we'd come back. Sure, that was calming. We knew you'd come back.
Brooke McLay [03:29:04] Tremendously nice of them, because I know that it comes from a good place. But we sat down and met with the bishop, and I spoke to him about just how this really had been a process of love. And he said, yes, but God is also the God of the Old Testament. And it was almost like the breath was sucked out of me. And I thought, dang it, I'm not going to be able to do it. I don't know if I'm going to be Able to go to that place.
John Dehlin [03:29:34] What else did he say? What was he saying? What was the point he was trying to make?
Brooke McLay [03:29:37] I think that he was trying to.
John McLay [03:29:38] I don't think about that, but.
Brooke McLay [03:29:39] Oh, you don't.
John Dehlin [03:29:40] That there's justice.
Brooke McLay [03:29:42] In other words, it's not all about love. That this is the same God who killed the Egyptians, who opened the Red Sea.
John McLay [03:29:49] I remember that exactly, but I.
John Dehlin [03:29:51] What do you remember, Brooke?
John McLay [03:29:52] The sentiment.
John Dehlin [03:29:53] It's okay.
Brooke McLay [03:29:53] Yeah, well, just, you know, he said he is also the God of the Old Testament. And for me, what that was saying is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's love and compassion, but you have to understand that the rules and the obedience is more important. You know, obedience is the first principle, and all that other stuff is bi stuff. And for me, you know, again, I kind of felt like I had opened myself to what I believe is a true Christian message that has been lost, you know, through various forms of all sorts of things throughout lives. And I'm certainly not perfect at living it. But to pretend to go back to insisting that knowing the Bible is more important than knowing and seeking to become like a God that is all loving.
Brooke McLay [03:30:38] I just knew that I felt like it was going to be a waste of my time. But again, it was okay. We wanted this approval from all of these people, and so we went and sat down with the stake president same day. Same day.
John McLay [03:30:51] Stake president, same day.
Brooke McLay [03:30:52] And he listened.
John McLay [03:30:53] The following week, he also said, I'm going to need to call the office of the first presidency. And I also had instructions for. From the apostle to have him call him directly and talk with him about our interview and about his feelings. And he did both of those things. And we were kind of under the impression that you might have to wait up to a year to be rebaptized. But it was the next week, I think. Or was it two weeks later? I think it was the very next week. So within about two weeks of this whole thing happening, three at the most, the good news had been received that the Maclays can come back in anytime they'd like to.
John Dehlin [03:31:28] That rebaptized.
Brooke McLay [03:31:28] Right. And I found all the way from the top, I think that, again, opposition in all things. We felt that was a sign of intense love and trust for us, that they would trust that we were being honest, and everything we said to them was honest in our desire to try to come back and just be back to the people we were. But I also started to feel like there was a lot of control there, and. And that terrified me that we would have to dress our entire family in white and go through what I thought was a slightly humiliating experience of re. Baptizing everyone, you know, that I just.
John McLay [03:32:07] Well, it felt a little bit like damage control to me.
Brooke McLay [03:32:10] This was. Yeah, because I thought the sooner you
John McLay [03:32:11] get the Maclays back, the sooner you cover up the damage that might be done by us leaving. Well, and I felt maybe that's not
Brooke McLay [03:32:17] fair because I Warmth of in our lives. And so to feel like somehow and at this time we had been told by the bishop we are not to take the sacrament because only people who understand and accept and appreciate the covenant with the atonement are allowed to take the sacrament. And so here we are, a family of six, not taking the sacrament. And now we have to all be. When we had just written a letter, you know, again, I just. And so for me, that really started feeling difficult because again, this idea that God is so much bigger, that he would come into my heart
Brooke McLay [03:32:53] and create benevolent feelings, but it has to all be controlled under the guise of all of these people who have to okay us, that started to really sit in conflict. And taking that step started to become more and more difficult to say, yeah, let's just do it for show.
John McLay [03:33:11] By the time we had that second meeting with the stake president in which he joyfully expressed to us that we had permission to be rebaptized, on the way there, I said, I'm not sure what he's going to say, but if he does say, and I was just expressing this to Brooke that we can be rebaptized, I said, I just want you to know I'm not ready. I'm not there. And I don't feel like I can commit myself because that is important.
John McLay [03:33:37] Baptism is saying, I believe and I'm going to live. And. And I said, I'm not there. And then I start having all these, you know, Moroni. Is it in the book of Moroni where we used to. The scripture on my mission that talks about how blessings come after. And I start doing these mental gymnastics. If I just go back, then I can have the faith rebuilt. But until I do, I've lost the Spirit.
Brooke McLay [03:34:03] And certainly there are blessings to that life. And I will say full heartedly that were we to go back into the waters of baptism and just go back into that life, I certainly think that there is some level of fulfillment. But I also think that we're keenly aware now of a different level of fulfillment that we would also have to sacrifice to make. It's not an easy choice.
Brooke McLay [03:34:27] And I can see why people choose to stay. And I also feel okay right now with taking a big fat, long sabbatical for a time. And so, you know, we just slowly, as that fear wore off and as we started to find a new rhythm for our Sundays especially.
Brooke McLay [03:34:48] And as, to be honest, as we felt reopened, like, we had almost that experience of saying, we're coming back, recon reconciled us. And so it, like, reopened the communication a little bit with some people. And so it was almost like instead of cutting this part of our lives off, we just stepped away from it. But I feel comfortable any Sunday. And I have been back on several Sundays with the kids to sit in there, because that is and will always be a portion of my home. So I feel grateful for that. And I feel like that for us was a healthy healing place to be.
John McLay [03:35:21] The. The comeback that we sort of announced. And I expressed to Brooke, I was concerned as we drove to Utah. I said, can we please not say anything to my parents or my family unless we're going to go back for sure. And so, because I thought it's too sensitive. It can be, yeah.
Brooke McLay [03:35:39] We didn't want to play.
John McLay [03:35:40] We didn't want to play with people's emotions or we wanted to be genuine and thoughtful. But now sitting in this place now, I can see that. I think some healing came because of that. And it was part of. Of our journey. It was part of our story. But we're not in a place, I'm not personally where I can make that commitment again, and I'm not sure that I ever will be. I'm not where I'm at right now. And my wife, as you have heard, she speaks openly and often about God. And I feel I have maybe different feelings about that than her. And we're not on the exact same page as far as how we view God and that idea, But I think we both also felt a control.
John McLay [03:36:21] And it was very subtle, but it was almost like, you can come back, but only under our terms and our circumstances. And the bishop repeatedly asked for requests to meet with us. And I finally said, you know, bishop, we don't really feel like we need to meet. If we need to, I'll let you know. But I started to feel these pangs again of you were being correlated. Yeah, we were being correlated in that the tribe church is very much about controlling.
John McLay [03:36:45] And then again, all those red flags go up. Is that how we want our kids to be raised? Do we want our kids to be correlated as we were and indoctrinated as we were so that they might have to go through this same thing.
John McLay [03:36:57] And anyway, where we're at right now is no we, at least. I don't know if I can speak for both of us, but we don't plan on going back or being rebaptized.
Brooke McLay [03:37:07] Going back, yes, we'll go on any given Sunday.
John McLay [03:37:09] But I've been very open with people in saying I haven't ruled that out because I think there would be some hypocrisy in me saying on one hand that I was bothered by this superlative statement of absolute truth and certainty and then to leave that for absolute certainty. On another hand, I'm open to learning to knowledge and the possibility that I might be wrong.
Brooke McLay [03:37:31] Yeah. Which is why I think that one of the best parts, early in this process, I was talking to a PR manager of one of my blogging programs, and I remember him saying, you have the right to ask these questions. And that almost surprised me because no one had ever given me permission to ask questions.
Brooke McLay [03:37:56] And so I've kind of taken that on as, like, an invitation to a spiritual journey. And so I think that one of the best parts of a spiritual journey is when there's mystery and suspense and surprise and you end up surprising yourself. I know that Jana Rice surprised herself. She ended up being Mormon when she never saw that in her future. And I think that we have to allow ourselves the right to surprise ourselves. And so that's why it would surprise me, but not surprise me if 15 years down the road we decide that our only home has been Mormonism and we go back. And maybe it won't, but I want to stay open to that mystery.
John Dehlin [03:38:36] And yeah, so we've talked about. We've now talked about your loss of faith, your resignation, your thoughts about returning and where you are now. Now I would like to sort of really shift gears for a moment over, away from your stories now that both of you, Brooke and John, have had a chance to reflect on what you taught for the church education system. The church education system, the CES curriculum, what you taught in seminary, what you taught in institute, what you taught at efy.
John Dehlin [03:39:14] We want this to be constructive. Right. My hope would be that someone, somewhere, other seminary teachers, other institute teachers, the church education system. I'm dreaming here. But the people will actually take a chance to listen to your story and find out things that they can learn to make the church a better place, to make CES a better place, to make seminary institute a better place. So what I'd like to do is take some time to just list the first one is going to sound like we're being critical, but that is not the intent.
Teachings and Curriculum They Find Harmful
John Dehlin [03:39:48] But I want to explore teachings that you, or more importantly, just CES in general or just church curriculum, things that are taught that you believe are damaging, that are hurting people. We don't need to drill too much into anyone, but I just want to go through and list all the areas that this can be through. The way that we can talk conceptually about the way that we teach about epistemology and thinking and feeling and the spirit and how things can be known. We can talk about historical issues where false things are taught or things are left out. We can talk about doctrinal things. I want to get to the two levels of what you all knew as CES instructors, but then what you were teaching and the disparity between that sometimes and then the cultural messages that are taught or encouraged, and then even some of the object lessons that are used and how sometimes those can be damaging.
John Dehlin [03:40:49] I want to just boom, boom, boom, boom, list all those within the intent of saying, okay, now that we've said where we see harm being done or things being left out or inaccuracies being perpetuated, then we'll shift constructively to how could CES do a better job and do its job in a way to hurt less people and to help more people. So let's start with the laundry list.
John McLay [03:41:19] Well, conceptually, I think maybe just that one of the things that I think is harmful is not so much of what's being said, but I guess maybe a sin of omission and what's being left out. Let me take, for example, what I would call elitism. And one of the things that I've heard, and you've probably heard this as well, is that, you know, Mormons are fond of saying something to the effect of, I've never once sat in a class where we have belittled another church or gone to a lesson where we have been mean, you know, and yet there's all these other churches that have firesides and seminars about Mormonism, how to combat it, this influence of Mormonism.
John McLay [03:41:59] But I don't think that's true. And in my seminary classrooms, I would even, I might say things if I was talking about another church specifically, I would leave out the name of the church, even though, you know, I might say something like, as, you know, students, there are churches that believe that you should baptize children and they practice, you know, and there's always some 14 year old guy who's going get to. That's The Catholics, Brother McLay or something like that. But I would try really hard not to specifically say, Let me cut to the chase. The point is, backhandedly, we are sending the message that we're the best, that it's us versus them.
John McLay [03:42:38] Whether we come out and say they're bad, this is wrong. Don't be like them by name. We are without question in the church right now and in the curriculum, putting us up like this and. And therefore them down like this. Now, some of my colleagues might disagree with that, and they might say passionately, and they would be right. Some of my closest friends are members of other faiths. And don't, you know, we have BYU professors that are on these faith councils and all of these things. But the message of the curriculum is one true church, us versus them. I think that's damaging.
Brooke McLay [03:43:11] Yeah. I think also there's a huge focus on, like, emotion is how we make decisions, emotion and share obedience. And so some of just the logical thinking skills are really stinted because these kids are, you know, and I think that most members of the church are pushed into a system where we always know that the answer is the church is true, and therefore everything will tell us that the church is true. Any question that you have should align with prophets.
John Dehlin [03:43:44] And so you start with the conclusion.
Brooke McLay [03:43:46] Yes. And so rather than saying, we want to help you gain skills for your spiritual journey, there's a very, very tight wall that you have to stay within to make that spiritual journey okay. Which, of course, makes it a very narrow space of thought. And so for any of the kids who are struggling, doubting, worrying, concerned. John had a student come up with him about a question with evolution. And John said that he could just tell that this kid had been tormented and had really been trying to think through it within the context. And rather than praising them for having original thoughts or even doubts or being skeptical in any way, that's immediately closed down. And I do think that there's.
John McLay [03:44:33] I said, it sounds like you've been thinking a lot, and I encourage you to continue doing it.
John Dehlin [03:44:36] But that wouldn't be the normal.
Brooke McLay [03:44:38] No, it's not for you.
John McLay [03:44:40] No, it wouldn't be. That was on May 22nd of this year. And this was a cadet at the Air Force Academy, and he was trying to wrap his mind around what he said in ces.
John Dehlin [03:44:48] Yeah, if the average kid goes to the average teacher and says, I'm really struggling with evolution, the average response would
John McLay [03:44:54] be, the brethren have said, the First Presidency has said, here's where you can read about it.
Brooke McLay [03:45:02] Or maybe, yeah, I believe in evolution. But along with all of this, always
John McLay [03:45:06] back to the scriptures. If I had a dollar for every time I was reminded to keep the doctrine pure or to stick with the curriculum or told that the curriculum had been approved by the First Presidency, I had one colleague that would say, this stuff has been on the desk of the First Presidency. Now, literally or metaphorically, the idea was, this is what we teach. And so there wasn't a lot of room for. There's really no room for deviation.
Brooke McLay [03:45:30] I think one of my big concerns, too, is that because of the rigorous pathway to become a CES teacher, a lot of original thinkers are weeded out of the process. And so what happens is you have these great people that are teaching really good lessons, and they're doing a good job of it. But when a youth comes to them and says, I have a doubt or I have a legitimate concern, what you're not doing is creating a space for that to be safe. And so, you know, I feel like in that way, sometimes we're doing disservice to our youth rather than saying, all right, doubt is a natural part of life.
Brooke McLay [03:46:13] And, you know, that's okay. You can have a doubt. We say, don't doubt, don't doubt. And, you know, we saw that even as recently as General Conference, where doubting is, shame, shame, shame on you. And so, yeah, I feel like just that whole process of choosing a CES teacher, while there are certainly varying personalities, there is very narrow space of thought.
John McLay [03:46:36] I want to say one of the things that I give credit to CES for is that I perceive during my time in there a constant desire to change and to get better and to evolve. However, it's a difficult thing for me to process because at the same time, there was also this kind of idea that we were kind of bulletproof, like, this is the Lord's work and this is the true church. And so we're not going anywhere. You know, your job is secure. And we're. We had an administrator once come to us and speak to us at an area conference where, if I remember correctly the way that he phrased it, he was referring to our influence as seminary and institution institute teachers for youth in the church, that demographic, 14 to 18, for seminary, 18 to 30.
John McLay [03:47:19] And I think the phrase he used was, you're the only game in town. I mean, we were made to feel incredibly important in terms of what?
John Dehlin [03:47:27] The only game in town in terms
John McLay [03:47:27] of keeping kids faithful, helping them with their testimony.
John Dehlin [03:47:31] The only game in town in the
John McLay [03:47:32] church that we were making. And I want to go back to something Brick said because I think some of my colleagues will watch this and I think that will be a good thing. I don't want to say that in CES there are no thinkers or that there are no, you know as well as I do, incredibly bright, articulate, deep men and kind. And kind that some of these colleagues are far. Their intellects are far superior than mine. But this isn't a question of intellect. This is to me, it's a. Where I. And I'm going back to your, your initial question. Where's the harm done? The harm is done in the dishonesty, in the way that the history and the doctrines are presented as opposed to what they really are.
John McLay [03:48:14] To me, that's damaging to the psyche of a young person. Why is it that a 40 something year old bishop will resign from being a bishop, or let's say a 52 year old man or woman suddenly gets this information and goes, are you sure that's true? You know, there's all these things like really? And you can say, yeah, it's in the Journal of Discourses or let me give you a reference. You can get this at Deseret Book or whatever. And then they receive that. And there's this. I'm coming back to CES with this. That's not what I learned in seminary. That's not what my seminary and institute teacher told me.
John McLay [03:48:52] I heard the Joseph Smith story. I mean, I don't know how many times I've shared that story of whether it's the first vision or his life or his marriages or polygamy. I think that it's not being presented accurately and honestly.
Brooke McLay [03:49:08] Yes. And you know what? In the words of Tim Minchin, I think that I've kind of, for me, he says he's great. You know, his problem with churches is they teach children to feel ashamed and to judge things as plain, right or wrong. And I think that for me that's the essence. Is that underlying some of these really great lessons is this feeling like if there is a problem where your faith is not enough, it's your problem.
Brooke McLay [03:49:38] And so there's a lot of shaming in that way, a lot of focus on outward appearances. Even though Jesus Christ himself said that we focus on the heart and just this concept that things can be plain, right or wrong. And so, you know, I know that John in his own class classes has had concerns with gay students that are not being embraced. And that is a terrible, it's a terrible way to grow up, to not be embraced. And if there's any place you should be embraced, it's within a group of people who are seeking to be Christian. So for me, you know, I think that the specific lessons are nice.
Brooke McLay [03:50:18] Some of them teach really great ideas, no question. Lessons on courage, and they help you. You know, you're a myth lover. When you can be placed in a myth, that's powerful. But coming clean and telling you that you're being placed in. You know, it's different for me to imagine that I'm Cinderella than I am being told literally going to be something. Something that perhaps is not necessarily founded by actual historical information.
John Dehlin [03:50:46] Right. Okay.
John McLay [03:50:47] When I was on the high council approximately 10 years ago, Elder El Tom Perry came to speak to our stake, and he met with the High Council beforehand. And I was very young, I was 28 when I was called to be on High Council, and I was still fairly new.
John McLay [03:51:06] We went around the table to introduce everybody that was present at the meeting. And when the stake president introduced me, he said, and this is our CES man. This is our seminary principal. Now, the other CES man at the time was in the stake presidency. So he was sitting right up there with Elder Perry. This is Brother McLay. He's the seminary principal. And Elder Perry looked at me and without hesitation said.
John McLay [03:51:29] He said something like, well, hello, Brother McClay. It's very nice to meet you. When are you going to join the church like the rest of us? And I kind of had this uneasy chuckle, like, ha, ha, what does he mean? You know, and I'm taking copious notes. And I had this. I still have these notes. When are you going to join the church? And everybody. It was kind of an uneasy chuckle, but it's interesting to me that he would say that. And there has been a discussion in CES for as long as I have been in it saying that. And this has been a big push of recent.
John McLay [03:51:59] The priesthood leads this church. And I think that there was a recognition that maybe CES has sort of taken the reins of developing testimonies. Yeah. In a way that maybe isn't healthy in that you've got CES here and the church here, and we need to be united.
John Dehlin [03:52:15] So you think Elder Perry had concerns about CES personally?
John McLay [03:52:19] I think he may have. Otherwise, why say that? Where did that come from? I can't read his name, but that was a very interesting comment. And maybe he was just trying to be.
John Dehlin [03:52:30] I'll just say that in my interview with Terrell Givens, basically the comment was, if I remember it correctly, is that CES is destroying the church?
Brooke McLay [03:52:42] Yeah, I think he said that the curriculum is an abomination or something.
John McLay [03:52:46] I don't know if it was that
Brooke McLay [03:52:47] strong, but he used a big word.
John Dehlin [03:52:49] I don't want to misquote him. But the sentiment was that CES is doing damage.
John McLay [03:52:54] I think that you're right because I listened to that podcast twice, as a matter of fact, and I think you've hit the spirit of it was that there needs to be a major overhaul. And that until that happens, we're going to continue to see, and I agree with this, we are going to continue to see people who are taught one thing in a certain way based on this curriculum, who then later on in life discover what really happened or a different story or a different way of looking at it, and it blows their mind. Especially when the beloved prophets like Gordon B. Hinckley say there is no middle ground.
John Dehlin [03:53:29] My understanding is that Marlon Jensen, the member of the quorum of the 70, feels this similarly, which is so funny
Brooke McLay [03:53:38] because in CES I can honestly say that I felt like, and I still kind of feel this way that, like, what you get in CES is like the real, the real undiluted truth. Like we are gathering all of the doctrine and we are putting it together and we're going to talk about some of the history that you won't hear on a Sunday. So it's a really fascinating dichotomy to hear it spoken of that way. And I can see both sides.
John Dehlin [03:54:06] So let's continue just if we can, this sort of lightning round of listing the things that are damaging.
John McLay [03:54:13] You bet. Maybe I would say that the insistence on the sacrifice for seminary and the demonization of a student who would rather take orchestra or math or something else, there's a lot of guilt, I think, perpetuated if they're not, they don't want to take seminary. We talk, Brooke and I talk to a little bit about we think modesty is good, but that sometimes it becomes
Brooke McLay [03:54:42] too much of a focus.
John Dehlin [03:54:43] Modesty.
John McLay [03:54:45] Let me tell you from a CES perspective how I never. I have some colleagues that were able to find a way to approach maybe a young woman who was wearing a low cut blouse and make a statement regarding that. But I felt like my hands are tied here. I am not going to say anything out of line or in line, inappropriate or in any way suggestive, even though, you know. So you'd refer repeatedly to the Strength of the Youth pamphlet. And like even J. Reuben Clark said in that Hallmark address to church educational employees that we don't want to sneak up behind them and whisper religion in their ears. Yet I felt like I often had to do that. Like I couldn't be direct because it would be offensive or inappropriate. And I tried very hard to live the standards with.
John Dehlin [03:55:26] And what's really wrong with focusing on. What's the downside of focusing too much on modesty, just briefly?
Brooke McLay [03:55:32] Well, I feel like sometimes what you focus on is what they focus on. And so rather. So what you get are two extremes. Either the kids who are trying to draw attention to themselves by being immodest or the people who are so uber modest that they feel guilt or you know, rather than it being essentially a non issue or just a small side note to a good healthy choice for self esteem or whatever when it becomes some aspect of your spirituality. I don't know that, you know, I
John McLay [03:56:07] don't know specifically in relation to efy. The standards for participants have become more and more rigid over the years and I've struggled with that because. Because my feeling is they should become less and less rigid.
John Dehlin [03:56:20] And what are they now?
John McLay [03:56:22] Men, young men must have their hair cut above their ears to the point of if they show up on the day of registration and it's not appropriate, they cannot come. Whether they've paid or not, there are people there to give them a haircut on the spot or the leaders will take them down. Girls skirts have to go to the knees. We had a leader in our state who criticized for flip flop wearing in church, which I just think is ridiculous. And that can be off putting for
Brooke McLay [03:56:47] people that are no straps, you know, like no tank tops or anything. You've got to have a sleeve.
John Dehlin [03:56:53] Anything about earrings?
John McLay [03:56:55] Yeah, with the one earring, just one
Brooke McLay [03:56:57] pair of earrings, you know so well. And again, I think that in some ways that can be a good thing because you create a distinctive woman appearance and so you feel some camaraderie because everybody's in this together. But at the same time that is setting us apart again, it kind of pushes this us versus them.
John Dehlin [03:57:14] It's hard to imagine Christ saying where' st thou onlyst pair of earrings? Or especially since we're not thou sandals. It's hard to imagine cutteth thine hair to an appropriate length.
John McLay [03:57:29] Although my hair be as long.
John Dehlin [03:57:30] Thou shalt not have thou shalt not facial hair like mine.
John McLay [03:57:35] And I understand, right?
John Dehlin [03:57:37] I mean it's. It is.
Brooke McLay [03:57:39] Well, especially because again, I think some of the most powerful stories of the Christ message are where he embraces the prostitute, allows the woman with the issue of Blood the lepers. You know, this is the. This is who should be embraced.
John McLay [03:57:55] I felt like as a CES employee, as a teacher, as an EFY director and stuff, there's too much effort to try to control young people instead of saying, let them be and allow them to develop and grow as they will. And obviously there needs to be standards. If you're going to do certain things in a youth camp setting, we're going to send you home because they're against the law, they're hurtful or whatever. But so that kind of control of you can't do this and you must do this, and it has to be this way.
John McLay [03:58:25] Another thing I would add, and this is in ces, but maybe generally in the church, is that fatalism kind of end of the world kind of the world is really bad. There's really a lot of evil out there and we must be guarded against the. I remember graphs and charts. I think I brought. I think Elder Pinnock spoke to us once years ago, and I brought my notes. I don't know why, because I was going through some. Some boxes recently. But one of the charts on there shows this idea that the church has a standard and is kind of getting better, but the rest of the world is going down.
John McLay [03:59:05] And I remember a member of a stake presidency saying, the Lord's standard stays the same and the rest of the world is going down. And we can't be the kind of members who are just a little bit better than what the rest of the world is doing. We have to keep our standards.
John McLay [03:59:19] To me, that's damaging in that it says, again, you must. You are better than other people, and you have to stay being better than other people because look how bad everybody and everything is getting. That kind of end of world.
Brooke McLay [03:59:32] Let's stick together, you know. And I think just along those same lines, I believe it was Tal Bachman who had written an article about how really, when you look at over time, our morality as a society, you know, we have more safety, more health.
John Dehlin [03:59:48] We really are women's rights, minority rights,
Brooke McLay [03:59:52] sure, we are increasing in morality as
John Dehlin [03:59:55] a whole, more democracy.
John McLay [03:59:58] The health and wealth of the world has gone up in every nation in
Brooke McLay [04:00:02] the last generation without retreating or retracting.
John McLay [04:00:04] There are good things that are happening. And I felt like that, even though we used quotes in the curriculum, like we would talk about President Hinckley saying what a great time it is to be alive and isn't it great? It was always with this idea that. But it's greater if you're a member and it's the greatest for us because we have this special thing and we must be the recruiters of everyone else or else they can't be completely happy.
Brooke McLay [04:00:29] And it is a great thing.
John McLay [04:00:30] It is with kindness and respect. I think that was done, but I can also see now from where I sit the damage that can be done in that kind of elitist us versus them mentality.
Brooke McLay [04:00:41] Well, and I recognize that people, if your co workers do watch this, and we do love you by the way, but I think that there is some concern for me over just the literalism of the Book of Mormon because, you know, as when you are where we are and you get to a point where, okay, so our 8 year old son, when I said, kids, we want to talk to you about a few things that we're a little bit concerned about within the church that are not making sense. And from the back of the car pipes up my 8 year old and he says, like Adam and Eve, as if two white people could make all of these people.
Brooke McLay [04:01:19] And I thought, oh my gosh, my 8 year old who was never allowed to say anything is starting to feel some disconcertment there. So I feel like there are some things that had to happen in the Old Testament, for instance, the Tower of Babel to make the Book of Mormon real. And so when you have to take everything completely literally or it's your fault that you're not seeing the emperor in his clothes, you know, to me that's a dangerous, again, this.
Brooke McLay [04:01:49] Either it's all true or none of it is because what you're setting these kids up for is saying, well, these flesh and blood people in my life are good, but some of this is uncomfortable or not making sense. And so you create this dichotomy where they're not allowed to pick and choose. And I think that it's not always a safe way again for them to explore their own faith or their own understandings.
Brooke McLay [04:02:10] And so you create this big fat horrible life thing that can happen. So I do have some concerns about just the literalism of the Book of Mormon that we could teach some of those lessons for the aspect of the lesson.
John McLay [04:02:23] But as soon as you go to, hey, this book might be good allegory, it loses its appeal and it's no longer the most correct book and the keystone of our religion and all those things. If it's just allegorical and not historical.
John McLay [04:02:37] Let me give you another one that comes to my mind that's specific to ces, whether it means to or not. It creates these go to men and sometimes women, but not very often, that are kind of heroes and elevated. So as hard as I tried not to, when I would go to EFYS or as the seminary teacher, people would look to you with respect and they kind of would revere you. I mean, I used to joke that I could go to EFY and it wouldn't matter what I would say. The kids would applaud or be responsive. I could burp the Alphabet and they would be like, Brother McCoy, you know, they were really kind.
John McLay [04:03:18] And also, I was riding on the coattails of the established organization and a very wonderful program that EFY is. But in many ways, I don't know that there's a way to get around that. I don't ever recall sitting in a gospel doctrine class where if somebody said, where's that scripture? Or what's that doctrine?
John McLay [04:03:38] People heads would turn. Brother McClay, like, I'm the go to guy. And I used to joke with my students and with ward members that I would say, I have an answer to every question you can ask me. There's not a gospel question I can't answer. I said more than half the time, my answer is, I don't know. But feel free to ask me anything, because I was unashamed to say I don't know. But at the same time, as I look back, if I'm being honest about my representation of the church and its history and the doctrines and all of these things, I was guarded.
John McLay [04:04:11] I wasn't going to call it not casting pearls before swine, but these specific issues of polygamy and polyandry and the book of Abraham and blood atonement and the Adam God theory, they never came into my classroom in the way that I personally studied them because it would not have been accepted. I would have lost my job. I'm going to be just candid about saying that if I would have taught the things the way that I now view them, that is the history and the doctrine, it would have been tantamount to apostasy, and I would not have had my job. I would have been reprimanded or pulled from the classroom or fired.
John McLay [04:04:45] And that's a problem because this is our history, this is what it was. And we can debate all over, back and forth about, yeah, but is it. And don't we want to reflect the spirit of goodness and what is the church really about? But when it comes down to it, I think one of the greatest disservices that whether it's meant to happen, and I don't think it's malicious. But we're not representing accurately in CES what the church really is, because either it's glossed over or brushed right past and you get like, at an efy, emotion really reigns supreme. And so there's this wave of emotion that you just ride through the week.
John McLay [04:05:26] And it's incredibly. It brings you together, it's bonding and testimonies are born. And I'm not. I mean, I felt it myself. People make big decisions based on that one week experience. But at the same time, and I'm not saying you should, why would you have a conference to try to talk people out of their faith? That would be silly. Did you have anything else on the list that.
Brooke McLay [04:05:48] No, I'm afraid I should have more opinions.
John Dehlin [04:05:51] What about just relying on emotion?
Brooke McLay [04:05:54] Yeah, you know, I think that we
John Dehlin [04:05:55] talked about that a bit.
John McLay [04:05:56] Yeah.
Brooke McLay [04:05:57] And I think that that is the
John Dehlin [04:06:00] way you encourage a testimony.
John McLay [04:06:01] Yes.
Brooke McLay [04:06:02] Right. They're very.
John McLay [04:06:04] I do have something to say about that.
Brooke McLay [04:06:06] Okay.
John McLay [04:06:07] But you go ahead.
Brooke McLay [04:06:08] Well, no, I was, you know, I just feel like. Because that was so the way that I was trained, I saw nothing wrong with it. And of course, I think as a woman, that reliance on emotion comes very naturally.
Brooke McLay [04:06:22] But now, of course, I will be, you know, in experiences with my own children, I can look back and see that some of the choices that we made based on emotion and obedience were perhaps not the best. Did blessings come. Yes, blessings often come from our choices if we're looking for those blessings. But I feel, again, back to rational thinking muscles. There's just some aspect of allowing those rational thinking muscles to develop in a way and encouraging that and putting our trust again. When we had contacted a variety of people who have really helped us with our faith experience, they never offered us the answer, but they always offered us their trust in our capabilities.
Brooke McLay [04:07:08] And I don't think that we do that enough with. With our youth. We don't offer them our trust in their abilities to make choices for themselves, to view the world with realistic lens, to try on and make mistakes. You know, I have an absolute fear of mistakes still because I. Because I wanted to be perfect. And so I think that allowing that and actually encouraging it in some ways
John McLay [04:07:36] there's a problem with that, though. I know more and more people would leave. I mean, I'm being very candid here, that if we were completely open. Let me just tell you that last year, one of the seminary teachers who was one of my former colleagues, taught that while translating the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith put his head in a hat with a stone. And the plates weren't even present. He taught that because it's not in the seminary manual, but it is briefly mentioned in the institute manual. And so he felt like he was on safe ground bringing that into the classroom. A question came up and he kind of mentioned it in passing.
John McLay [04:08:09] Father of a student was at his house either that night or the next day, saying basically, how dare you teach something to my son that could damage his faith and his testimony of this, of the church, and kind of raked him over the coals. To me, that's an example. There's a problem there. If Joseph Smith really did that, which he did, and that was part of the process, then we need to get that information out there and then let people decide for themselves. If you do a cost benefit analysis with actual information, do I stay and commit my life to this? Or perhaps am I going to make a different decision and move in a different direction?
John McLay [04:08:44] But you said something, John, about testimony and developing the entire structure, as I see it and saw it, of CES was what I would call the Moroni perspective. It is all true. The church is true. Joseph was a prophet. The Book of Mormon is true. And you eventually will figure it out and we're here to help you. So take your journey, warm your hands on the flame of my testimony or whatever, but pray about it. But you're going to come to a knowledge that it's true. So the base assumption is that everything that we say and that we teach is true. And if you're not realizing that, you're not coming to it, the problem is yours.
John McLay [04:09:23] It's that cliche that the people in the church are not perfect, but the church is perfect. I'm telling you that needs to change. We need to be able to start saying the church is not perfect and the people are not perfect. There's issues with both of these parties, and I don't know that ces, for obvious reasons, if their focus is to strengthen the testimony of youth, to be true believing members of the church and to serve missions and get married in the temple, and, and I will tell you that that is the teaching emphasis. Christ is at the forefront. Testimony of Christ, believing in Christ.
John McLay [04:09:59] But family, missions, temple, marriage, all of these things that we've been correlated to accept as our fundamental beliefs are what we perpetuate and teach. In ces, I was good at what I did and I was good at helping people to develop testimonies and feel emotion. Maybe that's why I'd have people say, come up and like from Mother Ward and say, Brother McLay, give me some of your best tear jerking talks and I'd say, what do you mean? You know, the kind that when you just get everybody feeling, I need something to really elicit emotion and connect the dots for us.
John Dehlin [04:10:33] So you whip up emotion, then what?
John McLay [04:10:35] Well, and then I add my testimony. First of all, not just emotion, but I build a relationship of trust. If they look to me and say I trust him or even I love him and he makes me laugh and he's an articulate, kind person who seems to enjoy his life and be very happy, then I nail him with and I know the church is true and I bear that testimony.
John Dehlin [04:11:00] And you make him feel the emotion.
John McLay [04:11:02] Absolutely. And the emotion is very much there.
Brooke McLay [04:11:05] The emotion is, I think, as I mentioned earlier, we explain the emotion to be connected to equal the church is true. So whether it's a moment of I'm losing something scary, I am feeling something wonderful, all of these things equal the church is true rather than I'm feeling highly emotional. So maybe I need to think through and understand why I'm feeling this way.
John McLay [04:11:35] For me in my journey, emotion works for everybody, Mormons and non Mormons. And so when you go into the macro perspective and you say, why does somebody who's Muslim believe what they believe or Jehovah's Witness or whatever. This is where I take issue with religion in general. If you don't think emotions involve for them, you're crazy. Of course it is. Of course they feel emotion that helps. It leads to confirmation bias, I think, for saying, oh good, now that I've cried, now that I've felt this, then this thing must be true. What he's telling me must be true. Doesn't matter. The faith relationship in my opinion.
Brooke McLay [04:12:11] Okay, well, and I have a different take on that because I believe that some of these emotions that we have as human beings and some of these spiritual experiences, we don't always have a perfect language to explain them. And so I feel that religion is the way that other people have pulled together a language for some of those feelings. So I don't always think it's bad. I definitely think it can be preyed upon.
John McLay [04:12:38] I hope I didn't come across that way.
Brooke McLay [04:12:39] No, no, no.
John McLay [04:12:40] I'm just saying also, I was not a manipulator. It's not like I went, aha, emotion. I mean, there is twist this around me.
Brooke McLay [04:12:45] There is truth to those emotions.
John McLay [04:12:47] Yeah. I was trying to teach inspire.
Brooke McLay [04:12:49] It's important to give a space for those emotions, but they can be manipulated for sure. And So I think that it's important to, you know, not say, because you felt the spirit that one time, you therefore should pay tithing for the rest of your life and never change your mind ever, ever, ever, regardless of how old you are or God will hate you. You know, I mean, for me, that's the problem, right? And so to say, in this moment, this language brought you peace and helped you find a way to express that emotion. I think that that is a wonderful thing. But, you know, it becomes dangerous when you have to be locked into that system first forever.
John McLay [04:13:30] There was a thrust a few years ago that was articulated to us this way in ces. We need to find a way to get the information that we are teaching our students from the head to the heart. Now, the heart is often referred to as the center. It's the organ that pumps blood through your body. That's what I believe now. But in literature and in scriptures, the heart is the feeling center. It is what you feel. So. So in essence, I would say that what we were being told was. And again, this is me looking at it now, but young people, and this was said, they understand, they know the right answers, they can check, list and tell you, even quote Scripture, but it's not in their heart.
John McLay [04:14:09] And so we were trying to perpetuate feelings or emotion in relation to these bits of knowledge and information. But I feel like the emphasis in doing that discounted the importance and the relevance of information. Intellectual curiosity and studying things on a level where you just critically think. Critical thinking is almost absent in ces. Now, that's a harsh thing for me to say. But what I mean is the student teacher relationship, as much as we discuss and we ask questions and we analyze, it always comes back to, what does the manual say? What does the scripture say? And to me, it's not truly critical thinking. Now, I feel like I should say that there's a culture behind the scenes in CES that's also relevant and maybe a little bit damaging.
John McLay [04:14:50] And that is, imagine if all you did all day, every day, was study the Gospel. Pretty much your conversations with your colleagues would probably go pretty deep. And they did. And so try to imagine some of the conversations in the temple that we would have, and discussions about obscure doctrines and just taking things to really deep levels. And as much as I would try not to, to feel special about such conversations, I did. I felt like I had knowledge that maybe other people didn't, but that in the classroom, it was never my place to dispense that knowledge because that might be pearls before Swine. Milk before meat.
John McLay [04:15:25] Was that the talk by Brother Millett? Milk before meat, but meat. And so there was always this feeling that the meat will come, but it's not your job to just throw those slabs of meat out there. You got to let people discover on their own. Keep it simple, keep it basic, fundamental teachings.
John McLay [04:15:43] Testify. We were told to share our testimony at the end of every single lesson and even bear testimony upon the individual principles that we would teach as we were going through a lesson. And that I think we did very well.
John Dehlin [04:15:57] What were some of the. Without explaining them too much, what are some of the beliefs behind the scenes by CES employees and instructors that you wouldn't share? Just a couple.
Brooke McLay [04:16:07] Just that you wouldn't share. Except for here.
John McLay [04:16:10] I'm gonna get in trouble.
John Dehlin [04:16:11] You wouldn't share more with students?
Brooke McLay [04:16:12] Oh, yeah.
John McLay [04:16:13] Multiple mortal probations was a big one in my area.
John Dehlin [04:16:17] So a lot of CES people believe that. What?
John McLay [04:16:19] Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say a lot of CES people believe, but several of my colleagues in the circles that I discuss these things in believe that there is multiple mortalities
Brooke McLay [04:16:30] because there were references to such in some obscure quotes.
John Dehlin [04:16:33] So almost reincarnation, kind of.
John McLay [04:16:35] Yeah. Along those lines, let me think of some other ones that, you know, nothing's coming. Polygamy. To my head, I do recall some discussions of polygamy being required for salvation and the time at which when the Church would have to come to accept that this is going to be. Because, as I believe, you know, Brigham Young very clearly said, this is something that will be required for those who go to the celestial kingdom, and the Church no longer teaches that, and it's nowhere to be found in our curriculum. But, yes, polygamy, I think some. And there are different opinions, I should say. Not everybody, wholehearted, wholesale, just said, oh, yes, I believe in multiple mortal probations.
John McLay [04:17:16] Just last year, year and a half ago, we were driving home from a meeting, and this topic came up, and there were four of us in the car and one of the brethren in there, one of my colleagues who had been in CES a little bit less than the rest of us, had never heard of this. And it blew him away. I mean, this is my perception of his reaction. It was very difficult. And he said as much. You know, the next day, I couldn't. I remember him saying, I had a hard time sleeping last night. And I'm trying to wrap my mind around this, but there are some pretty strong convictions of doctrines like that.
Brooke McLay [04:17:49] I think you discussed Adam God theory for A while I had to wear you. Trying to understand that with some of your colleagues.
John McLay [04:17:57] Well, one of my colleagues, when I was discussing it, Adam God theory, studying it, Blood atonement, he said, when I was a young seminary teacher, I studied the same thing, and it was so disturbing to me that I had to put it away. And that would be my advice to you. And at the time, I was like, absolutely, absolutely. What great advice. I'm just going to push it to the side. And later, I look back on it now, and I think, how could something that a prophet of God taught and recorded and even in the temple taught be something that is so disturbing to my spirit? But again, I blamed myself. I didn't have enough faith. I wasn't spiritual enough. But let me ask you this.
John Dehlin [04:18:31] I remember a conversation I had with Mark McConkie Jr. So the guy who's my age, who's the son of the stake president that you were talking about, grandson of Bruce Armaconki.
John McLay [04:18:40] Yes. Great family.
John Dehlin [04:18:41] I was talking to Mark about Mormon doctrine sort of, you know, being phased out. And, you know, recently, a year or two ago, Deseret Book actually stopped selling it. But at the time before it had been phased out, I was talking to him about the changes that they asked Bruce Amakanki to make. And he said this little thing kind of with a warm but gentle smirk. And the sentiment that he conveyed was the changes that they made to Mormon doctrine weren't changed because they were false. The changes were made because people were made uncomfortable by them. And the decision was made that we didn't want to make people uncomfortable. But we absolutely, as a family, still believe that whatever my grandpa wrote, wrote in that book is still the gospel, is still doctrine. And my sentiment is that CES is the last bastion of the guardians of Joseph Fielding smith. Bruce R. McConkie.
Brooke McLay [04:19:45] That's a great way to put it.
John McLay [04:19:46] Is that true? Yeah. My Mormon doctrine book probably had more markings and bookmarks in it than all, almost any other text that I had outside of my scriptures, which were thoroughly marked, because I did believe that, but I believed in that doctrine.
Brooke McLay [04:20:03] You believed that, and CES believes that because that's what we were taught as children, you know. And so what you have is a whole generation of highly correlated teachers that are, again, incredible teachers, incredibly good people for whom the system is working.
John McLay [04:20:18] Yeah. And why would we have. Why would we have have reason to doubt an apostle, a prophet, seer and revelator, even though it was written before he was. It was so clearly in the manuals, quoted in our curriculum and backed up by the church and published and reprinted multiple times that I had no reason to doubt, that I clung to it, I taught from it.
John Dehlin [04:20:37] So this is the dilemma, because, you know, when Gordon B. Hinckley's, you know, with Larry King, and Larry King says, you know, what about polygamy? And President Hinckley's like, I don't know that we teach it. I don't know that we emphasize it.
Brooke McLay [04:20:51] Right?
John Dehlin [04:20:52] No, no, no. He said no. He said polygamy is not doctrine. And then when Time magazine asks him about theosis, about can man become a God? He says, I don't know.
Brooke McLay [04:21:01] It was a couplet.
John Dehlin [04:21:01] I don't know. We emphasized it. It was just a couplet. And the fact that the church has phased out Mormon doctrine, it's pretty clear that at the top level, that we're distancing ourselves from all most of our distinctive doctrines that have sort of. That so many of us were raised upon. But it seems like CES hasn't gotten the memo. Like, they're still believers in all those things that the church leadership is distancing itself from the main backbone of education for the church is perpetuating and encouraging the dogma that is so damaging.
Brooke McLay [04:21:39] I don't know that I've gotten the memo yet. I mean, I absolutely agree, but I don't think that memo has still come to me through. You know, it's almost like all of these things are being created to make a really nice package. But what this package that has already been created in my mind in my indoctrination from the time I was a child, that's not going anywhere. And so it becomes a very confusing mix where. Where all of these men who have been so true to their gospel are just trying to disseminate information that they've had to make sense of in their own mind. And so when the curriculum changes and the emphasis changes, I think that you continue to try to do that while still bringing along with you the package of everything that you've had to make sense of already.
John McLay [04:22:24] Yeah.
John Dehlin [04:22:24] So just try to imagine how Many thousands of CES and student instructors do you think there are?
John McLay [04:22:30] About 2,500 worldwide.
John Dehlin [04:22:32] I'm trying to imagine the church leadership going to these 2,500 people and saying, you know, all that stuff that you used to believe you taught for 10, 20, 25 years. It's not true. Stop teaching that garbage.
Brooke McLay [04:22:45] It would be nice if they said, how devastating.
John Dehlin [04:22:48] How devastating would it be if a third of those people lost their testimonies or became angry or were put towards fundamentalism because they saw the church going weak. And so I can imagine from the church's perspective, maybe Boyd K. Packer is over ces, I don't know. So that it's being protected. But maybe the thought of radicalizing or damaging the faith of this core group of instructors is so terrifying to the church leadership that they can only drip it out, dribble it out over three generations.
John McLay [04:23:24] Right. If that's the case, they don't see it, in other words. And I don't mean that to be, like, arrogant, because what I mean is they try very much not to make decisions based on fear in ces. You know, don't take counsel from your fears and try to have faith. But I thought of some more doctrines because you asked me specifically about some things that we talked about, about behind the scenes, and three more popped into my mind. One is that there are an increasing number of people, in my estimation, that believe in evolution and that are trying to find quotes and ways to work that in, but the curriculum doesn't allow for that.
John McLay [04:24:00] That the Curse of the Dark Skin might not have been trying to work through that one. And what was the third one that I thought of? Oh, this most recently at a meeting I was at not too long ago, that the lands of the Book of Mormon may be North America and not South America. These are the kinds of things that are kicked around in hot tubs, in meetings that we go to, you know, to train ourselves and stuff, where we're just chilling, you know, we're just talking and.
Brooke McLay [04:24:26] Well, because you're trying to make sense
John McLay [04:24:28] of it all, I think, for me. And I remember in this last meeting that I was in, I was kind of throwing out some of the. Just testing the waters a little bit with Joseph and Carthage and history. And I was actually surprised to have some of these men fire back and really say they were fully aware of this. But the sense in that. And it was in a hot tub, I wasn't kidding about that. We were just hanging out under the stars. It was really nice with my colleagues, and no alcohol, though, at all.
John McLay [04:24:55] And they said it was clear to me that they understood and that they knew the history for the most part. But there was this. You don't even have to say it. We don't say it in the classroom. These are things we're talking about that are not going to go into the classroom. And that's disturbing to me because, again, how can we expect our students to think critically? I have a student, a former student who I'm going to meet with next week, who I remember 12 years ago sitting in my classroom in the Bible dictionary throughout. I think it was the Old Testament year, maybe New Testament.
John McLay [04:25:27] But he is flipping back and forth. And I remember sometimes him with angst, wanting to ask questions because he had doubts, he had questions, and sometimes feeling like, oh, I hope he doesn't ask that in the middle of class. You know, come to me after class. The last thing I want is for some really intelligent, thoughtful question about the probability of Noah's flood actually happening to pop up in class. Because it's my job to maintain, to help develop faith. And anything that might take away from the development of somebody's testimony was to be. Be put out and not to be. To be accepted. And so there is a culture of.
John McLay [04:26:07] And I think that you've articulated it well. And I don't know, I guess I fail to say again that these are very qualified, capable, honest, good people whom I love. And I would never want my contact comments to be interpreted as me saying, oh, my gosh, CES is so bad. But from where I sit now and what I've been through and the perspective that I now have, I would concur with Brother Givens and with those who might say, this is not helping the church, that the longer we continue to do what CES is doing and what it's teaching, and the more people who know how to get on the Internet and Google, the more we're gonna see hemorrhaging. There's gonna be a continual loss.
John Dehlin [04:26:56] And yet how in the world could the CES people start teaching the accurate history and have it not lead to mass defections?
John McLay [04:27:06] And that's what I was saying when Brooke was. That's what I was gonna say. That's the problem. If you are fully honest, I think the result is people go, what is that? What I've been told in primary.
Brooke McLay [04:27:16] Here's the thing, though. I think that there are so many people who feel a loyalty to the church as an organization that to say, you guys, we're just going to come clean, first of all, you couldn't do it all in one sitting. Second of all, I think there's a huge percentage of these people who really don't care for them. You know, the church is about sociality and the good feelings. And so I don't think that you would see, like, this Mass because so many people place their trust in the organization.
Brooke McLay [04:27:44] But I do also think that what you're seeing is a generation of kids, you know, where I was thinking when John was talking, yeah, but we don't tell our kids everything because there are some things kids are ready for or not. But what we see is a generation so capable of not only acquiring information, but thriving on that worldview that we can no longer pander to them and pretend like they can't handle it. We need to be able to trust them. Just as we finally, for the first time in our adult lives, had people say, you're allowed to ask these questions. We trust your capability to live your life and make choices with the advice of loving leaders, with the help, you know, and so while I think that it would be certainly a different path, I don't think that you would see like mass leaving.
John Dehlin [04:28:36] You don't?
Brooke McLay [04:28:37] No, I don't.
John Dehlin [04:28:38] Okay, so here's the deal.
Brooke McLay [04:28:40] I think you see a lot of people loyal to these.
John McLay [04:28:41] The church created a lot of cognitive dissonance.
John Dehlin [04:28:44] So if the church just said, from now on, we're going to teach the true, unadulterated history in a faithful way with all the facts, and we'll start with the 14 year olds, you know, what do you think, inoculation wise, do you think that we would raise a whole new generation of people who never again felt betrayed and who just bought the story? I mean, you could argue that, that a breastplate and a Urim and Thummim is just as weird, or, you know, a stone in a hat is just as weird as a breastplate. And, you know, so do you think that the church could inoculate and then successfully emerge from the type of curriculum changes you're proposing?
John McLay [04:29:24] Part of me does. One of my friends, one of my dearest friends who came out to see me after we made the announcement that we had resigned our membership. And we. And he was one who I think responded, maybe the best out of all the people that have responded. And he's a bishop right here in this town that we're in today. And he's just a wonderful, intelligent, bright human being. And he made the statement, we were talking about translation of the Book of Mormon and the peep stone. And he said, if I remember correctly, it wouldn't matter to me if Joseph Smith was standing on his head eating peach yogurt.
John McLay [04:29:55] In other words, to me that was like saying you can be completely honest and if people choose to believe, they can choose to believe. And I've actually asked myself this question. If I had been taught the true and complete and full history of the church as I understand it to be in the church archives, in the Wilford Woodruff Journals and the Journal of Discourses and all these things. Would I have remained. I think there's a better chance that I would have remained a member, knowing it with full disclosure and giving me the opportunity to choose. There is a much. I'm not saying I would, because some of it is.
John McLay [04:30:28] Let's just be honest, it's out there. It's really hard, I think, to wrap around that. But I would have a better chance of staying than what it is now, which is from primary, from the time we're itty bitty until we reach the adulthood. And for my generation, this is happening a lot in 30s and 40s. And then we go, what, there's something wrong. They told me this, they presented it as this, this. But I'm now looking into it and I'm saying, this is not what I told those people. And I'm one of them feel betrayed. And they feel like that's tantamount to dishonesty, that we need to be.
John McLay [04:31:07] If we're told to be honest in all our dealings with our fellow men, then why wouldn't the church do that? And again, I get the argument for put your best foot forward, milk before meat, and all these different cliches that we use in scriptures that we use to justify maybe holding back the full floodgates. But I do think that if the church and again, people will feel differently about this. But I would agree, I think, with Terrell Givens, that something needs to be done with the curriculum.
John McLay [04:31:37] What would happen if we rewrote it? How would it play out? I don't think we know initially. I think a lot of people would be shocked. Parents, I think, would be very upset because parents really have a trust, for they rely on you to help their child in these programs, in efys and seminaries.
John Dehlin [04:31:54] Because when 14, you're thinking, am I going to do drugs? Am I going to have sex?
John McLay [04:31:58] That's right.
John Dehlin [04:31:58] And here the kids are going, mom, is it true Joseph had 32 wives? Did you know that? You know, and some of them are married to other men. Like, wow, that's kind of interesting. Now my girlfriend wants to sleep with me.
John McLay [04:32:09] Exactly. And the Word of Wisdom was revealed in 1820.
John Dehlin [04:32:14] It was revealed in 1892 at a bar in the Nauvoo House. My buddies wanted to drink alcohol.
John McLay [04:32:19] Brigham Young was drinking even in Utah. And again, and I've said as much on this podcast, there are parts of the story where I could just go, look, he was human, you know, so he fought for his life. So he drank, so, you know, he had weaknesses.
John McLay [04:32:36] But instead, what the. What is being presented through every CES curriculum and I haven't even addressed the films, but I hope that that's implied is a beautiful cinematography. Just the cinematography and the music. I mean, it's top notch stuff. I think the church has tons of money to throw at this, so why not use that money to perhaps create a truthful version with, with, you know, I mean, you don't have to. It could be ugly. I think if you portrayed some of these things the way that they really happened. I don't know. Now I'm starting to feel like I'm trying to sound like it's my duty to defend the church and to justify things that I just think were flat out wrong.
John McLay [04:33:20] And I don't. But you're asking me about ces. You're asking me about change, about the possibility of maybe keeping more people in and having less defection and things like that.
Brooke McLay [04:33:30] And for me, I feel like the real question is, can that change happen and also come along with the change that, you know, my first question is, well, to what end? So are we trying to keep these kids in so that they become temple members? Because we haven't even gone to the betrayal that I felt when I realized that I really was pushed into something without having a clue what I was promising. And if I hadn't have promised it, I wouldn't have gotten married. And so, you know, I feel like, well, are we pushing toward a reality where Brandon Flowers is just as Mormon as Thomas S.
Brooke McLay [04:34:07] Monson? Well, if that's the reality, Hogs, Brandon, I think that if that's the reality that we're pushing for this broad, expansive, big tent Mormonism, then by all means, let's get it out on the table. But if we're just saying we're going to tell you the whole story so that you don't have an excuse to not believe and be a temple recommend holder, period.
John Dehlin [04:34:31] The end pay, pray and obey more control.
Brooke McLay [04:34:34] To me, that's where the danger comes, is we have to be willing to be open and say, you know what, there are going to be different ways for different people to take this information and all of the ways you can be sanctified in whatever way you choose,
John McLay [04:34:51] remove the stigmas that say, and these exist in CES and in the church. If you don't go on a mission, you're not a good person. If you don't get married in the temple, you're less than. Those things are very strong. That if you commit Certain sins that you are just not as good as. And so the student that I mentioned in passing, he did get a mission call. He did go to the mtc, and then he came home. He couldn't deal with it. And the things I remember that were said about him, the speculation about.
John Dehlin [04:35:19] Came home early.
John McLay [04:35:20] Yes. He left ntc, and he just said, can't do it because. And at the time, I was. I thought. And I loved him, and he knows that I love him. And he actually recalls talking to me after. And I guess I don't remember exactly, but I guess I said some good things and they meant a lot to him. And I did my best not to judge. But I will tell you that the rumors that were being spread, the stigma that was immediately attached. He's probably gay. I'm sure he was committing terrible sins. It's ridiculous. That kind of stigma and that kind of manipulation and control is not healthy.
Brooke McLay [04:35:54] Well. And when after the fact, years after the fact, actually, we found out that he sat in the airport and wept, not because he had left, but because he was trying so hard to make it work in his head, because he knew he was going to bitterly disappoint his mom, but he didn't know how he could go for. And you know, to me, I just. A person like that who has received nothing but people's scorn actually deserves nothing but people's admiration to have that level of integrity in the face of all of this pressure, you know, we should be applauding that.
John Dehlin [04:36:30] Right?
John McLay [04:36:31] Right.
Reflections, Final Thoughts, and Farewell
John Dehlin [04:36:32] So we only have a few minutes left, unfortunately. Really quick, answer these briefly. Very briefly.
Brooke McLay [04:36:40] Okay, quick.
John McLay [04:36:40] He has to tell us that because we've been.
Brooke McLay [04:36:42] We're generous.
John Dehlin [04:36:43] You guys are awesome. Everything you said is gold. How many other CES employees are where you were a few months ago? Is this something that. Is this going to be a trend of CES people leaving the church? Answer that really briefly.
John McLay [04:36:58] I don't think so.
John Dehlin [04:37:00] You're unique.
John McLay [04:37:02] I think, in that regard. We are broken in their eyes. Yeah. I'm unique in that I lost faith and in a negative way. I'm not, like, held up on a pedestal in any way.
John Dehlin [04:37:11] So this. You're not representing a trend?
John McLay [04:37:13] I don't think so.
John Dehlin [04:37:13] You don't think there's going to be an increasing amount of CES people that leave?
John McLay [04:37:17] I don't.
Brooke McLay [04:37:17] But if they are, we will be here for them. We will love them.
John Dehlin [04:37:21] So here's my question.
John McLay [04:37:22] I don't know of a single other man or woman in CES who feels as I felt they haven't. If they are there, and there probably are, because just statistically there probably are, they haven't shared that with me.
John Dehlin [04:37:34] Okay, what's the difference between you and them? Then
John McLay [04:37:40] we left briefly.
Brooke McLay [04:37:43] I'll say what you would say. It was a willingness to look at the whole package and go into it with the question, do I want to know if it's not true? And as soon as we said we will, as I think it was Tyson who said this in the atheist one, I will go where the evidence leads me. That's the difference. It's one step.
John Dehlin [04:38:05] So it's kind of a do what is right. Let the consequence follow.
Brooke McLay [04:38:08] Yeah.
John McLay [04:38:09] Yeah.
John Dehlin [04:38:10] I see two things that would be distinguishing factors in someone like John being willing to face what he faced and you but him, because he was in ces, a love for truth and a concern for truth that transcended everything. And a courage to do what is right, no matter what the consequences are. Tell me if that's how you see it.
Brooke McLay [04:38:39] That's absolutely. When I was a girl, my dad embezzled money, and I have always thought that real honesty was not a real thing. And then when I met John, honesty was such a priority to him that it was almost shocking to me. Like, I literally didn't know that you could live your life in such an honest way. But he always has been absolutely transparent in that way. So, yes, you're dead on those two things for sure.
John Dehlin [04:39:10] Okay. All right, so it's time to wind down. And in typical Mormon fashion, we have to end with your testimonies, But I want to change that just a little bit.
John McLay [04:39:20] Okay.
John Dehlin [04:39:21] First of all, thank you for doing this.
Brooke McLay [04:39:22] Thank you, John, for having us.
John Dehlin [04:39:23] John, I want each of you to take a few minutes and do two things. I want you to share with. I want to share with your. I want you to say what you would like to say to your former students, the former people you've taken, taught. What would you like to say to them? And it's an explanation of why you've. A summary of why you've done what you've done, and then what you would want to say to them now that you're where you are, knowing that you were where you were and that you've taught them what you've taught them. So we'll start with you, John, and then we'll end with you, Brooke.
John McLay [04:40:01] Okay. I think I would want to say to them, first and foremost, that I love you. I guess I can look at the camera as if I'm talking to them. That My time in the classroom and as a teacher were some of the greatest times of my life.
John McLay [04:40:26] That to my mission companions, to my mission president, to all these people that I've interacted with over the years in any capacity as a Mormon and as a member of the church or in ces, I love you. My decisions to leave the church and my beliefs, and I'm not. This is hard because I don't want to say something that I just. I'm just going to say it. You don't have to do what I've done.
John McLay [04:40:50] The last thing in the world that I would want to say is that since I've left, you should leave. Because I think for some people, it's better to stay. I think that it. It maybe makes more sense. Having said that, your journey is your journey and your story is your story.
John McLay [04:41:08] And if. I want to say, if you ever feel like, if you have doubts, that that's okay, and if you ever feel alone, that there are people that have gone through very difficult things and that stories can be rewritten and often are. But I want to say that I love you and that I wish you the very best in your life and nothing but happiness and joy, even though I think we all know that that's probably not going to happen.
John McLay [04:41:38] And to my colleagues, I feel like this is like a retirement speech that I never had. I would say again that I love you and that I respect you and that I hope that you can look at me still as a friend and as a person of integrity.
John McLay [04:41:56] I'm sorry I'm not a perfect person. And I'm not. I have a lot of flaws, but I did the best that I could, and I never wanted to hurt anybody, and I don't want to now. It is what it is, and my story is my story, and I own it. And this is my decision, and I have to live with the consequences.
John McLay [04:42:24] But I just want to mostly say that I love you and thank you for the memories and that I have a desire to have continued association with former colleagues, with former EFY participants, with these students and people that I really, genuinely love.
John McLay [04:42:42] But I also want to say that I don't believe that the church is what it purports to be. I think that's been made very clear. And I'm not saying that to manipulate them, but I'm saying that to be very clear and to own my position.
John McLay [04:42:55] I'm not even presently sure that I believe in an anthropomorphic deity that is, you know, dressed in a white robe and things like that. And I don't mean that to be rude. I'm just trying to own where I am. And I'm on this journey seeking for truth and would encourage you to do the same. It's okay to ask questions, it's okay to search, it's okay to think critically. And it's okay to associate with your former seminary teacher or EFY director or whatever capacity that we interacted in, because I'd like that. So I think that's all I want to say.
John Dehlin [04:43:31] Your turn, Brooke.
Brooke McLay [04:43:32] Okay. So what I would say to our former students is that, gosh, you know, I think that they're really. The main thing that comes to mind for me is that scripture that says, what you seek for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Brooke McLay [04:43:53] And I really believe in the words that Christ spoke, which is that what we seek for that, seek and you shall find. And I really do believe that that is a principle that we can pin our lives to, and that when we are seeking good, we find that good. And that is one of the reasons that the church is so good, is that we're looking for it all the time in a lot of ways around us.
Brooke McLay [04:44:21] And I don't feel like that good has left our lives. And anyway, in fact, I really feel that God and his goodness is open in such abundance around us. And, you know, that is what we're seeking for in our lives, and that is what we continue to find. And so I think that the main thing that I would say is if you feel like the church is bringing that goodness into your life, then stay and enjoy it and don't worry about it and don't push it and don't fight against it. But if you're feeling unsatisfied and confused or doubts or questions or just generally like God is pushing your heart in a different direction, you can trust that his good will carry you and that you will find it, and you will find it in abundance and that you're not alone.
Brooke McLay [04:45:18] So, anyway, they're good people all over this world. And I'm so grateful to you, John, for being one of those people who I think is open to truth in all of its forms. And anyway, I believe in that. I believe in good. So tissues.
John McLay [04:45:39] I hope that people will not mistake my sorrow as I just. I worry they might be thinking, ah, he feels convicted. Like, he's so sad because he knows that. Because some people have said as much to me that. And that's why I've said what I said. At the end. It sounded manipulative like I'm trying to tell you to not believe, I'm just telling you that I don't. And as hard as that was for me, as hard as that was for me, the sorrow that I feel is because it was so much a part of my life, and it was very real, and I didn't fake it. And I really like Brooke. I really. We have fond memories of our time in the church, and so I think that's been established.
Brooke McLay [04:46:18] But moving to John 2.0, I also
John McLay [04:46:22] believe in good, but it's been hard for me. And we're ready to press forward. And part of our being here and thank you for having us, is to share our story and kind of to let the healing begin, to, you know, take. Take the next steps and figure out who I am and just go from here.
Brooke McLay [04:46:46] That's good. The journey is bright.
John Dehlin [04:46:49] So now I just have one last yes or no kind of question. In spite of all the pain and the risk and the uncertainty, are you glad you've done what you've done, Brooke?
Brooke McLay [04:47:04] Yes.
John Dehlin [04:47:06] Yes.
Brooke McLay [04:47:07] Yes. Absolutely, yes.
John Dehlin [04:47:09] Do you feel like you made the right decision for you?
Brooke McLay [04:47:12] I do. For me, John?
John McLay [04:47:15] Yes. And it's only in the last, I would say, couple of weeks where I could answer that, really, without equivocation and just say that for our family and for me, that it was the right decision. Do I ponder it and mull it over and revisit it in many different ways? Of course. But we own it. And as hard as it has been and it has been very, very difficult, we're optimistic about the Future. We think 2012 is going to be a great year, at least until the world ends in December. It's going to be awesome. And then we see good things on the horizon, and we're trying to be positive and move forward from here in the best way we can.
Brooke McLay [04:47:58] Can.
John Dehlin [04:47:58] All right, well, I just want to end by thanking Brooke and John. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks for your courage, honesty. And just to be fair, there's probably a lot of people in the world who have need and are struggling. If any of you want to reach out monetarily to support Brooke and John in their current situation, I just want to invite you to contact me directly or them directly if you have ways to, and maybe support them if you can during this transitionary time where John's trying to find work. So I just wanted to make that plea, that invitation, although they didn't ask me to say that.
Brooke McLay [04:48:33] No, he did not.
John Dehlin [04:48:34] I want to ask any of you who have funds that you want to put towards something, a worthy cause, ask you to consider that. Anyway, thanks for joining us at Mormon Stories. Hope you've enjoyed it. And we'll be back again soon. Check us out on MormonStories.org and we'll see you next time.
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.
Thumbnail Credits: Main image from Mormon Stories Studio; Background image from the National Park Service
One Response
I’m SO glad you rebroadcasted this episode. It was absolutely amazing. John verbalized exactly what went through my mind as I realized the church wasn’t true. Brooke (in this and the next episode) is completely inspiring, causing me to examine and broaden my life as a post-Mormon woman.