Introduction and Welcome

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 542

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

Gina Colvin [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom Lead thou me on the night is dark and I am far from home.

John Dehlin [00:00:51] Hello, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin, and I am very excited for today's interview, as I almost always am. But today we are going to be pleased to spend some time with the very fabulous Gina Colvin. Gina. I've known her for a little while, and I think she's probably most well known in the blogger knuckle, at least historically, for her blog. She has a blog called Kiwi Mormon Mormon Reflections. What is it? Mormon Reflections from the Antipodes.

Gina Colvin's Background and New Zealand Context

Gina Colvin [00:01:34] Antipodes, yes.

John Dehlin [00:01:35] Is that. Is that the. The island chain that makes up New Zealand. And what is that?

Gina Colvin [00:01:40] Well, anti. Is opposite to. Empodes is the place of your feet. Oh, so it's opposite to the north. Ah, opposite to England. The other side of the world.

John Dehlin [00:01:52] And that's. That's how kind of Australia. New Zealand is referred to.

Gina Colvin [00:01:56] Yes, yes, mostly Australia, but love it.

John Dehlin [00:01:58] Okay, but you're. You're not in Australia, right?

Gina Colvin [00:02:00] Oh, heck no.

John Dehlin [00:02:01] Yeah. You're in New Zealand. Yeah. Yeah. So Gina is. Gina's fascinating for a lot of reasons. She. She's from New Zealand. She. She has a PhD in journalism. You. You're a professor, right?

Gina Colvin [00:02:15] Well, we call them. You call it professor in the United States, but I'm a lecturer. So we kind of have the British system, which is. Same thing. Professor is actually a promotion, an academic promotion the field. So.

John Dehlin [00:02:28] Okay, so you're a lecturer at a university. Which university?

Gina Colvin [00:02:32] University of Canterbury.

John Dehlin [00:02:33] Canterbury. Okay. And. And lots of other cool things. She. She is, I don't know, biracial, Multiracial in the sense that she comes from a Maori heritage. Is that right?

Gina Colvin [00:02:47] Yes, My father's Maori and my mother is white or pkeh.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] Right. So we're gonna. We're gonna talk about that. So we could talk about feminism. We could talk about race. We could talk about intellectualism. You know, you're almost like the two or two of the Three great threats to Mormonism all rolled into one.

Gina Colvin [00:03:07] I know, I can't help it.

John Dehlin [00:03:10] And also, Gina, in addition to her really insightful blogging and writing on Kiwi Mormon, she also has taken over the A Thoughtful Faith podcast, which, if any of you tuned into my interview with Micah Nicolaison a couple weeks ago, you know, Micah was the founder of A Thoughtful Faith, and it had a few owners between then and now, but Gina's kind of taken it over, and she has interviewed some fabulous guests over the past several weeks and months. So we're going to talk about Gina's early years, her time in the church. Gina is faithful in the church. I'm getting a lot of grief because several of the past interviews have been people who've left the church or who are angry. I'll just say part of that is because, you know, once you get stamped with the apostate label, sometimes there's people who aren't willing to come on your podcast anymore. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna blame that, at least in part for the dearth of faithful interviewees. But also I've just had some people I've wanted to just make sure I interviewed. So, anyway, Gina is active in the church, she's faithful in it, and she's committed, raising her children in the church, and she's leading A Thoughtful Faith, which is a podcast explicitly dedicated to helping people navigate thought and faith. But I wouldn't say that that means that her. Her writings or her presence is in any way timid or feeble. I think she's a very, very strong voice for. I don't know if. Would you call it progressive ideologies? What would you say, Gina?

Gina Colvin [00:04:55] Yeah, we call it liberal, progressive, reform, reconstructionist, revolutionary, all of it. Anything for change, John. Anything for change, for positive change, right? Not just let us be, all of us differently, better.

John Dehlin [00:05:08] Yeah. So we're going to talk about that. Talk about her activism, about Middle Way Mormonism. We're going to talk about race in the church, gender in the church, and all those sorts of things. But to begin as we always begin, Gina, let's talk about your sort of heritage or your early years with the church. How far back does your membership go in your family?

Māori Ancestry and the Church in New Zealand

Gina Colvin [00:05:33] Well, my grandparents, my grandfather, who is Mori, he joined the church, I think, in the 1920s or 30s as a young man. He was married, had about 12 children, and then his wife passed away, and then he had an arranged marriage with another Mormon woman, Te Henny Taiapa, and they had another, I think, another nine or 10 children. She raised them as well. So that was.

John Dehlin [00:05:58] Wait, so you're saying like 21 children?

Gina Colvin [00:06:00] Yeah. Between them, they lived in a very poor rural area on the east coast of the North Island. And in those days, of course, the church was largely mori. So there was. That was the kind of predominant kind of population that gravitated towards Mormonism. It's not until it urbanized kind of, you know, into the sort of 1950s, that many PKEH or white folks started joining the church because anyone, anyone who was white went off together in Zion. This is in the 19th century. And of course, because of the racial policies of the U.S. mori weren't allowed to immigrate to Utah. So they were left behind to establish the church.

John Dehlin [00:06:41] And what's the word you used for. For how he's. Or howly or white folk. And why would there have been PKEH people, you know, white folks in New Zealand back in the late 1800s, early 1900s?

Gina Colvin [00:07:00] Pkeh, or the English mostly, and we have French, came to New Zealand from about the 18th century, like into the 18th century. But England, New Zealand was a colony of England and it was established in 1840 as a colony of England through a treaty with Mori. So it's very much has that. It's part of the British Commonwealth along with Australia and Canada and, you know, other African states.

John Dehlin [00:07:28] And when did New Zealand get its independence?

Gina Colvin [00:07:31] 1890 was Dominion Day. It's still part of the Commonwealth, but it formed its own constitution in the 1850s or 60s and we could elect a prime minister at that point. Up until that time, it came under a governor general who was appointed by the queen. So we still have those ties.

John Dehlin [00:07:53] And so the first Mormon missionaries show up in New Zealand in the early 1900s then, is that true?

Gina Colvin [00:08:00] Late 1900s?

John Dehlin [00:08:02] Yeah, they were very late 1800s.

Gina Colvin [00:08:04] Yeah, sorry, 1800s.

John Dehlin [00:08:06] Okay, okay. And. But your grandfather wasn't converted until early 1900s, right? 1920s.

Gina Colvin [00:08:15] Okay, yeah, 1920, 30s, I think.

John Dehlin [00:08:17] Now there are certain. There's certain. I don't know if you guys are considered Pacific island, you know, but. But you think about like Samoan and Samoa and Tonga, there are, you know, these islands where we got the missionaries there soon enough to where today there's a very large percentage of. Of LDS members in the country. Is. Was that ever true amongst the Maori?

Gina Colvin [00:08:42] It's certainly a significant religion. Amongst Mori, it's not the most populous religion. We have some critic religious traditions like Ratana and Ringatu, which are taking the Christian Christianity, but also blending it with animism and Another prophetic tradition. So that's pretty significant. Mori Mormon has really kind of stabilized around a few families, so. And Anglicanism probably is the biggest religion, one religion for MORI as a population, but it's still significant. Latter Day Saints faith tradition is still significant for Mori.

John Dehlin [00:09:25] Like what do you think, 5%, 10%?

Gina Colvin [00:09:27] I think it's about 12 or 13.

John Dehlin [00:09:28] Okay, cool. Okay, so you're. Did you ever know your grandfather?

Gina Colvin [00:09:34] He passed away in the 1970s. I met him once, so. So because he was on the. I'm from the south island and he was in the north island and he wasn't too happy because. Because my mother and father weren't married. My mother was a teen, 18 year old when she ended up with my father who was 10 years older and he was already married. So I am a bastard. I am ex nuptial John.

John Dehlin [00:09:56] Okay, wait a minute. So. So your grandfather raises like 20 plus kids, you know, in the church? Yes, he. With his, with his second wife.

Gina Colvin [00:10:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:10:06] And then. So your, Was it your mother or father that came through that line?

Gina Colvin [00:10:13] That's my father.

John Dehlin [00:10:14] So your father is one of the sons of your grandfather?

Gina Colvin [00:10:19] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:10:19] And so was he active in the church?

Gina Colvin [00:10:23] You know, I don't really know. I think at various times he has been active, but at that time he was not, I don't think on and off. I think from my sisters, my half sisters. It does appear that he was attending church, but obviously when he was living with my mother, it was somewhat, I don't know, but he introduced her to the missionaries. Okay, so she joined the church.

John Dehlin [00:10:46] Okay, so he, he, he and your mother had you. Not, not in, not, you know, under, under wedlock.

Gina Colvin [00:10:54] No.

John Dehlin [00:10:54] But then she later joined the church.

Gina Colvin [00:10:57] She joined the church when she was pregnant with me. So they broke up. And I don't know where he went. Oh, that's right. He found another woman. He's a bit of a, you know, sort of, you know, sewing his wild oat sort of chap.

John Dehlin [00:11:09] Sure.

Gina Colvin [00:11:10] And she joined the church when she was pregnant with me.

John Dehlin [00:11:14] Okay. And so was he part of your life growing up or not?

Gina Colvin [00:11:17] Not so much on and off. I saw him. He had three families effectively, so he paid maintenance for me. I saw him occasionally at church functions, but I didn't have an ongoing relationship with him. And I'm, I'm reasonably thankful for that because he was a, A complex character. He came back to church after he broke up with his third wife and became a branch president.

John Dehlin [00:11:44] Wow.

Gina Colvin [00:11:46] Yeah. And that was reasonably problematic as well. So he stayed faithful until he passed away.

John Dehlin [00:11:51] Okay, so he's. He's passed away.

Gina Colvin [00:11:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:54] Okay, going back really quick. So for some reason, the name John Carmack comes up for me, when I think about Australia or New Zealand. Is there a connection there? Is there some story I should know about that?

Gina Colvin [00:12:06] Not that I know of.

John Dehlin [00:12:07] Okay, maybe that's.

Gina Colvin [00:12:09] Were you thinking of Matthew Cowley?

John Dehlin [00:12:11] Maybe? Like, are there any kind of sort of like, epic, heroic. I know that Lou Midgley thinks talks a lot about the Maori, but I'm just wondering if there's any sort of important or stereotypical sort of early Mormon moments amongst the Maori that are, you know, kind of formative to the folklore or the myth or the legendary or to your history as it relates to the church and its early years with the early church leaders.

Gina Colvin [00:12:40] Well, I think there's a lot of stories. If you're talking about missionaries, probably the most eponymous of them is Matthew Cowley. And his. His legend is larger than life. And there are various stories floating around about how he raised the dead and how he learned the language with huge facility in terms of the local traditions. It's very difficult, you know, like living at the periphery of the church. The weight, the narrative weight always exists from the eye, the gaze of the missionaries. So the kind of record that we get and that gets valorized are their letters and their missionary journals. But one thing that I do know, which I think is powerful, and Selwyn Cartney's just written a book about this, about significant Mormon ancestors in New Zealand. One thing that was really important was the prophetic tradition, and we call that Matakite, which is the ability to see behind the face. Another kind of metaphorical way of talking about being able to see beyond. And women and men, Mormon Mori, woman and men. All, you know, many of them or significant people had this prophetic tradition. So that's been reasonably significant. And that was something that was very much embraced. So when Mormon missionaries came to New Zealand, they learned the. They learned the language, they lived with the communities, they embraced the spiritual practices or accepted the spiritual practices. And so Mormonism and Mori ness sort of grew in this really interesting syncretic tradition. It's changed somewhat, although since the Mori renaissance of the 1970s, it's sort of resurfaced so that you'll see, for instance, at a funeral, a lot of those Mori funeral traditions get incorporated with the. The Mormon ones as well.

John Dehlin [00:14:38] You said the 1970s was the Maori renaissance. Okay. So kind of there was a colonization that happened, and. And. And maybe some culture got lost, but then there There was some attempts to kind of revitalize the culture in the seventies.

Gina Colvin [00:14:56] Very much so. Very much so. And it was interesting, the church's position on that. I'm aware of a general authority coming out to New Zealand with what they called the Little Red Handbook, which was during that period of time, instructions local leaders to avert the crisis of radicalization of our Mori members. So they weren't allowed to speak Mori in the. In church meetings. They couldn't do any of the kind of ritual practices, and they needed to be, you know, putting some restrictions around the kind of activities, activist activities that Mori got involved with.

John Dehlin [00:15:36] Okay, when we talk about the international church, I'm going to want to talk. I'm going to want to revisit this topic. So I'm writing some notes down, but. So this is going to sound really ignorant. So Maori has its own language?

Gina Colvin [00:15:50] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:15:51] Is it your first language or your second language?

Gina Colvin [00:15:54] It's my second language.

John Dehlin [00:15:55] And are you fluent in Maori?

Gina Colvin [00:15:58] Do you know, I didn't grow up. I didn't grow up speaking it, so I couldn't ever be as fluent as somebody for whom it's a first language. But I'm okay.

John Dehlin [00:16:06] I do.

Gina Colvin [00:16:06] I do. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:16:07] Could you bear your testimony in Mary?

Gina Colvin [00:16:09] I think yeah, I could.

John Dehlin [00:16:10] Okay. Do you mind doing it real quick just to give us a sense for the language?

Gina Colvin [00:16:13] Okay. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:16:21] Wait. Yeah, After a couple sentences, tell us what you said.

Gina Colvin [00:16:24] Oh, okay. I just introduced myself because you don't. This is a Mihi tradition, so you need to kind of acknowledge everybody and then introduce your name.

John Dehlin [00:16:32] Beautiful.

Gina Colvin [00:16:32] And then I would say where I'm from, Nongatipurao, Menga, Puhi, Oku, iwi. So. So my tribes are Ngati, Pirau and Ngapuhi in the north island and on the east coast of the South Island. Now, I don't know actually how to share my testimony in Mori te whakaponu ahau kai te ortoni te. I know that God lives. I have faith. I don't know what's resurrection in Mori. I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yeah, That's a feel for the language.

John Dehlin [00:17:15] Beautiful. Okay, so you've never probably borne your testimony in Maori.

Gina Colvin [00:17:18] No, I haven't. Thank you for reminding me. Thank you for reminding me that I never had.

John Dehlin [00:17:23] No, no, no. This is, you know, I'm just learning about you, that's all.

Gina Colvin [00:17:26] You know, actually we can listen to the temple ceremony in Mori and we had since the 1990s, which is kind of cool. So I could probably recite the temple ceremony to you in Mori, that's.

John Dehlin [00:17:37] That's even more impressive, actually.

Gina Colvin [00:17:39] I know.

John Dehlin [00:17:41] Okay. All right. So. Okay, so your grandfather had 20 plus children. Was he pretty faithful? Is he like a legend amongst the Maori of being, like, one of the early pioneers of the church?

Gina Colvin [00:17:55] Is he? Well, I mean, he sort of produced a dynasty. My family name on that side of the family is Rufu, and my grandmother is Taiapa, and both the Rufio and the Taiypa families are quite well known in New Zealand.

John Dehlin [00:18:16] So kind of the Royal Mormon families, a little bit.

Gina Colvin [00:18:19] We're not quite royal. You'd have to be a hypolite to be a royal. There's all sorts of kind of funny hierarchies that go on, and we're reminded of that because occasionally when President Monson was cognizant, he would come on area trainings or, you know, be Skyped into state conference, and he would talk about all of the families that he knew that were Mori.

John Dehlin [00:18:46] He had a good memory, right?

Gina Colvin [00:18:48] He did, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:49] Okay, so you're saying there's a specific family that's considered like, Royal Mormons in Maori?

Gina Colvin [00:18:56] I think just dynastic as opposed to.

John Dehlin [00:18:59] Yeah, dynastic, yeah. And what's the. What's the top family?

Gina Colvin [00:19:05] I don't want to say.

John Dehlin [00:19:06] Oh, you don't want to say. Does that put you on the spot? Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:19:08] No, no, no, no. You say, who, What. What family might consider themselves to be the top?

John Dehlin [00:19:13] Okay. What family might consider themselves to be. No, you don't have to.

Gina Colvin [00:19:18] No, please don't make me.

John Dehlin [00:19:19] Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:19:20] Because they might be listening and go, yeah, okay, now.

John Dehlin [00:19:22] Now they're all going to think it's them. Right? Okay, that's right. No, that's good. Okay, so your father sort of was in and out of the church and struggled. Your mother was a convert to the church when you were in her tummy. And so tell us about your. Did your mother remarry and tell us about how she raised you in the church.

Growing Up in Christchurch as a Biracial Mormon

Gina Colvin [00:19:46] Well, look, I'm living in a city that I grew up in, which I feel really thankful for, which is called Christchurch.

John Dehlin [00:19:52] Christchurch. Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:19:54] And I say that when I went to BYU when I was 17, I said I was from Christchurch, and people would say, yes, so am I, it's my city. But they didn't understand my accent. So, yes, I'm Christchurch. And Christchurch is. The church in Christchurch has always been relatively small and somewhat idiosyncratic and a little out on the limb. It's tried to make its mark by the purchase of prime real estate for its chapels. So, you know, the, the kind of the fancy road, the Draper, I suppose, of Christchurch is Findleton and we have

John Dehlin [00:20:30] Draper that's desecrating your beloved country. No, I love Draper. I'm just kidding. My mom lives in Draper. Draper.

Gina Colvin [00:20:38] Right, right. So. So the, so we've, we've got a very, very, very beautiful property on there and have since the 1950s. But having said that, the church is reasonably, has always been small, but growing up, it was a wonderful community. It was just wonderful. I was absolutely adored and loved and my mother was as well. I just, I only have happy and very, very sweet memories of growing up in the church in Christchurch and a ragtag group of people, mostly working class people, part member families, people who've made tremendous sacrifice to your bunch of crazies. You. It was all very, you know, it's just a great, rich, rich community to grow up in.

John Dehlin [00:21:21] So are you currently in the word you grew up in or in like a branch that sprung out from that word?

Gina Colvin [00:21:27] I'm meeting in the same meeting house that I was blessed in as a baby.

John Dehlin [00:21:30] So that explains a lot right there. Because it's a lot harder to discipline somebody, frankly, who you grew up with than it is somebody that's just a transplant who kind of nobody knows or cares about.

Gina Colvin [00:21:44] Yeah, for sure, for sure.

John Dehlin [00:21:45] So the social capital you, you have is probably pretty extensive.

Gina Colvin [00:21:49] Oh, extremely so. And then my husband's family, I mean, you know, between us, you know, I think there are four generations that meet in the same ward. So it's reasonably, reasonably intertwined.

John Dehlin [00:22:02] Yeah. Okay. That's a mess to try and deal with that. Okay, so. So are you comfortable sharing your approximate age?

Gina Colvin [00:22:11] I'm 47.

John Dehlin [00:22:12] Okay, so you're two years older than me. And so I know what the typical, you know, 80s upbringing was in the United States. It was roadshows and dance festivals and youth conferences and steak dances and things like that, temple trips. How much of that did you have versus not. Or what other experiences were sort of part of your youth primary? Just, you know what, we don't want to make assumptions about what your experience was.

Gina Colvin [00:22:45] Well, we had the traditional road shows and the green and gold balls and the missionaries were very much a part of that. You know, part of the missionary work, I think was transplanting an American culture and traditions. So yeah, it was a very close knit community around and, you know, celebrated Mormon ness with these, these transplanted cultural traditions. But I, but I have to say that my mother was desperate to get married And I just did a little plug here. She was kind of semi engaged to a missionary while she. Because remember, she was a young woman, you know, she was raising me in her early 20s in the church, and she had this missionary that she quite fancied, a chap called Jim Coffey. So if you're listening, Jim Coffey, you are remembered. And I think they had great plans for her to go to Utah and it didn't materialize. And I think she was rather depressed about that. So when I was nine, she married somebody else. She married a non member, a Catholic who was a really problematic human being. Still remains. So. And okay, wait, wait.

John Dehlin [00:23:52] Have you connected with this Coffee character? Do you, like, know where he is or.

Gina Colvin [00:23:55] I know he was from Utah, but.

John Dehlin [00:23:57] But you haven't, like ever found him, so.

Gina Colvin [00:24:00] No.

John Dehlin [00:24:00] So he may be listening to the podcast and reach out.

Gina Colvin [00:24:04] He may do. That'd be great.

John Dehlin [00:24:05] Okay. Yes, but that was. That broke your mom's heart.

Gina Colvin [00:24:08] It did break her heart. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:10] And she waited for. She waited for him how long?

Gina Colvin [00:24:12] Oh, look, I just remember. I remember her waiting for him. I think I remember him, actually. I was two or three and I remember. I think there was a photograph of he and I and my mother, and she'd sort of haul it out. So it's all rather heartbreaking.

John Dehlin [00:24:28] Oh, man.

Gina Colvin [00:24:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:30] And so she married someone else.

Gina Colvin [00:24:32] She married a Catholic man.

John Dehlin [00:24:33] And how did that go?

Gina Colvin [00:24:34] Terrible, John, terrible.

John Dehlin [00:24:36] I'm sorry.

Gina Colvin [00:24:37] Yeah, well, I mean, you know, aside from having an interesting family background, he was an alcoholic as well. So he prevented us from going to church.

John Dehlin [00:24:48] Oh, no.

Gina Colvin [00:24:49] So from nine years old, he refused to allow us to go to church. We could only go to the Catholic church.

John Dehlin [00:24:53] Wow. So we not even Anglican?

Gina Colvin [00:24:56] Oh, no, no, he was a Catholic. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:00] Okay. Did that marriage last or.

Gina Colvin [00:25:03] No, it didn't. I think it lasted about 10 or 11 years.

John Dehlin [00:25:06] Oh, wow. So wait a minute, so you. So then you weren't raised as an adolescent in the church?

Gina Colvin [00:25:13] Well, I. It's interesting that you say that because I think I had a very, very turbulent upbringing. So I was. I went. Things. Things were so turbulent at home that they became very turbulent at school as well. So I went on to high school and I was expelled from two schools.

John Dehlin [00:25:35] Oh, wow.

Gina Colvin [00:25:36] Yeah, Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:37] A real troublemaker. Were you. Were you brainy? Were you, as Joanna would say, were you. Were you thinky?

Gina Colvin [00:25:43] I think I was too thinky, actually.

John Dehlin [00:25:45] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [00:25:46] And I also had a mouth. You know, I was mouthy and thinking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:51] And so it was like you were too Good for school or like too bored or what? Just too. Too much trouble at home. And so you were acting out.

Gina Colvin [00:26:00] Yeah, I think there's also racism. We lived in a very, very white area and in a rural area. So we kind of lived in kind of on the outskirts of the city.

John Dehlin [00:26:11] So describe your skin for us so that we would even know what you know. You're biracial. Right. So, you know, dark brown. Like how would you describe your complexion or your look?

Gina Colvin [00:26:24] Well, it's seasonal. Seasonal, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:27] Depends on the sun.

Gina Colvin [00:26:28] It does. Caramel beige, I default to. That's my kind of winter thing. And then I go chocolatey brown in the summer.

John Dehlin [00:26:37] Okay, so it just depends on the sun.

Gina Colvin [00:26:39] It does, yeah. And I will say, and people who are biracial will know this, we get fairer at. The older we get. Okay, so I was a little brown child when I was little and then kind of gradually got sort of fairer and fairer.

John Dehlin [00:26:52] Okay, and so talk about the racism that was going on and how that affected you.

Gina Colvin [00:26:57] Oh, I think it was just systemic. Yeah. Like, I mean, you've got to imagine a kind of a pissy young woman in a very traditional, very. I wouldn't say elite school, but in the state school system, the public school system, it was a good school. Who wanted to push boundaries. There's a theme. Who wanted to push boundaries and who was, who was troubled. So I had trouble with authority. And so the first time, the first time I was excommunicated from school was when I. We had. We go by the British system. So I was in the third form, which. I'm not sure what grade that is. Third form, first year of high school. I was 13.

John Dehlin [00:27:45] Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:27:47] Whatever that is. And ninth grade, probably. Yeah. And. And when we had to. And when we were in that year, we had to do home economics and the girls had to do sewing and cooking and the boys got to do metal work and woodwork. And I objected that to that terribly because having been raised by a single woman who ran her own business, she taught me in those early nine years how to be a feminist.

John Dehlin [00:28:13] What?

Gina Colvin [00:28:14] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:28:14] Would she have used that word?

Gina Colvin [00:28:16] I think she was. She was pretty, she was bright, she went back to school and. Yeah, my mum was bright.

John Dehlin [00:28:23] So your mom was a self identified feminist in the late 70s, early 80s?

Gina Colvin [00:28:28] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:28:29] Like during the ERA movement, basically.

Gina Colvin [00:28:31] Well, your era, that didn't make a flicker here.

John Dehlin [00:28:33] Okay, so she wouldn't have even known about that.

Gina Colvin [00:28:35] No, probably not.

John Dehlin [00:28:36] All right.

Gina Colvin [00:28:37] Yeah, yeah. So, you know, and I objected greatly to this. And then we had this awful home, home economics teacher who had the. The most huge breasts ever. And it was quite intimidating for a 13 year old because she'd be a down on you and it would just be all sort of breast and, you know, body and, well, I don't know. Terrible having all those breasts around. And then this one, she would humiliate the girls. She would tell us terrible we are and how much. You know, I would have to bring ingredients to cook and I would always bring two eggs so I could cook myself some eggs on toast. So, you know, I was already out of favor. And then this one particular day, she was chastising everybody, calling us silly little girls. And then I just sort of shouted over, I got in a rage and I shouted over the top of the girls, I said, why don't you just shut up?

John Dehlin [00:29:27] Cool.

Gina Colvin [00:29:28] And everything went quiet, you know, as everybody's food rested in their mouths. And she came at me with a pizza pan.

John Dehlin [00:29:34] Whoa.

Gina Colvin [00:29:35] I know, I know. And I'm thinking the only thing I have to defend myself is a tea towel. So it was this kind of odd tussle as I slung the tea towel around her neck and she was trying to beat me with a piece of pan. And then that was the last I saw the interior of that school.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] So you're expelled? I was expelled in ninth grade.

Gina Colvin [00:29:54] Yeah. I was sent to alternative education, which was an odd school.

John Dehlin [00:29:57] That's for the bad kids.

Gina Colvin [00:29:59] Yeah, yeah. I was mostly filled. It was kind of like free choice. It was free schooling for high schoolers and. And that was mostly filled with stoned punks and, you know, teachers who just sort of would show up occasionally. So it was a bit disappointing really. I was sort of hoping for something a bit better.

John Dehlin [00:30:19] Like what?

Gina Colvin [00:30:21] You know, what I really wanted to do was to go to a Catholic girls school. I would have been happy at a girls school, I think, having been raised a feminist. But anyway, that didn't happen. And then the story gets a bit thicker and. Sorry. I eventually I began running away from home and I was eventually apprehended by the police and put in, I think probably you would call it juvie.

John Dehlin [00:30:48] For what? Were you breaking laws or just.

Troubled Youth and Finding the Church

Gina Colvin [00:30:50] No, I wasn't. No, I was just running away from home. So they put me in a secure facility in a girl's home and I spent three months there.

John Dehlin [00:30:57] Oh, and a lot of this just has to be that you lost your father or he wasn't around and then you're your replacement father was an alcoholic and I'm sure your mom Wasn't super happy. I mean, is that part of what's going on, do you think?

Gina Colvin [00:31:12] Yeah, I think so. I think it was a convergence of a lot of things and I just really, really didn't want to be at home. He was abusive as well. He was physically abusive. Fortunately not sexually abusive, but he was physically abusive. So it was, it was. It was. Yeah, it was tough.

John Dehlin [00:31:31] And during this time, like, was like the church or, you know, Jesus, were they like, did you cling to your religion as like, what kept you alive or kept you sane or what comforted you at night when you're sleeping in your jail cell or whatever it was?

Gina Colvin [00:31:47] Yeah, it was like a cell, John. Yeah, yeah. Do you know, I think. I think while I was at the girls home, I had some really, you know, you just. It's just a terrible feeling. The policeman who admitted me into that facility told me I was the lowest of the low and the bottom of the bottom and that, you know, to have that and to be in that place where all your freedoms are curtailed is just a dreadful experience, particularly for a young person. Yeah, so I had. I remember that first night and just weeping just inconsolably that I'd found myself in this place. And I felt that it was largely unfair, of course, you know, I'm 14. Of course you think, you know, the world is unfair and having a remarkably comforting and warm encounter with something divine. So, you know, that was. That was really important for me. But I don't think that that set me on to making my way back to church at that point. But there were points along the way. Okay, it took me back to church.

John Dehlin [00:32:55] So you did have some type of transcendent spiritual experience that comforted you during that really hard time?

Gina Colvin [00:33:01] I did, I did. And then, you know, I woke up in the morning and was looking for cigarettes, you know, you know, you know how these things sort of come to you and you're just trying to work it out. You've got sort of almost. It's like you've got God on your shoulder and he's just there. If you just care to turn your head. That was. It was kind of like that. There's a lot to work out as a young person.

John Dehlin [00:33:21] So would you have just described it as like a. Like just an overwhelming feeling that came over you? How would you. A voice like. How would you have described that experience?

Gina Colvin [00:33:29] I describe it as angels.

John Dehlin [00:33:31] Really?

Gina Colvin [00:33:33] Visible angels? No, no, just this sense of being enveloped and cloaked in warmth and love and goodness and being told you're good Enough.

John Dehlin [00:33:43] Wow.

Gina Colvin [00:33:44] And loved. You just loved. Yeah. So that was. That was powerful.

John Dehlin [00:33:48] Were they Mormon angels?

Gina Colvin [00:33:50] No, I don't think so.

John Dehlin [00:33:52] Were they Anglican? Anglican or Catholic angels?

Gina Colvin [00:33:55] I just think they were just angels.

John Dehlin [00:33:56] Okay, okay.

Gina Colvin [00:33:58] That's the feeling, you know, that's. I mean, that's the best way I can describe it.

John Dehlin [00:34:01] And is that. Is that a singular experience for you? Like the. Probably the most profound spiritual experience of your life? Or have there been.

Gina Colvin [00:34:09] No, no, there've been others.

John Dehlin [00:34:10] Wow. Okay. I'm excited. All right. So where'd you go from there?

Gina Colvin [00:34:17] Well, this is really interesting. And I think I continued to run away even after I was released from this facility. And I was hanging around with some street kids in town, and the street kids were particularly the Mori street kids were associated with what they call the Mongrel mob. So I was sort of on the outskirts. The proof of periphery of this culture, never doing anything really bad. We did steal a car one day, but that was somebody else's idea. So we didn't do anything really bad. I just was there. That's why I felt comfortable. I was a Rastafarian. You know, we'd listen to Bob Marley and I'd watch everyone get stoned.

John Dehlin [00:34:56] You weren't into drugs?

Gina Colvin [00:34:57] Not really. You know, I had the few. A few totes every now and again. You know, maybe I got drunk once. So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't, you know, I wasn't too. Too much of a reprobate. I just, you know, maybe that was my big, you know, my mother was a. Was teetotal and it just was never really a huge appeal.

John Dehlin [00:35:17] Did you. Did you follow any of the Rastafarian kind of religious teachings at all, or was that not part of it?

Gina Colvin [00:35:23] Didn't really know what they were. But listening to Bob Marley and, you know, getting stoned was kind of cool.

John Dehlin [00:35:28] Yeah, that's good enough.

Gina Colvin [00:35:30] And we used to read, you know, wear the clothes and. Yeah, okay.

John Dehlin [00:35:34] All right, so you found this group and then where'd it go from there?

Gina Colvin [00:35:38] Well, then I got picked up by. I was on the run again, and then I got picked up by the police. They put me in a jail cell in Christchurch Central Police Station. And I was just sort of waiting there. And then the district president came by and this is the first I'd seen any Mormons, because Mormons were not allowed in our home. And he came by and he said, we'd like to take you home. I was like, okay, whatever. And they took me home and they sat me down and Had. I mean, they had a big family. I mean, one of the. One of their sons, their eldest son was on a mission at the time, and now he's an area authority. And they had a big family, but they had cleared out a room especially for me. They had about seven boys. They'd had no daughters. And they sat me down and they said, we have always loved you, and we want you to be part of our family. And. And, you know, won't you consider it?

John Dehlin [00:36:34] What about your mom?

Gina Colvin [00:36:35] I couldn't go home. It was just too fraught at that point. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:40] Wow, that is so beautifully Mormon. I mean, that isn't it. That is how I think about the Mormonism of my youth, is just people doing extraordinarily compassionate and loving things to help others, you know?

Gina Colvin [00:36:55] Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:36:59] So you. So you went to live. You moved in with this family in like, six or seven boys?

Gina Colvin [00:37:04] I didn't. I didn't move in with them, but that experience, them rescuing me from that place was very important. But they were on the other side of town to the school that I would. Wanted to go to, or I think maybe I'd begun there. So I really wanted to continue at this other school. So they set me up with another Mormon family, and I stayed with them. And it was. But even at that point, I wasn't really active. I was just among the Mormons. And they were very kind. Very kind. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:36] That was almost like your Jean Valjean moment. Have you seen Les Miserables?

Gina Colvin [00:37:39] Yeah, when.

John Dehlin [00:37:40] When Jean Valjean meets the priest and he gives him the. The candlestick and the. And he says, find your way, kind of. He saves his soul a little bit through compassion.

Gina Colvin [00:37:49] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:37:50] Is that how you think of it?

Gina Colvin [00:37:51] I think I had a series of extraordinarily compassionate experiences with people in the church, in my community, who had known me as a little girl. And they were concerned and they loved me. I had no doubt that they were absolutely concerned and full of love for me. So it was beautiful.

John Dehlin [00:38:11] Okay, so you move in with this other family.

Gina Colvin [00:38:13] Move in with this other family. And I had a boyfriend at the time and breaking all kinds of rules and. But he was a very nice young man and had settled me. So I was settled at school. I was. And then. And then I decided that I wanted to go home. Things. I was a little older. I think I was 16, 15 or 16. I was a little older, and I just wanted to feel like I belonged. So I went home. I thought, well, I'll just take it on the chin with my stepfather, whatever, and so when I got home, I think I may have missed being in a Mormon family. And I think one morning, I think I was 15, I woke up with absolute clarity. A voice said to me, it's time for you to go back to church. Just like that. It's time for you to go back to church. And so I did. So I said to my mother, I think I need to go back to church. And at this point, I think things. She had been going to church, my stepfather had relented, and, you know, within a couple of days, I had the young woman's president picking me up. I had the bishop come to visit me, and I was back in the fold and never been out.

John Dehlin [00:39:24] Yeah, that's. I mean, that's where the church really shines, is when somebody's in a really tough spot, they can be there for people. And once that happens, how can you not feel a sense of love and loyalty to the institution that kind of really was there for you during your hardest moments?

Gina Colvin [00:39:44] Yeah, absolutely. And look, I had, you know, I had a number of choices sort of growing up. You know, between 0 and 9, I was attending Baptist church services, assembly of God, church services with my nanny. So my mother worked, and so I had a nanny, and she was Dutch, and so I was part of their family as well. So I had this very kind of mixed. I did the Catholic. You know, I was Catholic, but I was Mormon. But it's funny that I should, you know, should have that experience. And I knew with clarity that I needed to go back to the LDS Church.

Coming of Age and Early Church Involvement

John Dehlin [00:40:14] Okay, so you're. So you're. By 15, 16, you're active in the church. And. And how did it go from there?

Gina Colvin [00:40:23] Well, I mean, it went well.

John Dehlin [00:40:26] Like dances, war dances, steak dances, the whole, you know, sort of thing.

Gina Colvin [00:40:31] Yes, yes. And dating boys, getting crushes.

John Dehlin [00:40:36] Crushes on stateside missionaries. Is that part of it?

Gina Colvin [00:40:40] You know, I never. I never did the missionary thing. Wasn't interested in missionaries.

John Dehlin [00:40:43] All right.

Gina Colvin [00:40:43] I think it's because my mother was so hooked on them. You know, it's like my mother did.

John Dehlin [00:40:48] I'm not going to Elder coffee. You're not gon. You're not interested.

Gina Colvin [00:40:52] Okay. But I know I had a boyfriend. He was the mission president's son, and he was the grandson of N. Eldon Tanner.

John Dehlin [00:41:00] Nice.

Gina Colvin [00:41:01] Well, yeah, very, very conservative family. And we dated for a couple of years, and then he went on his mission. So it was lovely. I did personal progress, had, you know, wonderful time. Wonderful time as a young person.

John Dehlin [00:41:15] And so, like, this is almost like an Alma, the younger thing, where you just, you go from being a real troubled kid, what, to super righteous and exemplary.

Gina Colvin [00:41:24] Super righteous. I went and confessed all my sins. I walked out of there and I thought I've, you know, the visceral feeling of having been, you know, unbounded and just sort of spiritually liberated. It was lovely. Yeah. Very good, Very good people. And I've got to say something about our stake. One of the most important people in our recent history was very, very progressive morm and a chap called Ashley Roper. He was the district president and he sort of mentored some of the formative members in our stake with the same kind of inquiry, questioning liberality, progressiveness. So it was a lovely place to grow up in.

John Dehlin [00:42:06] And is Ashley still around?

Gina Colvin [00:42:08] No, he passed away.

John Dehlin [00:42:09] And did you know him personally?

Gina Colvin [00:42:11] Yes, I did, yes.

John Dehlin [00:42:12] Was he an influence on you personally?

Gina Colvin [00:42:15] Well, just, just. Yeah, he was. I mean, he was my. He was a district president, you know, family friend.

John Dehlin [00:42:20] Do you have a sense that he, like, read Dialogue or Sunstone or any of that kind of stuff?

Gina Colvin [00:42:24] Yes, yes, he did. And I'll get to that point because at 16, I knew that, you know, as I was becoming active in the church again, my stepfather was sort of stepping up the kind of the persecution. And I had another experience that said to me, I need to go and live with this particular, a particular family in our wal. And this is a, you know, it was the stake president's family. And so I said to my mother, I said, I think I. I think I need to move out and I need to live with the McIntyre family. And she said, I just felt the spirit. I think that's what needs to happen as well. So she went to the family and she knocked on the door, basically said, I think Gina needs to come and live with you. And the mother, Marion, who would become my, you know, my adopted sort of slash foster mother, said, I feel the spirit too. That's the right thing.

John Dehlin [00:43:19] Wow.

Gina Colvin [00:43:19] And so I just moved in. I became one of the family.

John Dehlin [00:43:23] Wow. So that was kind of 16, 17.

Gina Colvin [00:43:26] Yeah, 16, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:27] Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:43:28] And David, who was the state president at the time, was a Sunstone Dialogue, Eugene England. He was a historian, a professor of history, and those were the days when the stake president used to go to Utah for general conference. I think it was April. Conference, conference. He would go every year and come back with bags full of books. He was personal friends with Leonard Arrington and.

John Dehlin [00:43:52] Yeah, so that was David McIntyre.

Gina Colvin [00:43:54] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:43:55] So the dad of the family you moved into was stake president and a Huge intellectual.

Gina Colvin [00:44:01] Yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:44:02] And this would have been in the, I'm guessing 84ish kind of time frame.

Gina Colvin [00:44:06] Yes, around that time.

John Dehlin [00:44:07] Okay. All right. Wow. That's kind of rich.

Gina Colvin [00:44:11] It was, it was great. You know, and you know, they were sunstone dialogue and so. No. And they had Fawn Brody's book. They had Juanita Brooks, you know, and there was everything there. And we just read and we talked about, and it was just part of the fabric of our, you know, our conversations as a family.

John Dehlin [00:44:25] You're reading about that stuff? I read about as a 16, 17 year old.

Gina Colvin [00:44:28] Yep. I read, I read one need to not win it Brooks. Fawn Brody at 17. Yes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:35] How do you read that in Be Scarred?

Gina Colvin [00:44:39] You know, it was just like, oh, this is really interesting. And I remember after reading about his polygamy, I went to young woman's. I said, now how come we A, don't talk about Emma and B, we don't talk about the fact that Joseph was a polygamist and there was just sort of nothing there. My poor young woman's president, she was just the sweetest person. She said, I don't know, I just don't think we talk about it. And then that was that. But I could talk about that at home. Well, it's never an issue.

John Dehlin [00:45:05] Yeah, but I mean, I guess I'm struggling just because I had. When I read that book, I was never the same like I. But maybe it's context. I mean, how do you explain, do you have an explanation for why that didn't make you start wondering why Joseph, you know, wasn't a charlatan and, and the church wasn't true?

Gina Colvin [00:45:25] Well, I just thought that he was oversexed. So I'm reading this as a 617 year old thinking boy, he got a bit carried away, didn't he? So I never put that. I never put the polygamy and him marrying lots of women as anything but just really dodgy behavior.

John Dehlin [00:45:43] But you hadn't been indoctrinated that the prophet was next to Jesus in righteousness and had come to expect that he would, he would never stoop to that kind of behavior.

Gina Colvin [00:45:54] Not really. Not that I recall. And here's the interesting thing about the cultural dividend that we were very, we grew up very, you know, we're proud New Zealanders and you know, American cultural imperialism was something that we as a culture, as a New Zealand thing that we rejected. So when we felt this kind of American stuff coming in, I mean, you know, this is kind of the correlation period as well, we felt this stuff coming in. There was always this institutional. From the, you know, a stakewide sort of. Of antipathy for it. So there was always this, hey, things that come out of Utah and might even include the prophet aren't necessarily, you know, they're not Jesus. They're American men. Good men, though.

John Dehlin [00:46:41] Yeah, that's a. I mean, that is fascinating. And honestly, it's. I can't even totally understand it.

Gina Colvin [00:46:47] Yeah, it's kind of cool. You know, we would get even. The bishop would say, and he's gone on to be a mission president, he would say, look, see this, These lesson manuals, just follow the spirit, do what you want. If it's not applicable, just, you know, teach something else. Teach from the scriptures. So there was always a sort of backhanded, like, yeah, not interested in being colonized here by, you know, the American Mormon machine. It's kind of cool.

John Dehlin [00:47:14] I love this. I wish I had been raised there. Okay, so. So what happened next?

Early Marriage, Heartbreak, and a Bishop's Betrayal

Gina Colvin [00:47:20] Oh, I gotta go from one crazy thing to the next. So we. I was supposed to be waiting for my boyfriend who had gone to England on his mission, but he was Canadian, so it was just a really complex situation. And you've got to understand that I'm just 18 and dumb. We had promised ourselves to each other. We were madly, madly in love. He was the first love. And. And then I think towards the end of his mission. I am a cliche. I met this guy who was outside of the church at the time he joined church, and I met him at university. He joined the church and we got married. So I think I was 19 and he was 21.

John Dehlin [00:48:01] And. Is that your current husband?

Gina Colvin [00:48:02] No, it's not.

John Dehlin [00:48:04] Whoa. So why in the world would you step away from, like, your true Mormon love after seeing your mom suffer from so much duress with her husbands?

Gina Colvin [00:48:18] I have no idea, John.

John Dehlin [00:48:20] Was it just biology? Just, you know, just sexual attraction and emotion and all that?

Gina Colvin [00:48:26] No, because he wasn't even that great looking. I don't. I don't know. I think. I think because we have. I'd been conditioned to be anxious for marriage, that this. And, you know, you know, have the background that I grew up in. Maybe I was just vulnerable. I don't know why I did it. It was a mistake right from the very beginning. Terrible mistake. Shouldn't have happened.

John Dehlin [00:48:49] Not even a member?

Gina Colvin [00:48:51] Well, no, he was a member at the time.

John Dehlin [00:48:52] Well, you converted him, right?

Gina Colvin [00:48:54] Yeah, he joined the church.

John Dehlin [00:48:55] But that's a totally different deal than, like, I mean, the, the missionary you had. He Was. He was connected to what? You know, leaders in the church, right?

Gina Colvin [00:49:03] Yes, yes, yes, he was. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:05] Yeah. So, I mean, wow. So how did you break the news to your missionary?

Gina Colvin [00:49:10] Do you. You know, I just think I feel so bad, you know, I'm just dumb. I'm a dumb 18, 19 year old. And I wrote him a letter. I think he wasn' good at corresponding and I'm a good communicator, so that pissed me off. He blew it.

John Dehlin [00:49:24] He blew it then.

Gina Colvin [00:49:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I wrote him a letter and I said, sorry, I'm getting married. He wrote me a letter back and said, please don't.

John Dehlin [00:49:33] How many months from the end of his mission was this, John?

Gina Colvin [00:49:37] I don't know. Okay, maybe five months.

John Dehlin [00:49:40] Wow. So less. Almost less than a year.

Gina Colvin [00:49:43] Yeah. But, you know, having said that, and I have to say this, there was an elitism that I didn't like about his family. They're very, very nice people, but very elitist. And I don't think. I mean, look, I'm brown, you know, I have a past. I don't have any great connections. And I knew that. I knew that I was not the kind of stock that they would have liked to have this. So it was.

John Dehlin [00:50:09] I'm gonna. I'm gonna turn my psychology switch on for a second. So was it some self sabotage because of low self esteem and.

Gina Colvin [00:50:18] No, because I. I don't think I've ever suffered from low self esteem.

John Dehlin [00:50:20] Okay, so it wasn't that you didn't feel worthy.

Gina Colvin [00:50:23] No, I just.

John Dehlin [00:50:24] But you're referencing your. What? Oh, you just thought they were. They were jerks. Yeah. Did you just say on Mormon stories?

Gina Colvin [00:50:31] I did. Sorry.

John Dehlin [00:50:31] Oh, my goodness. I'm gonna have to give it an explicit rating. I would have never thought Gina Colvin would. Would earn an explicit rating.

Gina Colvin [00:50:39] Hey, it's not a swear word here.

John Dehlin [00:50:41] Oh, it's not.

Gina Colvin [00:50:43] What is it? It is a bad it.

John Dehlin [00:50:46] Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:50:47] You know. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:50:48] That's awesome. Okay, so. So you just didn't want any part of that kind of snobby family?

Gina Colvin [00:50:53] I think perhaps. I think perhaps I didn't want to be made to feel like I had to deserve him.

John Dehlin [00:51:00] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [00:51:01] You know, that he was stooping to marry me. I knew that there was. He comes from a big family. I knew there were concerns about his attachment for me. And he was white.

John Dehlin [00:51:10] He was fully white. White.

Gina Colvin [00:51:12] Yeah, he was white. And you know, he had the pedigree. Wow. He had the pedigree.

John Dehlin [00:51:16] Oh, okay.

Gina Colvin [00:51:17] And, you know, I thought. No, that. I don't. I don't want to be stuck with that feeling. Like I should feel like I'm lucky to be part of that family and. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:26] So, okay, so you broke it up. Okay, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take us on a detour for a second. So, so, you know, I, I, I served my mission in Latin America, and it was very common for missionaries and mission presidents and general authorities to all tell, to explicitly come down and tell the Latin Americans that they were literal descendants of the Lamanites. Is that what the Maori were told? And did you grow up kind of self identifying as a Lamanite?

Gina Colvin [00:52:00] Yeah, yeah, we did. I mean, that's important mythology. I should have mentioned that before. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:08] Okay, so you're like, I'm a laymanite.

Gina Colvin [00:52:12] We were a little confused because, you know, you had, at byu, you had the Lamanite generation. Right, Right. And they were Native Americans, which was

John Dehlin [00:52:18] a performing, which was like a singing and dancing group that would, that would, you know, they were Native Americans and they would perform songs and dances for people. Right?

Gina Colvin [00:52:28] That's right. That's right. So there was a little bit of ambivalence about claiming that identity because that belonged to Native Americans. But certainly we were the descendants of Hagoth. We had Nephite, you know, Lamanite ancestry.

John Dehlin [00:52:42] Who's Hagoth? Is that a Book of Mormon character?

Gina Colvin [00:52:45] John, where have you been?

John Dehlin [00:52:47] I've been in trouble. I've been, I've been wandering. You know, you had your, you had your string when you were 14. I'm just a little late to the party, I think you are. Who's Hagoth?

Gina Colvin [00:52:58] Yeah, Hagos was the bit, the boat builder that took off post the, that fourth Nephi.

John Dehlin [00:53:06] Okay. Yeah. And the rumor is that he went to the, you know, Polynesia Pacific Islands kind of thing.

Gina Colvin [00:53:12] That's right. And that was a rumor began by Matthew Cowley and Inspector W. Kimball started that. So the Pacific Islanders apparently, you know, descended from, you know, Hagoth and his boat, fearing people.

John Dehlin [00:53:25] Would that have been in your patriarchal blessing or.

Gina Colvin [00:53:29] In my patriarchal blessing? It says I'm literal descendant. I haven't looked at it for so long, maybe I should. Literal descendant of Joseph through Ephraim and the, and the blood of Israel runs richly in my veins.

John Dehlin [00:53:44] Okay, so you're Ephraim in your patriarchal blessing. But, but you still, you were taught that you guys were Lamanites, right? Right?

Gina Colvin [00:53:52] I think so. Yeah, pretty much.

John Dehlin [00:53:55] And were, were Maoris denied the priesthood prior to, to 1970? Eight.

Gina Colvin [00:54:01] No.

John Dehlin [00:54:02] Okay, so they were, they were brown enough, but not too brown.

Gina Colvin [00:54:05] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:07] And not, not associated with Africa. So.

Gina Colvin [00:54:09] No. And then we, I know we made sense of that. Well, you know, and I was kind of young, but I knew enough of it, the history of it as being. That's just something America did. That's not, that doesn't belong to God. That's an American issue.

John Dehlin [00:54:24] Really?

Gina Colvin [00:54:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:26] Okay, so did you ever have this moment where you're reading the Book of Mormon and you know, 16, 17, and it starts talking about God wanting to make people's skin dark and loathsome so that, so that the white and delightsome people wouldn't be attracted to them, to. Wanted to make them ugly. Was there ever a point where you're like, hey, that, that kind of hurts?

Gina Colvin [00:54:50] Yes and no. It was a bit of a joke, actually. I went to byu, Hawaii for a little while, just for a couple of semesters, if that. And, you know, and I was quite fair compared with, you know, other Mori there. And I would just sort of joke that I was white and delightsome because, you know, of my righteousness, you know, it was a bit of a joke. And if you have a look at, if you look at Mori, that it's not about skin color as much as it is about fairness as a beauty. Yeah, yeah. You know, it wasn't a big thing. Wasn't a big thing. It was certainly there. But there wasn't any outrage about it for you? I don't think generally there was any outrage about it. I don't recall anything.

John Dehlin [00:55:38] Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Like, I just, I just think that's fascinating. I mean, I'm not trying to impose my perceptions on others, but I remember as a, as a teen not being dark skinned and really struggling with that, you know.

Gina Colvin [00:55:55] Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:55:55] That's the white man's guilt. I don't know.

Gina Colvin [00:55:57] Maybe it is. Maybe. I mean, like, I'm not saying it wasn't absent in the conversation. It was just a silly thing. You know, I don't recall people getting too angry about it because nobody actually really thought that maybe that's a problem.

John Dehlin [00:56:09] Maybe liberals and progressives and intellectuals are just take things too seriously.

Gina Colvin [00:56:14] Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Because you would have to tell somebody that, you know, their skin color, you know, very dark, their skin color match their righteousness. Well, you know, you had branch presidents and bishops and stake presidents who are very dark. Or what are you going to say? Like, it just, it was a nonsense so it must mean something else because it didn't Actually bear itself out.

John Dehlin [00:56:34] Yeah. I mean, that's just two very different experiences with. With polygamy, with Joseph Smith, and with racism versus. Kind of what I was thinking. Okay, cool. So you're. You're at BYU Hawaii. You're. You're loving life and. But. But did you bring. So you married and brought your husband to byu? Why with you?

Gina Colvin [00:56:55] No, no, no, no. This. I went to BYU Hawaii, I think, when I was 17 or something, and it lasted a little while. I thought, this isn't the place for me. I want to go home. And I went. I went back, and so I married my first husband.

John Dehlin [00:57:07] Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:57:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:09] And you guys stayed together for how long?

Gina Colvin [00:57:11] We stayed together for three years. He had just graduated. It wasn't. Yeah, another crazy story. He had just graduated and with a law degree. He was white. And

John Dehlin [00:57:25] he.

Gina Colvin [00:57:26] There was a stake reorganization, and our bishop was being released and made the stake president. And he was called as the bishop by Elder Worthland.

John Dehlin [00:57:36] So he was like, by Joseph.

Gina Colvin [00:57:37] Joseph.

John Dehlin [00:57:39] Okay. All right.

Gina Colvin [00:57:42] And so he was.

John Dehlin [00:57:43] You were the bishop's wife.

Gina Colvin [00:57:44] I was a bishop's wife. And I was barely out of nappies, you know, my bones hadn't set yet, you know.

John Dehlin [00:57:49] Now, is that diapers? Nappies. Is that what? Diapers.

Gina Colvin [00:57:51] Oh, yes. Yeah. All right.

John Dehlin [00:57:52] Just making sure. You're barely out of diapers. You're the bishop's wife.

Gina Colvin [00:57:56] Okay, I'm the bishop's wife. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:57] And he's a convert, so that's interesting.

Gina Colvin [00:57:59] And he hadn't served a mission.

John Dehlin [00:58:01] Wow, they're really. They're really scraping the bottle of the barrel.

Gina Colvin [00:58:06] No, they were. But I tell you what, did it. Because we were called into a meeting. Now he can't. He can't extend the Elder Worth and couldn't extend the call. That was the state president's job. But we're invited to a meeting to, you know, as an approval process. And he seemed a little bit disinterested until he asked my first husband, you know, what are you doing? He said, I'm a lawyer. And Elder Worth and just perked up. And he goes, well, a lawyer. Oh, okay. A lawyer. Right. Okay, A lawyer. Yeah. I think I'll go with this. President.

John Dehlin [00:58:40] Awesome.

Gina Colvin [00:58:40] Like them lawyers, those apostles. Like them lawyers?

John Dehlin [00:58:43] Well, yeah, Lawyers have their benefits. Okay, wait a minute. So bishop serves for five years. You were only married for three. So are you divorcing the bishop or what? What?

Gina Colvin [00:58:55] Ah, now there's where it gets interesting. So after three years of marriage, it turned out that he was shagging somebody.

John Dehlin [00:59:02] Whoa. Okay. And in America terms, that means that's Austin Powers. That's sleeping with someone else.

Gina Colvin [00:59:09] Yeah. It's having an affair.

John Dehlin [00:59:10] Wild Bishop.

Gina Colvin [00:59:11] Yeah. While the Bishop.

John Dehlin [00:59:12] Okay. Elder Worthland, his inspiration was wanting.

Gina Colvin [00:59:17] It was off.

John Dehlin [00:59:22] Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:59:23] So that was an abrupt end to

John Dehlin [00:59:25] our relationship and to his tenure as bishop.

Gina Colvin [00:59:29] Yes. Well, not so abrupt. Not so abrupt. And this becomes really important because I think it was. Ronald Pullman was in the area office in Australia at the time. The state president was conversing with him, saying, look, there's something going on. It wasn't immediately apparent that he was shagging somebody else else, but that he just wanted out of the marriage. And this happened like, on Christmas Day in 1989 or something. I can't remember. And so the state president was counseling with us, and then he and my first husband said, that's it. No, I'm done. I'm out of this marriage. I was actually, I have to say, like, it's devastating going to. To kind of be put in that position. But I was a little relieved just because he kind of didn't feel like. Like, you know. Yeah, I was a little relieved. So if he was listening to this, don't worry about it. I was a bit relieved.

John Dehlin [01:00:19] It couldn't have been a great marriage.

Gina Colvin [01:00:21] No, it wasn't. It was wrong. And I put it down to astrology. I'm a Leo, he's a Scorpio. They must be married. I know, right?

John Dehlin [01:00:27] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:00:28] And so is Dan.

John Dehlin [01:00:29] When's your birthday?

Gina Colvin [01:00:30] 3rd of August.

John Dehlin [01:00:31] Oh, Dan Witherspoon. Yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:00:33] He's a Leo, too, I think.

John Dehlin [01:00:34] Awesome. Okay, so. So it's horoscope. Your horoscopes didn't align, and that's. That's what doomed the marriage?

Gina Colvin [01:00:39] I think so. I think so, John.

John Dehlin [01:00:41] Okay. Okay. So. So were you heartbroken? Like, that's incredibly embarrassing. Right?

Gina Colvin [01:00:48] I think it was a lot of things. It was a lot of things going on. I was. I was relieved. I was mortified. Yeah. There was a whole lot of stuff going on at the same time. Yeah. I mean, it was just. And very, very public. Of course.

John Dehlin [01:01:07] Yeah. I mean. Yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:01:08] And one of the problems that I had was that he wasn't released for about three and a half months. And so I had to go to church on Sunday, you know, and he would be making googly eyes at the woman that he was shagging.

John Dehlin [01:01:22] Oh, he was shagging a member of the ward.

Gina Colvin [01:01:24] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:01:25] Holy moly.

Gina Colvin [01:01:26] I know. It was just a. You know, I was going to say a cluster. Something beginning with F, but that's what it was.

John Dehlin [01:01:32] Is that a swear word in New Zealand put together?

Gina Colvin [01:01:35] I mean, I think it's pretty universal, the F word.

John Dehlin [01:01:37] Okay.

Gina Colvin [01:01:40] It's French.

John Dehlin [01:01:42] Okay, okay. All right. So. Wow. So someone in the world, was it someone you'd grown up with or knew?

Gina Colvin [01:01:47] No, it's my brother's, My foster brother's ex girlfriend.

John Dehlin [01:01:50] Okay, okay, okay.

Gina Colvin [01:01:52] So then he got her pregnant. But I mean, I think the thing that I found really hard was that I read the handbook and it said that a bishop who is, has, has, you know, done this, abandoned his family responsibilities and it was just, he and I, we didn't have any children, but we're still a family, should have an immediate church discipline.

John Dehlin [01:02:11] Yeah, of course.

Gina Colvin [01:02:12] And that didn't happen. And I, and I begged, I said, you need to have a church discipline. And because I was a woman, I don't know, nobody listened to me. So three and a half months it went on. It was, that was really, really difficult because I didn't have any, you know, I didn't have a bishop. Bishop. My bishop was my ex husband who was having an affair with somebody else. That was such poor judgment on the part of, you know, all of these people who are responsible for the ecclesiastical fears of that ward. Should never have happened.

John Dehlin [01:02:42] Oh, wow, that's so, that's so difficult. Okay, okay. So how do you rebound from that?

Gina Colvin [01:02:52] Well, in New Zealand it's a compulsory two year separation period.

John Dehlin [01:02:57] Okay.

Gina Colvin [01:02:58] And in the meantime, he had left the church. He. Well, he'd still continued to come to church and then they'd had a baby and then they broke up. So that was, that's my ex husband. And so I continued to come to church and sort of after two years we went to court and had our marriage annulled. And I thought, wow, okay, well, I'm going to go to Australia. It's the last time I ever say that too. It's like Canadians saying, I'm going to go to America.

John Dehlin [01:03:23] So is there a rivalry between New Zealanders and Australia?

Gina Colvin [01:03:27] Oh, you know, of course, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:28] Okay.

Gina Colvin [01:03:29] We call it a rivalry across the ditch. So.

John Dehlin [01:03:32] I thought you ran away.

Gina Colvin [01:03:34] Yeah, well, I was, I was going to. And I bought my tickets to go to Australia and I was ready and. And then my ex husband's executive secretary arrived back from his mission and he. We were in Sunday school one day and I was asked to give a lesson and I said, no, I don't, I don't, I'm not going to give that lesson because I'm going to Australia. And he had a witness of the spirit that he ought to stop me. Oh, and so that's my current husband, Nathan.

John Dehlin [01:04:04] Oh, wow. Okay.

Gina Colvin [01:04:07] Go, Nathan.

John Dehlin [01:04:08] So he was right off his mission.

Gina Colvin [01:04:10] He was, yeah, he was. Really soon we got divorced in the February. He was back at. By June.

John Dehlin [01:04:15] You were married by June?

Gina Colvin [01:04:16] Oh, no, we were married in September.

John Dehlin [01:04:19] Okay. Oh, okay. Okay, wait. She get divorced in February, he gets home from his mission in June, and you're married in September?

Gina Colvin [01:04:28] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:04:29] That's almost like byu. That's crazy.

Gina Colvin [01:04:31] That's crazy. Isn't it crazy?

John Dehlin [01:04:33] Well, that's. So he wasn't. You weren't, like, damaged? You weren't like a chewed piece of gum or, you know, a manhandled Snickers bar to him?

Gina Colvin [01:04:43] No, I was an experienced woman who had much to teach him.

John Dehlin [01:04:50] Oh, wow. I'm not gonna pursue that line of. Okay, so. Yeah, so. But he wasn't, like, ashamed of you or, like, concerned about the baggage or any of that stuff?

Gina Colvin [01:05:01] Not at all.

John Dehlin [01:05:02] I mean, I guess. I guess if your husband was the bishop. Ex. Husband. Was the bishop. And was shagging somebody, you're not going to be held responsible.

Gina Colvin [01:05:12] No, I don't think so. And I mean, my husband, he's a. He's a. He's a great man. He's got a good sense of humor, and he's, you know, one out of the box. He's idiosyncratic as well. So. So, yeah, so that. I mean, that. That happened by utter and absolute inspiration. That whole marriage thing, I just wouldn't have even considered. He's younger than me. Do you know? I was the bishop. Wife. Wife. And he was in young men's. You know, that's how kind of crazy it was. So, yeah, so he came back and had a very strong impression that we should get married. He'd had a vision of our life together. And, yeah, there was nothing. He was just dogging. So I said, oh, okay.

John Dehlin [01:05:51] And he was. He was younger than you?

Gina Colvin [01:05:53] Yeah, yeah, he still is.

John Dehlin [01:05:56] Oh, so it stayed that way. So how many years?

Gina Colvin [01:05:59] Four years.

John Dehlin [01:05:59] He's four years younger. Okay, cool. Cool. And it's been happily ever after.

Gina Colvin [01:06:05] Yeah, yeah, it's been great. He's a nice. He's a good man.

John Dehlin [01:06:15] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights. When with the wounded heart Anger or malice I draw myself apart searching my soul.

Part Two Introduction and Recap

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 543

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

Gina Colvin [00:00:36] The kindly light a myth encircling gloomy on the night is.

John Dehlin [00:00:48] Hello and welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John de Lynn, and I am super loving this interview with Gina Colvin. We just spent a first hour talking about many epic stories about her, you know, her heritage in New Zealand, her mother's struggles to find a good husband, how that translated into difficulties in her childhood, growing up, her own wayward times, where she was Alma the Younger, how she came back to the church, married the man who became the bishop, and then experienced her bishop, her husband, having an affair, which led to a divorce, and her subsequent marriage to Nathan, who was four years younger than her and recently returned from his mission. Wow. What a story. What a whirlwind.

Gina Colvin [00:01:43] I know, I know, right?

John Dehlin [00:01:45] It's almost like if someone hadn't lived it themselves, they. They wouldn't understand. It was almost like no man knows your history.

Gina Colvin [00:01:53] I know. Sometimes I tell the story and I'm thinking, wow, like, this sounds unbelievable, even to me.

John Dehlin [00:02:00] Yeah, that's great. I love it. Okay, so no kids with your prior husband?

Second Marriage and Life in America Post-9/11

Gina Colvin [00:02:04] No.

John Dehlin [00:02:05] Okay, so. All right, so let's. Let's just jump if we can to. Okay, so you're married, Nathan. What year that was?

Gina Colvin [00:02:14] We married in 92.

John Dehlin [00:02:16] In 1992. So Joanna and I were both at BYU causing trouble. September 6th was going on within a year. And my guess is you were shielded from all that stuff.

Gina Colvin [00:02:26] I had no idea about it.

John Dehlin [00:02:28] Okay. All right. Okay, so. So let's fast forward to, you know, what brought you to and if there are any stories you feel like you need or want to tell between then and the question I'm about to ask you. Feel free to take any, you know, detour you want. But what I'm curious about is what led you to start blogging, to get plugged into the Mormon Internet, and to start wanting to sort of write and engage in the conversation online. But feel free to tell me stories in the meantime, too.

Gina Colvin [00:03:05] Okay, so I'll talk about that leading up to, you know, because I think there's a series of events now. When I was divorced, I used to volunteer in our separation period. I used to volunteer for what they called the Crippled Children's Society, which sounds all very, you know, you know, terrible name, but I was basically going out on school vacation times and with young adults who were. Either had multiple sclerosis or, you know, series of, you know, whatever disabilities. Not intellectual disabilities, but physical disabilities. And I recall this one day on a Sunday afternoon, I was required to go to the racetrack with this group. And I was somewhat conflicted because I thought, oh, I should be going to church. But anyway, I thought, no, I. I've got an obligation to this person. She wants to go to the racetrack. She was. My buddy went to the racetrack. And I'm sitting at the racetrack with a group of people in wheelchairs and other just, you know, who are, you know, similar age to me in their 20s and late teens. And. And we're at the bar and they were all drinking, and I. And I was absolutely overcome with a sense of this is God's work. This is what God. This is what love is.

John Dehlin [00:04:31] Sort of helping the. The handicapped.

Gina Colvin [00:04:34] Yeah, the disabled.

John Dehlin [00:04:35] Helping the disabled.

Gina Colvin [00:04:36] Well, just giving. Just giving. And for it to occur in that context and on that day was an absolute epiphany for me. I mean, I think when you get divorced, you know, there are all sorts of kind of parameters and movements that happen in you to cause you to question. But that was profound. Like, I. I sat there and I wept. It was embarrassing. You know, I just kept crying because I just, for some reason, God had chosen to visit me at that point and tell me that this is God's work.

John Dehlin [00:05:10] Yeah, it's just like, in as much as you've done it into the least of these. Right.

Gina Colvin [00:05:14] It absolutely made sense. Christ's gospel, the love that he has for us, it all made sense in that moment. And I felt the grip of the institution just sort of, you know, slipping off me a bit. Like, you know, I thought about my meanness that, you know, I was like, well, I should. I should. I should just go to church. But I was actually having one of the most profound religious experiences that I'd had in a bar at the racetrack on a Sunday. So.

John Dehlin [00:05:38] And you were how old again?

Gina Colvin [00:05:40] Oh, gosh, maybe 22.

John Dehlin [00:05:42] Okay, so it was before your second marriage?

Gina Colvin [00:05:46] Yes, yes. I got married when I was 23. So maybe I was 20. Sorry, 25. I got married second time.

John Dehlin [00:05:51] Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:05:52] And then we had. At that time, we had kind of

John Dehlin [00:05:55] like your conversion to Real Christianity. Christianity, yes. Okay. Like born again, kind of a born again moment.

Gina Colvin [00:06:00] And I was reading, I was reading Eastern philosophy at the time. I was also reading Scott Peck's A Road Less Traveled. So there were all these sort of, you know, theoretical kind of theological frameworks sort of making its way.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] And that's a prime time for kind of inspired, enlightened discoveries, you know.

Gina Colvin [00:06:20] And then we had a visiting professor at the University of Canterbury and he came to our ward, a chap called Chris Eskridge, I don't know if you've heard of, of him, he's a criminologist from Lincoln, University of Nebraska, Lincoln. But he came and I really liked him and we, you know, had quite a few chats and he said, I want you to get Approaching Zion by Hugh Nibley and I want you to read it.

John Dehlin [00:06:44] He was lds.

Gina Colvin [00:06:45] He was lds, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:46] Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:06:48] And so I did. I founded a local books at, you know, Bountiful Books, which is a church bookstore here in the city. And I bought it, I read it from COVID to cover and I thought, that's my Mormonism right there, right there.

John Dehlin [00:07:03] And I suppose, you know, non pretentious, service minded, you know, forget the baggage of the culture. It's just about love and charity and service.

Gina Colvin [00:07:13] Yeah. And also about critique. So I think that, you know what, it might not be right to say that there was a sort of Marxian sort of critique in there as well, of the, you know, a critique of the corporation and of capitalism and, and how Zion can't be built on those principles. So. And that's the sort of thing that I was doing in political science at university because at that time I was an undergraduate, so it was all making sense for me. And I think that was one of the profound, most profound intellectual shifts that I'd had as well.

John Dehlin [00:07:45] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [00:07:47] So that was really important. So I just kind of had to say that. And then we, you know, Nathan and I get married. We have Isaac, who's our eldest, he's 21 now, and we just kind of do the Mormon thing, you know, he's, he's a high councilman, you know, he's a high priest and I'm the young woman's president. We just sort of move in and out of court. He's a counsellor on the bishopric at various times and then when.

John Dehlin [00:08:07] But no shagging, right?

Gina Colvin [00:08:09] Oh, no, we were shagging.

John Dehlin [00:08:10] No, no, no. He wasn't shagging anyone else?

Gina Colvin [00:08:12] Oh, no, no, no. He was shagging me. John. Much to my delight.

John Dehlin [00:08:19] There you go again. Gina Colvin. Another explicit rating for this episode.

Gina Colvin [00:08:23] Yeah, yeah. Put a big red E on it. And then in 2000, I think we had finished. He finished his master's degree and we wanted something different, so we moved to Taiwan, which was a great, great place to go if you want something different.

John Dehlin [00:08:38] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [00:08:39] And we lived there for four years. And that was during the time of 9 11. And this is the first time that we're sharing a community with Americans. So there were expatriate Americans, lots from byu. And the cultural difference between our New Zealand community, we had. Had grown quite a, you know, nice New Zealand, small New Zealand community of Mormons, and the American, Utah BYU Americans. The cultural divide was just so explicit. And this is.

John Dehlin [00:09:15] Did you find them annoying, the Americans?

Gina Colvin [00:09:17] Lovely. Just lovely. But just. Just different. Yeah, really different. And this is the time of the Bush era.

John Dehlin [00:09:26] And of course, you know, brother.

Gina Colvin [00:09:28] Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we were sort of. I mean, we grew up in a social democracy, you know, you know, my husband and I, we're lefties. And it was never a problem. Never a problem in my home, stake in my wards. You know, most of. I would say that, you know, 90% of the people in my ward are lefties. And so then 911 happened. And, you know, of course, my husband and I and all the New Zealanders were like, well. Well, that was predictable. Like, what did you think? You can't go into another nation and remove their sovereignty and use all your weapons of mass destruction against people without, like, some. Some backlash. You create terrorists wherever you go doing that. And we got, like, severe backlash.

John Dehlin [00:10:14] But the BYU people love that.

Gina Colvin [00:10:16] Oh, hated it. Hated it. And of course, 911 happens. This was a conversation. And, well, 911 happened. And then there was President Hinckley's response. And I don't know if you recall, but he was at general conference. I think it was maybe October 2001 or 2002, where it was on the eve of the US military announcing their invasion of Afghanistan. And he stood there and he said, I think we will go with the President on this. Those were his exact words. And I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to throw up. I thought, what president? He's not my president. And when you're talking about we, who are you talking about? I was devastated. Couldn't go to church for two weeks. I just. That was the biggest punch in the guts that I've ever felt. Yeah. So that. That was real kind of departure. And I think that for me was I. I'm the conversation that I'm having my religious conversation that I'm having is so different from the conversation that a Mormon. Mormon, you know, your average conservative Mormon American is having. And I can't reconcile these two conversations because I've read Hugh Nibley approaching Zion.

John Dehlin [00:11:30] Right?

Gina Colvin [00:11:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:32] Yeah. Okay, so what does that do to you?

Gina Colvin [00:11:36] Well, you know, it. Well, it causes me to think critically, doesn't it? You know, this is about power and who has power. You know, that. That kind of warm, sort of social socialist, sort of democratic kind of ideology that I grew up with seemed so at odds with this. What I felt was a crassness. You know, I mean, a terrible thing that happened. It shouldn't ever happen. And I, you know, was very sorry for the victims, but I'm not more sorry for the victims of 911 than I am of the victims of America's, you know, incursions into other states. The victims in Iraq, the victims in Afghanistan and in Pakistan and, you know, elsewhere. Like, you know, my feeling was, why should these. You know, why should my sympathies be monopolized by my concern for American victims over anybody else's, you know, you know, children of mothers and children and innocent people elsewhere?

John Dehlin [00:12:40] So I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna play devil's advocate for a second, and I would just say, have you read the Book of Mormon?

Gina Colvin [00:12:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:47] I mean, the Book of Mormon specifically calls out America as the promised land, and I think the DNC even says that the American Constitution was divinely inspired. So, I mean, did any of that occur to you and did it influence you at all, or is that just sort of like. Like, dark skin color and polygamy just kind of laughed that part off too?

Gina Colvin [00:13:08] Oh, no, not at all. Because I read the Book of Mormon as an absolute tragedy. So this is what happened. Yeah, you might have been promised, but look how you stuffed it up. Look. Look how. Look how the story ends because you didn't learn the lesson.

John Dehlin [00:13:21] You being who? You being who?

Gina Colvin [00:13:24] Oh, the United States. If that was the treatise. If the Book of Mormon is a treatise on the. On the proposition that the United States was the promised land, they screwed it up.

John Dehlin [00:13:36] They, meaning the Nephites and the.

Gina Colvin [00:13:39] Sorry, the Nephites and the Lamanites.

John Dehlin [00:13:41] Oh, okay, so they're the ones that made America no longer a chosen. Not the. Not the founding fathers of the 1700s. You're putting the loss of America's chosen status on the Lamanites.

Gina Colvin [00:13:58] No, what I'm suggesting is that in the arc of human history, that people could be promised in their Bestness, you know, they could be promised. If, like, I think all promises are conditional. And if the Book of Mormon has taught me anything, and even the Bible is that humanity is, you know, the humanity is fickle. And the Book of Mormon has, you know, taught me that if you want to be the recipient of those blessings, then you needed to have done better. Like these people needed to have done better. You know, if we're talking about it as a literal content, you know, text, that the Nephites and the Lamanites should have done better. And this is what happens. You get the promise, you don't do what's required, and you're annihilated.

John Dehlin [00:14:41] Okay, so you. Because. So you never. You never were indoctrinated with nor bought into the idea that America, the United States, was the chosen government. The whole Constitution thing, and as Jeff Benson and that stuff never, never made it, you know, into your worldview.

Gina Colvin [00:14:59] Not into my worldview. And we knew that it was there. And I grew up in an environment. We were like, that's just crazy. Ezra Duff Benson was just kind of, you know, cuckoo. That's your other. Well, I remember my foster mother, Marion, saying to me, and she's American. She went to byu. She said if. And. But she grew up in the Seattle area, so she's quite liberal. She said, I'm going to have to pray very, very hard if President Benson becomes the prophet. So it was all this, you know, I mean, the Ensign articles about the great Constitution. Those were just things that we just looked past. We just looked over.

John Dehlin [00:15:34] Okay, okay.

Gina Colvin [00:15:35] Poor Americans.

John Dehlin [00:15:36] Yeah. Okay. So 911 happens, and then the wars, the Iraq, you know, Afghanistan, and you're just, like, wondering what happened to your church?

Returning to New Zealand and Faith Transitions

Gina Colvin [00:15:48] Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much.

John Dehlin [00:15:50] Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:15:51] And, you know, we kind of have to make sense of that theoretically and intellectually. It just kind of suddenly occurred to me that the church goes where America goes. So the kind of. The cultural climate, the political climate of the time, it's not that radical institution that it used to be or could have been. It's just, you know, it's the predominant or the. The dominant discourse of the day. And as it sort of marched towards neoliberalism, so has the church. America's march towards significant management, sort of corporate management, and so has the church. America's becoming. What do you mean?

John Dehlin [00:16:35] Neoliberalism.

Gina Colvin [00:16:36] Oh, neoliberalism is an extension of classical liberalism, but it's sort of freedom through the markets. That's what neoliberalism is.

John Dehlin [00:16:47] Okay. And in the United States, that would just be good Old conservative capitalism, right?

Gina Colvin [00:16:52] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:53] Okay. Okay. I just want to make sure. And then we have the term neo conservative, which is sort of Dick Cheney kind of George Bush kind of stuff. I just want to make sure we all are meaning what we, you know, understanding what we mean. Okay, so you're saying the church is. Is becoming a market driven church, a capitalistic church, and a conservative, sort of imperialistic, you know, culturally conservative kind of church. You know, that's what you start seeing in the early to mid 2000s.

Gina Colvin [00:17:24] Yes, absolutely. And if we had thought that there was a cultural mismatch between New Zealand and the United States before, it was nothing like we were seeing post 9 11.

John Dehlin [00:17:35] So how traumatic was that for you? How significant?

Gina Colvin [00:17:38] It was dreadful. You know, I remember us listening on the radio while we were on the radio or the television or whatever, while we were in Taiwan and thinking, do, you know, we need, you know, wonder what the church is saying about that? And then we get Orrin Hatch on the television, on the television, and his first words were, we need to get those bastards. You know. Now that is a high priest. And I'm sorry, but if that's the kind of American high priest that's so jingoistic and sort of xenophobic and utterly kind of enmeshed in the political climate of the day, then I've got no respect for that. So, I mean, that was. That was pretty devastating. I know that he's a statesman and, you know, but still, that was one of the most significant issue, you know, that was the most significant, the earliest statement by a Mormon that I heard, like, what the hell is that? Yeah, that's wrong.

John Dehlin [00:18:33] Yeah. Okay, so what did that do to you and how did that affect your participation?

Gina Colvin [00:18:40] Well, it really compromised it, actually. I was a bit of a. Both my husband and I were a bit of a dog with a bone about this whole thing. I was told that my views were not wanted at church by Americans and. Yeah, yeah, it just, you know, you know, it puts little kinks in your narrative, your religious narrative, and you have that kink there until you go back to revisit and try and sort of work through it and theorize it. But I was just sort of thinking, you know, the American church doesn't feel like my church.

John Dehlin [00:19:13] Wow. And that all happens in Taiwan, ironically.

Gina Colvin [00:19:16] That happens in Taiwan.

John Dehlin [00:19:18] Okay, okay. So did you get out of Taiwan?

Gina Colvin [00:19:22] Yeah, well, we only had one child at that time. We got a phone call from my husband's niece to say, I'm having a baby. Would you come back and adopt it. So we did. We were actually going off to England, actually. We were considering doing our PhDs at Alabama, Tuscaloosa. But we thought once, once that happened, we didn't really want to go near the States. So we're thinking about England, Portsmouth, somewhere in the Devon area. And we were just almost ready to go to England for PhDs, and then we got this phone call. So we thought, we felt really good about that. We came back and we adopted Finn, who's now 10.

John Dehlin [00:20:00] And was that your second child?

Gina Colvin [00:20:02] That's our second child, yes.

John Dehlin [00:20:03] Okay. Okay. And how many children do you have right now?

Gina Colvin [00:20:06] We have six.

John Dehlin [00:20:07] Oh, wow. Okay. Okay. So you came back and got your PhDs in New Zealand?

Gina Colvin [00:20:12] Yes, we did, yes.

John Dehlin [00:20:13] Okay. Where?

Gina Colvin [00:20:16] University of Canterbury. We stick close to home.

John Dehlin [00:20:18] Okay. And that's where you teach now, right?

Gina Colvin [00:20:20] That's right, that's right.

John Dehlin [00:20:21] Okay. All in Christchurch.

Gina Colvin [00:20:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:23] Okay. Okay. So you go back to New Zealand and it's like, oh, I'm back home. Everyone's progressive here. I can just forget about my times in Taiwan and forget about that nasty corporate American church. Because you've got the New Zealand church.

Gina Colvin [00:20:39] Yes, yes. But having said that, the New Zealand church kind of there is a strain of New Zealand Mormonism that matches in time to what the American church is doing. So it always has. There's always been a tension. There was a. If you get a critical mass, they sort of bat it away. But there's always this tension between the expectations of the corporate structures that the American church imposes and, you know, your own things that you're comfortable philosophically or ideologically with. So, yeah, we did. We embarked on our PhDs. Nathan's in political science and mine in journalism. We took a sibling group in 2007 of four. Four boys. And so that. That ra. You know, that expanded our family to six children.

John Dehlin [00:21:26] You adopted?

Gina Colvin [00:21:27] Four boys we permanently fostered.

John Dehlin [00:21:30] Wow. Okay.

Gina Colvin [00:21:31] Okay. Yeah. So that was.

John Dehlin [00:21:33] So you have one biological child.

Gina Colvin [00:21:34] One biological, one adopted and four. Okay, four foster.

John Dehlin [00:21:38] And was that by choice or just.

Gina Colvin [00:21:40] No, no, John, it was. We were asked at the almost kind of, at the 11th hour, there was some social, or what do we call it, Children and young social services crisis. These were children that were in my husband's family and they needed a place and there were some objections to where they were being placed. And we had raised a couple of those objections, said, well, why don't you have them? So, so basically overnight we got three more children. We got ten, ten month old twins and a two year old.

John Dehlin [00:22:13] Wow.

Gina Colvin [00:22:13] So that was quite traumatic.

John Dehlin [00:22:15] Had you wanted more biological children or not or not really. Okay. No, one was fine.

Gina Colvin [00:22:21] Yeah, well, we had two. I mean, we, you know, we're happy. We kind of, like, had a nice little family. It was portable.

John Dehlin [00:22:27] Yeah. Okay. And then you had. And then you had five. All of a sudden.

Gina Colvin [00:22:30] Then we had five, and then a year later we got the sixth.

John Dehlin [00:22:33] Okay, okay. And so how did your. Your feelings about the church evolve? Or did they.

Gina Colvin [00:22:43] Yeah, they did. They did. Now, I think it started with me asking. Yeah, there are a number of things happening all at the same time, and I think having the children and feeling rather stressed out with having four children under. What did we have five children under four?

John Dehlin [00:23:00] That's crazy.

Gina Colvin [00:23:02] Yeah, it was crazy.

John Dehlin [00:23:03] While you're getting your PhD, while I'm

Gina Colvin [00:23:04] doing my PhD while I'm working.

John Dehlin [00:23:06] So that's crazy.

Gina Colvin [00:23:08] So, and then. And then, of course, you. The first thing I started so that we're putting the kind of the political thing on the back. On the back burner because it's not a big question in New Zealand and not a big discussion. And then we have this question of tithing. You know, because we were strapped financially, it was difficult for us to kind of manage all these balls in the air at the same time. And I'm thinking, why are we playing gross tithing and really making it difficult for ourselves? So I started asking questions about that. Then I looked at the New Zealand situation. I'm thinking, you know, our tax rates, first of all, we don't get the rebates that American get. America gets on their tithing. Isn't that. You get a pretty good rebate, don't you?

John Dehlin [00:23:48] This is very dangerous territory you're walking in.

Gina Colvin [00:23:51] Is it?

John Dehlin [00:23:52] No, I'm just being silly. I'm just being silly. Yeah. Yes, we do. So I'm sure if New Zealand's more of a socialist country than America, then, yeah, tax rates are going to be very different.

Gina Colvin [00:24:05] Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, like, one of our highest tax rates was at 33%. And then on top of that, the discourse in New Zealand was to pay a gross tithe. So you're pretty much left with nothing. I was thinking this is. And how come we can't arouse a conversation about what this, this, this tithing doctrine means in different places? Like in England, at one point, they had a 90. Their highest tax rate was 90%. So what are you going to do? Like, live on nothing? And that's, you know, obviously at the top of the, you know, the income bracket. So that got me thinking about tithing. I'm thinking, why are we doing this? I. You know, so. So there are a number of questions that were bothering me. And. And then we moved. My husband got a postdoc in Wellington, which is on the north island, so we moved up there and we went to a very conservative ward, very conservative ward. And. And I'd been used to being able to ask questions and they frowned upon any questions. And I can only imagine that it was, you know. Yeah, I can only imagine this kind of. The temperature in this ward was very much like some Utah wards or. And people find themselves and they seem to take offense at most things I said. And it got around to me going to renew my temple recommend. And I was refused an interview on the basis of some comments that I had made. Inane, I thought, or just sort of, you know, pretty. Pretty tame, I thought, in. In Relief Society. And I had said. I said to the counsellor, you are required to give me a temple recommend interview. He said, no, we've already had a meeting as a state presidency and we've decided that your. Your testimony is not strong enough to have an interview. I said, don't think it works like that. But he wouldn't take no for an answer. So. So, I mean, you know, I had an issue there. Eventually Nathan had to go in and sort of be my knight in shining armor and say, the least that you can do is give this woman a temple recommend interview. And if there's anything that comes out of that, it comes out of it. And if you don't, I will take this to the top. I will keep going. I will knock on every general authority's door because what you're doing is wrong. So eventually they gave me an interview and I got the recommend, but it left a Scarlet.

John Dehlin [00:26:36] So what year. What year was that about?

Gina Colvin [00:26:38] This was in about 2008, 2009.

John Dehlin [00:26:42] Okay, so that's. Okay. So that's like. Were you plugged into the Mormon Internet at that point, like, you know, by common consent or Mormon stories or any of that stuff?

Gina Colvin [00:26:53] No, I wasn't actually. I had no idea. The only thing that I had seen was a Sunstone on YouTube was a Sunstone. And I knew about the September 6th, a Sunstone presentation by Lavina Anderson. And I cannot tell you how many times I watched it.

John Dehlin [00:27:12] Really?

Gina Colvin [00:27:13] Yeah, I just wept and I wept and I wept. I thought, how can this be? How can this be my church?

John Dehlin [00:27:17] Was that Lavina reflecting on her, you know, excommunication, like, 10 years later kind of thing?

Gina Colvin [00:27:24] Yes. I think that was sparked by the Helen Whitney PBS documentary.

John Dehlin [00:27:29] You would watch the Helen Whitney thing?

Gina Colvin [00:27:31] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'd watched, and I'd seen Margaret's excommunication story, and I thought, this is really interesting. And I went on and saw, I think Michael Quinn was giving a presentation at Sunstone. And I watched that and I thought. And that's when I started, you know, the bells started going off.

John Dehlin [00:27:49] Okay, so that's. That's on YouTube. Okay. I think. I think I posted those to YouTube, actually. Those are. Those were because I. I had worked at Sunstone with Dan. I gotten old copies of those, and I think I may have converted them to video and then posted them to YouTube. I'm not sure, but I think so

Gina Colvin [00:28:04] could be your fault then.

John Dehlin [00:28:07] Maybe. So. Okay, so that's at around 89, 90. No, no, sorry. 2008. 2009.

Gina Colvin [00:28:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:28:16] Okay.

Starting the KiwiMormon Blog

Gina Colvin [00:28:17] And so I'm. So we're in the Wellington area and I start thinking, oh, okay, maybe there are conversations going on the Internet. And I came across Mormon stories, and I came across your podcasts.

John Dehlin [00:28:28] I thought, oh, okay, wait, but before that, were you. Had you been. So you were denied the temple recommend ultimately, or you got.

Gina Colvin [00:28:35] No, I got this. I got my temple recommend and I went to the States and.

John Dehlin [00:28:38] And again. And again. His concern was what. What was the central concern of them denying you an interview? It was just being cheeky or was it some doctrinal thing or.

Gina Colvin [00:28:50] Well, I do recall. I don't know, I just like to ask questions. And I do recall one. One statement that I made in Relief Society that went down like a cup of cold sick. And they were talking about righteousness. And I said, I think you. And I said, I think that you need to be very careful about how you judge righteousness. For instance, is coming to church a sign of righteousness? I said, I can tell you that I know for a fact that there are women in here who dread Sunday mornings. And it is a. It is a conflicting and difficult thing for them to come on Sundays. And they just. I, you know, I think that they disliked that. But just sort of statements like that, you know, they were talking about the Kirtland area era, and they were just using strict binaries about faith and faithlessness. And I said, well, I think there's a historical context. If somebody's going to take promise something prophetically and they take all your money, then we've got a problem. And you can't blame people for being a bit cross about that, can we now?

John Dehlin [00:29:57] Okay, yeah. So you're kind of unhinged a little bit. You're starting to really launch some social criticisms.

Gina Colvin [00:30:07] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:30:08] Okay. Yeah, well, that's going to get you into trouble.

Gina Colvin [00:30:11] Well, you know. You know, so. Yeah. So we moved back to Christchurch and I think that time I had found them all Stories, Community. I think I joined some support groups and sort of flitted in and out of that. And then I thought, you guys are talking like the rest of the world doesn't exist.

John Dehlin [00:30:32] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [00:30:33] And I think maybe you had one interview with Ronan. Was it Ronin Head?

John Dehlin [00:30:37] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [00:30:38] I can't recall. I thought, oh, good, someone from England. But it was entirely unsatisfactory. So I thought I need to, I need to write something from a New Zealand perspective. And that's when I started blogging in 2012.

John Dehlin [00:30:51] Okay, so. All right. And up until that point it was Mormon stories. What else were you plugged into?

Gina Colvin [00:30:58] I think probably just Mormon stories. And then.

John Dehlin [00:31:02] And so you were hearing the Grant Palmer and Richard Bushman and Terrell Givens and all that kind of stuff. You were listening to all that stuff?

Gina Colvin [00:31:09] Yes, I was.

John Dehlin [00:31:10] Okay. And was that affecting your testimony? Was it making you feel validated? What was it doing to you?

Gina Colvin [00:31:16] No.

John Dehlin [00:31:17] Is it making you more angry?

Gina Colvin [00:31:19] Not really. I mean, look, I have to say that the historical stuff, I'm not, I don't, I don't feel triggered by the historical stuff. I don't. And I suppose at some stage I don't require. It must have occurred to me. Maybe it was early on, maybe I was inoculated by it. But I have never required the church or even Joseph Smith to be perfect or the history, you know, the history of the church to be squeaky clean. It's not an expectation that I have. So, no, I don't think, I don't

John Dehlin [00:31:53] think squeaky clean is the standard. I think, you know, it's the 14 year old girls. I mean, that's, you know, 30 women. Like, that's, that's a whole different order of magnitude of difficulty. Right?

Gina Colvin [00:32:06] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:32:06] So what do you, what do you really mean when you say that?

Gina Colvin [00:32:11] Well, I think what I mean is that I think Joseph was deeply flawed. I've always felt that. Deeply, deeply flawed. I think that he was a mystic and I think he had a capacity for huge religious and spiritual creativity. I think that his story is not unlike other people's stories where they have got a charismatic ability, a talent, they attract an audience and suddenly they can't get their erections down. You know, that's just the goes it's on and on and on.

John Dehlin [00:32:43] You know, it's the human story of men getting power and then.

Gina Colvin [00:32:47] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:32:48] And so you just. You sort of were okay with that.

Gina Colvin [00:32:51] Yeah, well, I'm not okay with it. I mean, I think it's terrible, but I'm like, well, that's just. That's just. But that didn't. That didn't take away from my sense of his mysticism and the, you know, the kind of theological depth that. That, you know, other hallmarks of his kind of. Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:33:11] Yeah. Okay. So the history stuff didn't bug you?

Gina Colvin [00:33:14] Not really.

John Dehlin [00:33:15] And you launched your blog and it's been happily ever after.

Gina Colvin [00:33:20] It is. Yes. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:33:22] No, no, no. So, yeah. So how was that experience of blogging and what were you trying to do with your blog and how was it received?

Gina Colvin [00:33:34] I think I was just saying, actually, there's another voice here. And, I mean, I did. I didn't expect much of it. I was pretty pleased when I got, like, you know, 30 hits. But, oh, gosh, 30 people are reading this. And mostly it was happening around my city. You know, we had friends of mine that would blog and family members that would comment on it. I thought, this is really, really great. And then I. And then I think Joanna found it. I'm not quite sure how she found it, but she emailed me at one point. She was on the. She was on the radio in New Zealand on the national program, which is kind of like a public radio. And I thought, wow, what an elegant. An elegant way of talking about the church. And for some reason, I don't know, maybe it was destiny or providence or whatever it is, we hooked up and, well, hooked up. You know, we got in contact with each other, and we've been great friends ever since. And this is Joanna Brooks, of course. And of course, with Joanna behind you, reblogging or reposting your blogs, suddenly I had an audience. Unfortunately, it's not a big New Zealand audience, although it is getting larger. It's mostly an American audience. But, you know, it's obviously kind of hits a nerve. Now, the reaction that I got to it was interesting. I had a phone call from a member of the state presidency. He said that good Mormons don't. Are not communist. I don't know how he got that. He said, oh, no, that's right. He said to me, it sounds like you are left wing. I said, that's right, I am.

John Dehlin [00:35:14] This is the stake president in New Zealand.

Gina Colvin [00:35:16] Not the stake president, a councillor on the state presidency.

John Dehlin [00:35:19] All right?

Gina Colvin [00:35:21] And he said, you Sound like you're left wing. I said, I am, and proudly so. And he said, well, Mormons can't be left wing. I said, well, I think you're wrong, you know, and out of, you know, your, you know, it's unacceptable for you to say such a thing. So we fought for about 45 minutes. I said, there's no way I'm taking it down. And then it was just sort of left there. And that's the only sort of censure that I might have had.

John Dehlin [00:35:51] When was that?

Gina Colvin [00:35:52] Oh, shortly after I did it, I think I did a tithing thing. I was maybe, you know, maybe my fifth blog. And I thought, I'm going to crack open this New Zealand tithing business because, you know, the new, the American conversation is that it's all. It's not transparent. Well, it's transparent. In New Zealand you can get all of their figures because they come under a charitable trust. So they're required. They're not a console. They're a charitable trust in New Zealand. So they have to make annual returns and make them public. And so you can see the Canadian, the Australian, and the New Zealand and the UK tithing returns or their financial returns on an annual basis, see how much tithing is being paid and what is being spent on.

John Dehlin [00:36:38] Does that make you feel better?

Gina Colvin [00:36:40] What's that?

John Dehlin [00:36:41] To be able to know how much is being spent. Does that make you feel better?

Gina Colvin [00:36:45] No. Well, I was furious, John. You were furious because I was furious. I'm thinking they spend about 60% of their salary of our tithing donations on salary, salaries like corporate salaries, and then the rest is really around property management. Well, that's completely uninspired. When I think about, you know, I think about the tithing donations that go out, you know, and, and knowing that up until recently, the maximum that you could get from your tithing as a rebate was $520 to award, you're saying. Yeah, yeah. No, this is like a personal tax return. So, so you might pay, I don't know, five, you know, $7,000. The maximum that you'll get back from the government is $520. They've changed it to 33%. That's the maximum back.

John Dehlin [00:37:34] That's okay, I got it.

Gina Colvin [00:37:36] Yeah. So when you're asking a gross tithe, your only, your only return until recently was $520 a year. And I'm well aware I've had enough friends who work in their church office buildings to know the kind of wastage that go. And, and, and to see the figures That, I mean, I think I worked it out. If you looked at how many church. They had to say how many church employees they had, and I was working out that the annual salary of 80 per full time employee of the church was about $78,000 a year.

John Dehlin [00:38:15] Wow.

Gina Colvin [00:38:16] And that's not. And we know that, you know, particularly women who are in administrative positions certainly aren't getting that. So somebody's getting a heck of a lot of money.

John Dehlin [00:38:24] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [00:38:25] So that, yeah. So that I, I blogged about that.

Tithing, Same-Sex Marriage, and Church Discipline

John Dehlin [00:38:27] And so you stopped, you stopped paying a gross tithe then.

Gina Colvin [00:38:31] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:38:32] And so how did you determine your tithing?

Gina Colvin [00:38:35] Well, tithing, you have to go back to the scriptures. Tithing is 10% of your increase.

John Dehlin [00:38:41] Okay, so what does that mean to you?

Gina Colvin [00:38:43] Well, that's. After your expenses, it's 10%.

John Dehlin [00:38:46] Wow. That, you know, that's, that's, that could get you in trouble.

Gina Colvin [00:38:50] Yeah. I've always been honest about it. That's what I think it is. I mean, try and talk me down from that. Just because Talmadge and Brown or whoever it was said it's a gross tithing. If you want gross blessings and you're gross tithing. I mean, that only that statement could come out of America. You know, capitalism. Yeah. Get a return. But.

John Dehlin [00:39:10] Okay. And so you, you. And this was a couple years ago that you had this tussle with your, with the member of your stake presidency.

Gina Colvin [00:39:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:39:18] And that's it.

Gina Colvin [00:39:19] That's all. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:21] And you've, you've been pretty, pretty strong, right, in some of your blog posts.

Gina Colvin [00:39:25] I have. But, you know, it's. I'm not, I don't think that I, I mean, other people are going to see it differently. I don't know that I'm destructive. I'm critical, and I'm mostly critical of the corporate operations of the church and the culture. I think that deserves critique. I was asked by my stake president, I have the world's best stake president to. And he's, you know, he's been very, very kind, but, you know, he would like me to write nicer things about the church, but that's pretty much been it.

John Dehlin [00:40:01] Yeah. So that's, you know, I posted on a thoughtful faith for people to ask questions. And I think the biggest question they have is how have you avoided, you know, trouble. Sanctions. You know, you've supported ordained women. Do you have an ordained women profile? I Do you have an ordained women profile that hasn't gotten you into trouble? Are you on record as publicly supporting same sex marriage?

Gina Colvin [00:40:29] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:40:30] Okay. You support same sex Marriage that hasn't gotten you into trouble. It sounds like partially you're protected by leadership that goes back a long way and you've built up a lot of social capital. It sounds like maybe folks in New Zealand don't care about same sex marriage or ordain women like they do here. Is that, you know, how else do you explain the fact that that hasn't gotten you in trouble when it's landed others of us, you know, in the hot seat?

Gina Colvin [00:41:00] Well, same sex marriage is a done deal in New Zealand.

John Dehlin [00:41:03] It's legal.

Gina Colvin [00:41:04] Country wise, it's legal. Yeah. Now I recall my foster father, David and he had his state presidency and in the nineteen 1980 something, I think 1982 or three, they had the homosexual law reform bill which basically decriminalized sodomy. And a letter came from Salt Lake City to ask local leaders to, you know, petition government or make submissions to select committees to continue with this, you know, with this awful practice of criminalising homosexuality. And my, very famously, my state president, foster father said, brothers picks up this letter, reads it to the state presidency. Brothers, this is the letter that's come from Salt Lake City. Can we bother? Does anybody care about this? And everybody shook their head and he screwed it up and put it in the rubbish. So, so we, we, it's a very liberal, I mean like same sex marriage is a done deal in New Zealand. And what, what do you want me to do, you know, do you want me to go against it now or what? Like, you know, ask for the law to be repealed? Like that's just crazy.

John Dehlin [00:42:15] Right? So you just kind of, it's just like the dark skin or other, you know, other things. Polygamy, you just kind of, you don't really pay attention to it. It's not a big deal.

Gina Colvin [00:42:25] Well, it breaks. No, that's right. I mean, but it breaks my heart that in the United States that this has become such a huge issue. Like it's unacceptable. Like, I mean, same sex marriage just, you know, I mean we know what same sex marriage is. It's just the affording of marital rights to people of the same gender. And then, and then you pass that and then people of the same gender get married and that's it, that's all that happens, trust me.

John Dehlin [00:42:51] Right, but it's not unacceptable because you're, you know, you're still in the church, you're still active. So even though the church is doing everything it can to fight is acceptable, even though you don't like it, it's kind of like unpleasant, but you know, acceptable.

Gina Colvin [00:43:10] What's acceptable?

John Dehlin [00:43:11] That the church is fighting same sex marriage?

Gina Colvin [00:43:14] Well, I think it's unacceptable. There are other things to fight. How about poverty? How about inequality? How about racism? How about the treatment of women? Like, it's just, it's a silly, it's a silly issue to get hung up on and to drag the rest of the international church on. I mean, how many states where the churches have legalized same sex marriage? And it's just not a problem, it's not an issue and it shouldn't be our issue.

John Dehlin [00:43:38] Right, so you don't like it, but I mean, it hasn't affected how you, it hasn't affected your faith or your testimony?

Gina Colvin [00:43:45] No, that's just an American issue.

John Dehlin [00:43:48] Wow. Okay, cool. So. So having been raised a feminist, I'm curious how it was for you to see Kate Kelly, you know, ultimately be tried and excommunicated for ordained women. What was that like for you?

Kate Kelly's Excommunication and Female Ordination

Gina Colvin [00:44:09] Oh, it was devastating. It was devastating. When I just don't believe in excommunication. I even struggle that my ex husband was excommunicated. I even struggle with that somewhat. Yeah, I just think it's a punitive measure and I mean, it's just a nonsense. It's a nonsense to disregard questions of equality in the church and do so so violently. It's an enormously violent thing to do to anybody. And I, how I process that. I mean, I just think that was, I think this was the corporate church not wanting to. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how processed. I just think it was awful. It was terrible. I was devastated. It was at that point I went to my stake president, I said, I just don't think I can manage. For the first time I thought, I just, I can't manage this cruelty in the church. It's wrong. It's just mean.

John Dehlin [00:45:09] Right? Yeah, it's hard. So you oppose excommunication and it was heartbreaking for you to see that happen to Kate.

Gina Colvin [00:45:20] Well, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:45:21] Do you support. So you do, and you said you support female ordination?

Gina Colvin [00:45:25] Well, I do. I'm on the ordained woman board of the executive board. But my position is this. Unordain. Some men ordain, stop ordaining children and ordain some women. Okay. But I think one of the issues, of course, is the conflation of church and institutional authority with priesthood, which I see as spiritual practice. So when you conflate those two things, of course women are going to want the priesthood. But if you take, if you detach them and you say Actually institutional authority and practice. And, you know, and the organization of the church has little to do with spiritual practice, ritual and ordinances. If you kind of take those things away, then really you're asking people who have maybe some, as I said about Joseph Smith, some spiritual intuition and creativity, who want to be involved in ritual and ceremony and these ordinances, and those who have a bent for organization. You know, once you've got, when you, when you've got all of those things kind of conflated and you've also got patriarchy in there, you've got, you know, a cocktail of issues.

John Dehlin [00:46:42] So for you, those who run the church are kind of administrators or bureaucrats. They should be able to be men or women, right?

Gina Colvin [00:46:49] Oh, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:46:51] And then the priesthood is kind of spiritual leadership and guidance, and that should be men or women, too, but maybe not children.

Gina Colvin [00:46:59] Not children, no.

John Dehlin [00:47:01] And that's, I think that's kind of how the community of Christ does it, if I understand it right.

Gina Colvin [00:47:05] And I think about the Anglicans, you know, they, you know, if they feel that they have that call to priesthood, then, you know, they take a long time over that, debating it and reflecting and counseling, and then only when they're ready do they. Do they take it. We just sort of give it away as a praise. You've got a penis, you got the priesthood. You know, I mean, it's, it's. I think that's problematic.

John Dehlin [00:47:26] So something, something that just really disorients me. And, you know, obviously I felt this when you were talking about how you, how you thought about race in the Book of Mormon and polygamy in the early years. But, you know, when I started doing my research for my dissertation on LGBT Mormons and seeing the suicide rates and the mixed orientation marriages and the high divorce rates and all the depression and anxiety, and then I started being a therapist. All these young people who started telling me they were wanting to kill themselves and, you know, all the tales of the, of the feminists who were just really heartbroken over their role in the church. And at some point, all the, you know, when you say unacceptable, it became, I guess, for me, literally unacceptable in the sense that I kind of felt like I just can't be silent anymore. And so a lot of people are asking how you've avoided trouble. And I would say you've avoided trouble the same way I have. No, the same way I did for many years, which was, you never directly challenge the doctrine, you never directly question the church's truth claims, and you never directly criticize any leader by name. And that's the way you stay out of trouble. And I don't know enough about your writings to know to the extent which you've ever crossed any of those lines. But I'm unaware of you crossing those lines. But I imagine that might be how you stayed out of trouble. But my question to you is at one, what's kept it. What's kept you from feeling like it's unacceptable? Meaning questioning the church's validity, questioning the fitness of its current leaders, and even crossing that line into publicly criticizing them by name when they, when they, you know, do something that's really heinous. You know, how, how have you been able to stay a member and faithful?

Gina Colvin [00:49:33] Do you mean stay a member, not be kicked out, or just stay a member?

John Dehlin [00:49:36] Stay a member and just want to

Gina Colvin [00:49:38] even and be okay with it.

John Dehlin [00:49:39] Yeah. Want to attend, not go crazy when you attend church. Not get angry and want to speak out, not just scratch your eyes out when you attend and not want to go militant like maybe Kate and I ended up doing. What's kept you from taking it to that level?

Gina Colvin [00:50:00] Do you know, I think, and I've experienced all of those things. I think I. There have been times that I've gone to church and I think. And I've sat there and I thought, I think my head is actually literally going to explode. Do you know? And then people are going to have to get up onto the chandeliers and clean off my brain parts, you know, and there have been times I've had panic attacks, like, I can't go to church. I can't go to church. You know, one of them is having, you know, my husband's pretty Orthodox and it was very fractious in our marriage because I wanted to hold him accountable for his beliefs all the time.

John Dehlin [00:50:34] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [00:50:35] How can you believe this? How can you believe this? What You. Your belief is offensive to me, and that's not a very good way to conduct a marriage, you know, and, and, and when you think about it. But I will, yeah, I will say that I think when things have boiled over. I went to see my, my bishop a couple of years ago. He's since been released. A couple of weeks ago, I went to see my bishop and I, and I just brain dumped. I brain dumped on. I said, I don't like this. And there's a city cracker, there'. Marriage. And there's this and this and this and this and this. And it's just like, blah. And he sat and he, and he, and he said, gosh, that doesn't Sound very good, does it? Oh, no, that's terrible. Oh, what an awful. I can see how you'd be cross about that. And then I'd sort of just expired, you know, everything was out. And he said, gina, we love you. Like, this church wouldn't be the same without you. We love you. Do you love us? Because that's all that matters. And I said, yeah, I do, actually. He goes, I'm really sorry that I can't help you with these other issues and they sound terrible. And I know that I've got something, you know, I've got things to think about. But right now you belong to our community. We feel like you belong and we love you and we hope that you love us too.

John Dehlin [00:51:53] So that's beautiful.

Gina Colvin [00:51:55] I diffused it.

John Dehlin [00:51:57] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [00:51:58] But my state president's been the same way.

John Dehlin [00:52:02] Wow. And so I guess leadership roulette is part of the answer. You won the leadership lottery a little bit. Is that part of it?

Gina Colvin [00:52:11] I absolutely did, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:15] And in some ways you're a bit sheltered from the American church in the sense that many, I imagine many bishops and stake presidents might not have received that same venting the same way if they were, you know, here in Draper or Provo or Logan.

Gina Colvin [00:52:34] Yeah, I don't doubt it. But then there are places in New Zealand that I wouldn't say those things.

John Dehlin [00:52:39] Right. So you just feel safe in your particular ward. Isn't there a bit of privilege that you sort of. Do you have any survivor's guilt that you get a pass with your bishop? But then other people have the opposite experiences, and whether it's Marisa and Carson Calderwood or, you know, the Van Alen's or me or whatever, Kate, that, you know. Do you have any survivor's guilt?

Gina Colvin [00:53:03] I do, actually, I think. Well, I mean, I'm just frustrated. I'm frustrated because I think that the corporate church, I think, you know, the Temple Square Church could do something about this. They could give proper training, they could communicate broadly with their bishops and stake presidents about how to handle these situations. And I'm frustrated with that, but I think it's there for the grace of God. Do you know, if I had had the same stake president when I was living elsewhere in New Zealand, I think that it would be a completely different story. I think that they would have run me out of town, they would have found me a huge threat. And when you think about the implications of that, you know, so I'm from a. Like, I've got my. In my own ward, I've got my six children there's eight of us. There's nieces and nephews and there's in laws and then there's my own foster brothers and sisters and their children. That is a massive impact that any censure on me that would have. And now my brother in law is the bishop. So yeah, I feel like, you know, I don't like this priesthood roulette. I think it's easily taken care of.

John Dehlin [00:54:15] Right, yeah. Okay. So something that I'm not hearing in any of your writings or you know, venting to your leaders is any concerns about truth claims with the church. And so I'm sure you're probably more well read than I am on things like the book of Abraham and the papyrus and the translation Book of Mormon historicity, you know, polygamy and kind of the seedy things that happened. So to what extent have you thought about and what conclusions have you drawn about things like the historicity of the Book of Abraham, of Book of Mormon, the exclusivity of the one true church and all those things that sort of maybe get in the way for many of us?

Two Churches in One: A Personal Theology

Gina Colvin [00:55:13] Oh gosh, that's a big conversation. I'll try and keep it brief. I think for me there are two churches in our one church. And the church that I feel like I belong to is an open dialogue. It's transparent, it's where you question, it's where you refute, it's where you can you understand the power of heresy. And you are always trying to give the church a rebirth because in, you know, it is always dying as I think, I can't remember who said it, some wonderful poet said, because it's always dying. And I think that's the, for me, that's my church, those are my people.

John Dehlin [00:56:01] I think the power of heresy, I

Gina Colvin [00:56:03] think heresies, you know, utterly important for the health and relevance to say things that are heretical. I think it's a powerful way of raising consciousness to help us reflect on ourselves, to be self reflexive, to think critically about our position on things.

John Dehlin [00:56:23] So yeah, so to say the Book of Mormon isn't historical, for example, or this isn't God's one true church. You think that can be good for the church?

Gina Colvin [00:56:32] Absolutely, absolutely. Somebody's got to ask the question what happens if nobody asks those questions?

John Dehlin [00:56:37] Then everybody believes and follows and pays their tithing at full gross and the church thrives and grows.

Gina Colvin [00:56:43] That's what happens. Well, does it thrive? Does it thrive?

John Dehlin [00:56:46] Well, I mean look at the past 150 years. It's done a pretty good job.

Gina Colvin [00:56:51] Well it might have thrived, you know, corporately, but it might have grown in numbers. But then do you know what else has grown in numbers? You know, Coca Cola, you know, And Al Qaeda. Yeah, and Al Qaeda.

John Dehlin [00:57:06] Okay, so you're saying for the church to grow in righteousness, it needs heresy?

Gina Colvin [00:57:14] It does, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:16] Okay, so that doesn't speak well for the modern church, necessarily.

Gina Colvin [00:57:21] Well, yeah, I think. Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't. And I think that we were. I mean, somebody. I can't remember, Kevin, somebody emailed me something that B.H. roberts. He said, you know, we need a church of second disciples, those who raise hard questions for the institution. I mean, my church is filled with, you know, BH Robertson and Eugene England and Bob Reese, and that's my church. You know, I look over the fence and I don't recognize that other church. Like, it's shut down. It's just this sort of this empire building. It suffers from an absence of doubt in itself. It's prone to cruelty, lack, you know, thinklessness and thoughtlessness. And I don't recognize that as my church.

John Dehlin [00:58:09] Wow.

Gina Colvin [00:58:10] So my church is, you know, I have to create it in my church, in my head.

John Dehlin [00:58:16] But then doesn't that make you say, it's all rubbish, it's all. It's not true. And I'll go find community and love and service outside of Mormonism.

Gina Colvin [00:58:27] I think you're always doing that. Huh? You know, every Sunday, I think, gosh, it'd be much better. I took a. I took a sabbatical. I took a. Actually, I went on protest. I announced it to my stake that I'm going on protest until my husband repudiates polygamy. And he's a bit lazy, kind of intellectually about sort of Mormon things. I think he just sort of takes it secondhand from me. But on this polygamy thing, you know, he was a bit stuck. Not because he wants to be polygamous, I must say, but just because he hadn't given a lot of thought. I said, well, a lot of thought. I said, well, I'm not coming back to church until you have thought about it. And then I went to the Presbyterian Church, I went to Anglican Church, and I went to the Baptist church. It was just lovely. It was lovely to be. To have to witness spiritual practice that wasn't informed by all of our issues, our Mormon issues. It was such a lovely reprieve. But I feel called to be a Mormon from that time when I was 16. You know, it's time for you to go back to church. I feel called to be here. This is my church. These are my people, you know, And I think, I trust that God will say to me at some stage, this is not good, or, you should leave now. And I'll trust my intuition then. I'll trust that revelation. But right now, I haven't felt that.

John Dehlin [00:59:44] Yeah, well, I have to say, I relate. I mean, I stayed in the church, you know, years and years and years after I had major doubts and questions, and I was active up until the point where I got the letter from my stake president. So I guess I have to say I can understand your feelings, because that's the way I felt until I got the letter, basically.

Gina Colvin [01:00:09] Yeah. And if I got a letter, I think I would probably feel the same way. Like, okay, maybe that's my time done.

John Dehlin [01:00:16] Right. But. But until they kick you out, you're sticking?

Gina Colvin [01:00:20] I'm sticking. And I'm. Look, I'm in the primary presidency, and I think I'm jolly good there. I mean, I was like, I mean, up until recently, and I had to ask to be released from being the gospel doctrine teacher. You know, I was that for eight years and really enjoyed it. I enjoy the service that I give, and I enjoy the service that other people give our family. And I feel like I'm loyal to the church, loyal to the church that I have in my head.

John Dehlin [01:00:44] Right, yeah. So there's a lot of people out there who are struggling, and all they see is the corporate church. Maybe they don't live in an environment that's more sheltered than yours, or maybe they do. But even so, what advice would you give people on how to be able to create this church in your head and be satisfied by that? In the face of Dallin H. Oaks and, you know, L. Tom Perry and Boyd K. Packer and Jeffrey R. Holland and all these disheartening things that keep coming down from above. Like, you know, you said that talking about the middle way of progressives and liberals and heretics staying in the church. What tips can you give people to be able to culture and cultivate and nurture that church of your mind that can allow you to stick around? How do you do that? Do you have any advice?

Gina Colvin [01:01:48] I think one of the best things that I did was I was very upfront. Like, when I started blogging, it was really me saying, I'm not going to sit with this performance of agreement in an institution that I find sometimes harmful. And that was, you know, so I just kind of feel quite liberated. And I think if I say anything, it's just to speak up. They can't excommunicate everybody. And if they do, well, that's the church they want. I'll take wonderful, liberal, fabulous, thinkful people out of the church and they'll be left with something very narrow and unappealing and irrelevant for this day and age.

John Dehlin [01:02:26] Right, right. And yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, that's what I had to decide too. That the only way that I could stay. I felt like it would be a deal with the devil if I just stayed silent. So I said the tax I pay to remain a member, especially for all the people who I know are suffering because of the church's teachings, is that I'll be vocal. And then if the church wants me, even if I'm vocal, then we're good.

Gina Colvin [01:02:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:53] And the problem with me is they, they kind of said, we don't want you.

Gina Colvin [01:02:57] Yeah. You know what? And people, I'll take a bullet for this too, John. I'll take a bullet. I'm not going to step down.

John Dehlin [01:03:03] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:03:04] And you know, what are they going to do just to keep excommunicating and excommunicating and excommunicating? You know, I mean, I think we are at a time where there is increasing intolerance for a church that is just so kind of mean spirited and sort of, you know, monofocal and unable to ask hard questions of itself.

John Dehlin [01:03:27] Right.

Gina Colvin [01:03:27] I think that, I think there's just going to be a general intolerance. I mean, your excommunications, Kate's excommunications, you know, we, we hurt as a community when this continues, at some stage they are going to have to say, even if they do it for pragmatic purposes, because let's face it, that a lot of people who are in that place of questioning have means, that's a lot of tithing that they're getting rid of. So, you know, change the church to keep the money, you know, if you have to. And you know. Yeah. I just think, I mean, when you look at it sociologically, this always happens. You've got a strong subculture, there's internal. You get a problem with group think. And I think that's one of our biggest issues is group think. And this kind of powerful need to maintain a consensus even in this, in the face of lots of diversity. And if an organization that cannot expand to accommodate that diversity and those hard questions will implode on itself, it just, it won't be healthful, healthy.

John Dehlin [01:04:29] Right. I agree. Okay. So just, just because I'm dying to to know just a couple specifics. So. So you still believe in God, right?

Gina Colvin [01:04:42] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:04:42] Is it an anthropomorphic God for you? Is it a male God, a female God? Is it a God without, you know, passions, parts, or whatever it is? Like, what's God for you?

Gina Colvin [01:04:53] I think God's a number of things. I think she is. Looks like Xena, Warrior Princess, actually. I quite like that. I like the panentheistic God. I like a God of mystery. Like I, you know, read Job and Colossians and Corinthians where God is positioned as a God of mystery, I feel much happier. And whether it's body parts and passions doesn't bother me so much, but that the God that I feel closely associated with is a God of mystery and presence. So, yeah, I like that. There's no boundaries around.

John Dehlin [01:05:30] So you're open to an anthropomorphic God, but it's not necessary for you.

Gina Colvin [01:05:34] Not necessary.

John Dehlin [01:05:36] And for you, Jesus literally resurrected. Is that an important part of your belief?

Gina Colvin [01:05:43] I'm more compelled by Jesus historical mission, by his historical, his. His political work, his ideological work. I, you know, I've read, you know, John Dominic Crossan and, you know, Reason Aslan and where they've critiqued the. And who's here on Robin Myers, where they've critiqued the historic, the post Easter Jesus. I think they've got some compelling things for us to think about. I don't know. I don't know. I hope so, but I don't really know. And that's beside the point to me because what I really love is the living Christ.

John Dehlin [01:06:17] So for you, the resurrection will just be a bonus. But what you love and care about is the central teachings of Jesus.

Gina Colvin [01:06:26] Yes, because I'm here now. I'm not preparing for my death. I'm here now. And what Christ taught now I love. You know, for our lives, I love.

John Dehlin [01:06:36] Right, right. Okay. Yeah, yeah. This is sounding very similar to kind of my positions prior to my excommunication.

Gina Colvin [01:06:44] Thanks, John.

John Dehlin [01:06:45] No, thank you. I feel validated. Okay, so Joseph Smith, did he. Did he see God and Jesus? You know, did that literally happen? And is this God's one true church or with exclusive priesthood authority? Where do you stand on that stuff?

Beliefs on Scripture, Joseph Smith, and the Gold Plates

Gina Colvin [01:07:04] Did God, I don't know if Joseph saw God, saw God and Jesus. I mean, the scriptural record suggests that God, you know, Jesus visit. I don't know. I don't know that that's necessary to know that. I feel skeptical. But then I do believe that he is a, you know, he is a mystic. So Whatever he experienced and what I think he. I do believe he had an experience, and I believe he gave words to that experience. There may be some misfit between, you know, the words that he's given, the language that he's given that experience, and, you know, perhaps the thing that happened. But I can see historically, in terms of the context, if you want to make a church, then you need to create kind of concrete connections to the deities that you're speaking of that might sort of trump other religious traditions. I don't know. I can see the political. I can see why he would say that he did. I don't know that I need to believe that he saw God and Jesus. I mean, the only God in Jesus that I need to care about is the God and Jesus that I understand.

John Dehlin [01:08:07] What about the claim that it's God's one true church?

Gina Colvin [01:08:10] Well, I'm a bit agnostic like that, actually. I'm sort of a Mormon Christian theist agnostic. I think we could be. It's like. It's like a conversation about the Book of Mormon. Like, was the US the promised land? Well, absolutely could be. It could have been. Are we one true church? I'm thinking Zion. Could we be Zion? Absolutely could be. Are we? No, we're not. So if we're in the absence of us being a Zion people, then what else need we do to make ourselves Zion?

John Dehlin [01:08:42] So it's more aspirational than positional, so to speak. Well, you know, we're God's true church to the extent that we act like it. Is that what you're saying?

Gina Colvin [01:08:51] Yeah, yeah, but.

John Dehlin [01:08:53] But you're not sort of exclusive, you know, God's exclusive church does it sounds like.

Gina Colvin [01:09:00] I would find it very hard to feel that because I've just been so uplifted by other faith traditions and. And their conversations with God. You know, sometimes our. Our language that we have for our religion gets very tired and. And I find upliftment in the language that other people have, other faith traditions have. And there I find Christ again. I get Rene to kind of dismiss them out of hand. I think I couldn't do that in all good conscience.

John Dehlin [01:09:28] So God works in all the churches, and we're just one of many churches that God works through.

Gina Colvin [01:09:34] Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah. But I feel optimistic that we could be much more than we are.

John Dehlin [01:09:43] Right.

Gina Colvin [01:09:44] I like Zion. You know, the Zion thing is the thing that compels me. We speak of Zion. We speak of an ideal community. What we should be. We should be speaking more of that. We've gone the Christian sort of personal salvation route where that seems to be much more important than the community that we're creating.

John Dehlin [01:10:01] Okay. And then the last sort of detailed question is just, do you believe that there really were gold plates and that, that the Book of Mormon really is a translation of an ancient record? And, and same with Book of Abraham. Do you see that as a translation in a scripture? Or how do you, how do you think about those two books?

Gina Colvin [01:10:20] Ah, yeah, the Book of Mormon. This is a, you know, on the one hand, look, I love the Book of Mormon. I love it, I love it. But I don't have any particular inclination in me at this point in time to say I believe it as a literal text. There's no evidence. I mean, texts come out of a context and a historical, a political, a social, social and a cultural context. I, and I struggle to believe that at one point in the earth's history that God dictated a book or to, you know, a different age. Do you know what I'm saying? Like the Bible. For me, I love the Bible because it is God dealing with humanity and the wrestle that humans have with this, this being that they've called God. And I love the Book of Mormon because I think if nothing else, it gives us this wonderful sweep of human history that says this is what happens when you don't try and build the community that you, you know, that that is, you know, spiritually alive and healthy. But I noticed particularly convinced about its historicity or the narratives around it.

John Dehlin [01:11:40] So there probably weren't gold plates.

Gina Colvin [01:11:42] Probably not.

John Dehlin [01:11:44] And so how do you then keep yourself from then concluding that it was a fraud, that it was made up, and that it's basically based on a lie? Because that's what Joseph claimed. How do you keep from getting all angry and dismissing the text?

Gina Colvin [01:12:03] I think I've already answered that question because I don't ex. Like John. To John Joseph, he was, you know, he was flawed. I don't, I don't know. I mean, I think this is a story that need. I mean, the emergence of this book, however it merge, I think it's, it was inspired. Like, I mean, I do think it's some, there's some kind of inspiration. I, like, I say I feel a spiritual affinity with it, but. What.

John Dehlin [01:12:30] Okay, no, no, I get it.

Gina Colvin [01:12:31] Yeah. I don't require it to be historically accurate. I don't require Joseph Smith to have told the truth about it. I mean, he didn't tell the truth about polygamy.

John Dehlin [01:12:40] Right. And same with the Book of Abraham then.

Gina Colvin [01:12:43] Oh, I Think the church has already came up about that. Oh, that's always bothered me, that book.

John Dehlin [01:12:47] Yeah,

Gina Colvin [01:12:49] well, answer that question.

John Dehlin [01:12:51] Yeah, I mean, I'm feeling. I'm feeling three things right now. I'm feeling just with, you know, my family and I are doing better than we've ever done in terms of, you know, how. How happy we are. And so from the sense of having been excommunicated, I'm not. I'm not feeling bitter or angry because we're all doing really well and we're all happy, but I am also simultaneously feeling really kind of. I mean, I'm just describing my feelings now. I'm putting my psychology hat back on. I'm feeling really angry because you just described, you know, every. Every single tenant of my testimony or non. Testimony that I. That I explained to my previous stake president, that I explained my current stake president, my current bishops, and. And it's just. It makes me really angry that. That you're able and I'm happy for you, but I'm just. It does. It makes me feel angry that I got chased out for basically believing and saying the same things that you're kind of saying.

Gina Colvin [01:14:01] Well, I mean, you know, someone might listen to this podcast and I'll be out on my knee, out of my ear.

John Dehlin [01:14:07] I don't know. No, I don't think so. I mean, anyway. No, it's okay. And I. But then I also want to say I'm really happy. Like, I think it's a beautiful and so articulately expressed, nuanced perspective. It's. It's inspiring and it's. It's the kind of. The only type of Mormonism that I ever could have continued to embrace. And I love it that you're in. I love it that you're modeling it, that you're being honest and open and standing strong and. Wow, Gene, I think. I think that's one of the most powerful, candid and frank testimonies and role models that I could imagine for our modern church. So I'm. I'm also inspired as I'm angry, you know, and I'm. And I'm very happy that you're leading a thoughtful faith podcast and the community and that other Mormons can look to you as one. I don't want to say role model. You'll probably hate that. But just as someone who. They can say, hey, there's someone else, you know, I can. I can be that type of. I can be a Gina Colvin type of Mormon, you know.

Gina Colvin [01:15:16] Right. Preferably without the messy bits.

John Dehlin [01:15:19] The Messy bits. Without the shagging, you mean?

Gina Colvin [01:15:25] Yeah. Well, I mean. And thank you, John. Thank you for, you know, your part in facilitating, you know, a broader and a deeper conversation. And it grieves me. It grieves me that you have been made to suffer because of it. I think it was unnecessary. And I would like to have a chat with your state president.

John Dehlin [01:15:45] I'll let him know. I'll send his email address.

Gina Colvin [01:15:48] You have been a very naughty man.

John Dehlin [01:15:52] So. Yeah. So the middle way. Talk about, you know, how that happens, especially now. Especially now that the church has sort of. It looks like it's retrenching, whether it's the. The Van Allens or the Calderwoods or me or Kate or other people. You know, there's a lot of people that feel scared. There's a lot of people who say, if I speak up, like John or Gina or Kate, I'm going to be punished, too. You know, and it sounds like your response was, they can't put, you know, they can't excommunicate us all. So are you sort of taking that Martin Luther King Jr. Approach, which is they can only put so many people in jail, so everybody speak up and be bold, and at some point, they won't be able to get rid of us all. Is that kind of your position?

Advice for Thoughtful Dissenters Staying in the Church

Gina Colvin [01:16:43] I would love it. I would think. I think that people should write. Write a letter, an email right now. Go to your email and write a letter to your stake president or to your bishops and say, this is where I am in my faith journey. This is what I'm troubled. You need to understand, this is who I am, and I would ask you not to punish me for it because it's painful enough as it is, and let me be right. And if. And look, if we got thousands and thousands of people doing that, what are they going to do? You can't punish people for their doubts or for their belief. Same. Same reason that you can't force a belief. You can't force somebody to believe somebody, something. That's just a nonsense. Our belief is the only truly personal thing that we have on this earth.

John Dehlin [01:17:30] And I think I got to the point where my leaders would have said, yeah, you can believe anything you want. I mean, it was Elder Holland that said to me personally, you know, it's okay to have doubts. Just don't go and purchase a printing press. And what he means is, don't become vocal about it. Don't talk openly about it, whether it's in church or on your blogs or on your podcasts. You know, Just, just keep it to yourself or talk about it with your priesthood leaders in private. It's the, it's the public expression of doubt and disbelief that. That kind of gets you in trouble. So, so what do you think about that?

Gina Colvin [01:18:08] Well, I think that's a nonsense because first of all, there are going to be people who are in wards who are utterly and completely isolated and they have nobody else to go to except the online communities, people who understand them. I think about a thoughtful faith. And we get, you know, we get people daily introducing themselves and the story is repeated over and over again. And what do they say after they've said their story of pain and suffering? They've said, thank you so much for accepting me. This is the first time that I've had to tell my story. We've had even people going back to church because they got to tell their story. So it's a nonsense to ask people to be silent and sure, go and talk to your priesthood leaders, but it behooves the Quorum of the twelve or whoever, the first presidency of the church to properly train those ecclesiastical leaders. Now, I believe that not one ecclesiast. And if somebody has a problem with the church essays and they are asked to speak to the priesthood leader about it, then what they should say to their bishop or whoever it is is, have you read the essay? Because until you have read and processed the essay, I'm not having this conversation with you. So for me, it's about getting your power back. Like, when we submit our will to God, we don't submit our will to an institution. We are the church. And I just think, I just. It saddens me that people are so frightened. How have we got to that place where people are so frightened of a community that at its best is loving and it's inclusive? I mean, look at my story. You know, just this kind of poor brown kids with a mouthy attitude. And I have a PhD and I have a wonderful family, I've got a great job. And I. And all good things that have happened to me have happened because of my membership in the church. But that should be the story. This is what Mormonism should be. It shouldn't, should, should be. That should be everybody's story. Not, I'm in pain because of my church. Now that that is a grievous, grievous sin to be had on a church to cause good people pain. And I think people need to start waking up to that.

John Dehlin [01:20:19] That's beautiful. Oh, it's just, it's powerful. Well, I'M just so. I'm just dying to. Just dying to see if you're able to, you know, to gain a critical mass of kind of. I don't want to say followers, but just people who share that point of view and are willing to act on it. Because really, you get. You don't. If you're. If you're not having much of an impact, they really don't care.

Gina Colvin [01:20:50] No, that's right.

John Dehlin [01:20:51] Because the benefit. Because the cost of doing what they did to me, to me and Kate, can be way higher than the benefit. But there gets a point where they say, this person's having too much influence. We have to cut them off because they're, you know, because they're gaining. They're gaining too much support. And so that's what they do. And so. So, you know, I would say that you're fine unless. Unless people start really liking and believing and following what you do. And that's. And that's the only point where you could really be in jeopardy is that. That's kind of what you see, too, it sounds like.

Gina Colvin [01:21:29] Well, yeah, and I would hope that people don't, you know, I don't like to. I don't want to recruit followers. I mean, I would say, look, join the thoughtful faith community. Find a community that matches your faith journey, that they're speaking to you, and have that conversation where it's safe and, you know, get your power back and find strength in that. Because I think, you know, I think this church is worth saving, you know, and if I have to be a hit person, just like you, John, if I have to be a hit person along the way, then I think I've kind of, you know.

John Dehlin [01:21:57] Oh, what. Wait, what's the word you're using?

Gina Colvin [01:21:58] I think I've got to be a target along the way.

John Dehlin [01:22:01] What'd you say, though? Hit piece.

Gina Colvin [01:22:04] I said hit person. But I'm not going to be a hit person. I'm going to be the hit person.

John Dehlin [01:22:08] Wait, wait. Head person. I just want to make sure.

Gina Colvin [01:22:11] Hit. Hit.

John Dehlin [01:22:13] Hit person.

Gina Colvin [01:22:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:14] Meaning the person who takes the fall. What do you mean by that? Yes.

Gina Colvin [01:22:17] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:22:18] Okay. Okay. You're saying you're willing to be that.

Gina Colvin [01:22:21] Well, if I have to, then I have to. There's. There's no way that I can step. Step back from it. You know that, like, you can't step back from authenticity. What do I do? I do. I perform my religion to whose standards?

John Dehlin [01:22:35] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:22:36] I can't do. It's not possible.

John Dehlin [01:22:38] Right.

Gina Colvin [01:22:39] But I only wish it. I only wish the Church. Well, I mean, the church they have in my imagination, is a beautiful church. And it's there. It's there. It's sitting there, waiting to be. Waiting to be re languaged and, you know, and resurrected.

John Dehlin [01:22:57] Wow. I used to say Lindsay Hansen park was the one mighty and strong, but I think you're giving her a run for her money.

Gina Colvin [01:23:04] Ha. There you go, Lindsay.

John Dehlin [01:23:08] I love it. It's so powerful. Well, I. I hope this spreads, Gina Colvin.

Gina Colvin [01:23:15] Well, I hope so, John, and thank you for hearing me.

John Dehlin [01:23:20] Yeah. Oh, well, my pleasure. Okay, so what do you want to leave our. What do you want to leave our listeners with? You know, we always end by. By asking you to share what your testimony is, and you've shared a lot already. But before we go to that point, what do you, you know, do you have a call to action? Do you. Do you have goals for a thoughtful faith or for the future? Like, how do we. Is this just something that happens organically or are you hoping to try and agitate? Like, what's the future? You know, if you had a vision, like a. Do you have a 1, 5, 10, 20 year plan of what you hope to happen? Or is it just you're gonna podcast and see what happens, talk a bit about the future, and then end with your. With your testimony?

Future Plans, Authentic Faith, and Closing Thoughts

Gina Colvin [01:24:10] Well, I don't have a plan. Do you know? I mean, when I blog, something will hit me, and I think I have to write about that. So I don't really. I don't really have a. You know, what I would like to see is particularly for women in the church. And I think this is where women. For women to know their power and for women to reclaim that power in a church that is so heavily masculine, and to ask. And to take that power and to ask hard questions of their communities. Like, I just, I don't want it to be fearful. I mean, if I could wish for anything, I would wish that. That the church, that we weren't afraid of our community. Just as I said, I mean, I don't know. I don't have any particular plans. I just want to be in conversation with people, that's all. And I think I want to see people in conversation with each other in healing. Because I think, you know, I think people are hurt, they're in pain. I don't like that.

John Dehlin [01:25:13] So how does that happen? Because it seems like we're kind of moving in the wrong direction a little bit.

Gina Colvin [01:25:18] I think it happens one person at a time, one single person in a wardrobe who is struggling and wants a more Beautiful experience for their children and for themselves and for the young people who are growing up in the church. And I think that has to be the eyes on the prize, you know, is our young people asking questions about the health of their community and challenging where it needs to be challenged and being fearless about it and being authentic. I mean, what are you going to do? I mean, do you know. I mean, we have a woman who's in our ward. She's 92. The other day that she admitted that she thought she'd be excommunicated for saying, I don't believe in the Adam and Eve story. You know, a tremendous woman. And, you know, she. But she had the. You know, if that's the thing that she's confronting and wants to. Wants to share it with her community, I think that's what she should say. I don't think we should be ashamed of our words, shouldn't be ashamed of our belief. We shouldn't be afraid. So that's all I'd wish for, is that people stop being afraid.

John Dehlin [01:26:22] And so that means just people need to be courageous and speak their truth with love, but with power. And over time, hopefully, the culture will change.

Gina Colvin [01:26:33] I think so. I think we are at the heart of any change. And I was speaking to someone from the church offices last year when I was in Salt Lake, and he said, change will come to the church, it will never come from the church, so we can be part of that change.

John Dehlin [01:26:46] What does that mean? It'll never come from the church leadership. It'll come to the church, sort of as a grassroots kind of thing.

Gina Colvin [01:26:56] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:26:57] Okay. Okay.

Gina Colvin [01:26:59] We know that historically, the church, to outside pressures and an internal pressure.

John Dehlin [01:27:04] Yeah, Yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:27:05] I don't think we understand how much power we have.

John Dehlin [01:27:08] Yeah. And even if the church isn't quite what it claims to be, it's still worth being a member of and fighting for.

Gina Colvin [01:27:17] Well, yeah, I wouldn't say that. Can't Blanche. Because some people need to disengage. But, yeah, I think so. I mean, I personally think that right now it's worth fighting for. We have remarkable. We have a remarkable theology. It's audacious, it's beautiful, it's grand. It transcends class at the very heart. It transcends class and culture and race and makes saints out of sinners. It's just beautiful. We have to refine, you know, find that again.

John Dehlin [01:27:47] Yeah, yeah. So you're sticking and you're fighting.

Gina Colvin [01:27:53] I'm sticking. Yes.

John Dehlin [01:27:55] And you're fighting with love and candor and honesty and openness.

Gina Colvin [01:27:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:28:00] Those are your weapons?

Gina Colvin [01:28:01] That's my weapon, yes. Just. I just. What you see is what you get. There's no. Nothing underhanded, nothing hidden. What you see is what you get with me.

John Dehlin [01:28:11] I'm gonna give you a big hug next time I see you. Yay.

Gina Colvin [01:28:14] I'll see you. I'll see you in July.

John Dehlin [01:28:17] Oh, you're coming to Sunstone?

Gina Colvin [01:28:18] I'm doing the why I Stay session.

John Dehlin [01:28:21] Oh, wow. That'll be fabulous.

Gina Colvin [01:28:23] Yeah. So hopefully I'm gonna stay for that long. I've got a couple of months.

John Dehlin [01:28:28] You know, I did that about, you know, two and a half years before I was excommunicated, so.

Gina Colvin [01:28:32] Oh, John.

John Dehlin [01:28:33] No, I'm just kidding. Lots of people live. Have stayed after that talk, but, yeah. Okay, well, why don't you. I mean, this has been beautiful. I'm inspired as an ex member, and I hope other people are inspired too. And why don't you leave us with your testimony, whatever you want to say.

Gina Colvin [01:28:53] I think one of the most powerful things that I have to offer the church is a choice to believe. And I can't say that I know things are true, because I think talking about something as a truth is problematic. I think there's a kind of a tyranny in our certain certainty. But I. I will say what I choose to believe. And I. I choose to believe that for that, the Lord has called me to my faith tradition, that I'm here because of the arm of God. And I choose to believe that Zion is possible. And I choose to believe that Christ and his gospel can be the center of that. And I choose to believe that Joseph Smith was a entirely flawed, but a powerful religious mystic who. Who channeled some wonderful inspiration for us as we. We think about a community and about what's possible, what our eternal possibilities are. So that's. That's. That's my testimony. I believe in a Zion. I believe Zion is possible.

John Dehlin [01:29:53] You're a Zion Mormon? I am a progressive, liberal Zion Mormon, yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:29:59] I don't know what I'd do if I got Zion, because I'm just gonna have problem with authority. So, you know, I'd move on.

John Dehlin [01:30:05] But until that comes, you're. You're fighting for it.

Gina Colvin [01:30:09] I'm fighting for it, John.

John Dehlin [01:30:11] All right, so the. So the website is what, Kiwi Mormon. What's your. What's your blog?

Gina Colvin [01:30:16] Yeah, it's just Kiwi Mormon. It's at Patheos, right alongside Daniel Peterson.

John Dehlin [01:30:22] Awesome. Have any apologists come after you yet, or have you remained unscathed to this point?

Gina Colvin [01:30:28] Daniel Peterson.

John Dehlin [01:30:30] He's come after you.

Gina Colvin [01:30:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:33] Oh, awesome. Okay. Well, that's. That's good.

Gina Colvin [01:30:35] Kind of benignly, but. Yeah, I, you know. Yeah. I don't like ad hominem in the. In the. In blocking, so we have a different style. We disagree on things, but I. I usually don't. I'm not tempted to play in his. His sandpit.

John Dehlin [01:30:49] Sure, sure. Okay. And the podcast is. Can be found where? Thoughtfulfaith.org how's that going? Great. Do you like that?

Gina Colvin [01:30:59] I love it. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:00] You're getting great guests. You're getting people that I want to get. You're. You're scooping me.

Gina Colvin [01:31:05] Yeah, I noticed that, actually. I think. Hey, John. Hey. I just did that thing.

John Dehlin [01:31:09] Yeah, the Van Allens.

Gina Colvin [01:31:11] The Van Allen.

John Dehlin [01:31:12] I think I asked them first, actually, but you got them before I did, so I don't know.

Gina Colvin [01:31:16] Gotta wait quick. Gotta wait quick.

John Dehlin [01:31:18] I. I just. I. I wanted more people to hear their stories, so, you know, imitation is the highest form of flattery. And I plugged your podcast heavily in that episode.

Gina Colvin [01:31:27] Yeah, I saw that. I saw the hits go up.

John Dehlin [01:31:29] Yeah.

Gina Colvin [01:31:30] So thank you for that.

John Dehlin [01:31:31] Yeah. No, no, no. I'll do it again. So just be aware. But it's never. It's only out of a flattery or a common cause. It's never with any malicious intent.

Gina Colvin [01:31:40] Oh, back at you, Byte.

John Dehlin [01:31:41] Okay, all right, all right. So it's a thoughtful faith. And for those of you who want to meet Gina in person, come to Sunstone at the end of July 2015. Right, right.

Gina Colvin [01:31:52] Yeah. But the cyber trolls can leave their guns behind.

John Dehlin [01:31:54] They can stay. Stay behind. Okay.

Gina Colvin [01:31:56] Yeah, yeah, Leave your guns at home too, if you must come.

John Dehlin [01:32:00] Yeah, all right, I. I agree with that. All right, well, Gina Colvin, thank you so much for joining us on Mormon Stories.

Gina Colvin [01:32:06] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [01:32:07] And for all the. All the listeners, please join us@mormonstories.org you can leave your gracious comments for Gina. You know, you can ask her questions. And Gina, I hope you'll respond to some of the comments that I. I will indeed.

Gina Colvin [01:32:21] Indeed. If they're nice comments, if they're.

John Dehlin [01:32:23] If they're constructive and pleasant.

Gina Colvin [01:32:24] That's right. All right, that's the one.

John Dehlin [01:32:27] Thanks again, Gina, and thanks to all listeners. Okay.

Gina Colvin [01:32:29] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:32:35] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights and other sources.

Gina Colvin [01:32:50] Cease to make me whole when with

John Dehlin [01:32:59] the wounded heart anger or malice I

Gina Colvin [01:33:10] draw myself apart searching my soul.

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.