Introduction and Guest Background

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.

Bill Reel [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom

John Dehlin [00:00:43] Lead

Bill Reel [00:00:43] thou me on the night is dark

John Dehlin [00:00:48] and I am far from home. Hello, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Delind. It's November 24, 2015, and, man, it's been a busy month. I feel like I've exceeded my podcast allotment, and yet more stories keep pulling me back in. And today's story is a familiar story to Mormon Stories listeners. If any of you were around. Back In July of 2012, I interviewed Bishop Bill Real. Bill was living in Cleveland, Ohio area, the Sandusky Ward. And he was the first sitting bishop to come on Mormon Stories and sort of face the heat of questions as a sitting bishop. And we talked about all sorts of stuff about how he deals with matters of sexuality, you know, in his interviews with youth and other types of things, Mormon apologetics, etc. And, and it was a popular interview. And after that, Bill started his own podcast, and it's called, what? Mormon Discussion. Is that right, Bill?

Bill Reel [00:02:05] Mormon Discussion Podcast. Yep.

John Dehlin [00:02:07] And it's been going strong for what, a couple years, right?

Bill Reel [00:02:11] Yeah, we're on our third full year.

John Dehlin [00:02:13] Yeah, third full year. And honestly, there was a point in Mormon Stories where I was sort of explicitly trying to keep people in the church. And, you know, at some point I just realized not only, you know, not only was that impossible that there was going to be a lot of people who just weren't going to be able to stay in the church. I think I also just decided that I didn't want to have that bias. And there's probably a part of me that felt like maybe it wasn't always good for some people to stay. And so I sort of, you know, meandered away from that explicit mission more towards either neutrality or maybe even privileging people who are transitioning away, but Bill sort of filled in that gap. And how many episodes have you recorded, Bill?

Bill Reel [00:03:12] I think we're just a little around 100, maybe 170. 175. Somewhere in there.

John Dehlin [00:03:17] Yeah. And it's also. So. So today we're going to be talking about a few things. We're going to be talking about, you know, Bill's podcast and kind of how he's transitioned since. But also recently there was a pretty significant dust up on Reddit about. About Bill's activities with fair, the foundation for Apologetic Information and Research. And Bill worked with FAIR for a certain amount of time, and then things kind of didn't go so well. So we're going to be talking about what happened between Bill and fair, the apologetic Mormon group, and his interactions with Brian Hales and others. And. And we're going to talk about sort of some recent stances he's taken. Basically. He recently blogged on Wheat and Tares that he's an open dissent of the church's most recent apology towards LGBT members, and he wrote some justifications why. So we're going to try and cover all that today with Bill Real. So, Bill, welcome. Welcome back to Mormon Stories.

Bill Reel [00:04:29] Excellent, John, glad to be with you today and glad to have a chance to talk.

John Dehlin [00:04:35] So the first thing I question I had is you're no longer in Cleveland, Ohio, so what's going on there? I think you moved to St. George. I didn't hear about that.

Bill Reel [00:04:46] So because of the podcast, I was invited by a lot of leaders to go around and do some firesides in various places. I'd gone to Sarnia, Canada, went to Indiana to talk to a bunch of youth at a youth conference as the lead speaker for that event, as well as to talk to the young girls, single adult ward at the Purdue University, went out to, you know, Salt Lake City and moderated a fair Mormon session and traveling around. One of the places I ended up going was Henderson, Nevada, and being at Henderson, did a fireside for a group of Latter Day Saints who were struggling with their faith. And one of the individuals who came to attend that.

John Dehlin [00:05:30] Wait, did they like, fly you to do these firesides?

Bill Reel [00:05:33] Yeah, they paid all expenses for that one. Some of them I've paid the fuel and stuff to get there, but they put me up in their home and fed me and things like that.

John Dehlin [00:05:42] So who's paying the check for your travel for these firesides?

Bill Reel [00:05:46] Well, for some of them, it was the stake that I want to do the firesides for. For others, it was individuals who, out of their own pocket, paid for that.

John Dehlin [00:05:57] Wow. I've always wondered. I know the Givens are traveling around doing these fire sites, and I know that private donors are supporting that, but I didn't know that Other. Other people were doing that, too.

Bill Reel [00:06:09] Yeah, I don't have any kind of private donor who pays my way to these things. It was just whoever was asking me to go. Generally, if it wasn't too far, I would take care of paying for the fuel in my vehicle, but then they would put me up and feed me. But some of them have been ones that have been further away, like the one in Henderson, and the individual paid for the entire trip there and took good care of me and my wife over there. When I went to do this fireside in Henderson, one of the gentlemen who attended that owns a business in St. George that is four stores. It's a pawn shop. And so he said, bill, you're really good at connecting with people. You're good at communicating. You're good at talking to people and helping them with things. This would be a really good fit and wondering if you'd like to try it. And so, you know, I was selling floor covering back in Ohio and worked for a nice company, but it was not going to go anywhere, and this just provided a lot better opportunity. So we flew out to St. George, actually flew into Vegas, and then this gentleman's brother drove me into St. George, and we kind of stayed for about a week trying the business out, and it just felt like a really good fit.

John Dehlin [00:07:19] Wow. So you've been to St. George for a couple years?

Bill Reel [00:07:22] No, I just moved here nine months ago.

John Dehlin [00:07:24] Okay, great. And, okay, so you've been in St. George recently. Let's go back and just talk about really quickly, kind of why you started your podcast and what you were hoping to do.

Bill Reel [00:07:39] Sure. So, essentially, John, after the interview with you, I felt like this would be like a. So first thing I asked myself is, how hard is this podcasting thing? And so I went out to Walmart and got myself a little cheap little headset and went on to Podbean and created a free account and all that, and just said, okay, what I'm going to do is I want to be like John Dehlin, but I want to walk the other side of the line where I validate that issues are real, that there are problems out there, which I don't think very many people were doing at the time, outside of yourself and Dan Witherspoon with Mormon Matters. And I wanted to say, look, these things are real, these are problematic, but here's new ways in which to think about these and to kind of work through them, not in a mental gymnastics way, but rather in a way that we acknowledge there's evidence on both sides and we just move forward in faith.

John Dehlin [00:08:31] Okay, so that's different from apologetics how?

Bill Reel [00:08:35] Well, for me, when I look at apologetics, they often try to paint the critic as being deceiving, as the facts not really being the facts, as church history is really not that messy if you just work through these 46 steps. And I tried to take a different approach in saying that, look, there really is valid criticism. There really is reasonable evidence on both sides. There really is reason for people to say the church isn't true and to walk away. And yet I still tried to say, look, there's also this other side and call on people to just have faith and to have hope and to not ignore or brush aside the criticisms, but learn to really, truly live with doubt.

John Dehlin [00:09:21] Yeah. And honestly, that harmonizes with my sense of traditional Mormon apologetics that they, you know, they either attack the. The person asking the questions or they downplay. And sometimes they even, you know, Gaslight. They sort of, you know, make you feel like what you're thinking and feeling, you know, makes no sense, and you have no right to even think about it. And I've just never felt like that was an honest, respectful way to deal with these very legitimate issues. And honestly, I agree. I just wanted. I wanted to feel a sense of empathy and validation from apologists where they could say, no, no, no, we still believe, and, you know, we want to give you ways to believe, but we acknowledge the issues are tough and just so many of them just did not seem able to do that. It's almost as if they had Asperger's syndrome or something and just couldn't empathize.

Bill Reel [00:10:26] Right. And I've felt some of that same experience. It's almost like to take any issue and validate that there really is some problems in this is almost like goes across the line of where apologists can go, maybe. And so I certainly. Maybe to throw them just a little bone. I certainly think there's a group of people that their way of doing things, it works for. I mean, you talked a lot about Fowler's stages of faith. I've talked a lot about that in my podcast. I think for those who are in that stage three, where they see things very black and white, where things fit together really simply. I think apologetics works really well. And I think when, you know, certainly having spent time with fairmormon, there were lots of messages from people that they sent emails to and calls to and tried to help that said, look, you really did a great job helping me, and I really do think they appeal and help and contribute to a group of Latter Day Saints. And I think they're helpful to them, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:11:29] Yeah, sure. They must be, or they wouldn't really be able to keep existing. Yeah. So talk about how you got involved with fare.

Bill Reel's Early Work with FAIR Mormon

Bill Reel [00:11:39] So after the episode with you, John, it was really well received, I think in conservative Mormon corners. People were somehow finding me even and sending me messages and just saying, bill, that was really good how you and John were able to have this two hour dialogue, and yet you were able to, in an intelligent way and articulate way, talk about ways in which to be faithful and to somehow counter to some extent, some of those criticisms. After that was over and having started the podcast, it wasn't too long after that that Steve Densley, who is now, I think, the VP with fair, but at the time, I think he was a step or two lower on their leadership lad. He approached me and said, bill, that was really good. Your podcast is really great. Any chance you want to come on board with FAIR and help us out with our podcast? And it started off as him wanting to interview me, which ended up being two episodes where fair, part one and part two just kind of discussed my faith journey. And then after that, I started recording episodes that I shared both on my podcast as well as theirs.

Becoming an Insider at FAIR

John Dehlin [00:12:51] Okay, and so what did. So did you, like, join FAIR and become like a sort of a volunteer or an unofficial staff member?

Bill Reel [00:12:59] No, it was official. They have kind of different tiers of membership you can take. One of those involves an application as well as a small fee to be a part of them. And I did that. And so I was in, you know, somewhat of the inner circle where, you know, there's kind of a private message board behind the scenes where messages get talked about and issues get kind of worked out privately before messages get sent out to people.

John Dehlin [00:13:25] And.

Bill Reel [00:13:25] And so I was part of that.

John Dehlin [00:13:28] Yeah, I was. I was actually, as I remember, part of that. Like 10 years ago, I got. I got booted out of that. That private group. I'm not sure if it's exactly the same private group, but it was some group that was private that you had to kind of apply to join. Right. I didn't last very long.

Bill Reel [00:13:45] No. And I wasn't, you know, I wasn't in the top hierarchy. I think they have kind of a separate group where the top seven or eight people or so probably are having conversations. Group I was a part of. I mean, all the members of FAIR that you would know from having written blog posts or done other things within apologetics they were all commenting in those discussion boards, and so. And it wasn't something that was available or visible to the general public.

John Dehlin [00:14:09] Yeah, so what? And I think my sister's. My sister's in that group. My sister Julianne.

Bill Reel [00:14:16] Yeah, I've talked to her several times.

John Dehlin [00:14:17] Yeah. So. All right, so your main responsibilities for FAIR were then what, you know, when you're working with them.

Bill Reel [00:14:26] Yeah, so they. They kind of had me. And I don't want to say I was heading up the podcast. It's kind of a multiple group of contributors, but of those people who were contributing to their podcast, I was the one who was putting in, I think, the most material at the time. And I was quite proud of that because in 2013, I believe it was fair Mormon won the award for the podcast. Aw. And this was in Vegas where they had the, you know, the get together where they hand out the awards. And whoever mentioned, like, four of us, and I was one of the names that was mentioned in that. In that award ceremony, it went over really good. I contributed probably 20 to 30 episodes for them over the course of that time. I think I was with them maybe a year, maybe a little less. And mostly my responsibilities were just on the podcasting end and to answer emails and messages that people had sent in, asking questions about the church and the critics.

John Dehlin [00:15:27] So you produce episodes, answer questions. That was your main responsibility.

Bill Reel [00:15:33] Yeah. And the episodes, like I said, would release both on my podcast as well as fairs. I would put my own music and intros in for mine and put their music and intros in for the exact same episodes that I would put on their site.

John Dehlin [00:15:47] Got it. Did that. Did the. Did Pharaoh have a sense? You know, this was during the day where, you know, my podcast is going strong, where Mormon expression was going strong. Infants on Thrones started up in 2012, you know, year of Polygamy and feminist Mormon Housewives podcast. So did FAIR have a sense for how their podcasts, you know, competed with these others in terms of downloads and listener support?

Bill Reel [00:16:18] I wasn't privy to any of that. I got several pieces of feedback from fair's leadership that once my episodes were on, that they were being well received and I think in some ways help the listenership. But to say what those numbers are, I have no idea.

John Dehlin [00:16:36] They never let you know?

Bill Reel [00:16:37] No. They never said how many people were listening.

John Dehlin [00:16:40] Yeah. Because as I look at sort of iTunes ranking of the fair podcast, it always seems really, really far behind sort of the mainstream Mormon podcasts. And so it never seems like those podcasts have caught on beyond sort of a really restricted group. And that may just be that there are few Mormons who really gravitate towards the FAIR approach. But it sounds like they never gave you data to really know.

Bill Reel [00:17:10] No, no, we were never. Me, at least I wasn't. I was never aware or privy to what the statistics were on, who was listening, and how many people were visiting the site or downloading the episodes.

John Dehlin [00:17:21] Okay, well, cool. Well, so you were doing great work for fair, and then what happened?

Bill Reel [00:17:25] So along the way, I mean, part of it is when I'm responding to individuals who are writing into FAIR with questions. I'm writing back answers that validate that these issues are messy and that they're on different levels, problematic. The other thing I'm doing is I'm uploading episodes for their podcast where I'm interviewing Richard Bushman or Terrell Givens or having commentary on my own about what is doctrine. And in those episodes, also acknowledging that things are messy. And it didn't take long for Ferris leadership to start emailing me or messaging me and just saying, hey, Bill, we really can't do that. We really can't validate that. The critics have reasonable criticisms that members of the church will struggle over that their foundations will crash if we say those things. And I can't really not walk that line. For me, knowing church history, realizing the messiness of our faith, the only acceptable route that I had was to validate that those things were messy. And so the episodes would do that, my messages would do that. And I was constantly getting feedback from FAIR that, hey, you can't really go this far. And so there were lots of private conversations behind the scenes where we'd do 10 emails back and forth in the course of a day of me trying to explain why this is the only truly workable way to deal with the church's history is to be completely open and to validate that there's evidence on both sides. And that was always kind of a tension, because I think Fair to their defense. FAIR has always seen themselves as wanting to have the approval of the church. And for them to do that, they really can't ever go outside the bounds of what the church says or acknowledges. So until the church says, hey, we goofed up and we made a mistake, fair is never going to say the church made a mistake on something. And as you know, John, as people come through these faith transitions, there comes a point where they're aware enough of the messiness. They're aware enough that they respect their own inward authority over extrinsic authority that that kind of stuff just no longer works for them. And they have to be able to see things as messy if they're going to stay in. And simply turning a blind eye to it didn't work. So eventually, over time, Fair, it just got to the point where they saw there was a fork in the road and we were both going to be on separate paths. And so I got kind of a snarky email from one of fair's leadership where they essentially said, from here on out, Bill, don't tell anybody that you are with fair. You can contribute episodes, but we're going to have to listen to them completely and give them full approval. And from here on out, we want you to not do this or do that. And it just got to the point where it was apparent that that relationship wasn't going to be tenable.

Tensions and Disagreements Within FAIR

John Dehlin [00:20:32] Do you remember some of the specific issues that you were showing validation of or empathy for that they didn't like? Do you remember? Is that too much detail?

Bill Reel [00:20:45] I'm trying. Of course, we're talking three years ago. Some of the specific issues. I mean, I think it's, you know, if you were to take your survey and talk about the 12 things that. That members of the church struggle with the most within our theology and history, it's those. It's saying essentially that within the LGBT issue that this is something we all need to have more empathy for. There were discussions behind the scenes in FAIR that sometimes would attack personally. People like you and me and one or two other individuals would pipe in and say, hey, let's not make these criticisms personal. Let's attack them on the substance of what they're saying. And that wouldn't be well received. And so some of it was criticisms on a personal level. Some of it was theological issues where. Or doctrinal issues where I would say, look, the critic has a point when he says, xyz, we need to at least validate that this is problematic. In fact, I would even say just to tie it in. Richard Bushman recently was on my podcast where he just frankly admits that, you know, in some ways, the Book of Mormon is problematic in terms of having 19th century wording in it, phrases in it, things from, you know, the King James version of the Bible that he also finds problematic. And to some extent, I just don't think FAIR would really be comfortable with having those kinds of conversations.

John Dehlin [00:22:10] Were you there when Dan Peterson was kind of booted from the Maxwell Institute?

Bill Reel [00:22:15] I'm trying to remember if that was just after I left. I believe that Dan was No longer with them.

John Dehlin [00:22:25] Did you get the sense that he was kind of in charge

Bill Reel [00:22:29] with the Maxwell Institute of fair? No, I never got the impression that he was in charge of fair. I do think that there are people behind the scenes who donate money and maybe in significant ways to them, because some of the messages from fair's leadership to me, trying to reign me in, would express the idea that there were certain people they had to keep happy. There were certain people that they had to make sure were comfortable with what they were doing, that were big supporters of them as an entity. But I never got the impression. I mean, I certainly had some conversations with Dan within FAIR, as well as, like, Lou Midgley and I think Bill Hamlin as well. So I knew that they were a presence there, but I never got the feeling that they were the main decision makers.

John Dehlin [00:23:17] And did you feel like Midgley and Daniel Peterson and Hamblin, did you feel like they were good for Mormon apologetics or bad, or did you have an opinion about that?

Bill Reel [00:23:28] So I'm only sharing my personal perspective, and I realize that sometimes having conversations on the Internet can be not a full exposure to the real humanness of who we are. But for me, when I listened to, and I'll just be specific, Lou Midgley, for instance, he just seemed very unempathetic to people, very unempathetic to those who struggled. When people would have really serious questions about the church, where they were throwing their doubts on the table, it just felt like those weren't really validated or someone didn't take time to kind of, you know, these guys didn't really take time to put their arm around these people and say, look, I totally get where you're coming from. You know, these things would certainly give reason for any of us to pause. I just don't feel like that's really the approach of some of those guys.

John Dehlin [00:24:17] So they just, for you, they kind of lack empathy.

Bill Reel [00:24:22] Yeah, and it felt that way. It felt like it was this goal of protecting the church at all costs. And so when you take that mode, I think you really can't let any criticism in as being real and valid. And so these guys. And I seen it. I mean, I see where people would write in and say, man, I'm really hurting. I'm struggling over these issues. And some of these guys would write back and just throw out, like, the answer and not understand why these people struggling, were having a hard time. And it just seemed really cold.

John Dehlin [00:24:54] Yeah. Yeah, that's been my experience, too. So that's interesting. Okay, so you got this nasty, snarky letter that says, you know, we'll still take your content, but don't tell anyone you work for us. That's kind of weird, right?

Bill Reel [00:25:08] It is kind of weird. And at that point, I write back like, you know, I don't get this. This doesn't really make sense. I mean, I'm happy to understand that I need to walk a certain line. Let's spell that line out. Let's talk about it. I know that when this happened again, you know, Steve Densley essentially removed me once. I replied back and was frustrated. I also went on, and I'll be honest, this is probably my weakest moment. I went on and essentially took out my material from their podcast just to hold onto it and to see how this was going to play out. Because what I thought was going to happen was going to be them to essentially separate from me. And yet here I've got, like, 10 more episodes in their queue that are going to go in, and my material is there, and they're essentially using my stuff but want me to kind of disappear. So I removed that. And of course, that wasn't the nicest thing on my part. He sends me a message back and didn't really understand why I did that. Behind the scenes, though, other guys from FAIR are calling me and saying, bill, we got to figure out a way to repair this. We want you in. And in the midst of them saying they want me in and they want to kind of figure out ways to fix this, Steve or whoever completely removes my ability to log into the system at all. And at that point, it was just. And again, I think it was on both sides at that point, it just became an impossibility to fix. And so we just went our separate ways. We did do one more episode where John lynch interviewed me, where we had a conversation about kind of splitting off amicably and peacefully and kind of going our own separate ways and recognizing that we both kind of reach a different audience. And John also made the comment in that episode, and I took him at his word. This is John Lynch. He said that FAIR will continue to use some of my material if it's fitting and appropriate for the podcast. And as time went on, it became obvious they were never going to use my stuff again. So anyway, it was just, at some

The Break from FAIR Mormon

John Dehlin [00:27:07] point, they saw you as a threat and they needed to lock you out. Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:27:11] And again, I think that in some ways, because I really wasn't able to walk the line they wanted, I was maybe hurting their credibility with the church to have some guy on who says these criticisms are real and valid was kind of counter to what they needed to do to keep the church's support

John Dehlin [00:27:32] and their donors.

Bill Reel [00:27:33] Right, and their donors, whoever those people are.

John Dehlin [00:27:36] Yeah. And there's a part of me that feels like that makes sense, just that, you know, they've got to please their, you know, constituents and their donors and their benefactors, and you cross the line. Right, right.

Bill Reel [00:27:50] And I don't. I don't hold any animosity for that. I think that they have a right to kind of have their. Their mode of operandi to their way of doing things. And if someone doesn't fit into that, you certainly have a, you know, room to remove that person. It'd be like if I joined the Rotary and I didn't want to follow any of the Rotary's rules, and out I go. So I certainly respect that. But at the same time, for people like me who are still trying to keep people in the church, I can't tell you the number of times I've gotten private messages from their members or emails from their members who have basically said, you know, because you do things differently than us, you're a wolf in sheep's clothing. You are a walking the fine line of apostasy.

John Dehlin [00:28:35] And.

Bill Reel [00:28:35] And yet here I am. I mean, for three years, yes, I validate issues, but I've been trying to with all my might, to empathize with people and to help people stay in.

John Dehlin [00:28:46] And again, your understanding of their main concern is that you were showing too much empathy for people who struggle and acknowledging excessively the legitimacy of problems with the church's history and approach.

Bill Reel [00:29:03] Right. I mean, so let's say you come to the fair and you send a message in and you say, hey, guys, I don't get this Book of Abraham thing. This is a mess. I can't figure out what they would just do, by standard, is they would send you an email back, list all the reasons that this works or the things we don't know, and just leave it at that. Very rarely would you ever see somebody from FAIR send a message and say, yeah, this is really problematic. And I think. I think for those who have moved out of stage three within Fowler, those who, again, whose authority is within themselves, as well as who no longer see black and white, that kind of black and white argument of it's either all this side or all that side simply doesn't work. But that's the line that fair walks.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] Okay? And so, yeah, so fair target stage three, and you two target stage four or five, and. And in fair's mind, those need to be separate.

Bill Reel [00:30:03] Yeah. And fair's mind, validating the issues is going.

John Dehlin [00:30:06] Is going to stage four. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So there's just. They've got a clear mission and really clear boundaries.

Bill Reel [00:30:13] Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:30:15] So. So what happened? Anything else happen after that in terms of fair?

Bill Reel [00:30:20] No. I mean, I felt like in some ways the split probably ended as nice as possible. I went off kind of my own way, and I tried to make a concentrated effort to say very little negative about them. In fact, I had somebody from FAIR just message me a few days ago after this recent event that we'll get into where they accused me that the whole split and the whole reason they removed me from their. Their website was because I was being overly critical of fair. And I challenged the guy to find where I did that, and he couldn't. I might have made a comment or two, but I think in each of those comments I have validated that FAIR is a good thing for a group of people, that it works for some. But other than that, no, not a whole lot else has happened in terms of Fair Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:31:11] Okay, so you. So you left them in 2012, is that right?

Bill Reel [00:31:15] 2013, I believe, maybe late 2013, maybe the beginning of 2014 or so.

John Dehlin [00:31:21] So you worked for them for about a year, year and a half, something like that?

Bill Reel [00:31:24] Yeah, a year, year and a half. And again, moderated one of the sessions at one of their conferences.

John Dehlin [00:31:29] At the Fair Mormon Conference?

Bill Reel [00:31:30] Yeah, out in Salt Lake City. Originally, I was supposed to be part of a panel with Don Bradley, Janet Eyring, and Maxine Hanks. And then at the end, Mike Ash was supposed to moderate it, and he had other things he had to do and wanted to kind of pass that responsibility off. So rather than be part of, I moderated it, although I added several comments in during the discussion as well.

John Dehlin [00:31:52] Okay, and so what's happened recently?

Bill Reel [00:31:57] I don't know. I mean, I think that's the question of the day, is that three months ago, and I thought it was more recent only because I had just discovered it recently, but some people who are good with the Internet went back into the archives to try and find out when the change happened, but it looks like three months ago, they completely removed any presence of me from their website. Every episode I had done, they removed me from the transcript of the Fair Mormon session. They removed me from the picture of that session. I mean, any kind of connection from me to the website at fairmormon was completely. It just completely disappeared. I should have known something was happening. I got a. A message from Blair Hodges, who works for the Maxwell Institute, saying that he was trying to find the interview where I had interviewed him for their website, and he couldn't find it. And so I sent him the exact same episode from mine. And he thanked me, but it probably should have hit me then that something was going on, but for whatever reason, these guys have just made me disappear.

John Dehlin [00:33:02] Okay, so you've sort of. Bill Real has gone down the memory hole at fair, right?

Bill Reel [00:33:07] Which seems kind of odd, right? I mean, fair Mormon will defend the church and say, hey, look, the church doesn't hide history. And yet in some ways, here's fair Mormon hiding history. And I get it. If you want to remove the podcast episodes, fine. If you want to cut me out of a picture, great. But to alter a transcript of a session in your conference to make somebody vanish almost kind of seemed odd. And when I put it on Facebook that they had done that, and I made very little comments in the post, I mean, lots of people jumped in and it seemed to kind of brush them the wrong way too. It just. It didn't seem like something on the up and up.

Later Interactions with FAIR Leadership

John Dehlin [00:33:48] Now, you had mentioned that you had had interactions with Brian Hales and Fair Leadership between the time you left and now. What was the nature of those communications again? Is that. Was that the wolf in sheep's clothing kind of thing?

Bill Reel [00:34:03] No, the Hales thing is kind of separate, Brian. So one of the episodes I did on the podcast was called Handshakes and Drawn Swords. And what I tried to do was make some middle ground for people like the Van Alen's who are struggling with section 132. And what I wanted to do was say, look, we paint this in a black and white way, right? Either an angel comes with a sword, and Joseph is obedient to that and he's doing what the Lord is calling him to do. Or Joseph's a fraud. He's making this up. He's just wanting to have, you know, intimate relations with lots of women. And that's the reasoning. And we kind of within Mormonism have painted that dichotomy. And what I wanted to do is kind of go in and break new ground and say, hey, let's talk for a moment. Maybe is it possible that an angel did come, but it wasn't an angel from God? And, you know, I think there's section 119 where Joseph gives the revelation on handshakes, which seems kind of odd, this way of shaking the hand of an angel to know if it's a good angel or bad angel. And you also have in the Book of Mormon, in Lehi's vision of the Tree of Life, where this angel comes in a robe, but rather than leading Lehi to the tree, he leads him into the midst of darkness. And once he leads him there, Lehi lets this angel go, gets on his knees and prays, and then God shows him where the Tree of Life is. So it's almost kind of this precedent that maybe evil angels could lead prophets. And what I was trying to do, John, was to allow members of the church to theologically set 132 completely aside, to set polygamy, polyandry, young brides, all that completely aside and still hold Joseph Smith up to be a prophet in the church and to still have faith in the Book of Mormon. And when I did that, I got an email from Brian Hales, who said that, hey, I've written a response to your episode. I don't like your episode. Here's my response. And he sends me a PDF of an article titled the Unreal World of Handshakes and Drawn Swords. And so I write Brian back. I say, are you going to release this? I mean, if you want to, you can. I mean, if you want to release this, just let me know so I can, you know, respond back and forth and we can have a dialogue about the validity of the points we're both making. And he writes me back and says that, you know, Laura essentially has told him, you know, not to release it, that. Not without several modifications anyway to it. And I write him back and say, well, I'm going to let the. He asked me to remove the podcast episode, and if I removed it, then he would just let it end there. And I said, I'm not going to remove it. I think this is good middle ground for a Latter Day Saint who wants to still have faith but can't handle section 132.

John Dehlin [00:36:41] What was his concern about your theory?

Bill Reel [00:36:46] Well, I can hit the high points. He talks about Emma and the word virgins. Right. We've heard this one talked about over and over again. He wasn't comfortable with me saying that Lehi could possibly be deceived by an angel, even though I think that's a valid interpretation of that section of the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:37:01] I mean, the Doctrine and Covenants makes it very clear that people can be deceived by angels.

Bill Reel [00:37:05] Yeah, but his point was the moment we allow for a prophet to be deceived by an evil spirit, then everything is up for grabs. And I basically said, yeah, you're right. And so that's the messiness of Mormonism is that we have to look at each of these instances where angels come and decide for ourselves whether. And decide by the Holy Ghost whether those things are true.

John Dehlin [00:37:24] It's really weird because one of Phares arguments is that prophets, whoever said prophets are infallible. Right, right.

Bill Reel [00:37:31] But tell me where they specifically name those instances.

John Dehlin [00:37:34] Yeah, that's the issue.

Bill Reel [00:37:36] Right. The moment it's okay to say prophets make mistakes, but it's not actually okay

John Dehlin [00:37:42] to name the mistakes.

Bill Reel [00:37:43] Right. We can never name a specific mistake unless the church has come out and said, this is a specific mistake, and then all of a sudden we can

John Dehlin [00:37:49] talk about it, which they don't do.

Bill Reel [00:37:51] Right.

John Dehlin [00:37:51] Yeah. That's funny. That's funny.

Bill Reel [00:37:54] Yeah. The other things they hit on was the Adam God theory. One of the quotes from Brigham Young is that he knew by revelation that Adam was God the Father, and so he wanted to kind of take a part of it. What's that?

John Dehlin [00:38:06] Brian Hales do that?

Bill Reel [00:38:08] I'm saying that in the Journal of Discourses, Brigham Young says that.

John Dehlin [00:38:11] Oh, yeah.

Bill Reel [00:38:12] And Brian Hales wasn't comfortable with me putting that as. A way in which to observe that we could receive false revelations from evil spirits or think we're getting revelation from God that has nothing to do with him. It might even be the polar opposite.

John Dehlin [00:38:32] Did he have a theory on what happened with Brigham Young and Adam God?

Bill Reel [00:38:37] I can read you his little section if you'd like.

John Dehlin [00:38:39] I mean, if it responds. I think even Spencer W. Kimball said that. That's our doctrine.

Bill Reel [00:38:47] Right. But the argument back from Brian Hales and others would be that because that quote from Brigham Young or the Adam God theory itself is not canonized, then we really only should be dealing with canonized examples to refute these things. And I'm saying that's silly. If a prophet steps to the front and says, I've received a revelation that, you know, ABC has happened, and ABC turns out to be disavowed by prophets 100 years later, then I think that's an absolutely fair instance to show that a prophet received bad information from somewhere.

John Dehlin [00:39:20] Okay. So they're basically saying unless it's canonized, it's just a prophet's opinion. Prophets are allowed to have opinions, and so they shouldn't be listed as, you know, misrevelations or even really discussed because they're just opinions and everybody has opinions. Right.

Bill Reel [00:39:42] I would even go further than that. I mean, they would acknowledge that Brigham is claiming he got this from Revelation but that until it's accepted by the church by common consent, it isn't something that applies to the church and hence really doesn't have a place in the discussion. I think they would acknowledge that Brigham is claiming he gets this information from Revelation. It's not like it's just his opinion, but that by not being canonized, it doesn't apply to the church. And I guess in the end it somehow becomes his opinion, right?

John Dehlin [00:40:11] Yep.

Bill Reel [00:40:12] It seems weird though, right? I mean, if a prophet steps to the front and says, I've had a conversation with the divine, he's given me this information, I know it's true. And Brigham even goes further. He even says, there's other saints around who also know by revelation that what I teach is true. And so this kind of community grasp that Brigham is receiving revelation on this subject only to have a hundred years later us say that it's false, I think opens the door to us examining 132 and their argument about it being canonized seems silly too, because the only difference between the Adam God theory and canonization is one. One of the Pratt brothers, Orson Pratt, disagreed with it. He's the only one of the 15 who is on the record as doing so. The other issue is that we're simply putting all this importance on putting a vote before the people and everybody raising their hand in affirmation. And I mean, you could just about say anything in the church from a leadership perspective. And 50, you know, 2% of the people would raise their hand in affirmation. It just seems like that's kind of a silly place to draw a line on what we can trust as revelation or discuss as prophets being deceived.

John Dehlin [00:41:18] Yeah. I interviewed Steven Veazey of Community of Christ, and they take common consent really seriously. If he puts a revelation before the church, there are people that vote no, and he could be outvoted. That's the way I think it was originally established. But now people are just kind of. I mean, everybody raises their hand, and if there's any dissent, nobody pays attention, really.

Bill Reel [00:41:41] And I think even, you know, I'll just make a little joke here. I think even if the prophet came out tomorrow and said, you know, next Tuesday we're going to sacrifice all of our firstborns, I almost. I almost Wonder if like 51% of the people would still raise their hand.

John Dehlin [00:41:53] Yeah, the sky is purple, you know, and everybody would raise their hand. Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:41:56] Right. Because of this idea of, you know, leaders can't lead us astray.

John Dehlin [00:42:00] Yeah. Yep. And so really, the way I interpret what FAIR is doing is that they, they're in this unfortunate position of having to construct, defend the indefensible, basically. And so they create all these rationales that the Church doesn't even necessarily substantiate or, or might substantiate inconsistently, but it's all about creating plausible deniability so that people will never actually get to the point where they say, wow, this is a problem. Maybe it's not true. They just want to provide as much defense, as much obfuscation or, you know, what they would call evidence or information or justifications to just prevent anybody from going down that slippery slope from three to four.

Bill Reel [00:42:51] Right. And I should say here, this conversation, this back and forth with Brian Hales was completely separate from fair. But it should be noted, you brought to my memory one of the things that happened with FAIR was that we created, me, John lynch, two or three other individuals, we created a discussion board. It was called FAIR Mormon Support. And it was a place where people who were struggling could go and just have kind of live conversations or post messages and get responses back and forth so that they could see how others were thinking through these issues. That too, lasted about seven or eight months. And it became obvious to FAIR that anytime you allow a group discussion on these issues, that all it's going to do is validate how problematic some of them are. And so FAIR has since taken that completely down with the caveat that they've got a note on there that this is being repaired and will come back up. But. But I really don't think that's going to happen. I think it's gone for good. And I think they see that it's not a tenable position to hold to have group discussions on difficult issues and hope that the group all comes out the other side thinking all this all fits together perfectly.

John Dehlin [00:43:58] And that just quick, that makes, you know, that jives with me so, like, I can't get Michael Ash to come on my podcast. No matter, you know, no matter what. I've tried for years and years and years, you know, Daniel Peterson won't come back. You know, these people don't flourish with peer review, with scrutiny. They can only flourish where the discussion is highly controlled and, and limited. And, and then, and then. So, I mean, so that's one. And then the other is that they can't really thrive where there's empathy. And because to have empathy is to sort of understand all perspectives and that can lead you out. And so it's just very clear that, that, that they, you know, it's what we already concluded for Stage 3 Mormons. For Mormons who are orthodox, who've never really doubted, who have never really considered their, their testimonies in serious ways. But then they, they're confronted with difficult things. Their job is to limit the conversation, keep these people from being subjected to more serious discourse or peer review, and to just provide them with information that sort of allows for plausible deniability. Where it's like, oh, Hugh Nibley was smart and if he was okay with Egyptian, I'm okay with it too. Oh, Brian Hales is really smart about polygamy. If he's figured it out, then I'll be okay too, and just hope that they'll never really pursue their doubts or questions in any serious way.

Bill Reel [00:45:36] Right. I would totally agree with that. And I would just add on that I don't think you'll ever really see. You know, it used to be years ago, before the Internet, you would have these debates with prominent Latter Day Saints and critical evangelists on different issues with Mormonism. And I've downloaded MP3s of some of those old things and listen to them. They're kind of fun to listen to, but. But I don't think you'll ever see that again because there's just too much information out there that anytime an apologist has a conversation with a critic, the end result, no matter what conclusion you make, the end result is going to be that this is messy and there's a whole lot more out there than what I thought. And I just don't think that's the direction they want to take people.

John Dehlin [00:46:16] And I always felt like the FAIR website, with this big, huge directory of all the problems was actually a wolf in sheep's clothing in and of itself, because sure, you can go to FAIRE to get answers to one question, but then that exposes you to a hundred more questions. Did they ever acknowledge that or talk about that?

FAIR's Relevance After the Church Essays

Bill Reel [00:46:38] There were lots of questions, you know, from people outside of fairs who would say, you know, I came onto your site to find an answer to this one issue, and you know, oh my goodness, I just discovered there's 300 other questions I need to tackle. And I've spent lots of time in phone calls with people struggling who said, yeah, I went on to fair and was hoping to find this one answer to one question. And then I end up spending two weeks on their site not sleeping at night and wrestling with all these different issues that I had no clue about. I don't think fair is obviously fire is not trying to hurt anybody. But I think just the pure nature of laying the problems on a table is going to catch people off guard when they didn't know there was even a problem to begin with.

John Dehlin [00:47:26] Yeah, yeah, it's, it's tricky. They have a really hard job, I guess, to their credit. Several years ago, I had a friend who worked for Bonneville Communications and he, and he told me that he was consulting Fair. And so he asked me all my advice of what I would do to make FAIR better. And one of the things I told him was, well, that they needed to show more empathy, which I clearly you felt too. But also they needed to stop attacking, you know, people. And it, in all fairness, no pun intended, it does seem like they've backed off on attacking people. Brian Hale still kind of does that. And, and it seems like, you know, Greg Smith still kind of does that, but it seems like they do that more outside of fair. So is that fair to say that fair's dropped the ad hominem a little bit?

Bill Reel [00:48:22] I think to some extent they have. I still see a few of their members. I mean, I get private messages from a member or two who still wants to kind of, you know, reign me in. I still get a few posts on my Facebook page. There was a while there where several members of FAIR Mormon would come on my Facebook post and post a criticism of what I was saying. But the moment I would ask a question which is obviously going to lead them to admitting that this is more problematic than what they're saying, they would just drop out of the conversation. I don't know if that was necessarily any kind of anything personal, but I do think that they're still trying to kind of control the narrative in ways that, that I don't think they really have power to do anymore.

John Dehlin [00:49:06] Do you think that the new essays from the church are making FAIR less relevant?

Bill Reel [00:49:13] Well, let me. I'll put it this way. I think lots of people, of the hundred or so people I've talked to in the last two months in emails and phone conversations, those who are struggling with the history and trying to make it work and trying to stay in, I bet half of them, whereas if you go back a couple of years ago, the majority of them would be, you know, they would be encountering anti Mormon stuff. Half of those today, I think, are kind of entering their faith transition by reading the essays, I think by the church coming out and acknowledging some of this stuff is messy. I just, it obviously hurts the ground that FAIR needs to walk, if FAIR is going to walk ground where they don't admit that it becomes kind of counter to what they're doing to in any way, shape or form, kind of go against the essays. So I think it makes them a little less relevant.

John Dehlin [00:50:04] Yeah. And in your experience, for the people that came to FAIR to get answers, did you get a sense that they just left fully satisfied and never returned? Or did you ever get the sense that FAIR was sort of, for many a way station on to doubt later, and the fair was just sort of a temporary, at minimum, like you said, you know, at minimum, a temporary station where they would eventually lead into the stage four kind of doubting area. And in many cases, they went to FAIR for support, but it ended up accelerating their disaffection out or their doubting. Would you say that's fair? Fair. So no pun.

Bill Reel [00:50:51] Sure, sure. Let me say it this way. I know of probably 7, 8, 9 people who were in FAIR at the same time I was in FAIR inside part of the organization. And I know now those folks have moved on. They've sent me messages and just said, you know, fair, once you get to a certain point of thinking these things through, these issues become much more problematic than I initially thought. And so many of these folks who were in FAIR answering the questions have stepped away and said, look, I mean, it's just not that they're out, not that they've left the church, not that they don't believe, but that they see FAIR is no longer kind of meeting them where they're at, and so they've stepped away from the organization. As far as people outside of FAIR messaging, some people would message and email back and say thank you for the answer. I think again, most Stage three people are really helped by it. If you're in stage three, and as you pointed out in your podcast on stages of faith, 80% of the human population gets to that stage and never exits it. For 80% of the people, I think Fair Mormon to some extent shows them that there's answers out there. Sometimes it's just the idea that I don't know the answers, but somebody else does. And so that takes care of it for me. But I think for those who are really reading this stuff, thinking more deeply, I think a large chunk of them move beyond fair and it's just no longer helpful.

John Dehlin [00:52:17] Okay, so fair is effective for people who either are, you know, aren't serious in their questioning and doubts. Maybe that's the best way to say it. If somebody's just casually questioning and they just want some sort of comforting reassurance, that. But smarter people than Them in quotes have already figured this out. FAIR serves that group very effectively.

Bill Reel [00:52:47] I would say for most that's the case. I don't want to paint it like anybody who's thinking, anybody who's reading can't see things that way. There's obviously intelligent people, there's Obviously people at FairMormon who are super brilliant, who are very informed on the issues and still holding what I would call still a much more orthodox belief. I just think that for most people who get to a point where they're thinking deeply about these issues, I don't know that fair Mormon any longer helps them or applies them. It's a great place to go to get information. If I'm looking for a quote really quick, it's a great place to go to find the info. But as far as it actually answering people's doubts and helping them, I think once you're out of stage three, most of those people are no longer benefited, at least not in a large amount, by what FAIR does.

John Dehlin [00:53:39] Okay, that makes sense. So let's talk about your Unless there's something else you wanted to talk about.

Bill Reel [00:53:46] Well, I do want to add a little bit on to the Brian Hales conversation. One of the things that Bryan threw out was, Bill, you're not really thinking this through. We have Mary Elizabeth Rollins who reports that the angel came three times and she talks about how Joseph told her that he knew the angel was from God. And so therefore we just know that this is how it happened and Joseph wasn't deceived. But one of the things that really frustrated me with this point that he makes is that this is like 62 years after the revelation. And it's like when she's like 87 years old. And my first thought goes to how many times in apologetics do we discount witnesses or discount testimony or discount information or second or third hand accounts or even firsthand accounts, because the time span between when it was said and when the person's reporting, it is so much time. And to say somebody's 87 years old, 62 years after the fact, and yet she becomes really the only strong piece of evidence. You have to hold up that this middle way that I'm providing is completely uncredible. And so it was that kind of stuff that Brian would go into. I messaged Brian back and I was super nice. I mean, again, I'll be happy if listeners want my side of the conversation. I'm happy to share it. I wouldn't share his, but I'm super nice in how I'm trying to talk to him. And I'm saying, look, I totally respect where you're coming from. I've always said nice things about you and Laura. I don't have any personal agenda against you. It's just. I draw a different conclusion here, and I just want to provide some middle way. It's not even that I held this theory to be the most valid in my own mind. It was that I wanted to give people a place at the table, to still be faithful and to set this aside. And Brian writes me back and he says, I hope your podcast dies. And he wants to take my logo T shirt and just destroy it. And it was this kind of rhetoric from email to email that just kind of like, set me back and said, man, this guy, when somebody counters, let me back up. I think that when, because he's put so much work in, he's got so much information, he has so many points of historical data, that he makes the assumption that because he's done all the homework, that his conclusions have to be the right conclusions. And when somebody comes in and says, I don't really agree with your conclusions, I don't know that he really takes that very kindly. And I felt like in this correspondence with him, I really tried to be kind and nice, but say, look, I'm not pulling my episode and I'm happy to have a discussion with you on why I feel that this has a seat at the table. And all I got back was like, this just nastiness. And the four or five people that I value their opinion as being is being kind of neutral. I've let them read those messages and they say, man, I can't believe this guy says some of these things. And I just want to make it clear that with him being a part of fair, I know that in the last year, him and Laura have been major contributors with them in terms of helping them behind the scenes. That this whole me disappearing from Fair Mormon, it just kind of goes in line with all these other things that have happened. It just feels like whenever you take a stance outside of where they want you to be, they get really. They get really frustrated with you.

John Dehlin [00:57:18] Yeah. You know, the best way. You know, I've obviously had my, you know, run ins with the Hales in the past as well, and I know many other people have. And, you know, I. It's. It would be easy for me to just say they're nasty, you know, mean, mean people. It to some degree. I mean, anyone can be delightful under controlled circumstances. But I think. I think to me, what it comes down to is a quote that I, I posted recently on my Facebook page attributed to Thomas Paine. It says, belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. And I just think that the Hales, Dan Peterson, Lewis Midgley, Bill Hamlin, all of them who are sort of associated with acting kind of unchristlike and mean spirited at times, I think they're put in a very difficult position of having to defend what's indefensible. And you know, someone like Mike Ash can, or even Terrell and Fiona Givens or Richard Bushman, they can be polite, but it's only because they never actually open themselves up to scrutiny. They'll only interview with people who are friendly and they'll have these secret firesides or these public radio appearances where they're never really asked the difficult questions and that allows them to really keep their cool. But, but, you know, but, but Hamblin and Peterson and the Hales, they put themselves out in the fray by having to actually, you know, directly challenge, you know, people who are asking legitimate questions and providing critical concerns. And I think that that makes them, that turns them into people who, who behave in unchristlike ways because they're defending positions that really are unchristlike. And I think it makes you unchristlike to be put in the position of defending unchristlike things. That's my theory.

Bill Reel [00:59:28] Yeah. And I know, like in my correspondence with Brian, one of the things he said was, you know, he called the Van Allens anti Mormon. And like, to me, that just rubbed me wrong because here are these guys who, you know, at least as of their kind of being public, about 132, wanted to be in, wanted to stay in, wanted to be faithful, but simply had an issue with this one, this one topic. And for us to just say, like, anybody who finds a problem with one issue in the church and can't really overcome it easily is anti Mormon. Just seems to be like over the top and mean spirited. And anyway, it just, it gets to be kind of normal for me behind the scenes to see some of that kind of happen. And I think these guys are really careful not to do a lot of that in public because obviously to do it in public, you're going to call attention to the fact of your own behavior. I will say too, with people like Terrell Givens and Richard Bushman, I've interviewed them several times. So have you. I think they're genuinely good people who realize that this stuff is messy. And I've had private conversations with them, with Adam Miller, with Sam Brown, with, you know, Fiona and others. And I wouldn't name names necessarily, but in my private conversations with different scholars from the church that I respect, they're a lot more open in private and have expressed that they, to some extent, struggle with some of these same things that you and I do.

John Dehlin [01:01:05] Right. But they can't mention it. No.

Bill Reel [01:01:08] And obviously I wouldn't tell you which ones it was, so.

John Dehlin [01:01:10] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:01:11] But, you know, because obviously they're. They're. They have a right to do things kind of in their own. Their own way.

John Dehlin [01:01:18] And. And, you know, I'll just say again, I don't see. You know, what I try and do these days is just have empathy. And I just think the Hales and Dan Peterson and Midgley and Hamblin and people in that category, I just think they've got a really hard job where they're in the role of defending the indefensible, and that turns people. That leads people to act in ways that they probably wouldn't otherwise act.

Bill Reel [01:01:51] Yeah. And you'll have. Anytime you have a discussion, these guys want to defend the church, and I get that. I try at times, when I can, to defend the church as well, and they try to do that. But the moment you throw questions back on them where they're going to have to either walk down the path of admitting this is messy, they choose not to do that, and instead they tend to kind of get upset and use kind of more of this emotional argument of being critical of you or being critical of the mode in which you're asking questions and to kind of paint you as the bad guy, because I think that's the easiest way kind of out of that conversation, rather than having to deal with the fact that church history is full of paradoxes and contradictions, and our theology has some of that as well.

John Dehlin [01:02:41] Yeah. So anything else you want to say about Brian and Laura, or is that it?

Bill Reel [01:02:48] I will say one more thing. If you want to know every point that Brian Hales brought up in his document that never got published, you can go on to part two of the episode of Handshakes and Drawn Swords. And I address every single one of those points there. And I think when I'm done, I think I still show there's room for that middle way to have a seat at the table. That's it. That's essentially it with Brian and Fair. And I wish all them the best of luck. This whole thing with me disappearing off their website, especially the transcript of the session, just seemed kind of dishonest, and I wanted people within Mormonism to grasp and understand kind of what has gone on behind the scenes that kind of maybe led up to this.

John Dehlin [01:03:37] Got it. So I was really surprised to see your recent post on Wheat and Tares, because in my mind, and a lot of. To be honest, a lot of sort of post Mormons, you know, sent me links and said, wow, this is a big deal. Bill Real's kind of crossing a line here because you sort of. You sort of spoke out openly and publicly against a church policy. And that. That's kind of what gets people in trouble. I mean, you know, Rock Waterman, the Caldermans, me, Kate Kelly. Like, you know what happens these days when you're too vocal, you have too much of a following, and then you contradict the church. So talk about that.

Faithful Dissent on LDS LGBT Policy

Bill Reel [01:04:22] Sure. So I certainly still have a testimony of the church. And if you want, we can talk maybe about what that means. I certainly believe in the church. I have hope in the church. But when this policy came out, it just seemed so contradictory in so many ways inside my mind as I was trying to think it through. And at first, I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and I went off and I said, okay, let's listen. Let's think this through. Let's see if there's got to be some way of reconciling this with our history, our theology, our doctrine. And I just couldn't find it. And so finally, I'm just sitting there, maybe a week later, I wrote this on November 18, like a week later, week and a half later, and I'm still just as frustrated. Christofferson comes out, Edward Christofferson comes out. And I didn't feel like that really explained it or answered the issues. And then a week after that, then this First Presidency letter comes out. And this First Presidency letter seems to be kind of implying something very different from the original intent of what was worded in the handbook. And that just didn't feel right. And so I wanted to get my thoughts all down. And as I started thinking about everything that just didn't feel right about this policy, it became obvious that there were a large list of them. And so as I put this together, it's my reason why I dissent against the policy itself. And they've already made it clear this is a policy, it's not doctrine. And I don't see the negativity in disagreeing with the policy. I didn't know that in our church, we all had to think the same way. I think Elder Uchtdorf made a comment in this talk. The four titles that we're not all supposed to think the same way. We don't all have to agree on the same things. We can be unified in the midst of our diversity. And I guess we'll see if the church really believes that or not. Because I've been an ardent supporter of people staying in the church. I've been an ardent supporter of trying to make it work. I've been an ardent supporter of having faith that the church is true and hoping that it's true. And we'll see if they're going to let me dissent against the policy itself. I just, I can't make it mesh. It seems so separated from the things that we stand for that I'm extremely uncomfortable. And I'm not the only one, right? I mean, it seems like even the middle of the road Mormons are not comfortable with this policy and a lot of them are speaking out as well. I saw the article from Grant Hardy where he doesn't really draw any conclusions or let his own feelings be known, but he frankly admits that there's a lot of problems in the policy trying to mesh it with our theology.

John Dehlin [01:07:09] Okay, so you know, we can link people to the blog up on wheat and tares, but why don't you just talk our listeners through at a high level the main reasons why you think this policy isn't consistent.

Bill Reel [01:07:21] Sure. I can even just lead the. Just, you know, talk about the bolded points. One is that this policy diminishes agency. Right? We are. An 8 year old kid in one situation is now restricted. Even though his worthiness is not in question. He is restricted from participating in the saving rituals of our church. In other words, he is not allowed to choose to join, even though there is nothing that personally withholds him from doing so within his own agency other than the church saying you can't use it to choose to join. The second one is that the policy diminishes the importance of the Holy Ghost. Elder Christopher and said they can come back when they're 18. Nothing is lost. And yet we teach so much in our church that the Holy Ghost is crucial to our teenagers in their formative years. And now we're telling these kids, yeah, you're okay without it. The next one is that it violates DNC section 6827 which calls for all the eight year old children within the stakes of Zion to be baptized and confirmed. These kids may not be considered the children of Zion because of their parents, but these kids still have grandparents. These kids still have siblings, these kids still have aunts. And uncles who are in the church. And so obviously that affects those relationships. The next one policy diminishes the value of ordinances. Right. We're telling these kids, you come back when you're 18, but how many kids are really going to come back when they're 18? And how many of them are now going to be so bitter against the church they'll never come back? And as in our theology, as we kind of walk down the route, when they get to the other side, how excited are they going to be to acknowledge those church's ordinances and accept them? I think we're putting a wedge that diminishes the value of those ordinances. Policy seems to run contradictory to the teachings of Jesus where he talks about the little children, that whoever harms one of these little ones, and also the idea that suffer little children to come unto me, the policy leaves open a lot of harming possibilities. Say you've got a sibling who joined the church before the policy and now you're not going to turn. You know, you weren't born until after the policy. How are those situations going to be handled? And are some leaders going to follow the handbook and allow one member of the family to continue on the path of the gospel while the other kid doesn't? Policy seems to contradict article of faith number two, where we've talked about men should will not be punished for Adam's transgression, but for their own sins. And yet in some ways we're holding these children accountable. They're going to miss out on the rituals, the experiences, the joy of the gospel because of the sins of their parents. It seems deceptive to claim the letter was sent out a week later, that it was a clarification of that original intent. When I look at the original handbook versus what came out in the end, I would call it more of a modification or revision. The word clarification just seems to imply something that it really isn't. And so I wanted to bring that one out as well. There's already a policy that covers the likelihood that this would be taken care of in most situations. Right. The church already has a policy that both parents have to consent to their child joining the church. And so the only instances this affects a kid is where, where both parents are gay. That's the primary house the kids lives in. And both parents want their child to be in the church. And now you have to ask yourself if the main goal of the policy is to prevent those kids from being confused and to prevent those kids from. To protect them in all way shapes and form. These are kids that are going to want to come to church. These are parents who want their kid to come to church. And now they're going to be in church being isolated and marginalized, not being able to go through the same rituals that their peers are going through. And I have to ask myself, are we doing them a greater protection? Are we doing them a greater service? Are we really preventing confusion? And I don't think the answer is yes. Another thing was that Elder Christofferson a while back said there would be no litmus test on this issue. And yet in some ways this now is a litmus test that members were free to support same sex marriage. And yet a kid who wants to get baptized at 18 now has to disavow his parents behavior of same sex marriage. So in some ways these kids affected now have a litmus test. The idea that this policy promotes promiscuous homosexual sex over legal loving, committed relationships, that those relationships, the legal loving, committed ones, are now seen as a worse transgression. And so some people out there in Mormonism who are homosexual will now choose to just lead very secret lives and to still find that intimacy and companionship. And in some ways we've raised one ideal above another and I think we're going to do more harm to our community because of it. The motive of protecting children, we talked about that. I'm just trying to think offhand, the modification not being in the handbook yet that concerns me that soon as this, soon as a leader is released and a new bishop or stake president is called, they're going to refer back to the handbook and know nothing of this letter. Sure, some leaders save these letters. I served as a bishop. The three bishops prior to me didn't save any letters. And so the letters I found was from the fourth bishop before me. And so I don't have any confidence that across the board every bishop and stake president will hang on to this letter and that every new bishop and stake president will be made aware of it. And so until it's officially in the lingo of the handbook, that becomes very concerning to me. Book of Mormon teaches that if there's a desire to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, then that is all required to enter the waters of baptism. In other words, what have you against being baptized? And now we have to say, even if you fit all the personal requirements in terms of your testimony and in terms of the way in which you'll live your life, we're still telling these kids, sorry about your luck. And so as I put all those together and I spell them out in greater detail, I tried to be quick here. As I spell them out in greater detail in the blog, I end with a quote from Joseph Fielding Smith that says that when we do things in the church, when a leader says something or when the church teaches something that is contrary to the scriptures and to the doctrine, Joseph Fielding Smith says we are duty bound to reject it. And so I simply stand up and say, look, this doesn't fit very well. This doesn't mesh with a whole lot of principles. It doesn't mesh with scripture. It doesn't mesh with just the, just the logical end of who's going to be heard and who's going to be confused by these policies that I just felt like I need to stand up and say, you know, this is a policy. Am I allowed to dissent? Because I am. And we'll see if that, if that's permitted.

John Dehlin [01:14:31] Are you personally in favor of same sex marriage?

Bill Reel [01:14:35] Legally, I personally am in favor of same sex marriage. And let me say this too, John, throw another bone your way. When you and I did the interview, if you remember, right, if you remember back then, one of the questions you asked me, because I was trying to defend the church on this issue, you asked me, well, Bill, let me ask you personally, if your stake president asks you to live a celibate life and to no longer be intimate with your spouse or with anybody else of the opposite gender, could you do it? And if you remember, I kind of stammered on that question, tried to kind of avoid it. And after that interview ended, I had to think long and hard about that question. And the conclusion I came to was that if I'm going to be completely honest, there's no way that I would live the rest of my life celibate, not being intimate with someone of the opposite gender. And if I couldn't do it, then I would be a hypocrite for asking any of my gay brothers and sisters to do that. And so from that interview forward, I'm not going to sit here and say the church is wrong in terms of homosexuality being a sin. In fact, I'd probably much rather phrase it as a transgression. And maybe we're getting off track here, but one of the things I would want to throw out is that we also have a commandment in the scriptures where God says it is not good for man to be alone. And whereas Adam and Eve were placed in a garden with two impossible choices and they had to by keeping one, break the other. I think in many ways, our homosexual, our LGBT brothers and sisters are in that same predicament where they either have to choose to be alone, which God said is not good, or they have to choose to do something that at present, we believe God says is sin. And so when they break one, they have to break one to keep the other. And if they keep one, they have to break the other. And to me, that just seems like an impossibility for me. And so from that interview forward, I've been a supporter of our LGBT brothers and sisters in the sense that I validate them, I empathize with them, and I want them to know that whatever choice they make, I want them to find peace in this life rather than torment themselves and bank on the next.

John Dehlin [01:16:56] And there's also the teaching that man is that he might have joy. And I can tell you from my research that living a life of celibacy or a mixed orientation marriage for most LGBT people represents the opposite of joy.

Bill Reel [01:17:11] Right. And once we start recognizing the spectrum of things that occur with people as they're in the womb, and afterward with transgender and hermaphrodites and all the multiple possibilities that happen, all of a sudden, when you really look at this issue, it's a lot messier. It's not like it's black or white, and you're either this or you're that. Rather, there's a whole spectrum of ways that we as human beings can turn out. And I think in some ways, the way in which we've dealt with this issue kind of largely ignores that complexity.

John Dehlin [01:17:49] Yeah. I think another term for hermaphrodites is intersex. Is that right? That. Is that the. The term?

Bill Reel [01:17:57] I don't know. I'm not. I'm not performing surgery later today, so I don't know anything about.

John Dehlin [01:18:00] I think it's. I think they're. I think they prefer these days, the term intersex.

Bill Reel [01:18:05] Okay. And my apologies.

John Dehlin [01:18:06] No, no, no, it's good.

Bill Reel [01:18:07] It's good. Sure.

John Dehlin [01:18:07] I think. I think people associate hermaphrodites with, like, earthworms, so.

Bill Reel [01:18:14] Gotcha.

John Dehlin [01:18:14] Yeah. Yeah. No, that's good. I appreciate that. I appreciate your willingness to, you know, admit it, admit that you've changed a bit. Let me ask you this. I mean, if you really strip down modern, you know, Mormonism, the LDS Church, I think, really, if you had to distill it to one thing, it's authority, basically. They've shown, you know, you don't see new revelation. You know, you don't See, you don't see us clinging to a lot of our most distinctive doctrines. In fact, you see us kind of backpedaling. And even recently they've now redefined the new and everlasting covenant as not being plural marriage, but it's just being, you know, monogamous ceilings. We're redefining words like virgin to mean things that don't make any sense. And so what do we have to cling to if we become just another sort of Christian Protestant church? I think my analysis of the modern LDS Church is that what they have is modern day prophets and apostles that have privileged communication with God. And so that's why we get talks like the 14 fundamentals of following the Prophet, which basically says the words of modern prophets trump the words of old prophets. And we do best to forget whatever Bruce R. McConkie or Brigham Young said and just always follow, you know, follow the prophet, follow, you know, don't go astray. And so that's really what Mormonism is about. And honestly, you know, as long as you don't call Joseph a pedophile, as long as you don't call the church a cult, as long as you don't openly denounce the, the Book of Mormon or Book of Abraham as fraud, you're safe. Except in one area which is if you, if you contradict the brethren. And that's probably the most dangerous thing you can do in modern Mormonism. And you can pull out all the quotes you want to. And I've seen post Mormons for 10 years bring to their bishops and stake presidents a quote from Brigham Young that says, I worry that the members are going to follow us off a cliff and use your brain. But none of those quotes helped Paul Toscano, none of them helped Michael Quinn, none of them helped Rock Waterman, me. You know, that's, that's a, that's not a defense, that, that's not a dog that hunts, as they say. And so Bill real, you have to acknowledge that, that you're crossing a dangerous, I mean, you don't have to acknowledge, but I would suggest that you're crossing, you're not only crossing a very dangerous line, which puts you in the, potentially in the targets for disciplinary council because you're violating what's most sacred to Mormons in 2015, which is authority. You know, but in some ways, you know, this line of reasoning that sort of follows the Denver snuffer Rock Waterman path, which I'm not saying you're all the way there, but it's just this idea that this is the one true church and the restoration is God's manifestation of truth on the earth. And I'm going to disagree and say that the modern brethren are astray on really important things. That those things, I worry that they're not really reconcilable, that either the brethren are led by God overall or they're not. But this idea that the brethren can lead us astray, it just makes you wonder. The restoration is just small enough in terms of maybe 5 million active Mormons out of 6 or 7 billion people on the earth. If now you're going to tell me that in God's one true church, even his prophets and apostles are getting it wrong on really fundamental issues, it doesn't at some point it just really unravel the whole thing.

Bill Reel [01:22:43] In some ways I think you're right. I think certainly the 80% who are seeing things in that simple way can no longer hold onto that once we place all that on the table. In Sunday school this past week, there was an older gentleman in the back. We were having a lesson and the teacher decided to have the policy be the discussion point. And so there were, you know, 90% of the room was on one side of that conversation. And then just a few of us raising our hand and offering counter opinions to what was being said. And this old guy in the very back raises his hand and teacher calls on him and he goes, you know, I'm just really thankful that the brethren tell me what to think. And I kind of chuckled, although I'm frustrated in the class. I kind of chuckled because that's the adversary's plan, is to have us all think the same, have one person just lay out everything and we just raise our hand and agree with it all the time. That's not the Mormonism I love. And maybe they won't have me stick around much longer. We'll see. But I believe these men hold keys. I believe these men have priesthood. I believe that the church is true. Maybe not exactly in the way they sometimes frame it or think it is, but that it's true. And what we're going to have to say is, is there room for guys like Bill Riehl to stand up and dissent against a policy? Can he do that? And when I look at Mormonism, Orson F. Whitney talking about non members being among the auxiliaries of the church, when I look at the word church, DNC, I think it's 10 says, all who repent and come unto me are of my church. When we look at the first presidency letter in 1978, where Spencer W. Kimball and the other group there in the First Presidency talk about people like Mohammed and Confucius being inspired by God to give moral light to those around him. When Elder Uchtdorf admits we made mistakes, some of which violated doctrine, when the race essay says that the things we taught in the 40s that were a doctrine are now disavowed theories, I think all of that, if we're going to be honest, if we're going to just like open up and say, okay, what does this really mean? What it means is that prophets can and have made serious mistakes on doctrinal issues. And they, although subtly, they admit so themselves. And so this policy, by them saying this is a policy, not a doctrine, it even has lesser of inspirational weight to it. And they're going to have to decide whether people like me can have faith in the church, but publicly say, I disagree with this policy. And I guess we'll find out in the next six months or year whether they'll permit people who have a testimony, who believes, who understand the messiness of our history. And I've used that word probably a dozen times today. The paradoxes, the contradictions, the times where leaders have claimed revelation only to have another leader a decade later or 100 years later say, that guy was off base. I think all of that adds up to say that we get a lot of things wrong, but that still doesn't take away from the fact that we're still the Lord's institution to provide the saving ordinances and to ensure that we provide a way in which people can become more like the Savior as they move through this journey. And again, we'll see. Time will tell, and I'll, you know,

John Dehlin [01:26:06] and I'll just tell you how it worked for me. The way I think even Fair itself works is that when they peg someone as a wolf in sheep's clothing, which you're clearly being pegged as that by people like Brian Hales and Greg Smith and others, what they end up doing is either through the strengthening the members committee or just through their own efforts, they end up reaching out privately to your bishop and stake president. They end up feeding them documents that demonstrate your dissent, and it leads to a disciplinary council.

Bill Reel [01:26:45] Right? And I will say that I know for a fact that Brian has asked for who my stake president is so that he can have conversation with him, which I think is completely off base and completely wrong. But I will say this too. I've been open. When I was in Ohio, my stake president and my bishop were constantly informed of the places I was doing firesides, the subjects I was talking about, I would constantly send them information off of articles and things that I was contributing to. Here in St. George, I have sat down with my stake president and sat down and explained why I dissent against this policy, why I'm here in St. George, the podcast that I do, some of the things that I think I've shared with him, some of my nuanced beliefs. And so I don't know that these guys are going to have something handed to them that's going to be fresh and new. I think I've been pretty much an open book and anything that I say about what I think or feel or believe, I've said publicly.

John Dehlin [01:27:48] Right. So we'll see. You're willing to stand by your dissent and you think this is a hill worth taking and you're just hoping that the Church doesn't come after you.

Bill Reel [01:28:05] I'm open to further light and knowledge. I mean, I'm open to the Brethren coming out and saying, we'd like to give you a full explanation. Let me add this, too. Had, let's just say, and I don't know what the reasons are behind the scenes for some of this, but let's just say it is a legal reason that's been thrown around. Had the Brethren stood up and said, look, we live in a day and age where we have to protect the Church in its legality of it all. And so this policy is in place to do that, and we recognize that this will not be a blessing to some, but in the long run, this is the route we have to take. I would have certainly my head would have probably gone down. I would have been sad, but I would have been like, okay, I get it. Totally understand. It's when you come out and say this policy is to protect the children, and then when you look at it in depth and you realize it, at least on some level, isn't going to do that again. I just feel like I'm waiting. If they want to explain it better, they want to share why this works, why it fits, I am happy to listen. But so far it seems like they're content with the explanation they've given. And to me and to tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of other Latter Day Saints, that isn't quite working right now.

John Dehlin [01:29:20] Right. So you're basically saying the Brethren aren't being totally honest about their reasons.

Bill Reel [01:29:26] But I would also value the fact that we all need to, at times couch the things we say or not be fully transparent. Let me give an Example I've always used in the podcast, which is, John, when you went on your first date with your wife, did you tell her all the flaws that you had? And your answer would be obviously, no. I mean, I didn't just sit down and list all my negatives. I think on some level, the church has a right to kind of couch some of that. But at the end of the day, what they say publicly and how they mesh things publicly is what I have to go off of. And so the reasons they've given me don't fit. And for those reasons, I dissent against the policy.

Why Reel Speaks Out Rather Than Staying Silent

John Dehlin [01:30:12] And so why not do what many of your apologetic colleagues do and just say, I don't understand everything, but I trust the brethren, and I'm not going to publicly dissent because these men are good men, they're inspired and they know more than I do. So I'm just going to trust that and not dissent,

Bill Reel [01:30:33] because I look at what this policy is going to do to individual people and it's already hurting people. And I already know of lives that have been taken because of it. And I think at the end of the day, Mormonism, if it really, truly is going to thrive 100 years, 500 years into the future, then it's going to have to come to grips with what it really means. That 15 men in a room that we believe are led by the Savior, Also those same 15 minute times in our history have made very serious errors in doctrine, or that the prophet himself has made serious errors in doctrine, thinking that he has received a revelation, only to be told by a later prophet that he's wrong. Those are things that we're going to have to come to grips with and talk about and reconcile how we move forward as a faith dealing with that elephant in the room that anytime something is said or done, it could just as easily be a mistake like those things that were in the past. And so Mormonism, I think, just needs to grow up a little bit.

John Dehlin [01:31:42] So for you, it's that too many LGBT brothers and sisters are depressed and suffering from being marginalized and judged and driven to suicidality over these types of policies.

Bill Reel [01:32:01] The church's role is to bring all unto Christ. And aside from what is sin or what is not sin, to some segments of our membership, we provide a path that is, to 99% of them is just untenable. And to the 1% who does it, God bless them. But it just seems like we're establishing a route or a path that doesn't really accomplish the mission of a church to those people. And so in some ways, whether something sin or isn't, I mean, we have members in our ward who broke the word of wisdom, and we still gave them callings. We had a brother in our ward in Ohio, and when I was just ending being bishop and our new bishop came in, the brother was a non member. The wife actually wasn't even a wife. They were living together. He was married to another woman that was separated from. But they had never gotten officially divorced. They were living together. She wasn't a member. And yet we still allowed. Or he wasn't a member. I'm sorry. We still allowed them to participate. We still allowed them to hold callings. We still allowed them to be active in the church. We still made them feel like the church wanted them and that we were going to provide ways to include them, even if the doctrine said what they were doing was sin. And I think on this issue, we've drawn a line in the sand and said we were going to refuse to do that. And my point would be, is if this church's goal is truly to bring all into Christ, then we ought to recognize that we all fall short of the glory of God and that the church's job is to pick us up where we are and to help us be better.

John Dehlin [01:33:43] Yeah. Well, I think it's a courageous thing you're doing, and I hope it ends better for you than it did for me.

Bill Reel [01:33:52] I hope so. I hope so. I want to be here. I have a testimony of the church, but I'm not naive enough to know that other people, d. Michael Quinn, for instance, who had testimonies of the church, the church still saw that the most appropriate route was to remove them from the group. And so perhaps that happens. And I'm not naive enough to think that I can avoid that if they want that to occur. I just hope that they will sit back and say, you know, guys, it's time for us to recognize that all this stuff means something and that people on some level have to have a right to disagree on some of these things without us threatening to sever them from the group. And we'll see what happens.

John Dehlin [01:34:37] Yeah, we will see. And at some point, they'll need to stop the disciplinary council. So I hope those are a thing of the past.

Bill Reel [01:34:47] Right, me too.

Closing Thoughts and Where to Find Bill Reel

John Dehlin [01:34:48] All right, Bill Rill, tell us the URL for your podcast.

Bill Reel [01:34:52] The URL is mormondiscussionpodcast.org you can go there again. It's set up like all these other ones, John. I just don't have a third of the episodes you've got. You've done a wonderful job, I think, for our community. But that's the podcast URL, and hopefully a few people will check it out.

John Dehlin [01:35:11] All right, Bill. Well, good luck. And it's if, if you end up, you know, running on the, on the, you know, not so good side of things, let, you know, let us bring you back and we can talk about your experiences.

Bill Reel [01:35:25] Sounds good, my friend.

John Dehlin [01:35:26] And do you think you'll tell your bishop and stake president about your stand or do you think you'll let. Let Brian Hales do that?

Bill Reel [01:35:33] Well, I've already told my bishop in my stake president. I sent them an email telling them why I disagree with his policy and that it was causing me to rethink how I'm going to interact with the church going forward. I'm looking for other ways outside of the faith to find some spiritual nourishment. Not that I'm joining another church. Not that I'm leaving the one I'm in. Just that I've got to find some peace of mind. And I'm looking for ways to do that meditation and visiting other churches just to see what they're like. And my bishop and stake president are very clear on where I stand.

John Dehlin [01:36:09] Hmm. All right, good brother. Well, keep up. Keep up the good fight and please keep us posted.

Bill Reel [01:36:16] Thank you. Have a great day.

John Dehlin [01:36:17] All right. Thanks, Bill. And to listeners, thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories. Please go up and post your question or concerns. Bill, I'll tell you, I can guarantee you Brian and Laura Hales or one or the other will come up and try and defend themselves. And you guys can have a lovely battle in the comments section if you so choose. But if other listeners as well want to provide feedback or questions for Bill, maybe Bill, you'll check back in the comments section and answer some of the questions?

Bill Reel [01:36:46] Absolutely. I'll be happy to kind of stay tuned and see how it goes.

John Dehlin [01:36:48] All right. And all the listeners who provide us financial support, thanks for that. It's what keeps us going. So please. So thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories and please check us out again soon. Take care, Bill.

Bill Reel [01:37:01] Thank you, sir.

John Dehlin [01:37:08] 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

Bill Reel [01:37:38] malice,

John Dehlin [01:37:42] I 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.