Welcome and Catching Up with John Larsen

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast. Hope you're having a great day today. It's a special day. It's a special day for me. We are having Back to Mormon Stories podcast. Someone who I consider to be a legend. Sometimes I like to think of the players in the Mormon Internet world and in the Mormon history world, in the Mormon activism world, as kind of superheroes. And I don't mean that in a disrespectful way, in an arrogant way, in an elitist way, but it's freaking hard to play in this space, in my opinion, in my experience. And we're having Back to Mormon Stories podcast. Someone who I think is a legend. His name is John Larsen. Hello, John Larsen.

John Larsen [00:00:46] Hey, John. How you doing? It's been a while.

John Dehlin [00:00:49] It's been a while. And for those who don't know, I'm just going to do a quick introduction because as impossible as. As absurd as it is to think that I have listeners who don't know who John Larsen is. I'm guessing that most of you don't know who John Larsen is, because as you know, John, there's this kind of pipeline of listeners who come in and then go, and it's healthy that they go. But then I'm always having new people discover, and a lot of my listeners aren't going to know who you are. Isn't that crazy?

John Larsen [00:01:19] It is. And I mean, we stood on the backs of others, you know, like Bob McHugh and Tal Bachman and Steve Benson, Rick Packham, these guys who. Yeah, who? Their name. It's just. It's just one generation after the other

John Dehlin [00:01:31] after the other, and before them, Michael Quinn and Maxine Hanks.

John Larsen [00:01:35] How are going all the way back to the beginning.

John Dehlin [00:01:37] Yeah. Beach Roberts and Leonard Arrington and Lil Binion. Anyway, for those who don't know, quick introduction. Long, long time ago in the Mormon Internet world, after Mormon Stories had actually been retired, which was around retired, probably for the second or third time around 2008, ish. John Larsen decided to start a Mormon podcast. And filling in, you know, from my weird vantage point, filling the vacuum that had been left when Mormon Stories went silent as I was trying to get into a PhD program in Utah, which was challenging to do if you were going to try and do a Mormon themed podcast, especially if you're applying to byu. And so during that time, John Larsen emerged and started a podcast called Mormon Expression. He did it with his wife at the time, Zilpha. And he had a panel of participants that were really Fascinating and interesting. And Mormon expression became a force in Mormonism and on the Mormon Internet for many, many years. And to this day, whenever there's a thread on Reddit, on ex Mormon Reddit or anywhere else saying, what are the most influential Mormon podcasts of all time or Mormon podcast episodes of all time, even if the question is, what are your favorite Mormon stories podcast episodes of all time, what you will always get is, John Larsen. A Mormon Expression podcast is my favorite Mormon themed podcast. And reliably, you'll get the how to build a Transoceanic vessel episode of Mormon Expression podcast as a top three of all time Mormon themed podcast episodes, along with maybe, you know, Tom Phillips and maybe Michael Coe. So it's like for sure top three, if not number one, most influential episodes of all time. And even though John Larsen retired from podcasting how many years ago, John?

John Larsen [00:03:40] It's been six going on seven years.

John Dehlin [00:03:43] That's hard to believe.

John Larsen [00:03:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:45] And you were, you were kind enough, or I was lucky enough to be able to kind of interview you as you were retiring. And we had had this beautiful event at one of the Unitarian churches here in Salt Lake City that kind of announcing your retirement. You can check out that interview on YouTube to kind of get the story prior to John's retirement. But John, you were kind enough to reach out to me and say, hey, let's do a where are they now? Kind of thing. And I loved it because I said, well, am I interviewing you? Are you interviewing me? And tell me what your response was.

John Larsen [00:04:20] Did I say two old guys sitting on the porch? It's. It's two John's. It's the shithouse talks, right?

John Dehlin [00:04:28] Yep. So that's what you're in for. It's just going to be me and John for a few hours, catching up, catching each other up and catching you up. And most importantly, just shooting the shit. Can I say that word on Warmer Stories?

John Larsen [00:04:42] It's your. It's your place.

John Dehlin [00:04:45] All right, John Larsen. So. So how's it going?

John Larsen [00:04:47] It's good. Yeah, it was, it was over the Christmas break, I was looking up, I was watching a band that I like on YouTube and I was on my YouTube channel, which I don't hit that often, and I had saved podcasts, and there you were interviewing me that we, we, we shut down Mormon Expression at the end of 2014. And then I think we did that about February or March. So it was right after it had finished. And, and so I popped in, I was listening, and then I went back to the beginning and I Started texting you in the middle of it. And so, you know, I was saying, hey, we need to catch up. And then what really caught my eye is at the end of the podcast, you had asked me to predict what was going to happen in Mormonism, and you went back and listened.

John Dehlin [00:05:27] Right.

John Larsen [00:05:28] And it was funny because you were. You were seeing at the time, this is 2015, all these progressive elements coming in, and you were kind of optimistic about the new phase of the church. And I was a little bit floored by what I said. Do you remember?

John Dehlin [00:05:43] Tell us.

John Larsen [00:05:44] I said we were one pandemic away from the rise of a new religion. And I'll. I'll call that. I'll call that a win. Right. With the rise of QAnon and Maga and some of these. Some of these, well, frankly, scary elements with us today, you know, it's. Yeah, I called it.

John Dehlin [00:06:04] You did. You're a prophet. You look like a prophet.

John Larsen [00:06:08] I look. I look like I do. Just escaped from Azkaban if it was a fat camp.

John Dehlin [00:06:14] You got the long hair and the beard.

John Larsen [00:06:15] I got the long hair. I cut my hair the last day on Black Friday on March 13th, right before we went into lockdown, and I haven't cut it since. So now it's just kind of a thing. I don't know when I'm gonna cut it.

John Dehlin [00:06:26] It's like John the Baptist, man. It's like a secular prophet.

John Larsen [00:06:29] Right, Right. Yeah. I look like I'm about to move to a compound.

John Dehlin [00:06:34] Well, John Larsen, what's been going on? Catch us up. Where do you want. Where should we begin?

John Larsen [00:06:40] Oh, do we want to talk about me or the. I'm not that interesting. I've. I've. I had. I've had a. I've had some ups and downs in the last couple years, and. But they've. They've ended well. You know, I oftentimes the Mormon Expression podcast was. Because it was so integrated into my life. Of course, I famously got divorced in the middle of it to. To the lovely Zilfa.

John Dehlin [00:07:01] Shout out to Zilfa.

John Larsen [00:07:03] And so. And I think she's. She's been married now to her husband James, who's a great guy. About 10 years. I don't know. It's been. It's been a while. So. So not long after the podcast, I have. I have. I have two. Jill and I have two adopted children that we adopted as infants, and they're both on the spectrum and.

John Dehlin [00:07:23] Autism spectrum.

John Larsen [00:07:24] Yes, they're both on the autism spectrum, and they're. They're Both transgender and my oldest. You know, I've debated talking about it, but, you know, there's certain stigma behind mental health issues. And my oldest also is bipolar, so I spent a lot of time in the last few years in and out of, out of uni. That's the Salt Lake City's big mental health hospital, and really helping my kids get through some really tough issues. But I'm glad to say they're doing great, both of them. They're finding their feet and, but life gets in the way sometimes. And sometimes podcasts like this, they take a lot of work.

John Dehlin [00:08:05] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:08:06] Don't they, John?

John Dehlin [00:08:07] They, they do. They take a little bit of work. Let me ask you, let me ask you to start. I, I, I'm just, I'm going to jump out with things I'm curious about.

Ending the Mormon Expression Podcast

John Larsen [00:08:14] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:08:15] You're always welcome to answer questions back. So as I've watched people come and go, It's, I, I 100% get wanting to let it go.

John Larsen [00:08:29] Right.

John Dehlin [00:08:30] It's kind of like Frodo in the ring. You carry the ring for a while, but it becomes exhausting, and it kind of can change you and it can wear you out, and so you want to kind of let it go. But I also notice that for some people, it's hard to let it go. And then once they've let it go, they miss the attention, they miss the activism, they miss being part of the fray. And then sometimes they try and come back, and sometimes that's to different degrees of success, but it's, it always kind of changes you. So I'm curious, to start with, I'm just curious, what was it like to, to stop a podcast that was highly influential? I cannot emphasize how highly influential, how highly important, how high quality Mormon expression was, and how important you were to our community. How hard or easy or complex was it to end it?

John Larsen [00:09:29] Oh, it's a great question. There were a lot of mixed feelings. And so when Zilph and I were going through the divorce, that would be 2013. 2012. 2013, we kind of stepped back and we brought other people in. We kept going. So the last year is when I opened the studio in Salt Lake. And, and that year was just gangbusters. Right. And, and good. It was good. We were getting tons of downloads. We were filling up the studio every week.

John Dehlin [00:09:56] You had mental health professionals working with you?

John Larsen [00:09:58] We did. We Whitefields was, was around Mormon expression, and we've always, I'm proud of the fact that we always use Mormon expression as an avenue to give back to the Community to. To try to push people to therapy, set up different sessions, do things like that. So, yeah, that was all going very well. But by that time, I had really lost my faith in 2003, and I did for two years. I tried to keep going to church. I tried to make it work. I tried to do the. Whatever we call them these days. We used to call them progressive Mormons or New Order Mormons or whatever. And then about 2005, I just couldn't do it anymore. And then it was 2009, we started the podcast.

John Dehlin [00:10:39] When I started the podcast. So you're basically leaving the church the same year I start Mormon Stories, right?

John Larsen [00:10:45] Yeah, that was the last time I went to church, you know, as a. As a member, as a believing member or whatever, you know, sitting in the pews was. Was fall of 2005. So podcast started in 2009 and summer 2009. So I had processed a lot of that stuff out, but I was. I was just absolutely fascinated with Mormonism, and that's really why I started the podcast. As I'd moved to North Carolina and moved out of Salt Lake, so I'd lost kind of this social support network. And before Facebook, the networks were really more. Were stronger than they are now. And. And I was still interested in Mormonism, so it was just a way to chat about Mormonism. And then of course, it evolved into what process?

John Dehlin [00:11:24] It may be a little bit.

John Larsen [00:11:25] I don't know that I needed to process it as much. I had to process it more because my exit wasn't terrible. Like, I didn't have terrible leaders or there's a lot of people who suffer through their exit a lot. But luckily, you know, ZILF and I were on the same page. We had called a truce with our. With our parents. So. So there were some. There were some. You know, I. I have some relatives who it. You know, like that we have parts of the family that are dead. Right. Probably in part due to that, but. But, you know, with. With my. My sister and my parents, we always. We always just got along. We agreed to get along, so I didn't have to process through like a lot of people do. There's people who lose their jobs, they get divorced, they lose everything. But when I started doing the podcast, I suddenly found out we were sitting on this world of pain as you've been wallowing in for the last. I don't know how long. There's a lot of struggles, that Mormonism, the word is too loaded. But it is very, very cultish in that it takes over all aspects of your life, your relationships, your sexuality. There's. There's nothing that Mormonism doesn't touch identity. And, and it's deep, deep in identity. And that's, that's the question you're. You're getting at. Like, why do some. Why do some people transition out and some people don't? I mean, the same question could be given for, like, I don't know, Afghan vets or Vietnam vets. You know, there's. There's some who are able to transition, and there's some who carry that PTSD around for a long time. And I really. It was. It was later when I started reading more clinically about PTSD that I started recognizing a lot of the signs that, that the leaving of the church was so traumatic. So for me, I became more angry because I started seeing how just terrible this was for everyone. And I mean, for everyone from the 12 on down, we have a situation that was introduced, you know, coming up on 200 years ago that is causing pain and suffering on all aspects and, and just, just the, the anger of that. I was angry about it. Yeah. So. So you ask why. Why did you end? Well, I, I noticed that. That, you know, for the good podcasts, the ones that, that still live in infamy, they took a lot of research. You know, she wanted to do your homework.

John Dehlin [00:13:50] Your library is still available, right?

John Larsen [00:13:51] It is, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:52] Where. Where can people find.

John Larsen [00:13:53] You can still go to mormonexpression.com it'll redirect you to my webpage. And I just have it there just to simp.

Standout Episodes from Mormon Expression

John Dehlin [00:13:59] Okay. And. And what are. Give. Give the title and description of, let's just say the top five episodes. That or 10, however many you want to do. Kind of like the classics, so that. So that people can get what they need. What are the classics?

John Larsen [00:14:13] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:14:14] I know it's hard to do. It's like choosing your favorite children.

John Larsen [00:14:16] Of course, the transyoceanic vessel is one because it. It decimates the Book of Mormon. That. That's why people like it, because once you start walking through and, and just for the uninitiated what, what the podcast about is, what would it take to build a boat that could get you from the Sinai Peninsula to the New World? And the answer is a lot of technology that didn't exist there. And, and tens of thousands of people, you know, you know, like we. We. I famously keep yelling, where's the slag?

John Dehlin [00:14:45] You.

John Larsen [00:14:45] If you're going to make metal tools, there's things you have to have. Like, you have to have, you have to get your furnace up to 3,000 degrees, which they couldn't do in 600 BC, right. You know, even, even, like. And I think I've made, I made mistakes in there because I talked about blast furnaces. Well, blast furnaces weren't invented till the Middle Ages, so you could, you could do iron work, but the, the furnaces were really complicated and they're, they, you know, they didn't have bellows and things like that. So. So because they just hadn't been invented. So. So that one, that one is, is devastating because when you start saying, okay, well, he goes up to the, to the mountain to get metal out of the hill to make tools, is what it says. And the question, anybody who knows anything about mining, well, how in the world would you get ore out of the mountain without tools?

John Dehlin [00:15:28] Right?

John Larsen [00:15:29] So, you know, and you just start going like that, and it just unravels. I think one of the early ones that really got us notoriety was the Nauvoo Expositor. Of course, you know, when things were going south in Nauvoo, the loyal opposition put together a newspaper, the Nauvoo Expositor.

John Dehlin [00:15:49] William Law.

John Larsen [00:15:49] William Law. And folks. And, you know, they had a printing press and they did it. And in the, in the coda to, to Joseph Smith, Mormonism, you know, it started in 1830, you know, base. Or in 18, 1832, 1833, when they were in Independence. And of course, the, the mobs or the, you know, we, we, we throw that word around, but it's loaded. The, the people who didn't like what Mormons were doing and what they were printing. And if you look at the printing from, from that period, it was in Jackson county. It was pretty caustic stuff. I mean, Mormons were not ecumenical at all during the time. So, you know, they were talking about coming in and taking over this county and destroying all the wicked and all the Gentiles. So those guys went and upset their printing press. Right? And I know this is old history for everybody. And then of course, in Nauvoo in 44, then it happened the same thing again. Under Joseph Smith's direction, they went and stormed the capitol and did their insurrection. I might, I might find my stories crossed here, but, but, but so, so we went through the Nauvoo Expositor, the actual newspaper that printed out. And what you see is that everything that they had put in there, all of the claims against the church were true. Yeah, ostensibly. You know, some of them, of course, it's, it's media. It's it's written language, so some are exaggerated, but. And I think we did multi part on that and went through it line by line by line by line.

John Dehlin [00:17:15] You did what?

John Larsen [00:17:17] What, what other.

John Dehlin [00:17:17] And honestly is I'm as. I'm thinking about not only reading it for the first time, but then listening to your episode in today's world, you kind of have this Jeffrey Epstein kind of sex trafficking thing. And I think reading the Navu Expositor and maybe listening to your podcast for the first time, it sort of dawned on me that, that when you think about the missionaries going to Europe, lying that the polygamy wasn't being practiced, and then shipping these young women back to, you know, back to Illinois and you know, ultimately in poverty, uneducated to become plural wives, it. It kind of felt. It kind of started to seem like sex trafficking a little bit. Right?

John Larsen [00:18:02] Yeah, yeah. The, the, the story of the rise of the, of the church is very. When QAnon came on the scene in 2017, I have been fascinated by them and watching them very closely. And you'll have friends of mine who will tell you we'd be having dinner like in 2018, talking about things. And I'd say, but QAnon.

John Dehlin [00:18:21] Yeah, exactly.

John Larsen [00:18:22] QAnon is coming. Because what I recognized is the beginning of Mormonism. And so I think there's a PhD paper out there for somebody in parallel. When you see how quickly QAnon changes from one prediction to the other prediction to the other, and from an outside perspective, you look in it and say, geez, what's going on there? Can't they see? Well, Mormonism between 1830 and 1844 is the same way. They're abandoning doctrines and principles and philosophies. And the Mormonism that was really solidified by the Smiths, you know, Joseph F. Smith and his father and those guys, Joseph Fielding Smith, I mean, and Joseph F. Smith, that Mormonism is very, very unrecognizable to somebody in Nauvoo in 1842. And so we see the exact same thing with QAnon and that doubling down. And it's spooky. And it's spooky because. And we'll talk about this more because QAnon is infected the church and it is all over and they are panicking right now. The church is in bad shape today. We'll talk about it in a minute.

John Dehlin [00:19:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So we'll get back to that. But I totally agree. I just did an episode recently on how Mormonism prepared us for Trumpism and fascism and I got a lot of heat because a lot of my listeners love Trump and voted for him, and of course they mad. And I just say, yeah, we were groomed by Mormonism for conspiracy theories and for fascists kind of leaders. Right.

John Larsen [00:19:49] But that's why that. I'm just emphasizing the point that, that what's going on with Trump and Trumpism and QAnon and, and the proud and 3 percenters and all these fascist organizations is a story of poverty and fascism. I'll leave that. Then we can go back to the question. You know what, what I get upset about. I don't see anybody making a connection between the insurrection riots and the Black Lives Matter riots. The connection is poverty. And to me, who's not really a partisan, that's obvious. You get riots when people are despondent and they're lost and they're hungry. Now, we're still at a point where there's not a lot of people going hungry yet, but it's there. We're getting awful close. But you're talking about the people at the bottom. You drive. When Trump was campaigning, he talked about how decimated middle America is. It's absolutely true. And a lot of these liberals need to get out of their cities and just drive across the country and go through small town after small town after small town where the theater is closed and the grocery store is closed and there's a Dollar General there and there's a Walmart 10 miles away, and there's no job prospect and there's no hope. And that's what Trump was clinging to. And we have divided the United States into this red, blue, narcissistic bullshit that doesn't reflect reality. And the real reality is class. It's always been about class. It's always been about the proletariat and the people who control the means of production and that sort of stuff. I'm using communist words. I'm not a communist, but you get the point. So I want to put. The question you asked me was about the podcast. I think. I think there's a lot where we went through, like, sections of the Doctrine Covenant, sections of the Book of Mormon. Went through them carefully and thoroughly.

John Dehlin [00:21:31] You know, DNC132 was a really important.

John Larsen [00:21:34] Right. DNC132, DNC89.

John Dehlin [00:21:38] You did word of wisdom, and you

John Larsen [00:21:39] did word of wisdom. Because when you, when you go. And this, this again, are the remnants of QAnon. Like what, what the word of wisdom is the way I would say 92% of Mormons are by the Way, John, future tip, if you're going to make up stats, don't have a zero in the second number. Always put, always put a whole, you know, and it's better with a decimal, you know, 93.4% of Mormons. What. Don't understand what the, what the actual section 89 says. And there's not really a line that you can draw between one and the other. It just become this cultural, this cultural thing. The reason Doctrine Covenants is successful. So poorly written. It's a terrible, terrible book. It's. The LA prose is off. It's, it's, it's, it's full of nonsense and, and, and what. How this is point out. I'm stealing somebody else's idea that, that the problem is people read it because they're supposed to read the scriptures every day, right? And they read the scriptures and it's nonsense. So their mind wanders and they, you know, and it becomes this meditative experience. It's, it's. I mean, it's the same thing that other cultures do by chanting. So it doesn't really matter what it says in there. It, it, it's a conduit to a spiritual experience.

John Dehlin [00:22:45] I love it. I also had no idea that beer was okay according to DNC89. Right. But, but mild drinks of barley literally meant beer. And I don't think it was till I heard your episode that I realized that, that, that the word of wisdom is okay with beer.

John Larsen [00:23:01] Well, for, you know, most of like European history, it wasn't safe to drink the water. People, people forget this. So people drank hot drinks because they hadn't really discovered germ theory at the time, but they knew if they drank hot drinks or they drank soup or they drank, you know, mild alcohol, ales and stuff like that. You know, for most of the Middle Ages, nobody drank, well, water at all. It was all contaminated. And they were all afraid of the plague for obvious reasons that we understand better now than we did last year. So, yeah, that was just normal. But if you read the early writings, they condemn soup. And of course they were, they were riffing. Joe Smith was riffing off of Dr. Graham who. He stole a lot of that stuff from the guy who created Graham crackers who believe spicy food less led to masturbation.

John Dehlin [00:23:52] Right, Yeah, I remember that. All right, any other classic Mormon expression episodes that people should, should check out?

Moving Beyond Ex-Mormon Identity

John Larsen [00:23:59] I always like the 10 Ways John Larsen disagrees with John Larsen. Because I thought the podcast had a little bit of strength because I was willing to change my mind. You know, when I encounter new data and there's probably a lot that I don't. I was, when I was. I should have taken notes. When I was watching our interview, there were a couple things I said. I'm like, I don't believe that anymore. So I, I don't know. I think the last, the last 10, I was kind of saving up. If you're going to start anywhere, start with the last ten.

John Dehlin [00:24:28] Okay. And I, and I felt like you're one of your final episodes, if not your final episode. You talk about being an ex, ex Mormon.

John Larsen [00:24:37] Right.

John Dehlin [00:24:37] That blew my mind as well. Just this idea of like leaving behind Mormonism for good.

John Larsen [00:24:45] Right.

John Dehlin [00:24:46] And leaving behind ex Mormonism, that's hard. I'm. Part of me wants to ask you how that's going.

John Larsen [00:24:53] Well, I think I, it's almost like,

John Dehlin [00:24:54] can you do that? Can you ever really leave it behind?

John Larsen [00:24:56] Well, yes and no. I think that it wouldn't be psychologically help. Help to try to leave it behind. Now. Now for me, what has it been, 18 years now? Seven, 15 years. I don't know how it's really hard because it's not. There's no, there is. For some people, there's an epiphany and there wasn't an epiphany moment for me, but, but it stops marking your thinking. Like, like there I was, I was with some friends just a little while ago and somebody made a joke about like just something with the word of wisdom, whatever, and I didn't get it. They had to explain it to me because, because after a while you just stop processing the world through a Mormon filter. And I think, I think becoming an ex Mormon, when I talked about that as more where, where, where when you leave the church, you have a certain amount of your headspace dedicated to this, this world construction about where we came from, what's true, what's not true, and, and, and then somebody rejects the truth claim of the church, but they still have all of that psychological construction in their head that you can't, you, you cannot pull that out like weeding a garden and, and becoming an ex Mormon to me is really the stage in which Mormonism is no longer a hobby for you at all. Now you still might react like you still will probably have body shame issues that were put in the church, bad eating habits that were put in the church, sometimes good habits. You know, like, it's not all terrible, but it takes a long time. And I think that if I was going to add more phases, there's the time you're a Mormon and then, and I'm oversimplifying here because a lot of paths, and there's a time where you're ex Mormon but you're processing Mormonism still. You're still obsessed with Mormonism. And the further I am away, John, the more ex Mormons and Mormons become indistinguishable to me because they're all obsessed about the same things. They're talking about the same things, they're thinking about the same things. If you want to find out what's going on in the church, you go to the ex Mormon subreddits first because they'll have everything posted there in minutes, right? Faster than Mormons process it. So ex Mormons are really. And you can send the hate mail to John de Lynn. Ex Mormons are really more Mormon than Mormons often because they're just obsessed with it. But that's part of the, that's part of the deconversion process. So then an XX Mormon is when people fill that space with something else. Now there's a third phase after that, and then there's another phase after that. And maybe I'm just channeling Fowler at this point. The, the phase that comes out. So, so what I see is ex Mormons who just go and read all this stuff and then they become rock climbers, right? And they, they, they or, or whatever it is, they ride their bike or they, they, they become the same sort of obsessive, weird way that Mormons engage their, their, their religious philosophy. They'll usually transfer to something else. It's after that transference fades, in my opinion, that people become healthy psychologically and, but, but I mean, I'm not saying those stages aren't healthy. They're, they're part of this, this process. You see the ex with divorced people, especially if there was a, if there was a messy divorce, they, they, they're, they're obsessed with, with the other person for a while. They're, they're, they're looking at their, their posts and whatever, and then they kind of maybe find another romantic relationship and they think about it less and less and there comes a phase when they just don't care. Right? And then, then the transcendental phase that not everyone hits is that they become friends with their, with their ex or for. Whatever that means for Mormonism, that means to become friends with your Mormon past. So I think now I'm at a point where I don't, I can see that some of the bad choices I made were part of my culture, and that made me who I Am. And there's no energy spent on being angry about that anymore. I was a Mormon, I went on a mission. I practiced some cultural imperialism that I feel guilty about. Well, I just need to go out in the world and pay it forward, make it right somewhere else. Right. And that's where I think these phases. But I mean, let's be really clear. Mormonism is absolutely, undeniably a big heaping pile of. There is nothing about Mormonism that is a redeemable sort of something. Now you're gonna say, hold on, you're throwing a whole culture and I'm throwing my culture. Yes. Because we're part of American culture and we're part of Western culture and we're part of Anglo, Anglo speaking culture. And there's all of these elements and everything that you can find good in Mormonism you can find in other places. Right. So Mormonism might be a conduit for some people to do well. Right. Some people join CrossFit and they get their whole life in order and their marriage goes back to a good place, they become a better parent. But to say that CrossFit rescues marriages would not be the right thing to say. But all of the innovations that have come about in Mormonism from Joseph Smith on, they're all being discarded one by one by one. And I think it's time we acknowledge that and, and be unapologetic about it. It's in the human genome to, to seek group identity and we don't in the world is too complicated for our little minds. So we need these structures that help us understand. And these came with mythology. You know, they tell, they told kids that there's a big bad wolf is in the forest because there actually are wild boar and other things in the forest that can kill the kid. Right. So it's easier to have them scared of monsters. Right. These things have utility. Mormonism is past the point of utility, but it's going to be really hard to extract ourselves away from it and from the other bullshit out there, Mormonism, the only one, I think it was

John Dehlin [00:31:04] on your podcast, correct me if I'm wrong, where I first heard this idea that everything good about Mormonism isn't unique and everything unique about Mormonism isn't good. Is that from you?

John Larsen [00:31:16] I said that one time.

John Dehlin [00:31:18] That's, that's good, that's good.

John Larsen [00:31:21] Yeah, it's, it's true, it's true. But, but you know, we, we, we were a people, you know, I, I come from the pioneer stock or whatever, and, and we were a people. We're we're rebel route and Americans are that way in general. I've been watching these historic shows on BBC because BBC is a lot calmer than everything in America is a competition all the time about kind of historical farm practices. That, that's where I'm at these days. And, and it's interesting because most of the machinery, you know, in the 19th century and 20th century, the farms, was coming from America. It's because in America we have a culture of competition where, where if you go to traditional cultures that have been around a long time anywhere in the world, they'll have an identity, a group identity, a cooperation. You know, we're all Bavarians. We're all, you know, from this particular village, you know, wherever. And people aren't necessarily trying to one up one another. Well, all the people who came to America, I once saw a British historian who basically said America was all the assholes from every country. We're in constant competition. That's why we have this religious notion of the one true church, where of the 7 billion people on this planet, most of them would not know what you're talking about when you say, like, what a true church. Church true. What are you even talking about? And we Mormons walk around saying we're going to convert everybody to the true church. And it's a concept that doesn't even make sense to anybody. It's kind of like saying this is the one true ice cream. And everyone else is like, well, they're

Approaches to Leaving and Critiquing the Church

John Dehlin [00:32:48] all ice cream sandwich. Yes.

John Larsen [00:32:51] It's just a really bizarro concept that we've developed amongst ourselves. And the problem that when you talk to missionaries, they're so young and naive by design. They don't even have any idea what they're engaging in. I can't even talk to them because they have no idea their own theology, let alone any other theology, you know,

John Dehlin [00:33:11] so, so I have several children that are, are non. Non. Let's just say they are either sexually diverse or gender diverse. I'll say that. And I, one of my children, I was having a conversation with them and they basically said to me, the church needs to be destroyed. The world, the world needs to no longer have an LDS church. And I was, I was, you know, of course I want my kids to think and feel for themselves. But I've never operated Mormon stories under and you know, I've never operated Mormon stories under that paradigm. And of course I lost my faith in 2001 and I didn't leave until 2004. 15 and I didn't leave. They Kicked me out because I didn't want to leave.

John Larsen [00:34:05] Right.

John Dehlin [00:34:05] Part of that was because I felt. Well, part of it was because I felt like staying in it could help change it, but also would help make the work that I did more effective and reach more people. But also. And part of this is a product of my privilege, is I felt like I benefited so much from the church. I felt like I owed it my love and support, and I saw so much good in it because I felt like it had been such an important force in my life. So here I am with one of my kids saying, I don't see the church as evil. I don't want to get rid of the church. I think the church means a lot of good things to a lot of people. It helps marriages. It helps families. It gives people structure. And I made the argument that the only thing worse than a false or a corrupt structure is no structure. Because as you know as well as I do, there are a lot of people who leave high demand religion and wreck their lives or at least have a lot of problems. And I think you and I have both said at different points in our careers, there are people who probably would have been better off staying in the church than. Than what they. What happened to their lives or what they did to their lives once they left. So I. And of course my kids are coming from the perspective of, like, this church wants to. This church destroys people like me. This church leads to suicides of people like me. And. And it is lethal to people like me. So of course their perspective is they want to see the church gone. And there was even this real moment where I'm arguing that the church does good and can be good and helps a lot of people, where they said to me, do you think the world would be better off without Scientology? For whatever it's worth, I've been thinking about this stuff for 20 years. No one's ever asked me that, and I never thought about that. And I, you know, I've studied Scientology, and I thought, yeah, I think the world would be better off without Scientology. I think Scientology should go away. And then they looked at me and they said, that's how I feel about the Mormon Church. And then, of course, my. My apologetic mind goes to, well, there's differences between Scientology and the Mormon Church. And so that's where my mind went again, trying to defend it and try and support it. But I'm going to just ask you that question directly.

John Larsen [00:36:27] Would the.

John Dehlin [00:36:28] Would the. In your mind, would the world be better off if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ceased to exist.

John Larsen [00:36:36] Yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:36:37] Really?

John Larsen [00:36:37] I mean, but, but the problem is how do you get there from here? Because, because you have all these people. What we need is we need methadone and we don't have that yet.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] Tell us what that means for those who don't understand.

John Larsen [00:36:50] For some substances, people just heroin opiates, your body actually gets a physical dependency. Your body physically needs it as well as the psychological element of the addiction. The addictions themselves are very, very powerful

John Dehlin [00:37:04] to the point where if you take it away, you die.

John Larsen [00:37:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:37:06] The things that we demonize, all these drugs are bad.

John Larsen [00:37:09] Right.

John Dehlin [00:37:09] You can get to the point where if you take the drugs away, you die.

John Larsen [00:37:12] So methadone is this drug that I've never taken it and you'd probably know more about with your training. But so correct me. It basically can, can squelch the, the, the, the, the, the year and the really strong yearning for the drug without having the high. So it allows or it gives, actually does give a high. It's just, it's just, it allows people to taper off of, off of those opioids especially. Maybe you should clarify.

John Dehlin [00:37:36] Oh, that's great.

John Larsen [00:37:37] So, so, so you know, and it's, it's, it's like, it's like somebody like you can't really become addicted to pot, but you can become dependent on pot in a way marijuana in a way that it negatively impacts your life. Well, nobody has to go to. You're not going to get the DTS coming down off of, off of reefer. Right. But if you drink too much alcohol, you will physically. And I've, you see this. It's frightening when, when you know, they're shaking and sweating and they have to, they have to fight it out. I mean everyone should go watch train spotting or something. So, so, so church to really belabor this metaphor is, is, is heroin.

John Dehlin [00:38:16] Right.

John Larsen [00:38:17] And, and they're all mainlining it right now. But we're going to talk about things that are happening now. This is one of the reasons that we had to reach out. A lot has happened in the last five years. It's an entirely different game than it was when I left.

John Dehlin [00:38:28] And I do want to get there for sure.

John Larsen [00:38:29] And, but, but so, so the problem, and I, I pointed this out, I think we've talked about in some of your former podcasts. One of the questions came out years ago is why would they go after John Dehlin to get excommunicated but not John Larsen? I was always much more bombastic. I was always much More aggressive. And I always said, well, the church doesn't care about me. They've already neutralized me. If there's one thing the church has done well, it's dealing with apostates. But they excommunicated you. But let's take the spectrum. You have John Larsen over here. You have John Dehlind somewhere in the middle. And who's over here? Over here is Ammon Bundy. And these guys, the Bundys have been involved in open insurrection. Like they, they. In 2014, they took over the, the wildlife refuge. They did an armed standoff with federal agents down on their property. These. There has been no church discipline whatsoever against these guys. But, but, you know, Ammon was just arrested up in the, up at the Idaho courthouse where, you know, they, they stormed that thing with guns. You know, everyone's like, oh, on the 6th, on January 6th, how did this happen? And I'm like, they've been doing this stuff and nobody's been doing anything. Like, there have been armed insurrections in the West. Always, Always. They have an element of Mormonism every time. So let's go back to that. To that, to that question. The church has always been more scared of the right wing than they are of the left wing. Left wingers tend to go off and drink wine, and they've really neutralized them. The right wingers are an infection in the church, and that infection has taken over right now.

John Dehlin [00:40:07] Okay, we'll come back to church stuff. Let me ask you this. You know, you started off this interview today talking about how some of your kids have really struggled. My kids have really struggled. My marriage really struggled. I've been pretty public with the fact that my marriage with Margi almost ended in 2012. And if we, you know, and it almost ended catastrophically. And if, if we hadn't have had this wake up call, if we hadn't have gone to a lot of therapy and coaching, we would no longer be married. So that almost, you know, I almost said we almost ended our marriage. But then my kids have been through a lot, and it's always been hard for me. A couple things to tease out how much of the hard stuff my kids have been through has just been. Life has just been their personalities, just chance versus whatever extra load they carried. Being children of an activist, of an apostate, of a public figure, of an ex Mormon, of a, you know, all those things. And, and, and when they've been through their darkest times, I've felt a lot of guilt and shame that maybe they would be healthier if it weren't for. And by the way, my kids are all amazing. I'm not saying that my kids are not amazing. They're amazing, they're resilient. I'm proud of them all. And they're all thriving in many important ways, but they've also really struggled in severe, significant ways. So let me just ask you two things on an emotional and a personal level. What has it been like? What was it like? What has it been like to see your kids struggle? And the second part of that question is, have you had moments where you wondered whether your activism, your podcast, that, that you know, of course resulted in, not caused, but resulted in you and Zilfa breaking up and all that other stuff? Have you had to fight those questions or those demons of feeling partly responsible in any way?

Religion's Decline and Mental Health in America

John Larsen [00:42:22] I've probably processed that, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna absolve you, Johndalin. The world into, in 2021 is a quickly changing world. And we introduced in the last 25, 20, 30 years some very, very toxic things into our culture, namely social media and the social. We always leave it there. But the conduit of these giant corporations with more money than most nation states that are trying to manipulate you psychologically. I dare anybody to take a little notebook and just put a little tick every time you see an advertisement. And my guess is if you try it earnestly, you'll give up after about two hours when you hit item number 1000. We're constantly, all these systems and they're being run by AIs that are simply looking for like, like the advertisements you see when you go online. Wherever you're going online are there because the AI is showing you whatever it thinks you're going to spend money on. And it's blind, it's dumb. It has no idea. That's why these, these, these networks gain power so fast. It was like 20. It was back when I was doing the podcast. It was like 2013, 2014, where I think it was Google turned on an AI that was a learning thing and released it on the Internet. And within four hours it was spewing hate speech. So they had to turn the thing off. This. The. Our kids are growing up in this toxic environment and we all say, we all sit in our rocking chairs and say, oh, can you imagine if we were in high school? If they filmed everything and I've gone into parties in my house and had to yell at kids to put away their phones. They're filming everything. The pressure that puts on kids. But also there's Been a big cultural change. And I know this because I've dealt with transgender issues. And my house, I have four teenagers. It's like I live in the dorms and they're, you know, my kids are like from 20 to 17, so we have Mormon kids, Mormon refugee kids in my house all the time. I have bought binders for at least five different kids out there, you know, because their parents are binders, like for trans. But if we take like sexuality for our generation, John, we're Gen Xers, right? And it was, it's still taxonomy. There's men and there's gay men and there's women and there's lesbians and there's bisexual. And we're like, okay, we just keep adding cubbyholes for Gen Z. For these kids that are that age, they do not view sexuality in a taxonomy at all. And our parents, it's blowing their mind. They can understand or gender, sexuality or gender, sexuality, gender. The whole thing is fluid, right? And, and, and in a way that makes the people in our generation say, you damn kids, but, but have to understand they have a different worldview. It's not, it's, you know, we, we talked about coming out in, in ways in the 90s where it was still illegal. That's not the way this generation sees things. So, so we have a world that they're butting up against. They also see what's happening to the, to the world, which is the most important thing. Because, John, all this is bullshit. The big one's coming and we all know it's coming and we all know what it is. We don't want to deal with it. The planet's dying and it's dying fast. And I guarantee you, your 20 year old feels this more than you do. Because people like you and Ming say we got enough in our 401k that we're good. You know, like there's, there's, there's, there's dry sky flooding in Miami these days, right? It's, it's. Things are coming and we could go through it. It's there. You know, you read article after article about how environmental scientists are all depressed, very depressed, because we're, we're so. That's, I'm just saying this from our kids. We want to say it's Mormonism and hoo ha about Joseph Smith and whether you're too famous for kids. The world they live in is up and we're in that too. And it's time that we all have to start making serious changes. Wow.

John Dehlin [00:46:19] That escalated quickly and so ty that. So you're saying my kids struggles and your kids struggles. What?

John Larsen [00:46:27] Well, they're a little bit different because my kids never got raised in the church. So Mormonism is just this bizarro land to them. It makes no sense whatsoever. And they're right. Your kids went a little bit long, so they're gonna have to process out of it. But what I'm saying is the world, the problems that our kids deal with, if we lift our eyes up outside of Mormonism, the Depression, the suicide, the lack of hope, the no affordable housing, the jobs that don't pay a living wage, these are. These are universal. So I. I would say. That's why I say I absolve you. I don't think it's about you being John de Lynn or about Mormon stories about Mormonism. Mormonism is just a relic of the old world. And in the before times, as people are starting to say, I can see

John Dehlin [00:47:07] these kind of cold war conservative, you know, greatest generation folks saying part of the deterioration, all that depression, all that anxiety, all that suicidality and all the gender and sexual craziness is partly because of the erosion of religion. Because if everybody would have stayed orthodox and religious, people would know their place in society. People would have an identity, they would have meaning, they would have purpose, they would have structure, they would have morals, they would have values. And we. We wouldn't see the unraveling of the seams or the fabric of society.

John Larsen [00:47:46] There are those scholars who say medieval time, right before the rise of mercantilism and the. The city states that we had achieved a kind of a. After the plague, after the. And during the. The early. The 12th, 13th, 14th century, we had a. We had a mini ice age, right? There were. There were years where, like, all crops were killed in Europe. And then they'd achieve this kind of, like, state where they were not working. The. The serfs on the. On the farms, either on the farms or in the feudal system, were not working nearly as hard as you and I work today, John. And they had a wider variety of food. They were out in the sunshine. There were diseases that we have. So their lifespan was oftentimes cut short, but it's cut short by things like malaria and cholera and cowpox and things like that. But then we changed, and the world suddenly became a lot harder, right? And we're dealing with some of the same kind of changes. But what I'm saying is that old feudal structure gave people a place. The lords were over here, the church was over here. And I'm Here. And we all have this relationship, you know that although if I'm a monastic tenant farmer, the church is gathering half of my crops, but when I get sick, the monasteries will take me in. And that's where, that's where the hospital. So there was this symbiotic relationship that fell apart. And some of it was good and some it was bad. You're right. That religion, especially in the United States, where we didn't have a state church, we didn't have a collective mythology, we didn't have a collective sense of meaning. What the church did, especially the so called greatest generation, what they did is they came out of the war, in my opinion, and they wanted to create a paradise. And they had this paradigm of church. But that paradigm of church was about keeping former slaves, brown people, women, everybody in their place. This generation was a bigoted generation. Of course, not everybody was a bigot. But you had relatives who were in that time. I did. Casual racism and all that marked their worldview. But they really sought, I think after the end of the war they saw such devastation and such horror. And of course their parents had lived through the Great War, which was even worse. And I think there was an element where they wanted to create the ideal society. And the ideal society for them was embracing this American nationalism, this American dream, this Protestant religious worldview. And they were, they were anti Catholic and the church is anti Catholic. It's built on, you know, these passages about the whore of Babylon.

John Dehlin [00:50:19] Mormon doctrine.

John Larsen [00:50:20] Yeah, it's in the Book of Mormon. It's great abominable church, it's all over. And of course that was part of 19th century theology, right, that if you went over to the burned over district, they were pretty anti Catholic in the United States at that time. But you know, these guys wanted to create this paradise, but this paradise was still stuck on white Protestant men were at the top. And you know, the Jim Crow laws and suppression of all sorts of different minorities was part of their worldview. So this make America great again. The problem is based on a huge disenfranchisement of a lot of people of these underclasses. And you know, America built on the twin evils of slavery and on genocide. And there's no real way around it. And as Mormons, we participated in that genocide wholesale. The paiutes and the Utes. The Utes had long suppressed the Paiutes and there was a slave trade that, that we engaged in. Lindsay Hanson park tells me that there were as many as 4,000 Paiute slaves at one time during the 19th century. And what's really shame is because they didn't fully fit the paradigm, because Mormons treated their slaves the same way as Southerners treated their slaves, meaning they impregnated them. But you don't see these guys in the cemeteries because they were banned from the cemeteries. So you're talking about people who were trying to be righteous and trying to mold heaven on Earth, because Mormonism was always about creating the kingdom here, but at the same time doing horrendous things to other people that they saw as less than. And they saw it as less than because it's embedded in the scriptures. It's in the Doctrine Covenants, it's in the Pearl, Great price. It's in the Book of Mormon. All three scriptures are equally white nationalistic, racist. And I was just reading. I was preparing for a podcast, not this one, the other week or so ago, and I was reading Benson. And he won't even refer to African Americans as blacks or colored or African American or anything. He refers to them as the sons of Cain. And he does this in his writing and he does it from the pulpit. And that was tolerated. And Mormonism has one big problem. Well, not one big problem. It has a lot of big problems, but it has this one in particular, and that's that they fail to ever repudiate anything that's ever been said. So this allows all these conservatives, like, there's been tons of things that have been said across the pulpit, officially sanctioned saying polygamy is doctrine. And then there's been people saying, like, hinckley, well, I don't know if it's doctrinal, but there's nobody forcibly getting up and saying that other stuff is not there. Well, it's the mathematics you learned in seventh grade. You know, if you have a neutral, you know, you have to negate a negative, you have to do another negative, you have to apologize. You have to make it right and just hoping it goes away. We still have that burden on us. And so, yes, to your question about the structure of religion bringing stability and prosperity. It does to the class. Who buys to the privileged class. Right?

John Dehlin [00:53:26] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:53:27] Like for Zilpha and I, it took us. We weren't able to have children of our own. We were in the church for six years and we were always just shuffled away right into the primary. And the problem is, when you're in the primary, you're not interacting with any other adults. So could our have disenfranchisement from the church been more about this fact that we Weren't able to make adult friends because we didn't fit the paradigm. We didn't. You were supposed to have kids and then become the elders corn president and the bishopric and then, and then the high council. And there's a path. And Mormonism isn't very good at people who don't fall into the path.

John Dehlin [00:54:01] Yeah, it's, it, Mormonism is great at making people Mormons and making people good for Mormonism.

John Larsen [00:54:08] It's, it's, it's, it buys into the American problem of meritocracy, which we did away with the old guard, kind of. I mean, the old money's still there, but we like to pretend it's not. But the idea is that if you go to school and work really hard, you can be successful. That's true. Sort of. But what we want is, we want to put everybody into that machine. Half of the US population is below average intelligence. That almost sounds controversial. Right. It's just a mere statement of mathematics. But if success and financial success and stability is based on being in the top 10% that we're gonna. And companies say this all the time. We do interviews. We pick the best of the best. So if we're only giving economic advantage, then I'm talking greater American culture. Of course, the same thing happens in Mormonism because we're doing the same thing. We're trying to select the people who are the most like to be general authorities and promote them. And it's this huge pyramid that is really wide at the base, but narrows down quickly, just like American corporate culture. Right. So yes, Mormonism can give stability if you fit the mold. And if not, it has attention to slave class. It puts you in the, it puts you in the nursery. It puts you in the primary. You're going to teach the children of, of, of the plantation owners, as it were.

John Dehlin [00:55:24] So it's, it's super hard to not just keep coming back to Mormonism today and kind of the geopolitical context of today. But let me, let me at least ask you one more kind of line of questioning along the personal line, and then we'll, we'll jump right into the, to the fireworks. Sure. And I'm sure we'll keep coming back to it. But so one of the, you know, of course, and I think we've talked about this before, you know, orthodox Mormons are waiting for ex Mormons to fail. In fact, they've, they've all been conditioned, or some would say brainwashed to, you know, to believe that you can't be happy and healthy without the church. And then of course, with their confirmation bias, they're just waiting for us to have our, you know, to struggle as individuals, to become alcoholics or drug addicts or whatever, to have our marriages end, you know, divorce or whatever, and then to see our kids struggle. And it's all going to be just, it's all going to flow to their confirmation bias. See what, that's what happens when you leave the church. You've been through a divorce.

John Larsen [00:56:34] There are other.

John Dehlin [00:56:35] I just saw Carson Calderwood announce that he and Marisa are getting divorced. Love to Carson and Marisa. No judgment.

John Larsen [00:56:43] Congratulations, guys.

John Dehlin [00:56:45] What'd you say?

John Larsen [00:56:46] I said congratulations.

John Dehlin [00:56:48] No, I mean like on the one hand, many of us who are ex Mormon have wanted to keep our marriages alive, if for no other reason than to not fulfill the stereotypes, right? To not have our parents or family members believing parents or family members say, see, that's what happens when you leave the church. You get divorced. You've been through a divorce and a semi, slightly public divorce. And now you're what, five years?

John Larsen [00:57:15] You know, I think we, we split in 2012. So nine years, nine years ago.

John Dehlin [00:57:20] And then you've been married to Kimmy for.

John Larsen [00:57:22] We, well, we moved in together. We were living in sin, but we got, we got married on paper in 2016.

John Dehlin [00:57:30] So there are all sorts of bad orthodox Mormon marriages. And you know, they're all, you know, we've talked about a lot of different things about marriage but, but just talk about that. Talk about, you know, there's plenty of people right now who have been divorced or who are going through hard marriages or will become divorced and there's just a lot of stigma and a lot of shame and it's a really charged topic. So all off on divorce and marriage and ex Mormonism. And Mormonism.

Post-Mormon Relationships and Divorce

John Larsen [00:58:04] We were talking before about X and then XX and then xxx. And it's funny that you say the Mormons are kind of watching to look for failure in ex Mormons lives. Or at least that's the perception that ex Mormons have often. Well, that sword cuts two ways. Ex Mormons do the same thing to Mormons. They parade out failures. You know, oh, this guy was successful in the church but neglected his family. And da da, da, da da. What it really is, it's a war about lifestyle choices. But this goes back to our perverse American culture, that the American culture is the Thunderdome, right? Only two Enter the dome. Either ex Mormons have the right way of living or Mormons have the right way of living. Ex Mormons have Problems with their marriage. Mormons have problems with their marriage. And when you have something that shows up both sides equally, it is not a factor. And that's where a lot of these things like ex Mormons are going to struggle in their marriage, and Mormons are going to struggle in their marriage, and Jehovah Witnesses struggle in their marriage, and Catholics struggle in their marriage and people who have arranged marriages. So some of it, we have to start, we have to. We have to put down our guns a little bit. Now, that being said, Mormonism is a sex cult.

John Dehlin [00:59:19] What do you mean by that?

John Larsen [00:59:20] What I mean by that is Mormonism as it exists today, is absolutely obsessed with human sexuality and in very unhealthy ways. And as I've progressed through my life, I've come to believe that Mormonism has sexuality 180 degrees wrong all the time. Everything that they say about sex is wrong. From the normal cycle that is biologically programmed of falling in love with somebody, there's a progression to it, and you can see it in people who don't have puritanical upbringings. They become sexual when they both feel it. Like for Mormons, it's oftentimes they can be very sexual, but holding it back. And then suddenly it's sanctioned by the church so that the church still climbs in and tells people, okay, you need to watch your partner's download history. If they're looking at pornography, then that's cheating.

John Dehlin [01:00:18] Put a spam filter on or a

John Larsen [01:00:20] porn filter, all these things that promote unhealthy relationships. And of course, you know, like, I famously, I got engaged after three weeks, right? And Zilpha was a great person and we had some fun years, but we weren't right for each other, and that's why we got a divorce. And because Mormonism so infuses itself into every part of human intimacy, sexuality, and relationships and defines how they should go and tells you, if this is happening, that's good and that's bad or whatever. It very well, very much prescribes exactly how you have to live. And that's this intergenerational thing that this next generation, once we're all out of the way, they don't bother. They don't worry about who people sleep with with. It doesn't define them like it did for our generation. And that's why our generation can't wrap our heads around. And the church sure as can't wrap its head around it, because it uses it to control people. It uses it to control missionaries. It keeps people feeling broken because what the church tells you, is that normal sexuality, both solo, what you think. I mean, there's. There's. You can find whole Sunday school lessons that tell you if you think sexual feelings, that you're somehow committing a sin. That is not how sex works. Like, it is not a product of one's imagination. Like, as for most of us, we went through puberty. If we weren't screwed up by these puritanical churches, you'd realize that sexual urges are a natural part of human growth, as they are a part of the propagation of the species. Right. You can learn a lot about human sexuality by watching animals because, you see the things that we all condemn oftentimes are very prevalent. It's part of what we are. It's part of our DNA. And so this divorce thing is because the church infuses itself into these relationships and puts itself in between partners and says, this is okay, and this is not okay, and this is who you can love and this who you can't love. It sets people up for me and for many like us, for Zilpha and I, our marriage was propped up and pushed and propagated and scheduled by the church. I will admit I have some residual anger to my parents and the people around me because not one person, not one adult in my life said to me, when I got engaged after three weeks, you might want to slow your roll there, Joni. Not one person in the church said that. They were all overjoyed and they should have known better. And they did know better. And that's why religions need to go away, because they train smart people to act stupid. Stupid. So. But. But divorce. Divorce is hard, but for many people, it's absolutely the right choice. And for others, it's not relationships. They wave in and out, you know, And. And if you put energy into a relationship. But if two people are fundamentally, if you're married to somebody who believes that you are a son of perdition and you're going to spend all of eternity, like, roasting in outer darkness, run away from that person as fast as you can, but take care of your kids. Right? Because you cannot have a loving, giving relationship with somebody who thinks you're an

John Dehlin [01:03:31] eternal criminal or even just a disappointment.

John Larsen [01:03:35] Or just a disappointment.

John Dehlin [01:03:36] Yeah, that's bad, too.

John Larsen [01:03:37] That's absolutely bad. But some people struggle with marriages, others don't. Brigham Young was divorced, what, 14 times? I can't remember the number. A whole bunch of times. Right. And. And divorce is. Is a symptom. It's like surgery. Like, oh, is it bad to cut into somebody's body. Well, it depends on the circumstance. You know, if you're walking out of the 7 11, then by all means. But you know, if you're getting, if you're getting your pancreatic cancer taken out, then yes, surgery is good. Same with divorce. So I have no, I will not tell anybody. They should get divorced or they shouldn't. That's what they've got to figure out themselves. Awesome.

John Dehlin [01:04:12] So stipulating the ZILFA is great and we love you Zilfa and not asking for you in any way to disparage the. What you guys had together. Can you talk about how your relationship with Kimmy has been a good thing for you?

John Larsen [01:04:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:04:30] Even for others?

John Larsen [01:04:31] Yeah. Kimmy, my wife, she. We, we are really, I don't believe in anything like soulmates, but we really are aligned in what we want out of life, how we treat one another. We're both very empathetic people and we're both very deferential. We give a lot. So I oftentimes get hurt in my relationships in the bigger world because I'll give a lot more than I kind of get back in return, which after a while, you kind of shed those relationships. Hopefully. Like, when I left Facebook, I would have said, oh, I have 400 friends. And even though my phone number didn't change, I would say of those 400 friends, 360 never contacted me again. Even though we might have been interacting day by day. It's just that that relationship was mitigated by Facebook and the relationship didn't have enough roots. It hurt me at the time. Now I just see that's what happens. So Kimmy and I are. We're on the same page. We care about each other. We love one another. There's not friction in the relationship. And the difference between a good relationship that I had with Zilpha, but we would have never gotten together if it wasn't the church. And when the church went away, that we had less reason to stay together. And the relationship I have now with Kimmy is night and day. So that's why, you know, and the reason, the joke. I've said that lots of times in my podcast that people get divorced. You say congratulations because we automatically go to, oh, I'm sorry, we automatically color it dark where it might be the greatest day of both their lives. You never know.

John Dehlin [01:06:03] And, and for. So there's going to be listeners that, that married their soulmate and stay with them and have a great life, or they married someone that they're fundamentally compatible with. There's going to be a lot of listeners that right now are in marriages where they're fundamentally incompatible and they're like, well, I can't. Even if they're ex Mormon, they're going to be like, well, divorce isn't an option. I can't get divorced, I shouldn't get divorced. They'll think it'll hurt the kids. I can't get divorced because it'll hurt the kids, or it's selfish to get divorced or, or they'll be thinking, well, I'll take my problems with me no matter what. If I'm not getting along here, I'll find a new partner and there'll be some initial excitement, but then that'll peter out and then I'll be, you know, wherever you go, there you are. And I'll, I'll have problems there too. Can you talk about how things are different at a slightly deeper level? When you're with someone with whom you are fundamentally compatible, what are the differences and what's that like? What's that been like for you?

John Larsen [01:07:06] It doesn't feel like work. If your relationship is something you're working on all the time, then in my view it's not the right relationship. But look, John, if I train for a marathon, even if I train my hardest, I'm not going to break the three hour mark. Like it's not in my genetic code. I've met a lot of people and I've only met two that I wanted to be married to. Right. There are a lot of people out there who are just bad at relationships. And I think we never, we don't talk about this like there's a lot of people who, they're, they're closed off or they, they're. That we should encourage more people to be single. We should encourage more people to have serial relationships that are not high stakes because not everybody is, is of the mindset and Eastern religions, Hinduism, Buddhism deals with this a lot more and we talk about householders versus other people and say if that's the way you want to live, then go live that way. But it's not required for it for everybody. So I think we're chasing that American dream. Kind of like I was bagging on before, for some of you, it's you and you're only going to get a 60% relationship because it's you. Right? And if somebody really understands that about themselves, they're going to be much happier here because marriage is not for everybody. And it's not like if you just find the right person that you'll be happy. But I think culturally where the advantage that the younger generations have is they're willing to experiment around with that a little bit more to figure out who they are and who they want to be in terms of a marriage. Right. But I think all forms of marriage can be the right form for the right people. Open marriages, polygamous marriages, monogamous marriages, it depends on you. Non marriage, non marriage, single life, it depends on you and your partner. And if everyone could get honest and just say, you know what, I really don't want to be married because I like limerence, I like falling in love. And after two or three years, I want to do that again. Okay. Just as long as you're upfront with everybody, as long as everybody's honest, you're going to be much happier. So I don't, I'm not giving you any, any good answers.

John Dehlin [01:09:08] I've just said these are very good answers. Let's just go ahead and do it. I don't know that we've ever, I had you talk about this at Thrive a little bit when you came to speak at Thrive that one time. But, but let's go ahead and do it here. Lots of, it's very common for ex Mormons and people all over the world to experiment with ethical non monogamy or unethical non monogamy or swinging or polyamory or whatever you want to call it.

Exploring Ethical Non-Monogamy

John Larsen [01:09:34] Right.

John Dehlin [01:09:35] Do you have, do you have thoughts or musings for someone who's considering it, for someone who's in it? What, what thoughts or musings do you have about, about ethical non monogamy?

John Larsen [01:09:46] Well, the problem with ex, let's, let's talk about Mormons and ex Mormons. The problem with ex Mormons and Mormons, they don't have a lot of relationship experience. So, so when you take a relationship up a notch, it's, it's like, it's like going to college, right? There's, there's kids who do well in high school but fail in college because the college professors don't give a crap if you're passing or not. Right. They want to find the students who are interested in the same thing they are and deal with it them and you're on your own when you leave. What monogamy does is saying a strict monogamy of which there is no really strict monogamy. And you see the church getting argument about this. If you, you know, if you, if you look at somebody's boobies online, are you, are you, are you unfaithful and those arguments, because there is no like golden place that says I am monogamous or I'm not monogamous. So, so for, for Mormons especially, and ex Mormons came from the same paradigm. To go to that leap of having the emotional maturity to deal with more than one person at the same time is difficult. And because Mormons usually don't have a lot of experience dating or being in relationships or realizing what a bad relationship is, they often get in over their head very quickly. And somebody who's only ever been in love with one person can suddenly start dating their side piece and feel overwhelmed with limerence and burn down their whole relationship. Where people who are more experienced non monogamous people wait that out, they know that that's going to pass. So. And because it's still taboo, you know, like when we started Mormon expression, masturbation was still taboo, which is why I joked about it all the time. It's not taboo really anymore. And it's getting to be the same way with you talk to kids who are 17, 18, 22. They do not have the same attitudes about monogamy and non monogamy. I read a really a little while ago, and this is talking about millennials, you know, just right, right on the heels of my generation, they don't define threesomes as, as non monogamy. Like a threesome is still considered in the realm of monogamy. So what I say, you know, like, I've, I've, I've lived my life, I've experimented with all sorts of stuff. I would say that, that my, my wife and I are monogamish. I use, I'm taking, I'm taking Dan Savage's term, which is, you know, if, if everybody's on board, everybody's on board. But we don't spend a lot of time like chasing that, that down. Right. And, and we're perfectly happy and we always have been. And I can tell you after meeting hundreds and thousands of people through, through Mormon expression days, I wrote an essay kind of cloaked that basically you only ever see the failures. You don't see the successes. Non monogamy is way, way, way, way more prevalent than, than people pretend it is.

John Dehlin [01:12:35] Even in orthodox Mormonism, right?

John Larsen [01:12:37] Especially in orthodox Mormonism, yes. Yeah. And, and, and it's okay. There's no stigma as long as you're not hurting people. As long as you're being honest and truthful, as long as you're being upfront. Right. And, and, and people aren't getting hurt, then your sexuality is Your own, your body is your own. Nobody owns it. And anybody who says that they own it or you have to mitigate your sexuality through them, run away from those people. They are not healthy people. And that's why one of the big reasons the church is not healthy and its sexuality is all screwed up.

John Dehlin [01:13:10] What are the. And by the way, I, I want to, you know, I, I have talked to enough people who have been involved in ethical, non monogamy, swinging, whatever, to know that there are active Mormon bishops who are swingers. There are active Mormon stake presidents who are swingers. I'm not saying it's common, but you're not kidding when you say especially orthodox Mormons.

John Larsen [01:13:33] Oh, yeah, well, I would say it's no different. Right. Like we're going through a cultural change.

John Dehlin [01:13:38] It's that point about there's no difference. You made that earlier.

John Larsen [01:13:42] Right, Right, yeah. If you say, okay, well, 10 on making up a number, oh, 11.4% of, of, you know, men age 50 have multiple sexual partners or women or whatever. So that's going to hold for stake presidents as well as bishops, as well as, as, you know, Mormons and ex Mormons. Right, right. And, and for a lot of them, they're discreet and they're, it's, it works for everybody. You know, there, there are people who don't like sex. That's, that's fine.

John Dehlin [01:14:13] Asexual.

John Larsen [01:14:14] They're completely asexual. And some just, for whatever reason, they get bored of it, they don't like their body, that it's just, it's just not worth it. And there's been a lot of relationships saved. Unfortunately, in the greatest generation, you have a lot of people who have their side piece, both men and women. And that's how they, that's how they lived through a sexless marriage. That, that's not ethical. But it was, it was a way that people, people survived. Yes, the. And when we say swinging, we should probably say recreational sex. I mean, because that's really the differentiation. Differentiation. People have recreational sex versus people who have some kind of relationship. So when we talk about swingers, we're usually talking about people who have sex without having a relationship. But even then, there's a big continuum about how friendly you need to be, how monogamous you are inside that, that group. You know, even what people will do and won't do, they all have their own rules. So nobody can be painted with a big brush. But yes, and that's. I knew that and you know it. There's a lot of things that, when I was a podcaster I could never talk about because of we know all sorts of dirty secrets about everybody. And I'll tell you it's not what it appears. And I'll also tell you nothing is that's not unique to Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:15:28] So really, before we leave this topic, what are some of the big, obvious, glaring mistakes that ex Mormons and others make when they start to think about non monogamy to save people from the obvious, big, often repeated errors?

John Larsen [01:15:47] Well, I would say downfalls. I would say if we go through kind of the top three, the number one thing is there are a lot of people who understand what ex Mormons are going through. And there's a lot of sexual predators, both men and women, who. This is the reason I stopped going to ex Mormon parties. I got tired of watching it, that there'll be some. I've seen it on both sides. Some woman who doesn't know how to drink, she's only had drinks a couple times, goes this party, gets drunk, has some cute guy paying attention to her because there's these guys who are actually watching for this thing. They're, they're, they are full on predators who will take her in the corner, make out with her, maybe squeeze some boobies, and she wakes up the next day mortified because she didn't tell her husband she was going to do this. So I would say be careful. Ex Mormons just need to pretend they're college students. Everything that they're telling every ex Mormon should go to, not, not like a byu, but like a, a good western liberal college. And, and, and the, the kind of sexual training that they give to, to these kids coming out of their home.

John Dehlin [01:16:52] Consent.

John Larsen [01:16:53] They need the same thing. Yeah, learning lessons of consent. But also when you, and especially because you, with Mormonism, sex is way too important. I would say at this stage in my life, I would say sex is not nearly as, as great or important or as we inflate it out to be. It's not that big of a deal, but it's a big deal because we make it a big deal because we, it's, it's a big circular sort of thing. And when you do practice non monogamy, you're going to be flooded with a whole bunch of emotions that you could not predict. Anybody who's had like a parent or somebody really close to them die knows that, that they can be on death watching mom die. And then when mom has actually gone, there'll be a whole course of emotions that they couldn't even predict. And the same thing can happen with non monogamy. So when I've given the advice to people, I always tell them three things. Agree before you do anything, what your rules are for the night. Communicate both before and after and recognize that somebody's probably going to screw it up and you're not going to get divorced over this. And then probably the other thing is sit with your emotions because sometimes you feel all sorts of things right up front. And this goes, we're talking about sex, but this goes for many, many things that people might engage in that were forbidden or off limits or restricted before that. You kind of have to engage those things. There's, there's, you know, I've, I. One of my regrets of Mormon expression. I probably promoted alcohol too much alcohol and drugs and stuff can be fun, but there's no salvation at the bottom of a bottle. You are not going to find when I see these, these Mormon, these ex Mormons on there talking about taking Hiawath, whatever it is, that they're going to have some kind. There's no chemical that is going to save your mind. Like you're not going to find happiness by anything you put in your mouth, mouth. And, and that doesn't mean you shouldn't do them or that you shouldn't. But just eyes open, understand what you're doing, understand what the risks you're taking. But life is risk. You know, every time you get on an airplane, every time you get in a car, you're taking risk. But we're so, our minds are so perverted by the church that we don't understand real risk.

John Dehlin [01:18:58] You know, So I want to come to psychedelics in just a second, but just to close the, the non monogamy discussion. By the way, Margi and I are monogamous. That's just what we've chosen. But, but I just see it so much that I think it's important that we talk about it and are educated. So I heard you say watch out for sexual predators. I can endorse that. I think also I heard you say you're going to get a lot of flood of emotions. So have a lot of consent. Understand the rules of consent. For example, there's no such thing as non sober consent consent. So once somebody is past the point of sobriety, they can't consent. And you got to understand things like that. And then like you said, communicate before and after any other rules about or any other pitfalls about polyamory, swinging, non monogamy, whatever we want to call it before we move on to psychedelics.

John Larsen [01:19:54] Well, I just think realizing that it has the same pitfalls as any other relationship. There's no, there's no salvation and you've just increased the complexity. This is one of the reasons I don't practice any kind of polyamory. I'm sure, as I'm sure everybody is if they train themselves able to love more than one person. I don't think that now there's, we can talk about like pair bonding theory. I do think you pair bond one person, but you can love multiple people, but you just increase the complexity. I have some friends who are, who are polyamorous and their lives seem so complicated. They're juggling all these sort of things. Things. But you know, my point is every relationship style has problems. You know, there's been many, many, many a human being who've had an affair and then wake up the next morning sexually satiated, no longer urging, and then suddenly realizing, shit, now I've got two relationships I've got to manage, right? And, and, and, and thinking through what the real ramifications are. Not the pretend ramifications. It's 20, 21. I think if the last five, six, 10 years has taught us anything. 30 years. It's time for us to stop. Stop. We need to get rid of the myths, right? There are problems with, with monogamy. There are problems with polyamory. Understand what those problems are. Read, talk to a therapist. There's no, there's no golden salvation. You know, it's a, there's and, and, and just like we're saying, it may not be right for you, but, but doing it like you're implying on a drunken haze because you're mad at the church, probably not the best time. But at the same time, you got to work through stuff somehow or the other. But you might cause some damage, but maybe that's the damage that needs to be caused. I don't know. I don't have any answer. John.

John Dehlin [01:21:29] No, that's good. This is actually great. There, there are people that. There are. There's a saying that I've heard before which is like polyamory or non monogamy or swinging is what you do before you get divorced. In other words, it's this idea that people are in these bad marriages. They didn't get to have the high school or college experiences where they experimented or explored. They've only had one sexual partner their whole life, basically, and they're in a sad, bad marriage. And you put all that together and like, you don't. You've got kids involved, so you don't want to blow up the family. You don't want to hurt the kids. And so, oh, I know. We'll have. We'll have polyamory. We'll have non monogamy. We'll swing. And that's the way that we can recover those last years of exploring. We can revive things. We can have more fun and save the marriage and, and keep the family intact and maybe save our relationship. And then sometimes what you see is that it all ends up blowing up. So they'll. You'll meet them when they're in it, and they're like, oh, it's great. And, oh, we have a lot of communication. We have consent, and it's great. Just wait six months or wait a year or however long, and then the marriage is blown up and it's become a catastrophe, partly because of the complexity that you talked about. But it's also probably in part because they're trying to mask things that really can't be fixed, or they're trying to fix a problem with something that isn't a solution. Because if you've got a difficult relationship, adding complexity probably isn't the way to solve core problems. And you do risk adding so much complexity that it blows something up that otherwise might have been salvageable. So what do you say about kind of that idea that. That swinging or non monogamy is. Is what you do before you blow up the marriage?

John Larsen [01:23:20] My ancestors would sacrifice a goat every spring to ensure a successful harvest. And you know why they did that for hundreds of thousands of years? Because it worked. Right? I'll tell you.

John Dehlin [01:23:31] What do you mean it worked?

John Larsen [01:23:34] Divorce is highly correlated with education. You want to guarantee a divorce, statistically, go to college, right? So the problem is people. People do this all the time. They say, I think there's like, if we talk about swingers, recreational sex people, and are we grown ups listening to this podcast? Can we talk like grownups? Okay, so there are people out there who have a fetish that they like to watch their partner have sex with another person. And if their partner likes having sex with other people in front of their partner, Yahtzee. Right? They're happy. They're very, very happy. They've created a sexual environment. And this is more common. That sort of scenario I just described is much more common than, than. Than you think it is, dear listener. And, and so there's those people who do recreational sex because they both like it. It's something they do as a couple, right? It's something that they both enjoy. They enjoy the sexuality of their partner, and they. They enjoy doing that with other people. There are people who dance, who do ballroom dance, who will only dance with their spouse. Most dancers will go out on the dance floor when they have their ballroom dance club, and they'll dance with other people because it gives them pleasure to dance with other people. Then there's what you're hinting at, which is what I've called before the soft divorce. Sometimes a marriage is tanking for various reasons. Maybe the sexual energy is gone. That happens. It happens to a lot of people. They're really into each other. They still love each other. They don't get each other randy anymore. It happens. It's part of being human. It's probably biologically programmed in. The most successful biological strategy is to have as many children as you can with as many different people as you can. That's how you're going to pass, spread the seed. Right? So. So we have some biological elements pushing us to that, but there's people who. Who. They're in a sexless divorce, sexless marriage, for example, let's just take that easy thing. Who decide to open up, up, and then sometimes they discover this sexual energy that they want. So does that help contribute to the end of the marriage? Yes. Should it have? Maybe. Yes. So I've said before that opening your relationship is like putting the relationship on speed. If you were heading toward divorce, you're just gonna head to divorce much faster. Because now you've got a lot more levels of complexity. And it's not about P and V. It's not about the sex. It's about the emotional relationships with all these different people. And. And if. If your husband is going out on Friday night with his girlfriend and sleeping with her, whatever you feel about that, the fact is he's not with you on a Friday night. So. So you're putting some space in between your relationship. For some people, that's really good. They like marriages where there's these east coast, west coast marriages. I met some of these people where the one lives in New York and one lives in Los Angeles, and they see each other. They usually go on a big vacation in the summer for a month and a half. And, you know, these are moneyed people, and then they'll see each other every other month, and they're per. Perfectly happy with that, you know, and that's their. That's their paradise. So, yes. Can. Can. Can swinging cause divorce? I would say absolutely. But I would say the NFL has caused more divorces than swinging has, because anything that interrupts whatever it is that you need to have a bond.

John Dehlin [01:26:50] You mean watching it or playing in it?

John Larsen [01:26:51] Watching it. Okay, like. Like spending all day Sunday and all day Saturday. Like there's. That can be a lot of. If, if one person is a big sports fan and one person's not, that takes up a lot of time. It takes up a lot of emotional energy. It can drive a wedge. So, so can sex be a wedge issue? Yes, in particular for Mormons, because we were trained that it is. Right. We're trained that it's really super important and defines who you are and it's the most holy, sacred, whatever thing that you can do. And, and taking that baggage into these sort of situations can amplify the situation, but it's not there by default. So there are a lot of ex Mormons. There are a lot of Mormons who can successfully navigate this, but it's just, it's like training for a, for a marathon. You've got to realize you're taking on a different lifestyle and different things. There are therapists out there who can help you through this.

John Dehlin [01:27:37] Yeah. Natasha Hover Parker specializes in this. There are other sex therapists too. Final question about this. If you had to guess anecdotally, a percentage of relationships that consist that it. Okay, take, take your percent. Take. Think the 100 is all couples. You. All couples and families, you know, that have experimented with non monogamy in some way. What percentage settle into long term non monogamy versus they try for a couple years and then they just realize too hard, too complex, too fraught, and then they settle back into either monogamy or monogamish.

John Larsen [01:28:17] I hear what you're asking, but it's still rather binary. I mean, I know people who would say, you know, if they were in a safe environment, saying, yeah, kind of like I did. If the situation arises, okay, and everyone's happy with it. All right, the, the. Our rule in our relationship is we do whatever we want to do, right? That we as a couple, that we talk about it and we do whatever we want to do, which most of the time is. Or the vast majority of the time is just us, right? And so, so if somebody, if, if, if somebody is in Vegas and has a wild threesome in 2003 and then in 2017, you know, they're traveling in Europe and meet this fascinating couple and they play around with them for a while and then are they swingers? Are they. Monogamy, is it Monogamy, is it. That's where it's. It's for most people who Settle into it. They settle into doing whatever they are as a couple are comfortable with. So it's a really hard question to ask because I know people who I know have done things in the past and I know they haven't done anything for years and they don't want to because it's hard to hit on your friends. Right. So these situations don't actually arise as often as you think they do. And frankly, most of your friends, you really want to sleep with them. Probably not. So you could even be like, we are fully on board. But that doesn't mean you're going to find that right couple or that right person or that right soccer club or whatever it is. I'm not here to judge. So it's. I keep going back to. It's really complicated and it's much more complicated than we want, we want to make it out to be. So, yes, there's a lot of people who are very successful with it. Very successful.

John Dehlin [01:29:57] Over long term.

John Larsen [01:29:58] Over long term. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:00] Yeah.

John Larsen [01:30:00] I've known a lot of the people I know who've been doing these things. It's decades, Right.

John Dehlin [01:30:08] And if somebody were to just say, you know what? Monogamy is easier. Don't complicate your life, what's your answer?

John Larsen [01:30:13] If. If that's, if that's the right answer for them, that's the right answer for them.

John Dehlin [01:30:17] But for other people, that's not always the right answer.

John Larsen [01:30:19] There is no this. I hate to break the news to the world, there is no one size fits all to sexuality. Human sexuality is much more complicated. And again, the rising generation recognizes this more than we do. Yeah, it's a very important question because as you and I know that that's one of the big questions that people, people get married young, they have very little sexual experience. We live in a sex soaked culture, oftentimes in very unhealthy ways. And the message that you are getting, dear listener, I don't care who you are, is you're not getting as much sex as everyone else. You're missing out. There's all these grand parties and all this stuff that. And you're giving that up for whatever you have. There's always people who have more sex than you do. There are always people who have more money than you do. They're always like, then. And I don't mean to go back to Buddhism again, but the first noble truth is we always define it as suffering. It's not suffering, Dukkha. It's. It's this constant yearning. It's this inability to be satiated. And if you think that, that if you get a girlfriend on the side now, suddenly you're going to be satiated, you know, or you have three girlfriends or five girlfriends or seven girlfriends. Sex is something that never gets fulfilled. So if you're, if you think you're going to switch your paradigm up and suddenly be in nirvana, you're crazy. Right. Because you're going to have to settle on a level of monogamy of whatever that means. That unless, unless you want to go to wild crazy ragers every night. Every, you know, like, there's got to be limits. But even those people burn out. Like so, so, so a dear friend out there listening, you're going to have to confront your own sexuality and your own self and there's nothing you can do or not do to avoid that. You, you're. Well, I guess you can't avoid it. But, but there's, there's no, there's no panacea because it's about you and it's about whatever people or person that you're engaged with. Is that.

John Dehlin [01:32:09] Yep.

John Larsen [01:32:10] Sorry, I don't mean to be so preachy.

John Dehlin [01:32:11] Thank you. Okay, so let's talk about psychedelics really quick because another huge trend right now, it's, it's psilocybin, magical mushrooms, it's ayahuasca, it's DM, MDMA, MDMA, Molly. But also, isn't it DMA? Oh, there's, I don't know, a 10 minute thing.

Psychedelics, Happiness, and Life After Mormonism

John Larsen [01:32:33] I can't, I can't track.

John Dehlin [01:32:34] Like, and then the cactus. Oh, gosh.

John Larsen [01:32:39] Peyote.

John Dehlin [01:32:40] Peyote. You know, there's, it's, it's a thing. And the thing that I always, Every single person. And by the way, I still haven't tried beer, so I haven't tried psychedelics. But every person I talk to who's tried psychedelics says that it's changed their life, that it's helped them heal from trauma, that it has filled some hole that has been there for a long, long time. And I don't mean to mock it. These are smart people. These are people I care about. This is Steve Jobs, Sam Harris. Like, this is way bigger than just poster ex Mormonism. And it's happening in Mormonism too.

John Larsen [01:33:18] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:33:19] And I, I'm.

John Larsen [01:33:21] She's Mormons in pot. Mormons. I know so many Mormons are smoking pot.

John Dehlin [01:33:26] It's crazy now. Yeah, now that's true for sure. But I always, like, on the one hand there's a bunch of people where I'm just like, yeah, it Sounds like it's really helped you and it's had long term results. Then there's others where I just think, I don't know, I don't know that I see a lot of big changes in how you actually behave. And, and that's maybe to sometimes feel like what if, what if for some psychedelics just makes you feel like you've experienced some significant change, makes you feel like you've had a change in your life, but it hasn't actually changed your life. All it's done is make you think you've had a change in your life because it knows which chemicals to push to make you feel like you've had a big change in your life. And whether or not that's good or bad, I don't even know. I think it's all about the results of, of whether you know in the end you and the people around you are healthier and happier or not. But that's my just sort of like those are my sets of questions. What do you want to say to people who want to experiment with psychedelics?

John Larsen [01:34:28] Well, I remember a few years ago there was a survey that came out that said Mormons were happier on our religious people. You know, like pew thing. Religious people are on a whole happier than the non religious people. And Mormons were happier than ex Mormons. And ex Mormons were kind of like, man, they just think they're happy. And then, which leads to this quandary is if you think you're happy, how is that different than being happy? So it's a complicated question. It really is because we all have those friends who are always doing one thing after the other, you know, and they're always talking about what an improvement is. Then you meet them a year later and they're doing something else. And what an improvement is. But if they hadn't told you about that stuff, you would never know. So I don't doubt that there's many people telling you they've taken psychedelics and it's changed their mind. The question is, how many of those people, John, would you have said something's different about you? I don't know what's happened, but you're way different. Not very many. Right. I think mind altering drugs can be beneficial, but you need a guide. And, and it's just, it's the same as any drug. Like, you know, if you move down to Tijuana or, or Mexico City, you can just walk in the pharmacy and buy anything you want. Now, I'm not a libertarian or whatever, we're gonna want to talk about but I would rather talk to my physician to have them guide me through what medications I should take because it's not something I want to take on my own. Psychedelics me much the same way. If you have, have your shaman or a friend or a doctor or somebody who can help you through processing that I think it can be beneficial. Absolutely. The research is showing that. But we're not always as good at self medicating as we think we are. And that's why I say use caution. One of the things I tell people all the time is don't take anything that doesn't grow from the earth. And the reason why is it's one thing if somebody's muling on pot across the border because it's illegal. There's a moral thing. There's another thing if it's, if it's in being manufactured in a factory under slave like conditions in Colombia. So whatever you're about to put in your body, I want you all dear friends to always pause and ask yourself where did this come from? And that, and that goes for food too because there's a lot of things that you can walk to Smith's right now and buy and eat that you shouldn't be buying because they are decimating the local economy. Where they come across, they're being shipped with, with lots of oil and gas. You know, like, like if you're going to leave the church, you need to take on moral responsibility for your own decisions. And, and taking mind altering drugs is, is, is one of those. It's, it's not nearly as bad as everyone thinks it is. I, I once, I once read that if you add up every o, if you add up every overdose, every death or you know, from all the drugs combined, you still don't reach the number of alcohol related problems we have. Like, oh no, alcohol is by far and away the most terrible thing. If, you know, if, if somebody was saying, you know, I, I would say stay away from opioids and stay away from alcohol. If you're, if you're scared of addiction, the rest of stuff, it's like you

John Dehlin [01:37:40] know, and meth and you know.

John Larsen [01:37:42] Yeah, well, methods are just a synthetic opioid. So. Yeah, you're right, you're right. Right. So, so yeah, if you're, if you're going to do them, I'm not going to tell you they're good or bad. They, you can have both experiences. But get, get yourself a guide, get yourself somebody who knows what they're doing to help walk you through to Help dose you correctly, make, make sure you're in a good clean environment. That's, it's, it's, it's, it's really important. And they can be, they can be great. They can be the. And I, I don't have, I don't have tons of experience with a lot of. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a little bit more cautious on what, what I take, you know, but you can have great experiences on them. I'm not, I'm not gonna tell you that's not true.

John Dehlin [01:38:20] Yeah, and sometimes drugs can be laced with, with harmful chemicals. Not, not, not quality grade stuff that can actually. Like there's. Wasn't there some marijuana or some vaping pens that had some type of residual in it?

John Larsen [01:38:35] Yeah. When that was happening, what, what they're, what they were doing is that on the street they were taking vape pens that had been, they had used up the cartridge they were re injecting them with street thc. If you go to the dispensary, you know, the Utah dispensary out in, out in Wendover, you know, you see more Salt Lake license plates there. You do at the Salt Lake Temple. But if, if you go out there, you know, you, you're buying stuff that's regulated and, and controlled and, and you're not going to have those kind of problems. But when you're buying things off the street, you know, was it fentanyl that they, they put in all sorts of things. It's been in, it's been in Mali. It's in, it's in heroin, it's in, it's in meth. And that's, that's a more dangerous drug. So, so that's why you got to be really careful when you're buying stuff. Because if you don't know it's provenance, then be cautious. Yeah, but let's be honest, that ain't a big problem. There's more people like dying every day drying the highways than they get, they get a lot of press. But, but we sometimes talk about these things, you know, like, it's kind of like sex ed. Oh, if you go have sex, you're gonna get gonorrhea right away, you know, and in actuality, it's, it's, that's not what happens. It'd be like saying, oh, if you walk into a hospital, you're gonna get strep. Like it happens to a lot of people, but not to everybody. And sometimes people go overboard when they leave the church. Especially young people because they realize they've been lied to. And that's what we all need to be cautious about, what lies we're that, that, that, you know, marijuana is a gateway drug. And next thing you'll be doing horse like it's not, it doesn't work that way.

John Dehlin [01:40:12] Yeah. And there's a great book, Michael Pollan's how to change your mind. It's a, it's a book worth checking out. He did an interview on I think Terry Gross, fresh air. But you know, I, oh, and I'm just going to confirm that like if, if we're stack ranking danger like marijuana and things like psilocybin, you know, super low risk in terms of harm and, and nothing compares to like alcohol with

John Larsen [01:40:45] those two, you can't overdose on them.

John Dehlin [01:40:47] Yes, it's addictive.

John Larsen [01:40:50] You can go nutty. Like you especially if you haven't had a lot of either one of them in your system. You can have hallucinations that might scare the bejesus out of you, you, but you're not, your body's not in harm with, with meth and, and all the opioids and things like that. You can be at risk of actually killing yourself.

John Dehlin [01:41:09] But, but alcohol is by far the most dangerous thing by far. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And of course cigarettes can mean, cigarettes

John Larsen [01:41:16] are the most addictive thing by, by, you know, but it's, it'll impact your health and your finances, but it's probably not going to blow up your life, you know.

The Need for More Post-Mormon Voices

John Dehlin [01:41:27] Okay, so let's see. I want to, I want to quickly ask you, like, I am continually bummed that you are not still, you know, I, you know, Captain America or Iron man, like you're not in the fight, like continually like that bums me out. Like when we lose a superhero, it'd be like the Avengers losing hope Hulk or the Avengers losing Thor. And so, and it wasn't always this way. There was a time where I was on Mormon stories and Zelf on the shelf and who how do I promote marriage on a tightrope and Bill Real and Alan and Katie Mount, like, I'll promote you all because I want everybody, I want every talented person in this sphere partly because there's so much need, like I can't and if I were to just be a full time coach and therapist. And by the way, I have now officially closed my coaching practice for 2021. Part, part of that is just because I've got some other things I want to work on. But, but like if I were to just only be A full time coach. I could not meet a hundredth of the demand that's out there. Right? But it's not just about coaching or therapy. It's about podcasting, it's about writing. It's about like, yeah, we've got Mormon Think, and yeah, we've got CES letter and yeah, we've got LDS discussions, but we need more. There needs to be more TikTok, more Instagram, more YouTube, more podcasts because there's so much need for information and, and John Larsen In 2021, we have only scratched the surface of, of penetrating Mormon consciousness. And when I say that, I don't mean that our goal is to like push information into the minds and hearts of people who, who are happy and who don't want to know, but I'm just saying, let's just say we could have a magic wander crystal ball and identify all the Mormons out there that would want to know the church wasn't true if they could, if they could find a way to take off their glasses and find it out. If we just say those are the only people we want to reach. The people that won't kill themselves once they find out the church isn't true. The people who won't be super depressed and anxious and miserable once they find out the church isn't true, or just the people who, who are only in it because they think and believe it's true. And if they were to find out that it wasn't true, they would want a different life because maybe they're miserable in it or maybe they just want a life of free agency and autonomy. Let's just say that those are the only people we want to reach.

John Larsen [01:44:13] Right?

John Dehlin [01:44:14] I'm telling you, we've only reached 1% of those people, maybe 5. And that's in 2021. Like, that's, like that's not. I'm not just talking about 16 years of Mormon stories. I'm not just talking about since you were on the scene. I'm talking start with B H Roberts or start with dialogue in the 60s like Von Brody in 45. We have done a horrible job. Most Mormons have never heard of you and heard of me.

John Larsen [01:44:39] It's true.

John Dehlin [01:44:40] And it's not just like over half. I'm saying 97, 99% of educated Utah Mormons in Utah have never heard of any of this. Have never heard of the CS letter. I've never heard of Mormon stories. Mormon think you Mormon expression. We suck. We completely suck at marketing or building awareness. And I guess the flip side of that is that high demand religions are excellent at enveloping their followers in a bubble that prevents them intentionally from education and awareness. But we suck. And the only thing that's worse about how bad we suck is that people like you freaking go away. People like you go away, John Larsen. Why did you go away? Why don't you come back? Why don't you do this part or full time? Why did you leave me, John Larsen?

John Larsen [01:45:38] Maybe, John, I made it okay to go away. Maybe that was the norm. That was my calling, to make people go away. No, I think, I think, I think you're right.

John Dehlin [01:45:48] Everybody leaves me, John Larsen.

John Larsen [01:45:49] It was something. Well, there's one consistent factor in all of your relationships. Gordon Hinckley said, and it was brilliant. It was apropos that everyone needs, like, a calling or purpose and a friend. And the people who enjoyed my podcast, I was a friendly voice to them. I was somebody who had the same kind of mindset, the same approach. And my approach was from, you know, kind of a smart kind of beta male, you know, who's in there, but wasn't always the first one picked, but would go and read all the stuff, was kind of techie. And I spoke to a bunch of people like that. And you have your niche, but there's people who didn't like me, and that's fine. There's people who don't like you, and there's people who don't. And what we need is more voices. Yeah, and my experience in Mormonism was my narrow, tiny experience. It was my experience. So it's very important to me and it resonates with a lot of other people had similar experience. But I can't speak to you what it's like to be a black woman in Salt Lake. You know, I just, I don't. Who's a member of the church. Church. And we need that plurality of voices. And that's the advantage of tech today. But it's also. It's disadvantaged because the message gets so convoluted. It's like my wife was learning, you know, we were going through all this stuff post November 3rd, and she's like, I long for the days when there were three networks when I could turn on the 6 o' clock news or the 1030 news and see things wrapped up. And it was just. It's just this flood of information. And so that's both an advantage and a disadvantage. There's a multiplicity of voices that will speak to different people in the church. I don't know how to solve that. Problem. But it's like I can't emphasize enough that Mormonism is not true. And the reason I go back to that is not just to be a jerk.

John Dehlin [01:47:42] Is there a better way to get this point across?

John Larsen [01:47:45] It's not real. And the problem is I was engaged in this fight, but the fight is an illusion. It's not real. There's no such thing as ex Mormons. There's no such thing. These are all constructions in our heads. They do not exist in the universe. Mormonism does not exist in the universe. Christianity does not exist in the universe. It is all just these constructions. And part of my moving on was recognizing that.

John Dehlin [01:48:12] For you or for everyone?

John Larsen [01:48:14] Well, I would say it's true for everyone. I've just recognized it.

John Dehlin [01:48:21] Okay, but. But I'm gonna push back. But. Okay, so first of all, the argument for diversity, yes, we need Wonder Woman and we need, you know, Aqua Woman and we need Scarlet Witch and we need Jean Grey. We need all diversity and we need, you know, superheroes of color. Like, yes, we need podcasters and writers and bloggers and Instagrammers and YouTubers, trans, gay, bisexual, celibate women, men, gender, non binary, smart, not so smart, academic, geeky, normal people. Yes, we need all that. But that's not an argument for you going away. That's an argument for the Hulk to stay and Iron man to stay and Spider man to stay. But also to have Jean Gray and you know, Wonder Woman and you know, Black Panther.

John Larsen [01:49:13] I'm gonna jump your map.

John Dehlin [01:49:14] Have them all. We need them all. So we don't need you to go away. We do need other voices. That's the first.

John Larsen [01:49:19] But what I'm trying to tell you, John on, is that there are no superpowers. These are all just people running around in costumes.

John Dehlin [01:49:26] Of course. No, no, no. I don't mean it like I think you or I are superheroes. I know I'm mortal, I'm super flawed. And I know that you are humble and you, you're aware of your flaws too, that I don't use a superhero metaphor. I'm saying that

John Larsen [01:49:44] I thought it was

John Dehlin [01:49:45] the only way, the only reason I exist, the only reason that Mormon stories exist. I mean, let's just say this, that however far we have to go now, 20 years ago, it was worse in terms of people waking up to the mirage, to the untruths, to the fraud. But the only reason I exist, or that you exist is because Leonard Arrington, because Fawn Brody, because Michael quinn, because Bob McHugh, because Richard Packham, because Sandra Tanner. Gerald Tanner. Like, there have to be people that stand up, that speak up, that take the hit, that. That step into the arena and that educate and that promote and that speak up. Right. And so we need these voices. So, yes, you can say that it's all made up. So, yes, hobbits and elves and dwarves don't exist. Of course. Of course. But that's an argument for us to keep. Keep being. To keep speaking up. Because if we don't wake people up, we have to. We have two things to do. We have to wake people up from the mirage, but then we have to help them find an improvement. We have to help them trade up and. With the living experiment. We talked about that. You know, with the living. With the living community.

John Larsen [01:51:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:51:04] In Oasis. And. And, you know, that was a catastrophic failure for me. For you. For all of us. Or not. It was an experiment. But the point is, is more voices, not less. More John Larsen's, more zilfas, more, you know, everything. We need it all. So. I'm mad that you went away, dude.

John Larsen [01:51:23] I love.

John Dehlin [01:51:24] I'm mad that you left. I'm mad that you freaking left me. And if there's not. There's not a lot of us, like, Lindsay's still going. There's rfm. We. We barely are getting Bill Real back. Right. If it's on. Thrones are kind of. If they still exist. They're a shadow of what they were. Dude, don't freaking abandon. We need more John Larsen's, not less, dude.

John Larsen [01:51:44] Well, I, I love this new passionate. How long have you been going on rants? This is fantastic. Maybe I should start listening to your podcast. No, you're, You're. You're right. And I, I need to. When I say that it's all imaginary. I need to. I need to clarify. I'm not saying that as an insult to you, me, or anybody. What, What I'm. What I'm saying is that as human beings, a lot of we. We're not fully evolved yet. Our minds have some very big defects collectively, and religion kind of falls into that. But the pro. One of the problems I ran into, I mean, the biggest reason I went away from it is it's. It's a lot of work and I just. I had other interests than reading about. More interest. When I, When I knew I need to close down the podcast is when I was looking down my list of. I was. Had a punch list of podcasts that I really didn't want to do the research. Like. Like it didn't. It didn't call to me anymore. It didn't sound fun anymore. When those early days, it was fun, you know, like doing those podcasts was, was a form of entertainment and then that kind of made the work possible. But there comes a point and it's a healthy.

John Dehlin [01:52:54] Because it wasn't for the money, you didn't do it for the money, that

John Larsen [01:52:56] you won't care anymore. That you'll, that you'll look and say that. When I look at ex Mormons and I look at Mormons, to me, me, where I'm standing right now, they're more similar than they're dissimilar. They're obsessed about these religious things, either proving or disproving something that is not only not not true, it's an absolute false paradigm. That's what we were hinting at. Like, is the church true? Is Book of Mormon scripture? You know, like all the, every predicate in that sentence is, is, is, is illusionary. It's false. There's no such thing as scripture. There's no. And that, that's where for in part frustration, I, I recognize that no one has figured out how to get anybody out of the church yet. And I, I always said in Mormon expression, and I know we've had a lot of conversations that we're more concerned about once people have made the break, how to get them support and how to help them straighten their mind out and not the guilt and the shame and the suicide and the, and, and the broken relationships. That, that's more the concern than getting anybody out of the church. I did. Getting anybody out of the church never was a motivation to me because I knew it was traumatic, I knew it was hard. Right. So, so I would always, when, when, when the church is a bully, that, that sparks my energy. And then when people need community, that sparks my energy. But I, I, it's, it's, it's like there's a bigger thing here and, and, and just engaging the church and just proving that it's false over and over and over and over again. It's, there comes a point then, you know, like, could I be doing better? Mormon expressions and ones that are more interesting. And I try as I have time to engage Sunstone, I've got two or three that are lined up that I need to record and get out the door. So I occasionally go, I've never really fully gone away. Like, I've always been at Sunstone or I've always been, you know, like, but, but that's the model the Mormonism is in my life where at one Point. It was something that I did all day, you know, like I did all day Sunday and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. And there came a point I did the podcast weekly. And now I know I do it once every couple months. And that's about where I'm. And I get frustrated, I get angry, but I recognize that we have bigger problems. Like I said in the first half, the bigger problem in the world right now is ignorance. And we have carved out big swaths for people to believe all sorts of cockamamie crazy things. And we have to start calling people out, out. We have to stop allowing decision makers and politicians to reject basic science. Right? We, we have to, we, we, we've had a, we have an experiment with free speech and freedom of religion in America that just like all things, it has an, an end. There's hardly anybody who really believes in complete, unfettered, unrestricted free speech to say whatever you want, want. And the problem is now in 2021, we don't know where that line is. We don't know how much of the shenanigans that the Mormon Church gets involved in. We should tolerate, we don't know how much in a family, we should tolerate people spouting QAnon nonsense or whatever. And that's what, that's what we're struggling with right now. So, so I, I think I see the problem is bigger than anything that I can survive by, by, you know, recording that stuff. And I am, I am bright, but I'm, I'm ADHD and like doing things like keeping Mormon expression like maintained. And like people say, why is it not in a feed? Because you have to constantly be tweaking technology and signing agreements and, and, and doing this stuff. And all those big companies like, you know, Slacker Radio, they're always trying to like steal your content from you, you know, so, and it's just, it's just too much. So, so, so some of it is purely. I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to maintain a podcast feed, but I'll be happy to have these, have these things out there. I'm kind of scattershotting the answer, but I'm, I'm still as passionate about truth and righteousness and ethics, but it's a bigger question, you know, like, like whether or not somebody should touch their pee pee is not the right question. We should be talking in depth about what it means to be non monogamous and what it means to have that in people, in people's lives. Those are, those are great discussions. And oftentimes on the cutting edge of the podcast, you. It's hard to go there. You know, I'm sure in our conversation, there's been five or six things that I've said. You're like, oh, I hear about that. I'm gonna hear about that.

How Mormonism Prepared Members for Authoritarianism

John Dehlin [01:57:21] Not so much anymore. But, yeah, for years, for decade or more, I worried about stuff.

John Larsen [01:57:25] Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:57:26] I mean, it still happens. Like, I got so much blowback doing my, you know, how. How Mormonism prepared us for fascism episode, and I lost a lot of donors, but I don't care anymore. Anymore. Like, it's got to be. We got to hold a standard, not just against the church. It can't just be that the only concern is orthodox Mormonism, that the only enemies, and I don't even see them as enemies, but the only bad guys are, like, church leaders. Like, there are problems in ex Mormonism. There are problems in the world. And I'm a hypocrite if. If I'm only willing to cover just the church.

John Larsen [01:58:02] And it speaks to the powerlessness. When I hear people, you know, cancel their donations to you or whatever. What I'm hearing is, is somebody. I'm like, oh, that poor dear. Because they're trying to, like, control the world around them. That's a. The world is spinning out of control because of what we thought control was, which was an illusion before. And, And. And. And this. This is really apropos when people leave the church because they have this paradigm, this structure that makes sense. I don't have to worry about these things. I'm okay because I'm doing this. This is out of bounds. This is what I do. This is what I don't do. You know, I got the pence rule. I don't have lunch with any females who are my. You know, and. And. And the world's so complicated. That takes us down. Then this thing starts shaking, and it's like, oh, my God, John de Lynn is talking about fascism. I need to cancel my. You're talking about somebody who. Yes, I'm talking to you because you're still listening. Because all of the bad comments I ever got from people are people who are obsessed with the podcast. So you're still listening and you're broken. You're broken because you think it matters that your pennies that you're not giving to John de Lynn will somehow change this dialogue of fascism. And. And I was there, and we're all there, and we're all the same people. We're all one right? Humanity. And we need to stop realizing that, oh, these people over here, these people over here, like, like, we have to become honest with ourselves. We need to define. There's, there's, there's a great of. In the Insurrection, I think it's the Daily show or whatever, has a reporter who's on the ground like, like talking to people and making fun of them as they go up. And he doesn't realize what's actually happening. So it's all the more sweet because of that. But, you know, he talks to somebody about, he's like, is, aren't you afraid that what you're doing here is against the Constitution? And, and the conversation comes out like, the guys. So I've never read the Constitution. And the reporter says, you should read it. It's remarkably short. And this guy who flew into Washington D.C. and is storming the Capitol says, oh, I doubt that he didn't even know that the Constitution was very short. Right. We have an epidemic of ignorance. I would dare I see the word socialism and, and communism and fascism bantered around so often. I would Dare say that 999 people out of a thousand in the United States could not give a working definition of either any of those socialism of fascism.

John Dehlin [02:00:16] Right?

John Larsen [02:00:16] Yeah, yeah. And yeah, yeah. So. So you're getting called out for being, you know, it's, we have literally have people who are anti. Anti fascists. You know, you say, are you even paying attention to being an anti anti fascist? Like, and that's, that's what, that's what squirrels me up so much is, is everybody is so confused right now and they got to get back to the basics. They got to get back to what is real.

John Dehlin [02:00:40] But you're making my argument because that's why we need more John Larsen. If we need more reason, more thought, more wisdom, more education than we need more John Larsen. So I'll ask you this. What would it. You know, one of the things I really appreciated about that you would do because it has been hard to make the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories financially viable to make it sustainable. It's been like scratching, like, it's been excruciating. And now we are, we are like we had our best year ever in 20. Thank you to all the donors and listeners. 2021 was our best financial year ever. And it's even I feel almost sad or guilty saying that because it was the year of COVID There are probably some reasons for that, but it makes me just feel more indebted to doing good in the world. But it's our Best year ever. But it's been a slog, it's been cutthroat, it's been, it's almost killed me to try and just make this thing just to survive. And they make this thing financially sustainable. One of the things I always appreciated was that you would say to people, donate, donate to me, donate to John de Lynn, donate to Lindsay, donate to Sunstone. Because like the church and you, you did this in that Sunstone presentation you did at Phoenix, kind of in your comeback. The church has literally hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of employees. All the general authorities are making six figures. Who knows? Multiple six figures of the top leadership. Like so much money, so much power. If we don't support, you know, if we don't support our fledgling progressive and post Mormon institutions, they die. And, and I, I wonder if people had been more generous with you, would you have not left? And I'm going to actually ask a more productive question, which is, what would it take to get you back? Could we, like, like if there were a bunch of people that are like, yes, John Larsen was the shit, you know, he is what we need. Is there a way that people could raise money and get you back? What would your price be? What would you need to deliver a week?

What Would Bring John Larsen Back to Podcasting

John Larsen [02:02:48] Literally just asked me what my price was. I love it. Everybody has a price.

John Dehlin [02:02:51] What would you need to deliver a weekly episode?

John Larsen [02:02:54] I would need to.

John Dehlin [02:02:55] Of something. Well, probably even if it's not about truth claims, right? What if it's just about like maga? What if it's about the Constitution? What if it's about freedom? What if it's about democracy? What if it's about just helping post Mormons not be stupid or to live healthier, happier lives. It doesn't have to be about truth claims.

John Larsen [02:03:14] It's actually, it's a great question and the answer is really simple. The people who doing podcasts need to make a living off of it and then they can do it full time and then you'll have a much better, a much higher quality product, you know, and, and the. I got tired of having two jobs, right? I had a day job that I, that I had to maintain because the day job paid for the health insurance, which I, you know, needed more than anything, right? So I'd have to have health insurance and I'd have to not have to, you know, I have, I have a, a working wife and, and four adult and semi adult and teenage children, right. There's a lot of financial responsibilities living in this world old and, and frankly a lot of times. There's been a lot of podcasts I've had queued up. You know, I, I started a podcast like the John Larsen podcast, right? Got done and they had like nine episodes and people like, where did John go? I was in uni, not myself with, with my child. I was at. I was in a mental people.

John Dehlin [02:04:09] What that means it's a mental hospital.

John Larsen [02:04:10] Uni. Uni is the, is the Salt Lake City mental health where you take suicidal. If you're inpatient, you're, you're, you're there

John Dehlin [02:04:18] or a loved one.

John Larsen [02:04:18] Right. But, but, you know, how would anybody know? Did any. No one. You know, I didn't have the. There's no ex Mormon home teachers came by and said you were recording a podcast and suddenly stopped. What happened to you? Like, right, so, so to. In order to do things like this, and this is the point you're driving at is the people doing them need to be able to be not, not super comfortable, but comfortable in that they're not laying awake at night. I couldn't make the, the jump because I had to. I had so many people relying on me for healthcare care. And it's part of the, the, the, the, the cancer, the sickness in America right now. And, and, and, and it's not. I'm, I don't. I'm not a greedy person. I gave away most of the money we ever made through Mormon expression. And I was always. When there were people on salary or people getting paid, there's no way they were always getting paid more than me. And I'll, I'll open those books to anybody. I gave, I gave most of it back.

John Dehlin [02:05:12] Let's see what sucks about that is we lost you. So I'm not sure that was good.

John Larsen [02:05:15] Well, you know, it's. And, and part of it is, is this is where I say ex Mormons are Mormons. Once in the podcast, I said, I said if, if everyone gave to Mormon expressions listening more 1% of what they gave the church. So I was asking for, if I wasn't asking for anything. I was just musing. I was saying if I could. I said I could quit my job and do this full time and I could have, have a staff. Right? And, and, and they just went crazy on Reddit. Now Reddit, it was a little darker in those days than it is now, you know, and just, they just like, like just saying, hey, you know, if you guys gave money, I could do this full time. There is a real f. And I got tired of this. There is a real current in ex Mormonism that doesn't want anybody to. To make a living on this. And there's people who don't like you just because this is your job. That mindset has. No, I, I just, I do not understand it. If you want to convince me as an ex Mormon that you're not a Mormon, then drop that bullshit. Because the idea that people could come in here and help others process out of the church and make a living at it while you're going and making a living, you know, like people. The amount of money that people criticize you for making money, who paid a Verizon, which is a shitbag company, the amount of money I pay to Verizon every month is, is tragic. And the amount of money that I give to things like this is, Is inconsequential really. And it's. And it's. And it's. And that. And you multiply that by everyone else. We have to start in this world supporting the things we value. And what I would say is your values are what you spend your money on. The end. You can't argue anything else. Right? So if you say I don't believe in monoculture and I believe that monoculture is ruining countries, then stop buying bananas. You need to stop buying bananas. It's destroying Nicaragua, full stop. I'm not kidding. Right? Like, like there are things that you do. You've got your phone sitting right there. I've got my phone sitting right here. We both know those phones were made with child slavery. And if we think we're not culpable in that, for some reason, we are culpable. Every Christian out there better hope and pray that their religion is not true. Because if Christianity is true, we are all going to roast in hell for a long time. Long, long fucking time. Because we're responsible as Americans for every bomb that's been dropped. We're responsible for every economy that's been destroyed in the interest of our lives. We are living way beyond our means and we are chewing this planet up. And that. And so you're asking me why I wouldn't go back. Because there's bigger problems. There's bigger things to be. That more important than getting people out of Mormonism is that we stop consuming as much as we do do that. We stop burning as much fossil fuels. We're killing this planet. And we're doing it bathed in ignorance, doing these fights that don't really matter. I hate to even use this reference because they screwed up the television show, but if we go to the books, the, the, the, the oh, no, my mind just went blank. The. The tale of Song of Fire and Ice. That. What was. That was. That was a big show with the White Walkers. The winter is coming.

John Dehlin [02:08:18] Oh, yeah.

John Larsen [02:08:19] The point of the book, Game of Thrones, was always they were Thrones. And the real threat was at the borders, right? The real threat was coming down on us. And that's what I mean when I say this is all imaginary. The psychological problems of living in the society we have now, the social unrest, the lack of hope of getting an education, of getting a decent job, of being able to afford a house, these are the big issues. And we're arguing about, like, charlatans from the 19th century. Like, Mormonism just needs to be shuffled into a big dumpster, right? It's. It's. It's. It's nuts, and it's. It's taking us away from the bigger problem. That being said, for people in it going out, it is the big problem, and that's why you are so valuable. And I don't know that my voice would be any stronger than if I had done more than five years. I think I made my point, right? The sad thing is, is that people don't. It's not. It's not digest, not downloaded, or people haven't heard of it. But, you know, Tal Bachmann was brilliant, and it's sad that that's all gone. And. And Steve Benson, you know, the points that he made, and Bob McHugh and Bob McEwen and these. These guys, they get. They get buried. And it's not. It's not. By the way. There are people out there. I've been a victim of this. Who are scrubbing people like me from the Internet. They're Mormons who. You won't find me on Wikipedia or whatever anymore because they've actively scrubbed them. I know. Because I get notifications from. From Wikipedia. See, you can defend yourself, but after the third one, I lost, you know, and they basically just say Mormon expression never existed. And then the Wikipedia judges, boom, it's gone. So. So, but who cares? Like. Like there's. There's bigger problems. And, And. And Mormonism is just. It's a symptom. It's a manifestation of a bigger problem.

John Dehlin [02:10:06] Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry.

John Larsen [02:10:08] I'm taking it in directions that you may not want to go.

John Dehlin [02:10:10] But, but no, no, no, that's. I. We are exactly where I want to be because we're where we are. But, But I do. I do maintain that, you know, because I. When people ask me all the time, why do you still do this? How can you still be interested? You know, 16 years into Mormon stories podcast, like why? And I think about it, how do I make the biggest difference if, if my concerns are more global? If I agree with you that the last thing I want to do is read another biography of Joseph Smith myth, have another debate about Papyra, you know, talk about the peepstone in the hat. Yes, shoot me now. The last thing I would ever choose to do with my spare time is read some book about, some apologetic book, you know, a new spin on how the church might be salvageable. Yeah, shoot me now. It's the last thing I'd rather do. However, if I look at the binding force to sexism, homophobia, racism, you know, anti, you know, anti environment, there seems to be a strong religious strain. So I don't know how we recover and survive as a species without striking at the root, which I'm not going to say is religion. I'm going to say it's unhealthy religion because I don't want to be a bigot and just lump everyone together and say it's all bad. So I'm just going to say bad religion. And what I mean by that is a magical worldview, you know, superstition, woo, anti science mentality and again, any bigotry at all. How do we attack that as a society without going at unhealthy religion? I don't think we can, well even

Navigating Woo, Bad Religion, and Spirituality

John Larsen [02:11:46] woo can be, can be harmless or even beneficial.

John Dehlin [02:11:50] Of course.

John Larsen [02:11:51] I think, I think I've watched a lot of people do tarot card readings, right? And I think that it can be helpful because what it does, it just gives you another paradigm to look at, at things going on, but you can be manipulated by it. And, and that's why I was talking about like we all have a collective mental illness in that we evolved in social structures that they're reliant upon one another. And then we would have a mythology, storytelling that helped us understand the, the rules of, of, you know, that you don't eat tigers because eating there's not good healthy meat, right? So, so you, you, the problem is the community manipulated and almost always when you're talking about a religion, especially from Western paradigm, you're talking about something that's become incorporated, something that's become a hierarchy, something that certain people are using to extract wealth and, and, and, and manipulate other people into doing what they want. Like the Mormon sexual code was valuable to society because if somebody gets pregnant and has a baby that the mother can't take care of society, has to take care of it, or you have to have us. You get a choice of either taking care of the child or you live in a society that has street urchins. Both those are unattractive. So we try to cut it off at the core. This is what religion does at the expense of the individual, right? So Mormonism, if everybody's obeying it can be very. It can be very enriching, like wealth. It can, it can, it can produce extreme amounts of wealth at the expense of the individual. And I think that's where your passion is. You're seeing all this collateral damage. And, and what I'm saying now is this is systemic, and we got to figure out bigger ways because I think spirituality has been hijacked. I would say one of the big difference between John now and John, like, at the height of Mormon expression, is I'm much more of a spiritual person. But like any kind of anthropo, Anthropomorphic gods, man, like what? That's just, you know, so what's spirituality for you? Well, I, I've, as I've hinted, I'm. I, I become more and more and more and more Buddhist as I become, I would say at one point, I, you know, I flirted with Buddhism, and ironically, I encountered Buddhism on my mission. So I would say I'm probably full, full, full game, full stop.

John Dehlin [02:14:07] Secular Buddhism.

John Larsen [02:14:09] Secular what. What does that mean?

John Dehlin [02:14:11] So there's an entire podcast by one

John Larsen [02:14:14] of us, and I'm being facetious, but meaning it is, it is a Western construction. I, I don't know that there is secular Buddhism. I, I think, I think, I think it's more complicated than that. I mean, and when you talk about Buddhism, we tried it, we put it in, like, there's no church of Buddhism, right? And the Buddha himself said, you know, like these. The truth is truth. Our religion is truth. The Dalai Lama said that, you know, and they ask him what would happen if found out the science. And they said, well, we changed change because we believe in truth, so we'll pursue truth wherever it is. And the Wu elements of Buddhism that we're most familiar with are really not there. There have been religions that have been built up around these philosophies, and these philosophies are very old. I mean, they stretch back into Hinduism, and you see them surface over again. The Stoics, St. Francis, the Franciscans. It's not like the things that we know about what's right are dominated by. But they show up all over and over again. And it goes back to human selfishness, ignorance and greed and we have to overcome those problems.

John Dehlin [02:15:20] I think when people, you know this, when ex Mormons or former members of high demand religions hear the term spirituality, of course, what they think of as organized religion, that's hurt them and abused them, them. But they also think about a supernatural worldview that, that involves spirits or beings, some type of, you know, some type of metaphysical claim that then they're like, I don't want anything to do with that. And so I think this term secular Buddhism comes out of this idea to say, and you know, you can't, they're I like to call principles of mental health or, or tools for living. I don't, I don't use the term spirituality just because I know it's so triggering for my audience because again they, they would often think you're making a metaphysical claim about spirits or some theology or some organization because it's been used

John Larsen [02:16:14] against them so often. It's been, it's, it's, it's, it's like, like an abused puppy. Right? Yeah. When you come towards it, it worries it's going to get hit. Yeah, I know, I understand that completely. But when the, my, my pushback on secular, where Buddhism is and this, I'm stealing this from a teacher I admire says, you know, the problem in the west is that we do these things like mindfulness and meditation so that we can work three jobs so we have an unhealthy engagement with the world. And what we're trying to do in the west is engage like parts of these Eastern teachings in order to re. Engage in our western lives, life. And that's where I think there's an element of spirituality and Buddhism that needs to be embraced. And I'll tell you, it's not hard. Here we are, there is a universe. Right. Unless you're a solar persist out there. Most of us agree that there's a universe. And it has fascinating properties. Time, space, dimensionality, you know, like, okay, Saturn is this far away from the earth. What is that when you say this far away? What are we even talking about? About why is it, what is there? What is the substructure? You know, in the 19th century that was the luminous ether. Right. But we don't really understand it. But we do understand that life can emerge out of the universe. It has at least once. Right. Several 10 billion years ago. And consciousness can emerge out of the universe. It has with us that the universe all time and all space. What I'm saying is not controversial. Controversial. There was no time before the big bang, right? That time came out of the big bang. But you and I are just a piece of the universe, right? This whole, this entity that's a whole, we do not understand it at all. And the problem, this is your woo argument. This is where everybody rightfully so says okay, hold on there cowboy, because immediately somebody will try to sell you something like if it was a normal person. I was talking right now I'm going to tell you where my five tape series is that you can buy. I have nothing for you to buy. But the fact that we are conscious is much more awe inspiring than any story I've ever heard made up in religion. The fact that we're part of this, you are a piece of the universe that became self aware. And when I start getting mad at Maga and Qanon people, I have to remind myself that that person is this, is this beyond miracle. Miracle is the wrong word. It's this thing that. Why does it even exist at all? Why are we walking around conscious? And we take our consciousness, this gift that we live right now, you and I, and we spend this time like fighting with, with each other, you know, like the families and everybody, right? It's, it's, it's nonsense, it's crazy. Why are we fighting about this at all? We all want the same things. We want love, we want to belong. We want to feel like we matter. We want to feel like we're something more than just a garbage heap consuming things. We all want that and we manifest it in these ways that hurt one another. That's where religion is. We take what, what, what should be. We should just be laying back in awe every single morning because you've got about 80 years if you're lucky and most people don't get that. And we spend it worrying about things that do not matter rather than just saying God, what does it mean to be alive? And even like what does it mean to hurt? You know, what a beautiful gift that is so rare in the universe, it is so precious even of things that have been alive to be able to understand the existence the way we do, which is probably insignificant. So I would say I am full on spiritual because something is going on here. The universe exists and I'm part of the universe and I'm not separate from the universe and I need to drop that, that I'm not separate from the trees. And when I say the earth is dying, we're all dying, right? And, and, and it's, it's, it's clear and that, and that speaks to an underlying spirituality here. And that's why what you're doing is very important. That's why I'm here. And this fight the people, and you're calling for all these people. It's very important. But this is just the first step on a journey where we have to realize that we are all miracles. And it's time to drop the weapons. It's time to say, there is no Palestine. There is no Israel. There's just this land. And we're just all here trying to. Trying to do the best we can and have the best life we can. And once we realize that we do not have to take from others to have a good life, what we'll realize is what we need. And what we want is much smaller. What we need is very little. But we're all addicted, and I'm there, too. We're all addicted to so much, and we're all hurting one another, and we're hurting the life that exists on this planet. You know, we're anticipating this year the monarch butterflies are going to go extinct. And when I was a child in the 70s, the skies were full of butterflies, and I remember going out and collecting bugs. You know, like, the world is hurting. And Covid is part of that. That and this whole. This whole maga. This, this. This battle between conservatives saying, you know, aren't there things in the past we should hold on to, versus progressivism, like change? It's a. It's. It's a false dichotomy. They're both right. They're both right. And we have to stop killing one another. I'm. I'm sorry. I'm ranting.

John Dehlin [02:21:37] That was beautiful. Don't apologize for that. And that is my argument for why we need John Larsen. So I'm going to make a plea. Occasionally, I put a call out to the universe, my listeners and viewers, and they respond. So here's what I think. I think I know about Tim Ferriss. I know about Sam Harris. I know about Brene Brown. I think John Larsen can add as much or more value than any of your favorite podcasters, including me. And so I'm making a call right now if there's some millionaire or billionaire podcast listener out there or if there's a group of you that want to get together. John Larsen's already said it. If you guys. You guys have already donated enough money to support me, you guys donated enough to support Lindsey Hinson park, at least for now. You know, RFM is. Is surviving. Bill Reals hanging in there like, you know, it can be done. And it only takes a certain number of people to give 10 or 20 or 100 bucks a month. That's all it takes for someone like John Larsen to be able to feel enough comfort, to be able to leave his full time job and start doing this full time and to help transform humanity. So I'm going to make that call. Somebody out there, get your friends, pull together, do a GoFundMe. Just reach out to John and let's find a way to get John Larsen podcasting full time. Because we need this and we need John and John, we need you. And you're brilliant and you're sensitive and beautiful and we need other people, too. We need other voices as well, but we need you.

John Larsen [02:23:15] Thanks. I appreciate it. I. I have some things. I always have some irons in the fire. Who knows, maybe you'll hear from me more. But. Yeah, and if not me, there's others, right? If there's. There's. Yeah, We. We've got to start giving back. All of us. All right, let's go back to making fun of the church.

John Dehlin [02:23:31] Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So. So let's go ahead and shift to talking about Mormonism. Yeah. So. Because there's a lot that's happened and a lot that's happening, and you have a lot. Not only do you have points of view about what's happening now, but you also are seeing things in your extended Mormon family and in Kimmy's extended Mormon family and in friends and family. Like, Mormonism's in a different place, and it's potentially in a perilous place. And you started, when you came into this room today, before we. You. You were like, saying, there's a. There's a problem. All is not well in Zion. Like the church. It is a world of hurt.

The Church's Struggles and Uncertain Future

John Larsen [02:24:10] It is. The church is struggling right now.

John Dehlin [02:24:12] Okay. And that's what all my listeners, unfortunately, or fortunately, that's what they want to hear. They want to hear at the.

John Larsen [02:24:17] The.

John Dehlin [02:24:18] You know, there's a couple questions I get all the time, and one of them is, is this the tipping point? Is the church really hemorrhaging or is it just always like it was before? You know, it's that and do the brethren really believe? Believe. Those are the two questions you always get. Is, is, are the brethren conscious frauds? And is the church a couple steps away from. From unraveling and imploding? So let's rewind. You know, five, six, seven, eight years ago, whenever it was that you stopped. And I don't know if Thomas says monson was still a prophet. I don't know if Gord. If Russell and Nelson had become prophet.

John Larsen [02:24:50] It was Monson still. When we go and.

John Dehlin [02:24:52] Okay.

John Larsen [02:24:53] And I invite people to go back and listen the end of that podcast with you and I from 20, 2015, it was Monson and you know, you

John Dehlin [02:25:00] were the November policy happened yet? Like, no. Okay.

John Larsen [02:25:04] I don't think so.

John Dehlin [02:25:05] Okay.

John Larsen [02:25:06] So. So it was on, you know, like things, things were looking good, things were looking progressive.

John Dehlin [02:25:10] Yeah. So let me, I'll set the stage. So we've got like Mormon Expression, CBS Letter, Mormon stories, the gospel topics essays come out. Richard Bushman selling rough stone rolling. You know, the church, you know, Terrell Givens is now starting to be embraced by the church.

John Larsen [02:25:26] Patrick Mason coming out. The church is trying to embrace its

John Dehlin [02:25:30] weird past, becoming more open with its history. It's starting to nurture a progressive form of Mormonism from within. It's becoming a little bit more gay friendly. It's becoming a little bit more female friendly. It seemed like we might be experiencing this kind of renaissance of glasnost or whatever, openness, a blossoming. So where are we? What happened? Take, take us from then to now. Where are. Where, where were we and where are we?

John Larsen [02:26:02] So Mormonism believes that they have a prophet, seer and revelator. Right. They have 15 of them, but that if you talk to a true believing Mormon, they believe that the person who makes it to the top of the 15 is the one put there by God. Right. For to speak to a modern prophet for our times. You know, one of the, one of the differentiating factors, if you compare Mormonism to evangelicalism, they'll say God gave us the Bible and the Bible is our guide. Mormons like the Bible, but they believe we have a prophet who speaks, literally speaks to God and tells us exactly what we need to hear. Well, let me tell you about this miracle of mormonism. In the 1970s, like Spencer Kimball, beloved prophet Spencer Kimball had some health problems and, and one of them was he needed open heart surgery. Older man, very scary. And this young, talented surgeon came in and, and, and at the time, this is probably like 81 or something like that. I'm, I was a little kid at the time, so I'm not sure. But, but this articulate surgeon came in, Russell Nielsen. Just so happens he's also connected into the Mormon hierarchy, families. But we'll put that aside for a minute. Comes in, he's articulate because people, people are really, you know, like the prophet is going to be. He makes a showing he's impressive. God takes the prophet his selected mouthpiece and has a meet this surgeon. Not just a doctor, a surgeon. A surgeon who understands the last. Well, at that time, 120 years of like germ theory and science, things that we'd progressed on. You're trying to keep a straight face. Good things that we'd progressed on. You know, you can watch episodes of Math where they're, they're, they're scrubbing up and they're washing their hands and they're wearing masks because they're going to perform surgery. If anybody understands the transmission of viruses and bacteria, it is surgeons. And the Lord picks this man to enter into the quorum. Of course he enters like they all do. At the bottom of the heap he sits. He's the last to get what. What is it they're supposed to. Chocolate.

John Dehlin [02:28:13] He gets.

John Larsen [02:28:14] He's the last one to get the chocolate chocolates. Right. And, and the lord calls home 14 men in front of him and he rises through the ranks to be get this. The worst global pandemic in a hundred years hits when the prophet of the church, the spokesman for God, who was hand selected and had to go through this crucible of God actually engineering, when people would die, at least 14 of them. So he. We would be at the helm of the church when this pandemic. And it turns out that we can greatly. And science is showing this more and more and more, we can greatly stem the transmission of disease of virus with masks, which actually is not that scientifically clever. We figured out in the mid 19th century. And of course Asians, who've had more struggles with some of these outbreaks do on a regular basis.

John Dehlin [02:29:10] They've been wearing masks.

John Larsen [02:29:11] They've been wearing masks for years. And you say America, we thought they were weird. Yeah. Come back from Tokyo and like I

John Dehlin [02:29:15] was on the train and the right guys wearing masks.

John Larsen [02:29:18] So, so God puts in place the man who knows science.

John Dehlin [02:29:24] Not just that, but who wore a mask for half his life.

John Larsen [02:29:27] Who wore a mask for half his life. And what happens is as this is rolling out, we're all watching things. January, February of 2020, there gets to be a little bit of controversy and of course the. It gets stemmed by the fact that the America quickly realizes we don' have enough stores. But that starts saying we'll make, make, make a cloth mask. We are. This is this man's jam. It's as if the universe aligned to put Russell Nielsen in charge of the Mormon Church during this phase. And what happens? He screws the pooch. He Says nothing. The church. The church bumbled out some statements late, but they were. And everyone knows the church is a hierarchy. And those statements did not come from the 12, which was code to everybody in Utah county, that it wasn't actual church policy. Russell Nielsen could have got up in January and said, I testify you by the power of God, that this pandemic needs all of our attention and everyone needs to wash their hands and wear a mask. And I'm telling you that not just as a servant of the Lord, I'm telling you that as a surgeon. And I can tell you that it's important for us to stem the spread of this. Not only that, we actually had a prophet of the church who died in the last pandemic in 20, in 19 19. And we don't want that to happen. You knew that, right? That whoever was the president at the time died from the Spanish flu in 1918. 1919. So we have direct experience with that. And in the church, I always knew about the flu pandemic because it was devastating. The 1918 pandemic was devastating to our rural economy and our rural church. Why is it the church screws up every major thing? Right. Why is it that during the civil rights movement, you've got Benson getting up and talking about the Sons of Cain, referring to black people. Why is it that we decided to be a slave state? What is it that every global thing.

John Dehlin [02:31:34] Thing.

John Larsen [02:31:34] We supported the Vietnam War.

John Dehlin [02:31:35] Right.

John Larsen [02:31:36] And when killed the era. Yes. When George Bush was lying about yellow cake. And then everyone looks to Gordon Hinckley and he says we should just do whatever our leaders tell us to do. You know, like, why is it they fail every major thing? It goes beyond that. Like in this winter, we were looking for activities to do outside because the slows of transmission. 2020 is the one year they shut down Temple Square. It's almost as if they have revelation, but in reverse. You know, Am I wrong here?

John Dehlin [02:32:10] Can I just say it? You alluded to this, but it didn't start with COVID 19.

John Larsen [02:32:15] No.

John Dehlin [02:32:16] Like. And it goes beyond. But. But we had recently Matt Harrison, a wonderful historian, talk about Ezra Chap Benson, talk about the John Birch Society. And that leads into the New World Order conspiracies. Right. Of. Of the the 60s and 70s and all the conspiracy thinking that went on then. And then that just morphs. And then what you have in the early 80s. And I. I feel like I was a tiny bit of a prophet because I made the connection. I was studying satanic ritual abuse.

John Larsen [02:32:48] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:32:50] Because you can't Do a podcast of Mormonism and not, not hear weekly about how, you know, the first presidency of the quorum of the 12 all have chambers underneath Temple Square where they imprison women, impregnate them, and then kill the babies on the altars and eat the babies. Like you guys are all thinking, I'm crazy people, you know, and love people. A significant percentage of Mormons today and ex Mormons believe that the First Presidency of the Quorum of the 1212 hold women in jails under Temple Square, impregnate them, have babies, kill the babies on altars and eat their organs. Like that. And that the whole satanic ritual abuse stuff of the 80s and early 90s swept through Utah, swept through Mormonism and was a big deal. Right? It was a big thing. But then you've also got, you know, preppers, and you had the militia people. You had. When I was at byu too, there was the dude, the, you know, the whole stuff about the Bundys in Idaho and the, the, the Tim McVeigh kind of people or, or the David Koresh people, like the end of times millennialistic people. Right?

John Larsen [02:34:02] Was.

John Dehlin [02:34:03] It's right. And you've got the militia and they're coming along. And then that leads to Julie Rowe, that leads to Denver Snuffer, that leads to freaking Lori Valo and what's his name? Lori Valo and Chad Daybell, right? Like this was all pre Covid. Like this. This isn't Rome, wasn't built in a day. Like, the church has always been worried about the intellectuals and the liberals and the progressives and the activists, the gays, feminists, intellectuals, historians. But they've also been worried about the fundamentalists and the preppers and the, the. And the conspiratorialists. And so this has always been with us. And it's just so, so knowing that this isn't new, like, talk us through kind of where we've been and where we are and where we're going, given

John Larsen [02:34:56] that both Smith and Young set. Set the table for this, because they were duplicitous in their deal.

John Dehlin [02:35:02] Smith and Brigham Young.

John Larsen [02:35:03] Yes. In their, in their dealings with, with the federal government. Government. I mean, for, for, for Young it was particularly terrible, of course, culminated in, in. In 1857 with the massacre down at Meadows. Mountain Meadows. Yeah. So, so, but, but that violent Western

John Dehlin [02:35:24] element, anti government has.

John Larsen [02:35:25] Anti government element has been both passively and actively fostered by the Church. The church has long embraced prepping, and not just like prepping, but, but like prepping for violent insurrection sort of thing not, I'm not drawing a direct line, but, but that sort of not, you know, like government's gonna come take your guns. And everyone who grew up in, in Utah especially, or in Idaho or Wyoming or rural places knows that it was just absolutely common starting, you know, so you have those undercurrents of, of, you know, like the second manifesto where we were saying, hey, we're not practicing polygamy, but we were. So this idea that we can have something, we say to the outside, milk versus meat. We give a story about Mormonism that's different than the one that we take on ourselves. And the church has let this cancer of anti government fester, especially since Benson and Ernie Wilkinson and Skousen and those guys. You know, the BYU was, was, was a scary place in the 60s. You know, they sent, they sent their, their undercover officers and other officers to go root people out. And Lieutenant Aaron Rhodes just got busted for that two years ago where they were slipping, they were taking police reports and slipping them to the church authorities. That's why BYU's about to lose its police thing. This has been common.

John Dehlin [02:36:50] And when I was, not to mention just millennialism, right. We were called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for a reason. It's this idea that the world is going to end at any moment. And so we don't have to invest in the environment, we don't have to invest in infrastructure, in governments, in communities, because Jesus is always right around the corner. And that makes you paranoid, it makes you afraid, and it makes you think again. I'll worry about the afterlife because this life is about to end any minute.

John Larsen [02:37:20] Literally. I've heard it in church back in the 90s that you were foolish to invest in a 401k if you didn't have a year's worth of food storage in your basement. Now the reason I picked the 90s is every lick of food that was put down in that basement serves no value right now. It is all expired. And the amount of treasure that has been lost among the Mormons on that. Now of course for those who study cults, know that what Colts do is they want people to burn off all their time and money, all the time time. So they say they stay connected to it. I think it's part of that. But if we look at what's going on right now is when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, like the Mormon church in the fasting testimonies, hemorrhaged, because you would go to every fast and testimony meeting and hear some Yahoo. Get up and talk about how morally corrupt the Democrats were because, because Bill Clinton got a Hummer in the, in the White House or whatever. They didn't, they didn't like him. The fact that's not a car, right. That there's so much verbal assault on the American Democratic party throughout the 90s. And then of course, at the same time you have Rush Limbaugh taking off, you have Glenn beck taking off. 1994 Is Newt Gingrich and their Contract with America. This hatred that conservatives have towards. And I've always watched, I've always been fascinated by it because of my Mormon upbringing bringing. I would listen to Rush Limbaugh, read Fox News and, and, and they've been fermenting just absolute hatred towards the left. I would say that Republicanism, which used to have some merit in my view is only about one thing. Hating, hating liberals. Now it is, it is the anti Democratic Party, right? The anti liberal party. That's why, that's why conservatives somehow don't like anti fascists. You know, we're talking about here the conceptually not the kids breaking windows or whatever, but throughout the 90s and the 2000s and this only actually ended. I've been watching. You could buy Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck at Deseret Book, these conservative yahoos who have been lying to the American public for years. But this is built on the big lie. And this is where I keep going back to ignorance. The big lie is that religion is truth. Truth it is not. It is a lie. We evolved. There's no afterlife. There's no pre existence. We've proven that again and again and again. The earth is not flat. It's round. Right? There are germs. We know these things. And the conservative party embraced that big lie to allow religions to say whatever they wanted. And what Mormonism did is it Prepped Everybody study QAnon is gone nuts in Mormonism.

QAnon's Spread Within Mormon Communities

John Dehlin [02:40:16] Wait for our listeners. There are some who actually believe it or not. Probably the majority don't even know really what QAnon is. So give, give them a primer.

John Larsen [02:40:24] Okay, so right after, right after Trump was elected, there was a group event. We, we pretty well know who the three of them were. They on. On like the underbelly, like 4chan 8chan Reddit. These, these sort of open things.

John Dehlin [02:40:39] Things.

John Larsen [02:40:40] There was somebody who was called Q because they supposedly had Q level security clearance and they were high in the government and they, they would post these posts. And if you've read them, they read like the Doctrine Covenants. They're Just nonsense. But, but there's all these predictions that, that, that, that this, this thing is about to happen.

John Dehlin [02:41:02] Storm is coming.

John Larsen [02:41:03] The storm is coming. And what the storm is is that Trump is this hero who's playing this three dimensional game of chess. And whenever you see him behave badly or lie or whatever, that's to throw everybody off the scent. And what the scent is is that Hollywood elites and Democratic leaders, Oprah, Tom Hanks are all part of this satanic cannibalistic Kabbalah that has been operating in the deep state of US Government for years. And that Trump is this hero that's playing this game to out them all. And when the storm was going to come, they were all going to be arrested and Trump was going to reveal that he was playing this game and truth and righteousness was to be restored. Problem is they would predict something. And the man who took his car loaded with explosives on top of, of Hoover dam, that was QAnon. There was a man who murdered a, a crime boss, actually. QAnon, the pizza gate thing. QAnon, like there has been increasingly violent actions and, and I think I read recently that of, of the arrest, whatever we're at to 160 or 170 of the insurrection of the, of the insurrectionists, the majority of them were QAnon adherents. And of course now, now it's, it's getting mixed up. So, so it became this quasi religion religion that has more adherence than the Mormon Church does. And they're becoming more than 5 million. Oh, absolutely. This is everywhere and it's dangerous. This is why there were 25,000 troops in Washington D.C. it is everywhere. And in my neighborhood, I live in Cottonwood Heights. And this summer we had an individual who was, well, it was last year who, who had committed a burglary or a robbery and the cops gunned him down, shot him in the back when he was running away. So one of these, and of course he's, he's not fully Caucasian. Right. Let's, let's be honest. So there was a Black Lives Matter, not a protest. They did it, they did a parade. And the Cottonwood police descended on these guys, started beating him with sticks. Now I, afterwards, I will tell you, it was not that far away from my house. It scared the bejesus out it of, of me. There were Cottonwood Heights. Yes, Cottonwood Heights police officers intermixed with, with 3 percenters and oath Keepers with their machine guns, intermixed with a lot of signage giving Mormon scripture. Like, like they were all there together. The Mormons the, the, the militias and the, and the police. Right. So this thing has gone everywhere. Now, what's happening right now in the church is that most members are at home.

John Dehlin [02:43:52] Home.

John Larsen [02:43:53] And, and the church has given no guidance, They've given no standards. And some are, some are going to

John Dehlin [02:43:59] say, well, Oaks did say, utter the words Black lives matter once. And others are going to say, well, Oaks encouraged us to support the democratic process. The first presidency congratulated, you know, the new administration in a very vague way. And at some point, they've denounced violence. I don't want to get us off track. Crack. But.

John Larsen [02:44:19] No, you're right, it's a good point.

John Dehlin [02:44:20] But there have been a few statements made.

John Larsen [02:44:22] But Donald Trump and Mao say tung and, and every other, like, nationalistic movement that does like this, the leaders say everything. Like, you can find a quote by Putin that support. You could, you could get together a book of quotes by Putin that makes him sound like the Mother Teresa of free. You know, like, like. And, and you can see it with Teresa Trump. And, and it's a great lesson on Smith, John Joseph Smith. They say everything meaning good and bad,

John Dehlin [02:44:51] good and bad, true and false.

John Larsen [02:44:52] Because, because, because then you can always prove that. Well, here's what they said. You know. You know, Trump says, I want you to go out there and I want you to go take back the Capitol. And then he says, another time, but be peaceful about it. But it's going to be wild and go, you know, like. He says both things. Yeah. And if you take the 60s in the church, they were notorious for this. That, that Benson would give up, would give him this top, and then he'd go give a talk to the John Birch Society. That is just pornographic in terms of. Benson was utterly convinced that the Red Communists, that the Russians had infiltrated the civil rights movement and any petition for rights was a part of a satanic conspiracy. So these methods that. When you have dictators and these sort of guys that say both things, things that we shouldn't be. We shouldn't be startled by that. So, so my, my wife, God bless her, she's an activist, and she called the church and said, you have got to say something. And, and she got on with a PR guy and he's like, he's like, they gave a talk, and my wife's still members about QAnon.

John Dehlin [02:45:58] About QAnon.

John Larsen [02:45:59] They said, well, we gave a talk,

John Dehlin [02:46:00] but she's like, her concern was QAnon.

John Larsen [02:46:02] Her concern. Well, we'll get, we'll get there. QAnon. And then what's come from QAnon and she's like, that's not good enough. You have to make a statement. Statement. And God bless Kimmy. Because. Because less than 48 hours later the church flipped and made a statement.

John Dehlin [02:46:13] Oh wow.

John Larsen [02:46:13] Because. And the, the PR guy said we're just getting, we're getting hammered with calls. So the church. And it's like I said about, about the masks in the early days when we could have made a big difference in Utah. We could have not been one of the top five like transmitting states if the church had come out hard and fast and, and said you need to wear masks and this is time for us to start. All the Relief Society ladies are going to make masks mask and we're going to be a mask wearing people and we're going to do our part. They could have stemmed it, but instead they buried their statements in this thing and that thing and played it safe. The last five years have been Russell Nielsen and the leadership. You got Oaks who just hates the gays, clearly. And then the rest of them, no direction. Like, can anybody explain to me what the temple means anymore? Like I understand it's like a slideshow now. And you know, like all these things that had me every, everything for those of you who went to the temple. Temple sometime before. I don't even know what's in there. Like all that stuff has meaning. All the folds, all the, the hats, the, the aprons. It all, it's not random. It all meant something. And it's been watered down and polluted so much. You know, they, they keep changing every six months. They're, they're trying to, to hold on to something. But what is the church anymore?

John Dehlin [02:47:25] So just to, just to push back a bit. One, one criticism that apologists and orthodox Mormons may have of ex Mormons and critics is you complain when you don't like it the way it is, but then when they make positive changes, you say haha. See, it was never true to begin with. And, and now you're just making it up. How can they win?

John Larsen [02:47:44] They can't. They're wrong. They're defending the indefensible. And Apologetics is philosophically, they should all be stripped of their, of their college appointments because Apologetics is taking a conclusion and arguing backwards to try to find evidence. And the problem is they all are playing a game of plausibility. Okay, I flip a coin. What's the odds that it comes up heads or tails?

John Dehlin [02:48:13] 50. 50 almost.

John Larsen [02:48:16] Because the fact is that the coin could land on its side. It can happen, right so it's not quite 50, 50. Is it plausible, John, that I flip a coin and it lands on its edge? Absolutely, it is plausible. It is in the realm of the universal happenings. Is it plausible that I do it 20 times in a row, flip a coin, regular coin, it lands on its edge? It is indeed plausible. Given an infinite number of coin flips, it would likely happen an infinite number of times. Is it plausible that the Book of Mormon came from Mesoamerica? It is plausible. But I will take the bet of the coin landing on its side 20 times in a row before I will take the bet. The Mormonism is true. And apologists know this and their academic careers. So what they do is they find some piece of evidence out here. They say this could be plausible. They're right. And it's a. They're, they're pulling the, they're pulling the sheet over your eye because it's not probable, it's not likely, and it's in fact extremely unlikely. The odds that Mormonism is true is so insignificantly small because for it to be true, everything we know about the universe is wrong. That's a pretty big bet, right? So let's go back to this, this leadership and what's going on in the church right now. They allowed this violent insurrectionist insurrectionism to fester in the church and they did it by never taking, never punishing. They went after you, John De Lin, for what? What did they actually say they were communicating you for?

John Dehlin [02:49:56] Well, originally it was because I supported ordained women and because they came out in favor of same sex marriage and because the podcast Ammon Bundy pointed a

John Larsen [02:50:05] gun at a federal officer and at the end of conference they say keep and sustain the law. They have not taken any disciplinary action against Ammon. Bunny Bundy. Right. They opened an open insurrection again in Idaho, 2014. There have been violent acts. I know of no action the church has taken to disown any of these guys. Burgess Owens, Mike Lee. Mike Lee was there celebrating. He was in Trump's inner circle, like, like Sean Reyes. These guys are Mormon nutballs who are pushing insurrection and lies. And the church takes no action. Everyone hears what the church does loud and clear. The books that they decided to put in Deseret book. I can tell you from knowing academics who had their books pulled for crazy reasons, like the church reads everything. And when they put Sean Hannity in their bookstores, that is not by mistake. The church has been tongue kissing this movement for at least 30 years. And they own the church is part the not majority they are in part culpable for the insurrection and they have done nothing to quell it. And right now the wards are pulling themselves apart. I can tell you I was hinting at the problems the ex Mormons are facing because they got kind of disowned and put out from the family. Now almost everybody close to me to a person is having problem with their families who have embraced utter insurrectionist nonsense that they talk about the storm. And this is happening, happening openly in church meetings. The people are in spouting QAnon stuff and this mask stuff and where's the church leadership? I gave you an example before, I'll give it again. Let's say there's two sisters right now and one lives in West Jordan. One lives in Sandy right now. The one who lives in Sandy, her bishop has allowed them to have the sacrament in their home every Sunday. And she gets on Facebook and says it's so wonderful in the Sandy 124th Ward because we get the blessing of having the sacrament. Meanwhile, meanwhile her sister who lives five miles away on the other side of the valley, they haven't been to church in eight, eight weeks. And their bishop's not allowing that. The wards are completely on their own. Nobody knows how to deal with the masks. And, and I was talking to my, my folks. True believers, wonderful people. They haven't been to church in nine months. They have no intention of going back to church anytime soon. They're both in their 70s. They're getting their shot. They're not going back because they know the, the, the anti mask bigots are up there, there. And, and there's been wards where the anti mask faction has, has, has taken. There's been wards where the, the factions on Facebook. These guys are in open open rebellion. The number of people who are technically inactive right now is enormous because, because the, the church screwed this whole thing up. They didn't take any real powerful stand and they could have, they could have helped get through this and they didn't. And now the church has a big fucking mess on their hand because QAnon is loud and, and proud and alive inside Mormon culture. Mormons are toting guns and talking about killing Democrats. They are there. I know, I know who some of these people are. We are in a dangerous situation right now, United States and the church has blood on its hands. Whoa. And that's really what I wanted to come here to say.

John Dehlin [02:53:26] Wow.

John Larsen [02:53:26] And, and, and, and they've got to deal with it. We have a big problem like families are getting torn apart and this is why? I'm getting passionate. Families that got torn apart 10 years ago and found some kind of new piece are getting torn apart again because people believe crazy things about, about people. Like I'm, I'm, I'm fairly liberal and people believe crazy things about me, about what I'm willing to do, about what I'm, what babies I'm eating and what sauce I put on them. I don't know, it's just this, this whole thing was a game that the church leaders let run amok for years and years and years with their food storage and their conservative radio and their conservative politicians, and they let it go crazy.

John Dehlin [02:54:07] So how bad is it and how bad is it going to get if you have to put on your crystal ball? You made some correct predictions five, six, seven years ago. How bad is it right now and how bad is it going to get?

John Larsen [02:54:19] The church has lost control and I don't know how they get control back because people are openly on social media and other places, active members criticizing the church for their decision.

John Dehlin [02:54:30] Yeah. When the brethren come out and finally do say, wear a mask, then there's a ton of Mormons who are saying these guys aren't inspired anymore. Or when, you know, Russell M. Nelson shows that he got a vaccine. You've got thousands of Internet connected Mormons that are saying he's lost his way, he's betraying us. Right?

John Larsen [02:54:50] Yeah. Yes, yes. And how do they put this genie back in the bottle? That's going to be a really tough thing. So what I'm saying is Mormonism is not the religion for 2021. We've talked about youth and young people, and the real problem is not people like you and I leave the church. It's that people under 25, they're just, they're just walking out wholesale. And it was that way five or six years ago. It's getting worse and the people in the church are miserable. They did such a big campaign and, and the, do you remember what was the big campaign? When. Right before 2016. The new drug that was all over everywhere.

John Dehlin [02:55:25] Pornography.

John Larsen [02:55:26] It was, it was a church based, you know, the, the funders and, and they, they really wanted to get in the Republican platform this big anti pornography push. But it shows. And this is how Mormonism broke my heart. Mormonism and, and its backers. And I, I, by the way, I think their anti pornography thing was they're barking up the wrong tree, but I'm not for it. But, but when Trump got in and became the first president to actually be in pornography as well as, as. As his wife, the first. For the first. First lady, who. We've all seen her cooter. Right. Like, like these people were not. Were the antithesis of what Mormons. And I was waiting for. I was waiting for the election on November 3rd. And Salt Lake went for Biden by about like 53%. Solid county accounts for 30% or so, about a third of the state. And of course, and Summit county, where. Where Park City is. Went for. Went for. Went for Biden also. But the state went for Trump by 67%.

John Dehlin [02:56:30] Which means.

John Larsen [02:56:31] Which means that Mormons observing everything that Trump said, everything he did, everything he did, that is the antithesis of what they told me when I voted for Bill Clinton. I was told that I was morally corrupt. What I found is that I always. And if you listen to my old podcast, I give the church deference that they're good people. There are people in the church that are good, but the church does not create good people. And it's evident by what has happened. The insurrection of the United States was done under the banner of liberty, meaning Moroni's. Meaning there was a cosplaying a Mormon up there as an insurrectionist with the banner of liberty. And I invite every one of the listeners to go out and listen to the interview that they have of this guy. You have to look for the Roman cosplayer because they don't know what he's doing, and listen to him talk, because that's what you sound like to everybody else. It's just crazy. He's talking about Jewish DNA and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But Mormonism, because it's built on the big lie. There were no. There's no Jews in Mesoamerica. Right? There was no book. Book of Mormon is not an ancient doctor document. Like, there's lie after lie after lie after lie after lie. The church is built on that. We want to go away, but it primed the pump for people to buy the big lie that the election was stolen, that led to violence and insurrection. And Mormonism taught me they first of all have to acknowledge what they did wrong, and then they have to make it right. There will be no quarter for the Mormon Church unless they own their role in the insurrection, and they own it right now. And they have no idea what to do. They. When I read what they're writing, when I read their press releases, this is a church completely lost in the woods. Mormonism does not know what it wants to be. It doesn't know what it is. It doesn't have any message Other than you just. Just stick with us. Just to stay in the boat. Stay in the boat for what end? Because the boat is changing. Like. Like how? Like the. The number of times. The temple is supposed to be a restoration of an ancient, but if you count the number of times between modifications, it's accelerating. Are we moving closer towards truth or further away? Because it sure feels like we're moving further away from the truth if we have to keep tinkering with that thing every single year. If we have to tinker with every one of our programs. And the Church of course is in a bad place with the Boy Scouts because you take the fundamentals of QAnon, the idea that there's a sex molesting group of people who are preying on children. There was one. It existed. It's the bs.

John Dehlin [02:59:05] A Boy Scouts of America.

John Larsen [02:59:06] And the number one biggest financial backer of it was the Church. The Church.

John Dehlin [02:59:10] Mormon Church.

John Larsen [02:59:11] The Mormon Church. And the Church has to repent from that. The untold countless boys who were molested in the auspice of the church. Let alone the problem that the 90,000 people who signed on to that lawsuit, those are just kids that were molested by leaders. But if you start including the number of kids that were sexualized or molested or messed with by other boys, the number is staggering. I know just talking to ex Mormons, I would say at least a third of anybody who was in the Boy Scouts was sexualized at one point by other boys or other men. And the Church knew it. And Curtin and McConkie has covered it up and sent out these NDAs and paid hush money for years and years and years. The Church has to repent and the Church gets no fucking court order. The Church is not in a place of any moral authority right now and they need to shut the up and they need to deal with their own problems. But we're all just people. There is the church is the bad thing. I want, I want you to understand I see Oaks as a victim. I see, I see Nelson as a victim. He's an old man who. The world has shifted and he doesn't understand what's going on. Hell, I don't understand what's going on. Right. If we can all go back to the Kumbaya we were at an hour ago, John, that when we can all see this is really damaging. But just everybody walking out of the church leads to things like QAnon leads to. Leads to these, these MAGA guys who are claiming things that are absolutely not true. We have to deal with the problem of ignorance. And we have to start learning to love one another. And you can see how hard it is, is I was just blowing hate. Right.

John Dehlin [03:00:51] You know, an hour after weeping with love and reconciliation.

John Larsen [03:00:55] But isn't, isn't that the human condition right now? Don't you. We read the news and you go from rage to sorrow to, to all that stuff.

John Dehlin [03:01:02] Yeah. And, and it's almost like we need a. It's almost like we need a prophet.

John Larsen [03:01:07] Like we need, we need God's word. If, if there, if there is a God, I've, I've said many times, I don't believe in God for God's own benefit because if there is a God, the guy's a sleazeball and it is a guy. If there is a God in charge of this world, it has to be a man. Right? Because it's so up and. But I'm sorry, I've gone, I've gone back into, into my potty mouth. But let, let me, let me take it back. This is, this is a problem that we all have right now. Qanon is a problem we all have. MAGA is a problem we all have. And not everybody who supported MAGA is MAGA when I'm talking Matt. Now there are a lot of good people who wanted the best for this country who got taken in by this lie that the election was stolen. It was a big lie. And, and all of us at some time in our life will be taken on. I've said to you before, the greatest gift that we were ever given as, as ex Mormons is to realize we were very, very, very wrong about something. And as Americans we have to realize that we've been causing oppression all around the world. That there are people who are slice of the American dream is at the expense of other people and that there will be no like upcomings. I want my revenge on the people who I blame for the problem in this country. But they're not, they're not the part of the problem. They're me. They're just me in another instance. They're me in another incarnation. And I can be mad at the church because the church is not the people in the church. And there are people in the church who have been deceived by political movements and there's people in the church who haven't been deceived. But the church is just, like I said, it's an illusion and we've got to, we've got to repair. And that reparation can only happen when we reject ignorance and unfortunately, that means that most religions need to go at least as from a, from a political power perspective that people should believe what they want. But.

Church Finances, Power, and Institutional Decline

John Dehlin [03:02:58] So, yeah, there are a couple things I want to follow up on.

John Larsen [03:03:01] So.

John Dehlin [03:03:01] So if you look at the Mormon Church in 2021, we have the benefit of learning in the past few years that they literally have probably by now $150 billion just in stocks, bonds, real estate, investments, cash.

John Larsen [03:03:19] It's going to be more than that.

John Dehlin [03:03:21] No, just. I'm just saying it, that we know about. That we know about. That's not all the, the, all the assets held in the corporation running the church now, all the buildings, all the temples, all the real estate. Like it's a multi hundred billion dollar organization and it's getting richer and within less than 20 years it'll be a trillion dollar organization. So we can say on the one hand, and you learn this if you watch going Clear about Scientology, they may be, they may have a bunch of empty buildings, they may be losing status, they may have a declining membership, but they are growing in money and power, not shrinking.

John Larsen [03:04:04] We said this in the last but in the 2015 podcast that my prediction, the church is it will become richer and more powerful and smaller.

John Dehlin [03:04:12] So you're sticking with that. Is there, is there anything that the church can do? Like if they were to hire. I'll probably. This is a repeat question, but if the church were to hire John Larsen and say, how do we turn this around? We've got all this money, we've got all this power and influence, how do we make good?

John Larsen [03:04:29] They have to repent. And not. Because that's my paradigm in life. It's their paradigm in life. That's, that's their foundation is built on the idea of repentance. They have to repent.

John Dehlin [03:04:41] But doesn't that ruin it all? Does that make everybody walk away?

John Larsen [03:04:45] No, it was all ruined beforehand. What do you mean it's not real? Mormonism is not a real thing. Like, like, because people say, well, how do we, how do we keep the. It's, it's like, it's like if you're a slave owner or you're a feudal lord who's taking all of his money from the work of the peasants and say, well, how do we not imprison the peasants but still get all the money from them? You can't. Right? Like that's part of repentance. You have to own up to what you did. And the problem is the church does not want to give up their friends with benefit relationship with, with Its, with its dirty, spiteful side. The church can't keep raking in money like it is unless it keeps telling the lies it does. So the only way for the church to get out is to dismantle itself.

John Dehlin [03:05:33] Yeah, and, and I read enough Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X to remember the quote that power never relinquishes itself voluntarily. It must be forced.

John Larsen [03:05:46] Historically, that seems to be the truth. So there's a few instances you can find some, some, some small stories where people did, you know, there's the, and he keeps popping up the news. I can't remember which company it was up in Seattle where a few years ago the guy said, you know, everyone should make a decent wage. And I'm not going to make millions dollars, I'm going to make $73,000. And the company has just thrived right there. There are, there are places where we've, we've, we've gone to these things. And you know what I find I fascinating about like the rights criticism of socialism or communism. Everything they always accuse socialism of communism are, are things that are, happen under capitalistic system like riots or people going hungry or whatever to realize, saying, you know what I'm saying we shouldn't go to social. And I'm not right now advocating for that. I'm just pointing out the juxtaposition. We can't go to socialism because socialism has all the ills that we're facing right now. And that's where I'd say, well, there's something imaginary going on here, here because you clearly don't solve poverty through capitalism. That should be clear. Does the church have a way out? No, they have no way out. Because what will happen is if they come, if they, if they, if they come and say, all right, we can't, you know, we can't administer the grace of Jesus Christ. That's, that's God and that's between you and God. But let's come, let's have fellowship, let's take care of one another. What'll happen is they'll stop paying enough money to keep the 27 story building down and the temples that they're building.

John Dehlin [03:07:12] But boy, that's the thing. They now have enough money and assets that they can fund the current annual budget of the church just on the interest of the investments with money left over. So they don't need. That's part of the craziness of 2021. The Mormon Church doesn't need the members tithing anymore to maintain its current budget.

John Larsen [03:07:35] But, but it would be insanity to believe that the, the organization that put the policies in place, that allowed them to accumulate hundreds of billions of dollars would have the ability to change that. Right. Yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's like, it's like the, the man who, who is the seventh husband of a woman who's cheated on her previous six husbands. That's the kind of faith you need to run a religion. Because, because they, they, they won't. They can't. They don't know how. I was reading something. I can't remember if it's Jan Reese or whatever. They were writing about how part of it is just a corporate snafu like the church knows how to gather money, but they actually don't know how to spend it.

John Dehlin [03:08:15] They don't know what to do with it.

John Larsen [03:08:16] They don't know what to do with it.

John Dehlin [03:08:17] Yeah.

John Larsen [03:08:18] And, and, and they've created all these mechanisms to hide money from one another and all that kind of stuff. But that, but it's my, my point. For the church. Church to change, to have this Ebenezer Scrooge, wake up. Would mean that the church could no longer be the church. Like the temple building and the, the, and the, the forcing. You know, you know, everybody who's ever had, who's ever gone to the church, everybody I've known who's ever gone to the church warehouse to get food, first of all, they make you do it every week. You have to fill out this form, and then the Relief Society president, who probably doesn't know diddly shit, looks at it and says, says, do you really need. You really need two, two roasts this week? It's emasculating. It's humiliating. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's. I shouldn't say things like emasculating. It's, it's. It takes away from what it means to be fundamentally human. The organization that does that, that makes people grovel for food and, and, you know, they, they brag about what a humanitarian they are. I don't care how starving my family would be. The church would never give me five food because they would ask me to read the Book of Mormon or get baptized or whatever. The church can't fix this part without fixing this part. It can't land half of the airplane. For the church to not be shitty, it has to stop being shitty. Right? And that's what the apologies are trying to find. This, this line of this thing that doesn't exist. Because.

John Dehlin [03:09:39] Yeah, so. Yeah, so if you, if you look at it now, like, when I interviewed Terrell Givens the first time, he was kind of Persona non grata within orthodox Mormonism, to the point where he told me himself that several of his books were not allowed to be sold a Deseret book. Now he's running the Maxwell Institute along with Spencer Fluman. Right. Patrick Mason's just coming out with the book called Restoration, and he's making the argument that was made in stale ds, you know, whatever, years ago, which is like, oh, oh, the church is, you know, we're one of many true churches, and what is authority, really? And we're like the salt. But other churches have truth too, and we're all learning and growing and, you know, one big happy family. So, like, the church is making a lot of changes. They're coming, Becoming more clean about its history. They're becoming more LGBT friendly. Some would say they're treating women better. Like, what. What. What if people to say. What if people were to say to you, John, no, the church is getting better in material. They're improving the temple ceremony. They're taking out the. The vow. Well, first of all, they took away the ponchos where people were touching you nakedly on the sides of your bodies. When you're 19 years old, that's a bonus. But also, women are no longer hearkening, covenanting to hearken to their husbands as their husbands hearken in covenant with God. So, like, some would say the church is getting way better and that it's

John Larsen [03:11:08] looking bright to me. It's like, okay, we're only beating our slaves now when they deserve it. Well, first of all, even implied in the statement, it's getting better. They have to acknowledge that they were worse, and they won't do it. I have to scrub this story. So I know I have a friend who was. Was in a stake presidency. We can say that whose father was connected enough that when he left the church, he got a call from one of the current members of the 12. This individual was knowledgeable about church history and what this individual remember the 12? No, quite the opposite.

John Dehlin [03:11:51] The person who left.

John Larsen [03:11:52] The person who left. Okay, quite the opposite. The member of the 12 knew hardly anything and was doing this. Oh, man, we're all just trying to get to Jesus. And he said, the member of the 12 could not answer the question, then why Mormonism? Why don't I just read my Bible and pray to God? And he had no answer.

John Dehlin [03:12:13] The apostle had no answer.

John Larsen [03:12:14] The apostle had no answer.

John Dehlin [03:12:15] Yeah, because that's also a move the church is making. It's all about Jesus. It's all about love. We're just to help to get you to Christ.

John Larsen [03:12:23] Right? You know, it's like saying, okay, okay, there's this God. It's really great. About 2000 years ago, God came down to the earth and he saw the sorrow and suffering of humankind. And God sacrificed himself for this. And now he wants to give that grace to everyone, that everyone can be free from sin and from the struggle to sin. And it's freely available to everybody. But join our group, and you need to give us 10% of everything you make and you do everything we say. And you need to be obedient, even though it doesn't make sense, because obedience is like, Mormonism doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And then you're like, so why. Why did. Why were black women not. I always hate when they say black men in the priesthood. Why were black women not allowed to pray in the churches in 1975? Oh, God's mysterious. Like, but, but like there were black churches that you're saying you're ecumenical with now. What? Like, like Mormonism doesn't make any sense. And the people joining are people who are usually looking for something in a troubled world. And we have a troubled world. And Christianity is dying. Mormonism is dying because Christianity is dying. And the myths. I keep going back to this. That united us together have fallen apart. Patriotism. They were literally beating police officers nigh unto death with the American flag. If that doesn't speak during the insurrection, during the insurrection, if that doesn't speak to a people that has completely lost their way, that's us Americans. And Mormonism is just a segment of that. The church, if it wants to survive and be something more than just another like, militant militia weirdo Western freedom movement, it has to repent. And it won't. That's my prediction.

John Dehlin [03:14:04] Yeah. Because repentance means self destruction. So how over the next 10 to 20 to 30, 40 years, we know that, that almost all the U.S. membership and maybe globally, they haven't been going to the temple because the temples have been closed. They haven't been going to church because Covid. We don't know how many still believe. We don't know. I know that my podcast is doing really well. I know that all the other progressive and post Mormon podcasts are having a great year, Right? So a lot more of them are listening to the podcast now. A lot more of them are reading CES letters. And then a whole crap ton of them are just realizing how happy and joyful life can be. Without, you know, spending half your Sundays sitting in a pew being bored.

John Larsen [03:14:49] Right.

John Dehlin [03:14:50] But the church has all this money and all this power, but the church has Maga and The church has QAnon. And the church, as you said that Russell, the church doesn't stand for anything anymore. According to you. And they're becoming man be pamby Christians.

John Larsen [03:15:05] Lightweight. And I shouldn't say they don't stand for anything. I mean there's still, there's still morality and, and that again, I'm questioning it because these people voted for Trump in massive numbers. So color me skeptical about your sexuality, about how you did you. Bill Clinton wasn't fit for office when you've got the, you know, the pornographer in chief. Like, so that's what my problem Now, John, after November 3rd is. I don't, I'm not being facetious. I don't know what Mormons believe anymore, anymore. I don't know what they stand for. I don't know what their morality is. I don't know where they are. And I'm not kidding. And, and, and, and because there's been so much change over the last few years, sliding to what, what is it? Why do you need to go to the temple? Why is any of it?

John Dehlin [03:15:52] You know, they're going to say, Mormons believe in a loving heavenly father who is all powerful and all loving. They believe in Jesus Christ as his son, who taught love and kindness, who died for you, who suffered for your sins, who rose on the third day. We're all going to live again because of Jesus.

John Larsen [03:16:10] And Hades captured Persephone and took her down across the River Styx and she comes up once a year in the spring. I know. Yes, yes, like, but all of that doesn't mean anything. Like everything you said, it's just, it's just blah, blah, blah. There is a God who's all powerful. But, but, but this world has been full of the most terrible. Go look up cowpox. This is my second reference to cowpox. Like, like, where was God during that? Like, like, like. Okay, so you believe in an all powerful God who exerts no power. Right? It's, it's, it's a, it's a belief that has no T. It doesn't speak to the problems we're facing right now, which are the global destruction of the environment and mass, you know, starvation and some of the same problems.

John Dehlin [03:16:53] Go ahead. So, of course, of course, an all powerful God. The idea of an all powerful God is suspect. Of course. The idea of Jesus resurrecting on the Third Day is suspect. But for a lot of Mormons, those beliefs do inform. It does give them hope, it does give them a reason to get up in the morning. It does give them an identity. It does give them from, from sapiens, from Yuval, Noah, Harari. It gives them a shared myth, a set of shared stories, a set of values that makes Utah function. It's 90% of the state legislature. It's business, it's family, it's marriages, it's family reunions and grandparents. Like all of that is informed by whether or not it's true. A belief in a loving heavenly father, a belief in a divine resurrected Jesus Christ, a belief that this church is the one and only true church, that it does have unique authority, that we have the ordinances, that if nothing else, we have the ordinances that are legitimate. Nobody else has legitimate ordinances. And we've got to do the temple work. Like all that's still alive and well in Mormonism. And it's believed by people whether it's true or not. And it makes them pay 10% and go on missions like it's still today. My nieces and nephews are going on missions for the church. So in some sense it's not as vital as it was. It's not as clear. But, but so many of the things that you're saying, what does the church stand for is still alive and strong in the hearts and minds and beliefs of Mormons.

John Larsen [03:18:25] Yeah, you said it well.

John Dehlin [03:18:27] So it's not going anywhere.

John Larsen [03:18:28] Yes, exactly. The scope of the problem is huge. That's why I've said, I think I called it. When one podcast, I said, this is the end. This marks the high water point of the church. And I can't even remember what dumbass thing they'd done back then. And I was probably right. But then I said, and It'll take about 300 years to clean it it up. Right. And I'm, it's, it's. The scope of the problem that you're talking about is, is, is enormous. And it's paralleled by the problem of capitalism and growth. Everything we do is based on growth. You cannot continue to grow forever. And, and Mormonism, you talk about a loving Jesus, I would push back on that. I think the Mormon Jesus that gets worshiped in the pews is one that's going to come and cause pain and suffering to our enemies. Mormonism is the Church of Latter Days. And that's not looking at the Jesus of Jerusalem. It's looking at the Jesus soaked in blood. And that's what they literally teach. They literally teach that Jesus is coming back soaked in blood, ready to murder and kill. It's hard to create a pluralistic society with those people.

John Dehlin [03:19:33] But the only way Mormonism goes down, in my opinion, is when the global economy goes down. Because as long as like if you look at, I can't tell you how many friends I've met over the years that totally lost their faith in the church. But they're orthodontists, they're business people, they're dentists, they're doctors, they're construction workers, whatever it is. Too many friends, too many family, don't want to disappoint grandma and grandpa. Like too many social and financial hooks tied to orthodox Mormonism where they couldn't afford to walk away if they wanted to. In other words. And how's the, how's the economic prosperity in Utah relative to other states within the country? We're actually like, real estate prices are still going up here, like 401ks are still going up. Like businesses are still doing well. As long as prosperity is co located with orthodox Mormonism, you're going to see people riding it. The only thing that I see putting a serious dent in the church because they're not going to come clean. They're not going to admit that it's all a fraud. That's never going to happen. They, they're on record dallian chokes, on record saying we don't apologize, we don't seek or give apologies. That's never going to happen. The only thing that's going to happen is if and when there's literally a global socioeconomic collapse, potentially war and Mormons aren't doing well financially or socially, only then will they say well this isn't helping me anymore. Right until then, we're going to see a vibrant relative to the rest of Christianity and I would even argue the global population, the church is going to be doing really well as good or better. That's probably going to outlive the United States of America as a, as a government. Sorry ex Mormons that hate the Mormon Church, but that's my prediction.

John Larsen [03:21:29] I agree, I agree. I think what we're saying here is, is it's a huge problem like Mormonism and evangelicalism and other isms, you know, the, the, the, the, the nationalistic movements on the left that took place in Cambodia and China and whatever. There's that there, there's, there's huge problems with these. It is a big problem. And what's the solution? We have to combat ignorance and we have to somehow create the methadone clinics. That's what you're running. That, that, that more. It would be a tragedy. And I've said this before and it's happening. The problem with Mormonism collapsing in terms of its direction and moral authority is it's giving rise to people who are disillusioned on the right, who are full believers, which means polygamy, Denver snuffer, like these fundamentalist movements will start and they're more scary.

John Dehlin [03:22:18] QAnon too, right?

John Larsen [03:22:19] QAnon. QAnon is, is, is, is that. That if there's a power vacuum, something else will step into that vacuum. Him. And that, that's the point. The point in global history we're at. QAnon is not the next world religion that I predicted in 2015. It is the predecessor to it. And what that's going to look like, I don't know. And it's, it scares me.

Truth, Epistemology, and Making a Difference

John Dehlin [03:22:40] So doesn't this give you a little. Do you ever have. I do. I have these moments of insecurity where I'm like, Mormon church is problematic. QAnon is worse.

John Larsen [03:22:50] Yes, absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:22:51] If we're. And you tried the living community, which was a secular, kind of like a secular church that I was really cheering for. I later tried to do Oasis, you know, here in Utah, which again are like secular communities, and didn't happen. Died, like fell apart. And so have you ever had kind of this. We weren't able to figure that out yet. And so have you ever had this nagging thought about grace? We take all these people out of Mormonism as fraud as it is, but then they empty into QAnon and organizations that are way worse. Maybe it would have been better to just stay quiet, be on the down low and let orthodox Mormonism thrive. Because the alternative might be worse. The vacuum that we create by educating people and waking them up to the fact that the church isn't true just takes them into organism other cult leaders, you know, unhealthy pyramid schemes, other charlatans, and even worse, super fraudulent sociopolitical movements that take down democracy itself. Do you ever worry that we all would have been better just stand quiet and keep in Mormonism, you know, as it is, versus what we're. The direction we're headed towards?

John Larsen [03:24:15] I think, I think, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:24:16] Yes.

John Larsen [03:24:17] But I don't, I don't, I don't have regrets?

John Dehlin [03:24:18] You said yes.

John Larsen [03:24:19] Yeah. Yes. You're right. You're right about what? That the world might be worse if Mormonism collapses. Right. The. The absence of Mormonism might make the world a worse place. But I am not smart enough and nor is any government or to engineer them that the only thing we can, we can, we can do is combat ignorance and seek the truth. Knowing that our truth seeking mechanisms are flawed and they have to keep, they have to keep re engaging that, that, that even though, even though science and logic and these things are our best hope, but they're, they're still human, they're still a product of our human mind, they're still flawed, but all we can do is, is go after truth. The utility of the utilitarian argument for Mormonism, I get it. But fundamentally, spiritually, at my core, I reject it because I say it's truth that matters. It's the only thing that can matter. And if the Mormon church could be the best thing that ever happened to humanity, but if it's built on lies, the lies need to be exposed and people need to know the truth. That's all I've got for you, John. I've got no other. Like I look at human history, I think in the long run human race is doomed. Whether that's in 300 years or 30,000 years, I don't know. And you know what? That may not be such a bad thing. We are flawed. I love being alive, I love being a human. But we got a lot of fucking problems, right? I can't solve those problems. But all we can do is cling to truth and cling to one another. And recognizing like, like I was saying before that we're all just trying to solve this problem. We're all just elements of the, of the universe that became self aware. What a fucking miracle. What a beautiful thing. And all this other stuff I keep saying, it's all imaginary. If the church fails and something else comes in, there are all these. Imagine we just go chasing one imaginary thing after another after another. So the only thing we can do is pursue truth and let the chips fall where they will. I think that's all we can do.

John Dehlin [03:26:25] When I think about turning my questions back on myself, when I think about movies like Pleasantville or Truman show or the Village, you know, these, these constructed realities that a bunch of kind of sages in a community or old people constructed a fake reality so that there would be order and happiness and health within the society. And that's, you know, I don't want to, to give away any spoilers to

John Larsen [03:26:56] any movies, but after 30 years you're free. Rosebud is a sled,

John Dehlin [03:27:03] so. But, but when I think about that, there's kind of this Benevolent arrogance of, like, what if truth, what if truth isn't the, the highest good? What if we need, okay, we need science, we need evidence. We need enough truth to like escape germ theory, you know, germs to prolong our lifespans to 90 years instead of 40 and to, you know, get to the moon and build computers and improve society in the ways that we have. But too much truth makes us nihilistic. Too much truth makes us depressed. Having this hope in Jesus, having these authorities telling us how to behave, it's problematic. But the myth and the authority and the religious structure gives us something that we need in addition to measured truth. I hate to say it, but I'm kind of asking the question Boyd K. Packer was, was sort of asserting, which is not all truth is useful and not all things that are true should be shared. Right? What if. What if we can't? What if we're not smart enough? Like, what if we can't fully handle all the truth and stay healthy and sane and have full order? What if we need myths and prophets and heroes and patriarchies even to have enough order? And if you don't have some of the myth and some of the patriarchy and some of the structures, then it unravels. I'm not making an argument.

John Larsen [03:28:44] It's a brilliant question.

John Dehlin [03:28:45] None of us are smart enough to know for sure, but, but I think that's a fair question.

John Larsen [03:28:49] I would say the answer is that every time in human history, known human history, last 10,000 years, that we have tried to construct a truth. That's my air quotes. Oh yeah, I'm on camera. Hey guys. As we try to construct a truth has always failed. I would say, John, you're putting hope in doing this thing that we as humanity have done over and over and over and over and over again. And it's never worked. We keep saying, but this time it's going to work. What I'm saying is, I don't know if what you're saying, if there's this theory that we need some kind of false construction in order to be happy in the universe, I don't know, but all I know is that truth wins out. And to me there's obvious things about truth. Like if I suffer pain when somebody hits me in the shoulder, then that person suffers pain. So I actually think the truth is more redemptive than maybe you're rhetorically giving it credit for that. With truth comes empathy, and with empathy comes compassion. And compassion is the opposite of greed and self selfishness. And the truth, the big Truth. T is we're very greedy and we're very selfish.

John Dehlin [03:30:04] And tribal.

John Larsen [03:30:05] And tribal.

John Dehlin [03:30:05] We're very tribal. Right, right.

John Larsen [03:30:07] So I think the truth will set you free, as the. As the Bible tells us. But you're not going to like the truth, because the truth is you need to take less from everybody. You need to demand less. You need to put less on people. You need to stop walking around telling people they need to do this or they need to do that. It's like, I mean, this. This takes the conversation full circle. There is no true sexuality. There is no true monogamy. There is no true church. There's no true dollar. Like, all these things can be used for good or for bad. And when you start getting religions like Mormonism where they will excommunicate you if you get a mastectomy because you have gender dysphoria, but if you get a mastectomy preventative because your mom had cancer, you won't get excommunicated for that. You can get in trouble for getting a tattoo. That's a beautiful piece of work. But you can literally, and Salt Lake is the number one thing you can violently, as a woman, get your breasts cut open and put implants in there that will destroy their function both as a nourishment device and kill sensation, potentially negatively impacting the sexuality to ostensible purpose for breasts. That's okay. Like, you can't. The problem with Mormonism is you can't make any sense of it. And so the idea that that nonsensical bunch of, like, random things that have been could somehow be something that makes people happier. Well, we first have to stop begging the question that as humans, we should be happy. Maybe as humans, what we should be is content. Maybe as humans, what we should be is peaceful and stop pursuing happiness. And that instead of, like, buying the new thing or jumping off the cliff or getting on the airplane or going. Going to Europe, we should learn to sit in a green field and watch the sunrise and sunset instead of eating extravagant meals that came from this latest thing. Maybe we should learn to eat simply with what we have, but do it with friends and do it with song and live a joyful life. So I agree with what you're saying, in part, but I think the truth is actually beautiful. But it hurts because all of us, you and me, are clinging to a lot of things that are not true, that are damaging ourselves, that are damaging other people. And that's. That's the religion I want to see emerge, is that we start saying, let's let's really take a breath and figure this out.

John Dehlin [03:32:27] Yeah. And just to be clear, I am a truth. I. In my heart, I'm a truth warrior. And I don't believe. I don't believe the basis of the questions I was asking you. I wanted that beautiful answer from the questions I asked, and I got it.

John Larsen [03:32:44] But it's a brilliant question. It still. It is. It is one of the big questions, you know, like, what do we do here we all are on this planet, 7 billion of us right now. Like. Like what? What? What do we do? What. What if there was a revelation that came from space that showed us that all of our religions were false? What would we do the next day?

John Dehlin [03:33:03] Yeah. Yeah.

John Larsen [03:33:03] You know, and. But I. I think something beautiful can emerge. My hope for the, you know, we talk, we end with the discussion of the future. I think we're in for a rough ride. I think. I think we have crossed, and there's good evidence for this. We have crossed. The people talk about tipping point. It was about 30 years ago of what? The environment, the environmental catastrophe that's coming. And the next millennia is going to be rough. It's going to be tough. And we are already experiencing it. You and I, we want to experience very much. Our kids are going to experience it wholesale. Our grandkids, our life is going to be drastically different. We know this. And. But I believe that this might, eventually, might teach us that the parasitical behavior of the human race that just consumed everything, that wants to send out 55,000 missionaries, that wants to consume, consume, consume and own everything, everything is reaching its climax. And what? There will be our descendants, our progenitors who will figure this out and learn to live in harmony with Earth. I believe that. I honestly do. I think there's hope. There's not hope for 7 billion of us, but there's hope for a small set of us. And knowing that, I think we can start that today. We can start trying to say, well, if there was a group of people who lived in peace and harmony, how would they live? Live well, they'd get together with their friends and eat meals and sing songs. Do it, do it now, don't wait. They drive the cars less do it now, don't wait. We know the answer. We know what brings us peace and happiness. We know we have to stop fighting. And that's where I come on this and I yell and I scream and I rage against the machine. But my message I want to give to everybody is we don't have to do any of this. We don't have to fight. We can solve all of our problems right now. We have enough money, we have enough systems as human beings. We can solve all of our problems. And what we need to start doing is asking ourselves why we're not and not like why he's not or why these assholes are following Trump or why Trump is saying that, what can I do differently? Because at the end of the day, that's the only thing I can do. How do I use a little bit less plastic? How do I use a little bit less water? Water, you know, that's all we can do. And I think it's really important. So I've made fun of y'. All. I love you. I love the Mormons. You're a part of me. I love the ex Mormons. You're a part of me. I love the people I'm with. It's. It's this journey, this beautiful journey that I've had that I get to witness this, that living through this plague. What that has taught me about how I process things differently, you know, because, because for the first time in my life, I've always watched the news and it's happening in Vietnam or it's attacking in Afghanistan. It was happening right here. And me walking out the front door, get. Still to this day could get problems. I'm part of it. And I think that's part of my recognition, that of my privilege. The place that I had before. I didn't lose any sleep over H1N1. I didn't, I didn't, you know, when that, when that came, came about sars, like, I didn't, I didn't worry about it. There's outbreaks happening in Africa all the time. Because I'm. It's easy for me to say they're not, not me. I'm not empathetic over there.

John Dehlin [03:36:16] It's over there.

John Larsen [03:36:17] And what I hope is that for the, me and for everyone, this teaches us empathy. And, and, and the, the fact that so many people got taken up in QAnon to the point that they were performing an act of insurrection. That. That's us. That's all of us. It could have been any of us. We. And, and I'm hopeful. I know I sound, I know I sound like I look at these things and say, they're all getting burned down. You know, there's. We're not going to be driving fossil fuel cars forever. We know that. That. We know. We know it. There's this hope that technology will come along and redeem us, but if it does, we'll just. We'll just push that to the end. We have to turn it around. And that not only means with our consumption, but that means with how we treat one another. And just every. What I hope comes with the family and friends who've gotten lost their way with QAnon and some other strange beliefs. I hope that they have that same epiphany saying, oh, my God, I can be really wrong about something.

John Dehlin [03:37:11] So I. I do want to have. I do have one more question because that's. That's beautiful and it's worthy to end on, but I. I'm not done. I have one more kind of line I want to talk about. So. Okay, so it. I am. I am like you. I identify as a truth warrior. Everything I've done with Mormon stories for the past 16 years, and it started 20 years ago for me, was realizing that I had been been sold a conspiracy theory, a religious conspiracy theory, that I had been betrayed, I'd been lied to, and that I wasn't the only one that was suffering as a result of the conspiracy theory that I believed. And I wanted to minimize the harm caused by the organization selling the conspiracy theory. And I wanted to awaken as many possible people who wanted to be woken up to the realities of life based on truth so that they could reclaim their lives and make whatever hopefully life they wanted to with the remaining time that they had. So that's me. That's where I stand. That's where I stood 20 years ago, 16 years ago. That's where I stand today. I had a strategy. So when I.

John Larsen [03:38:15] When.

John Dehlin [03:38:16] If you think about pre 2004 in Mormonism, okay, you've got, you know, whether it's Beach Roberts in the 1920s, whether it's Fawn Brody, 1945, whether it's Leonard Arrington and the Tanners in the 60s and 70s, September 6th in the 80s, what the church always did is it silenced and punished its truth speakers and its historians and its true tellers. It propagated conspiracy theories and lies and misinformation, and it silenced anyone who spoke out against it. And it kept an overwhelming massive majority of people in ignorance. Okay? And whoever spoke up became an ex Mormon, became an anti Mormon. They were silenced, they were excommunicated and they were kicked out of the community. And those people bailed, they left, they went silent, and they stayed silent even to September 6th. Paul Toscano, Margaret Toscano, Maxine Hanks, great people. Arvon Gileadi, great people. You, they. You don't hear a lot from Michael Quinn. You don't hear a lot from them anymore. Yes, they work behind the scenes. They speak now and again. They did not, other than Sandra Tanner. They shrunk and disappeared from broad public consciousness. What changed in 2004, as far as I'm concerned, is. Well, I'm going to say at least one thing. I decided, I decided it with whatever small thing I could do to do something slightly differently. I was going to, number one, try and make the change from within. And part of making that change because I, I would. All I thought about, and all I think about now is effectiveness. That's all I, all I wanted. I wanted to be as sustainable as possible, reach as many people as possible for as long as I could possibly do it. That was my religion. Effectiveness. Right, and, and sustainability. Because I didn't want to end up like Michael Quinn or, or, or Fawn Brody or, you know, Maxine Hanks, who I love and is probably listening to this. And I didn't want to disappear when the, when the heat rose. Right. And I didn't want to be shut out. And so I started. So I'm thinking about what, what's been effective because if you Fast forward between 2004 and, and 2021, it's a different deal. It's a different deal. It is a different deal. And the way it's different is a way larger percentage. The, the, the acceleration of, of eyes opening, of awakening and, or disaffection from Mormonism. It's exponentially greater now than it ever was before in the history of the church. I believe. And I'm going to acknowledge that that's not just happening in Mormonism, that we've got the rise of the nuns, that we've got, you know, Protestant Christianity and free fall. You know, religion's taking the shorts everywhere and you've already acknowledged that. But for the power and the influence in the, in the timeline and trajectory and growth of Mormonism, the Mormon Internet that put a dent, put a crack in Mormonism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in a significant way. The ex Mormon Reddit. There is no other ex church community anyway comparable to the ex Mormon Reddit. There's no other ex religious podcast community, not Jehovah's Witnesses, not Orthodox Jews, not Muslims, not. Nothing compares to ex Mormon podcast world like we are. We are. We have been effective and you have been and continue to be in your way a really important part of that. And you know, Bill Real and RFM and Lindsay and your polygamy and sunstone, like we have made an impact. And I want to argue that one of the ways we've made an impact is by number one, relying on storytelling. And so if you think about it, it, what I try to do with Mormon stories is like, how do we not become marginalized in the trash pile of, of ex Mormonism? We're going to rely on stories because if we just let people tell their stories, how do you argue with stories? You can argue about Nahum, you can argue about DNA. How do you argue with someone's story? So I think that's one thing we got right is by, by telling stories. Another thing that I think has helped with longevity as far as I'm concerned, concerned is trying not to be too angry, try not to be too extreme. Ed Decker like burned himself out, burned his reputation out. And so I've waxed and waned. But by trying to be empathetic, by trying to be moderate, by trying to not get too angry but not too apologetic, by, by being as safe feeling and as, as, as neutral and as objective as possible, I think that's been effective. And I'm building to a larger question that far exceeds Mormonism because we've got geopolitical problems not just in America, not just with the Constitution, but with global warming and with the global community. The question I'm asking is how do we make a difference? How do we make a difference? I think story helps, I think speaking out helps, helps. I think leveraging technology helps. I think trying to be open minded and as objective is possible. But I also think relying on truth and evidence helps. If you look at CES letter I had Jim Bennett on, Jim Bennett is the son of Senator Bob Bennett, late Senator Bob Bennett. One of the things he told me is, is that they have found two things. Well, one thing that CS letter has made a definition like. I think one of the reasons why they hate me and they hate Jeremy Runnels is because we've been effective. Truth has been effective. The CES letter delivered more truth in a packaged, consumable, sort of consumable, user friendly package in a dense, in a dense, condensed, user friendly, consumable way. Consumable way unlike anything that had ever come before it. And I would say in addition to CES letter, Mormon stories delivered these compelling long form stories that were heart wrenching, that were believable, that were credible, that opened people's hearts and minds in ways that being attacked, that, that, that, that arguing DNA, arguing geography, arguing historicity couldn't do. And, and so we've been effective and truth has wended its way within Mormonism in a way that I think is meaningful and I think in ways that we can learn from. So whether we're talking about the next 100 or 400 years of Mormonism, or whether we're talking about QAnon, or whether we're talking about MAGA or anti truthers or fascism, or whether we're talking about global consumption, materialism and, or environmentalism and, or global, you know, wealth and, or poverty. What, what can and should we do? What have we learned that we've done right on the side of truth, on the side of making people, of building a broader consciousness, of waking people up, of bringing them to their senses, of helping them live a higher, more noble, more meaningful, more healthy life. What can and should we all be doing to make. Because it only happens when people speak up. It only happens when people lift their voices. It only happens when educators educate. That's the only way people learn. A different point of view. So how do we do it, John Larsen? What can we learn from the good things we've done within progressive Mormonism, within post Mormonism in the world? How do we educate our current and future selves so that we're not as prone to conspiracy theories, we're not as prone to lies and, and malicious patriarchies and fascist leaders? How do we move forward as humanity? What are the tools? What are the ways that we do that? Hope I didn't put you to sleep.

John Larsen [03:47:03] No, no. It's a fantastic question and I think there's a few things buried in there. We do what we can. The real reason is the reason you did Mormon stories and I did Mormon expression is because there was no other choice. Like you, you, you, you are a type of person who values truth and, and is empathetic and could see the pain and wanted to fix it. What you've been doing, Mr. DeLynn, is trying to fix a big problem. And I think if you've been listening for the last few hours we've outlined it's a big problem and, and just everybody tearing out the problem. What, whatever, whatever we can, whatever.

John Dehlin [03:47:40] And so do what you can.

John Larsen [03:47:41] And, and I, I, I look and I gave this talk of the Thrive Conference a year or two ago. You look at it, it's really depressing. Like there's all, there's always people. Whatever you can imagine right now is your worst scenario. There are human beings right now living that, that hell that you, that you're trying to avoid. But there's what I call the threat and it's, it's It's a minority of people who, throughout the history of the world have always pushed for something bigger and better. And what you see is humankind progressing even though the majority of the people aren't progressing.

John Dehlin [03:48:18] It.

John Larsen [03:48:18] Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [03:48:19] Yeah.

John Larsen [03:48:19] And that gives me hope that when we. When we realize that we're both good and evil, all of us, and that. That the goodness is sometimes like. Well, what inspired you to do Mormon expression? I don't know. Ego. That. That there's. The. Things are complicated and they're big and. But just try. Just do whatever you can. You know, everyone has stories in their life about some time they were feeling really down and somebody. Just a small, small act of kindness. When we were in the middle of, like, you know, like three weeks ago, January 6th, watching all this stuff fall apart and just realizing how bad it was, and I'd read on some story of some small act of kindness, and I would just break down sobbing, you know, because. Because it's there. But unfortunately, it's the minority. You can spend your life spent, you know, playing Pac man and then doing a Rubik's Cube and then, you know, going to Disneyland and all that stuff's fun. Or you can devote some of it to trying to make this place a better place in your way. It doesn't have to be. I think that's. That's the story you're saying, the power of Mormon stories. And. And you were able to rhetorically be there is. You were kind of in no man's land, in every man's land. You were the enemy of everybody and the friend of everybody, which allowed for this plurality of voices, which made the staying power of Mormon stories. That's why it's still around and still growing. And I think you're a flawed person. I'm a flawed person. And we've made tons of mistakes, and we have. Last time we podcast, two years ago, we just sat around no pine tree about things we'd done wrong. Right. And I will continue to make mistakes. Right. But that's okay. But if we. Once we start striving for the good. Yeah. All hands on deck, everybody, in whatever little way you can. There's somebody in your neighborhood who's suffering right now. Don't ever ask anybody what you can do for them. None of us know how to answer that question. Just do something for them. Whatever. A tiny thing. You know, that's the beauty of it is good is so much more powerful than evil. It's so much stronger. And there's people who would tell you well, touching your pee pee is bad and using naughty words is bad. But you need to give us 10% of everything and we're going to put in a big bank account that's good. You know, it's like, like, you know what's good. Socrates taught us this like, like 2600 years ago. No one needs to tell you what is good. You know what's good. Fundamentally, it's all this big confusing in these made up systems that it gets hard but, but you know that sharing your lunch with somebody who's hungry is good. There's nobody who thinks that people starving to death is, is, is, is a good, you know what's good. And if all of us just started doing what's right, loving people, supporting them, helping the addicts, helping the assholes, helping the people who we all deserve every bad thing that's ever happened to us, every one of us, right? And just letting that go and saying, okay, we've got people in prison, I gotta let go that I wanna punish them. How do we make our society better when we could, when we can shift from justice to just like, dude, we're only here for so much, for so long, let's make this place as nice as possible. And I think I'm trying to validate that there's all these. And for anybody out there who's thinking about doing it, doing a podcast or doing whatever, do it. Do what speaks to you, speak your voice. Because if everybody in the church spoke out right now, the church would immediately collapse under the power of, of the innate goodness of all of us that's wrapped in the inner evil of all of us. It's, you know, it's a cycle, it's a yin and yang. But we've got to have hope, we've got to have faith, we've got to push against the machine and it wins out. The Nazis were in power for 12 years. 12 years, that's all. They create a hell of a mess. But truth won out. And Germany right now, because America has advocated, is the global leader of progressive compassionate democracy. We lost our standing, but they picked it up and they also invaded Poland that many years ago, right? We can all change and we have to cling to hope. But to answer your question, I think, think there's a part of me, maybe 10 years ago that wanted to fix the big problems, to go after the church, but now it's, it's, it's smaller, it's, I, I am, I'm trying to buy produce and things directly from farmers, right? So I found A place where I could buy onions for. They're $9 for. For 50 pounds. If you buy them at Smith's. 50 pounds of onions cost about $65. I know. I did the math. Well, so I found other families who want to go. And then we went. We just. One of us went up and bought onions and gave the onions. I'm talking about onions because it's literally like, means nothing, but it means everything, right? There's very little things that, that, that, that. That you can do. You can just. Just little acts of kindness because we're not kind anymore. People don't even know who their neighbors are. And it's gotten worse under Covid. You drive down the street and everybody's giving each other the bird and cutting each other off, and we all just need to take a deep breath. And me as much as anybody, you know, peace is here. It's with us. All we have to do is stop fighting. It's always with us. It was always with us.

John Dehlin [03:54:16] Us.

John Larsen [03:54:16] The truth is always with us. And the lies sit on top of it. And we can.

John Dehlin [03:54:22] I don't know.

John Larsen [03:54:22] I have to have a little bit of hope.

John Dehlin [03:54:26] Me too. And that's beautiful. And I'm. I'm just going to say, how do we balance truth telling, which we've lifted up in this podcast, with calling the church of a fraud or a cult or something? That's not true. True. With kindness, like, how do we tell the truth that condemns entire organizations and ways of life and still be kind? It's really. How do we thread that needle?

John Larsen [03:54:55] It's tough and, And I'm sure that contributes to why I'm not in the. On the hot seat every day. And I don't mean that as a criticism at all to you, John. I think. I think what you're doing is a net good, good in the, in the world. But it's. It's hard and sometimes it wears on you. You, you know, you just. You get tired of punching. I think I said in the last podcast, I felt like I was kicking a puppy, right? Because the church, intellectually, truthfully, rhetorically, is such an easy target. Like, they have, you know, they have things where it's written in Egypt, it literally written in Egyptian, and we. There are people who can read Egyptian, and it doesn't say what the scriptures say it is. It's hard to recover from mistakes like. Like that, you know, but we have to keep trying.

John Dehlin [03:55:39] We do. We do. It's hard.

John Larsen [03:55:42] So I admire you. Thank you for doing this. You've got the studio we started all in our basements with trying to figure this stuff out. And here you're, you're growing up. We're on camera. I look like the Unabomber who ate too many Twinkies. Yeah, it's, it's a, we're all progressing. We're all, we're. I, I, this is, this is, this. This encourages me, John, and encourages me that people out there have been inspired by me and, you know, there's people who, who've. I'm the one, maybe some of them are proudest of that were inspired by how wrong I was and tried to prove me wrong. I've had a few letters like that. Who, who, who found out because the truth is always better. I mean, that, that's one of the lessons of the, of the, of the Matrix. Right. They took the red pill. And I know, I know red pill has been taken over, but I want to emphasize the point. In that movie, they got to the real world and found it was a pretty shitty place, but it was better than being caught in an illusion.

John Dehlin [03:56:38] Hopefully.

John Larsen [03:56:40] I think it is.

John Dehlin [03:56:41] I, I do, too.

John Larsen [03:56:42] Some people want to go back. They go back.

John Dehlin [03:56:45] Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the things that I feel most excited about, I mean, last time we interviewed you, it was to celebrate an honor and thank you for your contribution. And your contribution has been significant and it will continue to be significant. And I want to figure out a way to get in our RSS feed up so that it's easy to consume Mormon expression. But regardless, people are still finding it. It's still being recommended on Reddit and you need to go to john larson.com

Closing Thoughts and Farewell

John Larsen [03:57:16] if you go to john larson.org or just go to mormonexpression.com I still in the URL, it just redirects you.

John Dehlin [03:57:20] Yeah. Check out Mormon Expression. It's great and it's important. And again, thank you, John Larsen, for all your contributions. And of course, you're sometimes podcasting for Sunstone Podcast, so make sure listeners and check that out because you'll still get good John Larsen goodness there. Plus, I hear Lindsay and Brian Buchanan and others are doing some really cool. They're doing some great work with Mormon Brian.

John Larsen [03:57:43] Brian is so brilliant. Of course Lindsay is. But yeah, let's listen to, listen to those podcasts and, and Sunstone. I, I know I, I still work with them. I'm not as involved as I was like a year or so ago. I was helping them get the podcast cast up. But I'll tell you, every person I've met there to A soul has their heart in the right place. Like we're all doing this stuff on shoestrings. And when I say that you guys don't realize how tight the budgets are. I mean they, they are oftentimes just tight. Like, like trying to decide how much paper to buy. You know, that's why I think if people saw really how, how hard it is to do these things. But, but there, there. And they're, there's. There gets to be egos and, and disagreement because we're all human beings, but they're. Everybody's just trying to solve this big mess. And I think even the Brethren are, to a degree, I see the changes as them and apologists, the apologists, they're. They're wrong headed.

John Dehlin [03:58:39] They're trying to fix things from within.

John Larsen [03:58:40] They're trying to fix the problem. Right? So, so Kumbaya. And hey, I'm happy to come talk to you guys anytime. The Maximum Institute Church. I'll give you, I'll give you my, my mind. And I don't envy your job. Yeah, I don't, I don't know how to do it any better. We already said that. I said they should just walk away.

John Dehlin [03:58:59] Well, the thing that I'm most excited about today is that your call for people to get engaged and to contribute makes it so you aren't off the hook. In other words, John Larsen can't go away now. That doesn't.

John Larsen [03:59:16] I.

John Dehlin [03:59:16] You know, I would love you to become a full time podcaster again. The next great thing that you have to contribute. But your words condemn any effort you might have of shrinking and disappearing. We need you, John Larsen. I don't know what form. I would love to see you just get right back to your prominence within this community. Maybe that's going to take donations, but you still have a lot to offer. You've given us so much much. You've given us so much today. And I believe in you and how much more you have to give. You are brilliant and a sweetheart and wise and good hearted. And so John Larsen, I'm going to hold you to your call to stay engaged. And you know, the Avengers can't survive without Hulk, you know, and without Iron man and without, without Hawkeye and without, you know, Scarlet Witch and without Black Panther and without. Who's the girl that shoots Black Widow? Like Avengers can't survive without all their superheroes and John Larsen, we need you in the Avengers.

John Larsen [04:00:32] Okay. All right.

John Dehlin [04:00:35] Are you going to accept the.

John Larsen [04:00:36] Can I be the Deadpool or am I mixing?

John Dehlin [04:00:37] Yeah, you could be Deadpool. We need Deadpool.

John Larsen [04:00:41] All right. Yeah. And, and you're right. I haven't done my standard thing. You're listening Mormon stories needs money. John needs money. He needs to buy health insurance, which is expensive. He needs to send his kids to school. John deserves a regular income, as does everyone else. Like, like, and, and, and we all have an obligation to support these things. And I challenge each of you. The Salt Lake Tribune needs subscribers like, like the, you know, the, these institutions that we all new find the sources that, that you. And find a way to give them a little bit, A little bit. It does it, it adds up. You know, at, I think, I think at the height of when we had, you know, money coming in, most of the donors gave less than, well, gave like less than $10. Right.

John Dehlin [04:01:28] A month. A month.

John Larsen [04:01:28] And that always, always, always. If you added all that up, beat out the big donors. Always.

John Dehlin [04:01:33] Yep, yeah. Yep. And the last thing I'll just do is, is reiterate. Sometimes the Internet works like a genie. And Aladdin in the magic lamp. So I'm putting it out there, the secret manifest, whatever you want to call it, I'm rubbing Aladdin's lamp to say wealthy donors out there, prominent donors, passionate donors. We need to bring John Larsen back and make him a full time podcaster and, or contributor to our community some way, somehow now. And I'm just willing that to happen. Some of you out there, please, please, let's get John. Let's pay John Larsen what he needs to, to, to come back to the community.

John Larsen [04:02:17] Or better yet, let's get the revenue so the next John Larsen can come in. So where there's places for other, there's other voices. There's plenty of them and, and we need to hear from them.

John Dehlin [04:02:27] Yeah. More millennials, more women, more trans people, more gay people, gender, non. Binary.

John Larsen [04:02:32] Yeah, I look at all the podcasts. It's all like these Gen Xers get it? Gen X. You're in the. Stuck in the middle. You know, you got baby mirrors on the side. But we, I do, I'm, I'm really interested. I talk to my kids. I'm fascinated by their worldview. We need more of those, of those kids. And I don't know that necessarily they're going to come in and you know, we, we need to find avenues for them. Yeah, I agree.

John Dehlin [04:02:53] It costs us money to fund them,

John Larsen [04:02:57] probably.

John Dehlin [04:02:57] Yeah, that's probably a good reason to have them.

John Larsen [04:02:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:03:00] All right. John Larsen, we love you.

John Larsen [04:03:02] It's been a pleasure.

John Dehlin [04:03:03] John, I'm so glad you came back. Back.

John Larsen [04:03:05] Yeah, I'll cop in every couple years and come in.

John Dehlin [04:03:07] Come back anytime, man.

John Larsen [04:03:09] Next time, it's got to be rocking chairs and pipes, though.

John Dehlin [04:03:11] Okay. Whiskey. Wait, is it scotch or whiskey? Which is your poison?

John Larsen [04:03:15] Well, these days I drink more whiskey than Scott. Scotch is a little fancy. I do like a good sipping scotch, but I. I'll drink whatever anybody hands me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whiskey. Whiskey's a. More a Mormon thing, right? Whiskey.

John Dehlin [04:03:30] All right, well, thank you, and we love you, brother.

John Larsen [04:03:34] Thanks.

John Dehlin [04:03:34] You're a good soul.

John Larsen [04:03:35] Love you, too, John. And everything you've done and. And. And keep up God's work.

John Dehlin [04:03:40] I'll do it. Thanks, you too. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for joining us at Mormon Stories. Email us mormonstories gmail.com comment@mormonstories.org comment on YouTube. Comment on Facebook. Support us if you can. And please be kind to each other. Love each other, other, do good and step up and be a part. How? Even if you just learn, read good books, listen to good books and teach your kids, teach your siblings, you know, teach each other, learn. And that's one of the best things you can do, is just learn and discover the truth and not the truth filtered through me. You know, find lots of sources and figure out how truth works, works, how science works, how evidence works, and learn. And I think we're going to learn our way out of this problem as much as we are in any other way. All right, love you guys. Take care. John Larsen, you're awesome.

John Larsen [04:04:35] Thanks.

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.