Introduction and Why Excommunication Matters

Hemant Mehta [00:00:02] I'm Hemant Mehta.

Jessica Bluemke [00:00:03] And I'm Jessica Blomke and you're listening

Hemant Mehta [00:00:05] to the podcast for FriendlyAtheist.com youm can now listen to all of our episodes and see show notes@friendlyatheistpodcast.com John Dehlin is about to complete his PhD in Clinical and counseling psychology. But you may know him best as the founder of the Mormon Stories podcast, one that celebrates the faith and also critiques it when necessary. Because of some of his views supporting same sex marriage and the ordination of women within Mormonism, Dolin was excommunicated from the Mormon Church earlier this year for apostasy. That's a story that made the New York Times and we're gonna talk about that with him. And let me just add in a really quick story here.

Hemant Mehta [00:00:49] I was recently at a conference with John and I ran into several people who were ex Mormons and I don't think most of them had met each other before that very conference. And we got to talking and at one point I'm like, how do you guys all know each other? They all pointed to John. He's kind of like the rock for all these ex Mormons. And it seems like every time I meet someone who left the Mormon faith, they all know. They all know John, they all know his podcast, they all listen to it.

Hemant Mehta [00:01:20] But I just think that's really neat that you're kind of the go to guy for people leaving the Mormon Church. So thank you for joining us. We appreciate it.

John Dehlin [00:01:29] Thanks, Emin. It's an honor to be on your podcast.

Hemant Mehta [00:01:31] Absolutely. So let me ask, this is a question that I've been trying to figure out for a while, which is, do you want to be in the Mormon Church? Like, why is excommunication such a bad thing? Because, like, you know, if you don't believe that stuff, then you should be kicked out. And if you don't agree with church doctrine, it sounds like excommunication makes sense. So, so fill in the blanks for me here. Why was that so controversial?

John Dehlin [00:01:59] Well, you know, the truth is, a lot of it has to do with my background and my heritage. I'm a fifth generation Mormon. My ancestors crossed the plains as pioneers. I was raised Mormon in Houston. And I just have so many incredibly fond and positive memories.

John Dehlin [00:02:26] In so many ways. I'm proud to be Mormon. I'm proud to have been raised Mormon, and I love Mormons. And so I guess things got complicated for me when I learned about Reform Judaism, because even after I started to doubt and question some of Mormonism's central tenets. I learned about Reform Judaism. I read these books by an author named Kaim Potok. Books like the Chosen, the Promise. My name is Asher Lev. And what those books talked about was the evolution of Judaism from sort of a strict orthodox, literalistic kind of religious tradition to a tradition like Reform or Reconstructionist Judaism where you could even be an atheist or gay or lesbian and be a rabbi.

John Dehlin [00:03:16] And I guess at the time I still had so many fond memories and fond associations with the church that I was trying to potentially fight for space, kind of to carve out space within Mormonism so that you didn't have to choose between your tribe, your culture, your heritage, your identity, your community, you know, and your integrity.

John Dehlin [00:03:38] And so that's why I fought it for probably 15 years, honestly. But ultimately, I think the church made its choice. The church said, if you're going to be open and honest about your beliefs or your views, and they happen to differ from what the current leaders are saying, we really don't want you in the church. And I guess they made it really simple for me. And now I can say that it's been a difficult journey, but I think I and my family feel like we're doing very well. And looking back, I think maybe in some ways they kind of did us a favor, but that's what the intent was when we were trying to stay in the church.

LGBT Rights, Women, and Breaking Points with the Church

Jessica Bluemke [00:04:21] So why is, I mean, why was LGBT rights kind of a point of contention for you versus the church? Do you think that was your breaking point? Was it women? What do you think was your most the hardest thing for you to face as a Mormon?

John Dehlin [00:04:37] Well, it started back when I was working for Microsoft in Seattle, right around 2000, 2001, I was called as a seminary teacher, which means that I would wake up every morning and teach scripture study and religion to Mormon high school students in Issaquah, Washington. And I wanted to be a really good seminary teacher. And so I started studying the church's history in depth. And even though I had a vague sense of some of the main, finer points of sort of difficult Mormon history, I had never really stopped to really understand kind of the details about our church's founding. So even though I knew that polygamy was somehow a part of our early church experience, I knew that Brigham Young had practiced it, and I had known that Joseph Smith, our founder, had done something with polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:05:28] And it wasn't until I really dug in depth, until I learned that Joseph Smith, you know, married 14 year old girls, that he married other people's wives. In other words, a woman would be married to a man, and he would actually send that man on a mission, and he would then marry his wife while he was gone on the mission. And then I found out things like he would. He would proposition a girl to be his polygamous wife, and if she declined, he would publicly call her a whore in the newspaper. You know, that's just one example. And I didn't know that stuff, believe it or not, until I was 31, 32, in some cases, 40 years old.

John Dehlin [00:06:11] So there's that. And then learning that our foundational scripture, like the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham, those two books actually not only have no historical credibility, but actually have a mountain of scientific evidence that counterindicates any historical authenticity. That's what began to erode my traditional orthodox faith in the church. But, yeah, the social issues quickly followed. My wife and I. My wife has a cousin who's a beautiful, wonderful human being. And during my time at Microsoft, he came out to us both and. And told us that he was gay and he had almost decided to kill himself. And once I learned about his story, and then many other stories of gay Mormons who had tried to engage in reparative therapy, who had tried to work with the therapist to try and change their sexual orientation, and how that led them to either be mentally ill or suicidal.

John Dehlin [00:07:11] Many of them took their lives. I learned that Utah had the highest suicide rate for young men between the ages of 15 and 24, and that a decent percentage of those were young gay Mormons who wanted to kill themselves. You know, it's when I sort of started feeling for these people that I really said, you know, we have to do something. And so that's when I started Mormon Stories Podcast.

Jessica Bluemke [00:07:37] I kind of want to go back a little bit. I definitely want to get back into the gay thing in a second. But I want to touch base on what you said about. Once you learned a little bit about your own, the history of your own relig, all of a sudden you had it kind of shed a new light. What do you think of the leaders of the Mormon Church, who clearly, they must have this information. They must know the same information you do, but they continue to tell the same story. Do you think. And obviously none of us can read their minds. Do you think they're. They're true believers, or do you think they're kind of pulling one over on us?

John Dehlin [00:08:09] You know, that's one of the most popular questions in sort of progressive or post Mormonism and here's my point of view. You know, I know gay Mormons who, in spite of all the harm that the church has done leading to suicide and depression and all sorts of problems, who still believe the church is true. And my view is if you can look at sort of almost the cultural genocide that's happened against just gay Mormons alone, and yet I know gay Mormons who maintain their belief, then it makes perfect sense to me that an 80, 85 year old apostle for our church who was raised during the Cold War, who has so much to lose, you know, financially, culturally, socially, by opening his mind to disbelief, it seems, it seems very, very plausible that these leaders could maintain belief.

John Dehlin [00:09:12] And frankly, I know a lot of good, honest, thoughtful people today who aren't leaders of the church and still believe the church, literally. In fact, my brother, my two sisters and my parents are all still active believing Mormons. And they've been my, you know, they've been my family members for 10, 15 years while I've been going through all this. There's a really good quote from a book called the Jungle by the author Upton Sinclair, and he basically said it's very difficult to get a man to see a point of view when his livelihood depends on not seeing it.

Jessica Bluemke [00:09:47] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] And that's how I look at our apostles and prophets today.

Hemant Mehta [00:09:51] How did your being excommunicated from the church affect those relationships with your family members who are still in it?

John Dehlin [00:09:58] You know, I'm really lucky in that respect and maybe that's the privilege that's allowed me to do mormonstorians podcast. I've never for a second doubted my mother's love or my father's love through all these experiences. In fact, when I had my disciplinary counsel or my excommunication court back in February, my father and mother were the first two people to testify on my behalf. My brother, who was very high level executive in the church, also testified on my behalf.

John Dehlin [00:10:35] My siblings, I don't know. Somehow in my family, the sentiment that was gleaned was you just love family no matter what. And I've just been really lucky that way. Now it has made it so. There have been many difficult conversations. I wouldn't say that all of my extended family feel as comfortable with me as my immediate family.

John Dehlin [00:10:56] And I say it strained our relationships from time to time. But it's nothing like, you know, I just released an episode of Mormon Stories today about a woman who, her parents won't let her actually in her home of origin. She can't. She's got two Children, she's married, her family's not welcome in their family of origins home, and she's not allowed to communicate with her, you know, five or six other siblings who are all younger than her. So I. I got it so good compared to many, you know, action post Mormons that I know of. So I'm very grateful for that.

Hemant Mehta [00:11:35] Was your wife also kicked out when you were.

John Dehlin [00:11:38] My wife was not kicked out when I was. She's not been as vocal as me. And just to be clear, I wasn't kicked out for disbelieving. I was kicked, kicked out for openly talking about my disbelief. And Mark, Margi, my wife, she's been incredibly supportive, but she's a very private person and just doesn't feel called to sort of be outspoken about these things. So, no, they didn't call a disciplinary council for her, but the day after I received my letter of excommunication, she did resign her membership from the church. Oh, wow.

Hemant Mehta [00:12:13] So you had to know, though, when you're doing the Mormon Stories podcast and you're speaking out about this stuff, you had to know you were, like, stirring up a hornet's nest here by talking about these things, by being open about your disbelief, like you had to know you were gonna get in trouble. Right. I feel like your critics would be calling you out on that.

John Dehlin [00:12:33] Well, you know, it's interesting because I wasn't totally sure because really, the main premise of Mormon Stories has been just to interview people, to tell their story. So I interviewed faithful Mormons, faithful scholars, active believing Mormons, bishops, people who are really committed to the faith. And I interviewed people who were doubting or disbelieving or progressive.

John Dehlin [00:13:03] And I was really careful in my work with Mormon Stories to no longer, to never criticize with church leadership directly. And I was able to sort of nuance and describe my beliefs or lack of beliefs in ways that maybe weren't considered an assault to the leadership. So I was able to go a good nine years and have almost no trouble. Now. It was a risky endeavor at 2005 when I started it, because the church does have a history of excommunicating outspoken, but we kind of just have this faith or this hope that in the Internet age that the church would grow up, that it would learn its lesson, that it would learn to engage in respectful civil discourse without punishing people.

John Dehlin [00:13:47] And so I think, at least for a good nine years, I felt like I was on relatively safe ground, even though sometimes I was surprised. But what happened was in 2000, late2013, I was asked to give a TED talk at Utah State University. I gave a TED talk on being an LGBT ally.

John Dehlin [00:14:07] And. And then later I showed my public support for, for the ordained women movement. And right around that time, in the fall of 2013, after Mitt Romney had sort of decided that he wasn't going to run for office again, and my dates are a little bit mixed up, but this is my kind of understanding, the church basically started retrenching on the issue of same sex marriage. So, you know, 2008, the church supported Proposition 8. Obviously that didn't, you know, that they were successful, at least temporarily, but there was a ton of backlash that the church experienced. And so they kind of went silent. And so I kind of had this deal where as long as the church was sort of moving in the right direction, I was going to kind of, you know, do my best to be moderate and temperate in my, in my language.

John Dehlin [00:14:56] But once 2013 rolled around and the church sort of becoming more vocal and oppositional again, the same sex marriage, that's when I really felt strongly that I needed to start speaking out in even stronger language. So it wasn't until 2013 that my language started getting really strident. And it was literally because I had so many past clients or past friends who had either attempted suicide or considered suicide who were gay. And I just said, you know, if I continue being silent and giving the church a pass on this, I feel like I'm complicit in the harm. And so, yeah. So, Hemant, it's fair to say that eventually my rhetoric got to the point where it was a fair call for them to excommunicate me, but I still think it was probably the wrong decision on their part, even though I understand why they did it.

Jessica Bluemke [00:15:46] Sure. Do you think that. So if the Mormon Church has this habit of if somebody disagrees, if somebody's trying to push us in the wrong direction, we're just going to get rid of them and, you know, kind of call the herd. But do you think that's a sustainable model? Do you think that the Mormon Church will still exist as we know it today in a couple generations if they don't start to sort of modify their view or are they going to become kind of archaic?

John Dehlin [00:16:12] Yeah. You know, a lot of people who I hang around with sort of like to predict the demise, the early and quick demise of Mormonism. And honestly, I just don't see that happening. If you look at the Catholic Church, it survived all the pedophilia scandals and it's still healthily plugging along. And our church has survived other major events like, you know, polygamy and then abandoning polygamy and then sort of opposing the civil rights movement and prohibiting blacks from full fellowship to then changing their position. The church. I think churches are incredibly resilient, and faith and belief are also incredibly resilient. I do think that the church is experiencing an attrition, you know, of many of its best and brightest in terms of its most thoughtful, most open, most, most honest, most educated people.

John Dehlin [00:17:05] But there's a huge chunk of the membership that really just enjoy the social benefits and would maintain their affiliation with the church regardless of belief. And so I see the church's growth sort of becoming flat in the developed world, but it's still sort of growing in the developing world. And even our own birth rates allow us to maintain modest growth in the developed world. I do think that the church is going to suffer from the way it's handling issues like same sex marriage and women's issues. I do think over time it'll lose its 20 something, it's 30 something kind of audience. It'll become an aging church.

John Dehlin [00:17:48] It'll certainly suffer from the sort of public opinion aspect. But, but I, I do see the churches chugging along for, for hundreds of years. If the shakers. I think it's the shakers who, like, prohibit procreation. If they can still exist 100 years after not allowing people to actually, you know, have sex and have babies. I think, I think the Mormon Church is going to last for centuries, if not more.

Hemant Mehta [00:18:18] Yeah, you got the big families thing down.

Jessica Bluemke [00:18:20] Yeah.

The Church's Public Image and Historical Controversies

Hemant Mehta [00:18:21] So over the past couple of years, I've seen the church kind of take steps to widen its appeal. So when the Book of Mormon came out on Broadway, the Mormon Church took out ads in playbills saying, like, you've seen the show, now come read the real thing, which is very clever on their part. We've seen them acknowledge the fact that they were racist. They've acknowledged Joseph Smith was a polygamist with like, what was it, 30 to 40 wives or something, like you said. Do you think they're kind of reacting to people like you who are saying you got, I mean, you're wrong on all this stuff and you refuse to admit it. Do you think that is helping them, this, these moves to kind of say, look, we're part of the broader culture here?

John Dehlin [00:19:04] Yeah, it's, it's a really, it's a fair question. I do think that the past 10 years of blogs and podcasts and scholarly research and basically the emergence of the Mormon Internet certainly forced the church's hand, to be honest. I was a part of helping the church think through and get a sense for its disaffection, the church. Actually, I worked with the church in kind of the 2011, 2012 timeframe to do a study on why people were leaving the church. You can actually go to whymormonsquestion.org to see the results of our study where we surveyed 3,000 Mormons. And one of the biggest findings from that study was that the most educated and the most affluent of its members were the ones who were leaving.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] And so I do think that our podcast and other efforts put pressure on the church to come clean, to be honest, to be more candid, because they realized that if they didn't address these issues, that the rest of us were going to be addressing them in ways that they may not have found favorable. So I don't think they did that out of sort of their own initiative. I think they were forced to become more open. And the main way that they've tried to become more open is to release these essays, which are these statements, kind of trying to be a little bit more open about the past.

John Dehlin [00:20:33] But Hemant, I think you went a tiny bit too far to say that they've sort of apologized. In fact, in a recent press interview that one of our top apostles sort of granted, he said, literally, this church does not make apologies. We do not seek apologies, and do we not give apologies. And so what they've done is they've written these essays that are sort of half truths, but spun in ways to try and maintain people's belief. And, and they're done in sort of an almost desperate way to try and control the message.

John Dehlin [00:21:13] And the train wreck is an afterthought. And so maybe it's gonna help. But I think they risk exposing more members to the problems and ultimately leading to defection than they actually maybe gain by being open and honest. Because really, how do you explain to a member that Joseph Smith had sex with a 14 year old or multiple teenagers? How do you explain to the membership in any credible way that it's founding scripture, like the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham has no compelling scientific evidence?

John Dehlin [00:21:50] How do you explain that so many apostles and prophets in the past were racist, fought the civil rights movement and got it completely wrong about race and the church, and yet we should believe the prophets and apostles today when they tell us that gays and lesbians are living in sin and that they shouldn't be loved and accepted and allowed to marry? I Think that if you come too clean and if you're too open and honest, even if you're trying to control the message, you risk sort of infecting all the membership with this information. That really, in most cases, is not going to lead to faith.

John Dehlin [00:22:31] It's going to lead to a dissolution of faith. Now, having said that, there's still going to be a ton of Mormons that don't care. They won't read the essays. They don't want to know. But for those who are awake and alive and have integrity, I think they're going to be deeply troubled when they learn these things. And I've already had literally hundreds and hundreds of podcast listeners tell me that their faith crisis started when they read the church's essays on race or on polygamy.

Jessica Bluemke [00:22:58] I guess I don't quite understand why admitting that gay or just accepting that, like, gay people can be married and that's fine, or just it's okay to be gay in general. Why is that such a pain point for them? Because I feel like if they sort of.

Hemant Mehta [00:23:14] If they just acknowledge that.

Jessica Bluemke [00:23:15] Right. If they just acknowledge that or just like, let women be ordained, what do they stand to lose versus what they stand to gain? Gain?

John Dehlin [00:23:25] That's a great question. So when our church was founded, it was founded on some very specific claims. The reason why we were called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is because Joseph Smith taught that the millennium was coming. Most of the members of the church thought that Jesus and the second coming of Christ would come in their lifetime. Joseph Smith told all the members, everybody moved to Missouri. Missouri is where the second coming is going to happen.

John Dehlin [00:23:52] And, you know, this is going to be sort of how it all ends. And unfortunately, Joseph Smith was killed. They were kicked out of Missouri. None of those prophecies came true. Another thing Joseph Smith did is he instituted polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:24:08] And he told all his followers that polygamy was God's true order for marriage. And so we have all these distinctive teachings of Mormonism, like, you know, assembling in Missouri to Zion, like practicing polygamy, other. Other things, like man can become a God. So that was a. That was an important teaching of Joseph Smith in his later years, that, that God was once a man like we were, and that someday if we're really righteous and follow him, that we'll someday become gods and have our own planets to govern.

John Dehlin [00:24:42] Those were all fundamental teachings of the church. Well, over time, a lot of those teachings weren't tenable. So again, the Missouri thing fell through. The church is backing away from teaching that man can become gods because the evangelicals don't like that. And we need to be allies with the evangelicals. And of course, polygamy, you know, we were basically forced to stop practicing polygamy. And so as the church has retreated from its central doctrine, the only real significant claim that the church has left that's distinctive is that our leaders talk to God. So Mormons believe that our current prophet, Thomas S. Monson, even though he's widely understood to have some form of Alzheimer's at this point, He's, I think, 88 years old.

John Dehlin [00:25:28] Mormons believe that he speaks with God directly and that this is God's one true church and that he leads the church. And so because our church has been so outspoken in the past, because prophets and apostles in the past have said that homosexuality is evil, that homosexuality is wrong, that women should not hold the priesthood, that women should not be equal in the church, if the current prophet makes those changes, what he's doing is he's undermining his own authority. And he's basically saying, hey, members of the church, you know, those past prophets that held my same office, well, they were wrong. And so now we're going to make a bunch of changes.

John Dehlin [00:26:08] But of course, if they do that too much, the very next question that the members are going to ask is, well, then how do we know that what you're saying next is really going to be of God if it just changes with social pressure? And so that's the kabuki dance that they have to always engage in. And that's why they feel like if they cave on women, if they cave on homosexuality just like they did on polygamy and on other types of things, that the membership's gonna just defect en masse. And in reality, we have an example of that because there's a split off from the Mormon Church called the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or the Community of Christ.

John Dehlin [00:26:47] And they actually let blacks in before we did. They let women have the priesthood before we did. And their membership has basically suffered dramatically. So it's just a matter of maintaining membership and financial contributions and power, and they don't want to undermine that by making big changes. Does that make sense?

Jessica Bluemke [00:27:05] Oh, yeah, it makes complete sense. I kind of. This is a weird question to ask, but I wonder if the whole polygamy thing, if they hadn't been marrying underage girls, do you think that that would be a different kind of story now? Because I feel like the big problem most people have with polygamy I hope, is that it's when it deals with teenage girls who are being married to these older men against their will. Do you think if it was all women consenting to marry out of their own free will who are of age, do you think that would be a different conversation we would have had about polygamy?

John Dehlin [00:27:41] You know, it's kind of like. It's kind of like polygamy would be a punch in the gut no matter what. But the fact that he was doing it with underage girls and, and using pressure and manipulation and then he lied about it, that's like the point on the spear.

John Dehlin [00:28:02] So certainly if you talk to Mormon feminists today, they're against patriarchy. They think polygamy is just antithetical to equality, to happiness, to healthy families. And so it's certainly. It certainly, you know, wouldn't be a non issue. It would still be an issue if there weren't the underage stuff and the deceptions and things. But I think that kind of puts a sharp end to the spear that becomes fatal for so many people. Because really, you know, the church likes to point to Warren Jeffs, who's the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and say Warren Jeffs is evil because he marries underage women and he engages in pedophilia and child rape and he manipulates and distorts and lies.

John Dehlin [00:28:53] But it doesn't take long to kind of say, well, what's the difference between Joseph Smith and Warren Jeff? And so I think, yeah, it puts the point on the spear. I think.

Hemant Mehta [00:29:03] Not to change the subject entirely, but one thing I've seen, you were talking about the Mormon Internet. One thing I've seen in the past year or so are a lot of videos on YouTube with people sneaking hidden cameras into temple ceremonies, things that the public never had access to before because they were closed off and you had to be Mormon to experience these ceremonies. What do you think that does to the church when the outside world gets a glimpse of what's going on on the inside?

John Dehlin [00:29:32] I think it just. I think it makes the church look more weird, more out of the mainstream, more cult like. Because. Because I do think that our temple ceremony, it was borrowed from the Masonic Lodge. I think everybody admits that and knows that now. And a lot of the practices within it are just weird or barbaric or really unsettling. And so, yeah, I would say it just pushes us farther out of the mainstream and makes us look kind of more like Scientology and Jehovah's Witness. And less like, you know, your Lutheran or your Protestant variety. Christian.

Jessica Bluemke [00:30:04] Although, I mean, the Catholic Church, if you had never experienced it before, there's a lot of murmuring and standing and sitting and.

Hemant Mehta [00:30:12] And we're eating Jesus.

Jessica Bluemke [00:30:13] Eating Jesus, yeah. Drinking blood.

Reflections on Podcasting and Closing Thoughts

Hemant Mehta [00:30:16] One last question for you, John. So you've done like 550 plus episodes as of right now. By the time this is posted, I'm sure it's like 700. But here's my question. What have you learned about podcasting and about ex Mormons in general after doing this for a decade?

John Dehlin [00:30:36] Yeah, I've learned that the podcasts are an excellent way to reach people. I think we're certainly in the tens of thousands of listeners at this point. I know that over the lifetime of our podcast, we've certainly reached over 100,000 listeners.

John Dehlin [00:30:53] And what's powerful about podcast, first of all, is that it can reach people in time slots that otherwise are not as heavily competed against. So you're not competing against the television at night, you're not competing against, you know, their sleep, you're competing against. You're not competing. You know, if they're mowing the lawn, they can listen to a podcast. If they're driving to work, if they're on a plane, if they're exercising. It's a fantastic way to reach people in slots that otherwise wouldn't be used. But more importantly, I think that the spoken word touches people emotionally much, much quicker than often the written word does. If you read Jonathan Haidt or Jonathan Haidt's work, you know that oftentimes we arrive at our decisions emotionally and then use logic and reason to kind of support the decisions we arrived at emotionally.

John Dehlin [00:31:52] And what a podcast can do, if it's done right, is it allows someone to tell their story, to communicate emotion, and it's oftentimes that emotion that really penetrates and moves people. And that's what I love most about podcasts. Other than that, it's just so fun to create a listenership of 20,000 people, to be able to go anywhere in the world, and to be able to meet cool people who love what you do and feel like you've helped change their life for the better. So it's been probably the most rewarding professional thing I've ever done, and I hope to never stop.

Jessica Bluemke [00:32:24] Yeah, I kind of add onto that that I like the idea that I feel like podcasting is a community. Like, I don't feel like I'm competing against. Like, if I. If we promote. If Hemant and I promote your podcast, we're not like, watch that instead of this or listen to this instead of that. It's people can listen to as many as they want. God knows how to do that.

Hemant Mehta [00:32:42] And it tailors to your own, like, personal story. So if, you know, for, like I said at the beginning, the ex Mormons that I know are very familiar with the work that you do because it has meant something to them. And I think that goes for anyone who does any sort of public activism of this sort where they're reaching people and they don't even realize how many people. It's really neat.

John Dehlin [00:33:06] So. And I would just say I don't think the world fully understands how much podcasts are affecting people's lives for the good. I think the impact podcasts are having on the world is incalculable.

Hemant Mehta [00:33:22] Mm, yeah, totally agree. Well, thank you so much for your time, John, and we will post links to all the things you mentioned, your podcast in the show notes for this episode.

John Dehlin [00:33:34] All right, well, keep up the great work. You guys are inspiring me and I hope to collaborate more in the future.

Jessica Bluemke [00:33:39] Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, John. Have a good one.

John Dehlin [00:33:43] Thanks, guys. Talk to you soon.

Hemant Mehta [00:33:47] Thanks for listening to the podcast for FriendlyAtheist.com this episode was taped at Cinnamon Sound Studios in Aurora, Illinois, and the music was written and performed by Brad Chagdis. If you like what you're hearing, please consider making a contribution@patreon.com Hemant that's he Mant. We appreciate your support. I'm Hemant Mehta.

Jessica Bluemke [00:34:07] And I'm Jessica Blomke. We hope you'll join us next time.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.