John Dehlin

Introduction and the Origins of Mormon Stories

[00:00:00] This is Mormon Stories. I'm John Dehlin. I'd like to welcome you all to a special edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm hoping to keep it very brief, but many of you have inquired a bit about, you know, where I've been the past couple years, why I took Mormon Stories down, why I've brought it back. And so I wanted to just take a few minutes to talk to you. A little bit about the past, a little bit about the present, and a little bit about the future of Mormon Stories. But most importantly, how I see something very beautiful that we can all do together. A little bit about the past.

[00:00:37] When I started Mormon Stories Podcast, I'll be honest, I had an agenda. And my agenda was to figure out a way to help Mormons stay in the church, LDS church members stay in the church, after confronting sort of an intellectual faith crisis. And so I tackled issues like polygamy and masonry and Joseph Smith, all with the intent of saying, these intellectual issues do not have to lead you outside of the church. And funny enough, I did discover that for a lot of people, there were ways to work through these issues and maintain their faith. However, it was always disheartening, even if it was a minority of the listeners, and I have no way to really quantify, became quite difficult and sometimes disheartening for me when I would hear that something that I put up had the opposite effect of what I intended.

[00:01:36] In other words, simply by being exposed to some of the tougher issues, some of my listeners ended up deciding, both through listening to my podcast and through other resources that they pursued, to leave the church. And to be honest, that kind of freaked me out. It kind of scared me, and it made me shut down Mormon Stories back probably a year in to the project.

[00:02:04] Simultaneous to that, I was going through my own faith journey where I was trying to reconcile holy these issues. And to be honest, towards the second half of Mormon Stories, I went through a phase where I was losing my own faith in the church.

[00:02:20] That's kind of the episode when I entered, you know, the era when I interviewed the Toscanos and interviewed, you know, Grant Palmer and a bunch of the, you know, people who are associated with the September Six and other disaffected Mormons. And I have to admit that my agenda during that time privately, you know, maybe even subconsciously switched a little bit. And while I never had the agenda or the intent to lead people out of the church, there was definitely a period during my Mormon Stories experience where my intent was to sort of spread the pain that I was feeling not spread pain, but spread the information that I was feeling because I felt like the information was important.

[00:03:05] I felt like it wasn't well known enough within the church. And I sort of felt like everybody should know about this stuff and, you know, then where they decided to go with the church would be kind of their own decision. But I felt like everybody needed to know. And, you know, that was a hard part too because again, I had agendas for people, I had intentions for people. And in the little training that I've had so far, getting my PhD in psychology, I've realized that having agendas for other people is about the worst possible thing that you could have, you know, in your mind and in your heart and in your desires as motives for what you do.

[00:03:48] And so, you know, I took a year off of Mormon Stories podcast or two years off Mormon Stories podcast. I don't even know how long it's been actually. And I went through my own little journey. My family and I probably went semi active in the church.

[00:04:07] We probably in many cases became semi believers in the church. And we went through a serious, probably year long phase where we tried to decide whether we were going to stay in the church or leave the church. For some reasons that I won't get into here, we made the decision to come back to church. We made the decision to maintain our membership. As I'll say, semi believers, we believe some of the things about the gospel and the scriptures and there are other things that we don't believe. So for example, we have a hard time believing that polygamy in the way that it happened was really the way God wanted it to happen.

[00:04:50] We have a hard time believing that God was the reason for the priesthood ban on blacks. We were not big fans of the idea of cursings of any kind as it relates to skin color. And you know, anytime God is portrayed as someone who is encouraging violence or hatred or anger, such as the God of the Old Testament, we just choose as a family to kind of reject, you know, those instances or beliefs or doctrines or to interpret them in, in other types of ways. So, you know, my beliefs and my family's beliefs are probably better left for a different episode. But I'll just sort of say that we've come through this journey as members of the church, but as non traditional members of the church, as sort of a Unitarian Universalistic members of the church, in that we no longer feel a need to rank our church relative to other churches to judge that we're the true church and everyone else is the false church.

[00:05:53] All that stuff is off the table and it has nothing to do with why we maintain our membership and attend church. We attend church now because, you know, we love the people there. It's our home, it's our heritage, it's our culture.

[00:06:13] We love the hymns, we, we love the opportunities to serve. We love it as a place to express our spirituality. But we completely validate not only non Mormons and other religious traditions as equally legitimate and in many ways superior, but we also validate those who have chosen to become agnostic or atheist as some of the most enlightened, spiritual, amazing people we've ever met. So call us Unitarian Universalistic, liberal, ultra inclusive, unorthodox, orthoprax Mormons if you'd like. But that's where we are in our journey. For those, for the two of you out there who might be interested in that fact. So that's a bit about the past.

[00:06:57] Now, why did I bring Mormon stories back? During the last couple years, I became a huge fan of an author named Chaim Potok. I'll spell that for you. C H A I M Potok. P O T O Kaim. Potok has written several books on Judaism and how Judaism has confronted the struggles of modernity, specifically post World War II. So just to give you a little background, you know, the Holocaust happened. Jews, for the most part, let's just say, were Orthodox and believing Jews up until that time. But the Holocaust was a tragic and traumatic shock to the Jews who survived post World War II. It made them question God's existence.

[00:07:48] It made them question God's love. It made them question the value of maintaining their belief in Judaism. It made them question every aspect. And what you see emerge after World War II is a flourishing of Judaism with intense rivalries and schisms as people began to try and reclaim their heritage and their religious tradition in a way that they could feel good about. So you have the Hasidic Jews and the ultra Orthodox Jews trying to maintain tradition. You have the conservative Jews who wanted to maintain the tradition, but also wanted some ways to meld into society in a way that allowed them to be Jews and Americans or Jews and citizens of other countries.

[00:08:33] You have raised Reformed Jews and Reconstructionist Jews who didn't believe in God anymore, who didn't believe in religion at all or in, you know, supernatural, but who still respected their tradition, their identity, and wanted to raise their kids Jewish. And these books, the Chosen and the Promise.

[00:08:53] My name is Asher Lev and David is Harp. Those are the four books again. The Chosen, the Promise, Davida's harp and my name is Asher Levi, explore things like Judaism as a culture versus Judaism as a religion, secular Judaism versus spiritual religious Judaism and many other such things.

[00:09:14] And it was in those books that I realized that Catholics and Jews have successfully found a way to be inclusive within their faith traditions. There are devout Catholics and they're considered Catholics. There are, there are semi devout Catholics who are also considered Catholics. And there are Catholics who don't go to Mass, who think the Pope is full of crud, if you'll excuse the expression, who believe in, you know, pro choice and who don't believe that the Pope is infallible. But they're still Catholics too. And even people who have left Catholicism have been able to maintain their ties to Catholicism. And that has become one huge beautiful ecosystem of faith that I think has been very constructive.

[00:10:03] Judaism has been through the same thing. And what I've realized in coming back is that Mormonism is the same type of thing. It's a heritage, it's a culture, it's a set of religious beliefs, it's a set of churches, but not just one. There's the LDS Church, there are fundamentalist Mormons, there are reorganized, you know, there's the community of Christ. There are hundreds of other LDS or Mormon related sects. There are people who have left the church. There are ex Mormons and post Mormons and New Order Mormons, secular Mormons, atheist Mormons. It's one big beautiful ecosystem of people who are associated with this church. And, and I think that it's time for us to celebrate that.

[00:10:56] I think that it's time for Mormons to reclaim Mormonism as being bigger and broader than just the LDS Church. So when you think about the people who are Mormon. Yes. You think many of you might think of Thomas S. Monson as being Mormon.

[00:11:11] I would include apologists like Daniel Peterson and Lewis Midgley and others as Mormon. Sherry Dew's a Mormon, but so is Richard Dutcher who's a wonderful filmmaker who has left the church or chooses not to attend. And so is Aaron Eckhart the actor. And so is Neil LaBute, the playwright. So is Sean McCraney, the born again Mormon who who believes in evangelical Christianity since he's left the church and tries to evangelize that. And ex Mormons and ex Mormons and Post Mormons and New Order Mormons, members of the blogger Knackle, Jan Shipps and John Hamer, wonderful historians who aren't members of the church. They are all Mormons.

[00:11:51] Mormonism is a culture, it's a heritage. It's a faith tradition. And Mormonism is much, much bigger than the LDS Church. And so I have to admit that one of my motives in bringing back this podcast is to try and grow an appreciation and an advocacy and a sense of inclusiveness for celebrating Mormonism writ large. Instead of Mormonism being defined by are you an active member of the LDS Church and have a certain set of beliefs and doctrines that you ascribe to? The truth is, two thirds of the members of the LDS Church are not active in the church. And so if you take all the Mormons who have left, plus the two third inactives, you find that active believing, tithe paying, you know, hardcore believing, literalistic.

Goals for a Broader, More Inclusive Mormonism

[00:12:40] True believers in the Mormon Church are by far the minority within the big broad world of Mormonism. We want to respect that, we want to celebrate it, but we also want to realize that Mormonism is much, much bigger. That's one reason I brought back Mormon Stories, but I can't say that it's the main reason.

[00:12:59] The main reason I brought back Mormon Stories is the following. Ever since I started Mormon Stories, I've been having people email me and call me and come to Cache Valley to have lunch or dinner with me to tell me their stories. And on average, I've had one to three people a week for the past five years, which means over a thousand people either write me or call me or come visit me or have lunch with me, or I've gone to visit them to tell me their stories. And the main motivation for me bringing Mormon Stories back is is that I'm tired of all the pain that I'm experiencing and that I'm witnessing as it relates to Mormonism and the LDS Church.

[00:13:44] The first group of people that I think are suffering far too much are people who lose their faith in the church because I've been through my own faith crisis. Because I know what it's like to struggle with the very challenging and sometimes sickening and sometimes glorious history that we have within Mormonism. Because I know about people's spiritual and faith crises where they try to get answers to prayer and spiritual manifestations, and they simply don't come. Because I know about the abuse that happens not only in the world, but also within the church, and how abuse can leave you permanently scarred and broken as it relates to your affiliation with the church.

[00:14:29] And because I know about the fact that some people just culturally don't fit within the church. They just don't feel like the church is a place that resonates with them. They don't feel like it's a place that uplifts them. They don't feel like it's a place that inspires them. It's not my experience, but it is a valid experience. It is experience that is worth respecting and understanding and having empathy for and support. And most of all, because of the extreme difficulty that is entailed with leaving the LDS Church, some people want to call the church a cult. I don't like to use that word, but sometimes the church is cult like, or the church's culture is cult like in how difficult it makes it for people to leave the church, how much pain and ostracization and alienation that is inflicted by the culture on people who choose to leave.

[00:15:28] The shunning that happens is unacceptable. And so I want to make it very clear that there is a difference between somebody who is tearing down the church and spreading invective and hatred and lies. You know, fine, if you want to call those people anti Mormon, call those people anti Mormon. But there is another set of people who simply don't believe the church is true. They don't believe the church is what it claims to be. Or they never got the spiritual manifestations that others have gotten. Or when they go to church, they don't feel like it's a place they can be comfortable.

[00:16:09] Or the intellectual issues that they've studied make it so they can no longer give their full loyalty and devotion to the church. And so these groups of people have sincere, earnest motives and intent. They have reasonable issues that are to be understood and respected.

[00:16:32] And it's important that we do our part to do that, because there's a difference between earnest, sincere disbelief in the church and a desire to talk about it so that there's empathy and understanding. There's a difference between that and somebody who wants to kill and hurt and maim and lie and cheat and steal about all things Mormon. And so I want Mormon stories to be a place to build empathy and love and space and tolerance and understanding for those who have struggled with their faith, not to convince the believers to become unbelievers, not to glorify the disbelievers, but to create more space, more empathy, and less pain for those who struggle and who've decided that they either can't believe it all can only be part, or can't believe any of what the church happens.

[00:17:27] Labels can be pernicious. The label anti Mormon, which I've used frequently in the past, can be used to dismiss, to ostracize, to alienate and to shun. And this is as evil as, you know, any of the invective and the hatred that can be spewed back towards the church. And so that is the first reason that I've brought back Mormon stories. The second reason that I brought back Mormon stories is the following.

[00:18:00] I cannot tell you how heartbreaking it has been to have married couples come to me over and over and over again with the same story. They're happy in their marriage, they love each other, they have children, but one of the two members of the married couple has lost some or all of their faith in the church. And because of that one simple fact, which two thirds of all members of the LDS Church have encountered, by the way, the marriage becomes threatened, the union becomes threatened, and. And the children often become part of the casualty. This is totally unacceptable. A good marriage should remain a good marriage independent of whether one can maintain a literalistic, orthodox view of the LDS Church.

[00:18:59] And if a marriage for every other reason is a healthy and a strong one, and if only one member or both members of that marriage decide that they need to change their relationship with the church, there needs to be a way for that to happen in a way that doesn't destroy the marriage and doesn't hurt the children.

[00:19:18] And believe it or not, it's an incredibly difficult thing for couples to figure out. They have a hard time knowing how to talk to each other. What are the implications for the future? What are the implications for eternities? What are the implications for their commitment to each other? What will the in laws think? How do we raise the children?

[00:19:37] You know, how do we maintain meaning and faith and spirituality in a home that's either divided or, you know, leaving the church. It's incredibly difficult transition. And so a second goal that I have with Mormon Stories podcast is to help there be less divorce and less unproductive pain in marriages, as some people within a marriage or as members of the couple experience a faith crisis.

[00:20:07] A third goal that I have in Mormon Stories circles around mental illness. Now, there are lots of people who want to say that the LDS Church causes mental illness. The truth is, mental illness is everywhere in the world. It's in the church, it's in other churches, it's outside of churches. Mental illness just happens. And to try and blame it on the church or blame it on the culture, and, you know, there might be some areas where that's valid, but for the most part, mental illness is a reality no matter where you are or what you do. And within the church, just like outside of the church, there's far too much depression there's far too much anxiety, there's far too much suicide.

[00:20:54] There's far too much eating disorders. There is far too much abuse, and there's far too much addiction. There are far too many marital problems. And so part of what I want to do with Mormon stories going forward is to explore people who have struggled with mental illness and have found ways to work through it. I want to explore how Mormonism affects or encourages or prevents mental illness. And I want to give people tips and tricks and insight and inspiration into ways that they can work through mental illness to emerge on the other end, healthy. And to be honest, you know, this, this question is the reason why I left the jobs that I've had with MIT and with Microsoft and have started going back to school to get a PhD in clinical psychology.

[00:21:49] Because I want to help be a part of the solution when it comes to marriages and mental illness and healthy living within the Mormon culture. And so to sort of give a final, you know, plea to those who are believers in the church who might feel uncomfortable with why I would want to do these things. Because many people think and claim that I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing, that I'm trying to infect people with disbelief and have them leave the church. Nothing could be further from the truth. I started staleds.com with the intent of helping those who feel like they want to stay in the church, but who are semi believers or non believers, find a way to do that in a constructive manner.

[00:22:38] You know, I love stale ds.com that's not where my emphasis is going to be going forward. There are other people who are running that site now. But here's what I would do to make an appeal to believing LDS church members who don't quite understand why I'm doing what I'm doing.

[00:22:58] Believe what you want to about Jesus. There's one thing about his ministry that to me, you know, my interpretation of his ministry that to me is undeniably beautiful. Jesus would walk around with his disciples and preach to people.

[00:23:13] But he kept deciding to go to people and talk to them and spend time with them and have dinner with them. That served as an annoyance to his own followers and apostles. So Jesus would have dinner with the publicans. He would have dinner with the sinners, whoever those people were, as if that's some special category. He would defend the adulteress when everyone was ready to stone her. And he would give this parable about the sheep and the hundred and leaving the 99 to go after the 1.

[00:23:52] And if Jesus was critical of any group of people. Most consistently, he was critical of the rigid orthodox religious people who were judgmental and critical and cynical in, in idolizing their rituals, but in forgetting the most central core messages of Christianity that I see, which are love and tolerance and faith and patience and reaching out and building bridges and inclusion. And so Jesus kept having dinner with the publicans. He kept having dinner with the sinners. He kept defending the adulteresses and attacking the, the rigid religious people.

[00:24:36] And that was the central message that I take away from Jesus. And so I would just make that appeal that it may be uncomfortable to talk about homosexuals for true believing members. It may be uncomfortable to talk about the mentally ill. It may be hard to talk about feminists or atheists or non believers for some of you. And all I would say is please consider Jesus challenge to all of us to love, to understand, to go the extra mile to walk in their sandals so that we can be the most loving and inclusive people that we can possibly be. I'm not advocating having no standards or boundaries.

[00:25:22] I'm not advocating the loss of literalistic belief or commitment. I advocate you standing wherever you are, wherever you want to stand, you need to stand there. And I celebrate that. But I also advocate that you work as hard as you can to love and respect and empathize with your brother or sister wherever they are standing.

[00:25:47] One of the ironies that I've learned over the past five years is that you will not always be standing in the place that you are now standing. And the people that you are looking at will not always stand where they are standing. And one of the beautiful ironies of life is that someday you may even switch positions with your brother and stand where he is standing now, and he will be standing where you once stood.

[00:26:15] And that to me, is an appeal that we should love each other, respect each other, stand firm in our beliefs and convictions, but simultaneously have empathy, love and respect and create room for others where they stand. This is what makes life truly beautiful. This is what makes life truly interesting.

[00:26:38] So that's my appeal. Finally, there are many, many artists and writers and journalists and movie makers and musicians and, and athletes and actors and politicians within Mormonism. And I hope that Mormon stories can become a place where we celebrate the culture of Mormonism and all the rich participants in its culture.

[00:27:03] The situation has never been brighter for Mormons in terms of authors and filmmakers and politicians and public figures. And I think many of those people are going to have fascinating stories to tell. So enough about the present and now about the future. Here is what I promise to give all of you who are willing to support Mormon stories. Number one, I am going to work my hardest to leave the discussions about the truth claims of the church. Is the church true? Is it false? What happened back when? I'm going to leave that to other forums. For the most part, that is not where my heart lies now.

Commitments, Community Support, and a Vision Forward

[00:27:39] I'm not trying to prove the church true. I'm not trying to prove the church false. I'm going to leave that to other places. Secondly, I'm going to leave behind any agenda as to where you end up. If you're a non believer, I'm not trying to make you a believer or to attend church anymore. If you're a believer, I am not trying to get you to leave the church. I'm leaving all that behind.

[00:28:03] A third thing that I want to promise is that I will include guests on Mormon stories within the full spectrum of Mormonism. So for those of you who are believers, you may struggle when I interview ex Mormons. And all I can say is try to build a space for tolerance and love and respect for people who see things differently than you. If you listen with your heart, you will find that allowing yourself to listen to somebody who has a different faith view than you may even help you strengthen your own convictions and and deepen them in ways that you never before felt possible. But more than anything else, I hope that you'll remember Jesus admonition and challenge to do this.

[00:28:48] And for those of you who are non believers, I will be interviewing believers on this program. I will be interviewing apologists if they'll come on. And all I can say to you is, you are once a believer. You of all people should know what it's like to be a believer. You of all people should have empathy and respect and tolerance for those who were once like you know that I'm not trying to advocate what you do, but I think there's something beautiful about people who face intellectual or social or cultural challenges with faith or belief or religion, yet choose to remain members of it anyway.

[00:29:24] And so I will be interviewing them as well. And I make you that promise. I will always seek to maintain a constructive dialogue within the podcast and on the blog. And I promise to do my best to publish weekly episodes so that every week you get a new share of Mormon stories. Goodness. Now, to close, here is what I will need from each of you. Mormon Stories is going to be run going forward on the npr, the National Public Radio, or the PBS model. All of future episodes are going to be purely dependent upon your financial contributions. I don't do this to make money. If I had wanted to make money, I would have stayed at Microsoft or stayed at MIT where I could make six figures and live a happy and a successful life.

[00:30:14] I'm doing Mormon Stories because I believe in the things I've just said. But I need a way to pay for graduate school. I need a way to compensate myself for the time that I spend on this. I guarantee you that I've made much less than $5 an hour over the time that I've done Mormon Stories. So at best, you're giving me, you know, minimum wage in your contributions. But those things I need to pay for my health insurance while I'm in graduate school, to pay for the food on the table and to justify the time that I'm spending. So the extent to which you contribute to Mormon Stories is the extent to which I will keep doing it when the donations dry up, I'll take that as our journey is done and I'll move on.

[00:30:55] But there's a donate button on the top right of the MormonStories.org webpage. I need you guys to donate to the extent that you're able and comfortable. For those of you who can only donate 20 bucks or 5 bucks or, you know, 20 bucks a month or 5 bucks a month or 20 bucks a year, that's fine. For those of you who can donate 100 bucks or a thousand bucks or whatever you can donate, I promise you that every bit of that money will go towards making Mormon stories Excellent. And towards achieving these goals that I've outlined here for you today.

[00:31:28] A very generous supporter has volunteered to set up Mormon Stories as a nonprofit. So your donations in the future will be tax deductible. And I'm setting up a way for you to do monthly donations that I'll be releasing as soon as the 501c3 nonprofit's set up. I'm happy to make our finances transparent once there are enough donations to justify that. I am not trying to bamboozle anyone in any way.

[00:31:56] If you cannot donate or if you have extra time in addition to donations, the things that I need are the following. Anytime you can recommend, or more importantly, help me arrange good guests for Mormon stories, that is critical. So please, go up to my blog, recommend, go up to MormonStories.org, recommend who you'd like me to interview, and if you can, help me, even contact those people and, and arrange for them to do an interview with me, where all I have to do is set up the scheduling that would be hugely helpful. If any of you are really good with the Internet or web technologies or even audio technologies.

[00:32:35] I am always looking for tips and tricks to make the blog and the podcast of higher quality. So that would be wonderful. One of the most important things you guys can do is to build awareness and marketing. You know, bring marketing to Mormon stories. I don't want to push Mormon Stories on anyone who's not interested, but the extent to which you guys are comfortable blogging about particular episodes, putting links to Facebook, to Mormon stories up on your Facebook page, to twittering about, to tweeting about Mormon stories, is the extent to which I can help spread the word. Even more importantly, those of you who participate on forums or blogs, the extent to which you can, each time there's an episode, go up to, you know, one of the forums out there, whether it's the apologetic forums like Mad or the alternative Mormon forums like Nurder Mormon or Stale DS or, you know, the foyer, you know, wherever you can.

[00:33:39] When I put up a new episode, if you can put a link up to let people know that a new episode's up, that will drive more listeners to Mormon stories, who will then contribute, who will then make it so you have to contribute less. And this thing can be sustainable. So I need your marketing and awareness. Finally, I've put up an email newsletter for those who want to really support and help. I provide them with special footage and interviews and opportunities that I don't share more broadly. So please go up to MormonStories.org and look for the place to subscribe to the newsletter. It's at the top, right, and subscribe to the Mormon Stories newsletter so that I can communicate with you and let you know where I need your help.

[00:34:23] So to close, I challenge each of you who are interested to join with me to reclaim Mormonism in all of its beauty and all of its splendor as a beautiful heritage, culture and even ethnicity. I challenge you to join with me to create a space for the appreciation of the beauty and the wonderment of all the diverse sets of people we have within this culture called Mormonism. Join with me to celebrate Mormonism as Mormons, to create spaces for those who are non traditional, but to also benefit from their joint fellowship and frankly, to enjoy the precious few years that we all have to share together on this big, beautiful, spinning blue globe that we call Earth during these short lives that we all have.

[00:35:19] So that's the history. That's where we are. These are my promises to you, and I hope that you will all join with me to achieve these goals and to make Mormon stories a great part of Mormon culture. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your support. And I promise that a few wonderful episodes are right around the bend. Thanks a lot. This is John Dehlin and take care of.

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.