Introduction and Episode Context

Radio Free Mormon [00:00:00] Foreign.

John Dehlin [00:00:04] And welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your hosts for today, John Dehlin. I am super excited to be joined in studio by the Gerardo Sumano. Hey, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:17] Hey, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:18] Welcome. Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Early.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:20] Yeah, pretty early.

John Dehlin [00:00:22] And we have Jen Camp in studio with us.

Guest 3 [00:00:25] Hi, everyone.

John Dehlin [00:00:26] And if that's not enough, we have Radio Free Mormon joining us at 7:15ish AM from the Pacific Northwest. Hey, RFM hey, everybody.

Radio Free Mormon [00:00:36] Oh, how are you doing, everybody? It's so great to see you. I'm loving the glasses, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:41] Well, my eyes. I'm 52 and my eyes are going bad. So these are actually prescription glasses. They're not cosmetic.

Radio Free Mormon [00:00:50] My eyes are going bad, too, but my vanity is greater than my need to see.

John Dehlin [00:00:54] My need to see is barely exceeding my vanity, but only just. Tiny bit. Tiny bit.

Guest [00:00:59] All right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:00:59] Well, you've got the total Poindexter vibe going on with us.

John Dehlin [00:01:02] Oh, you did it. You got it in there. I love it. Felix the cat, the wonder. Wonderful.

Radio Free Mormon [00:01:07] Wonderful.

John Dehlin [00:01:08] Nobody knows what we're talking about. All right. All right, everyone. Today we are going to be talking about. We're. This is part two of a little series that we're doing. And the series is on a recent speech that Elder David A. Bednar, Mormon apostle, prophet, seer and revelator gave to the National Press club in Washington, D.C.

John Dehlin [00:01:34] coinciding with the open house and renovation and rededication of the Washington, D.C. temple where Margi and I were married and where lots of good things have happened over the years. So basically, for those who didn't watch part one, please pause this, go back and watch part one and then come back and watch this. This part two episode is going to build on part one.

John Dehlin [00:02:00] But what happened in part one is that Gerardo, Jen, RFM and I basically did a full review of that first part of his talk and that that video has been very well received. People really enjoyed it. What's most interesting is we haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet because most people didn't really pay a ton of attention to that first, to his actual talk. What they did pay attention to was to the Q and A that happened after we mentioned in part one that it's been like, what, 22 years since a Mormon leader has spoken to the National Press Club. And, and what we also talked about was how those days of President Gordon B.

John Dehlin [00:02:47] Hinckley speaking openly to Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes or Larry King, those days are gone because with the Internet, Mormon leaders have increasingly been on the Tail end of very difficult questions by reporters that they weren't prepared for. And it led to some very embarrassing moments. And we shared a couple of those embarrassing moments. One is a few gaffes that Elder Bednar made, one with the child and one where he said that there are no homosexuals in the church.

John Dehlin [00:03:22] Those are a couple gaps we showed with Elder Bednar, which shows the risks of kind of going off script in the Internet age as a Mormon apostle. But we also showed Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's interview with the BBC during the time of Mitt Romney, where Elder Holland was asked some pretty pointed questions and he was caught lying on camera deceiving, if lying is gauche, as RFM likes to say, caught misrepresenting the truth.

John Dehlin [00:03:54] We had to cut that BBC clip out of the video because the BBC filed a copyright violation claim. But what we do want to do, we we can include in the show notes the full episode that includes the full interview with Mitt Romney. It's up there about Mitt Romney.

Radio Free Mormon [00:04:14] Right?

John Dehlin [00:04:14] It. Yeah. What did I say with me. Yeah. About Mitt Romney. Thank you. John Sweeney from the BBC doing a full hour about Mormon and about Mitt Romney and about Mormon apostasy where it includes kind of a lengthy, I don't know, 10 minute Q& A where Mitt Romney is caught, where Jeffrey R. Holland is caught in probably several moments of deception. Anyway, having said all that, what made this Q and A with David A. Bednar super interesting is that it happened is that he was willing to take questions. Now, one of the big questions I have just to begin with that I'll throw out to the panel.

John Dehlin [00:04:52] And by the way, we want to welcome our live stream guests both on YouTube and on Facebook. We really appreciate y' all waking up so early in the morning to be a part of this live stream. We will do our best to incorporate your comments and questions into the live stream. One of the reasons we live stream is because our viewers and listeners can actually provide us valuable input. And one of the things we want to invite you all to do is to let us know what you thought about this Q and A, what parts bothered you, and we'll do our best to include them.

John Dehlin [00:05:26] We're also always grateful for super chats where people are willing to donate to support this programming. So anyway, what was so remarkable about this Q and A is that it happened at all. One of the questions I have for all of you is do you think that this was an unscripted, unprepared Q and A or do you think that Elder Bednar received the questions in advance as a stipulation to even do this. And, and do you think he would have had time to prepare his questions? So I'm going to ask RFM his opinion on that first.

Reactions to Bednar's Prepared vs. Unscripted Responses

Radio Free Mormon [00:06:05] Well, I think his comments obviously were, were prepared. I think the Q and A was not prepared.

John Dehlin [00:06:11] His, his responses in the Q and A, you don't think were prepared?

Radio Free Mormon [00:06:15] Oh certainly, certainly they were prepared in the sense of they know exactly what it is that they're probably going to be asking about. And so he did have some handlers help him pre responses and you can see that especially toward the end where he's just firing off one line answers which are quotations maybe from the family proclamation. But the there's two reasons I think that the Q A were not prepared. And by that I mean I'm prepared.

John Dehlin [00:06:42] Like did he get the questions in advance in your opinion?

Radio Free Mormon [00:06:45] No, not at all. You say no, no, not at all. We're dealing, we're not dealing with a face to face produced by the LDS Church. We're dealing with the National Press Club. So no, I don't think so. And one of the reasons besides just that, because yeah, you could have an inside person who's a member of the press club still funneling in questions or whatever, but they also had it ostensibly designed that you're emailing in the questions in advance because they gave that address at the outset. You can email your questions to this email address and then we'll read them. Obviously that doesn't mean that they were a surprise to Elder Bednar. So let me get to my main point as to why there is a significant point during the Q and A where the, I'm sorry, I can't remember her name. But the lady who's asking him the questions.

John Dehlin [00:07:40] The reporter.

Radio Free Mormon [00:07:41] Yeah, the reporter asked him about church membership and he gives an answer and then she does a follow up. And this is where you'll see once, once we get to it, he does a full side thing to her. He's standing there just looking at her and I get the vibe from him that he is angry. And I checked this out with some other people who watched it just to ask if they got any kind of vibe. And the people I've talked to got the similar kind of vibe that he's giving off this, this anger kind of attitude toward the reporter who's asking him the questions. And somebody else commented, if you'll notice, once he does that and then he gives his follow up answer that she never asks another Follow up question to any other question after that and then just they start going like that very quickly.

John Dehlin [00:08:39] Okay. Well, the, the. Unfortunately we're all speculating, but we have to. Because there's not transparency. It is possible that the church required the questions to be provided ahead of time and also said we'll allow for a few email or tweet questions to be added. So it could be both rfm. But, but Gerardo, I'm just curious if you have any opinion.

Gerardo Sumano [00:09:02] Yeah, I didn't know that's what RFM thought, but I completely agree with him. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:09:08] That what?

Gerardo Sumano [00:09:09] That he didn't have the questions in advance.

John Dehlin [00:09:13] Okay.

Guest 3 [00:09:14] And.

Gerardo Sumano [00:09:15] And I think I pointed that out to rfm. Maybe someone else did too, but the fact that after he gets upset, she stops asking pressing questions.

John Dehlin [00:09:26] Okay. All right.

Guest [00:09:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:27] Jen, do you have.

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:28] Yes, I stole that from Gerardo.

John Dehlin [00:09:30] That's good.

Radio Free Mormon [00:09:30] Thanks for throwing me under the bus there,

John Dehlin [00:09:34] Jen.

Guest 3 [00:09:35] I think it's both.

John Dehlin [00:09:36] Okay. All right. Yeah. My opinion was he just answered them too quickly and too succinctly to not have been prepared. So also, rfm, I guess you were saying that he could have. He could have pre prepped like politicians do. He could have prepped with his PR team feeling like they had a good idea of what questions would be asked and that that might have been why he appeared so prepared.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:04] Oh, yeah. There's like a half a dozen issues that are going to come up.

John Dehlin [00:10:08] Money.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:09] And he had his one sentence replies ready to go, by the way. One other thing is that I think he was prepared for question. Was not prepared for certain questions is because in the body of his speech, he answers preemptively. The three main issues which he expects to come forward from in the question in the Q A. And those had to do with the priesthood ban. It had to do with the LGBTQ issue. It had to do with women in the priesthood, I believe were the three issues that he addressed in the body of his talk to preempt those questions being asked later on.

John Dehlin [00:10:44] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:10:45] And I don't know that he would have done that if he knew what the questions were going to be in advance.

John Dehlin [00:10:49] Okay.

Gerardo Sumano [00:10:49] And I like, there's another part where the reporter asked about the 100 billion or they're talking about the $100 billion. And the question is something about are you going to do more? And Elder Bedner was like, what more did? After all the list I already gave you, what more do you want me to say about. About this? And I don't think his. Some of his answers were not as polished.

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:15] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:11:16] As they've been before when it's a scripted answer question.

John Dehlin [00:11:22] All right, well, I. You know, viewers, you can judge for yourself. I think you're right. It's going to be like, LGBT women, racism, money, growth, or shrinkage. Like, you can almost guarantee that he was prepped for those five questions at least, and that he wanted to talk about humanitarian aid as a way to offset the. The $100 billion question as well. Right. All right, well, should we jump in, everyone? Is there anything. Rfm. Is there anything you want to say in advance of us actually launching into the actual Q A?

Radio Free Mormon [00:11:57] Yes. If he hadn't been prepared, I expect on the membership numbers question, he would have said there was shrinkage.

John Dehlin [00:12:05] Is that a Seinfeld reference? Are you George Costanza?

Radio Free Mormon [00:12:11] I play that part in real life, yes.

John Dehlin [00:12:14] All right, Gerardo, anything you want to say before we launch in?

Guest 2 [00:12:16] No.

John Dehlin [00:12:17] Jen?

Guest 3 [00:12:18] No, I'm ready.

John Dehlin [00:12:19] All right. All right, everyone, here we are. We're going to launch.

Gerardo Sumano [00:12:22] You didn't ask Jen what she thought of what? About if it was scripted or not?

John Dehlin [00:12:26] Oh, I did.

Gerardo Sumano [00:12:27] Oh, I did.

Guest 3 [00:12:28] Oh, yeah. I said both.

Gerardo Sumano [00:12:28] Oh, okay. Okay. Sorry.

John Dehlin [00:12:30] But thank you. Yeah. We want to always make sure everyone gets included.

Radio Free Mormon [00:12:34] What were you doing, Gerardo, that you missed that?

Gerardo Sumano [00:12:36] I don't know. I was maybe thinking what I was going to say.

Bednar on Temple Access and Exclusivity

John Dehlin [00:12:40] All right, all right, all right, everyone. Should we. Should we do this? Should we launch in? Here we go. Q and A with Elder Bednar. The first one is about temples.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:13:02] Thank you so much for the remarks. It was really a great rundown of all the things that you're doing. Many locals have toured or will visit the D.C. temple before its rededication. What do you hope they'll take away from that experience, both after glimpsing sacred spaces and also about how the church balances competing restoration motivations. Preserving the past, but also modernizing and engaging new tastes and values.

Video Clip 1 [00:13:28] Good. I think what we would hope people would learn about is the nature of that spiritual journey that I tried to describe. It's a worship space. It's a sacred space, but it's also an instructional space. So you have all of those purposes being combined, and it's a place where we go to meditate, to pray, to ponder, to seek heavenly influence and guidance in our lives. So, as I said, we really want people to understand and hopefully appreciate what the temple is, how it's used, and what we do when we're there.

Video Clip 1 [00:14:06] Okay. Would the church have more influence on us? Culture and politics, along the lines of the Catholic church and many Protestant denominations. If it maintain the openness it's demonstrating by inviting the public to visit the

Video Clip 1 [00:14:19] D.C. temple, I think the answer is yes. That's why we've invited everyone to come. That's. It probably seems unusual because the temple has been in operation, but that's customary anytime in the renovation, the updating of the interiors of the temple. It's decommissioned, then rededicated. And we always have. Have these kinds of open houses.

John Dehlin [00:14:42] All right, all right. So there we have it. There's his first answer to the Q A. Rfm, do you want to provide your first reactions to the question about.

Guest 2 [00:14:59] We'll.

John Dehlin [00:14:59] We'll do two parts. We'll do first the question about temples and how they're used and what their role is within Mormonism, and then we'll do later, after we've all responded to that, the question about temples remaining open. So, rfm, do you want to go first about how he described how temples are used in their role in Mormonism?

Radio Free Mormon [00:15:19] Sure, I'd be happy to do that. I was actually writing down notes about the second part, but I'll get back to those later.

John Dehlin [00:15:25] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:15:25] Yeah. He talks about meditating. We go to the temple to meditate. I'm not sure I've ever heard that once before, and I've been a member of the church for 40 years.

John Dehlin [00:15:37] Why are you laughing, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [00:15:39] I agree.

Radio Free Mormon [00:15:42] Meditate. Get out. I mean, he's trying to make this sound like something that he hopes his audience will find good. This is a good thing. You go to the temple to meditate or you go there to pray? You know, I'm not sure that that happens an awful lot. I've never heard about meditation. I'm sure people pray sometimes once they get through the. The ordinance where you're. There's really no time for prayer. I guess there is a prayer circle, isn't there? So, yeah, there is officially prayer in the temple, but he just seems to want to talk.

John Dehlin [00:16:23] That's not personal prayer. That's right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:16:25] That's group prayer.

John Dehlin [00:16:26] Yeah, that's someone else.

Gerardo Sumano [00:16:28] Voices is the most righteous way to pray, though.

Radio Free Mormon [00:16:30] That is the way to pray so that God will hear you.

John Dehlin [00:16:33] But we're talking about the true order of prayer, where at the end of a temple ceremony, some of the participants get in a circle with, you know, having the.

Radio Free Mormon [00:16:45] Put their right hand in, and then they put their right hand out and

John Dehlin [00:16:50] to shake it all about. Rfm. You're naughty. Okay, Keep going. Keep going.

Radio Free Mormon [00:16:58] Yeah, so that was just. I know what he's Doing Okay. What he's doing is he says he hopes people will appreciate what goes on in the temple. And that's part of why they're there with the open house. They're doing this big push to talk about the Washington, D.C. temple and the renovation and everything. I think it's hard to appreciate what goes on in the temple when he is so obviously not talking about what goes on in the temple.

John Dehlin [00:17:23] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:17:23] It's difficult to appreciate something when you have absolutely no information about it except these generic kind of descriptions that he's given and even somewhat misleading descriptions when he says you go there to. To meditate. Those are my thoughts right now.

John Dehlin [00:17:37] Yeah. So, Gerardo, do you think it's misleading what. What he said?

Gerardo Sumano [00:17:42] I think the part that I found misleading was when he says that the purposes of opening the temples is so people understand what we do in the temple. And I don't think really church members or church leadership want people to understand what we do in the temple. And here's another reason why I thought the questions were not given in advance. He usually misses to answer half or more of the question. Oh, yeah, so.

John Dehlin [00:18:10] Oh, yeah, that's a good point.

Gerardo Sumano [00:18:11] The reporter asked the question, and in part of the question was about preserving the past, which I think she's referring to the controversies about the murals in the Manti Temple and the Salt Lake Temple that were originally going to be removed. And then a lot of members were outraged by the church saying that the murals were going to be removed. And then the First Presidency came out and said, oh, never mind. We're not going to remove them. So the reporter is asking about these renovations, and where do you found the balance between preserving the past and he completely doesn't answer that question.

John Dehlin [00:18:50] Well, that's a great point, Gerardo. Yeah. Because the church maybe doesn't respect the history, the art and the history and even the architecture. Sometimes if it has some other missionary motive or PR motive in mind. And you're saying he missed that, which he. He totally did. That's a great point, Jen.

Guest 2 [00:19:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] Any.

Guest 3 [00:19:12] I guess I'm just. I'm just picking up on the new words that he's using in this talk that I've never heard a prophet used before. Like, in his main talk, he used going within. And then in these questions afterward, he's talking about meditating. Like, he's using all the words that have been in, like, secular Buddhism or like Eckhart Tolle or like, like, you know, the new words that everyone's connecting with right now in 2022, especially during COVID and things like that. And so I'm. I'm picking up on all these new words that they're using. Trying to connect again with people, I feel is why they're using them.

Guest 3 [00:19:57] So. Because I don't believe that you can meditate in the temple. I believe that you can try to and that they should allow that. But if you stay in the celestial room, which is the only place you can meditate in the temple without a time limit limit or being moved to another room, they will ask you to leave if you're there too long. And so I don't think there's like a place that's just set apart from meditating in there.

Gerardo Sumano [00:20:28] I know they're trying to open. Just to be fair to them. I know, but they're trying to open it more like let people go just to the celestial room without having to go.

John Dehlin [00:20:38] I've never heard that. Are they doing that now?

Gerardo Sumano [00:20:40] Yeah, yeah. So this is new stuff.

Guest 3 [00:20:43] So maybe there's opportunity now that no one's there to kick you out.

Gerardo Sumano [00:20:48] But it seems like it's a response to appeal to this new, you know,

Guest 3 [00:20:55] new wanting to meditate.

Gerardo Sumano [00:20:56] Right.

Guest 3 [00:20:56] Yeah. That being important to people. So maybe, you know, I just. I just am hearing a lot of new words being used.

John Dehlin [00:21:06] Yeah, yeah. I'll just say to just. I'm going to reflect what RFM and Jen said, which is that, you know, my experience, I. I was a member for 45 years until they excommunicated me. My experience in the temple, you know, you go in, you get dressed, you go sit. You go sit in a little chapel thing where they're playing an organ and you're supposed to be quiet. Now, theoretically, during that little moment where you're sitting in the chapel waiting to go in to the ordinance room, I guess you could. I. I used to try and meditate there, but it just depends on how, you know, how. How soon the ceremony is about to start. But when they're playing the hymn and you're sitting there waiting. That was my favorite part, probably, now that I'm thinking about it.

Gerardo Sumano [00:21:51] Members are not taught to meditate.

Guest [00:21:53] Like.

John Dehlin [00:21:53] No, they're not. No, that's. That's right.

Gerardo Sumano [00:21:55] If I was a member and I would hear the word meditate without hearing a podcast about psychology or about how to meditate, I wouldn't know exactly what to do. What. What am I supposed. Thinking about Jesus and being sacrificed, you know?

Guest 3 [00:22:08] Yeah, no, that's true. Like, they don't. They've never said meditate. No, they Just say, you know, this is a place of reverence. Be quiet. You know, don't speak in this room to other people. Like, this is the kind of words that they would totally tell you about the room.

John Dehlin [00:22:23] Like, I. I just remember growing up and my dad never liked the temple. And so one of the reasons I'm who I am is because my parents were honest about what they really thought about the church. My mom never liked the temple. My mom didn't ever go until she was a temple worker with my stepdad. That's another story. But my dad would just tell me, man, I wish I could go to the temple and, like, hear inspiring sermons or. Or, like, really have a chance to meditate and get spiritual. But that's not how it's constructed, because once you're invited into the ordinance room, you're literally watching this movie.

John Dehlin [00:22:59] Hearing, you know, doing hand signals, doing handshakes, putting your clothes on and off, changing the. Where the thing to the hat is tied to your shoulder thing, putting the robe on and off, putting your apron on and doing all these chants and weird hand movements. That's for the endowment. Why are you guys laughing? How dare you laugh at me. What's so funny?

Radio Free Mormon [00:23:23] The way you're describing it, and I

Guest 3 [00:23:25] say it so fast, it just sounds.

John Dehlin [00:23:28] Am I wrong?

Radio Free Mormon [00:23:29] Well, I just want to say, for the audience. Is it okay, John, if I just clarify that when you talk about taking your clothes off and putting them on.

Guest 3 [00:23:36] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:23:37] You actually do have clothes on the entire time, and we're just talking about the temple robe?

Guest [00:23:41] Okay, that's.

John Dehlin [00:23:42] I wasn't trying to say that. But, yeah, you're right.

Radio Free Mormon [00:23:44] Well, there are some people who are listening who may not have, you know, had the experience.

John Dehlin [00:23:47] That's good. That's good.

Radio Free Mormon [00:23:47] It sounds a lot more exciting the way you're describing it.

John Dehlin [00:23:51] Yeah. Well, anyway, it's a. It's. It's the film. Plus handshakes and arm waving and all this stuff where your mind is. You know, you may zone out during the movie because the movie is boring. And you see it a billion times if you go to the temple regularly. But if you're meditating, it's in spite of the ordinance, not because of it. Right. You're supposed to be thinking about what the movie is telling you, not getting to know yourself. Like. Like to your point. Jen Eckhart Tolle, Mindfulness, introspection, That's just not.

John Dehlin [00:24:25] None of us have ever been told that. That's what that part is about. And then as soon as it's over, there's the prayer circle where somebody else offers almost certainly a rote prayer. Bless the missionaries, but bless the people in the. The prayer role. Bless our prophet. Bless the patriarchy. Sustain the patriarchy, you know, and then you go through the veil again. More chance and handshakes and kind of things. And then you go into celestial room. And in my experience, like you said, Jen, they want you out of that celestial room now. Again, if they've changed that now.

John Dehlin [00:25:00] But. But he's not mentioning any of that. Like, any of that stuff I just said. He's not mentioning. Well, we go to the temple to learn our secret names so that when we go to heaven, Heavenly Father will let us pass the gate. He's not saying we go to the temple to learn the right handshake so that when we go to the veil in heaven, we are allowed in.

Gerardo Sumano [00:25:20] Like, he.

John Dehlin [00:25:20] He's not even talking about endowment.

Gerardo Sumano [00:25:23] He's not talking about endow with power. Like all this Mormon words.

John Dehlin [00:25:27] Oh, yeah, we go to the temple to become gods so that we can learn what we need to learn to rule over, to be able to accept all the servants that are going to be in the terrestrial and telestial kingdom, which is all of you. We're going to the temple so we can become promoted to godhood, so that the rest of you secular people can be our servants in the afterlife. Like, he's not mentioning any of that.

John Dehlin [00:25:51] And then what he's also not mentioning is baptisms for the dead. We go to the temple to baptize people like you who never joined the church so that you and your ancestors can actually have a chance at not being damned for eternal life. So we do baptisms for the dead. He's not mentioning that. Right? He's not mentioning the washings and anointings and. And so, like, what he's leaving out, you could say he's leaving it out because it's sacred and that be fair.

John Dehlin [00:26:21] But I think it would also be fair to say he's probably leaving all that, what we actually do in the temple, out as a matter of pr. Now, you guys, tell me, tell me, am I wrong? Gerardo, am I wrong?

Gerardo Sumano [00:26:32] Isn't Bednar the champion of this rhetoric that says that talking about the temple outside the temple is. It's fine as soon as it's not these handshakes and. And the passwords. Like, I think there was some talk about when the first Presidency came out with a statement on when the changes made in 2019 of the endowment ceremony that members were not supposed to talk about anything that happens in the temple outside. Seems there was some talk about Elder Bedner's next conference talk was about how we can talk openly about what happens inside the temple, Just not the handshakes kind of thing. And almost like he was preaching to the first presidency and telling them, hey, guys, I think you're misrepresenting what we are really supposed to be doing. So, yeah, I think you have a. A fair point.

John Dehlin [00:27:23] I. I did receive insider information that Elder Bednar is working on a video that is more open about what goes on in the temple. Probably showing temple clothes and showing something about the creation and some of the ritual. But why are they doing that? Honestly, we would have to attribute that to Mike Norton, new name Noah, who for decades has been secretly recording the temple ceremony and making it public where the churches realized kind of the cat is out of the bag for the secret Masonic ceremony that we've tried to keep secret for a couple hundred years. Jen, I. I want to get you in here. Anything you were thinking?

Guest 3 [00:28:06] No.

John Dehlin [00:28:06] Am I being too. Am I being too hard on Bednar? Is. Is he leaving? Is he leaving out things intentionally in a way that isn't fully honest or not?

Guest 3 [00:28:17] Well, I think he is.

Radio Free Mormon [00:28:19] Okay.

Guest 3 [00:28:19] Of course I think he is. And then I think he's trying to use new words to make them feel more comfortable about the temple when it's not very comfortable.

John Dehlin [00:28:31] Yeah. Because. Because in all of our experiences in Mormonism, Gerardo, Jen, and rfm, were we ever encouraged to truly be introspective and meditate and get to know ourselves and sort of cultivate an inner knowing of

Gerardo Sumano [00:28:45] what inside out of who we.

John Dehlin [00:28:46] Right. Inside out of who we are and what we care about and what our authentic self is.

Gerardo Sumano [00:28:52] No.

John Dehlin [00:28:52] Were you ever taught that, Gerardo? No, Jen.

Guest 3 [00:28:55] No, we. I. No, we were said that's a place of learning. Like, you go and you pay attention to receive it out to what they're trying to teach you. Like you're supposed to be watching and listening. You're not supposed to be being quiet and going within. That was never taught to me.

John Dehlin [00:29:11] But rfm, we want to get you here on this question. Am I being too hard on Bednar? Any reflections on what we've been talking about for the past couple minutes?

Radio Free Mormon [00:29:18] No, I'm just wondering if this new temple video that you mentioned that Elder Bednar is involved in features another young boy.

John Dehlin [00:29:27] And you'll. You'll have to watch listeners and viewers, you'll have to watch our previous episode to understand the joke that RFM just made yes.

Radio Free Mormon [00:29:38] So, anyway, the way you're describing it, it's very interesting, though, as you're going through all those details, John.

John Dehlin [00:29:43] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:29:44] Because as you're doing that, I really am realizing that he left out kind of everything. It's almost like borrowing a phrase from that I heard from Hugh Nibley. It's like Hamlet without Hamlet.

John Dehlin [00:29:56] Yeah, exactly. It's so good.

Radio Free Mormon [00:29:58] That's his description of the. The temple and what goes on inside of it. But I do think that you've put your finger on something important. You have solved the. The question as to why it is the church continues to announce and build all these new temples while membership numbers are not growing to support them. It's so that there will be room and plenty of time to meditate.

John Dehlin [00:30:23] I love it. Yeah. It's like he. He said that we do things that we don't, and then he left out everything that we actually do do.

Guest [00:30:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:32] In his response. Yeah.

Guest 3 [00:30:34] Yeah. And maybe there is time to meditate now that no one's going.

John Dehlin [00:30:38] Now they realize nobody's attending. They're going to change the product. But it's like McDonald's switching the hamburger meat. Only after the press embarrassed, you know, them about the pink sludge in the. In the beef. You know what I mean? It's. It's reactive revelation. It's not proactive prophecy, seership and revelation.

Radio Free Mormon [00:30:57] Right.

John Dehlin [00:30:57] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:30:58] Hey, John, can I just say one other thing, just for people who are not familiar with going through the temple, excuse me. Is that you've got the celestial room, which is the, the end goal of the endowments. Where you end up. That's the finishing line or the finishing point. And generally in temples, the way they're constructed is that there's one celestial room. Of course, that's probably the same in all temples, but they're surrounded by endowment rooms.

Radio Free Mormon [00:31:23] And so you have multiple sessions of the endowment feeding into the same one celestial room. So the sessions begin at staggered times, specifically so that people coming in from one session into the celestial room will not be running into people coming in from another session into the celestial room, with the result that you have a very limited amount of time in the celestial room before the next session starts being funneled into it, and then you are encouraged to leave. So that's why there's very little time in the celestial room for meditation, even if it were mentioned as an option or taught as a concept.

Gerardo Sumano [00:32:03] Maybe that's why they're building so many, so then they don't have to have so many endowment ceremonies going on at the same time people can meditate more.

Radio Free Mormon [00:32:11] Yes. Yeah. You have a budding career as an apologist. Gerardo,

John Dehlin [00:32:19] There's a comment that someone made. I. I'm scrolling for. Jen, can you find it? It's. It's where. Where somebody's saying that I'm misrepresenting the hand waving and how the temple thing works. So many comments have come in.

Radio Free Mormon [00:32:33] It did kind of look like Kermit the Frog there.

John Dehlin [00:32:35] I just kind of want to respond to somebody claiming that I'm misrepresenting what goes on in the temple.

Radio Free Mormon [00:32:41] Well, all I can say is that there may have been some peripheral errors on your part, but you were a lot closer to the truth than Elder Bednar.

John Dehlin [00:32:50] Absolutely. Do you not. Do you not see it, Jen?

Guest 3 [00:32:53] I'm trying to find it.

John Dehlin [00:32:55] Yeah. It was.

Guest 3 [00:32:56] I'll keep looking.

John Dehlin [00:32:56] It was basically the. The claim is that Delin. Delin's misrepresenting. You know, with the handwaving stuff. Delin is rep. Misrepresenting what actually goes on in the temple. And I just, you know, people are going to find this offensive, but I'm going to tell you my experience. Okay. He's basically saying my arm waving and hand waving misrepresents what go. What goes on in the temple. When I went through the temple, I would do things like this. Pay lay ale pey lay ale pei lay ale. Or I would say, suffer my life to be taken. Or I would say, suffer cutting my bowels open instead of slitting my throat.

John Dehlin [00:33:38] Suffer my life to be taken. Drawing my thumb across my. My stomach as if I'm disemboweling myself or cutting out my heart. Putting my hand to my. I'm getting a little bit too excited. Putting my hand to my heart as if I'm cutting out my own heart. Okay. Not to mention the handshakes where you're, like, giving and receiving different handshakes.

John Dehlin [00:34:02] Not to mention the true order of prayer where you're doing all these things in succession. Slitting throat, disemboweling myself Pele ale in a group of people dressed with a baker's cap in a green apron and these weird robes in a circle while everybody's chanting together. Go watch the YouTube videos that that new name Noah or Mike Norton has released. I don't think I'm exaggerating. Yeah. Here's what Scott Brandon said. The temple can be odd, but Delin's characterization of clothing and handshakes shows he has little understanding. Okay, Scott, I've got little understanding, having been a member for 45 years now. It's true the church has cleaned up the temple ceremony and took out the pele l.

John Dehlin [00:34:43] But now they say, oh, God, hear the words of our mouth. Right? They still do that. They took away the penalties. But then that begs the number one, Scott, don't invalidate my experience because I was a member for 45 years and I'm telling you what I experienced. I'm also telling you what the majority of Mormon have experienced since the beginning of Mormon Temple worship. Because the thing that I experienced is what my parents and their parents and their parents and their parents all experienced going through the temple. And so what you're now doing, Scott, is you're saying, oh, well, that's not the way it is today.

John Dehlin [00:35:16] But what, what that is not acknowledging, Scott, is that we were all taught that the temple was a revealed ordinance from God through his holy prophets, instead of being taught it was a Masonic ceremony, sort of morphed into the temple ceremony. We weren't taught that. We were taught it was a ordinance directly revealed from God. And if that's the case, Scott, why did it change?

John Dehlin [00:35:40] And none of us were ever given an explanation as to why it was changed. So that's even more deception upon deception. But, Scott, I'm going to ask you kindly, respectfully, don't invalidate my experience or make it sound like I don't know what I'm talking about. Okay? I was a Mormon for 45 years and I went through the temple many, many, many times. And I don't believe I'm mis, I'm mischaracterizing the hand wavy culty weirdness that the Mormon Temple ceremony has been for generations RFM you went through prior to 1990. Am I mischaracterizing the temple?

Guest 2 [00:36:20] No.

Radio Free Mormon [00:36:21] And I'll just tell you, John, I, I know that you were waving your hands like Kermit the Frog. You know, it was really nice. But my perception of it when you were doing it was that you were first off kind of like doing it in fast motion, but also that you were doing it in order to avoid being as specific as you were in response to the comment. So I thought that you were doing that in a way to try and keep things. Well, it's, you know, it looked a little bit silly, but I understood that you were trying not to be as specific as you ended up being because of that comment. So I, I was taking it that way when you did it.

John Dehlin [00:37:04] Well, it's a complicated thing because this is probably the most, quote, sacred part of Mormonism and Mormon find it offensive. And. And. And the Mormon used to issue death threats, like the Masons, to anyone who revealed the things that I just started to reveal. Now because they took that stuff out, is it still against the rules to talk about the stuff you experienced that they've taken out since then? I don't know. Well, am I. Am I still under condemnation, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [00:37:32] No. What. What I've always thought is that the temple ceremony was part of my life experience. And as part of my life experience, I am. I have the right to talk about it.

John Dehlin [00:37:45] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:37:45] Without feeling bad for people getting angry, you know?

John Dehlin [00:37:52] Yeah. Yeah. And my purpose isn't. My purpose isn't to mock. It's simply to describe.

Guest 2 [00:37:57] Right.

John Dehlin [00:37:58] And to note that they're probably intentionally not talking about that, not because it's sacred, but because it's super freaking weird. And they probably know that it's weird and culty, and they don't want the general public really thinking about how weird and culty it is. We've probably beaten a dead horse here.

Guest [00:38:17] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:38:18] But what her arter said is important, that it was David A. Bednar who gave that talk in General Conference in which he specifically limited the sacred and therefore secret parts of the temple to those things which in the endowment are labeled as sacred and therefore secret, which are the tokens, the names, the signs, and anything else he said can be talked about. But the thing that struck me about Gerardo's comment, of course, is that knowing that Elder Bednar has already gone on record that he can talk about everything else that goes on in the temple except for the name signs and tokens, he chose not to.

John Dehlin [00:38:54] Yeah. And again, we have another kind of believer who's always with us. Dan Hardy says he's mocking me. When I say my intention is not to mock, but to describe. And I don't know what to say. Maybe you could. Maybe you have special powers, Dan, and you can see my heart.

John Dehlin [00:39:11] I know these are sensitive issues, but for me, they're real. Because my parents were both deeply disturbed by the Mormon Temple ceremony. And I'll add this, Dan Hardy. Every single person I've probably ever interviewed on Mormon stories, with only a few exceptions, describe their temple ceremony as experiences as disturbing.

John Dehlin [00:39:32] So you can say I'm mocking, Dan, but I think I'm just reflecting what everyone is afraid to say within Mormonism, which is the Mormon Temple ceremony is plagiarized from creepy Masonic ceremonies and super disturbing for most people when they go through it. I think that's fair. Okay, let's go to the second part of elders, Elder Bednar's response about the temple.

Panel Discussion on Temple Openness

John Dehlin [00:39:58] Where can anyone reflect what the reporter was asking about the temples remaining open and the temple openness? Who wants to reflect what they think the reporter was asking? Rfm, what do you think the reporter was asking?

Radio Free Mormon [00:40:12] I thought. I think the question that came in that she was asking was, okay, you're being open about the temple. This is your big push. This is the reason you're here and your big message. But are you willing to be as open about other aspects of the temple, the church, as you're being about the temple?

John Dehlin [00:40:29] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [00:40:29] And he could have just said yes, because he wasn't open at all about what happened in the temple and that carries over to other aspects. But his response was interesting in that he didn't answer the question at all. Instead he just picked up on the temple part and said, yes, we have an open house so everybody can come in and see the temple. And we've had open houses before and we'll continue to have open houses in the temple where we don't show you what's going on. And that is what qualifies as transparency.

John Dehlin [00:41:02] Yeah. Gerardo, what'd you think that part of the question.

Gerardo Sumano [00:41:08] Maybe she was. Yeah, maybe she was asking about if temples should remain open like they were right now during the open house.

John Dehlin [00:41:18] Yeah. Like what? What I thought of in that question was the fact that like unworthy Mormon, which means if you don't pay your 10%, even if you're the father of the bride or the mother of the bride, if you don't give the church 10% of your money, you don't get to watch the wedding of your own child in the Mormon Temple. And then all the family members, if you've lived, if you're, if you're an aunt or an uncle or cousin or a grandparent or a sibling of, of a Mormon getting married in the temple, you're excluded from the wedding. You don't get to actually go.

John Dehlin [00:41:56] And that's one. And the church has a loophole for that that few Mormon actually follow, which is to have a civil service first, which they only change because the Internet complained. But, but for the most part, non believing or unworthy or non members that her family or friends are excluded from Mormon Temple weddings. And what I thought she was getting at potentially is, hey, why don't you let non members come into the temple for things like that? So that's what, that's what I was thinking. Jen. What? What? Did you have any additional thoughts?

Guest 3 [00:42:32] No, I Think I, I agree with that. I think that she was asking, asking that in her own way also. And I agree with her that for special occasions like that, there should be some kind of way to at least let parents and siblings go in to watch the ceiling or the wedding. And maybe that's just selfish of me because I know I'll be possibly in that situation with my own daughters.

John Dehlin [00:43:05] How so?

Guest 3 [00:43:06] Just because we are a mixed faith family.

John Dehlin [00:43:09] And so what might happen, I won't

Guest 3 [00:43:12] be able to see my daughters get married.

John Dehlin [00:43:18] Yeah.

Guest 3 [00:43:18] So that's tough. That's a tough one.

Gerardo Sumano [00:43:21] Yeah.

Guest 3 [00:43:22] Yeah. And I think it can still be a sacred place for them. And, you know, they can still allow the parents to be escorted, you know, in a certain path or whatever up to the room, be able to see that ceremony and right away escort it out if that's the way they want to do it. But to exclude a parent from their daughter or son's wedding, I think is cruel and I think it should not be done. And I think every daughter and son who has a parent that has to wait outside would love with all their heart to have them inside the temple, even if just for the five minutes of the actual ceiling. That's my thoughts.

John Dehlin [00:44:16] Yeah. Yeah. Margaret and I got married in this very temple, the D.C. temple. Thank you, Jen. That was beautiful and moving. And Margi and I were married in that very DC Temple he's talking about. And because Margi's parents were converts, all of Margi's aunts and uncles and cousins were not allowed to attend our wedding. They all sat outside and then a bunch of, you know, the inactive or non believing family members on my side weren't able to attend. And that's, that's just kind of outrageous that this still happens in 2022. So.

Radio Free Mormon [00:44:50] Well, I think that one of the reasons that there has to be an exclusionary policy is because the key point of the temple ceiling involves the most sacred hand clasp that is taught in the endowment. And so that might have something to do with it. It is the flip side, though, of Elder Bednar's description of the temple which leads to these kinds of questions. Because if you're going to describe the temple in such a way as to say, well, it's a place we go to pray and to meditate and to receive instruction, then the question naturally arises, well, so how come I can't come into and meditate and pray and receive instruction?

Guest 3 [00:45:30] Yeah, well, and there's ways around that. If the only sign not given or like given in that sealing Ceremony is the one clasp, you know, put a small cloth over it, you know, and still, I mean there's ways around it. It's just ridiculous to be honest.

John Dehlin [00:45:52] I mean let's, let's face it. They got rid of the four points of fellowship. They got rid of the penalties. They got rid of the preacher from the, you know, from the movie.

Gerardo Sumano [00:46:04] The Veil.

John Dehlin [00:46:05] They got rid of the veil.

Gerardo Sumano [00:46:06] They got rid of the part where you changed your clothes actually from, from one side to another. That was like really important because one side was, was supposed to represent one part of the priesthood and the other one another part of the priest. They got rid of that.

John Dehlin [00:46:18] Yeah. They got rid of the, the shield where they could, you're naked on the sides and they could touch you with oil all throughout your body. That was the actual washings and anointings part.

Gerardo Sumano [00:46:27] Right.

John Dehlin [00:46:27] They got rid of that. And they got rid of women hearkening to their husbands with their husbands. They changed it all. So like, you're right, Jen. They could change any.

Radio Free Mormon [00:46:36] They do.

John Dehlin [00:46:37] They do change anything.

Guest 3 [00:46:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:39] The only thing they don't change are things that they benefit from not changing. And what's the one thing they benefit? How do they benefit from not allowing unworthy non tithe paying members or non members from, from attending a wedding ceremony? What's the one way they do benefit?

Guest 3 [00:47:00] Tithing. They have to pay tithing to go to the temple.

John Dehlin [00:47:04] I, I can't think of any other

Guest 3 [00:47:06] thing that's a, that would be. Yeah, that would be the way that they would benefit.

John Dehlin [00:47:11] It's just, it's a way to force people to pay tithing. Or you can't see your family member or friends.

Guest 3 [00:47:16] Follow the religion and obey. Obey and believe. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:20] It's a way to compel belief and, and behavior. I mean that's the, the whole bite model. Stephen Hasson's bite model of how high demand religions and or cults misbehave is by controlling behavior, information, thoughts and emotions.

Guest 3 [00:47:38] And I know and I know people that are only staying in the religion until their kids are married so they can attend their ceilings.

John Dehlin [00:47:48] It happens every day.

Guest 3 [00:47:50] So you know, it's. There is like they're okay lying about the questions and, and going through the motions until their children are, are sealed because they want to be there. That's how much parents love their kids. Like they will do all that just to support them and love them and be there. And I wish that the church would make a way to love those parents. They can't be in there in the same way that I believe Jesus would like. If they want to be like Jesus, then make a way for that to happen. You have the ability and make it happen. Just make it happen. Don't separate families on special days. Don't do that.

John Dehlin [00:48:38] Yeah.

Guest 3 [00:48:39] And I'm an emotional person. I don't want to see any comments about, you know, this not being healthy. This is healthy. Emotion is healthy, and we need to stop looking at it as not being so.

John Dehlin [00:48:56] Amen. Thank you, Jen. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, that was beautiful and powerful, and I know we spent a lot of time on that, but, I mean, it is the whole purpose of the press conference. Right. Temple stuff. So.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:12] By the way, under the heading of your lack of understanding, John.

John Dehlin [00:49:16] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:16] Five points of fellowship.

John Dehlin [00:49:18] Yeah, what about it?

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:20] You said four.

John Dehlin [00:49:21] Oh, I said four.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:22] Yeah. You weren't doing it right. I think we finally found out what happened to you and how you lost your way. You were only doing four points of fellowship in the temple in that five.

John Dehlin [00:49:30] That's a good point. But it's been. They took that out in 1990, so I get a tiny break for that.

Radio Free Mormon [00:49:37] The twig is bent, John.

John Dehlin [00:49:39] Huh? Yeah. That was 30 years ago. Okay, thank you for that correction. All right, well, let's go ahead. That's one. So that's one question.

Guest 3 [00:49:50] We're going to be here till 8pm Everybody hold on tight.

Church Membership and Growth Claims

John Dehlin [00:49:54] All right, here's the next set of questions. And this is a big one. This is around church growth. So here we go. Or lack of growth, as it may be.

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 [00:50:03] I wanted to talk a little bit about how your membership is changing. The Latter Day Saint Church has said it's one of the fastest growing religions in America. But according to the latest reporting by the Salt Lake Tribune, the church outside Utah has only added 8,000 new members. It's reporting in the U.S. during the past two years. And it says Utah's growth of about 34,000 members represents the majority of the church's 42,000 member growth in America over the past two years.

Video Clip 2 [00:50:33] And for those of us who follow Pew and Gallup survey data, it's been clear that the church's replacement rate in the US has been negative for over a decade. Back in 2008, Pew ran a survey that said the replacement rate of the church has dropped to 80%. And that means that for every five members who leave the church behind, four new converts joined the church. Can you talk about some of those findings and how you can say that the church in America is growing when we're looking at statistics like this?

Video Clip 2 [00:51:00] I'd be happy to. And I'll try to be an apostle and not an academic and a statistician, which is what I used to do. I would just highlight one feature and talk about the very complicated nature of what we're discussing. If you take a look at the church in the aggregate, it is growing, which in the climate that we find today is rather newsworthy in and of itself.

Video Clip 2 [00:51:26] Secondly, if you take for example, the western area of the United States, we have had a huge out migration of members from that part of the of the country. We've also had a huge migration from Mexico and Central America.

Video Clip 2 [00:51:44] I have no idea what the real numbers are. So we have numbers and I believe the numbers, but there's some uncertainty in the numbers. So I guess what I'm suggesting is at the aggregate, I have confidence in the growth. If you want to break it down state by state, that is a rapidly moving target. And I just am not in a position to comment because I'm not sure what's really happening.

Video Clip 2 [00:52:13] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:52:14] All right. So like everybody here in the studio is laughing and shaking their heads. Gerardo, you get to go first.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:22] Yeah, okay, good. So I'm. Okay, I'm a little bit out of words, but. So he says several things. He says he, he has the numbers, he wants to trust the numbers, but he doesn't really know and that there's not really way to know.

Gerardo Sumano [00:52:43] So I actually called my dad yesterday and I asked, have you. Did you watch Elder Benner's press conference? And he said, yes, I watched it. And I said, so he's a bishop, just so everyone doesn't know. And he's been in stake presidencies for 10 over years. But I asked him, so don't you. So I said my understanding was that reporting, at least as far as I knew used to be they would take attendance in sacrament meeting every, every week. And then they will report to Salt Lake the best week out of the month.

Gerardo Sumano [00:53:23] And he said, yeah, but that changed a little over a year ago. And he said the way it's now, the way we're doing it and Salt Lake is asking us to do it, is we need to take attendance in sacrament meeting every week. And not only sacrament meeting, we have to report also Elder Scorum Relief Society, young men, young women's and primary, and we have to report it every single week.

Gerardo Sumano [00:53:50] And I mean I was a little shocked because I, I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt to Elder Bedner, but man, they have been having these numbers for over a year, right? Like, and and not only they've.

Gerardo Sumano [00:54:05] They. They have the numbers every week now. They have even from the people that attend for Relief Society and Elders Quorum and the Auxiliary. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know how we cannot see that as a lie.

Evaluating the Church's Membership Numbers

John Dehlin [00:54:22] Okay, so. So that the first question we're. I mean, there's so many questions we have to address here. So the first one you're addressing, Gerardo, is do they have good numbers?

Gerardo Sumano [00:54:30] Right, right, right.

John Dehlin [00:54:32] And if the Mormon Church does anything, well, it's tracking its membership and the data. Do we not all remember sacrament meeting, where a dude walks up and down the aisles every single sacrament meeting? What is that dude doing? Anyone want to guess?

Guest 3 [00:54:48] Counting.

John Dehlin [00:54:49] Counting the people attending. That's been happening since I've been alive 52 years at least. The Mormon Church has been counting how many people are in sacrament and reporting that up the chain. What happened? What's passed around every Sunday school that has ever happened in the history of Mormonism. What's passed around or what's. What's, you know, what. What piece of paper has in the. In the hand of the Sunday school teacher a roll. A roll which shows who's there and who's not. They've got the gosh darn numbers, right, Jen?

Guest 3 [00:55:25] Well, I was just going to say they're not like other Christian churches where you just come.

John Dehlin [00:55:29] Yeah.

Guest 3 [00:55:30] Catholic church, you go, you know, you just come and you go. No one takes your attendance. No one maybe even knows your name sometimes, you know, but in the LDS Church, your name is on the paper. There's a little box. Check it off, you know, and they know who's there. At least in the littler classes, they know who's there in. In sacrament. They're just counting the numbers. Yeah, Counting everyone. But.

John Dehlin [00:55:55] But they know. They know who's got the Melchizedek priesthood. They know who's got the Aaronic priesthood. They know who's got temple recommends. They call you in and say, you don't have an active temple recommend. Do you want to renew it? They know who pays tithing. They know who goes to tithing settlement. They know every. Every baby that's born. They get them on the rolls of the church immediately. Like, this church knows its numbers. I worked at church headquarters from like 1997 to 1998, and I had access to both activity rates by unit and total membership by unit. I had that back in, you know, 1997, 98. I had it as just a contractor working for the church. RFM does. The church does. Elder Bednar have access to and know the numbers.

Radio Free Mormon [00:56:44] Yes, and yes, of course he does. These numbers get funneled from everywhere war through the stake up chain. The whole purpose of having the numbers is to report them to Salt Lake City and so that the Salt Lake City knows what the numbers are. And like you said John, for 52 years they've been doing this every week and apparently during that time they take the biggest number of attendance in sacrament meeting for the month, funnel that up, so they have a at least monthly snapshot and have forever of church attendance in every single ward. So there's a couple things I want to say about what he said.

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:23] I'm just going to say the first thing here because Elder Bednar is intentionally creating confusion so that he does not have to answer the question that he knows the answer to. He's a statistician. Not only does he know the numbers, he loves the numbers. He loves numbers. He loves working with numbers. That's what a statistician does.

Radio Free Mormon [00:57:47] So he also knows this, okay, so he talks about these migrations, oh, from the western states over here, from the south to the north. It doesn't make any difference. Let's just take one family from California moving to Utah, okay, you got a good Mormon family moving there. Let's say there's seven members, two parents, five kids, they move from California to Utah, okay? They don't just disappear from the grid, they leave California where they're showing up on the monthly rolls in sacrament meeting and they move to Utah where now they appear on the monthly rolls in sacrament meeting.

Radio Free Mormon [00:58:31] So as long as they're staying active, they don't vanish just because they're moving from one state to another or one country to another. They are going to remain as a constant number. So his answer, he's trying to create confusion when he knows how the church operates. He knows that people moving have no bearing whatsoever on the total number, the aggregate number, which he says he's confident is continuing to grow. He knows what the numbers are. He knows that they keep track of the numbers and he tries to create confusion in order to avoid answering the question that yes, he knows the answer to.

John Dehlin [00:59:07] Okay, and before you move on to, before we move on to some of the other points, let me just respond quickly. RFM to to that not only would a member always report if they're active, not only would a member always report if they've moved immediately to their new unit, and then the church automatically knows where everyone is at all times, who's active.

John Dehlin [00:59:32] When, when we, when I was excommunicated and Margi resigned. Our kids remained on the rolls. We moved to Salt Lake but didn't want the church to contact us. Right. We wanted to be left alone. But my kids, we weren't pressuring our kids to resign. We wanted our kids to make their own decision.

John Dehlin [00:59:50] Our former bishops and stake presidents harassed our family members back in Logan to try and get the address of where we move to. Yeah, my, my mother in law and, and we told her don't tell them our new address. And they bugged her three or four or five times repeatedly harassing her to give them our new address so that they could harangue and harass or love and fellowship and love bomb our children in our new area. So the church is, is even rabidly vigilant about tracking the people who want to be left alone and leave the church. And you know, so like it's even more intense than kind of what you, than what you state RFM really quickly.

John Dehlin [01:00:45] I also love the point you made RFM about him wanting to avoid the question because the question was, is the church one of the fastest growing churches? Isn't that what they were asking? And what's the right answer? So the right answer is yes. A lot of other Christian churches are in freefall. And Bednar, basically what he wanted to do was say, hey, we're better than a bunch of the other people that are doing really, really, really bad.

John Dehlin [01:01:11] But the truth is the Mormon Church is growing at less than, less than 1% a year. Which it, yeah, it's, I guess it's impressive that we're not declining in 2022 in a way compared to other losing churches. But there are other churches that are growing. That's something he's not mentioning. And also the only, you know, she mentions the fact of the, of the replacement rate that it's negative, that for every four who convert, five leave. What, what, what's being left out of the conversation is the only thing that's propping up the, the less than 1% Mormon growth rate annually. Well, there's two things. There's over inflated baptisms in places like Latin America, the Philippines and Africa.

John Dehlin [01:01:56] We know there's like a 10 retention rate in those baptisms. But the church relies on, you know, developing world fraudulent baptisms as a way to prop up their growth numbers. And anybody who served in Latin America, the Philippines or Africa knows that what I'm saying is true. We've covered it on Mormon stories. My mission was a perfect example of that. But then the second thing, it's just that Mormon have more babies. So Mormon have three babies per couple on average versus other, you know, other religions that have two or one children per couple. And it's literally the high Mormon birth rate that's. That's saving the church from being in freefall.

John Dehlin [01:02:35] When you couple that with the fact that we were all taught the prophecy in Daniel 2. Right. That the church was a stone cut out of the mountain without hands and would consume all nations, we were taught this is the one true church, and then it was going to grow. This is a reversal where we were all taught that the one true church was going to grow.

John Dehlin [01:02:54] But because of the Internet, we're finding our. The Mormon Church shrinking and declining. And within 10 to 20 years, the church will literally likely be in decline. And for an active believing Mormon, isn't that kind of a different thing than what we were all kind of led to believe even now?

Radio Free Mormon [01:03:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:15] What do you think, Roto?

Gerardo Sumano [01:03:17] Yeah. And it's also a little bit silly that he doesn't answer the question that she's asking, you know, about the replacement rate.

John Dehlin [01:03:29] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:03:31] To give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe what he's thinking on his mind is that there's not really a way to know how many of the inactive people are gonna come back to church eventually. So that's why he may think there's no real numbers.

John Dehlin [01:03:45] Also, also, it's easy to report that California. The more the Mormon Church in California is in decline. And I think what he's trying to say there is. Well, a lot of those people are just moving to Draper in Utah County.

Guest 2 [01:03:56] Right.

John Dehlin [01:03:56] So we can't look at the decline of the church in Washington and California and judge the whole church by the fact that everybody's leaving, quote, the mission field and returning to Zion with their. With their money. So, I mean, I think to be fair, he was trying to address that as well.

Guest [01:04:13] But.

Gerardo Sumano [01:04:13] But the church does have the numbers. Why. Why won't he share the numbers?

John Dehlin [01:04:17] Yeah. But also what he's avoiding acknowledging is what we all know, and what he knows very well is that the church, like to quote Marlon Jensen, former general authority and church historian, the. The Mormon Church in 2022 is experiencing its worst apostasy since Kirtland. The Mormon Church is hemorrhaging its members in the United States, Latin America, Canada, Europe and Asia. It's hemorrhaging. And he knows that, and he does nothing to say, yeah, we're. Yeah, we're kind of having a problem right now. There are a lot of people that are choosing to Leave. And it's often over LGBT issues or women's rights or. Or the fact that we misled people about history. Did he mention any of that? Should, Would, would it have been honest for him to acknowledge that the church has a serious hemorrhaging problem of membership?

Guest [01:05:10] Probably.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:11] But he wants to focus on the growth in Africa.

John Dehlin [01:05:14] Yeah. Which. Which is. Is basically. It's almost like they're taking advantage of developing countries to statistically prop up the church.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:27] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:29] Yeah. Because otherwise, what does it mean if the God's one and only true church shrinks as a relative percentage of the world's population? It means that God's plan sucks. Right. It can't even get 1/10 of 1% of the world's population in his only exclusively authority true church. Like that's embarrassing.

Guest 3 [01:05:51] Well, and then they're asking people in poverty already to pay tithing and even pay more than the 10% in some places. I've heard them ask for that. And it just, it just kind of breaks my heart that they would be asking that of them to someone in poverty.

John Dehlin [01:06:09] Yeah.

Guest 3 [01:06:10] When they have 100 plus billion dollars.

Radio Free Mormon [01:06:14] Yeah.

Guest 3 [01:06:15] It's just. It kind of breaks my heart.

Guest [01:06:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:19] Really quickly. We talked about this in the first episode, but we need to talk about it here because it's direct. What do we think about the fact that when he's introduced it's. He's got a PhD and he's a scholar and a well respected academic. And then immediately when he's asked to kind of analyze the numbers, his response is, well, I'm an answer as an apostle, not an academic. What do we rfm, what do you think about that? What's going on there?

Radio Free Mormon [01:06:43] Can I make a, please a couple comments about what you just talked about and then I'll definitely go to the apostle comment. What you talked about that's been happening since you were alive is what's happening since I was a member, which is the ward membership clerk counts every person who's at sacrament meeting every week. And those numbers go up to Salt Lake City. Those are the activity rates. Salt Lake City knows exactly how many people in the church are active because that's how they define activity. They know the numbers of the people who are showing up to church for sacrament meeting, for the worship service. We don't know those numbers. Those are the key numbers that the church does not disclose to anyone. So it's really no great surprise to me that Elder Bednar did not disclose it to this reporter.

Guest [01:07:41] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:07:41] Even though he knows exactly what they Are the other thing that's interesting is what you had mentioned, John, about Daniel, chapter two, and the stone cut out of the mountain, rolling forth without hands. You know, the church growth being a sign of its truth.

Radio Free Mormon [01:07:56] And I lived through that when that was taught, when the church was growing. Gangbusters. Hey, this is a sign that this is God's church. See, Daniel, too. But really, there's nothing about growth that means that something is true, because then we're committing a logical fallacy, really, the bandwagon fallacy. Really, the more people that believe something, the more likely it is to be true.

Radio Free Mormon [01:08:20] And yet what's interesting to me about Elder Bednow's response is that he is giving this response against the template that he grew up with as well, which is that the church's growth shows it's true. And therefore he's going to answer the question in such a way as to not reveal the fact the church is not growing and certainly not growing like it used to. Okay. Okay. So, Apostle, this is so funny.

John Dehlin [01:08:47] Those who don't know we talked about this last episode. The Mormon Church continues to claim 17 million worldwide members. And the actual activity rate based on multiple inside sources is likely a third of that. So we're talking 3 million. And so for those who just don't know the church boasts 17, it's more likely three to four. Covid, in and of itself, from my inside sources, took somewhere between 5 to 10, you know, let's just say 5 percentage points off the active membership of the roles and that. And before COVID it was bad. So when the church says 17 million, it's deceiving people. It's more three to four million. Okay, RFM, keep going.

Radio Free Mormon [01:09:32] Right. And of course, why is it you need to have inside sources and people who are calculating things and trying to figure it out by roundabout means? Because the church doesn't tell the numbers that the church has in its possession about how many people are showing up to church. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:45] And they could.

Radio Free Mormon [01:09:46] Yeah. So he gets this question. He says, well, I'm going to answer that. I'm not going to answer that as a statistician or an academic. I'm going to answer that as an apostle, which is really, really strange because as a statistician, I know the answer, but as an apostle, I can not know the answer. I can fudge about the answer, and I can.

John Dehlin [01:10:07] I mean, I'm not going to use

Radio Free Mormon [01:10:08] the L word, but he's.

Church Leadership as Business and Spiritual Authority

John Dehlin [01:10:09] Yeah, with COVID Oh, what's the most important Mormon response about COVID and. And the and the Mormon prophet. Anybody want to remind us when. When Covet happened? And you know, we have a Mormon prophet with his career background. What did every Mormon leader and Mormon want to say about that?

Gerardo Sumano [01:10:27] Well, that's funny because he like a couple questions after this one. He's going to give the example of President Nelson using his medical degree to receive prophecy or revelation regarding the pandemic. And then he realizes what he's doing with President Nelson and what he had just said about talking as an apostle. And he said, well, on this case, I'm going to be talking about Russell M. Nelson this way. But it's not always that way. It gets complicated.

John Dehlin [01:10:57] Yeah, okay. Rfm, Keep going. Sorry.

Radio Free Mormon [01:10:59] I love Gerardo's insights. He sees so many things that I don't see and what's going on?

John Dehlin [01:11:04] He does.

Radio Free Mormon [01:11:04] He does this whole ridiculous thing about, I'm gonna answer you as an apostle so I can deceive you.

Guest 3 [01:11:10] Yeah. What is that? That's what, that's what I felt too. I'm like, oh, wait, so when you're an apostle is when you lie? Well, like when you're just deceiving everyone. Like, I don't. That was weird to me too.

John Dehlin [01:11:24] Or like it's not a part of being a church leader is using your best talents in the service of your calling?

Gerardo Sumano [01:11:31] No, but he's lying because he's saying we don't know the numbers and there's no way for us to know. And we know they know.

Guest 3 [01:11:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:39] Rfm, we keep interrupting. Sorry, but.

Radio Free Mormon [01:11:40] No, it's great. This is a discussion. I think it's wonderful. But this is something I've noted for quite a while about leaders in the church because in reality, they wear two primary hats. The first hat they wear is as a leader of a worldwide multi billion dollar corporation. And the other major hat they wear is as they're apostles of Jesus Christ.

Radio Free Mormon [01:12:05] And as strange and disparate as those two hats may seem to the outside world, members of the church kind of, we understand those go together like Rama Lama, Lama Kadinga, Dinkadan. So they've got the hat of the apostle. They got the hat of the CEO, if I can put it. Or board of directors. Right. Of this organization.

Radio Free Mormon [01:12:25] And what I have noticed is, is that over time, what they do is when it helps them to be an apostle, they're an apostle. And when it helps them to be a. An organization leader, then they're an organization business leader.

Radio Free Mormon [01:12:44] And I've noticed this before. So let me give you this example so you can see How Elder Oaks did the opposite. Opposite of what it is that Elder Bednar just did. What Elder Bednar just did was okay to answer this question. It's more helpful for me to be an apostle and put that hat on than for me to be the business leader and answer with that hat on. Because the business leader knows what the answer is, but the apostle doesn't.

Radio Free Mormon [01:13:07] Back in 1985, we all remember the whole Mark Hoffman tragedy, horrible thing that happened. But the church, through Elder Oaks, is trying to answer the question. You may remember when he gave that address to try and explain about, you know, why it is that a salamander is actually the same thing as saying the angel Moroni. That one went over big.

Radio Free Mormon [01:13:29] But in part, he was also answering the question because it came up, believe it or not. How is it that you, as apostles of Jesus Christ, who are sustained as prophets, seers and revelators who are alleged to have the gift of discernment, got taken in by a fraudster and spent thousands of dollars to buy documents that ended up being found to be fraud.

Radio Free Mormon [01:13:55] So in addressing that question, Elder Oaks realizes it's not going to be helpful to. For me to have my apostle hat on in answering that question, because an apostle would not be deceived. So he's going to answer it as a business leader, which is what he does. He says, well, we have found out that, you know, we meet hundreds and thousands of people every year that we've never met before. So what we have decided is, is that we default to trust because we're such good people and we're going to trust everyone who comes to us and everything they say, apparently, until we find out there's a reason to not trust them.

Radio Free Mormon [01:14:40] Now, that's really not a great business model, even for a member of a board of directors of a company. But at least it gets him off the hook because he doesn't have power of discernment as a business leader.

Radio Free Mormon [01:14:53] And what I see is Elder Bednar doing the exact opposite in this case with this question. It doesn't help him to be the business leader. It helps him to be the apostle. And the thing that blows my mind is he actually said that part out

Gerardo Sumano [01:15:05] loud, but he's not even being a good apostle because he's in a shepherd supposed to know he's sheep.

Radio Free Mormon [01:15:13] Well, yeah, I. I suppose so, but. But he doesn't know the numbers.

Gerardo Sumano [01:15:18] So then he doesn't know he's sheep.

John Dehlin [01:15:20] Yeah, but he does. That's the thing he does. He knows the numbers. One final. That was Brilliant. Rfm. And Gerardo and Jen, one thing I'll just add is if your occupation, if, if a Mormon apostles occupation had nothing to do with their calling as a prophet. Syrian revelator. I think what we would get would be a random distribution of occupations Amongst the top 15 in the church leadership. We'd have a farmer in there, we'd have a school teacher. You know, we would have a social worker, a psychologist, a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist. You know what I mean?

Guest 3 [01:15:59] They did. Before the Internet.

John Dehlin [01:16:01] They did. Okay. I don't know if they did, but we all know what they have now, right? What do they have now? Who wants to say? Yeah, rfm.

Radio Free Mormon [01:16:12] I couldn't be happier about this development by the way.

John Dehlin [01:16:18] Tell us.

Radio Free Mormon [01:16:19] Lawyers.

John Dehlin [01:16:20] Lawyers. That's. That's a, that's a major group, right?

Radio Free Mormon [01:16:24] It's the most important group actually.

John Dehlin [01:16:27] And why do they have lawyers, rfm, if you had to theorize.

Radio Free Mormon [01:16:30] Oh, because they're the smartest people on the planet, obviously. No, I think the reason they have lawyers in there is because the church benefits from having lawyers. Certainly having a legal team, a legal. Well company, but also lawyers involved. Because lawyers sometimes have a deserved reputation for, for couching the way they say things in the way that's most favorable to their client, even if it sometimes has little contact with the truth.

John Dehlin [01:17:05] Your case accepted, right? You being the exception to that rule?

Radio Free Mormon [01:17:09] Well, actually, yeah. And I'm not the only one. But like I say, 95% of lawyers give the rest of us a bad name.

John Dehlin [01:17:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's lawyers and businessmen. Right. And occasionally a church indoctrinating kind of educator. Right. Like a lifelong church like Packer or Bednar or. Well, I guess Bednar when he was BYU, ID president or Holland, you know, a former president of BYU who was in CES, you know what I mean? But, but has there ever been a police officer in our lives? A firefighter, A nurse, A school teacher?

Gerardo Sumano [01:17:50] A historian.

John Dehlin [01:17:51] A historian. A psychologist. Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:17:55] A theologian.

John Dehlin [01:17:56] A theologian. Right. Have any of those people ever been chosen to, to lead the church as a prophet, seer and revelator ever?

Gerardo Sumano [01:18:05] No.

John Dehlin [01:18:05] No. Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [01:18:07] No, I understand Brigham Young was a glazier.

Church Growth in Africa and Latin America

John Dehlin [01:18:14] All right, all right, well now we're down to two. Slide. Two slides down. This is so great though. I think we're really covering important things.

Guest 3 [01:18:23] Yeah, I do too.

John Dehlin [01:18:24] I think this is a really important episode and if I do say so myself. Okay, so the next set of questions are around Africa. Africa and the United States. So you know, let's hear what he has to say about Africa. And again, more growth.

Gerardo Sumano [01:18:43] This is the follow up, follow up question.

Guest 2 [01:18:46] Where in the world is the church growing? You had mentioned Africa is one of the major places where you're seeing growth. What is the status of the growth in the United States kind of in comparison worldwide? You basically said America is growing not as quickly. But how can you account for some of this in some ways? And how can you account for, for what are some of the reasons that say Africa is growing so much now?

Guest [01:19:11] Africa has been influenced in many parts of the continent through early Christian missionaries. When you go to visit with a congregation there and you recite a verse from the Bible, everyone in the congregation, without looking at a text, can recite it with you. There's a very strong Christian tradition. So the message of the restoration of the primitive church strikes a resonant chord with these people. They come, they see our, our congregations, they participate and they desire to join.

John Dehlin [01:19:43] Okay, really quick, I'm going to pause that because it's, I want to hit these things as they come up. So is that why Africans are joining the church in Mass? Because Christian missionaries came to Africa long ago and they recognize Christ's original church in the Mormon message?

Gerardo Sumano [01:20:03] I, I agree with the first part. My, I was talking to my husband who served in Germany, his mission, and he interacted with a lot of people from Africa. And his experience was that people from Africa were really easy to preach to, but they would be hard, very hard for them to commit to attend church, but really easy to commit to, to get baptized. So he said, like, if we would come and say, do you want to get baptized? Oh yes, for sure. And if another church comes and says to the same person, do you want to get baptized? Oh yeah, for sure. And they'll get baptized as many times as they can or they want with like different churches.

Gerardo Sumano [01:20:44] Like they might under have an understanding of the Bible. But the type of, like the type of church that Mormonism is of, like, this is the one true church. Most Africans would be really hard for them to have that or understand that or even accept that conception. Even after concept, even after getting baptized in the church.

John Dehlin [01:21:09] Yeah, yeah, and I, I'm sure that's true, Gerardo, but what I, what I. There's two things I kind of want to get at here. One is, is Africa alone in being colonized by Christian missionaries? No, like that's all of Latin America, right? That's all of the Philippines, right? That's like half of the developed world. Like not Asia, maybe not some parts of Asia. But I mean, what am I here? Yeah. I mean, so, like, why would that be the reason why Africans are converting? But this. Lee, go ahead.

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:44] Well, my point was saying that about the culture in Africa and Christianism is a little different than Latin America, which makes it.

Radio Free Mormon [01:21:50] What.

Gerardo Sumano [01:21:50] Which can be an explanation to why Africa is growing so fast. In Latin America, while there's like a lot of, like Catholicism, you know, and people already know about Christianity, they're a lot more resistant to accept a new message that it doesn't come from the Catholic Church. But in Africa, people seem to be a lot more open to, like, whatever message comes, and they'll accept it no matter which one comes first, and they'll accept the next one that comes and the next one that comes, and they're just really open to whatever they get.

John Dehlin [01:22:22] I mean. I mean. Yeah, but I think there's a couple darker or more nefarious or problematic things going on here. Let me just float two possible ideas and I want to hear your views. Number one is how many of you have close family members who served missions in Africa prior to, let's just say, 10 years ago. Oh, no, I'm going to say there's almost none. Right. Why.

John Dehlin [01:22:48] Why was the church not heavily investing its missionary work in Africa? It could have. We all have family members and friends who served in the British Isles, who served in Western Europe, who served in Japan, who served in Latin America and in the United States.

John Dehlin [01:23:03] Why was the church not, let's just guess, why was the church not heavily investing in missions in Africa in the 60s and in the 70s and then the 80s and even in the 90s, they could have. They could have opened a gazillion missions in Africa. Why weren't they?

Radio Free Mormon [01:23:19] It's not a good investment.

John Dehlin [01:23:22] What do you mean? Her. What do you mean? Rfm?

Radio Free Mormon [01:23:24] Well, the money they're putting in is not going to be equaled to the money coming out.

John Dehlin [01:23:28] That's one. That's one reason. Yeah. What do you mean, Jen?

Guest 3 [01:23:33] They wouldn't have been able to have the priesthood after. Yeah, I mean, after converting them, you know. Right.

John Dehlin [01:23:42] Well, I mean, Mormonism is one of the most racist churches of the 20th century because it excluded black people from full fellowship up until the late 70s. And then even after that, there was still residual racism to the point where they were the lowest priority for us. We would have preferred to go to India or China, communist countries probably before Russia, before going to Africa. So. So that's a part of it is our racist past that he's not Addressing here, but also it's unplowed land. One of the reasons why Africa is booming is because it's not like Mexico. What's Mexico like with the missionaries these days, Gerardo? I mean, when Mormon missionaries show up to a pueblo in Mexico, I said like, whoa, who are these people? What's it like?

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:40] I think it's different in every part.

John Dehlin [01:24:42] But what I'm just saying that like Latin America is the missionaries over and over again going to all these towns a gazillion. Like Chile alone has what, 10 missions in just one country.

Gerardo Sumano [01:24:53] Oh, right, right. Like most people recognize who the missionaries are now.

John Dehlin [01:24:57] It's plowed territory. Yeah, Africa's unplowed territory because we weren't investing in it because we were super racist. So that's part of why I think Africans, it's like, whoa, who are these people? But then the more darker, sinister part is this is sensitive, but this is what I experienced in my mission.

John Dehlin [01:25:19] You're, you're in a developing country, you don't have, you don't have cement floors, you don't have indoor plumbing, you might not have electricity, you might not have food. And then these six foot six blonde haired, blue eyed Americans show up in white shirts and ties with suits into your little pueblo or into your little village.

John Dehlin [01:25:45] And they've got money and good teeth and they're tall and they're educated and they show up in your town. What does that do to the mind of somebody who like literally has no shoes, no indoor plumbing, no indoor water? What? I mean, this is probably sensitive territory, but I think it's relevant.

Gerardo Sumano [01:26:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:09] What do you. I don't mean to like plant your

Gerardo Sumano [01:26:12] ass colonizing for sure.

John Dehlin [01:26:16] In what way?

Gerardo Sumano [01:26:16] I agree. Well, you're coming from a place of like, of privilege to unprivileged people. And they're obviously gonna accept whatever you tell them, right? Not necessarily because it's true or good or it's necessarily gonna benefit them, but just because they're seeing you as a, as like a higher authority because of your position of privilege.

John Dehlin [01:26:44] Yeah, it's like, will they teach me English? That might help me get ahead? Will they give me money that might help me feed my family? Will they potentially, can I marry one of them? Maybe that would get me to the United States or will they help me get a visa so that I can get out of this place and actually go support, get food and shelter? There's a power differential. I think that's really significant here, Jen.

Guest 3 [01:27:08] And they also, with the Pathways program and education, they also are Promised that if they serve a mission, they can go to the Pathways program, they can do the online schooling through the church.

John Dehlin [01:27:23] Get an education.

Guest 3 [01:27:24] Yeah, get an education, which I think is huge to a lot of them.

John Dehlin [01:27:27] Yeah.

Guest 3 [01:27:29] So that's.

John Dehlin [01:27:30] There's that, and that's hard because what's wrong with getting an education or learning English or learning some of the church's morals and values? Like, I'm not saying people in developing countries don't benefit from joining the Mormon Church. I think many do, just because they get a set of moral standards, a community, a set of beliefs, a sense of meaning and purpose, identity. So that's why it's complicated.

Guest 3 [01:27:52] It is complicated, too, because in a way, I think that those are all our things that we're placing onto them. Like it's cultural imperialism. Exactly. Like they could be exactly happy and content and not needing of any of those things and just want to live with their family the way they are and be 100 happy and content. And the church in its station of privilege is coming in and saying, our way is better.

Guest 3 [01:28:34] And. And they don't know that. They don't. They don't know that they're not going in. I think for, like, to learn from them, to, you know, embrace their culture, to listen to really see them and then make a decision, you know, how can we help? How. How could we help? Like, that's how I picture Christ going into the. Their country.

Guest 3 [01:29:03] They're not doing that. They're just, this is the way it's going to be. Let me put that over you and let me tell you all the good things without telling you all the everything. And that's wrong. That's just. You shouldn't do that. Yeah, that's not. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:21] It's like your native beliefs are wrong.

Guest 3 [01:29:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:23] They're an abomination. The way you dress needs to change. Learn our language if you can. Adopt our ways, adopt our. Stop drinking the drinks that are native to your culture. You know, change your. Change your food, change your beliefs, change your spirituality.

Radio Free Mormon [01:29:40] Get rid of your plural wives.

John Dehlin [01:29:42] Yeah, get rid. Because we're rich and wealthy and powerful.

Guest 2 [01:29:46] Her.

John Dehlin [01:29:46] Let's get you in here. Rfm. Do you think we're. Do you think this cultural imperialism point and this even colonialism point is. Is important here when we talk about the growth in Africa?

Radio Free Mormon [01:29:58] Well, even when you don't call on me, I'll intrude myself one way or another.

John Dehlin [01:30:02] All right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:30:03] I think that. By the way, that wasn't a joke when I said get rid of your plural wives.

John Dehlin [01:30:08] Right, right.

Radio Free Mormon [01:30:09] This is one of the great ironies in a church riddled with ironies is that they go to Africa where many people do have more than one wife and it's accepted and it's legal. It's just not Mormon anymore. And so one of the conditions of being baptized is that if a man has more than one wife, he has to get rid of all of them except for the one he wants to keep,

John Dehlin [01:30:36] which is extra weird because our Doctrine and covenants section 132 allows for polygamy and plural marriage. Why shouldn't in the countries where it's legal, why shouldn't they be allowed to actually obey the commandments found in doctrine and Covenants 132?

Radio Free Mormon [01:30:51] Now, it's part of that love hate relationship the church has with plural marriage. They love it in the past, they hate it in the present, and hate anyone who practices it in the present,

John Dehlin [01:31:00] but they love it in the future because, yes, Nelson and Oaks are both going to be polygamous in heaven.

Radio Free Mormon [01:31:06] The once in future polygamist. Good point. Dr. Delin.

John Dehlin [01:31:10] I will tell you, I will tell

Radio Free Mormon [01:31:12] you that I do know some people. I know people who have converted in Africa and become members of the church. They've been on the show, the Mormonism Live show. I know this wonderful woman named Susie Benson who does incredible work over there in Africa. And they're both post. In the post Mormon space, I think it's fair to say. But she certainly has a lot to do with the church over there. And she's attended church. And this is going to really be shocking to the audience, I know, is that the materials that are used by the church to teach the Africans who come to church, don't mention anything about the priesthood ban, don't mention anything about the temple ban, don't mention anything about the problematic history that the church has had with people with dark skin, people with African blood.

Radio Free Mormon [01:32:00] Right? One drop of African blood, you're out of here. That's the way it used to be. It's not being taught now. On the one hand, I understand why they're not teaching it, but on the other hand, what they're doing as they're what, sowing their seed in this, this unplowed field that you talk about, John, is that under every seed they're planting, they're putting a time bomb.

Radio Free Mormon [01:32:24] And it's just a matter of time before that goes off and the new member. Or maybe five years down the road, maybe 10 years down the road, God forbid, 20 or 40 years down the road, like me Right. They find out about this, they were never told, and they just absolutely get decimated and destroyed and traumatized and may or may not leave the church over it. Probably more likely to leave the church over it, not only because this was an issue which directly impacts them, but also because they weren't told about it in the first place.

John Dehlin [01:32:57] And people like that reach out to me all the time. Africans who were converted, never being told about the black priesthood temple and, you know, priesthood and temple ban. And then they find out later. And that just speaks to one of the core missions of Mormon stories, the Open Stories foundation and Mormonism Live and Radio Free Mormon Informed Consent. These people are being brought into the church without giving. Giving the full history and the full problems with the church. And they're only told that later. It's kind of that milk before meat thing. All right, well, let's go to the. The next part of the clip.

Historical Patterns of Missionary Expansion

Guest [01:33:37] So there's very rapid growth in the United States. The growth is not nearly as rapid as it is in Africa. And my observation is that over the history of the church, in different parts of the world, there are different seasons of growth. In the early days, in the 1830s, 1840s, mass migration of saints coming from Europe to the United States. We don't have as many converts in Europe today as we did then. So there's an ebb and flow in seasons in the growth all over the world.

Radio Free Mormon [01:34:06] Okay,

John Dehlin [01:34:09] Gerardo, I caught you smiling there. What's. What. What was funny about seasons of growth?

Gerardo Sumano [01:34:15] Well, he wants to say their seasons, but they also. He also wants to combine it with the migration. So he wants to say, oh, we don't have as many converts in Europe as we had then, but because they migrated to the United States. But also growth is by seasons, different places. I don't know. It's kind of confusing. And the whole season thing, kind of more about what we were talking about, the plot, like, the plowing and how, like, it's kind of like a pyramid scheme when, like, a lot of people already know about it. Like, it starts, it stops growing. And that's kind of what has happened in Latin America already. People know about the Mormon Church, who the missionaries are. So the growth is not as fast as it used to be.

John Dehlin [01:35:05] Yeah, it'd be kind of like saying Enron has seasons of growth.

Gerardo Sumano [01:35:08] Right.

John Dehlin [01:35:08] Or, you know, Xerox, Xerox company has seasons of growth. To invoke the metaphor of seasons implies a predictable pattern of, like, growth and then non growth and then growth and then non growth. If he's at all a prophet, seer and revelator.

Guest 2 [01:35:28] He.

John Dehlin [01:35:28] He of all people should know that the Mormon Church is not. Is not on course for more seasons

Gerardo Sumano [01:35:34] of growth in Europe or anywhere other

John Dehlin [01:35:38] than places where the church has colonial aspirations and massive privilege advantages that they can wield using undue influence. Right, right. Like the church is not, you know, Scotland is not set for a. A great awakening of Mormonism. Japan is not set for a great awakening of Mormonism. California is not going to have a huge growth spike in 10 years. It's just. Yeah, it's deceptive to give that impression.

Gerardo Sumano [01:36:10] Right?

John Dehlin [01:36:10] Isn't it?

Guest [01:36:10] Right.

John Dehlin [01:36:11] The church is in freefall and it's hemorrhaging. And within 10 to 20 years, it's going to actually be shrinking while the world continues to grow. So it's actually going to shrink as a percentage. It already is shrinking as a percentage of the overall world population today. It's already doing that. So that's deceptive. Rfm. Are we being too hard on Bednar in that? Seasons of Growth. What do you think about Seasons of Growth?

Radio Free Mormon [01:36:36] Well, it reminds me of a song that was popular when I. I was in high school, but it was Seasons in the Sun. But we don't have to go there.

John Dehlin [01:36:41] We had joy, we had fun. We have, you know, it. We had the Terry, Jack, the Sun, but the wine and the song like this.

Radio Free Mormon [01:36:50] Seasons have all gone. Oh, this is going to be Bednar's new theme song.

John Dehlin [01:36:54] You can't mention a song or I'm going to sing it. It's just the way this rolls.

Radio Free Mormon [01:37:00] It's okay if you call me by Gerardo's real name. Just don't call me by my real name.

John Dehlin [01:37:04] Okay?

Radio Free Mormon [01:37:05] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:37:05] I don't even know you're. I forgot your real name. That's good.

Radio Free Mormon [01:37:08] That's good because I've trained you well. Now, after that unfortunate incident a few years back, which we won't talk about, but I. The thing that struck me here is that something's very subtle kind of going on, which is he goes from having absolutely like, I have no idea what the numbers are when it comes to these negative, problematic migrations in the United States. Right. But now in the course of a few seconds, he sort of shifts over to really being the master of the numbers. And he knows where the growth is occurring. He knows where the growth isn't occurring. It's definitely growing in Africa. It's not growing in the United States like it is in Africa.

Radio Free Mormon [01:37:43] It used to be growing in the. In Europe in the 1830s and 40s, and then these people come over, but it's not growing there as much anymore. So in the course of a few seconds, we see a shift from his being really, really not knowledgeable about the membership and the numbers of the church. And now we're starting to see the man, the statistician behind the apostle, the man behind the curtain, who really does have a good grasp of the numbers and can tell us where these seasons are occurring and when.

John Dehlin [01:38:14] You know what it reminds me of? Rfm. I don't know if you remember. Phil Hartman on Saturday Night Live used to have this character called unfrozen Dead caveman lawyer. And he would always. Whenever he was asked a difficult question in court, he would always say, my uncivilized caveman brain can't comprehend these sophisticate, sophisticated earthly ways. You know what I'm saying? It's like he would. He would conveniently invoke ignorance whenever he needed to. Yes.

Radio Free Mormon [01:38:42] And that's what. I think that's what we're seeing Elder Bednar do. I mean, it's what a politician does, right?

John Dehlin [01:38:47] Yeah, He.

Radio Free Mormon [01:38:48] He talks about being an apostle versus a statistician, but overall, he's being a politician here.

John Dehlin [01:38:54] Yeah. Jen, we didn't get you in here. Anything you want to add to the seasons of growth position?

Guest 3 [01:39:01] No, I'm good.

John Dehlin [01:39:01] Okay. All right. Just want to make sure we gave you a chance.

Guest 3 [01:39:04] Thanks.

Why People Are Leaving the Church

John Dehlin [01:39:04] All right, let's go to the next slide where he addresses why people are leaving churches.

Guest 2 [01:39:15] Just following up on that. Membership and affiliation with religious organizations in general has been on the decline in the United States. Why do you think that is?

Guest [01:39:26] I think we live in a tumultuous world, and people are searching for answers and may not be satisfied with some of the answers that they found.

John Dehlin [01:39:38] Wow. All right. That's short but sweet. Gerardo, what do you think truth in that? He actually said something true.

Gerardo Sumano [01:39:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:50] So kudos to. Kudos to Bednar for saying something true.

Gerardo Sumano [01:39:53] Yeah. Yeah. Although I think in his mind, he's thinking about other churches, but not the Mormon Church. Because we have the right answers.

John Dehlin [01:40:04] Yeah. Or maybe if people aren't satisfied with the answers, it's on them.

Gerardo Sumano [01:40:08] Right, right, right.

John Dehlin [01:40:10] Jen, People aren't satisfied with the answers.

Guest 3 [01:40:14] Yeah. But, yeah, I kind of agree that it sounded truthful.

John Dehlin [01:40:20] Yeah.

Guest 3 [01:40:21] His answer.

John Dehlin [01:40:22] Yeah. We should be able to always, on Mormon stories, give credit where credit is due.

Guest 3 [01:40:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:28] Rfm, what do you think about. Think about his answer.

Radio Free Mormon [01:40:32] He's totally thinking about every other church. That was clear to me. Okay. I Don't claim to be a mind reader, but sometimes I am just the same. Oh, yes, because we know that the church, the LDS church, is the only one that gives the answers that satisfy every other church. You know, you can't get no satisfaction with the answers over there. It's because not enough people know about our church. If enough people knew about the answers that our church gives, then the numbers of Christians wouldn't be going down. They'd be skyrocketing.

Gerardo Sumano [01:41:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:09] I'm also going to add that when he, when he talks about a tumultuous world, I don't want to call it virtue signaling. Signaling. But what he's basically saying here is he's falling back. If the church is growing, then, oh, the church is true and we're all amazing and you should all join. If the church is shrinking, then it's an evil, corrupt world. Right. So this is kind of, this is kind of blame reversal where, where the house always wins. Where, where either way the church wins. But it's, but it's blamed on the. The evil, wicked people of the world. If the church isn't growing, what he's not doing.

John Dehlin [01:41:46] And I think this is implicit in all of your comments. He's not taking any responsibility for why the Mormon Church is shrinking. And I think we all know why the Mormon Church is shrinking. What would have been a fully honest answer to this question? Gerardo? I'll have you start. Jen, you think, and her and RFM too. If he were to actually say why the Mormon Church is shrinking, if he was going to be fully honest, like the church, the Mormon Church taught us to be, what would be some of the things he would have said?

Gerardo Sumano [01:42:15] Well, he never accepted that the Mormon Church is drinking.

John Dehlin [01:42:17] I know, but let's just say he was going to.

Gerardo Sumano [01:42:19] Right.

John Dehlin [01:42:21] What would he, what would he say if he was going to be completely honest?

Gerardo Sumano [01:42:24] He would agree with the reporter. She gave him the numbers.

Guest [01:42:27] Right.

John Dehlin [01:42:28] Like, but what would reasons would he give? Oh, instead of saying it's a tumultuous world, you know? You know, people aren't satisfied with the answers we're giving because they're too wicked.

Gerardo Sumano [01:42:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:42:38] To. To know the truth. What would he say?

Gerardo Sumano [01:42:41] Well, people are finding out about the real history of the church. We have the media, Hulu, Netflix, all doing, you know, like, documentaries, documentaries about the Mormon Church. Everyone already thinks that we are kind of culty and weird. We have this temple ceremonies that I don't really want to talk to you much about. You have to pay 10% of tithing you know, to this church, stop drinking coffee, stop drinking tea.

John Dehlin [01:43:14] Which are both now found to be pretty healthy.

Gerardo Sumano [01:43:17] Right, right, right. And people are. A lot of people are leaving traumatized by being lied to.

John Dehlin [01:43:24] Yeah. Jen, you're next.

Guest 3 [01:43:28] If you're a woman, you will never be enough without a man. Basically. Basically, the Internet is open and you have the ability to find anything. There's proof and they're finding it and they're. They're knowing how wrong a lot of things are. And so they're having to go.

John Dehlin [01:44:01] Yeah, it's almost like saying, we. We can't keep the truth from the people any longer.

Guest 3 [01:44:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:44:06] People are finding out the truth. What would you add? Rfm, if he was being fully honest about why the church is shrinking?

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:12] I would add social issues.

John Dehlin [01:44:14] Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was. I was hoping you'd go there. So.

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:18] Such as lgbt, the way we've treated them, the way we keep treating them.

Radio Free Mormon [01:44:25] And women.

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:26] Women. People of color. Racism, Racism, or past racism. The racism that still exists in the church, but we kind of want to

John Dehlin [01:44:36] ignore the scriptures that remain racist. You know, Book of Mormon, Book of Moses, Book of Abraham. Super racist.

Gerardo Sumano [01:44:45] Right. And not giving space for people who have doubts about the truthfulness of the church and stuff like that.

John Dehlin [01:44:53] Excommunicating truth tellers when they reveal the truth.

Guest 3 [01:44:56] We keep families from their own children's weddings. We. We could go on and on.

John Dehlin [01:45:04] Rfm, you want to add to the pile, or did we pretty much cover it all?

Radio Free Mormon [01:45:08] I think you've covered a lot of things. That reminds me of that movie Liar, Liar with Jim Carrey, when all of a sudden he's a. He's a lawyer who has to tell the truth and what he's really thinking. Yeah, that'd be wonderful thing to try and channel Elder Bednar actually telling the truth and not being able to say anything but the truth in response to that question. There's so many things, it would just come out of his mouth. Well, in answer to that question, I think the. One of the reasons the church isn't doing so well is because we have been doing our darndest for decades to bury the negative information about the church and to keep the members from finding out about it.

Radio Free Mormon [01:45:47] But dang it, 1990 or so, along comes this thing called the Internet. And over time, all this information that we have been trying desperately to hide, to warn our members to not read, to label that information as anti Mormon lies has been disseminated and we don't have control over the narrative anymore. More and more members are finding out about it. We actually had to go and make up gospel topic essays, if you can believe it, and put them on our website in which we had to admit that all those things that we've been calling anti Mormon lies for decades were really true. And we knew about it all along.

Radio Free Mormon [01:46:27] And yeah, when we did that, some of our members took offense. They got upset. They thought maybe we hadn't been straight with them. They got offended, they left the church. Yeah, maybe that wasn't such a good move back in 2000. And I'm sorry, you could go on forever. Back in 2015. I'll go on just a little bit more. You know, we've been spending decades and billions and millions of sacred tithing dollars trying to defeat gay marriage in every state in the union where it came up. We finally lost in the overfill decision from the Supreme Court in August or September of 2015. And then we got together and we had a super secret meeting in the temple and we said, we got to do something about this.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:05] And somebody says, well, what can we do? It's the Supreme Court, for crying out loud. And they said, well, we can't do anything about that. But what we can do is we can create a punitive policy and enforce it in the church that says that gay people in a relationship that's now legally acknowledged by the law of the land are apostates as far as God is concerned. And their children can't get baptized or any of the other things that we all know about until they're 18 and end up denouncing or renouncing their parents lifestyle and get special permission from the First Presidency. Then at 18 they can get baptized finally, whereas every other kid in the church gets baptized at the age of eight.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:48] And so we, but we didn't want to take credit for that. We didn't want people to know we were doing it. So we had a great idea. We figured we'd sneak it into the manual under the COVID of darkness.

Radio Free Mormon [01:47:58] And we never, never anticipated that we would have a mole inside the church office building who would see this. We pick up the phone and have John Deen on speed dial and say, hey, did you know about this? And within 24 hours it's getting broadcast everywhere, courtesy of John de Lynn. And now they've got egg all over their face. And we know how the story goes from there.

John Dehlin [01:48:24] Four years later, four years later, they rescind that punitive. Awful, horrendous, you know, decision like. Yeah, and I'll just add that that was beautiful. Rfm I'll just add two more. And there's so many we could do. How about the endless sexual abuse scandals, pedophilia, Boy scouts settling for $250 million in payouts to, to the thousands of young Mormon boys that were sexually abused where it was covered up. Hush money paid victims just, you know, silenced while perpetrators were reassigned without getting punished. There's that whole sexual abuse thing. And let's just not forget how completely tedious, boring and irrelevant the Mormon Church has become. What I was thinking to, you know, to gen zers and millennials and, and young people like forget all the lies and the abuse and the, you know, everything else just, just tediously boring, monotonous and irrelevant to. In the modern world.

Gerardo Sumano [01:49:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:29] Right. They're caring about how many ear piercings you have when like the global warming, if you believe in that, gun violence, if you believe in that, you know, racism, systemic racism, poverty, hunger. All the things that the church could be thinking about, they care about. Do you drink coffee or not? How many ear piercings do you have? Did you masturbate last, you know, last week? And then. Oh, let's make sure and defeat same sex marriage because that's the biggest threat to humanity. I mean it's just, there's just.

Guest 3 [01:50:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:01] And what if he could show some humility and some acknowledgement about how much they've screwed up.

Guest 3 [01:50:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:07] Or are tone deaf.

Guest 3 [01:50:09] Yeah. And that younger generation, something that I love about them is that they speak up like. I don't know. I was just watching a clip the other day of the, a graduation speech. Some woman in a graduation speech at a college, I believe it was, and she started to say something and the younger kids started booing her like they, they, they're not gonna take it anymore.

John Dehlin [01:50:35] Yeah.

Guest 3 [01:50:36] They, they have the Internet. They know they can find it. They're not scared as much as my generation.

John Dehlin [01:50:42] Yeah.

Guest 3 [01:50:42] Was scared to even look off lds.org they're, they're starting to know, they're starting to be brave and I'm proud of them for that.

John Dehlin [01:50:51] Yeah. It just reminds me of when I was at Microsoft and Microsoft was a monopoly. And one of the problems with the monopoly is you get lazy. And Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer got lazy in their monopoly. You know, Bill Gates even denied that the Internet was super relevant or interesting for a while because it threatened his business model. And there's just this hubris that, that accumulates when you've got too much money and power where you just aren't paying attention anymore and you're not really making the changes you need to stay relevant. And that's. The church has been powerful and rich for way too long and now they're being shown as, you know, the king having no clothes basically. All right, let's go on to, to the question around his business degree, academic training and all of that.

Bednar on Institutional Priorities and Doublespeak

Radio Free Mormon [01:51:50] Okay.

▶ Video Clip 3

Video Clip 3 [01:51:52] Many church leaders, including you, have a deep business administration backgrounds, which is unusual for faith leaders who tend elsewhere to be selected for scholarly distinction. Distinction. And they seek guidance behind the scenes from those who understand and how organizations and to ensure long term financial viability. What are some of the advantages of so much business acumen at the church's highest levels and at least as importantly, how is it challenging in the ways that you give that give you and your colleagues pause?

Video Clip 3 [01:52:23] Okay, I'm going to give an answer and I'm pretty positive you're going to want to have a follow up question. I have tried really hard not to let my academic training influence what I do. Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the Book of Mormon there's a verse that says, when they are learned, they think they are wise and hearken not unto the counsel of God. So I do not take my academic background and experience and impose that on the church. I let the doctrine of Christ influence how I see things. So certainly there are practical advantages in knowing about how organizations run and budgeting and so forth forth. But I view that really as secondary. I try to view what we do and the mission we fulfill through the lens of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Video Clip 3 [01:53:16] So basically you leave behind all of your previous experience and education to focus on.

Video Clip 3 [01:53:22] You can't leave it behind. But we do leave our nets. All right, the ancient apostles, they were summoned and they left what they were doing and, and they then began the work of serving the Savior. That's what we do. That's what the members of our church do. But it would not be accurate to say, well, you just leave your experience behind. Of course we're influenced by that, but I try not to let it dominate.

John Dehlin [01:53:46] Okay, rfm, let's give you. We just got a comment from Holly saying double speak here. I wonder what she means. Rfm, let's give you the first shot at responding to leaving your nets.

Radio Free Mormon [01:54:00] Yeah, I'm not sure if he is actually answering the question that she's asking. I'm not exactly. It was a little bit ambiguous, but it has specifically to do with your, your training, your business training. There's a predominance of businessmen who are in the apostles and asking how you balance that with being an apostle.

Radio Free Mormon [01:54:25] His answer suggests to me that he's taking this in a way that maybe she didn't mean. I don't know. But I do know the way he's answering it. So let me focus on that. What he's doing is he's saying that regardless of my education, regardless of my training, regardless of my experience, all of that is going to be sublimated to the teachings of the Church.

Radio Free Mormon [01:54:50] That my training and experience in education is not ever used by me. Speaking for Elder Bednar of car, of course, is never used by me to question anything that the Church does or teaches or even to allow myself to be able to think critically about any of those issues.

Radio Free Mormon [01:55:10] And that critical thought, of course, being helped by presumably all the education and training and experience he has. But no, none of that is important. The only thing that's important is what the Church teaches and what the Church does and everything else that he could bring to the table and should bring to the table. This would be a very positive model, especially if they got different people from different careers and not just businessmen and lawyers and maybe even people with different genders. I don't know. You know, I'll go out on a limb here and maybe even different orientations and all together and talking about things, maybe that would make things more fruitful, more balanced, more give greater depth to their ability to think about things.

Radio Free Mormon [01:55:53] But none of that is important. That's the message I'm getting from his answer. The only thing that's important is what the Church teaches and what the Church does, and nothing else is going to get in the way of that or even allow myself to think. Is that right?

Gerardo Sumano [01:56:10] I think to me, the most important part of her question was why do most leaders in the Church have business backgrounds as opposed to theologian backgrounds? And why is your Church different in that way where other churches would have scholarly or theologian backgrounds and then turn to other people for the financial help? And he completely ignores that first part of the question. Why is every one of the apostles businessmen or lawyers and not scholars or theologians or historians? To me, that was an important part of the question that he didn't answer. But, yeah, I agree with RFM too.

John Dehlin [01:56:59] Yeah. Yeah, I'll just, I'll just say I, I this. Actually, now that I've watched it and thought about it, I have a pretty strong reaction to this, because what he wanted, what I heard, heard him say is we follow the teachings of Jesus first and our, our professional backgrounds are secondary.

John Dehlin [01:57:20] But I see evidence of the opposite being true. And you can, you can it's even ironic because what was Jesus about? Right? Jesus was. I think everyone will agree that if you had to like highlight what Jesus was most about, and I think the Mormon Church would even teach this. It's like feed the hungry, clothe the naked, you know, take care of the poor, heal the sick, preach love and forgiveness, that sort of thing. I mean, I think, I think even the Mormon Church would agree with that. And I think even when the church has us sing A Poor Wayfaring man of Grief or teaches us, inasmuch as you have done this to the least of my these, my brethren, you've done it unto me.

John Dehlin [01:58:04] That's what Jesus was about, right? But what did he say about humanitarian work in this very Q and A, what did he say? He said we're not primarily a humanitarian organization. But it's worse than that. If you look at what modern Mormon prophet seers and revelators have us focus on, what do they focus on?

John Dehlin [01:58:27] Did Jesus ever say pay 10 of your income to the church or you won't get to go to the temple? Did Jesus ever say do this weird creepy Masonic endowment or you won't be able to get married in the temple and then you won't be able to become a God someday? Did Jesus ever say don't drink coffee or tea? Did Jesus ever say don't masturbate? Did Jesus ever say don't be gay? Did Jesus ever say spend all your money in lobbying efforts fighting same sex marriage.

John Dehlin [01:58:53] Right. Did Jesus ever say keep meticulous statistics about all your membership and then tell everybody you don't really know what the numbers say. Right. Did Jesus ever say go do baptisms for the dead and do these creepy weird ordinances for dead people when there's people starving right there in front of you? Did Jesus say that?

John Dehlin [01:59:14] You know, did Jesus ever say keep non members and non believers out of the temple, my holy temples? Maybe. I don't know what he said about that particularly. But like every emphasis of the modern Mormon Church seems to be informed by. Or, or did Jesus ever say when, when a child gets sexually abused, silence that and then protect the abuser? No. Jesus said anyone who hurts these little people is damned. Right.

Gerardo Sumano [01:59:44] Or that dark skin is a curse or that there was going to be a priesthood ban or that members were going to have the priesthood and women were not and yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:59:56] And so like literally almost everything that the church, the modern Mormon Church does in the modern past 100, 150 years seems to be informed by lawyers, right? By businessmen, by accountants, by statisticians, by finance. You know, did Jesus ever say, amass 150, 200, $300 billion in wealth and then just sit on it like, I think Jesus said the opposite. It seems like what the church is actually governed by is finance experts, accountants, lawyers, business people. Right. That's. That's governing every aspect of the church. And they're ignoring Christ's course, teaching, Christ's core teaching. Now, I don't think Elder Bednar thinks of it that way, but if you look at how the church is behaving, are they really led by Christ and his teachings or are they led by their business, lawyer, accountant and finance backgrounds? Am I too harsh? I agree, Jen.

Guest 3 [02:01:07] Yeah, I agree that they're not choosing Jesus path there. They're choosing the business path, the, the

John Dehlin [02:01:16] lawyer path, the business path, the money path, the Wall street investment path. Yeah, right. The protect your interest path. Rfm. Am I being too harsh?

Radio Free Mormon [02:01:28] Now is the great day of my power. Yeah.

The Church's Handling of the COVID Pandemic

John Dehlin [02:01:37] All right, well, let's go ahead and go to the next question, which I think was about handling the pandemic. So let's, let's cut to that one. Next.

Guest 2 [02:01:55] I'm going to move on to a question from a member who said that they were reporting in Salt Lake City recently and that members impression was that the church has handled public statements about the pandemic particularly masking rather differently from other faiths. And that the divide between conservative and progressive members with respect to Covid may be the inverse of many other traditions. Is there a story here or is it overstating?

Guest [02:02:19] I think it's overstated. We have the president of the church who was a world renowned heart surgeon. He's doing the same thing. He puts his ministry first, but he brings some very relevant experience and expertise to this and he gave guidelines.

John Dehlin [02:02:40] Okay, really quickly, Gerardo, why are you, why are you laughing?

Gerardo Sumano [02:02:44] Because he's. He's contradicting, right?

Radio Free Mormon [02:02:46] Why?

Gerardo Sumano [02:02:46] He just was saying about leaving your nets and what he said previously about being an apostle and not a statistician.

John Dehlin [02:02:55] Yeah, yeah, but.

Gerardo Sumano [02:02:58] And he realized that when he, when, when he started talking about Nelson being a surgeon.

Guest [02:03:03] Right? Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:03:05] Okay, let's continue.

Radio Free Mormon [02:03:06] Can I just add there, that's a great point, Gerardo, but it's also completely irrelevant because we all know that the president, Nelson, what he did was he encouraged two worldwide days of fasting and prayer at the outset of the pandemic that didn't go anywhere. And if God heard those prayers, he thought, well, screw you guys, because I'm just going to make it worse because you're pissing me off now. And it was way, way, way later, after it really became clear beyond dispute that those days of fasting, prayer were not going to be doing anything, that President Nelson used all of his medical background and training to follow the dictates that the government was imposing.

Guest [02:03:46] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [02:03:47] He didn't need any training. He was late to the table as far as I was concerned.

John Dehlin [02:03:52] Yeah, yeah. All right, let's. Let's keep it. Let's keep the clip going.

Guest [02:04:00] The best answer I can give to your question. Joseph Smith, in the early days of the church, was asked by a legislator in Illinois in the city of Nauvoo and said, this is a very orderly city and things seem to run very well. How do you do that? Because we have a very difficult time. And Joseph Smith said, we teach them correct principles and they govern themselves. They don't prescribe every jot and tittle of what you should do. Here's the principle. Now you go act the way you think is most appropriate. That's what the leadership of the church has been doing. Here are the guidelines and the principles. You make your choice.

Guest 2 [02:04:42] Sounds like that you're well tuned to handle a pandemic.

John Dehlin [02:04:46] All right, reactions. Who wants to go first on reactions to teaching the members correct principles and letting them govern themselves as it relates to Covid.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:58] Weren't there some guidelines about missionaries not being. I mean, I'm not. My. This has nothing to do with my opinions about the vaccine, but there were guidelines very specific about missionaries not being able to go to the MTC or their missions without getting a COVID vaccine for a while. So was that teaching them correct principles that let them govern themselves? I guess if you think, well, they can choose to go on a mission or not, and the requirement is a COVID vaccine. I don't know. And I. So he's ignoring the question, right? Like, he's ignoring what she's really asking, which is conservative members were. Some conservative members were really upset about this type of types of guidelines. Not. Not just guidelines, but requirements for COVID vaccine.

John Dehlin [02:05:46] Yeah, yeah. Rfm. What. What do you want to say about teaching correct principles and letting them govern themselves?

Radio Free Mormon [02:05:56] I think that that is one of the places where the theory of Mormonism is excellent, but it bears little resemblance to the reality of Mormonism. I don't really see a lot of teaching correct principles and letting the people govern themselves or if they govern themselves differently than those principles that we taught. Well, you're out. See John Deyn. So that's one thing the other thing is what Gerardo had just been talking about and. Gerardo, what was it you were just talking about? Give me a little help here. I'm an hour earlier than you. I got almost no sleep last night. I apologize.

Gerardo Sumano [02:06:31] You're good. The missionaries.

Radio Free Mormon [02:06:34] The missionaries. Oh, and. And the. The requirements and the. The vaccines. Yes. You got this conservative membership out there, and they actually have two religious devotions. And I'm not going to say that's not the same way with liberals too. Okay. Because there are. The closer you get to the fringes, the more passionate. I was going to say fanatical. Don't want to use too strong a term. But the more passionate those beliefs become, I think. And so generally, the conservative membership in the church with two devotions, one to the politics and one to the church, they find those most commonly aligned and identical. But now all of a sudden, when they have this idea that they are against the imposition of vaccines, they're against vaccines in general.

Radio Free Mormon [02:07:26] And I can't speak for all of them, but I think we all know what I'm talking about. And I'm not trying to misrepresent a certain position. But they're also faithful lds. And now the president of their church that they sustain as a prophet now comes out with a directive that in an encouragement to get the vaccines. And many of them saw that as some sort of a betrayal that this prophet who was usually in line with them, or at least they perceived it, now it's very clear that he's not. And now the schism is created. Now, that's a very, very interesting question to have asked.

Radio Free Mormon [02:08:01] And I think the reporter here did not do a good job because I know she's getting these on the fly. This is another example of these. These questions coming in, not being prearranged because she took this question, she. She asked it to Elder Bednar, and then she said, is that too strong? Is there a story here?

Radio Free Mormon [02:08:22] And give him the option of, you know, just weaseling out. No, there's no story here. When obviously there's a story there and he knows what the story is, but he doesn't want to talk about the story. He wants to go back just to being an apostle and not being aware of what's going on in the church that he's a leader of.

John Dehlin [02:08:40] Thanks, rfm.

Gerardo Sumano [02:08:41] But he knows about the masking requirements and what's most that the church had imposed on BYU schools on several words and stakes around the world. I mean, my personal opinion is that kudos to the church for Doing that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:08:57] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [02:08:57] I think it saved a lot of lives and it's, it's great. But why is he denying that the church did that? Why is he trying to give an appearance that oh, membership had a choice when in reality a lot of membership didn't have a choice.

Gerardo Sumano [02:09:11] And, and then there's also. Well, what's really interesting to me is that Bedner was one of the, I think was the only apostle that I saw that came out in a very conservative way on a video talking against, you know, mask, masks and, and not being able to attend church because of COVID restrictions. And he, he was on this live stream video in his office where he's talking about, he's saying things like we can never let the government do this again to us and this is just completely a violation of the first Amendment and this is horrible and all this stuff. So he was really, you know, like you can tell on what side he was on on these issues.

Gerardo Sumano [02:10:02] So I kind of, I, I can kind of see why he's trying to downplay the restrictions that the church imposed in many stakes wards, schools and etc.

John Dehlin [02:10:14] Yeah, my, I'll just say my quick memory. Well, the first thing I just, I think is fair to say is if you think about the Bible, what's the value of a prophet, seer and revelator? What's the value of prophecy, seership and revelation? Like what's the whole value? It's that you can, it's that you have the power to see the future. That's what Joseph Smith told people. He can see things that other people can't see and that's why they followed him because he claimed to have the power to see things that other people couldn't see. And. Go ahead Jen.

Guest 3 [02:10:49] I was just going to say and the other role of a prophet is to heal. So if all these people are getting Covid and they're in the hospitals, why aren't they in the hospitals healing them?

John Dehlin [02:10:58] No, that's a, that's a, that's another great point is why didn't priesthood power make it so no Mormon or anyone willing to receive a blessing? I'm sure there's a lot of non Mormon in Utah that would have loved to get blessings if it would have kept them from dying.

Guest 3 [02:11:11] Yeah, I didn't see any PR out at the hospitals following them around, going and ministering.

John Dehlin [02:11:16] Yeah.

Guest 3 [02:11:17] To.

John Dehlin [02:11:18] Yeah. So that's a great, you know, does priesthood power exist? Do, do, does the Mormon teaching of priesthood healings actually work? But to this larger point like this is a key opportunity for prophet seers and revelators to say, hey, members, we're prophets. There's a revelators. And guess what? A really bad pandemic is about to come. So everyone get your. Everyone get your masks now. You know, everyone stay home now. Let's cancel the missionary. Let's cancel the missionary program now. Before, you know, before what's the CDC guy? Before Fauci ever appeared on anyone's consciousness. Let's stop the temples, let's stop the missionary program, let's stop church meetings, let's all get masks. Let's spend a couple billion developing a vaccine because we know that a really bad pandemic is coming. You know, maybe that's unrealistic, but, like, what does it mean to be a prophet Syrian revelator if you literally can't see the future? Right?

Gerardo Sumano [02:12:23] But then I think the elder Nelson came out and said the general conference after the pandemic, saying, little did I know that this was going to happen.

John Dehlin [02:12:30] Yeah, like, like, so are you a prophet revelator to begin with? But then let's just say, okay, that's an unfair, unrealistic expectation. Well, then you'd say, well, then at least you'd be a shining example on the hill of the best practices of dealing with a state that you literally control. I mean, the Mormon church literally controls Utah. 80% of the state legislature, the governor, all the major offices are held by Mormon, except in Salt Lake county, maybe Park City. Like, you would think Utah would be the shining example on a hill of. And the Mormon church of how to minimize illness and death. But was it like, I remember.

John Dehlin [02:13:11] Do you remember, you know, those. Those pictures of Mormon missionaries just as the. Just as the pandemic was really starting to ramp up, all those photos of Mormon missionaries showing up at people's doors without masks, continuing to preach the gospel after everyone had been told to stay home and wear masks. Do you remember that? Yeah, I remember that. Do you remember hearing about old people dying from going to the temples without masks and literally dying from exposure of doing temple work? While, While the pandemic was raging, whole missions got.

Gerardo Sumano [02:13:46] Got Covid like entire missions and stuff.

John Dehlin [02:13:50] Yeah, yeah. And the missionaries were then running around infecting like, yeah, people by knocking on their doors. Not to mention the cluster f of all the wards and branches it being left up, you know, how long did it take the church to move to zoom church? Right. It seemed like it took a while.

Radio Free Mormon [02:14:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:14:07] And then even then there was like some attending and some not. And then in the churches, some were wearing masks and some weren't. And this became. This became a major source of people leaving. Mormonism over the past two years was, like, battles within Mormon wards across Utah and Arizona and Idaho, where, like, a stake president would say, everyone needs to get the vaccine and wear masks. And then there'd be this huge revolt of, like, anti, you know, Covid maskers or anti COVID vaccine people.

John Dehlin [02:14:41] And I talked to somebody in the Boise Stake, where a stake president made the rule that everybody needs to wear a mask. And he had to take the rule away because so many members revolted and said, we're not wearing masks to church. It's the sign of the beast or of 666 or the coming of Satan or whatever it was. And I'm not even coming down on the side of vaccines versus not or masks versus not, although I am pro vaccine and I'm proud mask or I was until the pandemic subsided. But the point is, like, wasn't the church's handling of COVID kind of a. A cluster F?

John Dehlin [02:15:17] Or am I being. I mean, to the prophet's credit, we were glad when he eventually was supportive of the vaccine, because it could have been way worse.

Guest [02:15:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:15:26] But even that was that, well, why

Gerardo Sumano [02:15:28] is he not owning it?

John Dehlin [02:15:29] Yeah.

Guest 2 [02:15:30] Right.

John Dehlin [02:15:30] What do you mean?

Gerardo Sumano [02:15:31] Well, why is he not owning all the. All, like, that they actually impose restrictions. Why? Which I think they were good. Right. Like, I think would be hard. I mean, yeah, I think most rational people would agree that, like, there being a requirement for masks in the MTC while there was, like, a current pandemic was not a bad thing.

Radio Free Mormon [02:15:56] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [02:15:56] Like, it was probably good for missionaries to be wearing masks, but why not owning it? Why is he saying, like, well, they had a choice. Everyone had a choice. It didn't matter. Like, we showed them the. The correct principles and they governed themselves. But, yeah. Yeah, I struggle with that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:16:14] Yeah. It's a strange thing to say in the context of a pandemic, where really, if you're going to effectively deal with it, the last thing that you can do is teach correct principles and let the people govern themselves.

John Dehlin [02:16:28] Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:16:29] But I agree with Gerardo that once again, he's speaking as a politician, and he knows that there is a sizable component of his church that was against the vaccines. And so I think Herard is right. That's why he's not owning it, because to own it is to offend them further. So he wants to walk that line as carefully as he can down the middle, not to Offend people on either side because this is what apostles do as well, apparently. As opposed to just speaking the truth.

John Dehlin [02:17:02] Yeah. And. And we should tell people. We all know now. I. I got insider information that as much as the church is hemorrhaging from people concerned about social justice, truth claims, lying about its history, racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobic phobia, they're actually losing more people on the conservative right who are angry that the church was supportive of the vaccine and. And of masking. Jen.

Guest 3 [02:17:28] Yeah, I think that's. I think that's true. Like, even with a friend of mine who is super, super lds, when she was told to get the vaccine by the prophet, that was like, devastating to her because she believes in oils and natural healing and immunity. All these things that for her.

John Dehlin [02:17:51] Or conspiracy. That the vaccine and masking was literally conspiracy.

Guest [02:17:56] Right.

Guest 2 [02:17:57] Yeah.

Guest 3 [02:17:57] Yeah. So for her, that's kind of where she was at. And that was like, devastating to her. Like, that the prophet would say to get vaccinated or wear a mask. And. But then when we were talking about this and I was, you know, just having a conversation with her over messenger, I told her about the gospel topic essays in the same conversation, and I was right away unfriended because I. About the gospel topic essays. So it's kind of funny, like, where the line. The line is drawn, you know, of listening to them or not listening to them and how that goes about. So. Yeah, no, it's just interesting.

John Dehlin [02:18:48] It's a. Yeah. Quick shout out to Jacob Berg for the super chat. Super grateful Jacob, and for all of you, Martine, and others who have. Who are willing to support us. So I guess in summary, it's a bug, not a feature that they let the members govern themselves, but it's also almost gaslighting for him to act like they did let the members govern themselves when they really had a lot of instances where they didn't. Is that a summary of what we're saying?

Gerardo Sumano [02:19:19] I think so.

Radio Free Mormon [02:19:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:21] Yeah. Do we all remember, like, when the missionaries were being, like, special jets were being charted to evacuate missionaries.

Radio Free Mormon [02:19:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:28] From various foreign countries.

Guest 3 [02:19:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:30] What a disaster. I mean, that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:19:32] That was a disaster.

John Dehlin [02:19:33] Yeah.

Guest [02:19:33] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:19:35] And he's standing up there like, we handled it in an amazing way, just like Nauvoo. And by the way, if there was order. If there was order in Nauvoo, rfm, Do you want to tell us about the orderliness of Nauvoo, since he wants to use Nauvoo as a shining example of order?

Radio Free Mormon [02:19:55] I think this may be an apocryphal statement attributed to Joseph Smith, but to the extent that he actually said was probably gaslighting in the first instance as well.

John Dehlin [02:20:05] What do you mean it wasn't true? Why?

Radio Free Mormon [02:20:10] Because teaching people correct principles and letting them govern themselves sounds good, but I don't think that's what was happening in Nauvoo. Obviously, they're teaching principles, but they're also setting up a very strict kind of religious structure superimposed upon a municipality and combining church and state and largely being very structured with how people were to be living their lives.

John Dehlin [02:20:38] Yeah, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:20:41] And I like Jen's point too, by the way, about this idea about prophets, priesthood, healing people.

Guest 3 [02:20:50] Right.

Radio Free Mormon [02:20:51] Because on the one hand, we're sitting here and we're going, finally, yes, President Nelson did probably the right thing. At least let's just put it in the opinion of the majority of people in the country. Okay. Maybe not this conservative faction that he seems to have offended, but most people would think that was a good thing, that was the right move to make. Okay. Yeah. Vaccines and masks and wash hands and all this stuff. All right, so having said that,

Guest 3 [02:21:19] is

Radio Free Mormon [02:21:19] that what a prophet does? Is this a prophetic response simply to go along with government mandates? It's not like he got this from God. No, he got this from Washington, D.C. is where he got that from. And from Salt Lake City, I. E. The capital, and the mandates that were being put. Put in place. And he said, well, yeah, you should follow the mandates that have been put in place by the government.

John Dehlin [02:21:44] He eventually. He eventually said that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:21:46] Eventually it did. Like I said, it did take a long time for him to get around to it. And that's after, I think, he figured out that the Days of Thunder were not going to have the desired effect. So. But this is the idea. We, we. The two hats. There's two different hats in so many different areas. And here's his hat as a medical professional, which we look at and say, finally, good, you. You made the right call. Even though you offended these people, it's a good thing you said this. But this is not the theory of Mormonism. This is the reality of Mormonism. But the theory of Mormonism, as Jen said, is we'll heal you. We have the priesthood, we can heal the members, we can pray the. I'm sorry, the phrase that comes to my mind is gay away. But we can pray the pandemic away, right?

John Dehlin [02:22:34] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:22:34] God will hear our prayers. I'm the prophet telling you. And by the way, I want to give him some credit here because actually that was the first prophetic thing I've seen a president of the church do in, I don't know, forever is to come out and say, we're going to have a day of fasting and prayer, and we are going to plead with the Lord to turn away the effects of the pandemic. I was impressed.

Radio Free Mormon [02:22:57] It showed faith on his part. Faith in God, faith in prayer. Faith and fasting. And then they had the day of prayer. It spiked. The COVID rate spiked up. Right. Okay, bad sign. Obviously, somebody out there was, you know, sneaking some Oreos from the pantry when they were supposed to be fasting. So we do a second one. And I thought, wow, he's going to do it again. He's doubling down. I'm liking this. He's going all in on the prayer and fasting. And then that didn't work. And I'm just sitting. Is he going to do a third one?

John Dehlin [02:23:30] I mean, third time's the charm.

Radio Free Mormon [02:23:34] That was it. The third time was the chart. He didn't go there. And that's when. And it's interesting to watch. Just psychologically, this is where his faith fails him. And he's learning in real time that God is not responding to the prayers and fasts of his saints. And I don't know what's going on internally, but I betting there's an impact that doesn't go without some kind of reflection on his part.

Gerardo Sumano [02:24:03] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:24:04] And then it takes him a while finally to go, okay, well, go ahead and get the shot.

John Dehlin [02:24:09] Yeah, it, it's, it, it's. It's the failure of magical thinking. And Jen, you said this in a recent episode, you know, when we were talking a little bit about gun violence, you basically said that, that the days of, like, we'll pray for you. Yeah, Are kind of over. Yeah, like, like, Christians need to effing stop thinking that prayer fixes anything. You can pray, pray, believe that prayer fixes. But to say publicly, oh, 20 kids were shot in a school. Oh, we have more mass shootings than days in a year. Oh, let's pray. Like, oh, there's a massive pandemic. People are dying. Let's pray.

Guest 3 [02:24:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:25:00] Are we kind of hopefully going to get past that age?

Guest 3 [02:25:03] Yeah, we need to. We need to get past that age, and we need to use some critical thinking, and we need to come together on these kind of things that are hurting our country and hurting our children, and we need to come together and we need to make things happen instead of pray. Still pray. I, you know, whatever prayer is to you, I Do it. I love that about you. But there also needs to be action coming together to make powerful changes.

John Dehlin [02:25:40] Yeah. It's not that we're anti prayer, but there's a, there's a negative side to urging prayer as the primary response to a tragedy. It's. It makes people feel like they're actually doing something.

Guest 3 [02:25:52] Yeah, yeah. And I hate, I hate the talk that, you know, if you're going to put everybody in two sides that we can't come together on, on some things, and I believe that we can. Glennon Doyle had a podcast about this the other day and polling both sides, there's major, major things that we can come together on that we already agree upon. And so to move forward, at least in those things, I think we should work on that instead of. Oh, and, and pray.

John Dehlin [02:26:32] Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. And pray. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess if we're going to be fair to the church, I think at some point the church did the right thing. Well, the right thing. But also I think they did spend some money and send some supplies. Covid supplies somewhere. Masks or, you know. Yeah, go ahead.

Gerardo Sumano [02:26:54] I think they sent vaccines too.

John Dehlin [02:26:56] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:26:56] Or help with paying vaccines for other countries.

Guest [02:26:59] But.

John Dehlin [02:27:00] And that's great.

Gerardo Sumano [02:27:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:27:01] And that's great. And then the only question there is, but if they're sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars, did they do enough?

Gerardo Sumano [02:27:10] That's what we're gonna address.

John Dehlin [02:27:13] That's what we're gonna address.

Radio Free Mormon [02:27:14] They're saving it for the monkeypox.

John Dehlin [02:27:18] All right, thanks, rfm.

Radio Free Mormon [02:27:19] All right, that's the Jen's point about prayer. I agree with her about prayer.

Guest [02:27:22] Prayer.

Radio Free Mormon [02:27:22] I will say that as between prayer helping dealing with problems and the government dealing with problems, prayer has the benefit of at least not making things worse.

John Dehlin [02:27:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Governments can make things worse sometimes. For sure. All right, now we move to red meat for many of our listeners. As many of you know lately on Hulu, under the Banner of Heaven has been. It's a book by John Krakauer about Mormon fundamentalism and violence and polygamy. And there's been this seven part series on Hulu that's wrapping up what this week, I think. And it's, it's been, it's been talked a lot about in the post Mormon circles. And then I don't know how much orthodox Mormon have watched it, but certainly the church PR has been out in full force trying to condemn and dismiss and downplay any relevance of the book and the series to actual lived Mormonism. And so it's fun. It Was fun to see. The reporter ask his reaction to the movie in the book. Should we hear about that conversation? Let's hear.

Responding to Under the Banner of Heaven

▶ Video Clip 4

Video Clip 4 [02:28:38] In 2003, the church denounced the book under the Banner of Heaven by John King Krakauer, calling Krakauer a storyteller who cuts corners to make the story sound good. Now, Krakauer's book has been adapted for TV and is streaming on Hulu. What does the Church think of the Hulu adaptation? And more generally, how do you feel about the depictions of the faith in media and culture? For example, the musical, the Book of Mormon, the TV series Big Love, and the reality show Sister Wives. How is this affecting the church?

Video Clip 4 [02:29:05] Okay, I'll pose a rhetorical question first. First, given all the stuff that I just described, who has time to watch programs on tv?

Video Clip 4 [02:29:16] Fair enough.

John Dehlin [02:29:20] All right, I'm gonna pause. Any quick reaction to that?

Gerardo Sumano [02:29:24] Well, the majority of the question was not. Have you seen them? Is like, how is the church reacting? What does the church think? And how is it affecting your membership? It didn't have anything to do with, like, have you seen it? Elder Bedner?

Guest 3 [02:29:38] Yeah, I'd say the same as Gerardo. He's just. I just hate when they do this. It reminds me of thought stopping. Like, they're just. That's what they're doing. So I hate when they're. Let me ask you a question. Like, I'm done with. Let me ask you a question. No, just answer the question.

John Dehlin [02:29:55] Yeah, well, I was. I was in. I was kind of really into politics for a while, and there's this saying, never answer the question asked. Answer the question you wish had been asked. And that's something you'll see on Meet the Press and this Week with George Stephanopoulos. Pretty much every week. Rfm. What's your reaction to who has time to watch this nonsense?

Radio Free Mormon [02:30:16] I think that was his best line of the night. He had a clever line, a clever comeback, which allowed him to slip past the actual, quote, question. And frankly, when he started saying in response to that, I want to ask you a rhetorical question, I thought he was going to say, there are no gay members of the church.

John Dehlin [02:30:38] What do you mean?

Radio Free Mormon [02:30:39] Because there are no homosexual members of the church. I'm sorry. That's what I expected him to say. Right, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [02:30:44] Yeah, that's exactly what he does on that occasion. He says, let me rephrase the question.

John Dehlin [02:30:49] Right, okay.

Gerardo Sumano [02:30:50] And then he says, there's no.

John Dehlin [02:30:53] Yeah, we showed that clip last week.

Radio Free Mormon [02:30:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:30:55] Okay, keep going. Rfm. Anything else?

Radio Free Mormon [02:30:57] No, that was it.

John Dehlin [02:30:58] Okay. Yeah, I Just think it's a little smug. Like it. The fact that they'll, you know, it's. It's such a common Mormon technique to smear the critic like Jon Krakauer. He's maybe controversial, but he's a respected author. And there's credibility, for sure. There's credibility to both the book under the Banner of Heaven, the legacy of violence and sexual weirdness and obedience within Mormonism. Certainly there are important, relevant themes that under the Banner of Heaven, both in book form and in TV form, that we could all learn from, that he could acknowledge in a gracious, humble way. Right.

John Dehlin [02:31:44] And certainly the PR machine cares about it. And. And you would think that the leaders would want to see it just so that they could know what other people are watching. So it comes across as smug. It comes across as dismissive. He engages in ad hominem to dismiss. You know, the church engages in that homonym to dismiss Krakauer and as we know, Troy Williams and Lindsay Anson park and all the people that were involved in making it. But it also just appears out of touch. It's cute. It was funny, but I. I wish they would just listen. Like, if you think about Jesus. Jesus. The first thing Jesus would do to somebody in pain to a critical issue is he would listen, he would validate, he would acknowledge.

John Dehlin [02:32:28] But instead, what we're going to hear is like, I don't even have time. What's the movie called again? Like, I'm not even paying attention. And it. I just wish they were humble when. And willing to listen and more in

Gerardo Sumano [02:32:39] touch when the show. It's titled after a phrase that a prophet of the church used under the Banner of Heaven. That's a phrase that John Taylor used when talking about polygamy.

John Dehlin [02:32:53] I didn't know that. That's great input, Gerardo.

Radio Free Mormon [02:32:56] Thank you. Yeah. And Gerardo's right. I mean, the reality is he knows exactly what's going on in this show. He knows exactly what's in the book. He's not ignorant of it. This is what I believe to be something that is not correct, what he's stating in order to give the impression, oh, I'm too busy building this wall. Right. Was that Ezra, Nehemiah, Whatever it is, I think it's Nehemiah too busy building this wall to come down there. So I'm too busy doing all this stuff, all these projects with which apparently Elder Bednar is personally involved in. So it actually consumes all of his time. All of these projects the church is doing doesn't have time to Even pay any attention to what's on tv.

Radio Free Mormon [02:33:37] Never even heard about this, doesn't know what's in it. And I will also say that there was a cost to his answering it that way. You know, I was in this debate last November and with the three Amigos. And in retrospect, there were a number of places where I had to make decisions to go this way or that way because I can't go everywhere at once. And there were a number of missed opportunities that I recognized that I, I missed. And I think that Elder Bednar missed an opportunity to make a meaningful comment about under the Banner of Heaven, which obviously would have been spun his way and the church's way, and I get that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:34:21] Right. But he missed that opportunity because tons of people are watching it. And to say, I'm too busy to watch it does nothing to address the issues that those people have.

John Dehlin [02:34:34] Yeah. What if his response was, yeah, man, our history is complex and we've had. We've done good things, but we've also made mistakes and history is problematic. And yeah, there's a lot that I've learned from all this. And I think there's some things, things we can take away, ways we can do, you know, better. Wouldn't that be a type of Christlike response? That would be impressive, right? It would be. Yay, even inspiring. Yay. Even Christlike.

Gerardo Sumano [02:35:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:35:03] Yeah, I think. Is that fair? Yeah. All right, let's. This, this next part is, for me one of the most, I don't know, potentially problematic or explosive parts of the whole Q A. Not to build it up too much, but let's hear how the church has been mischaracterized.

▶ Video Clip 5

Video Clip 5 [02:35:23] So the most honest answer is I, you know, I've read about this stuff. The Salt Lake Tribune that you've already mentioned said they had as one of their headlines, banner. What's it called? Banner Under Heaven.

Video Clip 5 [02:35:36] Yes.

Video Clip 5 [02:35:36] Yeah. Banner under.

Video Clip 5 [02:35:37] Under the Banner of Heaven.

Video Clip 5 [02:35:38] Fact or fiction? There's some discussion about how accurate is. How fictional is it. So this is not new. Christ was mischaracterized. We have been mischaracterized since 1830, when the church was re established. That's always been the case. I don't think it will ever go away. We don't like it, but we don't spend all of our time trying to respond to it. We have a mission to fulfill and we're moving forward to accomplish that mission.

Video Clip 5 [02:36:09] Okay, we are.

Gerardo Sumano [02:36:13] All right, so here's the phrase. This is by John Taylor, prophet of the church. God is greater than the United States. And when the government conflicts with Heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of heaven against the government.

Gerardo Sumano [02:36:29] So, yeah, just it was a little hard for me to see him dismiss the title since it's like a pretty known quote you by John Taylor, but maybe it's not that known. And then the other thing that I. I included a slide after because the first thing that came to my mind when he said the headline Fact versus Fiction under the Banner of Heaven was not the Solic Tribune article. In fact, I started looking for the fact versus Fiction article and it took me a while to find it. But the one I could find and the one when you type in on Google Fact versus Fiction on the Banner of Heaven, the first thing it comes up is Fair Latter Day Saints or Fair Mormon articles on under the matter. So I wonder which one he was talking about. Was he confusing Sal Tribune with.

John Dehlin [02:37:27] Oh, wow.

Gerardo Sumano [02:37:28] Okay. But yeah, I thought that was interesting.

John Dehlin [02:37:31] All right, that is interesting. Did you have. Okay, yeah. Rfm, let's get you in here.

Radio Free Mormon [02:37:41] What's going on with my picture? Can you hear me?

John Dehlin [02:37:43] Oh, your. Looks like your picture froze.

Radio Free Mormon [02:37:45] This is my ventriloquist act where I get to speak without moving my lips. Give me a second. I'll take a drink from a glass of water too. Okay, well, at least I've got a good expression on my face. I could look at that frozen image all day.

John Dehlin [02:37:59] One thing you can. Well, as soon as maybe in a second you can either stop your camera and start it. Try stopping and starting your camera using.

Radio Free Mormon [02:38:08] Oh, no, I'm enjoying this way too much. Okay, so I'll do it right after I say this.

Gerardo Sumano [02:38:11] Okay.

Radio Free Mormon [02:38:12] I feel like I'm, I don't know, reporting from somewhere in Ukraine. And you've got the image up there and you're hearing the reporter's voice. Okay, so here we are. No, the two main words in this were mischaracterized in Jesus for me, because now he got to immediately say that the church is being mischaracterized by the series, which all of a sudden I guess he knows a lot about since he hasn't had time to watch it. But he knows enough to know that the church is being mischaracterized. So he has his cake of saying it's mischaracterized and it gets to eat it too, by not mentioning any of the points where he feels that the church is being mischaracterized.

Radio Free Mormon [02:38:48] And the cherry on top of this Sunday is that this is what happened to Jesus too. And this is what happened to the church ever since its beginning. And you know it's going to keep happening. Why? Because we're true. We're the real thing. And the persecution and mischaracterization prove it. Now I'll go and try and fix my camera.

John Dehlin [02:39:10] Yeah, you can either stop and start your camera or you can exit out of Streamyard and come back in. So try.

Radio Free Mormon [02:39:15] Oh, I'll try and stop and start the camera.

John Dehlin [02:39:17] Yeah, do both.

Radio Free Mormon [02:39:18] Hello. Did that work?

John Dehlin [02:39:19] Not yet. Rfm. Really quickly though. I'll just say for me, what was most disturbing about this is who's done more misrepresenting the critics in of the church and the media over the past 200 years? Of the church, whatever. How many years? Who's done more misrepresenting? Critics in the media or the church itself? Who's more responsible for misrepresenting during that time? Mischaracterizing. Who's done the mischaracterizing? The church about itself or media and critics? Am I. Is that just the obvious point?

Gerardo Sumano [02:40:04] Yeah, I would say the church about itself. Right. Even if we just start thinking $100 billion. I mean, the church is saying we're being mischaracterized, but that's the truth. And then they come out and say it's true and hid it and they hide their history and they said all the stuff on the gospel topic, essays were anti Mormon lies for decades and decades. So yeah, I would say the church, but.

John Dehlin [02:40:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're back, you're back. Rfm. Are you sitting still just to punk us? Got you, got you, got you. You're the best. Yeah, yeah. And wasn't it funny he started out by saying now to be honest because what that signaled is his previous answer wasn't fully honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:40:56] I think he's actually said to be the. The most honest answer.

John Dehlin [02:41:01] Degrees of honesty, right?

Radio Free Mormon [02:41:03] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:41:03] Degrees of honest responses.

Radio Free Mormon [02:41:04] We're going to approach a little closer to honesty with this answer.

Ensign Peak, Tithing, and Financial Transparency

John Dehlin [02:41:08] Yeah, well, speaking of that and rfm, we know we have to lose you soon. So this is one of the most important parts that we're gonna. That we're gonna now cover. It's the issue about the billion dollar, you know, investment at Ensign Peak and humanitarian aid.

Radio Free Mormon [02:41:25] So it's only millions of dollars. I understand.

John Dehlin [02:41:27] I know. I've got clips of that. So we'll get to that. That this is a big deal. This next part,

▶ Video Clip 6

Video Clip 6 [02:41:35] getting really tight on time. So I'm going to try to run through some questions kind of in a rapid fire with over 100 billion in funds and assets. The LDS Church has more capability than any other church in the country to help eliminate poverty. What more could the church do in terms of humanitarian efforts here?

Video Clip 6 [02:41:50] Okay, I hope I address some of that and what I just said you wanted to move quick. And number two, if you take a look at the stock market, I don't think it's 100 million anymore. And I want to make one other comment about this. People want to bang on and say, well, you've got all that money in reserve. Yeah. And it's a good idea for other people to follow that example.

Video Clip 6 [02:42:16] We believe that there are, you can read in the Old Testament about seven years of famine and seven years of plenty. It's a good idea to prepare. These undertakings that I've described are resource consuming, not resource generating. And a lot of people depend on the resource that we provide.

Video Clip 6 [02:42:38] And if things are different in the future than they are now, we think it's provident and wise to prepare to maintain that kind of support in an uncertain economic environment. Okay, I sounded like a business professor.

Video Clip 6 [02:42:56] He did.

John Dehlin [02:42:59] He sure did. Yeah. So, man, there's so much there. I want to just kind of go first and I want to hear you guys, but I just want to get it out of my brain before I forget it. First of all, you know, saying that our real estate is resource consuming and, and not, you know, revenue generating. Go ahead.

Gerardo Sumano [02:43:22] I think he means the charity contributions that he described on his doc. That's why I think that's what he's talking about.

John Dehlin [02:43:29] Okay, well, Gerardo, you. You prepared some slides, so. No, no, no.

Gerardo Sumano [02:43:33] Go, go, go.

John Dehlin [02:43:33] Okay, so the, the. So obviously one of the big, most major gaps of this whole thing is that when he answered the question, even though she asked about billions, he responds with millions. And this is kind of a really big deal. We. I got this from a. A post on ex Mormon Reddit by Japanese piano too. But what's. What. What is what was acknowledged there not only is that he said Hundreds of mil, 100 million instead of billion, so he said M instead of B. What a Sleuther uncovered was that when the church re released the audio of his gaffe, or lack of acknowledgment where he said 100 million instead of 100 billion, the church actually edited the audio and the video in their re release of his response, as I understand.

John Dehlin [02:44:33] I don't even know if there was an acknowledgment. But what we'll go ahead and do is play that now. So here is. Here's the original again. Listen, for the million.

Guest [02:44:42] Stock market. I don't think it's 100 million anymore.

John Dehlin [02:44:47] Okay. So he says 100 million. Right. And then here is the church's stock market.

Guest [02:44:54] I don't think it's 100 million anymore.

John Dehlin [02:44:56] So here is now the church's re release of the audio and the video from that episode.

Guest 2 [02:45:03] Efforts here.

Guest [02:45:04] If you take a look at the stock market, I don't think it's 100 billion anymore. We.

John Dehlin [02:45:11] And I'll just play that one more time because I. Yeah, can you play the whole video?

Radio Free Mormon [02:45:14] Because they draw. They pull back away so you can't

John Dehlin [02:45:17] see his legs anymore. Wait, Arth, I'm sorry.

Radio Free Mormon [02:45:20] That's okay. You just play the whole video because

Gerardo Sumano [02:45:23] they, they took out part of a

Radio Free Mormon [02:45:25] pullback, a big pullback shot from him when he says they change it to billion instead of million so you can't actually see his lips.

Gerardo Sumano [02:45:33] Oh,

Radio Free Mormon [02:45:36] that's the version I saw in the, in, in the highlight reel for Deseret or for the church newsroom.

John Dehlin [02:45:43] All right, let me just. I have to make an edit to the slide to allow that. So I'll just do. I'll just make that change now. I'll relaunch it and play it again. Editing real time here, everybody.

Guest 2 [02:46:01] Efforts here.

Guest [02:46:02] If you take a look at the stock market, I don't think it's 100 billion anymore.

Radio Free Mormon [02:46:09] We come back in.

John Dehlin [02:46:10] Was that it?

Radio Free Mormon [02:46:11] Yeah, they do the, the pullback for the billion and then they come back in.

John Dehlin [02:46:17] Yeah. So they, they panned away so that you couldn't see his lips. Is that what you're saying?

Radio Free Mormon [02:46:22] Oh, yeah, absolutely. By the way, what does this look like when they're changing this? Because we know he said million, now he says billion. Did they actually have to go back and have Elder Bednar re record that line in audio so they could dub it in to the actual thing that he said live. And the first time, the first thing I heard, I thought about when I heard about this was that Elder Pullman lives.

John Dehlin [02:46:54] Yeah. Yeah, me too. Me too.

Radio Free Mormon [02:46:55] I thought this is something that the church would try and like not do again.

John Dehlin [02:46:59] Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [02:47:00] Since 1984.

John Dehlin [02:47:02] And, and, and John Larsen's gonna be doing an episode on this. I think you and Bill Real have covered that in the past. For those who don't know what you're talking about, can you give a 20 second explanation of what the Ronald Pullman thing is?

Radio Free Mormon [02:47:13] October General Conference, 1984. General Authority Ronald E. Pullman gave a talk that the church did not like. So they had him rewrite it, go back into the tabernacle and re record the new and improved speech as if he were giving it be in general conference, complete with a cough track, and then broadcast that or reproduced it as if the second improved speech were the original speech that he gave.

John Dehlin [02:47:39] Yeah, and this is them doing that again. But. But it's worse. It's worse. Somebody went back. Somebody went back and looked at the growth of the Ensign Peak Fund since before COVID Right. And it's actually still up like 10%. So he was actually.

Gerardo Sumano [02:48:00] Well, yeah. I think the argument was that the stock market market as a whole is still up since 2019. Because the thing was, the reveal of the 100 billion was in 2019.

Guest [02:48:13] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [02:48:13] And if everyone remembers, it started going like crazy up in 2020, and now it has come down. But because of the growth in 2020, today, the 100 billion would be greater.

John Dehlin [02:48:27] That's right.

Gerardo Sumano [02:48:28] Than the 2019 reveal.

John Dehlin [02:48:30] Exactly. And so it's still up. The point is it hasn't gone lower than what it was. So not only is he misrepresenting and saying millions, not billions, which benefit the doubt. Maybe he just made a mistake, but also he's giving the impression that it's no longer that big when we know factually it's bigger than it was when it was revealed. And what we're also not talking about is the fact that the Church hidden that it had over $100 billion in real estate, cash, stocks, bonds. It hid that from the membership until it was leaked and revealed. And again, that's just a gross egregious amount of money for a Christian church to be sitting on when there's so much poverty and illness and nakedness and lack of clean water and violence and sickness in the world.

John Dehlin [02:49:22] So children dying. Yeah, and children dying. And, you know, so that goes to the second point again, which is what literally, what was the parable of the. Of the talent? Does anybody remember Jesus's parable of the talent? Can anybody remind us what that was? He says Jesus leads. Right. What was the parable of talent is basically Jesus saying, if you've got your coin and you bury it, you're bad, you're in trouble.

Gerardo Sumano [02:49:50] Right.

John Dehlin [02:49:51] But if you use it, you know, you're blessed. Right. The fact that the Church is stockpiling hundreds of billions of dollars while they tell Africans to pay 10 on their meagly widow. Measly widows might. It's just super hypocritical, I think.

Guest 3 [02:50:06] Well, and Jesus, when the. The story that comes to my Mind is when Jesus went to the temple and he overturned all the tables.

Guest 2 [02:50:15] Right.

Guest 3 [02:50:16] Because they were, you know, using money and, and selling and earning that at the temple.

Guest [02:50:23] Right.

Guest 3 [02:50:23] You know, in the most sacred place. And so I just don't see Jesus hoarding $100 billion when there's so much need in the world.

John Dehlin [02:50:35] But he says it's a virtue. He says that calamity is surely going to come. And not only is he doubling down and saying he's proud that their horrible recording by this point, 150 billion. And that's just the stuff that we know about. This is literally a trillion dollar church or a half trillion dollar church. Someday it'll be a trillion dollar church. Not only is he, you know, you know, not saying he's embarrassed, he's doubling down and saying he's proud of the way that we're hoarding money and he's encouraging other people to do it too. Which I believe in having savings and I, I believe in being financially responsible. But it's interesting that that's how he's playing it. Jen,

Guest 3 [02:51:16] I forgot my train of thought here, but it just. Well, Jesus will provide. That's what I would say to them. Jesus will provide.

Gerardo Sumano [02:51:26] Isn't that what I tell the African people?

Guest 3 [02:51:28] Yeah. Jesus will provide. If you have faith, if you have faith, if you pray and if you help those in need and you give, Jesus will provide a way. He'll provide a way for you. And if you're his church, his only true church, he won't, he won't leave you stranded.

John Dehlin [02:51:49] So, you know, use your money for.

Guest 3 [02:51:51] Use your money.

John Dehlin [02:51:52] Yeah.

Guest 3 [02:51:52] Do what I said, do what my example taught you and I will provide for you. That's what Jesus would say.

John Dehlin [02:52:00] Heal the sick, Feed the hungry, Clothe the naked.

Guest 3 [02:52:03] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:52:04] Don't hoard hundreds of billions of dollars.

Guest 3 [02:52:07] Yeah. Leave everything, sell everything, give it away and follow me.

John Dehlin [02:52:13] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:52:13] I don't think we're really responding to his analogy though of the seven year famine.

Guest 3 [02:52:20] Oh yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:52:21] But when you look at the, the story, it was as I remember it is it was everyone you know in Egypt giving part of like their, their assets or whatever to save during seven years so that then the next seven years they would get it back. Right. So when our church membership gonna get back the $100 billion that they've contributed. So it's not an, it's not a good analogy that he's using.

John Dehlin [02:53:01] Interesting. Rfn. Any, any final points on, on this part? Gerardo, I know you've got some slides,

Gerardo Sumano [02:53:08] but those are rfm I did them for rfm.

John Dehlin [02:53:11] Oh, rfm. You want to talk about these slides real quick?

Radio Free Mormon [02:53:13] No, I do want to say that that's his great point that Gerardo just brought up. Yeah. Bad analogy. You never get it back. Nope, it's gone.

Guest 3 [02:53:23] And.

John Dehlin [02:53:24] And there's actually a prophecy by Lorenzo Snow, was it, who said. Yeah. That someday the. The church will no longer require tithing. Is like a couple hundred billion maybe a good time to stop requiring tithing. Anyway.

Gerardo Sumano [02:53:40] Yeah, go ahead.

Radio Free Mormon [02:53:42] And I want to comment on what Jen said because I think what she said was extremely important and should not be passed over lightly, which is that the one true and living church of Jesus Christ upon the face of the earth demonstrates by this practice that they have no faith in God.

Radio Free Mormon [02:54:01] They have no faith in Jesus Christ. The only thing they have faith in is money. That's it. Because if they did have faith in God, they would do just what Jen said. They would spend the money and trust in God to give them more so they could continue to do good things with it. The fact they don't do that shows that their faith is not in God. Their faith is in Mammon. And that's always a strange statement in the New Testament and one that's difficult to comprehend that you need to worship God and not worship Mammon.

Radio Free Mormon [02:54:35] Well, this is a classic illustration and visual aid for anybody who's having trouble understanding that story statement. But the LDS Church does is what worshiping Mammon looks like.

John Dehlin [02:54:50] Yeah. Amen. You cannot serve God in Mammon. Jesus said that.

Gerardo Sumano [02:54:57] Plus on the seven year famine and seven year whatever. And you had a clear prophecy of clear years. Right. In the Bible where like Joseph was told there's going to be seven years of this, seven years of that. But here we're playing like blindly and thinking that something, a calamity is going to come, not really knowing what calamity is going to come or when it's going to come.

Radio Free Mormon [02:55:24] And.

Gerardo Sumano [02:55:25] Well, what I already said that members are not even going to get it back anyway.

John Dehlin [02:55:29] Yeah, it's like, don't invoke real prophets who actually prophesy unless you're going to prophesy yourself.

Guest 2 [02:55:35] Right? Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:55:36] All right, rfm, We've got it. We've got some slides here. Do you want to talk to the slides a little bit?

Guest 3 [02:55:41] No.

Radio Free Mormon [02:55:42] I always say no when I start talking. I'm an naysayer with exceptions. But yeah, this is a great slide that Gerardo used his skills to create. We were talking on the phone yesterday about this and the main thing is this is that I've been talking with the individual who spearheaded the Widow's Might Project, and hopefully we'll get a link to that in the show notes. Because the Widow's Might Project is a very recent development that not only this individual, but a number of experts, both members and non members, have gotten together and sussed out and investigated and researched the information that is available to find out the information that's not available and to figure out where this.

Radio Free Mormon [02:56:25] What the church's finances really look like, the part that they don't want us to know by looking at the things that we can know. And so obviously that takes a great deal of expertise, and I don't have that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:56:37] So my contribution to the widow's. My project was to have this individual send it to me in advance for review, not to correct anything he had on there, but to make sure that it was something that somebody like a layperson like me, who doesn't understand statistics, that it was simple enough for me to understand. That was my contribution to the Widow's Mite Project. But what this individual told me yesterday is that we need to make it very clear that the $906 million that the church has now claimed in this latest report is given for charitable donations.

Radio Free Mormon [02:57:18] It's gone up 22 times from what it's been historically, since 1985, of 50 million a year. And now all of a sudden, it jumps up 22 times to 906 million. That is bogus. That is not real. Well, it's real in the sense that for the very first time, they added the entire collection for Fast Offerings into the category of charitable contributions.

Radio Free Mormon [02:57:49] And that's about $850 million a year. And everybody knows Fast Offerings, right? They're collected from the members in addition to tithing, they're given to the bishop. And then the bishop tries to use those to help the needs of people in his ward, usually based upon their worthiness and following the commandments. And there may be some difference in the way it's administered. It may have to go up to Salt Lake City now and then come back. I'm not sure. But basically, that's what it's for. It's for limited use for members of the church in need based upon usually worthiness that's determined by the bishop who gets to oversee that.

Radio Free Mormon [02:58:20] The main point I'm trying to make here is that the sudden job was a complete illusion on the part of the church and that the $50 million of charitable giving, which is what most people would think is charitable giving, giving to people outside the church, not based upon their faithfulness to the tenets of Mormonism, that remained the same. So if you got that graph, this is what Gerardo did with it.

Gerardo Sumano [02:58:47] Summarize. So, basically, because we were debating last time whether we were going to trust, whether we trusted the 900 million versus the 50 million and if that jump seemed realistic, Right. I tended to side with the church a little bit and say, okay, let's trust them and take them at their word that they jumped from 50 million or 40, 40 million to 900 million. But basically, what you're saying, our family, is that you got an insider who confirmed to you that the 50 million has not increased, that the 50 million that the Church has given out in welfare has remained the same even in the year 2021. But what they've done to artificially increase the number to 906 million is now to count the fast offerings that now that the church has always, you know, turned back to. To faithful members when they're in need.

Radio Free Mormon [02:59:45] Right. And not to be discount Gerardo or his reaction because the last time was just last week, remember, we were having this kind of argument. He's going, well, I believe these numbers. And I'm going, I'm suspicious of these numbers.

John Dehlin [02:59:57] Yeah, I'm not.

Radio Free Mormon [02:59:58] I'm not believing these because this. Well, because the church has taught me by sad experience that I can't trust what they say. And Gerardo being the young innocent, is. Is still believing them. And, you know, I appreciate that because it's really good illustration with Gerardo. This is exactly the response that the church intended to evoke from the members or the people listening to them is what Gerardo did, which is to believe them that they actually increased their charitable donations by 20 times or 22 times over the previous year.

Radio Free Mormon [03:00:40] And it didn't happen. Didn't happen. And I envision in my mind I was talking to my friend about this. What does that look like in real terms? Because here you've got this group of apostles and all the other people who are. Are involved, and they're sitting there saying, oh, my gosh, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? We got $50 million a year. That's what we have been giving in charitable contributions. Now it comes out all of a sudden that we've got, you know, more money than God sitting in his bank account in Salt Lake City and all our investments.

Radio Free Mormon [03:01:08] That doesn't look good. What should we do? Well, we should increase our charitable donations, obviously, because if we don't, that's really going to look bad. So they start talking about that. And then one really smart guy in the bottom back corner comes forward. He's wearing glasses as well, John, with thick black rims. And he says, hey, wait a second, I've got a better idea. We don't actually have to increase our charitable donations. We'll just take this whole column of fast offerings and we'll move it over here to the charitable donations column. And now it'll look like we are giving $906 million when actually we're just giving 50 million at least as that category had been described previously and in previous reports. And everybody looks at that guy and says, you're brilliant. That's what we're doing. And by the way, you get a promotion.

John Dehlin [03:02:01] But it's so like, I don't think these are evil men and I think they want to do good. So it is kind of mind boggling that they're, that they wouldn't, number one, want to use the money to help more people. And that too, they wouldn't see it as their own self interest because if they started some big literacy program or cleaned a bunch of water for a bunch of people or freaking developed a vaccine ahead of time so that they could save more lives, like they would be heralded as a hero. Like what? As heroes, what's a better missionary effort than to like really do good all around the world and make people super grateful? Like even the KKK I hear, has implemented drug addiction programs as a recruiting tool. Like why wouldn't the church want to use its money to buy good PR and membership and allegiance instead of fake it?

Gerardo Sumano [03:02:53] They do. They use those 50 million.

John Dehlin [03:02:56] Well that, I mean, you're joking, right? Because, well, Your point is 50 million

Gerardo Sumano [03:03:00] is still a lot. It's not a lot compared to what they have.

John Dehlin [03:03:04] And that's what these slides are supposed to show, right?

Gerardo Sumano [03:03:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:03:07] Let's do that really quick.

Gerardo Sumano [03:03:08] Yeah. So RFM was asking, came up with this idea. Let's just show the next one. Yeah. Of showing the growth of what we know about the 100 billion fund. So on the report of the Washington Post, we know that the 100 billion fund started in 2012 with 40 billion. That's, that's as early as I could find.

John Dehlin [03:03:32] Can I just say it's almost inaccurate to call it 100 billion because I, I think the total fund funds.

Guest [03:03:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:03:37] Were around 120 back then. Yeah, that's real estate, cash, stocks, bonds, municipalities and all that. And that's just what we know about.

Gerardo Sumano [03:03:46] Right.

John Dehlin [03:03:46] So we say 100 billion. It was really 120, but then it's grown since then because the church made a gazillion off of like, Gamestop and Tesla.

Gerardo Sumano [03:03:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:03:56] And all these, you know, so it's probably 150. And that's just the stuff that we know about. But let's just go with a hundred for the sake of simplicity.

Radio Free Mormon [03:04:02] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:04:03] He was not going to fit on the, The. On the screen. No, I'm serious. Look at that.

John Dehlin [03:04:08] So you couldn't see the blue. I'm like, haro, you left off the. The blue part in the bottom.

Guest [03:04:14] And it's like.

John Dehlin [03:04:14] No, that's just how small it is. Yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:04:17] So. So that's. The red represents the 100 billion fund, how it's grown over time. So 2012, we had 40 billion. 2014, we have 60 billion. 2019, we have a hundred billion. And I put 2021 to counteract apostle David Bedner, that he has gone down. While he has not gone down, it has stayed the same at least. Anyway, so. And then we have the comparison with the amount of money that the church gives out on welfare and humanitarian aid. And this is. This is presenting that little, like, almost invisible line represents the 40. 40 million.

Radio Free Mormon [03:05:05] Wait a second. You're. Okay, that is actually. Hang on, let me put on my glasses. There is. That's actually on there. I thought that was on the other slide.

John Dehlin [03:05:16] No, it's so small you literally can't even see it.

Radio Free Mormon [03:05:21] Yeah, there's a. There's a. Okay.

Gerardo Sumano [03:05:25] Because if I had done it. Yeah, if I had done it right. You wouldn't be able to see it.

John Dehlin [03:05:30] If you had made it 120 billion or 150 billion.

Guest [03:05:33] Like.

Gerardo Sumano [03:05:33] Yeah, yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:05:36] So that not only shows how small it is, but it does also show. I think the main reason I suggested it was mainly just to show that charitable donations as previously defined have remained constant in spite of the increase in the value of the church holdings.

Radio Free Mormon [03:05:56] So we would expect. I would expect that the more money you make, the more charitable donations you're going to give. I don't know why I would think that. Maybe because I was a Mormon for 40 years and still am. And the idea is the more money I make, the more tithing I pay.

Radio Free Mormon [03:06:15] There's a direct connection between the money you make and the money you pay, the money you give out for good things and help people out. But what has happened with the church is that once again, it's do as I say, not do as I do, and the value of the Church is going up almost exponentially over time. And the amount of charitable donations has remained constant at a rate that is almost impossible to see. It's so small in comparison.

Gerardo Sumano [03:06:46] Yeah, if you go to the previous slide, you can see. So the previous light represents 40. 40 million. 40 million. 40 million for 2019. And then on 2021, I put the 900 million just so you can see 900 million versus 100 billion so I

Radio Free Mormon [03:07:03] can see the false.

Gerardo Sumano [03:07:04] Yeah, yeah, you can see donations amount.

Radio Free Mormon [03:07:07] It's the actual charitable donations amount that is so small I can't see it. Yeah, perfect.

John Dehlin [03:07:14] There was. There's one question here from Kevin M. He asks, isn't Ensign Peak just stocks? And the answer is no. It may be that Ensign Peak only handles the stocks, but I directly communicated with Lars Nielsen back before he decided to release his brother David Nielsen's, you know, insider data. And, and the, their overall estimation of the assets that they were tracking included real estate, cash, stocks, bonds, etc, and that's why I'm saying 120 billion at least. And that's just what Ensign Peak was tracking. And I've got all the PDFs to show all that insider data.

Guest 3 [03:07:59] Yeah. And people are saying like in the comments, like the church should at least do the 10 that it asks members to do.

John Dehlin [03:08:07] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:08:09] Myself believes that all us members give that tithe to. I think almost all of it should be used personally to do what Jesus would do. But, but at least that amount, that's kind of what they're, they're stating in the comments. And you know, I think that's the least, the least that they should do.

Guest [03:08:35] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:08:37] What I said earlier, I still stand, stand behind. So.

John Dehlin [03:08:41] Yeah, it's just when he says we follow Christ, we put our past behind us. We're not businessmen, we're not bankers, we're not lawyers, we follow Christ. This is like one of the most outrageous examples of him literally not following Christ and doing, literally the church doing literally opposite of what Christ taught. Rfm, you are so amazing. And, and we've kept you past, past time. I just want to say support Radio Free Mormon. Donate to Radio Free Mormon right now. Go to radiofreemormon.com or org, whatever it is. Donate to this dude. Check out Mormonism Live every Wednesdays at 6:20 Utah time, Mountain time. RFM, you're a treasure to us all. Support Bill Real Mormonism Live. Radio Free Mormon final words. Ready? Free Mormon, goodbye.

Radio Free Mormon [03:09:35] Oh, thank you everybody. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm sorry, I've got a deck out after we've only been at this for three hours.

John Dehlin [03:09:45] Jen is sending you the heart.

Radio Free Mormon [03:09:46] Jen, thank you so much, everybody. Have a great time. Mud along without me. I talked to Gerardo yesterday. I gave him all of my other points, which I'm sure he can mention in my absence.

John Dehlin [03:09:57] Okay, we love you, rfm.

Radio Free Mormon [03:09:59] Thank you so much. Bye.

John Dehlin [03:10:00] Bye, brother. And viewers and listeners, please don't go away. A lot of the really good stuff we're now just about to cover, and the next part is something that Horatio Gerardo is sort of an expert on and I know a couple things about. It's now time to see Bednar's response to the LGBT question. Should we go there next?

Gerardo Sumano [03:10:18] Yeah.

Bednar on LGBTQ Members and Same-Sex Marriage

John Dehlin [03:10:19] All right, let's go.

Guest 2 [03:10:23] I wanted you had mentioned that you're working on the federal level with LGBTQ members. Can you talk a little bit about what you're doing there? And then to follow up, can you envision a day when LGBTQ church members can marry and be sealed within the church?

Radio Free Mormon [03:10:37] Okay.

Guest [03:10:39] On the first point, we talked about how what we did in Utah in 2015 was a model that that's been extended in Arizona that's also been taking place in Georgia. So that learning the things that we've experienced in those and things that we've learned are setting the stage to try to take that forward to the federal level.

Guest 3 [03:10:59] Okay.

Guest 2 [03:11:01] And also, can you follow up on the question that I had regarding whether you'll ever envision LGBTQ church members, Mary, being able to marry and be sealed within the church?

Guest [03:11:11] We believe that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God and that the family is central to the father's plan for the eternal destiny and happiness of his.

Guest 2 [03:11:21] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:11:23] All right, Gerardo, LGBT stuff. We talked about this last time.

Gerardo Sumano [03:11:28] Yeah, I think that was a good question by the reporter saying, like, because in, in his speech, he talked about doing a lot and on the federal level to help LGB advance LGBT rights. So the reporter asked him, okay, what are you doing at the federal level? And so he answered correctly. He said, what we did in Utah, we're doing it trying to do it in Arizona and trying to do it at the federal level.

Gerardo Sumano [03:11:55] So basically, if people know what the Equality act is, the Equality act is a bill that has been try to. Democratic senators have been trying to pass it for. For a while now. I think over five years or more. If I, I believe basically what he would do is put LGBT rights at the same level as race, in the same level of right, which religious exemptions don't have, as they have Power, but they don't have as much power.

Gerardo Sumano [03:12:33] So by, yeah, by putting anti discrimination laws for LGBT people and the same level as race, you know, would improve a lot of things in the country, especially because most discrimination today happening in the US Against LGBT people comes from religious people anyway. So the church has come up with like a counter bill called the Freedom for All act. And that's the one he's talking about, where, yes, the Freedom for All act, which the church has helped draft, basically says, yes, LGBT people, we're going to give you those rights you're looking for, but you have to give us broad exemptions to all those anti discrimination laws.

Gerardo Sumano [03:13:23] In other words, you need to allow us churches, even on our secular endeavors like universities, where we receive federal money from, you know, the taxpayer money, we want exemptions to this anti discrimination law. So we want to be allowed to keep discriminating.

Gerardo Sumano [03:13:43] And that's what the Freedom for All act is. And we want to keep practicing conversion therapy if our members want to do that. We want, you know, rights to discriminate on housing, on employment against LGBT people, even on companies that have nothing to do with the church but are owned by the church and this kind of stuff. So that's what the church is trying to look on this legislation. That's what they did in Utah, that is what they're trying to do in Arizona, and that's what they're trying to do at the federal level with the Freedom for All Act.

Gerardo Sumano [03:14:18] And so, yeah, that's what he's talking about, in my opinion. I don't think that's really advancing LGBT rights because of what I said already, most anti, most discrimination is coming from religious people. And currently there's kind of like this ambiguous ambiguity as to how much really religions have the right to discriminate against LGBT people. And passing a legislation like the Freedom of for all act would make it very explicit that religions have all the right to discriminate where right now it's kind of ambiguous. And yeah, cases are being heard on this stuff, but yeah, and then he didn't respond about same sex marriage in the church.

Gerardo Sumano [03:15:06] And so the report reporter asks again, and I think he cites the Family Proclamation and basically doesn't answer the question. Because you, you know, like, Doc, we know that doctrines in the church change all the time.

John Dehlin [03:15:20] How does it make you feel, Gerardo, as a, as a gay man, as a former Mormon, to just hear him parrot that tired line that we believe marriage is between a man and a woman now that it's legal in the entire country. And after the church spent so many decades trying to defeat it, to take the rights of marriage away from LGBT people, how does it feel in 2022 to hear him just parrot that line back?

Gerardo Sumano [03:15:51] I mean, it's hard to hear it, especially because as he's saying it, I'm remembering all the times Mormon leaders have said that same sex marriage is counterfeit. You know, they haven't only said, oh, this is what we believe, they've also come out against same sex marriage and talked against it. So, yeah, it's, it's hard, but at the same time, it's like, as best as he can do, at least he's not attacking same sex marriage.

Radio Free Mormon [03:16:23] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [03:16:25] Like they've done other times. He's saying, this is what we believe. But I mean, what are you going to do? You can't change people's minds or beliefs.

John Dehlin [03:16:36] Yeah, I just, again, I, I maybe mentioned this last time, but I hate it the way the church is like, actively working to support discrimination, but then claiming that those efforts demonstrate their love for LGBT people.

Gerardo Sumano [03:16:54] Yeah, yeah. Well, for, for sure. Helping with this legislations is not because they love LGBT people. It's because they know that LGBT rights are going to be passed by the courts or legislation no matter what. So they want to be involved in it as much as they can. So they can get all the exemptions that they want or they're looking for.

Radio Free Mormon [03:17:15] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:17:16] To keep discriminating.

John Dehlin [03:17:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just can't believe in 20. You know, again, I don't think it's, you know, these are guys. It's one thing if they're like corporate leaders or like, you know, just normal citizens. These are people not only claiming to be leaders of God's one true church, they're claiming to be special witnesses of Christ. So when we, when we exp. When we voice in this series, higher expectations of them, I don't think it's unfair. I don't think it's unreasonable because they tell us they are special witnesses of Jesus Christ, of his one true church. So can we hold them to a higher standard? Is that fair?

Gerardo Sumano [03:18:03] I think so, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:18:04] Yeah. And so when we do and we say, what would a real apostle of Jesus Christ say and do if he was trying to emulate Jesus? Maybe he'd say, man, we, we are really embarrassed at how we've treated our LGBT brothers and sisters. We encourage celibacy, which is deadly. We've encouraged mixed orientation marriages, which has doubled the divorce rates, not to mention the horrific quality of life experiences of both the LGBT married partner and the straight spouses. And we've encouraged conversion therapy for decades and, And. And fought their legal right to get married. Man, we're really sorry. And. And we're learning and we're listening. Plus, the suicide rates of LGBT people in Utah are triple the national average. We've got blood on our hands. We're so humbled and sad and sorry for what we've done, and we're now listening and learning and trying to do better. Trying to do better.

Gerardo Sumano [03:19:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:19:09] But instead it's just like, hey, we're great with the gays.

Gerardo Sumano [03:19:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:19:13] You know? Yeah, we love that. We love all people, you know, and we're fighting for their rights when really they're fighting to protect their. Their ability.

Guest [03:19:21] Right.

John Dehlin [03:19:22] To discriminate at byu. Right.

Gerardo Sumano [03:19:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:19:24] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:19:25] And I don't like. They say that they love this community, the LGBTQIA+ community, but when you love someone you don't like, you don't have talks at BYU about muskets. You don't rope off a walkway up to the Y that was lit with

John Dehlin [03:19:55] just lights with rainbows.

Guest 3 [03:19:56] Yeah, yeah. No, they didn't do anything. They weren't. It was all in love from them, you know, and love for others that they did. That. There's just. You can't. You can't say you love someone and not see them. And when the church is not seeing them and when they're not apologizing and making their membership also see them, that's not love. It's just not love. It's not unconditional love. It's not really just love if you don't see someone and are cutting off ways for your membership to also see them. And so I don't see that as loving them.

John Dehlin [03:20:52] Yeah. Not to mention the church is not supportive of gender transitions. You know?

Gerardo Sumano [03:20:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:20:58] They're punished people for gender transitions. They're discouraging gender transitions. And there was one other thing I was going to say. What were you going to say?

Gerardo Sumano [03:21:12] I did want to just explore, just very briefly, what it would look like if LGBT rights were put at the same level as race, like today at BYU school schools. Legally, the. The church would be liable for discriminating in the basis of race, even if they claim that's part of their religious belief. So they don't have they. For generally applicable laws like the discrimination against race, they don't have that right.

Gerardo Sumano [03:21:42] So putting LGBT rights at the same level wouldn't really be taking away their rights. They're. They're just putting. Granting, you know, lgbt. The Right to not be discriminated against. And. Yeah, I just wanted to say that. But like, you're saying, they're still doing it. Trans people, gay people, lesbian people at BYU schools, in church employment, even church employment that doesn't really have anything to do with the church. Like f.

Gerardo Sumano [03:22:12] Like Family Search and other companies that the church owns that they want to keep that right to fire people if they're gay or they act gay or whatever.

John Dehlin [03:22:22] And they're excommunicating same sex married gay couples.

Gerardo Sumano [03:22:25] Right.

John Dehlin [03:22:25] Which we may cover a little bit in the near future. Yeah, yeah. And to your point, Jen, is that love? If you get legally and lawfully married to your loving partner and commit to a lifelong relationship, the church will excommunicate you for that. And you want to say you love your LGBTQIA plus brothers and sisters.

Guest 3 [03:22:44] Yeah, it's not love to me.

Women, Priesthood, and Heavenly Mother

John Dehlin [03:22:48] Well, Jen, it just so happens that the next slide is about women.

Guest 3 [03:22:53] Oh.

John Dehlin [03:22:54] And how the church treats women.

Guest 3 [03:22:56] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:22:56] All right, I'm gonna guess he says that we're great to our women. That's just my guess. But let's just wait and see.

Guest 2 [03:23:05] You mentioned that women lead within the church in many ways. Will there ever be a female priority? President of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Can a woman be a prophet in the lineage of Joseph Smith?

Guest [03:23:14] Great question. We follow the pattern of the ancient church. We believe that a man must be called of God by prophecy and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority to preach the gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof. The pattern, anciently, was that the apostles were men. That. That's the pattern.

John Dehlin [03:23:35] All right, Jen, you get the first response to that?

Guest 3 [03:23:40] I don't even know what to say anymore. I. Yeah, the. I don't know. It's his interpretation, it's religious interpretation, that it was led by man. Men. And. Oh, there's just so much there. There's so much there that I want to do. Actually a whole other podcast on episode on. But yeah, basically he's right. You know, he's saying the truth there. He's. I mean, he didn't come right out and say, no, they never will, but he's basically saying, no, they never will.

John Dehlin [03:24:25] And he's saying it's what God wants.

Guest 3 [03:24:27] Yeah. And he's saying that's the way it was set up, which I disagree with even in Christ's time, but that's a whole other thing for me. But it's just it. No, basically, no. I don't know what else to say. That's just. Yeah, yeah, it's his. It's the very religious interpretation of. Of what they say. Christ didn't even have a church anyways. I don't even know what to say. My words are like. I'm like, yeah, I'm overwhelmed.

John Dehlin [03:25:08] Like, he doesn't even have the wisdom and the insight or the knowledge to just say, oh, maybe God wanted awful patriarchy for six millennia, or maybe humankind has been horrendously patriarchal for six millennia and church has reflected that. Like, he doesn't even have the wisdom to tease out the fact that maybe if the Bible was that way, it was a reflection of the flaws of mankind, not God's will.

Guest 3 [03:25:41] And that's my whole point is like a group of men got together with all the scrolls and they decided which ones they liked, which ones they didn't. And the ones that they didn't, they destroyed or they buried or they put in caves which are later found, which are still not even talked about in modern day. So silencing all the women.

John Dehlin [03:26:05] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:26:07] You know, and. And moved forward from there. There's just. There's so. There's so many beautiful feminine women in history that are never talked about in religion, the religious realm. And their writings that have been founded and written into English for 70 years are still not even talked about. So it. There's just a whole lot of stuff there to. To go about. But. But yeah, at least he. At least he was honest talking about the church. He said it was ran by patriarchy. It's going to be. And there's no place for women in. In that spot.

John Dehlin [03:26:57] And it's his view that God wants that. Yeah, there's a. There's a. A commenter. Hondur writes there is a female apostle mentioned in the New Testament.

Guest 2 [03:27:06] It.

John Dehlin [03:27:06] Gerardo, you've got a slide in here. Do you want to talk about the slide?

Guest 2 [03:27:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:27:12] And there was also an interesting tweet by. Was it Tater Petrie or Taylor Petrie?

Gerardo Sumano [03:27:17] Facebook post. That's where I learned about this.

John Dehlin [03:27:19] Yeah. Do you want to talk about that?

Gerardo Sumano [03:27:20] Yeah. So he just.

John Dehlin [03:27:21] Who's Taylor Petrie?

Gerardo Sumano [03:27:23] He's a Mormon scholar and he's the editor of Dialogue.

Radio Free Mormon [03:27:27] Yep.

Gerardo Sumano [03:27:28] Journal of Mormon Thought.

John Dehlin [03:27:29] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:27:30] But he made a kind of like a funny Facebook post about Elder Bednar contradicting the Bible because there is an. A woman apostle mentioned in the Bible. And so I Googled it and I found that actually. Yeah. That the. There's a significant amount of scholars who believe that Junia, who's mentioned in Romans 16:7 was indeed an apostle, considering Paul's attitudes towards apostleship and the way he, he's talking about her. And so yeah, it seems like there was a women apostle mentioned in Romans.

Guest 3 [03:28:10] Well, there's also in the Gospel of Mary Magdalene in her roles that were discovered and translated that no one knows about. But she also says in her writings that the apostles said that she was an apostle and she was loved above all. So above all other apostles. So there's just so, so much there to unpack that he's just not obviously is a lazy learner and has not studied that. And there's a lot that you can find and learn about. And, and I don't believe it. Like, I don't believe that Christ and God and Heavenly Father would make the beautiful women or humans of all kind, humans of all kinds, and then make them less than to another because he loved us less. Because he, you know, wanted us to be, you know, quiet and submissive and like all these things. I don't know.

John Dehlin [03:29:33] Or because you had the wrong anatomy.

Guest 3 [03:29:35] Yeah. God, like God made that like we're not enough in because we're a woman. Like that's ridiculous. Yeah, it's ridiculous to think that way. And it's man made patriarchy and religion that decided that and moved forward with that for many, many years. So I think we're done. Yeah, we're done with that. So we're gonna.

John Dehlin [03:30:06] You're done with that?

Guest 3 [03:30:07] I'm done with that. I'm done with that. I think there's a lot of women with me on that. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:30:15] And also there's double speak here because, you know, he's quoting some article of faith that Joseph Smith wrote in something, you know, back in the 1830s. But, but we also believe, if you, if you quote the same articles of faith, we believe all that God has revealed, all that he does now reveal. Does anyone want to continue finish? And we believe that he will yet reveal many great important things pertaining to

Guest 3 [03:30:44] the kingdom of God.

John Dehlin [03:30:44] Exactly. Somebody learned their articles of faith. I mean, isn't the Mormon Church based on the teaching of, of, of continuing an ongoing revelation? And whether it's the temple changes, whether it's the lifting of the black priesthood and temple ban, whether it's, you know, a million things that the church has changed over the years, adding Melchizedek priesthood when it, that was never originally part of it. Changing the church's name. Right. Changing the temple ceremony. Like if getting rid of instituting polygamy and then getting rid of it. Right. There's like a Gazillion things that the church has changed. And the church sells the priesthood band. Yeah, the church sells.

Gerardo Sumano [03:31:29] This is basically a priesthood ban for women.

John Dehlin [03:31:30] Yeah. They could lift up for women.

Guest 3 [03:31:33] Thank you, Gerardo. Yeah, yeah. I haven't thought of it that way.

John Dehlin [03:31:36] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:31:37] But it is.

John Dehlin [03:31:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was doctrine before. So they left. They changed doctrine before. They had several first presidency statements. First presidency statements saying that the Black Temple and priesthood ban was doctrine. They changed that. So if. If modern day ongoing revelation is literally a selling point of the Church, why do we have prophet seers and revelators if they don't give us ongoing revelation?

Guest 3 [03:32:00] And women anointed. They blessed like in the past. They did all of Mormon women. Yeah. Mormon women took that away.

John Dehlin [03:32:07] Yeah. Mormon women exercised the priesthood, gave healings, gave washings and anointings. Exactly.

Guest 3 [03:32:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:32:15] Then why can't he. Why does he fall back to. Well, that's what Jesus did. When it's not what Jesus did. That's what Jesus did. So we're always going to do that. Why wouldn't you say, at least just throw a bone and say, who knows what the Lord will reveal next? We're praying. Like, what didn't. Didn't David O. McKay at one point say, I'm praying that the blacks will receive the priesthood? I just haven't gotten, you know, I haven't gotten that revelation yet. Like, why wouldn't he do the same thing for women other than the fact that he just.

Gerardo Sumano [03:32:47] For the reversal of the 2015 policy. Nelson said that they were also pleading to the Lord to reverse it.

John Dehlin [03:32:53] Yeah. Why aren't they pleading to the Lord to give women the priesthood, Jen?

Guest 3 [03:32:58] I don't know. Why. Why aren't they doing that? Why aren't they pleading to the Lord to know Heavenly Mother for those members who are missing her and needing that connection? Why aren't they, like giving their money away and just praying that it will be replaced so that they can continue God's work?

John Dehlin [03:33:17] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:33:17] Like, there's a lot of things. Why a lot of wise.

John Dehlin [03:33:21] Jen, bringing up mother in heaven is so brilliant because in 2022, instead of like encouraging it's. It's. It's Mormon doctrine that there are at least one Heavenly Mother, if not multiple heavenly mothers in heaven? Jen, you bring up a great point. Why isn't the church encouraging us to develop relationships with our Heavenly Mother or mothers and to get. And get to know her mother more? Why aren't they praying for revelation to reveal more about our Heavenly Mother or Heavenly Mothers so that we could have a feminine representation in our worshiping of the divine instead. Jen, what are they doing in 2022 as it relates to Heavenly Mother?

Guest 3 [03:33:58] They say we need to stop talking about her and praying to her. And we. And that the prophets at this time are not doing that. They're not trying to find revelation for them for that. Which is so sad. So sad to my heart, for the women members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, because they need that.

Guest 3 [03:34:26] They need that. And if you think of the church, just think of the church for a minute and then replace every male role with a female role. And then as a man, think of how that would feel to you, and then are you okay with that? Are you okay with living and believing and that being your deity, does that feel good and whole and, you know, equal to you? If it was reversed, and if it doesn't, then there's a problem. There's. There's something that's not right there. And I would.

Guest 3 [03:35:09] I would encourage you to be vocal about it and to seek out things that connect you where you feel you need to be connected. So

John Dehlin [03:35:24] beautiful. And I just have to give a shout out to Fiona Givens, who is a church employee talking about Heavenly Mother. And the church silenced her and told her to shut up about it. And then she was, you know, removed or removed herself from the Maxwell Institute when she felt like it was hostile. This is the state of women in Mormonism in 2022.

Guest 3 [03:35:46] Yeah, well, I'll. I'll tell one personal story that's super fast. Is I in Release Society on Mother's Day? I said a prayer and I just mentioned Heavenly Mother in my prayer and thanked her for being there and, you know, sending my love to her. And I was reprimanded for that, for even saying her name.

Gerardo Sumano [03:36:11] By a man or a woman.

Guest 3 [03:36:13] By a woman. But I think in direction from a man, because they was. It was told that I did that, and then it was. The woman came back to me and told me that that was not appropriate to do. So. Yeah, I think there's a lot of. There's a lot to unpack there. There's a lot to unpack in that one question, you know.

John Dehlin [03:36:37] Yeah, yeah,

Gerardo Sumano [03:36:41] yeah.

John Dehlin [03:36:42] Dan, our. Our friendly believer asks if I believe that we have a Heavenly Mother. I don't know why he's asking that, but my answer is I don't think anybody knows. But if there is divinity, it's not male or exclusively male. That's my answer to you, Dan. All right, I guess we can go on to the next point, which is about abortion. Let's see what Elder Bednar to say about that.

Transgender Members, Abortion, and Social Issues

Guest 2 [03:37:15] Okay. The. As the church has done with. With gay marriage in the past with Proposition 8 in California, does the organization plan on intervening on a social and political issue by publicly advocating its position that abortion is a woman's choice in consultation with God and local male leaders in cases of rape or when the mother's health is at risk?

Guest [03:37:36] Our existing policy, you can read it in online in our chat church handbook of instructions, is that we believe life, we affirm the sanctity of life, and also the means whereby mortal life is created. It already highlights the fact that there should be consideration given in cases of rape, incest, the health of the mother, the viability of the fetus.

John Dehlin [03:38:03] All right, all right, Gerardo, you've got feelings about this.

Gerardo Sumano [03:38:07] He's again, not asking the question. Not answering the question. Sorry.

John Dehlin [03:38:11] How so? What's she asking?

Gerardo Sumano [03:38:13] She's asking, are you gonna lobby just like probably she's thinking, just like you did with same sex marriage, just like you've been doing for your religious exemptions for lgbt. Are you gonna lobby for your position on abortion, which is that women has the choice in certain circumstances, or are you gonna allow just. And not say anything about states who are restricting abortion in any case, like even on the case of cases of incest and rape? And he doesn't. He doesn't answer the question.

Radio Free Mormon [03:38:50] He.

Gerardo Sumano [03:38:50] He pretty much reinstates what she already said, which was the church's position. So she was really respectful, asking him about abortion, telling him what already what the church's position was, and just asking him, are you gonna advocate for this, your position politically?

John Dehlin [03:39:13] And.

Gerardo Sumano [03:39:13] And then he just decides to not answer the question.

John Dehlin [03:39:17] Yeah. And then he just kind of restates the church's position.

Gerardo Sumano [03:39:20] Right?

John Dehlin [03:39:21] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:39:21] Yeah, but what is that like that the question was, are you gonna lobby for it?

John Dehlin [03:39:26] Are you gonna use your money and power influence, like you did with the civil rights movement, right. To try and defeat it, like you did with the Equal Rights Amendment, to try and defeat it.

Guest 3 [03:39:35] Right.

John Dehlin [03:39:35] Like you did with same sex marriage, to try and defeat it, like you're probably doing with trans rights, which we're going to talk about in just a second.

Gerardo Sumano [03:39:42] Right.

John Dehlin [03:39:43] Like you've done with, you know, anti discrimination. Yeah. Anyway, it's just. Yeah, yeah. He doesn't answer the question. I mean, aren't we glad that the church at least allows for abortion in the case of rape, incest, or the health of the mother? I mean, that's Kind of actually positive.

Gerardo Sumano [03:40:02] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:40:02] Right.

Gerardo Sumano [03:40:03] Yeah, very positive.

John Dehlin [03:40:05] I think it's not as bad here as it's going to be in some of the Southern states.

Gerardo Sumano [03:40:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:40:10] But, yeah. Okay, let's go now to trans people. What? She asks a question about transgender people. See what he has to say.

Guest 2 [03:40:23] How would a trans person be treated if they had already completed their transition before exploring membership in the church?

Guest [03:40:30] We welcome all and strive to love them. Now, I use the word strive because we don't do that perfectly. And so people have stereotypes, they have misconceptions, they have biases, and they have prejudices. We strive to love everybody, Gerardo.

John Dehlin [03:40:51] We strive to love everybody. In response to the question, can a transgender person, I guess, engage in full fellowship once they get baptized?

Gerardo Sumano [03:41:02] Well, he's not telling the full, you know, like, truth, which is.

John Dehlin [03:41:06] He didn't answer the question.

Gerardo Sumano [03:41:07] Yeah, right, right.

John Dehlin [03:41:09] He didn't say yes or no.

Guest [03:41:10] Right, right.

Gerardo Sumano [03:41:11] Oh, yeah, yeah. That's true. Because that's. That was the question. I missed that.

John Dehlin [03:41:15] If a trans male.

Gerardo Sumano [03:41:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:41:16] Joins the church, can that trans male have the priesthood?

Gerardo Sumano [03:41:20] Right, right, right.

John Dehlin [03:41:21] Get married in the temple. Now they have, but that's when the church didn't know that this person was trans.

Gerardo Sumano [03:41:27] Right.

John Dehlin [03:41:28] Because there have been transgender people get married in the temple, but it's because they were. They. They passed as cisgender. Right. Or as non transgender. They made it through. But the question was, if a transgender male or female, man or woman joins the church, could they engage in full fellowship? He didn't answer. What else are you going to say?

Gerardo Sumano [03:41:50] Well, the policy is that, no, they can't enter the temple, and they have to get first presidency approval before they get baptized.

John Dehlin [03:42:00] Yeah, yeah. And the church openly discourages gender transitions and then punishes people if they go through it.

Gerardo Sumano [03:42:09] Right.

John Dehlin [03:42:10] So he's not being honest. He's not saying transgender people. We discourage transgender. You know, we.

Guest 3 [03:42:20] We.

John Dehlin [03:42:21] We. We discourage gender transitions, and people who engage in them are not welcome to be in full fellowship.

Gerardo Sumano [03:42:29] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:42:30] What he says is, we love everyone. And he acknowledges that there's bias and unfair treatment in the church to his credit.

Gerardo Sumano [03:42:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:42:39] What he doesn't say is these people are not really welcome in full fellowship, which is no different than the priesthood ban on blacks or the priesthood exclusion on women. Am I wrong, Jen?

Guest 3 [03:42:52] No. And the words he uses was, I believe I'm. We're striving to love.

John Dehlin [03:42:58] That's true. That's true.

Guest 3 [03:42:59] I'm, like, striving to love them.

John Dehlin [03:43:01] Right.

Guest 3 [03:43:01] Like you're Christ.

Gerardo Sumano [03:43:03] Right.

Guest 3 [03:43:03] You're standing in place of Christ. And Christ wouldn't be striving to love them. He would just love them.

John Dehlin [03:43:11] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:43:12] Like, there's no striving. They're just, you love them. That's the, like, number one commandment, you know? You know, love God, love and then love. It's not love God and strive to love everyone else. You know, it's love God and then love everyone. So even that striving before love is kind of makes me angry.

John Dehlin [03:43:33] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:43:34] So, yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:43:36] And there's this. This is an issue that's newer to American consciousness, transgender issues. And I know there's a lot of strong feelings and misperceptions, but I'm just going to say, as someone with a psychology PhD who studied LGBT issues for the vast majority of transgender youth and adults who do either social transition, gender transition, or even have OPERA experience operations, choose operations to do a some sort of bodily gender transition.

John Dehlin [03:44:12] The American Medical association, as well as the American Psychological association and the American Psychiatric association, all are in agreement that is a matter of health of. And in many instances, a matter of life and death to undergo gender transition.

John Dehlin [03:44:33] So this is a medical issue. This is not just like a social fad. According to the scientists, according to the doctors, this isn't just a social fad. This is a matter of medical and in many instances, life and death. Is that your understanding, Gerardo?

Gerardo Sumano [03:44:52] That's my understanding, yeah. And I think a new study came out just recently in May. I sent it to you about youth transitions. Youth transitions, yeah. And it has been. They. This study followed several hundred youth who transitioned during the period of five years and saw their quality of lives. And if there were any retransitions, like a transition back, and the results were.

John Dehlin [03:45:19] It's extremely rare.

Gerardo Sumano [03:45:20] Yeah. Extremely rare.

John Dehlin [03:45:22] Yeah. And by the way, like, you could go, oh, well, if it's extreme, if it happens at all, that's bad. Well, people regret having abortions. People regret having babies. People regret, you know, having their tubes tied or getting a vasectomy. People regret boob jobs. Right. But there's all sorts of things that we don't outlaw. Right. Because there's a small minority who end up regretting what happens. And to your point, Jen, we should just listen to transgender individuals when they say, I experience gender dysphoria. My gender that was assigned to me at birth is not the gender that feels right to me. I need to transition. Support me in that. And then, believe me, that's what we should be doing.

Gerardo Sumano [03:46:09] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:46:10] You should just be unconditionally loving and listening and trying to see, even if you can't come to agreement with someone, you can still listen, actively listen and try and see, try and learn. And maybe step out of your bubble that you've only been able to think within and just learn, I guess, really just listen. Just listen and see if that makes you think or question or even just be curious about learning more or understanding more. But definitely all of those things can be incorporated and still loving them.

Guest [03:47:03] Right.

Guest 3 [03:47:04] Not striving to love them, just loving them.

John Dehlin [03:47:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah.

Radio Free Mormon [03:47:12] The.

John Dehlin [03:47:12] The. To summarize, the Mormon Church has anti trans policies.

Gerardo Sumano [03:47:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:47:18] Just like they did with blacks, women, lgbt, you know, gay and lesbian people. And that's what the honest answer would have been. Not, we're striving to love them because bigotry isn't loving.

Guest 3 [03:47:30] Yeah. It's either love. Like rfm, I think just said this in the comments. It's love or not love. Like there's no strive.

John Dehlin [03:47:38] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:47:39] Like you either love someone or you don't love them.

John Dehlin [03:47:41] It's like, it's like Yoda do or not do. You know, there's no try.

Gerardo Sumano [03:47:46] Strive isn't a cinema of trying to. And so he's basically saying we're trying to love them. That sounds awful.

Guest 3 [03:47:53] Sad.

Gerardo Sumano [03:47:54] Sounds awful.

Guest 3 [03:47:55] That's so sad. It really is. Like we're laughing. But it. Because it's. Because it's so. I don't know. The right word is ludicrous. Like you just. It's love. It's either you're loving them or you're not loving them. So love them. Choose love. Choose what God says. Choose what Jesus did.

John Dehlin [03:48:14] And since Jesus is the prince of peace, of love, he's the ultimate example of love. By their own beliefs, and they claim to be special witnesses of Christ. I don't think we're holding them to an unfair standard.

Guest 3 [03:48:26] Yeah, right.

Tithing, the Word Mormon, and Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [03:48:28] All right. The next topic is tithing in the poor. We've covered this a lot. Is there anything else worth covering? Let's hear.

Guest 2 [03:48:34] Okay. Given the significant financial strain that tithing is for those in work, war and abject poverty, is there any discussion within the church about not requiring that for people in those situations? Or at least. At least tithing? Only what is left after paying for housing, food and other necessities.

Guest [03:48:52] President Hinckley stood at this pulpit in 2000, made reference to law of tithing. I remember watching him teach in impoverished areas of the country and promising the people the pathway out of poverty is keeping the commandments of God, including tithing. The church doesn't need their money, but those people need the blessings that come from obeying God's commandments.

John Dehlin [03:49:20] Okay, first thing I want to do is just reference people to a video that I once did on tithing in the Understanding Mormonism channel on YouTube that aggregates all general authority statements about tithing. And they tell these horrendous stories and they give this horrendous counsel that if a poor person has to choose between food or shoes and tithing, there are general Mormon general authorities on record saying, pay your tithing before buying food. Pay your tithing before buying shoes. It's an outrage. We, we, we'll include that in the show notes because that's one of the most powerful pieces of media I've ever been a part of is just the church's history on tithing.

Gerardo Sumano [03:50:10] Yeah, Gerardo, I added that slide. If you can just kind of like exit and put it back.

John Dehlin [03:50:16] Oh, you know, it's not going to show.

Gerardo Sumano [03:50:20] But he gives away. I think RFM said this. He said, this is the first time I've heard a Mormon apostle say that the church doesn't need your money. Like, it's usually this a rhetoric I've heard from like leaders of the church, you know, bishops, missionaries, stake presidents, but I've never heard it from an apostle. And I think, I think it was rfm, but who highlighted this. And so he gives it away because we have this conference address by Joseph F. Smith in 1907 which says, we expect to see the day when we will not have to ask you for $1 of donation for any purpose except that.

Gerardo Sumano [03:51:13] Except that which you volunteer to give of your own accord, because we will have tithe sufficient in the storehouse of the Lord to pay everything that is needful for the advancement of the kingdom of God. So basically, Bednar right now with this statement has fulfilled this prophecy by saying that the church does not need the members money.

Gerardo Sumano [03:51:38] So if Benner is fulfilling Joseph F. Smith's prophecy, then we would have to go to the next step, which is that members won't need to pay tithe. Should. Shouldn't be paying tithing anymore.

John Dehlin [03:51:55] Yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:51:56] Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [03:51:57] It does. Yeah. And it's just, it's. It feels like gaslighting and undue influence to tell super poor people who literally can't afford food, proper medical care that, you know, they can't afford not to pay tithing. Yeah, that's. Did Jesus teach that? Like, it's just so outrageous. And we in the United States don't get it because our level of wealth Even if you're middle class or lower middle class, even if you're low class in the United States, you just outrageously are outrageously more wealthy than, than many, most people in developing countries. So we just don't even get what it's like to be starving barefoot, not have clothes, not have health care, and then to pay 10% of your income. We don't get it, you know.

Guest 3 [03:52:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:52:51] Yeah. I just included a link to that tithing video in the comments. Please watch that and share it liberally and Jen will include it in the show notes. All right, so that's, that's tithing. Then he goes on to talk about tithing administration. I think we can skip that part. He basically just talks about tithing being administered between central and local. Basically all the local units.

Gerardo Sumano [03:53:22] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:53:23] Pay their money to the, to the corporation, corporate headquarters. Right. And then the church does what with it, what it wants and it doesn't even have to use it for the reasons the members think.

Gerardo Sumano [03:53:33] Right, right.

Radio Free Mormon [03:53:34] Right.

John Dehlin [03:53:34] There's all. I mean, the church is not financially transparent. It's not accountable. And if it wants to invest in real estate, investments, buy businesses, lobby to take rights away from people, the church just does whatever it wants with the money.

Gerardo Sumano [03:53:49] Yeah, right. Yep.

John Dehlin [03:53:52] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:53:54] I think we can skip the next one too.

John Dehlin [03:53:56] The reporters misreporting. Okay. The. The next one we'll talk about is the use of the word Mormon. Yeah. By the world and by reporters.

▶ Video Clip 7

Video Clip 7 [03:54:12] I've noticed that you're not using some words anymore. Mormon seems to not be mentioned as often. Lds, the acronym, I accidentally, I think used it several times when asking you questions. But can you talk about the decision to really emphasize Church of Latter Day Saints as opposed to calling yourself Mormon or LDS Church?

Video Clip 7 [03:54:35] I think that President Russell M. Nelson will be known forever as a man of remarkable courage to say we will no longer use a nickname pejoratively attached to our church by our enemies anymore. And we're inviting other people to call us what we are called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. You know, we live in a world where everybody is offended about almost everything thing and we don't take offense. We just ask people to respect what to us is very sacred. The name of the church was revealed. We didn't have a task force and test it with focus groups. It was revealed by the head of the church who is Jesus Christ. And we simply are asking people to respect that and call us what we are.

Video Clip 7 [03:55:35] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:55:37] Wow. There's a few things there. I'll let you. I'll let you go first, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [03:55:42] I think the first thing that came into my mind is when he used the word

John Dehlin [03:55:50] pejorative.

Gerardo Sumano [03:55:50] Yeah. Pejorative. And that the word Mormon has pejoratively been attributed to Mormon.

John Dehlin [03:55:57] Yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:55:58] Because it's like a synonym for that word is like denigrating. Yeah. Derogatory.

John Dehlin [03:56:06] Yeah, Derogatory. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:56:07] So what. Why were you embracing it for like 100 plus years to the point where you were investing millions and millions and millions of dollars in campaigning for a campaign called I'm a Mormon? And we have general conference talks, you know, mentioning the word Mormon all over the place. The prophet Gordon B. Hinckley said, that's totally fine to use that word because the word Mormon means more good. Multiple apologist organizations had the word Mormon in them.

John Dehlin [03:56:43] Yeah. So farms, foundation of Ancient Research in Mormonism.

Gerardo Sumano [03:56:49] Yeah, right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:56:50] Mormon Studies, you know. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:56:54] More Good was named after the. The meaning of Mormon.

Guest 3 [03:56:57] Well, they were Mormon.org. right.

John Dehlin [03:57:00] Yeah, yeah. Mormon.org. yeah, that's what they were. Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:57:03] Marketed that way.

Guest [03:57:04] So.

John Dehlin [03:57:05] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:57:06] So, yeah. Kind of weird, right, that he's telling that it's the critics who've always called

John Dehlin [03:57:14] the Mormon Mormon without acknowledging that other prophets, many, many prophetess and revelators warmly embrace that term.

Gerardo Sumano [03:57:22] Right.

John Dehlin [03:57:23] That's kind of gaslighting to not acknowledge that and just call it revelation. And now.

Gerardo Sumano [03:57:28] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:57:29] Including the prophet that after Nelson said that, said, oh, no, you're okay.

Guest [03:57:36] Yeah.

Guest 3 [03:57:36] Like, we don't need to do that. You're okay. Mormon is good. It means more good. We embrace that. We build a campaign around that. We throw it out into the world. And he kind of put him in his place a little bit. So I think this was his ego. If I can say that. When he got into the prophet spot, he was like, it's my turn, and I'm gonna do what I said I was gonna do when I was put in my place years ago. So it feels like an ego thing to him. Because even if he wanted to change things around and make it more centered around Christ, I think that is beautiful if the church wants to do that. But they're. But making Mormon bad. Like a bad thing. Yeah, that was tape. That's. That's the next level. That's.

Guest 2 [03:58:30] That's.

Guest 3 [03:58:31] We know it's your ego speaking now. We know that whole thing was your ego speaking instead of Christ speaking the way it was formatted so. And brought to the world that way,

John Dehlin [03:58:41] it actually provides evidence that they're not led by God. Because if we know that Nelson was against the term Mormon a long time ago. And we've got a speech where he's denouncing the use of the term in general conference. In general conference. And then we have an actual prophet Sy and revelator following that up saying the term's okay. And then.

Gerardo Sumano [03:59:02] Well, actually Hinkley, because it's the next conference after Nelson. Hinkley refers to Nelson. Yeah, he says six months ago, six months ago Elder Nelson came and said this and this. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:59:17] And then later Hinckley or Thomas S. Monson literally spend hundreds of billions probably on the IMO Mormon campaign. And then when they die. To your point, Jen, Nelson then uses his ego to bring back the point that he believed before he was rebuked by other prophets. Literally shows he's not being led by God. He's literally being led, like you said, Jen, by his ego.

Guest 3 [03:59:41] Yeah. And that's sad because I mean, you could bring Christ back into the forefront of your religion in a beautiful way. In a beautiful way. Keeping Mormon, you know, keeping that. Your book is called the Book of Mormon. You know, keeping Mormon in its good name, like keeping the Mormon name in a good name, the way it was done and saying Mormon was only used by like people that hated the church or were against the church is just not truthful.

Guest 3 [04:00:13] And it, it takes their good name. It takes that good name that was used by so many people in what they felt was, you know, standing in Jesus's name. I don't know, it's just seemed so much just his ego and like I'm the prophet now and this is what I'm going to do and I'm in a. Because this is the way it was, should have been done. I don't know, it's just full of ego. Full.

John Dehlin [04:00:44] It's also not, it's. He's. You know, what we're not acknowledging here is how much money both the church spent investing in all the Mormon verbiage and then having to change it in, remove it. Right. We talk about how much pain and suffering and poverty there is in the world and then the church spends hundreds of millions of, of tithe paying dollars wasting, wasting it, wasting it on investing in the word Mormon and then wasting it and all the technical efforts to have to reverse it and change it and undo it and do away with it. That's a massive waste of investment of what they would call the widow's might or sacred tithing dollars. The final thing I'll say is him joking about sort of. What did he say? Pilot testing, market research.

Gerardo Sumano [04:01:38] Oh yeah, we don't do markets research

John Dehlin [04:01:42] about the use of the word Mormon, first of all. And he talks about, you know, we didn't market test the name of the church. Viewers and listeners need to know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not the original name of the church.

John Dehlin [04:01:57] It's like the third. It's like the name. There were two other names before it was like the Church of Christ or the Church of the Christ of Latter Day Saints, like Church of Jesus Christ. Latter Day Saints was like the third name. So he talks about it like it's revelation from God, but it, it evolved. The name God didn't even get that right from the beginning. Joseph Smith didn't even get that right from the beginning. But then it's even worse because we know that the Church sends out market research like four or five times a year. We're inundated with it with, with the screenshots of the surveys that the Church is sending out to its members to pull what their thoughts and feelings and opinions are about everything.

John Dehlin [04:02:35] And we know they're doing, we know they're doing market research on, on non Mormon and how, how the churches church is viewed. And ironically, it was them getting rid of the word Mormon that was actually influenced by market research where they found out that too. And I've been told this by insiders, this is where it's really dishonest.

John Dehlin [04:02:58] The Church polled people's perceptions of Mormon in response to the Book of Mormon musical and more modern Internet, you know, phenomena. And what they found is people associated bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia, polygamy, Amish whatever with the term Mormon.

John Dehlin [04:03:23] The Church found that out negative associations with the term Mormon because of the Church's own doing, not because of enemies of the Church. The Church has mismanaged its public perceptions and its public image for so long that people had such negative impressions of the term Mormon that the Church, through market research, decided to jettison the term and rebrand itself. So for him to claim that that had nothing to do with market research, it's actually the opposite is true.

Guest [04:03:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:03:57] It was driven by market research.

Gerardo Sumano [04:03:58] Yeah, right. To emphasize the name again.

Guest [04:04:02] Yeah.

Wrap-Up and Panel Closing Thoughts

John Dehlin [04:04:05] Well, guess what, everyone? Guess what? Gerardo and Jen, we've reached the end of The Q&As like yawning. Gerardo's like looking at his phone a little bit like, I think we've gone too long. Did we go too long?

Gerardo Sumano [04:04:19] I think a little bit.

John Dehlin [04:04:20] Oh no, it's good. It's been Good for me. I don't know. I don't know what it means to go too long. Like, I. That's not even. I'm just like, oh, no, we're out of slides. That's terrible. You guys are like, can we have. Can we go to the bathroom now?

Gerardo Sumano [04:04:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:04:34] Should we have lunch now? I'm a bad boss. I'm inhumane. I need to go to the bathroom, actually. Anyway, Summer, summarizing thoughts. Gerardo, We've had. We've had 700 people on the live stream watching this, so I think people value it. RFM was amazing. All right, closing thoughts. Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [04:04:55] I mean, apostles and church leadership are gonna do what they're gonna do, right? So. And we're. We're just gonna keep calling them out. So. Yeah, that's it. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in and keep tuning in for. Because more is probably gonna keep coming.

John Dehlin [04:05:19] Yeah. Yeah. Jen, before I give a final thought, what are your final thoughts?

Guest 3 [04:05:26] Yeah, I just hope everyone enjoyed this kind of the panel form and just kind of talking about current talks and things like that. I really enjoy these ones, these podcasts. So, anyways, thanks for being here. Appreciate it.

John Dehlin [04:05:45] Thank you. Yeah. In many ways, Gerardo, you're the brain behind much of what we do, and Jen, you're. You're the heart. Although you've got a big brain, too, Jen. And Gerardo, you've got a big heart, but we really love your contributions, Jen.

Guest 3 [04:05:57] Thank you. Yeah. Gerardo is the main man.

John Dehlin [04:06:00] He's a throbbing brain. There was actually a comment like, gerardo's a brain, basically.

Guest 3 [04:06:04] Yeah. I think I put it up there. Or you did.

John Dehlin [04:06:06] I did, too.

Guest 3 [04:06:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:06:07] How does it feel to be. To be objectified as a brain hero?

Gerardo Sumano [04:06:13] Feels good.

John Dehlin [04:06:14] I guess. There's worse things you could be.

Guest [04:06:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:06:16] Than a big brand. Yeah. Well, it's so smart. It's such an honor of mine to have you all on this team, along with RFM and, you know, you know, Brooklyn and. And all the other members of our team. But I'll just say a couple final things, and that's just that, you know, Mormon Church, you taught us how to be completely honest.

John Dehlin [04:06:38] And your PR efforts and your statements, Elder Bednar and others, they're not reaching the standard of honesty that you taught us to exhibit. But worse than that, Prophet Sears, you know, Quorum of the First, First Presidency, Quorum of the twelve in the Mormon Church, you claim to be special witnesses of Christ and prophet seers and revelators, and your behavior does not match either any of those titles. You are not acting like representatives of Jesus Christ in how you run this church.

John Dehlin [04:07:13] And there's no evidence that you're doing any prophesying, seeing, or revealing. Instead, you're being reactive to media pressure and pressure put on you by Internet activists. And. And so do better. We love you, but you've got way too much money and way too much power to not do better. We believe you're sincere. We believe you're trying do better with your $200 billion in assets and in all the power that you have. Do better.

Guest 3 [04:07:51] Yes.

John Dehlin [04:07:51] Yeah, yeah. And then finally.

Gerardo Sumano [04:07:54] Oh, everyone should subscribe to YouTube. We're close to 60,000 subscribers on YouTube.

John Dehlin [04:07:59] Yeah. So follow us on YouTube, become a subscriber, and maybe we'll reach the 60,000 threshold, which is a nice achievement. 10,000. Is that at least 10,000 new subscribers in a year?

Gerardo Sumano [04:08:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:08:09] Imagine if that growth continued.

Guest 3 [04:08:11] I think it's 10,000. I've only been here. I've been here five and a half months, and we hit 50,000 when I just started, so it's only been like five months.

John Dehlin [04:08:23] Yeah. If we can. If we can increase your subscriptions and keep this rate going. Yeah, we'll hit a hundred thousand, which is a real watershed moment.

Gerardo Sumano [04:08:31] And leave comments. So it helps.

John Dehlin [04:08:33] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [04:08:34] Video up.

John Dehlin [04:08:35] So thank, please. Thank you. Thank you for giving us super chats on YouTube. Thanks for using the Stars feature on Facebook to throw us some financial support. Thanks to everyone who donates through MormonStories.org clicking on the Donate button. If you love this content. If you want to see these panel formats, we pay Gerardo, we pay Jen, we pay Brooklyn to do the editing. I get paid. We need your financial support. So please support us through those different means, but also through subscribing on Facebook, following us on Facebook, subscribing and following us on YouTube. Sharing, please. If you liked these two things and you're able to share them on social media, let other people know, share it privately.

John Dehlin [04:09:17] And then commenting everywhere just helps with the algorithms. So that's all super useful. So thanks. And also thank you for joining us, all of you commenters on the live stream. Like, these comments are such a rich treasure trove. I wish there was a way to just do episodes where we just had user call ins and comments because there's so much wisdom in the group and we just don't have time to share it all.

Guest 3 [04:09:44] Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin [04:09:45] We got to figure out a way to incorporate our viewers and listeners more in. In creative ways because they're so brilliant.

Gerardo Sumano [04:09:53] Yeah.

Guest 3 [04:09:53] Send me your ideas.

John Dehlin [04:09:54] Yeah, yeah. So that. But thanks for everyone who's joined us live. The commenting on the live stream is its own treasure trove. So thank you for joining us and keep it coming.

Guest 2 [04:10:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:10:07] And thanks for all your support. Please be good to each other, please be kind to each other, please love each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everyone.

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.