Welcome and Introductions

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is June 26, 2023, and we are here for another monthly special edition of Mormon Stories podcast, the Mormon Expressions John Larsen edition of Mormon Stories podcast. Today we are going to be covering two books that were secretly edited by someone in the Mormon Church. And here to tell us these stories is the much loved, the one, the only John Larsen of Mormon Expression fame. Hey, John. How's it going?

John Larsen [00:00:41] Hey, John. Hey, everybody. Thanks for. Thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:00:45] How's. How's Oregon treating you these days?

John Larsen [00:00:47] It's good. It's been a nice summer. All the heat's gone down to the south, which is where I prefer it. And we've been having a good time. Oh, the illustrious Luna Lindsay came and stayed at the yurt last week, and so we had some great conversations. She, of course, wrote a book on the cultish elements of the church. There it is. Recovering agency. Yeah. Very brilliant individual and had a great time.

John Dehlin [00:01:18] Is Luna helping you write a book or something?

John Larsen [00:01:21] Luna is not helping me write a book. No, no. People tend to come to my place, I think, as a liminal space as they're thinking about doing other things. And I don't know, I just think Luna, they came down and just hung out and we talked philosophy.

John Dehlin [00:01:44] Well, for those who haven't checked it out, there's like a four or five or six part series on Mormon stories with Luna Lindsay Corbden where we cover what Luna calls the 31 flavors or tools or techniques of undue influence for recovering agency. Or you can even think of it as 31 tools that cult leaders use to wield undue influence. So it's certainly a classic series and Luna is brilliant. So I'm glad Luna's getting a shout out. John Larsen.

John Larsen [00:02:17] Oh, for sure. Yeah. The book is great. It's dense, but as Luna told me, the book was made that way on purpose. Kind of like a reference so you could, you could look it up and see what's going on when they try to get inside your head.

John Larsen's Announcements and Updates

John Dehlin [00:02:30] All right, well, John Larsen, sometimes you have some announcements before we jump into the main event. Any announcements for today?

John Larsen [00:02:37] Nothing big. Last week, last time I was on, you know, I announced my, my, my farm sharing scheme. I don't know, scheme, but, you know, rather than people ask from time to time how they can donate to me directly. And I don't really have a Patreon or anything like that, but we set up a Amazon store and the response was overwhelming. It was really touching. Thanks guys. I've got new soaker hoses and we little chickens. The chickens have swings and a little xylophone to play with and, and so you can see if you, if you care to, you can go. I think we put a link here or you go to john larson.org there's a link right on top of my page.

John Larsen [00:03:20] It'll take you there. Don't feel obligated, but if you want to help out, I think the, my, my pitch was, you know, I, I do this instead of working on the farm. So if you want to help me work on the farm, that's how you can do it.

John Dehlin [00:03:33] All right. Yeah. Please go to johnlarson.org to support what he's doing there. Also also add, for those who are just brand new to Mormon stories or have been living under a post Mormon or progressive Mormon rock, John Larsen used to run a podcast called Mormon Expression. We helped John resuscitate those episodes. They're like 300 plus episodes on Spotify or on Apple podcasts. You can go to Mormon Expression and listen to his entire back catalog. And then these episodes are possible thanks to those who donate to the John Larsen Mormon Expression Fund on Mormon Stories podcast. So if you value these episodes with John Larsen, donate to his farm homesteading project@johnlarson.org and also go to mormonstories.org mormonexpressions Mormon expression and become a monthly donor as well. All right, John Larsen, what do you got for us today?

John Larsen [00:04:37] Yeah, and I guess I should say one other thing. I have been recording back on my YouTube channel, so if you want to hear some of my thoughts about random stuff, I think I've recorded three episodes since we did it last, so you're welcome to mosey over there. Search for me on YouTube and you'll find it.

John Dehlin [00:04:55] And what's the type of content you got there?

John Larsen [00:04:57] We, I talk more about the farm and things affecting the farm like ecology and climate change and things like that. I think the next episode I'm going to do is about phosphorus. I'm going to explain the phosphorus problem in depth.

John Dehlin [00:05:15] Nice sounds sexy sounds. Just can't miss sounds like must see tv.

John Larsen [00:05:22] You're John Lars to take on fire. Phosphorus.

John Dehlin [00:05:26] Can you drop it? Can you, can you direct an F bomb at phosphorus? Is that possible?

John Larsen [00:05:32] Well, not at the element itself, but you know, since, you know, we're talking about, we're running low on phosphorus and phosphorus is literally in our DNA and when we run out of phosphorus, it's game over for all of us.

John Dehlin [00:05:46] Okay. All right. All right, John. Well, you picked a interesting topic for today. Why don't you give it an intro?

Building a Mormon Book Collection

John Larsen [00:05:54] Yeah, sure. These are as I've talked about before, when I was studying my way out of the church, and then in the years that I was doing the podcast and I became a book collector, a Mormon book collector. You know, at the height I had thousands of volumes, I've narrowed them down to about 500 that I've kept. And it's really kind of a shame that most of the literature and writing of Mormonism is systematically being destroyed. Libraries. There's no library in Utah or anywhere along the Mormon quarter that keeps it. The church puts out destroy orders on some books. So if you donate them to the desert industries or whatever, they just get destroyed, as do most.

John Larsen [00:06:38] Most of the secondhand stores. You know, they keep the books in for a while and then they get sent off to be shredded. So there is a whole history, rich history of our collective faith tradition that is just disappearing. It'll be gone.

John Larsen [00:06:53] There's kind of a silver lining to that. In a thousand years, Mormonism won't even exist. No one will even know it was ever here, because the Mormons themselves are constantly deleting their own history. But I have.

John Dehlin [00:07:10] John, I don't want to get us off track, but if the Catholic Church can survive millennia and priest pedophilia scandals, some might argue that just being valued at $250 billion ensures the Mormon Church's existence for millennia, if not longer. We don't want to get off track, but do you have a quick response to that?

John Larsen [00:07:34] Well, the Mormon Church is no Catholic church, first of all. Secondly, there's a documentary from about 20 years ago. They talk about the Shakers.

John Dehlin [00:07:44] Who.

John Larsen [00:07:45] It was about the last three Shakers, and I think it's in trust now. There were three women left, and they were rich as fuck. They had just land and property and money because it was all held collectively. So having a church that is robust in funds doesn't necessarily make it survive. A religion has to be more than a corporation, so.

John Dehlin [00:08:11] All right, well, you heard it first here on Mormon stories. Mormon expression. All right, John, tell us about these books.

John Larsen [00:08:18] Okay, so these books are part of my collection. We're going to go through two books. I really have four here. We're going to show you pictures that I took. So they're a little bit amateurish. I apologize. Of the books. So they're in my private collection. If there's anybody who doubts what I'm saying, they're welcome to Come here and inspect them.

John Larsen [00:08:38] The first book we are going to be looking at is a book called what Do Mormons Believe By Rex Lee? And I have two of them for reasons that will become clear here in a moment. And the second one is none other than the Book of Mormon, the double day edition. I have two of those. For reasons it will also become clear.

John Larsen [00:08:58] So we want to talk about these books and what happened to them and where they came from and why these things happen. I will say it's speculation at the end of the day. I don't, I don't know who made the changes.

John Larsen [00:09:10] I know what Doubleday says and we'll get there. But it is in the midst, the midst of bureaucracy and lawyers and all that kind of stuff. It just sort of disappears.

John Dehlin [00:09:22] Okay.

The Church's Official Stance on Honesty

John Larsen [00:09:24] All right, let's first, you know, I, the church taught us certain things. So I want to go through and take a minute, talk about the churches stand on honesty. So I went I. These screenshots you're about to see were gathered on Friday. This is how I spend my Friday evenings, I guess. So Friday night I went online and I took some screenshots. And the first one is if you go to lds.org and type in honesty this and it gives a definition. And the red boxes are my addition.

John Larsen [00:09:53] So, you know, the first thing it says is, yeah, this is the Ten Commandments. And, and to be honest means to be sincere, truthful and without deceit at all times. Sincere, truthful and without deceit at all times. And then a little bit lower a paragraph down, it says if we are dishonest in our words or actions, we hurt ourselves and we often hurt others as well.

John Larsen [00:10:20] And that's true. And we're going to talk about how these actions have an impact and do hurt other people. There we go. If we are dishonest in our words, we hurt others and we hurt ourselves. So that's the, that's the church's definition of honesty. And then there's the Gospel essays. So which replaced, I think the, the old gospel question or whatever it was manual. This is from chapter 31.

John Larsen [00:10:43] Lying is intentionally deceiving others. Bearing false witness is one form of lying the church tells us. And we skip down a couple sentences. We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth. Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest. Let's say that one more time. This is from the church gathered three days ago.

John Larsen [00:11:13] Whenever we lead People in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest. And they're not saying. Whenever you. They're saying, we, we, we, the Church. When the church leads people in a way to believe something that is not true, they are not being honest.

John Larsen [00:11:30] And then this is the one that's important right below that. Honest people will recognize Satan's temptations and will speak the whole truth, even if it seems to be to their disadvantage. That's what honest people do. Honest people will speak the whole truth, even if it puts them in a bad place or shines a bad light on them. So we can infer from that that not only are people who don't do that dishonest, they are under the influence of the devil, the great Beelzebub.

John Dehlin [00:12:02] And maybe a short way to say that we all learned is what's the dare to do? Right? Dare to be true, but also do what is right. Let the consequence follow. Right.

John Larsen [00:12:15] Let the consequence follow. Yes. That's what. That's what the Church taught us.

John Dehlin [00:12:18] Okay.

John Larsen [00:12:20] All right. So let's talk a little bit about book collectors and publishing. There is, when you go to the front page of a book, and I'll just kind of open up, we'll look at this in a little bit more detail on a screenshot. And I'll try to, for those who are visually impaired or listening to this, I'll try to remember to describe what we're looking at.

John Larsen [00:12:42] And I'm sure, though, you guys will post some kind of link out to these images or we'll do our best to accommodate you. So when you look at the publishing page of a book, it looks something like that thing there below my pinky. And there are some things that happen in this book. One is you'll see this sequence of numbers down at the bottom. I don't know if you've ever wondered. It usually looks something like this. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 8, 6, 4, 2. Or there's some other sequences. Sometimes you'll see numbers in the 80s. Sometimes you'll see things that look like dates. And different publishers do different things, but that's a signifier of the printing now.

John Larsen [00:13:25] But the editions are really important. Book collectors want first printing, first edition. Now, this is a throwback to the olden days when you had to set type. So if you remember from all the historical tours you've ever done of the type presses and, you know, at Nauvoo or whatever that they go and they take. And they take all these little letters and they put them in trays and they do it backwards. And then you ink that and then you roll that onto paper. That's how, that's how books were made. So you would set the type, and an edition of a book originated that it was associated with one type setting.

John Larsen [00:14:06] So as long as you kept the type setting and you didn't change it, that was the edition. Now, I think I have a definition from the Heritage Dictionary up here.

John Dehlin [00:14:16] Okay, really quick. Did we. There was also a slide to steal is dishonest. Did you want.

John Larsen [00:14:21] Oh, I missed even more. Copying music, movies, pictures, or writing text without the permission of the copyright owners is dishonest and is a form of theft. So it's saying if things are copyrighted and you're messing around with them, they specifically call that out as being dishonest. Thank you, John. I missed that one.

John Dehlin [00:14:43] No worries, no worries. Okay.

John Larsen [00:14:44] Okay. So here I gathered this from the American Heritage Dictionary. So we're really clear. I've debated enough. Apologists over the years know we get down into pedantic weeds really quick. So an addition is the entire number of copies of a publication issued at one time from a single set of type. That's what I was talking about. That was the original definition. And if you see definition d a version of an earlier publication having substantial changes or additions, a newly revised edition of standard reference work, they give it an example.

John Larsen [00:15:16] So not only do collectors and others want to make sure they're getting that first edition of a book, which is the one that holds all the monetary value for whatever reason, it's more rare, so it has more value.

John Larsen [00:15:28] But it's important to academics and others reading the book that we know that we're talking about the same thing. So once a book is published, it can start to become quoted in the new era in the ensign, it can quote it in a conference, other authors can quote it, academics can quote it. And. And this happens quite frequently. The church and the way people approach, talks and the way they write, they quote text all the time. So it is very integrated and integral to Mormon academic circles that you're quoting text. Now, if I'm writing a paper and I read a book and I quote that text and John doesn't believe me and goes and grabs a book on his shelf and he looks in the text as different, he's going to accuse me of being a liar because he'll say, that's not what the book says.

John Larsen [00:16:23] I'm looking at the book right here. So those reasons there that academic clarity and being absolutely honest and forthright in Your publishing are really twin elements of book publishing. And so when ever any changes are made, then another edition is issued. So if you see that you're the 13th edition and the fourth printing, the text has been altered 13 times. It's very common the books that you find typos, sometimes factual errors will be discovered later, sometimes the author changes their mind. So having revisions give you an example. The first edition versus the second edition of Bruce R. McConkie's Mormon Doctrine are vastly different.

John Larsen [00:17:13] And that first edition is worth a lot of money. Last I checked it was worth, they were $500 a pop. There were only 3,000 of them printed and there's probably less than a thousand in, in circulation still. And the second editions are really, really common out there. You can find them all over the place.

John Larsen [00:17:31] But there's, and I know this one from personal experience, there's a lot of people who will deny that the first edition actually exists. But at least you can show on that front page that this says second edition or third edition or 17th edition. And then those numbers that I showed that 1, 3, 5, 7, that refers to the printing. So what happens especially with Doubleday, because I really looked up their printing process and, and, and all they have, they, they follow a strict set of rules that they is they pull the number off. So when you see 1-357-98642 that means you are, are on the first printing of whichever edition it's identified as.

John Larsen [00:18:11] So if you had let's say a third printing it would say 3, 579864. So they would take the two off and they would take the one off. Why do book publishers do it that way? I have no idea. They've done it that way for a million years.

John Larsen [00:18:33] But a book collector or an academic will look at that and say the book collectors are more interested in the printings. And it's common to print a smaller run and then just print more. And now we can keep typeset digitally so we don't have to have big boxes where we're storing all those little metal letters so you can keep printing multiple, multiple times off of the same edition. So additions, printings, two different things. Are we clear on that?

John Dehlin [00:19:06] Yeah, that's good intro. Thanks John. This is good stuff. I can't wait to see where it goes.

John Larsen [00:19:11] So again, for collectors it's money. For academics it's reputation.

John Dehlin [00:19:16] And even in reference, right? You want people to be able to, if you're going to cite something, you want to be able to reference accurately what you're citing Correct. Yeah.

John Larsen [00:19:26] And. And even though, as far as I can tell, there's no federal law against manipulating the. The library system and printing system that's been in place for hundreds of years, it would be commonly defined as deception. If you're. If you're taking that front page and you're making changes to make it look different than what you actually did, I think we can all agree that that is a dishonest practice. Yeah. So you can't. Let's be very clear, you can't change the text of the book and keep the addition number. That would be. That would undermine the definition of an addition. So if you're using the word addition there and you changed it and you have anything, any knowledge of the book industry, you know what you're doing, and you're trying to lie, you're trying to deceive people. Why? Well, let's explore that a little bit further.

Examining the First Book: What Do Mormons Believe?

John Dehlin [00:20:25] So as an example, If Bruce R. McConkie released the first edition of Mormon doctrine, said that black people were black because they were less valiant in the pre existence, and that the Catholic Church was the great whore of all the earth, and the church was embarrassed by that. And then they reprinted a bunch of new Mormon doctrines, but took out all the embarrassing, problematic stuff, but still called it a first edition, that would be knowingly deceptive and dishonest.

John Larsen [00:20:53] Yeah, I think that's pretty obvious. I don't think it's a wonky definition of dishonest. I think it's pretty straightforward definition of dishonest.

John Dehlin [00:21:02] And then the case that I'm referring to, they didn't do that. As you said, they had a first edition, a second edition, and I think they had a third edition as well.

John Larsen [00:21:10] Yeah, yeah. I actually, I think they reminded me more than that. But. Yeah, but it's. The first edition was 56 and second edition was 58. Then I think there was a 1966 edition and I think in 1979 or something, if I remember.

John Dehlin [00:21:23] Okay, perfect.

John Larsen [00:21:24] I'm pulling that on my head.

John Dehlin [00:21:26] All right.

John Larsen [00:21:27] Okay. So let's talk about this book, what Do Mormons Believe by Rex Lee? You know, it's a fascinating book. Yeah. There's. There's the. There's the pictures up there of the one on the left and the one on the right. It is a. It is a fascinating book. It was. It was published in 1993, and it addresses something that's really important, which is what do Mormons Believe?

John Larsen [00:21:52] And let's talk a little about Rex Lee and who he was. Rex Lee graduated from The University of Chicago Law School when he was a young buck. And then he became the Dean of BYU Law from 1971 to 1975. Yeah, there's his Wikipedia.

John Larsen [00:22:11] And after that he went. He became the Solicitor General of the United States under, under Reagan from 1981 to 1985. So he served the first Reagan administration. The Solicitor General of the United States is like the lawyer in chief of the United States these that it is not a position for dummies.

John Larsen [00:22:37] You're going to be a really smart guy. And Rex Lee was a really smart guy. By the way, it's worth mentioning, Rex Lee is the father of Michael Lee, the current yahoo who is in the Senate. But Rex Lee so served as Solicitor general of the US from 1981, 1985, and then he was kind of ousted out of the Republican administration for being too liberal is the word on the street. They thought he was too. He was not conservative enough.

John Larsen [00:23:08] He, he. By the way, while he was the Solicitor General, he argued 59 cases in front of the Supreme Court. So this is not only a man who understands. He was dean of a law school, had a law degree himself, was the Solicitor General of the United States for four years, and he argued 59 cases in front of the Supreme Court. That's, that's about as high as it gets.

John Larsen [00:23:34] After that, he came back to Utah and he was the President of BYU from 1989 to 1995. Where he was. That's the part of the time I was attending byu. So he kind of was my, my, my BYU president.

John Larsen [00:23:54] Fascinating fella, really smart. His career is marred a little bit by the fact that he took on the era, meaning he, he argued against it. I was going to have you read the. I was going to read the Equal Rights Amendment right at the top of the broadcast because famously, when you ask people if they agree with the ERA and you don't tell them it's the Equal Rights Amendment, they usually agree with it. They're like, yeah, duh. But when you tell them it's the Equal Rights Amendment, then they, then they divide into camps. But he wrote a book in 1980 called the Lawyer Looks at the, at the. At the era.

John Dehlin [00:24:25] Dude, I'm reading it. I'm reading it. Women shall have equal rights in the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex. That's it.

John Larsen [00:24:44] That's all.

John Dehlin [00:24:45] That's it. And so this Rex Lee who Also for me as well, John. He succeeded Jeffrey R. Holland as president of byu. He was there also while I was there. And let's just face it, he was well respected. He was also the dean of the BYU Law School, I think maybe the first dean maybe of the BYU Law School.

John Larsen [00:25:07] That sounds right.

John Dehlin [00:25:08] And I think the law school was named after him. Right.

John Larsen [00:25:13] It might be now because he got. I can't remember what took him. It was pancreatic cancer or something like that. I don't remember. But he passed away in the mid-90s.

John Dehlin [00:25:25] Super smart guy. Super. I respected.

John Larsen [00:25:27] Totally agree. I think he was sick near the end of his administration at byu. I don't have any problem with his leadership at BYU and the things that I remember him talking about. I thought he was very elusive speaker and generally a good guy. The rumor is on track to become the next member of the 12, but there's no way to verify that.

John Dehlin [00:25:55] And I just googled and I'm wrong. It's the J. Reuben Clark Law School. They didn't change it. They didn't change it. So please strike that from the record.

John Larsen [00:26:06] All right? You're going to get about 400 comments telling you that.

John Dehlin [00:26:10] But he was the inaugural dean of BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School. So I had that part right. Okay.

John Larsen [00:26:17] All right, so I want to say this and then we'll come back to it. If anybody is positioned to write a book on what Mormons believe, it's this guy here is a man who knows how to read complex text, right? Like, you can say a lot of things about him, but clearly he can digest the, the, the wonky learned writings of the effete elite, because that's what he did. So, so definitely a smart guy. Let's go back to the. The picture, shall we? We're going to walk through. So again, these are from my collection. The, the, the. The two books here. And we're going to open them.

John Dehlin [00:27:03] Okay?

John Larsen [00:27:04] Okay. So what we're looking at is that title page and what I want you to see down at the bottom or whatever. I'm sure the book people librarians are yelling at me because this page has an actual name and I can't remember what it is, but the one on the left is an actual first edition or it was the first printing of the first edition. So you see it has that 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. So this was published by Deseret Book, so they do it a little bit different than Doubleday does the next one. If you look at it and Stare at it long enough.

John Larsen [00:27:40] What you'll see is that it looks like it's the sixth printing. So it has 10, 9, 8, 7, 6. But everything else is exactly the same. There is no indication at all that it's been changed. In fact, the copyright year is exactly the same. The card catalog number is exactly the same. There is no indication whatsoever that this text has been changed in this book. What we should be looking at is just a later printing from the same typeset. That's what Deseret Book is telling us.

John Dehlin [00:28:17] So the plot thickens.

John Larsen [00:28:19] The plot thickens, indeed. All right, so let's open the book up. I've added these little red boxes in here. I know it's hard to read a little bit on the left side or the right side where the books. I'm curving in. And I am going to bring one up on my screen that is a little bit more zoomed in so I can see it.

John Larsen [00:28:45] Okay, so this is the first edit here on page 76. And I've gone ahead and I've just highlighted every single edit that happens in the. In the book. So why would Rex Lee. Now, if you think about the gauntlet that this book went through, like, Rex Lee would have had to have written it, and then he would have hired an editor, and because it is a doctrinal issue, he would have had.

John Larsen [00:29:18] I. I worked for BYU police, and every so often, they would. The church would deploy. I was a traffic cop. I gave parking tickets, and I drove around and put boots on people's cars and stuff. I know I was a dick. I was an asshole.

John Larsen [00:29:33] But you guys, you park everywhere. So they would deploy us as private security sometimes. And one time I got deployed at private. I swear to God, this is absolutely true. I got deployed at private security at a house party at Rex Lee's house. We had shut down the Provo Road because the house party was with the 12.

John Larsen [00:29:56] So. So there they would pull up in their. Their limousines. They don't have, like, stretch limousines, but they have, you know, kind of cars the gangsters drive or whatever. So. So they'd pull up and then they would get out with their security guys, and then they'd go up to the house and we shut down a whole tire on Provo Road. So the guy. My orders, I'm telling you this story is Rex Lee hung out with the 12. That's who he would invite over for. For a dinner party.

John Larsen [00:30:24] And by the way, Henry Eyring was always the nicest. Props to Henry Eyring. He would Always come talk to security. He just come see how we were doing. I won't. I won't say the ones that everyone thought were an asshole. Monson.

John Larsen [00:30:39] All right, let's. So. So he. He's. He has connection, is my point. Yeah, he has the top people to review this book, and then it gets submitted to Deseret Book and goes that gauntlet. I cannot imagine what it would take to get through all the Deseret Book

John Dehlin [00:30:56] committees and the Correlation Committee.

John Larsen [00:30:58] Right, And Correlation Committees. Right. And this book does. So it gets actually published. And then to make the story, it gets recalled, and then it gets edited, and then it gets republished underneath the same heading. So somebody had to actually do this.

John Larsen [00:31:24] So these changes, we don't know who made them. But as we go through them, dear listener, we'll try to guess together if these come from Rex himself or they were imposed upon him. But this would have been significant effort to manipulate this text and do it in a way to skirt the entire publishing system that is imposed by Deseret Book, which is a property of the Church. So they're not only, like, deceiving all of us, they're deceiving or using their vessels.

John Larsen [00:32:00] Either somebody was pulling the wool over Deseret Book's eyes to make Deseret Book unknowingly publish a revised first edition, a quiet edit, or Deseret Book was. Was. Was complicit. I don't know. I don't know which. But I don't know that any one of those is better than the other. You know, if there was a secret, like, squad, you know, that came in, like, through the. The duct work, and, you know, they. They. You know, they had their little. Their. Their black clothes on, and they went down there and they made the edits and slipped them in so they would never know. Maybe. I don't know. I have no idea. All right, so let's go back. Let's go back to the images.

Comparing Editions: Keys of the Priesthood

John Dehlin [00:32:37] Okay.

John Larsen [00:32:39] All right. The one I want to focus on here is

John Dehlin [00:32:46] on page 76. Right?

John Larsen [00:32:48] We're on page 76. This is the first one. And. And in the middle paragraph, the first one, they're either, like. They're making, like, little editorial things, like, oh, okay, I. Yeah, whatever. But in the first book, it says that authority, meaning the priesthood authority.

John Dehlin [00:33:07] Can I read the intro to that?

John Larsen [00:33:09] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:33:09] It says, the church is governed through the authority of God's priesthood, which was restored 160 years ago. The priesthood is the authority and power to act in the name of God. That's basic priesthood Stuff that includes the authority and power to direct when something should occur, under what circumstances it should take place, and who should do it. Now is the key part.

John Larsen [00:33:30] Now comes the change. So the old text read that authority is vested in persons who hold the keys of the priesthood. Very simply, the keys are the power of presidency, the power to direct any given church unit over which the possessor of those keys presides.

John Dehlin [00:33:47] All right, real quick, John Larsen, do we have any hint in our own minds as to what may have been disturbing before we read the replacement text? Do you have a. I'm trying to think if I even have a clue as to what's going to get changed here. Do you?

John Larsen [00:34:02] Well, I know the answer. So, yeah, so they changed that to that authority in its entirety is vested in the president of the church who holds all the keys of the priesthood. Very simply, the keys are the power of presidency, the right to preside over and direct any given church unit.

John Dehlin [00:34:25] Let me check and see if I understand. He said that the keys are the power of presidency. And they are like, oh, no, no, it's not the presidency that matters. It's the prophet, it's the president of the church. Is that right?

John Larsen [00:34:40] Yeah. The authority in its entirety is invested in the president of the church. Now, we could do a whole podcast on that sentence because in the succession crises when Joseph Smith died, he basically left a governing structure that defined the different quorums as being equal in authority.

John Larsen [00:35:00] And he also defined out that the first presidency held the keys as opposed to the president of the church. Now, this comes on the heels of the problem of Ezra Taft Benson, which, of course, Steve Benson gave us a lot of light on who had severe dementia when he was still the president of the church.

John Larsen [00:35:25] And so the Hinckley and Monson did a little onesie twosie where they legally got everything changed underneath an auto signature pen of Ezra Taft Benson, the author that gave them the power to act in the president's name when he was incapacitated. They did that all in the sly, but so it's interesting that they.

John Dehlin [00:35:47] I have to tell a story there. When I was in the mtc, Estad Benson was my cousin, and I knew that he was probably not doing well, but he had signed my mission call. So I believe Ed Pinniger was. Was the mission president of the mtc. And he was doing like one of those big Q&As in front of all the missionaries in the MTC. And I guess I was a little bit of a smart aleck because I raised my hand And I asked Ed Pinniger, hey, you know, Elder, President Monson's a. Sorry, President Benson's a pretty busy guy.

John Dehlin [00:36:22] Do you think he takes the time to sign all these mission calls, or do you think that maybe there's some machine that signs him? And Ed Pitttger looks at me and he says, elder, whose signature is on your mission call?

John Dehlin [00:36:36] I said, ezra Benson. And he said, well, then why are you asking me who signed your mission anyway? I had to tell that story.

John Larsen [00:36:44] Fantastic. So what this paragraph basically does is it's basically saying, we're going to let you guys lead, but we are in charge. We're in charge of everything. It's the president of the church who holds all the keys of the priesthood.

John Larsen [00:37:01] And then the next paragraph down, they put a little further light knowledge on this because Rex is giving us an example. And so in the first text, he says, positions within the ward and in the case of organizational heads within the ward, that those persons will themselves receive the keys of that organization, such as Relief Society, priesthood, quorum and Sunday School.

John Larsen [00:37:26] And they change that and says, in the case of an organizational heads, a presidency receives the authority, authority and responsibility necessary to direct the organization. So the change that was made was saying these keys are different from actually serving in an office. They're these secret things that only one person or the first presidency holds and nobody else can hold them. And I want to point out something because this is going to happen again. Notice that they eliminated the Relief Society. The Rex, when he wrote the first edition, he was specifically giving examples that show that this is something that is exercised by both men and women.

John Larsen [00:38:11] Men and women both exercise power in the church. And then later he either changed his mind or somebody said, nope, nope, nope, it's only men. And there'll be another instance here where they erase the Relief Society from, from the book.

John Dehlin [00:38:25] Okay, so the vibe I'm getting is they, they want to make sure power, it's understood fully. The power is concentrated at the top with the prophet. And we don't want anybody thinking they've got any, any power that's significant outside the prophet or the president.

John Larsen [00:38:44] Right? Is that right? Yeah, that's the way I interpret it too. Because if, if you have a rogue church leader who does something, they can say, tut, tut, we have the keys. You just have the designated authority. But we didn't designate authority to do the wrong thing, so you can't claim any power. And when I hear like the yahoos, like the cohabs, the polygamists and stuff on Their breakaway sects, they talk about keys and this stuff all the time. To me it's just kind of blah, blah, blah. But this is really important to some people. But what we do see here is there was definitely a walk back of something that sounded a little bit like it gave people authority to do something in God's name. But nope, it's only invested in the president of the church.

John Dehlin [00:39:35] All right, well that's interesting. And there's more. Should we go to the next pages?

John Larsen [00:39:40] Let's go next.

John Dehlin [00:39:41] Page 79. Right. Page 79.

John Larsen [00:39:45] Page 79. Again, if you're watching at home, it's the, it is. The one on the left is the original and the one on the right is the edited. Okay. He's talking about the presiding bishop and he says it includes the. The first one is just grammatical changes. There's, there's nothing really interesting there. The second paragraph.

John Larsen [00:40:09] A calling as a general authority differs from a stake or ward calling in two important respects. First, in the case of all but the second corm of the 70 whose members usually serve for five years, it is a lifetime assignment. Second, it is a full time responsibility. General authorities, unlike ward and stake leaders, leave their employment once they have been called. Like all others in the Mormon lay ministry, their professional training background are in some other field. But, but unlike their warden state counterparts, their general church callings become a full time job.

John Larsen [00:40:42] Okay, all right. He's just describing how it works. But remember, I'm gonna come back, I'm gonna belabor this point. This is Rex Lee, leader of the BYU's university in the inner circles of church leadership. Solicitor General, really smart guy, understands and can read text. Right.

John Dehlin [00:41:05] And he's publishing this book in the final two or three years of his administration of byu. So it's not like he was an outsider. He was literally had been president of BYU for several years when this book gets published.

John Larsen [00:41:18] Yep, yep. Now they, they, they kind of move the language around here a little bit. But they, they, they say in the,

John Dehlin [00:41:26] in the second, in the second.

John Larsen [00:41:27] In the second edition they take the same sentence version.

John Dehlin [00:41:30] Not second edition. Right.

John Larsen [00:41:32] Yep, yep, yep. We can't call it second edition. The second secret version of this book. Their professional training background are in some other field. But unlike their warden state counterparts, their general church calling become a full time job. Yeah, said that before. Apostles serve for life while members of the first quorum of the 70 serve until the age 70, health permitting, when they are granted emeritus status. Members of the second Quorum usually serve five years.

John Larsen [00:42:00] So what you're Seeing here is between the time either Rex Lee and I don't know the timeline of when these changes were made. When the church makes its little changes, it generally is not very forthcoming about them. They'll come out in bulletins, maybe. But what it seems happened is that sometime between the first printing here and the second one, they'd made a change to ensure that the 70 were no longer for life.

John Larsen [00:42:32] And there's rumors that abound why that happened. I think it's just standard concentration of power. When you have any organization through time, it will eliminate the power of everybody but the top. That's just what organizations do. But it allows them to dump members of the 70 and then kind of dismiss what they're doing. But, but this one is just a small administrative change, but one that was missed by Rex Lee. Right. At least in the first printing.

John Dehlin [00:43:01] Yeah. So I'm just googling to see if I can find something about this. And what I'm finding is. Somewhere on Google where It says, In 1989, these limited term members were separated into a new second quorum of the 70s. So it looks like that. It looks like they made that distinction between first and second Quorum and the limited term members. And I think that the 70 aging out at 70 years old, it's possible that they made those changes in 1989, but maybe Rex Lee didn't get the memo. Maybe he forgot.

John Larsen [00:43:50] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:51] And. And so they had to correct him. That's. That's possible.

John Larsen [00:43:54] It's not. I, I just, I want to be forthcoming. I, I am going. I'm showing every change that I'm aware of in the book. So to me, that's administrative. It's not a big smoking gun or anything. Right. It's just interesting that it's there. It shows the complexity of what Mormons believe. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:44:15] Well, it shows that they probably didn't do a very good job of correlating and editing this book.

John Larsen [00:44:20] Yeah, yeah. Right.

John Dehlin [00:44:21] Okay.

John Larsen [00:44:22] They're human beings. Right?

John Dehlin [00:44:23] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:44:24] Okay. So page 88 there, the text is the same, basically, but there was an addition made. And he begins with a paragraph that is really doctrinally very interesting. And he says it would be manifestly unfair to relegate the millions of people who have lived on this earth and never had the opportunity to hear the gospel, to be precluded from the blessings of exaltation.

John Larsen [00:44:48] The problem, what happens to those who never heard the gospel is in fact a question that's baffled Christian denominations for centuries. I don't know that it's baffled anybody the answers men have devised are varied and few find any of them satisfactory. Given the requirements for salvation. Everyone deserves a chance, and everyone must have that chance. And that is why we do genealogy, genealogical and temple work. And they added or family history work, as members call this area of service.

John Larsen [00:45:21] But, you know, so. So what they're doing is they're kind of expanding. They're saying, hey, you know, it is grossly unfair. It'd be manifestly unfair in the language of Rex Lee, to have a system of salvation that millions of people who have lived on this earth never have the opportunity to hear.

John Larsen [00:45:43] That would be cuckoo, right? That's nuts. So what we do is we send 12 year olds to the temple to get baptized for them, because that's not cuckoo. And then what they did is they expanded this because I think it still sounds a little cuckoo. And so they tried to say, well, and all the family history work is part of that thing that combats it being manifestly unfair. That's the way I read the text. He's saying, this is the reason it's not manifestly unfair in this paragraph. And they add family history work to that. But may I offer a counter view to Lee and others?

John Dehlin [00:46:25] Sure.

John Larsen [00:46:26] Genealogical work and keeping track of one's ancestors the way you keep track of breeding cattle is a cultural phenomena of mainly white Anglo culture. Other cultures do not trace their ancestors as a patrilineal sort of. And this person mated with this person and begot this person, and this person made it. It's like they don't understand that concept. But when they talk about their ancestors, it is not, or that. Or there it is not in the way that you can reproduce with genealogical work.

John Larsen [00:47:06] So what you have here is a solution to a big problem, a very big problem. But the solution is itself manifestly unfair, because instead of having a millions of people who lived on this earth never having the opportunity to hear the gospel, what you actually have is billions of people who lived on this earth who their culture did not keep birth and death records, so they never get the chance to hear the gospel.

John Larsen [00:47:34] So the solution here, I just want to point out the weirdness of Mormonism here. This is no solution to a problem. You know, if I say there's 2 billion people starving on the planet and you say, hey, I just gave a homeless man a popsicle, you're not really solving the problem. That's nice. That's a good thing to do. I'm not criticizing that. But it doesn't solve the conundrum of 2 billion people hungry Just like doing genealogy work doesn't solve the problem. As a matter of fact, it's really kind of perverse because you take people like. Like the millions and billions of people who died without the ability or the age to have children.

John Larsen [00:48:17] Most of the people been on this planet we talked about in the Plan of Salvation die before they're eight years old. And most of them there's no record for. But there's a lot of people who were above that age who we just have no idea they ever existed. Nothing's written down. There's nothing there. There's no burial site, there's no grave. And the Mormon system is that those people can suck it. They can wait until the millennium, but it's really important that we do the genealogy of our people. Of our people.

John Dehlin [00:48:47] Got it.

John Larsen [00:48:48] So, okay.

John Dehlin [00:48:49] All right. And that's an important side note. And again, this example is one of three so far, of just basic changes being made. Right.

John Larsen [00:49:00] Basic changes. It does expand. I think my interpretation would be. The second edition is trying to. The first one doesn't really solve the problem, so they're trying to solve the problem by adding in a bigger buffer. Includes family history work, but I don't think it solves it.

John Dehlin [00:49:17] All right, just for scorecard purposes, whose versions are you liking better overall? Rex Lee's or Correlation Department, General Authority editions.

John Larsen [00:49:26] Oh, Rex Lee's is much better.

John Dehlin [00:49:28] Yeah, he's kind of a cool dude. Like, I liked him. I was a kind of a progressive Mormon. I remember liking him.

John Larsen [00:49:34] Yeah, yeah. This is not a bad book as far as trying to understand Mormonism. Okay, next page. So he's talking in this thing about sometimes the church leaders take political positions. And he goes through three examples. Of these things that happened, and one is the MX missiles. The church surprisingly came out against MX missiles during the 70s, and it kind of caught everybody off guard. The other is a National Labor Relations act, and the other was the Equal Rights Amendment. So he's using these examples where the church gets involved. So we'll pick that up with where the changes come. On the one hand, they clearly do not receive the same universal, unqualified support enjoyed by doctrinal matters.

John Dehlin [00:50:27] He's talking about the church leaders.

John Larsen [00:50:29] Right, the opinion of the church leaders. How much weight do we give them? So he's saying on one hand, when they come in on secular governmental issues, they clearly do not receive the same universal, unqualified support enjoyed by doctoral members. He's pointing out that Mormons are more likely to disagree with their leaders when they're in the realm of politics than when they're in the realm of doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:50:52] In fact, in the previous paragraph, he's basically saying, when church leaders make pronouncements, how much weight do Mormons give those pronouncements?

John Larsen [00:51:03] Right.

John Dehlin [00:51:04] And again, the answer is what?

John Larsen [00:51:06] Yeah, he's saying, on one hand, they clearly do not receive the same universal, unqualified support enjoyed by doctrine.

John Dehlin [00:51:12] If Mormon church leaders make pronouncements that are politically related, it's not the same weight as doctrine.

John Larsen [00:51:19] Right. Then he says, on the other hand, neither can they be put in the same category as statements by intelligent men whose judgment we have confidence in and whom we usually agree. So he's saying, we don't treat these like doctrine. This is what Rex Lee is saying. But they are the anointed leaders of the church, so we do need to give them more weight than we would just give intelligent people out there. Now, Rex doesn't really make a case as to why that is. I don't agree with him at all. But, you know, that's, that's his culture.

John Dehlin [00:51:54] Okay?

John Larsen [00:51:55] And then he comes down and he says this. He kind of, he kind of talks about the parameters. Then he says this. But if I cannot reconcile their statements on government and politics with my own views, then I would hear to my own views, which is a very reasonable statement. Right.

John Larsen [00:52:16] If, if, if, if church leader talks about something that doesn't really have anything to do with the church, and you are a member of the church and disagree, what Rex is saying is it's okay for you to say, well, I'll stay with my own views. I do not need to change my views just because the church leadership has those. Now, remember this time, Rex Lee's in his late 50s, early 60s. Let's see, he's in his. And he had seen the church, he had seen Ezra Taft, Benson and that crowd make just boneheaded statement after boneheaded statement in the 50s and 60s.

John Larsen [00:52:55] So Rex Lee knew where the bodies were buried, and he knew the problem of giving unqualified support to church leaders. And I think, again, a brilliant statement. Go with your gut. If you don't agree with it, give them more weight than you would just a standard, normal, intelligent person. But at the end of the day, go with your own values. That's what he's saying in the first edition of this book, in the first printing.

John Dehlin [00:53:23] Right.

John Larsen [00:53:24] Okay, so let's talk about the changes. On the one hand, most Mormons evidently support the church's stance on issues when it takes one. On the other hand, the Pronouncement probably did. The pronouncements probably do not receive the same universal, unqualified support enjoyed by the standard works.

John Larsen [00:53:45] So they changed the two hands. He's saying, well, they don't have the same weight. But the revised edition is taking it away from the leaders and pushing it out on the reader. Most Mormons evidently support the church's stance on issues when it takes one.

John Larsen [00:54:04] Most Mormons evidently support the church's stance on issues when it takes one. I don't know that that's justified in the chapter here in the essay. So they're first of all changing the parameters. But then it's the kicker. It's the final statement. Remember, he says, if I can't reconcile their statements on government politics, my own views I will hear in my own views. But the revised edition says many members will then make the issue a matter of prayer and study.

John Larsen [00:54:33] In short, there is a general attitude of deference towards church leaders. View two big weasel statements there. When you disagree with church authority, they will play a trump card and they will tell you to go pray and study, study and pray. The implication is you haven't done your homework and you're not talking to God enough. What they're saying is if you disagree with the brethren on any issue, you have not prayed and studied enough.

John Larsen [00:55:05] And then this statement, in short, there's a general attitude of deference toward church leaders. View by whom? That's a great. Or a dirty use of passive voice where you eliminate the subject from a sentence. In short, there is a general attitude of deference toward the church leaders Views by who? The church leaders.

John Larsen [00:55:25] And why end with that? It's saying basically as softly as they can, where, where, where Rex Lee is saying, go with your conscience now it says you need to go with what the church says and not question it.

John Dehlin [00:55:41] Okay, all right.

John Larsen [00:55:46] So.

John Dehlin [00:55:47] So it seems like Rex, is Rex leaning more towards if, if a member disagrees with the church leader, the members should go with their own. With their own conscience. Is that what he's kind of leaning towards in the first printing, or am I getting that wrong?

John Larsen [00:56:05] That's right. He's saying, he's saying listen to them. Give them a little bit of they're better than just intelligent guys. Listen to them. But at the end of the day, if you can't reconcile it, stick to your own views.

John Dehlin [00:56:18] And then of course, we're fond of saying our Mormon stories that the most sacred thing is in all of the Mormon Church is authority. So clearly, if, if he's trying to vest too Much authority in the individual members. The First Presidency ain't going to have none of that. And they're going to swoop in and change that. Which, which is what we would expect.

John Larsen [00:56:38] Yeah. They say if you disagree with the. The, the brethren, go pray and study more.

John Dehlin [00:56:43] Yeah, well, may.

John Larsen [00:56:44] Maybe I already prayed and studied. But it doesn't say that. It just says, go do it more. And then it says there is an attitude of deference, meaning you're out of step.

John Dehlin [00:56:52] So follow the brethren, you know, follow the prophet. Follow the prophet. Don't go astray.

John Larsen [00:56:56] Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:56:56] Okay. Who is the. Who was the president of the church in. In 1992? Mormon Church President. So this. Hinckley was the president by this point?

John Larsen [00:57:09] Well, let's see. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:12] Okay. I'm just.

John Larsen [00:57:13] Benson died in 80.

John Dehlin [00:57:16] Okay. Yeah, Hinckley. This was still. This is still very much Hinckley.

John Larsen [00:57:20] And we'll. We're gonna return to Hinckley before the hour is through.

John Dehlin [00:57:24] Okay. Okay.

John Larsen [00:57:25] Just checking he doesn't get out of this one unscathed. Okay, so this is the last one. Thanks for bearing with me so far. He's referring. This is on page 102. And he's referring back to the keys of the priesthood discussion before. So this one needs to be altered. So in the first edition, he says keys of the priesthood are distributed to all members according to their callings. Women in Relief Society presidencies, for instance, are set apart to their callings and given the priesthood keys to govern the organization.

John Larsen [00:57:59] But the revised one says authority is distributed to members according to their callings. The president in a primary presidency, for instance, is set apart to her calling and given the authority and responsibility to govern the organization. Church members are accustomed to high level blah, blah, blah. So they change it from keys to the priesthood, which are distributed to just authority, which is a designated authority. But look at that big fuck you. They. They. They actually pull the they. They. There's two instances where he mentions their release ID and they are both eliminated from the book.

John Dehlin [00:58:37] Man. The church leaders are just par. They're just terrified of women. Aren't Mormon church leaders just terrified of women?

John Larsen [00:58:46] It would seem that, that, that. And, and, and. Okay, so here's. Here's the. Let's. Those are the changes. Let's. Let's go back and review a little bit. So all that stuff is interesting, but, you know, here's the point. I really want to drive to Reno. Rexley is no dummy. He was a lawyer from the University of Chicago, Dean of BYU Law, Solicitor General of the United States President of BYU. 59 cases before the Supreme Court. We established he's from an inside family, has connections to everybody. I mean, this guy is about as Mormon and authoritative, you know, in the Mormon hierarchy and he doesn't understand Mormon theology.

John Larsen [00:59:28] And, you know, that's why there aren't very many books on Mormon theology. Because if Rex Lee can't understand Mormon theology enough to write a 105 page book about it, how can anybody? But that's the point. When you're in a cult, it doesn't have a clear boundaries. It's not defined what the beliefs are.

John Larsen [00:59:54] And it shows up every time somebody tries to actually define what the belief of Mormonism is. Every single time the church authority is going to come in a little bit later and they're going to change it. They're going to say, no, you didn't get this right. No, you didn't get this right. No, you get this right. But if he can't understand it, nobody can, because this is not a slouch.

John Dehlin [01:00:18] Okay? Yeah, yeah, you'd think he'd be able to get it right. And I guess I could hear a liberal Mormon saying, hey, this is a feature, not a bug. Like, he's not caught up in all the Salt Lake corporate mumbo jumbo. He's a more practical Mormon and this just shows how cool he is. And that just shows that the church is full of diversity and different types of people.

John Larsen [01:00:41] But the quiet edit came out while he was still alive. Yeah, he had to know that this happened. And he had to understand, being the Solicitor General, what was going on here, that they were making a change and trying to make it appear that they didn't, that they were trying to soft pedal this in and pretend that no changes were ever made. Because what would the headline read? Hey, you know, president of BYU and former Solicitor General doesn't understand Mormon doctrine.

John Dehlin [01:01:12] Yeah. And so me, for me, that's a huge deal, is that he would know better. He should know better. He probably did know better. And this is the church doing something very dishonest. And, you know, sometimes we like to say it's not an original quote, that sometimes it takes religion to make good people do bad things. Because he clearly wasn't fully honest and open about, you know, being complicit in this change, which is clearly deceptive.

John Larsen [01:01:41] Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Okay. You know, any one book can be a one off, could be, you know, an aberration. But in the mouths of two or three witnesses shall all truth be established. So let's fast forward a little bit and we need a little bit of background on this one.

Gordon B. Hinckley's Role in Church Changes

John Larsen [01:01:59] So Gordon Bittner Hinckley, you mentioned him earlier, is an interesting and pivotal character and really defines the latter half of the 20th century for Mormonism. If you took wrote about the top 10 most important people in Mormonism, he would be in that list.

John Larsen [01:02:17] He was born in 1910 and then he went on a mission. He came from a rather prominent family. His father was Bryant Stringham Hinckley, who is sort of a mid level church operative, worked for the church his whole life, did a bunch of stuff, never made it to the red chairs. But his uncle was Alonzo Hinckley who was an apostle. So his dad worked for the church, Alfonso worked for the church and he actually had another uncle who was heavy up in the church and in Sunday school, which is Edwin Hinckley, who was from one of grandpa's plural wives. So it was his step uncle because of polygamy or whatever.

John Larsen [01:03:05] So he had at least three people of the previous generation who were church authorities. He had born in 1910, finished his mission when he was 25 in 1935. And he was immediately appointed to be the executive secretary of the church's radio publicity and missionary literature committee. And he spent the rest of his career basically in journalism and marketing and really shaped the marketing arm of the church in 1937. Keep in mind, this is when he's 27. You know, he was appointed to the Sunday School general board and then he was in charge of the committee that was to figure out what to do about the Swiss Temple.

John Larsen [01:03:48] If we remember, before the Swiss Temple came online in the 50s, the temples were all acted out as a passion play live. But they didn't think that would work for various reasons. And Gordon Hinckley was instrumental in getting the first film of the temple, which was filmed I think in the late 50s, early 60s, and famously had Gordon Jump, the actor, I think he played Peter in the first edition of the film. So that was Hinckley's theme. He became in 1958 he became an assistant to the general authorities. A position, a pseudo general authority position that were all eventually collapsed into the other general authorities.

John Larsen [01:04:29] So a lot of general authorities from his. A lot of members of 12 from his age were assistants before they got rid of that in August 2003. This is, this is, this is important. Hinckley gave a rather important talk that defined his presidency. Hinckley was very, very media savvy and. And he really wanted to have a good view of the Church. The church had famously hired like New York advertising firms to help present new image of the church.

John Larsen [01:05:06] He was always reaching out to the press. And he gave a sermon in which he addressed the war in Afghanistan. This is 2003. Now, as a little bit of context, the Bush administration had fabricated this story about yellowcake, which was a precursor supposedly to chemical weapons. But it turns out historically it was completely untrue. They'd fabricated the story in order to launch the operations into Iraq again in 2003.

John Larsen [01:05:44] And Hinckley said, as citizens, we are under the direction of our respective nation leaders. They have access to greater political and military intelligence than do the people generally. Furthermore, we are freedom loving people committed to the defense of liberty wherever it is in jeopardy. And he said, it may even be that the Lord will hold us responsible if we try to impede or hedge up the way of those who are involved in a contest with forces of evil and repression.

John Larsen [01:06:14] I want to pause here for a second. The United States. It's when the first time we did it, we did it with Tonkin Bay and Vietnam made up, completely fabricated the pretense for going to war with Iraq. And Hinckley got up and told all the members of the church that God may actually hold us, John, you and me, accountable if we try to impede or hedge up the way of those who are involved in the contest.

John Larsen [01:06:48] That's a pretty big one. So it's. And, and, and shortly thereafter he. Well, I think right before he'd appeared on 60 Minutes and he said some kind of wonky things about polygamy. So he was playing fast and truth loose with the truth already.

The 2004 Book of Mormon Edition Controversy

John Larsen [01:07:07] So roll Forward a year. 2004, the church leads out this big announcement. They are going to release a new edition of the Book of Mormon. But wait, it is not the church that is going to be publishing this. The Book of Mormon is so impressive and so important that Doubleday has agreed to release one.

John Larsen [01:07:33] And I have in front of me the Deseret Book or not the Deseret Book, the Deseret News article. And here I'll start reading from you. Cast in partial gold cover, reminiscent of the plates from which millions believe it was translated, the first secular printing of the Book of Mormon will line bookstore shelves beginning next week, marking what many within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints will no doubt see as a milestone in, in the mainstreaming of their faith.

John Larsen [01:08:04] And they go on and say, this is really super important. This is a big fucking deal. We are now going big. And you know, they're saying, this is a great quote. Some Latter Day Saints might wonder why any would pay $25 for a book they know can be had for free for the asking from LDS missionaries.

John Larsen [01:08:23] Yet both Rapkin and Deseret book chief Sherry Dew, who served as the agent between the LDS Church and Doubleday, believe that it's a. There's a market for a hardbound copy that has no strings of proselyting attached. This was a full frontal press.

John Larsen [01:08:43] I guess I'm trying to say they, they really wanted to get legitimacy and bring Mormonism out of the backwaters. And they were going to do it with this double day release. So 2004 rolls out. Great, wonderful. Then 2007 rolls around.

John Larsen [01:09:04] All right, let's bring up the, let's bring up the screenshots. We got the two books. Now this is interesting because I was at work the day I got word that this was happening, this was in 2007. And I scrambled. I went and hit four because the word came out from a leak inside Desert Book. They were pulling them all and they were doing a soft swap. And I went to Deseret Books all the way down, and I found the one on the right that you see that has the now 50% off sticker at a Deseret book in Pleasant Grove.

John Larsen [01:09:39] And I bought it for 50% off along with the other one. So let's look at the printing page that we talked about at the beginning of the show. And next slide. So on the left you're gonna see, you're gonna see the, the. The. And I'm sorry, I kind of reversed what I did last time. The left one is the. Is the 2007 printing and the right one is the 2004 printing. I want to point out a few things. Doubleday has, has a standard. When they do a first edition down there at the bottom of the right side, they, they always put first double day edition.

John Larsen [01:10:19] And then you see our printing block, 1-357-98642. So from that. And Doubleday also tends to print the date that they did the original printing. So November 2004, first double day edition, first printing. This book that I have here is a first edition, first printing of the Random House Doubleday edition of the Book of Mormon. And you'll see up above that I have the Library of Congress catalog number. And they have actually filed it. The Church did this. Doubleday wouldn't have done this. The Church filed the Book of Mormon. Another testament. Jesus Christ. First Doubleday edition is how they filed it with the library of Congress.

John Larsen [01:11:00] Okay, now if we look over on the other side, Double Day has removed that first Double Day edition, but the printing numbers 135-798-642 remain the same. So this book on the left is still purporting to be a first run of first print, which from Doubleday's perspective it is because it's a revised edition.

John Larsen [01:11:26] But it's not, it's not here. You'll also see that they had to change the ISBN number. I do not know enough about ISBN numbers to explain that to you. So I'm just pointing that out for. Gee whiz it, it might mean absolutely nothing. Now if you read through the rest of this page, you'll see the same material is just flip flopped around. They re edit a different way. But I want you to pay attention to that Library of Congress catalog information on the left hand book. This is the revised printing that was printed in 2007 and it says Book of Mormon, another Testament of Jesus Christ, first Double day edition.

John Larsen [01:12:05] So between that printing number and First Double Day Edition, any academic, any scholar and any book collector would assume that what they have in their hand on the left side is not the 2007 reprint edition, but an original printing of the 2004.

John Dehlin [01:12:26] Okay, all right.

John Larsen [01:12:28] Are you with me?

John Dehlin [01:12:29] I'm with you so far.

John Larsen [01:12:31] Okay, so let's go on to. Luckily there's only one edit we're going to talk about and I think there were some heading changes, but there's only one edit that matters. This is the introduction to the Book of Mormon which has been in the Book of Mormon forever. And if you see on the right, this was what the Book of Mormon had said for 150 years or whatever it was. It says after thousands of years all were destroyed except the Lamanites and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians.

John Dehlin [01:13:01] That's the change, right?

John Larsen [01:13:03] That's the old one.

John Dehlin [01:13:04] Okay, that's the old one. Right, right, right.

John Larsen [01:13:07] That's the old one. That's what it had said for a long time. And then secretly in 2007 with no press releases and under the auspice of a first printing of a book that they kept under that they swapped it out to, and they are among the ancestors of the American Indians.

John Larsen [01:13:29] That is an enormous doctrinal historical change from saying that the Lamanites were the principal ancestors of the of the American Indians to just being among and all, I should say all subsequent editions after this 2007 printing of Doubleday in whichever language that's printed, will have the among, as opposed to principal.

John Larsen [01:13:54] So if we had looked at. If I brought in some older copies of the Book of Mormon, like the 1979 Gold Plates 1. It is full of like pictures of Mesoamerica and identifications, in fact, Joseph Smith, I forgot to look this up. Joseph Smith identified the landing spot of where Lehi and team hit the New World. It is to be found in teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith. Maybe I'll look it up for a minute, in a minute here, but so we can ground part of the story down in Mexico, South America, and then we have part of the story that happens up in Upper State New York in Palmyra.

John Larsen [01:14:36] And the teachings of the Church had been constant and very clear that the American Indians were the Lamanites. They just were the Lamanites, which was doctrinal justification for moving into their lands. Remember that Palmyra, Kirtland, Ohio, Independence, Missouri, Nauvoo, Illinois were all on recently liberated Indian lands.

John Larsen [01:15:04] And as was Salt Lake City. The churches followed as the Calvary and the US army attacked and pushed the natives to corners. Then the Church has followed right in, right behind it every time. But, but, but this was, this was an enormous retelling of our own history. And they did it on the sly and tried to just push it in, on, on, in the secret.

John Dehlin [01:15:34] Yeah, yeah. And we've, we've covered this pretty extensively on our LDS discussions episode. It's, it's one of the biggest acknowledgments that the Church has ever made. And it was clearly in response to the overwhelming assault for the previous century on Book of Mormon historicity, whether it's linguistics or DNA or, you know, anachronisms or, you know, pick, pick your branch of science, geography.

John Dehlin [01:16:09] You know, the Book of Mormon fails the historicity test. And at some point, it's pretty clear the evidence against the Book of Mormon, scientific evidence, became so overwhelming to the traditional narrative that, you know, Hill, Cumorah was in New York and the Native Americans were, you know, descendants of the Lamanites, that the Church knew that it couldn't look the world in the eye with the straight face and try and claim that Native Americans are descendants of Jews from 1600 BC. And so at some point they just realized they had to make this change. Right.

John Larsen [01:16:50] Yeah. So, you know, the. All that is a big, you know, doctrinal thing and a big, a big issue that's outside the scope of this. But, you know, here again, you have two examples of where the Church trying to accomplish either doctrinal purity or change something, did what is clearly a dishonest and deceitful practice. It clearly knows what it's doing. It has a publishing company.

John Larsen [01:17:15] These are sophisticated operators, Hinckley and Lee, and yet they're willing to basically bend the truth. They're willing to. To lie in substance and form in order to prop up an organization. And to me, that's really the sad part of it, is it's always the organization before truth, the organization before honesty, the organization before forthrightness. The church should have come forward and explained what they meant by changing a Hmong to changing principle to a Hmong, because the poor apologists in that time, they got shellacked, they got the shit beat out of them, and they had no good response. Because the church had no response. It didn't say anything solid.

John Larsen [01:18:04] Tribune contacted Doubleday and Doubleday's response was the church told us to do it. So that the church never said why they did it go like, okay.

John Dehlin [01:18:15] And John, we don't have like an expert in the publishing industry to be here to kind of set us straight. I can imagine a scenario where someone experienced in the publishing industry would say, oh, John Larsen, you don't understand. This happens all the time. That would be surprising to me. But I can imagine a scenario where that might happen in this case. I don't think that these two things. My best guess is that these two things are out of the ordinary. Now. In the first instance, where the church is publishing its own book, it can get away with it. I'm wondering if it would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall at Double Day when, when, you know, Sherry Dew or whoever calls them and says, this is what we're going to be doing. I wonder if some sparks flew.

John Larsen [01:19:07] It. It is hard to. It is hard to know. I. Double Day, you think, would have had some problems with it. And it's not like they're just making small editorial changes. There was a long precedence of the way that is that. That is not just fixing some goof. They were, they were using. And in my opinion, they were using Doubleday to whitewash this. I think. I don't know, and I'm not too conspiratorially minded, but it could be that this was always the plan. He used Doubleday to come back and then make the switch. And I think they, they were, they, they knew that people, the, the people would go through and, and go line by line by line by line as soon as the Double Day edition came out. So, yeah, it's, it's really hard to find anything but nefarious motivation to do this. It's just dishonest.

John Dehlin [01:19:56] Yeah, yeah. And, and it's kind of sad because I think for many in this listenership, they're going to go, how is this news, John Larsen? The Mormon Church was dishonest. I mean, we just have the recent SEC settlements to show in 2023 that the Mormon Church doesn't seem to bat an eye at being egregiously dishonest. Like that seems to be more on brand than off brand these days.

John Larsen [01:20:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:27] I don't know, is that too harsh?

John Larsen [01:20:31] Well, you know, if you say, okay, we find another girl that Epstein was trafficking or something, and then you say, oh, that's old news. We already knew that he was trafficking lots of young women. What's one more? You know, the case against the church is always built brick by brick by brick by brick.

Conclusions on Institutional Deception

John Larsen [01:20:50] And you know, the point that I have here is here, it's concrete. That's why I brought these two books up. They did this and they did it in a deceptive way in order to fool you, the, the member of the church. They didn't do this to fool the world. This is aimed clearly at Mormons. They're trying to snooker you. And, and it's just everywhere I look, there's deceit, there's lies, there's misrepresentation, there's abuse, there's power grabbing, there's money. And people can say, oh, yeah, that's just one more little thing, but the wall is made out of a million bricks. And this is one of the bricks.

John Dehlin [01:21:32] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people are going to be grateful you showed this to them. Joan Larsen.

John Larsen [01:21:40] It's concrete. Again, any legitimate scholar who sends me, you know, a self address stamp box, I'll send you the books and you can, you can review them yourself. But I have no motivation to lie here. You can, it's, it's interesting. This used to be more prominent on the Internet. You used to be able to look up and read about these. It was hard for me to find articles. I do know that church practices, they have guys, I don't know if they're actual missionaries or they just do it on their own. They try to scrub any kind of negative information out to get it kicked off, get it lower down. So, so much of this history, you know, this is something that if you were leaving the church in 2007, this would have been outrageous to you. And now, you know, 10, 15 years later, it's forgotten.

John Dehlin [01:22:29] Yeah. All right, well, John Larsen, you've given us Another episode to help us understand the way the Church works better. Super grateful.

Closing Remarks and Farewell

John Larsen [01:22:40] All right, well, it's my pleasure. Thanks again for having me, John. I, I, I enjoy all the feedback. You guys can send me emails@john larson.org check out my website there to find out what I'm doing and working on, if you care.

John Dehlin [01:22:54] Any previews for what's coming next or do you not know yet?

John Larsen [01:22:57] I, you know, John, I have a list of like 9 or 10 really great topics and I still, I thought I'd found my. I know you. You want me to do the one on Smoot hearings and I haven't found my book yet, so I thought I had it, but then I look closer and it was my book on the legal troubles the Church got into in the late 18th century, 19th century, which is an interesting topic when they start seizing all the property and the profits went underground. But I still looking for my book. But I've got an endless trove. I could do these till the day I die. The Church gives us lots of material.

John Dehlin [01:23:31] All right, well, if you want to support these episodes, your financial support makes them possible, please go to mormonstories.org mormonexpressions and is it Mormon Expression or Mormon Expressions?

John Larsen [01:23:46] John Larsen, Mormon Expression. I think I still have all the URLs, but it's just the expression.

John Dehlin [01:23:53] Okay, yeah, go to mormonstories.org mormonexpression we'll make sure Julia includes that in the show notes and you can become a monthly donor. Pick an amount that works for you, and we'll make sure that we keep John Larsen around for a long time. Also, please remember, you can check out the entire Mormon Expression library, whether it's on Spotify or on Apple Podcasts. And please check out John Larsen.org and John Shill for your YouTube channels one last time.

John Larsen [01:24:28] Oh yeah, I should probably figure out where you go. But if you search for John Larsen, I just sit down in this room and record every once in a while. I think I'm John Larsen. One. Yeah. John Larsen. J O H N L e R C N1 I have, I have a channel where I just sit and talk about stuff from time to time.

John Dehlin [01:24:46] And if folks want to donate to your, your farm and your homesteading stuff, how do they.

John Larsen [01:24:51] If, yeah, if, if you feel so inclined, first give to Mormon Stories for the Mormon expression thing. But if you, if you like what I'm doing out on the ground, if you go to john larson.org it'll have a link to take you to the to the face, not the Facebook, the Amazon shopping page. It's like a gift registry, and Amazon doesn't make it easy. So sorry about all the hoops you have to jump through, but, yeah, that. So that. That's. That's where it's at.

John Dehlin [01:25:18] All right. Thanks so much, John Larsen. You're the best. Thanks to everyone who listened to us today. Please share this episode with anyone you would like. Please, please subscribe to us on YouTube, subscribe to us and follow us on Facebook. Check us out on TikTok, on Instagram, wherever you get your social media. And most importantly, please be kind to each other and be good to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

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.