Introducing Gary Bergera and the Book

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host for today, John Dehlin. It's October 27, 2022, and today we have someone, really two people in studio that I have huge respect for and that I've wanted to interview for many, many years. The main guest for today is the one, the only Gary, James Perjara. Hey, Gary.

Gary James Bergera [00:00:21] Hi, John.

John Dehlin [00:00:22] How are you? Thanks for coming.

Gary James Bergera [00:00:23] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:00:23] It's such a treat to have you.

Gary James Bergera [00:00:25] It's a pleasure to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:26] Yeah. For those of you who don't know who Gary is, if you're into Mormon history, Mormon studies, you'll know Gary because he worked forever for Signature Books and for the Smith Pettit foundation, and I believe he still works for the Smith Pettit Foundation. But the reason why Gary and one of his colleagues, Ron Prittis and so many other people, George Smith, have such a near and dear place in my heart is because when I was going through my faith crisis, kind of, kind of pre Mormon Internet, I think you could say there are just several books that were instrumental and I, I, I probably don't, I probably can't list all the books that were influential from, from Signature Books that were influential to me, but certainly Grant Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, certainly Losing a Lost Tribe, both of Michael Quinn's books, Origins of Power and Extensions of Power and just so many other books, all of Dan Vogel stuff, Dan Vogel's biography, so many books on polygamy and Mormon history. It we could do an entire episode listing all the contributions that Signature Books and the Smith Pettit foundation have made to allow the sort of Mormon Internet phenomenon of podcasts and blogs and social media and honestly, just the awakening within Mormonism to accurate, factual, credible Mormon history and scholarship. So much of that rests on the back of George Smith, the Smith Pettit Foundation, Signature Books, and Gary Bergera and Ron Pridis and other people who have been involved. So, Gary, you're a modest guy, so you probably don't even love that introduction. But that's my introduction and I'm sticking to it.

Gary James Bergera [00:02:06] It's, I'm not going to try to

John Dehlin [00:02:09] contradict it so well. So I'm going to have Gary introduce himself a little bit more. But what I want to do is just start with the middle and the ending. We are here to promote what I think is a really, really fascinating, an important book. The book is called justice and Mercy Studies of Transgression in the Latter Day Saint Community by Gary James Bergera and With a contribution from Lavina Fielding Anderson, who is also a legend. Not just because she's one of the September Six. Not just because she called out ecclesiastical abuse decades, decades ago and was excommunicated for that one offense, as I understand it. But she's also been part of the backbone of providing editing services to Mormon scholarship for decades. Is that fair to say?

Gary James Bergera [00:02:59] Yeah, that's very fair to say.

John Dehlin [00:03:01] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [00:03:01] And she's been a good historian in her own right, too.

John Dehlin [00:03:04] Absolutely.

Gary James Bergera [00:03:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:05] But this book, justice and Mercy, there's a lot in it. And just to give you a quick preview, what it talks about is the disciplinary councils, and I. I think they were all excommunicated, right? No, not. Not Joseph F. Smith.

Gary James Bergera [00:03:20] Of the. Of the four people who feature in that book, three of them were excommunicated and one was. It's hard to know what to call that. He was informally disfellowshipped.

John Dehlin [00:03:32] You're talking about Joseph F. Smith, right?

Gary James Bergera [00:03:34] The patriarch.

John Dehlin [00:03:34] Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we're gonna be talking about Albert Carrington, Thomas Taylor, and Richard R. Lyman. And they were all. And Joseph F. Smith, and they were

Brian Buchanan [00:03:44] all

John Dehlin [00:03:47] leaders of significant status within the Church of Jesus Christ.

Gary James Bergera [00:03:51] Three of them were general church officers. And Thomas Taylor was bishop.

Brian Buchanan [00:03:56] Bishop of the 14th Ward, a very important ward in Salt Lake, one of the original wards there.

John Dehlin [00:04:01] Yeah. And if you're wondering, those of you who are listening, who's that voice? Does that voice sound familiar? I'm also just over the moon excited to have with this Brian Buchanan of. I guess you could say of Signature. Of. Sorry. Of Benchmark Books fame. But also he's the co host of the Mormon History Podcast with Lindsay Hansen Park. And I probably don't even know half of the contributions you've made within Mormon studies and the Mormon world, but that.

Brian Buchanan [00:04:30] That's. That's about it right there.

Gary James Bergera [00:04:32] Well, and the other. The other key point is that Brian is the publisher of that book.

John Dehlin [00:04:37] Of this book.

Brian Buchanan [00:04:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:38] And he helped with the editing as well.

Gary James Bergera [00:04:40] He helped immensely.

John Dehlin [00:04:41] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:04:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:04:42] Okay. All right. And so I want. I have one right now to. Stop. Stop. Pause this interview, go to the description of this episode and click on the link and buy this book. And not. Not for any other reason than that it's an excellent book, and we want to support good scholarship and good writing. So please go buy this book. I promise you it's worth it. And what we're going to be doing today is to dig into at least these four stories. And. And we've talked about Richard Lyman before on The Shannon Caldwell Montez episode. Because that he. He was an apostle who's excommunicated for an affair in the 19th, in the 20th century. So he's significant.

Gary James Bergera [00:05:25] He.

John Dehlin [00:05:26] He was a third generation apostle. But, but Albert Carrington. These are all just fascinating stories. So before we dive in really quickly, Gary, would you give yourself a proper introduction just to kind of include some of the things that I left out?

Gary James Bergera [00:05:43] Sure. I'm more than happy to talk about myself. So I am a two time graduate of Brigham Young University. I grew up in Provo. I graduated from BYU in 1980 with a degree in psychology and then again in 82 with a degree in public administration. From that, Ron and I.

John Dehlin [00:06:04] Wait, what years?

Gary James Bergera [00:06:06] So I graduated in 1980 and then 1982.

John Dehlin [00:06:10] Okay, so you would have missed Ernest Wilkinson.

Gary James Bergera [00:06:13] I missed Ernest Wilkinson. However, when I was a student, an undergraduate at byu, one of the classes that I took was in journalism and I wanted to do an article on academic freedom at BYU, which included the 1966.67 spy ring. Wilkinson was still alive. So I actually made an appointment and I interviewed him on the record for the article that I was working on. So I at least met Ernest Wilkinson.

John Dehlin [00:06:41] So would you have been part of the 7th East Press or would you

Gary James Bergera [00:06:43] have predated at the beginnings of the seventh East Press? Yeah, in 1981.

John Dehlin [00:06:49] Whoa. So were you a part of the seventh East Press?

Gary James Bergera [00:06:51] I was a part of the seventh.

John Dehlin [00:06:52] Holy moly. So for those who don't know, before the Student Review, which a lot of you won't know about, when I was at byu, Student Review was a underground alternative progressive liberal newspaper that is a B way student. You could get pre Internet to find out all the cool scuttlebutt like Paul Dunn or.

Gary James Bergera [00:07:08] Well, the student review thought September 6th press was too liberal.

John Dehlin [00:07:12] Really?

Gary James Bergera [00:07:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:07:13] Yeah. But the 70s press was the predecessor.

Gary James Bergera [00:07:15] It was to the Student Review.

John Dehlin [00:07:16] Right, yeah. Yeah. So, wow. So you were causing trouble at BYU in the late 70s and early 80s.

Gary James Bergera [00:07:23] No, I was not causing trouble, but I was teaching at the MTC at the same time that I was helping out with the 7th East Press.

John Dehlin [00:07:29] Well, I want to just go into your story, but. But I. But that, that will take away from the book, so I will stop under one condition. Can you guess what that condition is?

Gary James Bergera [00:07:37] The condition is that you're going to invite me to come back and talk about some of these other things.

John Dehlin [00:07:42] Are you?

Gary James Bergera [00:07:42] And I really appreciate that invitation.

John Dehlin [00:07:44] So you're thinking about it?

Gary James Bergera [00:07:45] I. I definitely will think about it. All right.

John Dehlin [00:07:47] All right. Okay. Well, I want to dig into your story. Gary and Ron and Lavina and whoever else will come on. And you, Brian, I would. I would love to interview you too, Brian. But anyway, anything else you want to say about your intro? I may have interrupted you.

Gary James Bergera [00:07:59] So from, from byu, I worked with Ron on that was later published by Signature. As we approached the end of that process, I was invited, both of us were invited to come on and work with Signature. So we started working at signature from late 1984. I left Signature in 2001 to work at the Smith Pettit Foundation. Ron stayed on at Signature until he retired a couple years ago. I retired from Signature Books in February of this year. From Signature Books from Signature Books in February of this year. I stayed on. I'm staying on part time at Smith Pettit until the end of this year. And then I'll be done. I'll be fully retired and we'll be taking lots of naps probably, or going to movies or who knows what, whatever

John Dehlin [00:08:46] retired people do and tell people what Smith Pettit does.

Gary James Bergera [00:08:50] So Smith Pettit is a 501 nonprofit foundation. It identifies projects that it's interested in supporting and then it contracts with individuals to work on those projects as works for hire for the Smith Pettit Foundation. Invariably, the project the finished projects will then be submitted to Signature for possible publication. They still go through Signature's process. It also partners with other nonprofits to support things that align with Smith Pettit's mission. So it funds some of the book awards and the writing awards that the Mormon History association, the John Whitmer Historical association, the Utah State Historical Society and other organizations do.

John Dehlin [00:09:38] And what are some of the projects that are my listenership and viewership would have been most influenced by that would have come out of it would have

Gary James Bergera [00:09:47] come from the Smith Pettit, Smith Pettit and or so Smith Pettit sponsored the three biographies of Joseph Smith, two of which have been published. The first one was by Richard Van Wagner. The third one was by Marty Bradley Evans. The second one is by Dan Vogel and it's its Signature right now and should be coming out next year. It also.

John Dehlin [00:10:07] That's the one about Kirtland.

Gary James Bergera [00:10:08] That's the one that covers the Ohio and the Missouri years. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:12] Oh, okay. Because it covers Missouri, too.

Gary James Bergera [00:10:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:14] Okay.

Gary James Bergera [00:10:15] Yeah. It also sponsored Dan Vogel's critical edition of the history of the Church, that six or seven volumes that came out a few years ago. It also sponsored Dan Vogel's edition of the definitive edition of the Wilford Woodruff Diaries that Benchmark published a couple of years ago.

John Dehlin [00:10:36] Okay.

Gary James Bergera [00:10:36] So those are probably the key. There's some other things too, that, that Smith Pettit's been involved with, but those are probably the ones that most people are aware of. Beautiful.

John Dehlin [00:10:47] All right. And Brian, do you want to tell us anything about. I mean, Mormon history podcast is loved by, by so many. Just because you and Lindsay are doing great storytelling around history. Anything you want to say about you? And Benchmark books, just as a introduction.

Brian Buchanan [00:11:02] It's. My life has been so fun because I get to go to work every day and hang out with the people that I like, talk about the stuff that I like, and then I do a podcast about topics that I like with Lindsay. And it's, it's so much fun. She's a very persuasive person. Yeah, I actually am not much of a podcast person. And as year of polygamy was. Had kind of was winding down somewhat, she approached me and said, what if we just did a podcast about Mormon history and we just go beginning to end? And I think if anyone else on earth would have asked, I would have said no, but she's very persuasive. So we have a lot of fun doing it. It's. As you know, maybe podcasting is kind of a lot of work, but it's very fun and obviously the world we're in. Podcasting is such an important way of telling all kinds of stories and particularly history. And you know, there's a lot of people who may not want to sit down and read an 800 page book on a topic, but a good approachable podcast can get them the gist of the story and the important details and, and, and it's, it's a good part of our, our history world.

John Dehlin [00:12:09] Love it. Yeah. Well, that's a great segue into today's episode because we're going to be telling the live telling the, telling the tales of four disciplinary councils, three excommunications and an ambiguous example of discipline of a, of a church patriarch in, in Joseph F. Smith. And it's a different Joseph F. Smith than many people would be thinking of. So, so before we actually jump in, Gary, in the beginning of this book, justice and Mercy, you kind of try and set your intention and, and what I perceived you trying to say is that you're not just trying to go for the scandal. You're not just trying to, to cover the controversy or, you know, people's peccadillos. You ha. You have some very specific intentions in mind. And I'd love to hear your thoughts. And then also, Brian, I know you probably had thoughts about why this book would be an important contribution as well.

Motivations Behind Justice and Mercy

Gary James Bergera [00:13:06] Well, for me, the primary motivation is to, you know, these are four men, important men in the history of the LDS Church. And the stories of their excommunications or their disciplining from the church are important factors, events in, in their lives, in the lives of each of these men. And I think if you try to narrate the lives of these men without treating these events, you misrepresent their lives. So that was my primary motive, was just to try to complete or at least to provide enough information for somebody who was later working on a full biography of each of these men that would have access to and would be able to write their complete story and not something that was incomplete or that misrepresented. I'm also interested in transgression and what transgression means and what it represents in a religious community and in this case specifically, the LDS Church. So those were the two main primary motivators for me in tackling these men's stories.

John Dehlin [00:14:14] Yeah, they're also just fascinating. Brian, what would you add?

Brian Buchanan [00:14:18] A few years back when one of the 70 was disciplined, that was quite a big thing that hadn't happened in a long time and I think.

John Dehlin [00:14:24] So you're talking about James Hamila. James Hamila, yeah. Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:14:29] And. And that was, that was quite the big story. Right. And people were interested in. It's hard because Mormons walk this very interesting line of how they view their leaders. They, we pay lip service to the idea that they're, of course, they're normal people, but in practice that doesn't always work out. And so stories like this, I think are important to remind everyone that, that people are people, even if they're leaders. And I do think it's also interesting for people to see that even though they were high level leaders in three of these cases, their cases were not swept under the rug. They were investigated, they talked about it, and ultimately they did face discipline, just like an average person would have. And so I think that's an interesting point for people to consider is how the Mormon Church court system works even at the highest levels, which is an important part of our history.

John Dehlin [00:15:19] If I'm thinking about disciplines I'm aware of, obviously Joseph Smith excommunicated with people for breakfast and probably Brigham Young did too. But the Oliver Cowdery examples, like, oh, you accused me of adultery, I'm going to excommunicate you. But, but in my Lifetime. There's George P. Lee, who is the Native American General Authority, who probably apostatized, but he was excommunicated. He was excommunicated for sexual abuse of some kind, as I understand it. And then there's Paul H. Dunn, who was kind of put on emeritus status for. For not being honest. And then there's James Hamila. And you could kind of wonder whether Dieter Uchtdorf was disciplined a little bit by being removed from the First Presidency, just like Hubie Brown would have been. But those are the ones that come to my mind. But these four, I mean, I knew about Richard Lyman, like what an apostle has an. As an adulterous affair. So it's going to be fun to talk about that. But these others, I. I knew about Joseph F. Smith, but. So this is just gonna be fun. All right, Brian, anything else you want to say about.

Brian Buchanan [00:16:20] These are such fascinating stories, and that's. This would probably be a good place to talk about kind of a little how the book came about.

John Dehlin [00:16:26] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:16:26] As Gary had published the articles on Lyman and Carrington and Joseph F. Smith in the Journal of Mormon History. And they were fascinating articles that created a lot of interest and people loved them. But in the world of books that I'm in, I know articles for a lot of people, they won't necessarily see those. And so this, this is really where the book began. As I thought, these articles deserve to be part of a larger book that would get in more hands because they are such fascinating stories that reveal so much of. Of the Mormon character and our history and. And so it was nice to see them get another life.

John Dehlin [00:17:02] Yeah, beautiful. Well, let's, let's dive in, fellas. I'm so excited. So the first, the first chapter, one of the book is about Albert Carrington. And I. I'm sure I've stumbled on his name in my readings of Mormon history, but, man, I didn't know the story. So how do we set up the life of Albert Carrington?

Albert Carrington and Polygamy Violations

Gary James Bergera [00:17:23] Well, he was. He was one of the more educated members of the LDS Church. In the mid 19, mid to late 19th century. He rose in the ranks. He became a counselor to Brigham Young. He was also an assistant trustee in trust, I think, for a period of time. And he was one of the administrators of Brigham Young's estate. When Brigham Young died, he was called on to preside over the church's British mission. And it was there that trouble started to happen. He became too close with some of the young women who worked in the mission office. People started to notice things. Reports Started to filter back to Salt Lake. He denied it really quick.

John Dehlin [00:18:12] Was this before he was made an apostle or.

Gary James Bergera [00:18:13] No, this was after. He's an apostle at this time.

John Dehlin [00:18:15] So he's made an apostle, did you say? Around 1870?

Gary James Bergera [00:18:20] Right, yeah. So. And plural marriage is going on. He didn't have, he didn't bring his wife or wives with him when he was president of the British Mission.

John Dehlin [00:18:28] So he's a polygamist. He's an apostle. Remember the quorum of the 12? And he's serving as a mission president.

Gary James Bergera [00:18:34] Serving as a mission president. And he's also maybe, you know, they're encouraged also to look for additional wives. And so it's possible that he was looking for additional wives and was taking things a little too.

John Dehlin [00:18:45] In England. In England. Okay. All right. Okay. So what, what?

Gary James Bergera [00:18:50] So, so, so word is starting to come back. People are noticing things. People are talking. It's not good publicity.

John Dehlin [00:18:57] What are they noticing?

Gary James Bergera [00:18:58] They're noticing that he's. They're noticing that he's spending too much time or inappropriate time or even more inappropriate kinds of physical, physical contact with, with one or more of the, of the girls who are helping out in the, in the mission office.

John Dehlin [00:19:13] Okay.

Gary James Bergera [00:19:15] Word gets back. He eventually, Brian is he sent home. Is his mission over and he sent home?

John Dehlin [00:19:22] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:19:22] He finishes his term and then John Henry Smith, his colleague in the 12, comes to replace him as mission president. And then he starts hearing those rumors also and starts to think there's probably fire where there's smoke and finds out there's.

Gary James Bergera [00:19:38] And in the meantime. So Carrington is back home now.

Brian Buchanan [00:19:41] He is back home and he is called to.

John Dehlin [00:19:43] Can I just note one thing like we've been covering on Mormon stories? We did a six part episode on Joseph Smith's polygamy and we, we talk about some of the things that his polygamous wives have in common. And it seems like if you're working close, if Joseph had people in the house, women in the house, domestic help, whatever you want to call it, orphans that were staying with him, they were kind of prey to his advances. And I guess, I don't know if it's a false equivalence or a false connection to say that Albert could have looked. If he had known about the life of Joseph Smith. He could have looked at Joseph Smith's life and said, hey, people who live in your house. That's, that's how Joseph got a lot of his wife's time. Maybe we would never know whether he would have made that connection, but he certainly could have. Is that Fair.

Gary James Bergera [00:20:35] It's fair. I. I would be surprised if he actually was consciously making that connection. I think it was just a matter more of opportunity for him. Of all the people that are chronicled in that book, Carrington is the one, personally for me, that is hardest to sympathize with because his behavior seems more predatorial and abusive. So, you know, I try to understand where he's coming from, but when I step back from that, he is maybe the least sympathetic.

John Dehlin [00:21:10] Because of the power differential. Because he's an apostle.

Gary James Bergera [00:21:13] Yeah. And these women were the way that he's. Yeah, yeah. Lyman is easier because it was just a, you know, it was a long term relationship.

John Dehlin [00:21:24] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [00:21:24] And there seems to have been genuine love between the two of them. I'm not sure how much Albert Carrington loved the women that he was involved with.

John Dehlin [00:21:32] Okay, okay. All right. So the. So the mission president follows him, says, hey, there might be an issue. Does he raise a red flag? Does he.

Gary James Bergera [00:21:40] He does raise red flags. There are meetings. Carrington denies it.

John Dehlin [00:21:44] I mean, he's with the first presidency of the 12.

Gary James Bergera [00:21:46] With the first presidency and the 12.

John Dehlin [00:21:48] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [00:21:49] And Carrington does deny it. He's categorical, isn't he, Brian, about denying it?

Brian Buchanan [00:21:53] At that point, he'll admit sometimes early on to maybe a little foolishness. And his language when he talks about it is fascinating because he clearly sees what's going on very, very differently than all of his colleagues do. Especially as it starts to get worse and more details come out.

Gary James Bergera [00:22:11] Well, the details that come out is that some of the women immigrate to Salt Lake. Right. And they get married. And apparently they talk about it. And at least in one case, the husband was the one who complained. And the church authorities started to take these much more seriously. They realized that Carrington had not been honest with them.

John Dehlin [00:22:35] Yeah, I think I get the impression that one of these women, we should probably get her name. Is it Kirkham?

Brian Buchanan [00:22:41] Sarah Kirkman.

John Dehlin [00:22:41] Kirkman, yeah. So. So I guess she gets married and then the husband. I guess she confesses and the husband finds out that she had had some type of sexual relations with this apostle. And so I. I guess I just wanted to note one thing. There's kind of almost this conflict of interest if the first presidency of the Quorum of the twelve are investigating one of their own, because clearly they would have an interest in. They're not being a scandal. So when it's brought up the first time or two with. With Carrington. Carrington, that he's like, I didn't do it. And they're like, okay, you're fine. And they just let him go. And it just makes you wonder how it's almost like a boys club vibe where, like, oh, sure, you wouldn't do it. These people, they're nuisances. They're. These are not the droids you're looking for. Let's move on. Is that. Is that fair to say?

Gary James Bergera [00:23:33] They would. Sure. I mean, I think that there probably was some of that, but for me, when I look at it, I think more that they had had a long experience with Carrington. They knew what he was like. And I think that there's an inclination to view him as a colleague, maybe even a friend, and to believe him when he denies that and that which makes the sense of betrayal that much greater when they are confronted with these things. And Carrington does come clean. And I think that that may have been as much a factor in their decision not only to excommunicate him, but to not allow him readmission or to postpone restoring any priesthood or temple blessings that he may have received. So, yeah, I think there's some of that that, you know, we want to keep this quiet, but the idea that this man, this friend, lied to us, I think maybe was even a bigger factor in how they ch. How they continued when.

John Dehlin [00:24:38] When Kirkman brings his wife to. To kind of tell on. On Carrington, it's not just that she had had sexual relations with Carrington before she married him. It's that those sex. That sexual relationship had continued as if Carrington had kind of groomed this couple with. With his influence so that he could have continued access to Mrs. Kirkman after she had been married. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. So that's extra troubling. Okay, keep going.

Gary James Bergera [00:25:12] Yeah, it is. So they find out and they call him in and he eventually does come clean. He offers certain explanations or he minimizes his. His adultery. One of the big things is the way that he sees adultery. He says that he used protection of some kind and so the seed didn't mix. And that, for him, seems to be some kind of reason why it isn't. It wasn't as bad as the rest of you. Want to make this out?

John Dehlin [00:25:50] Can I read from your book? Is that okay?

Gary James Bergera [00:25:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:53] So this is from. This is from justice and Mercy, page 10. It says, quote, it seems that brother Carrington told her in the beginning of their connection that there was no harm if they did not mix their seeds. She worded it also in another way that he told her there was no harm if they didn't go through the whole performance. Now this obviously calls to me the, you know, this idea of soaking just all this, all this sort of weird BYU non sex sex that happens these days.

Brian Buchanan [00:26:24] These ideas are not new.

John Dehlin [00:26:27] They're not new. Yeah, they're not new. But, but the chapter is called A Little Folly in Israel. And I think that's what you're kind of saying like. And I think he even gets that term from Brigham Young.

Gary James Bergera [00:26:37] No, he gets. He, I mean, maybe, but he uses,

Brian Buchanan [00:26:39] he blames it on Brigham Young.

John Dehlin [00:26:40] He uses it.

Gary James Bergera [00:26:41] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:26:42] He does say, yeah, George Q. Cannon's not happy about that.

John Dehlin [00:26:45] No. Yeah. So he basically says if the seed doesn't mix, it's not adultery. It's not adultery.

Gary James Bergera [00:26:51] It's not definition adultery.

John Dehlin [00:26:53] Crazy. It's crazy. All right.

Gary James Bergera [00:26:56] And they know, they don't, you know, it doesn't work. His rationale is not accepted and it makes things worse. So they do come down hard on him. They excommunicate him. They publish a notice. They explain the reasons why that it is for. I think. Did they even use the term adultery in the notice of excommunication, Brian?

Brian Buchanan [00:27:18] I think they do. And other times they call it lewd and lascivious conduct. Yeah, yeah, they, that's the thing is once they, these colleagues understand the full extent of this, they are horrified. And their journals are very, very detailed about this and they, you know, they say, this is the most disgusting recital I've ever heard. And so really when they do understand what's going on, they are willing to face it and own up to it. But what I also think is an important point is to remember that this is all going on in the 1880s when the anti polygamy legislation is coming down on their heads. And so there is this kind of siege mentality that they've set into. And so I think that also helps to explain why at the beginning there may be not quite as, as willing to accept is because they're constantly facing this, what they see as, as persecution from the outside. And so this is just yet another example of this until all the details come out and they realize, oh no, this is real. This is when we believe this and we're horrified.

Gary James Bergera [00:28:21] Yeah, well, they also, it does serve as a kind of a PR move too, to be able to say, look, we're publishing, we're, we're were practicing plural marriage, but it's a moral practice. So Carrington comes along and it just, you know, it feeds all of the critical tropes regarding polygamy. And so they move quickly and decisively to say, this is not polygamy. This is not us.

John Dehlin [00:28:49] Well, that's what. You know, one of the names I recognize is Moses Thatcher. I know that he was a polygamist himself and, and an apostle. And isn't he one of the ones who's excommunicated for. For continuing with post manifesto polygamy?

Gary James Bergera [00:29:01] He's not.

John Dehlin [00:29:02] He was not.

Gary James Bergera [00:29:03] He's not. He's. He's disciplined.

John Dehlin [00:29:05] He got. He excommunicated though, right?

Gary James Bergera [00:29:06] I do you know, Brian, was it officially he's dropped from the quorum.

John Dehlin [00:29:11] Dropped for the quorum?

Gary James Bergera [00:29:11] Yeah. For what? Was. For political stuff. It was. He would not align politically with the. The.

John Dehlin [00:29:17] Okay, okay.

Gary James Bergera [00:29:18] And. And just resented the political manifesto and. Yeah, he wouldn't do that. He also had some substance abuse issues. You know, he was treated for pain. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:28] Okay.

Gary James Bergera [00:29:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:29] Well, I, I just think it's. This is always. And this happens with the Lyman thing too, and it happened with John C. Bennett. It's like, okay, what's the difference between, like, it's. It seems like lines get blurred as soon as it's no longer monogamy. As soon as there's polygamy and plural marriage, then lines get blurred. And so it's weird that Moses Thatcher has a ton of wives and, and, And I, I guess Carrington's on the hunt. He has multiple wives, but somehow Moses Thatcher has a moral high ground. And the other apostles, because they're somehow their additional sexual partners are approved of, but this one with. With Carrington wasn't because he got caught. Brian, you're nodding your head. Why are we not your head?

Brian Buchanan [00:30:09] This, I think, is such a fascinating thing, and this is an aspect of polygamy that doesn't get talked about enough, is if you are one of the wives of a man that's involved in behavior like this, what is the difference between courting a potential plural wife or run of the mill, what other people would see as an affair or not even the wives in England, when this is going on, the other church members that are seeing this, what's the difference? I have an ancestor who served a mission later in life to England where he was born, and brought home a plural wife who was my ancestor. And so this. Yeah, like you said, the criteria of what is acceptable, not acceptable behavior during polygamy is very, very messy and always was.

Gary James Bergera [00:30:57] Well, this is one of the key points in talking about transgression. You know, what is it? What are you Transgressing?

John Dehlin [00:31:05] Yeah. Yeah. It's easy for the lines to get blurred. Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [00:31:08] Who Decides what it is.

John Dehlin [00:31:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's also worth noting that one of the members of the quorum of the 12 was Brigham Young Jr. Who had married one of Carrington's daughters. So there's another conflict of interest in the Quorum. Right? Yeah. Okay. All right. So.

Carrington's Excommunication and Rebaptism

Gary James Bergera [00:31:26] So he is. So Carrington is at this point when he's excommunicated. Brian, how old is he? Is he in his 80s?

Brian Buchanan [00:31:33] He is, yeah. He's. And that's.

Gary James Bergera [00:31:35] In his health isn't very good. And so he's basically shunned now. He's excommunicated, he's shunned. His family's embarrassed. It's just. I even think the marriage between his daughter and Brigham Young Jr. That founders, doesn't it? Yeah. So it's. Carrington's life just goes downhill from there. And his health is bad. He has people both within the family and without who then start to urge his is rebaptism. The brethren are not interested in rebaptizing him. Finally, his health becomes so precarious that they see it as a blessing to him to rebaptize him, which they do. Right. While he's still alive. Although I think they do it privately in his home.

John Dehlin [00:32:27] Wasn't it in his bathtub?

Gary James Bergera [00:32:28] Yeah, they do it in his home, in his own.

John Dehlin [00:32:30] Can I address that really quick? Okay. So when I was on my mission, there was a former branch president who had embezzled some tithing and. And had been disciplined. And I. I had to be a part of the disciplinary council as a young missionary in Guatemala. So I'm reading the church handbook of instructions, probably in Spanish, and it's. And I'm like, well, how do you decide if it's let go, disfellowshipped, or excommunication? Literally, one of the criteria was how public, how known is the scandal, Right. Or the offense? And in my mind at the time, I'm like, does God care? Like, why would God care how public the scandal is? It should be sin or no sin. And the crime should be. The punishment should be equally distributed, whether it's well known or not. You know, if I'm thinking about the origins of that policy, I'm thinking about Carrington and Lyman and others, because I. It's got to be that there's been apostles who have. Have made major mistakes or major discretions, but nobody knew. And it just seems like if nobody knows, then maybe no harm, no foul. Right? Is that.

Gary James Bergera [00:33:39] But.

John Dehlin [00:33:40] But in this case, they're really anguished about kicking him out because if they do, it's going to be all over the papers, and then all the enemies of the church, like the Sully Tribune, are going to be all over it. Is that. Is that worth kind of exploring just a tiny bit? Just this idea of, like, not them not wanting a PR scandal?

Gary James Bergera [00:33:59] Well, this goes back to what you said before, right? That. That. That there's a disinclination to want to publicize what. What they worry is going to be seen as. As dirty laundry and is going to give ammunition to their enemies. Yeah, I think that that's part of it. Although I can remember as a youth in the 1960s that they would announce excommunications to the ward.

John Dehlin [00:34:24] But that's. Of leaders or just of regular members? No, that was just.

Gary James Bergera [00:34:28] Yeah, that was regular members. I think that being a general officer of the church, in their eyes, is different. And if there is a serious malfeasance, a serious transaction, that they make a point of that, because it does, it can be used to reinforce boundary maintenance. And I think they're telling people, look, we can tolerate a certain amount of disobedience or of transgression, but at a certain point we can't. And we want you. We want everybody to know about this, that up to this point, maybe we can deal with it, but after this point. Sorry, no. And with Carrington, the whole thing about him being baptized at home in his bathtub, I think part of that was they didn't want to make a public statement. But I also think they were worried about his health.

John Dehlin [00:35:26] Sure.

Gary James Bergera [00:35:27] And he probably was infirm enough that they could not bring him to a traditional font. But they were still. Even after that point, they were still, you know, getting rebaptized is one thing. Having your priesthood and temple blessings restored is something else.

John Dehlin [00:35:41] That's right.

Gary James Bergera [00:35:42] And they kept. And, you know, you can see them continuing. It's almost forgiveness. There are various levels of forgiveness. Right. And I think baptism is one level of forgiveness. Rebaptism is one level of forgiveness. Priesthood restoration for men and temple blessings is another. And they finally decided Carrington's health was. He was in decline. He was dying. And I think that they finally decided, let's see if we can do something. Let's restore his priesthood and his temple blessings. But I think he died, didn't he? Just before, as they were on their way to his house to do something. I think he passed away. And they weren't able to do that. And it was done. Did they do it? They must have done it then. Possum you can do it after.

John Dehlin [00:36:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's fascinating. Well, maybe the bat, the bathtub baptism just fascinated me.

Gary James Bergera [00:36:40] It's interesting, isn't it?

John Dehlin [00:36:41] But I did, for me, I felt like it was to avoid scandal, but, but that is fair. His health was in decline.

Gary James Bergera [00:36:46] I, I, I think there may have

John Dehlin [00:36:47] been maybe two birds with one stone.

Gary James Bergera [00:36:49] I don't, I think that it's possibly. Yeah, I mean, I think they could have done it in a font if he had been able to and still tried to keep it, you know, quiet.

John Dehlin [00:36:56] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [00:36:57] But I suspect that they maybe had to lift him, lower him into the tub and it was just, well, this

John Dehlin [00:37:04] theme, this theme repeats through, through many of these stories. Just once they're kicked out, they really want back in sometimes almost immediately. And so part of what's fascinating about this book, justice and Mercy, is that you include the journal accounts of many of these apostles where they're torn and deliberating. We get him re. Baptized or not, what will the public think? Has he shown enough contrition yet? We'll get to that with Lyman. And then, and then like you said, the baptism may or may not happen, but then it's like, do we restore all the blessings? Yes or no? Or does it get done in the afterlife? Yeah, and that's, that's a, that's a great part of the book is to hear, to read the, the diary, journals.

Gary James Bergera [00:37:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:46] Of, of the apostles sometimes tormented over

Gary James Bergera [00:37:49] these questions is interesting and I'm happy to talk about right now too, if you want to do that.

John Dehlin [00:37:54] Well, anything. EL Carrington.

Gary James Bergera [00:37:56] Brian, do you wanna.

Brian Buchanan [00:37:57] No, I think that's, that's probably good on him.

John Dehlin [00:37:59] Okay, let's, if it's okay, let's go in order just because, because that's how, that's how I read it in my brain. So the second gentleman, he was not an apostle, but he was a prominent bishop in Salt Lake, but he did a lot of work down in southern Utah, specifically around Cedar City. And his name was Thomas Taylor. So let's tell the story of Thomas Taylor.

Bishop Thomas Taylor and Misconduct

Gary James Bergera [00:38:21] So Thomas Taylor. Brian, you're going to have to help me with this because my memory is not so good. Thomas Taylor was, he was the bishop, but he also had business interests and he was the church's immigration agent. Is that right? And he funded a lot of the stuff himself. He was hoping that he would get reimbursed for helping to bring however many thousands of people he helped coordinate their immigration to Utah. And what was it that happened in southern Utah? And why was he down there.

Brian Buchanan [00:38:51] Well, and this is so fascinating because people today, a bishop is a very different sort of animal than they were in the 19th century. You know, they had so many different things, and they're trying to provide for usually multiple families. And so, yeah, he's down there promoting iron interests and trying to get some business things going.

John Dehlin [00:39:08] Mining, right? Yeah, yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:39:10] And. And all of a sudden. Yes, Rumors start flying about him also.

Gary James Bergera [00:39:15] Well, he spends a lot of time on these interests. He's not in town. Right. He's out in the country. And he's got some people to help him out there.

Brian Buchanan [00:39:24] And that's so fascinating, too, because then it creates this jurisdictional conflict.

John Dehlin [00:39:29] Well, can we talk about the offense really quick?

Brian Buchanan [00:39:31] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:31] Do you want me to talk about it or do you want to talk about it?

Gary James Bergera [00:39:33] Well, there were some young men, right, who had been helping him out there, and they. Why did they. What was it that elicited? He.

John Dehlin [00:39:44] There's a pattern.

Gary James Bergera [00:39:45] He. He. What did he want them to do? He wanted them to.

John Dehlin [00:39:49] So basically. So basically he would. He would get these. Tell me if I got this right. He would. He would get young men to help him with whatever mining efforts he was trying, and he would end up sleeping in the same. This is the bishop, mind you. It's kind of a molesting bishop. He would get these young men to get in a bed with him to sleep the night because he's on business

Brian Buchanan [00:40:11] ventures, which was very common in the 19th century. That's another thing I think modern readers would be. Would find odd. But that was by no means unusual. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:19] To share, bet. I guess. But. But he's. But he's got this pattern of. Of grooming these young men to share a bed with him. He hires them, they come on jobs with him, and then while he's in bed with these young men, he would grab their hand, put them on his genitalia and. And encouraged the men to make him ejaculate. Sorry, it's gross. But that's. That's what he did. And there's. There's at least three instances where. Where young men testified that this molesting bishop, Thomas Taylor, would. Would perform these acts. Now, we don't know what other things he did, but these are just three instances where these men were willing to go to church leaders and say, this bishop, this Mormon bishop.

Gary James Bergera [00:41:02] It was all the same offense, right. With them, it was all kind of a. And was it mutual masturbation or was it just them. Them masturbating?

John Dehlin [00:41:12] There's a question in the book, whether he even necessarily was gay, because it was just like, I need to take care of my business, and you're going to help me with your hands.

Gary James Bergera [00:41:20] It does seem more situational.

John Dehlin [00:41:22] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [00:41:23] Than it does anything else. Right.

Brian Buchanan [00:41:24] There are some hints. He says before he was baptized, he engaged in something. He doesn't really elaborate, so. And you can kind of see him trying to fight it. He makes references to how he knew it was wrong. But, yeah, like you said, situational. It came up and kept happening.

Gary James Bergera [00:41:42] So this comes up. So this surfaces down in Cedar City. Right. And the most that the Cedar City people do. Leaders. Do is to do what they don't feel like they can do anything in terms of his membership because he's not a member of their ward or stake. How does it get referred up to Salt Lake then?

Brian Buchanan [00:42:03] Yeah. They say, well, this isn't our jurisdiction. They kick it back up to Salt Lake. And they say, well, we can release him as bishop, but beyond that, the transgressions didn't happen here, so that's your job, Cedar City. So they keep kicking it back and forth, which is a very interesting.

Gary James Bergera [00:42:19] And so finally it ends up with whom?

Brian Buchanan [00:42:24] Finally, they almost. They just kind of let it go for the most part, and Salt Lake takes their action. And. And it is also interesting because then you have these lingering business conflicts.

John Dehlin [00:42:36] Okay, wait, can I just say. Can I just say what? I remember reading it just because I read this, like, yesterday. So apparently, somehow the Sully Tribune. Yeah, God bless the Sully Tribune, finds out that this guy's got some accusations

Gary James Bergera [00:42:53] because his name is omitted. Right.

John Dehlin [00:42:54] So when the Deseret News publishes a list of the bishops in Salt Lake City or Salt Lake county, they don't. They leave off the name of Taylor, but they don't explain why.

Brian Buchanan [00:43:06] Eagle Eye Tribune notices.

John Dehlin [00:43:08] So the trip is like, hey, hey, everyone. The church just left off the name of Thomas Taylor as one of the bishops in Salt Lake.

Gary James Bergera [00:43:16] You.

John Dehlin [00:43:16] You ought to. You ought to start asking questions about why.

Gary James Bergera [00:43:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:19] Right.

Gary James Bergera [00:43:20] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:43:20] Well. And then the Deseret News publishes a notice of excommunication in error. And Taylor reads this and thinks, wait, did I get excommunicated? And he writes a letter and. Yeah. It's a very, very confusing story for all parties.

John Dehlin [00:43:37] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [00:43:37] What's the upshot of the letter?

Brian Buchanan [00:43:39] It's that he says, I'm sorry for what I did. And he also kind of hints at the business conflicts that's there between him and general authorities. And so this is. This was an interesting one because unlike the others, where it was almost a purely sexual nature. You also get some kind of lingering business resentment that's. That's there, which is, well, is he

Gary James Bergera [00:44:02] complaining about that or is he threatening to expose business malfeasance?

Brian Buchanan [00:44:08] It's a mixture of everything. He kind of confesses in one paragraph and then kind of wonders, where am I left? And not really resolved to their sets. He is excommunicated eventually, but not by that point when it's published is the weird part. So.

John Dehlin [00:44:26] And it's also, I mean, I'm thinking about the Boy Scout scandal today. I'm thinking about. It seems like every month along the Wasatch front, there's a bishop accused of. Of abuse or molestation, a Mormon bishop accused of that. Or across the United States, like this idea of. Of priesthood leaders having a broad pattern of abuse. Not a 80%, but, you know, certainly some percentage of Mormon ecclesiastical leaders and CES instructors continue to abuse using their position of power. And, you know, so. But, but it seemed like the Church wanted to keep this out of the courts. And so it. Because right now there's this whole West Virginia and Arizona cases where, where the Church is using Curt McConkey to do their best to keep any of these abuse allegations out of the court system. I'm obviously looking for the root history that that might lead to the church, help lead to the Church's practices today when it comes to scandal and potential legal allegation. So I just had to make that tie that they tried to keep this out of the courts, you know, even if they did pursue it in church court, only after they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Gary James Bergera [00:45:46] Right.

John Dehlin [00:45:46] Do you mind if I read just

Gary James Bergera [00:45:47] a little bit from the book?

John Dehlin [00:45:48] Is that okay? All right. So this is. This is Thomas Taylor after he's caught. And I guess this comes out of his journal, but it says, I have sinned and done grievously wrong. I'm cut off from the Church. The. That I know is of God and I have brought it upon myself. And oh, how wretched I am. I've blamed men whom I've thought acted spitefully towards me in other things. But I desire to be submissive and acknowledge that it is just. And now I plead for mercy. Oh, do not cast me off forever. I want to have the privilege of the visits of the teachers. Now that was interesting. Oh, I'm going to keep reading and then I'm going to come back to that. I want to show them. Is it talking about home teachers or teachers in the ward? Like, who are the teachers that he's talking about. I'll finish reading then. I want to hear Brian so or, or Gary. I want to have the privilege of the visits of the teachers. I want to show them if my heavenly father will help me how I will repent of my sins. I want to be humble and do right, that I may yet be saved through obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I want my wife and children who are here to be visited by the teachers. They have done no wrong. When overwhelmed with grief, my wife has cheered and comforted me and said, can't you do right from this time on and be forgiven? I said, I will try. My family in the city have had jobs, comforters, and my wife, Elizabeth Romney wants a divorce and my family will be broken up. So basically he's married to multiple women. Somehow that's not enough for him. And he's married to a Romney. So Elizabeth Romney is one of his wives and I think she ends up divorcing him. But do you have an idea who these teachers are that he really wanted to make sure still came around?

Gary James Bergera [00:47:36] I assumed it was the ward teachers, like home teachers. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:39] But it was just the calling of deacon, teacher, priest that was different than those were adults.

Gary James Bergera [00:47:43] Right.

John Dehlin [00:47:44] And they would be.

Gary James Bergera [00:47:45] But.

John Dehlin [00:47:46] But the whole teachers are 14 year olds. That's a relatively modern thing, right?

Gary James Bergera [00:47:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:52] Okay.

Brian Buchanan [00:47:53] And they would have hewed a little closer to the. The idea of the Doctrine and Covenants to the teachers specifically. See, there's no evil in the church. So especially like during the Reformation, they had more of a catechizing purpose of asking more pointed questions about morality and things like that. So it would have been, you know, less of just presenting a message like in current times, but more proactive.

John Dehlin [00:48:15] Helping out.

Brian Buchanan [00:48:16] Yeah. Seeing that the morality of the church is strong kind of thing.

John Dehlin [00:48:20] There was one other little paragraph that I thought was really interesting. He writes, I am sending my consent today for my wife. And this is the. This is Elizabeth Romney for my wife to obtain a divorce. She never had appreciated the addition of wives to my family. This is the first wife, Elizabeth Romney. And now I have sinned. Her patience is exhausted and I fear for my children. So it's again, she never liked the polygamy, but she went along with it. I just always love to call that out because the church makes it sound like almost every woman who was engaged in polygamy loved it and had a testimony of it. But Elizabeth Romney never liked it.

Brian Buchanan [00:48:59] Yeah.

Aftermath of the Thomas Taylor Case

John Dehlin [00:49:00] All right, what else do we want to say about the molesting? Bishop Thomas Taylor.

Gary James Bergera [00:49:04] He Was he re baptized?

Brian Buchanan [00:49:09] Good question. I do not remember.

John Dehlin [00:49:12] So I want to say he was. It seemed like he was re baptized four years later.

Gary James Bergera [00:49:16] Okay. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:18] So he did get re baptized and it was four years later, which was much less time than it took Richard Lyman, who's our next subject? It's four years. Four years of a delay for sexually molesting three boys. Wait four years.

Gary James Bergera [00:49:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:33] And you get re baptized.

Gary James Bergera [00:49:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:35] You know, if you have privilege, I guess. I don't know. I don't know if it would have been better or worse.

Gary James Bergera [00:49:39] Depend on what you did.

John Dehlin [00:49:40] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:49:41] Also, he seemed to be much more penitent than the others. Carrington, you know, he didn't try to deny, I don't think as much as some of the others did. And they really didn't like it if you talked back.

Gary James Bergera [00:49:53] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:49:53] And he didn't do that as much.

John Dehlin [00:49:55] The problem with that is, is what we know about child molesters is that they don't. They, they, they often don't. They don't change. They, they can't be rehabilitated. So I just want to call it to the fact that if they're like, oh, four years, he was penitent, let's bring him back. That doesn't mean he's changed his behavior. And that could restore. And he goes on to still have some influence in the community in his business deals. So it still puts children in danger when the church re baptizes pedophiles. Yeah, right.

Gary James Bergera [00:50:26] Yeah. And today, if this had happened, I don't know if the response would have been the same, you know, if they would have, you know, if four years was, you know. Yeah, if, if, if, if that, if they would have wanted him to, you know, wait longer. I don't know how that works. Do you know what, what with. So somebody does, let's say some. Today somebody does this kind of behavior is excommunicated. Do they have like a limit? You can't come back for X number of years?

John Dehlin [00:50:53] Oh, I have no idea. I think it's, it's all about who you know and, and who you're connected to and probably how prevalent it is. And there's probably some type of legal assessment with Curtin McConkey to decide what the risks are. But historically, in the past 20, 30 years, a child molester might not even be excommunicated.

Gary James Bergera [00:51:12] Right.

John Dehlin [00:51:12] And then if, and only if they got caught and yeah, re baptism is always a possibility. Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:51:20] All right.

John Dehlin [00:51:20] Well, that takes care of the molesting. Bishop Thomas Taylor. It's Time to switch to one that I was familiar with. But it was still fun to read about it. Richard R. Lyman, the three generation apostle who had an adulterous affair as an apostle.

Apostle Richard Lyman and His Secret Relationship

Gary James Bergera [00:51:36] Yeah, for me. So Richard Lyman is again, he was a highly educated member of the church and was one of the first PhDs to be called as an apostle. And he had a long time. His family goes back forever in the church. For me, the thing that struck, that struck me about this is that he

John Dehlin [00:51:57] was, he got a PhD from Cornell.

Gary James Bergera [00:52:00] Yeah, yeah. And. And he was in the engineering department at the University of Utah.

John Dehlin [00:52:06] I think that's right.

Gary James Bergera [00:52:07] I think he had something to do, to do with the naming of the streets or the laying out of the streets in Salt Lake City. The, the problem that his problem started when he was asked to help bring back into the church a woman who had been excommunicated for being a plural wife. A post manifesto. Plural wife.

John Dehlin [00:52:33] Is it okay if we mention his wife, Amy Brown Lymon, just to set some context.

Gary James Bergera [00:52:38] And she was also a church officer. She was president of the Relief Society.

John Dehlin [00:52:42] Yeah, he's married to Amy Brown Lyman and she was like president of the Relief Society. Like a prominent, educated, smart, capable woman. There was a problem though.

Gary James Bergera [00:52:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:54] Do you want to talk about just their marital problem? Well, it might have been a precursor to some of this.

Gary James Bergera [00:53:00] Are we talking about the son or.

John Dehlin [00:53:02] That came later. But you get the sense of temperaments

Gary James Bergera [00:53:04] were different and well, and, and they, you know, they, they, their relationship seems to have turned platonic at a certain point.

John Dehlin [00:53:13] Yeah. Yeah. You write that like after, after their final kid, she just said we're done have, we're basically done having sex. So this is a man married to one woman and they're not having sex, but he's an apostle. I think that's an, that's an important context to build. Also did the death of his son predate his relationship with.

Gary James Bergera [00:53:34] I don't know that it pre, did it predate it?

Brian Buchanan [00:53:37] He started working with her before.

Gary James Bergera [00:53:39] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:53:39] Then the son dies and then, but then they're, they're, their relationship then begins after that.

John Dehlin [00:53:45] That was something I didn't realize is that the sons, they have a son, the son's wife dies likely by suicide. Is that right?

Gary James Bergera [00:53:52] I can't remember if it was this was the wife or her wasn't his. That him.

Brian Buchanan [00:53:56] That looks like some question.

Gary James Bergera [00:53:57] It looks like suicide.

John Dehlin [00:53:58] So their, their daughter in law dies and then a year or two after that they're putting pressure on him. He has an alcohol problem. He's not making good on the family name.

Gary James Bergera [00:54:07] Right.

John Dehlin [00:54:08] Lyman's traveling all over the world. He probably can't be the dad that he needs to be. And then his son dies by asphyxiation of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Gary James Bergera [00:54:16] That's right.

John Dehlin [00:54:16] In the garage. I didn't realize that. So. So deep tragedy. I think it's his only son.

Gary James Bergera [00:54:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:21] Right. And so he's. He's in a loveless marriage, at least in terms of sexual intimacy. And they have a son die by suicide. As an apostle.

Gary James Bergera [00:54:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:31] Okay.

Gary James Bergera [00:54:31] And as this is going on.

John Dehlin [00:54:33] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [00:54:33] He is tasked with helping to bring back into membership a woman who was excommunicated for being a post manifesto plural wife.

John Dehlin [00:54:41] And can we. Can we just talk about the history of that really quickly?

Gary James Bergera [00:54:44] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:54:44] So she's from, what, Scandinavia? Right. And some Mormon guy kind of grooms her into being a plural wife.

Gary James Bergera [00:54:53] Right.

John Dehlin [00:54:54] After. After the manifesto.

Gary James Bergera [00:54:56] Manifesto.

Brian Buchanan [00:54:56] After the second manifesto. After the second manifesto, Quinn estimates it was probably 1909 that the marriage occurred.

John Dehlin [00:55:03] And what's her name?

Gary James Bergera [00:55:05] Her name is Anna Jacobson.

John Dehlin [00:55:06] Anna Jacobson.

Gary James Bergera [00:55:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:07] So she's groomed by a Mormon, becomes a postman second post manifesto plural wife.

Gary James Bergera [00:55:13] But then she's excommunicated.

John Dehlin [00:55:16] But he wasn't.

Gary James Bergera [00:55:17] He wasn't. He was just. He. He left and went someplace else. Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [00:55:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:21] So the church lets off the. The offending polygamous male.

Brian Buchanan [00:55:27] That was unusual for that to happen. In those cases, if anyone was not going to be excommunicated would usually be the wife. So that, that, what that did. That caught my attention too. That, that. That was not the usual pattern.

Gary James Bergera [00:55:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:42] Yeah. Like that. I, I wonder, you know, because it's so weird that then he gets assigned to bring her back into the church. Like, why is the church. Of all the important things an apostle has to do, why is the church assigning an apostle to fellowship and excommunicated plural wife.

Gary James Bergera [00:55:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:56:00] Isn't that weird? Was that. Did you find that weird?

Gary James Bergera [00:56:02] So that didn't. I, I. Can. I. I see what you're saying. When I read this stuff and was looking at it for the first time, that didn't strike me as unusual. But I also. I don't. I don't think I was looking for. I, I don't think I had the context to know if that was going to be unusual. If, if they. Because I don't know, maybe they've had other.

Brian Buchanan [00:56:21] Do you know, Brian, There were cases for a few years. Talmadge was sort of the point man in the quorum of the 12 to deal with post second manifesto cases. And there was one actually he helped very similar thing. He was asked to help bring this woman back into fellowship. And that caught my attention because she had later married my great great grandfather. And so I think there were cases like this. And part of that just goes to the messiness of. Of post manifesto and particularly post second manifesto polygamy. And in a lot of cases, I think there was the inclination to excommunicate, but later decide that may have been too harsh. Conditions were kind of messy. And so there were cases like this where they were tasked specifically of working with individuals.

John Dehlin [00:57:11] But that just seems like, again, bad decision making. Seems like they should have a woman fellowshipping Anna Jacobson back into the church. But here, here they've almost given permission for Richard Lyman to be spending a lot of time with a. With a divorced woman who's single, and he starts fellowshipping her over multiple years. Yeah, right.

Gary James Bergera [00:57:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:32] Well, that just makes no sense. But, I mean, I don't know.

Gary James Bergera [00:57:35] Well, I don't think they anticipated what was going to happen.

John Dehlin [00:57:39] So what does happen?

Gary James Bergera [00:57:40] But, so, so they, they. They become friends. The. The friendship at some point. And Lyman refers to this later, he says that at some point they developed a very strong friendship. They even decided that when one of them died, they would arrange to have the other one sealed as a plural wife to Lyman. But they continue to interact and eventually, as Lyman explains their. There. There came a point where he succumbed to temptation and their relationship turned sexual.

John Dehlin [00:58:18] And. And my understanding was he was in a. At least for like 10 or 15 years of the time he was an active apostle. He was also in this. Yeah. In this sexual affair.

Gary James Bergera [00:58:29] Yeah, he would. He. Apparently what would happen is that there were. There were times when the 12 would have their weekly meeting in the temple on Thursday, and then he would walk up Main street to center street to her apartment and spend time with her after the temple meeting.

John Dehlin [00:58:47] I mean, we're always pounding hard on the folly of this. This notion that church leaders have discernment, that they have the ability to kind of get. Get promptings from the Holy Ghost when bad things are going on. If ever there was a case of a lack of discernment, it's the fact that the first presidency of the quorum of the 12 were. Had a. Had an adulterer among them for what, 12, 15 years probably, and they, and they had no idea.

Gary James Bergera [00:59:12] Yeah. Yeah. At some point, though, somebody notices something, right. And reports start reaching J. Reuben Clark that, you know, Elder Lyman has been observed, you know, going into this apartment. And so the church and Clarks especially, they've been using members of the Salt Lake Police Department to investigate polygamists. Right.

John Dehlin [00:59:37] And you know, you know, the. The name Vetterly, you probably know why that name means something to me, right?

Gary James Bergera [00:59:44] Because.

John Dehlin [00:59:45] Because I was a political science student at byu and there was a Vetterly professor there who's probably the son of this Vetterly on the police force, who ended up being one of the professors that supported, as I understand it, supported Wilkinson in kind of that spiring stuff that happened in the 60s and 70s. Dick Vetter, that.

Gary James Bergera [01:00:04] Actually, the Vetterly that you're talking about came in later to the.

John Dehlin [01:00:07] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:00:07] He was hired under Dallin Oaks.

John Dehlin [01:00:09] Right. But I'm just saying that's where the name.

Gary James Bergera [01:00:12] I'm not sure. I think I might have looked into that. And I don't know that there was.

John Dehlin [01:00:16] If it was Linda relations. You're not sure if it was his dad.

Gary James Bergera [01:00:18] It may have been something else because it's too coincidental.

John Dehlin [01:00:20] Right. So who was this Vetterly? Who's this Vetterly in your book?

Gary James Bergera [01:00:23] Wasn't he the police chief? He's the police chief of Salt Lake city. So the 12 decides they need to. They've heard these stories. They now need proof. And what they decided is they need like visual proof of this. So J. Reuben Clark asks Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold Beeley to accompany the police up to this house. And they apparently break down the doors. They catch them in some doing something that provides enough proof so that they subsequently bring charges of adultery against Richard Lyman and excommunicate him. And a little while later, they excommunicate Anna Jacobson.

John Dehlin [01:01:08] Yeah. So for me, this idea, and I guess it was some of the people involved were J. Reuben Clark, Harold B. Lee and Joseph Fielding Smith.

Gary James Bergera [01:01:17] Right.

John Dehlin [01:01:17] All people that kind of were rougher. Right. I think had a reputation of being kind of rough guys, in some ways, maybe moralistic. I don't know what the right.

Brian Buchanan [01:01:28] Moral hardliners. Definitely.

John Dehlin [01:01:30] Yeah. So they get these moral hardliners guys. What a. What a weird relationship that Mormon church apostles are partnering with the police force. Not. I mean, was it. Was adultery technically illegal?

Gary James Bergera [01:01:44] I. I assume it would have been, you know, if you really. If it came to that.

John Dehlin [01:01:48] But, but.

Gary James Bergera [01:01:49] But whether it was illegal or not, like civilly illegal.

John Dehlin [01:01:53] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:01:53] This was just something that they.

John Dehlin [01:01:55] I'm just imagining three apostles or two apostles.

Gary James Bergera [01:01:58] It's an interesting relationship.

John Dehlin [01:01:59] And this chief of police of Salt Lake literally breaking down the door of another Mormon Apostle in Salt Lake City and catching them in the very act.

Gary James Bergera [01:02:09] Now he, Lyman later says that he writes to a relation and says that Vetterli told him that if Vetterli knew that it was Lyman they were after, he would never have gone along with it.

Brian Buchanan [01:02:23] All he was told was that it was a big fish.

John Dehlin [01:02:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so maybe that gets Vetterly off the hook a tiny bit, but it's still weird.

Gary James Bergera [01:02:32] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [01:02:33] Well, the context for this I think is fascinating because it seems to me very clear that the way this comes to church leaders attention is due to a Salt Lake bishop named Fred Curtis who had been part of this widespread program under J. Reuben Clark's supervision of hunting out polygamists. And they would go to meetings, they would take down license plate numbers and then they would get to their contacts in the police or the dmv, have those run, come back to them, then they would go to those people's their bishop and have them discipline. So it was part of a very widespread coordinated surveillance effort. And I, Lyman, I think, was just an accidental result of that. Which is fascinating.

John Dehlin [01:03:18] Yeah, yeah. There needs to be a book on like the churches, the Salt Lake City corporate church's relationship with law enforcement. I remember, I think I remember Brett Metcalf talking about like that when There was an ERA event happening in the 70s in Salt Lake City. I guess the church partnering with law enforcement to take down license plate numbers of women involved in the era stuff. And then there's the whole spiring at BYU in the 60s with Wilkinson. Like that could be a book, probably the church's relationship with law enforcement.

Gary James Bergera [01:03:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:53] In. In Salt Lake City, in Utah. Kind of weird, right?

Gary James Bergera [01:03:56] Yeah. And probably not just law enforcement.

Brian Buchanan [01:03:58] Right?

Gary James Bergera [01:03:58] You know, probably.

John Dehlin [01:03:59] Oh, yeah. You know, so I guess it's really important to mention that, you know, just like Carolyn Pearson has that lovely book, the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, like polygamy is always a part. So Lyman, just like, you know, just like Carrington had his little folly justification. If there's no seed mixed, no harm, no foul, Lyman had a justification too. Do you guys want to tell what Lyman's justification for the affair was?

Gary James Bergera [01:04:26] You mean like initially what they thought they thought that they were. So this is an interesting question. Did Lyman view the relationship as some kind of crypto plural marriage and that they were actually married in some way? Some people say it looks like maybe there was this kind of relationship. Maybe they had. Maybe Lyman had married himself to her. I don't know that I'm persuaded by that. I mean, early on, it does look like Lyman was viewing her as a potential eternal wife. Not in this life. And it also seems clear later on that he says this was not. That he did not view their relationship, his extramarital relationship with Anna Jacobson, as some kind of crypto plural marriage. Brian, what do you think?

Brian Buchanan [01:05:20] It's a tough one. Mike Quinn was very convinced, and Leonard Arrington asked him about it one time, and he told Leonard flat out this was a case of polygamy. I'm more along with you. And again, there's history to that. The idea of the solemn covenant where it was just a mutual vow, there was no ceremony, there was no officiator. That's very kind of loosey goosey. And I think you could argue for that being that kind of relationship. But, yeah, I don't think it's persuasive enough.

Gary James Bergera [01:05:51] If Lyman ever believed that he didn't later, part of his condition, the conditions for him being readmitted into the church, he had to say that it was an extramarital relationship. It wasn't a plural marriage.

John Dehlin [01:06:06] Yeah. So in my mind, as I'm trying to reconstruct this, the fact that he wanted to get rebaptized and get his blessings restored, you know, the fact that he was a Mormon apostle tells me he was a sincere believer in the gospel. And, and so in my mind, if he is an apostle of Jesus Christ in the church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, and he's having an extramarital relationship, he's got to manage his cognitive dissonance.

Gary James Bergera [01:06:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:06:35] And for me, that is the way he's going to manage his cognitive dissonance is by feeling like, I love you so much. God has to be okay with this. I'm feeling the Holy Ghost right now. Let me give you a hug. Like, I'm feeling so good about this. So it must be that God has given us his. Okay. And this. And this is polygamy. I mean, to me, there's just no way that's not true.

Gary James Bergera [01:07:00] And that could be. And they continue after their excommunications, there was a period of time where they continued to see each other.

John Dehlin [01:07:08] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:07:09] And so you do wonder what kind of gymnastics he went through, you know, to. To. To justify that.

The Church's Response to Lyman's Transgressions

John Dehlin [01:07:18] Well, one thing that blew me away, that I had not learned about this story previously from this amazing book that I'm going to plug again. Go buy it now. Justice and Mercy. I'm chilling for you guys. Come on. No, no, no. This book is worthy. Was how terrified the brethren Were as soon as they excommunicated Richard Lyman for who they were worried he would connect up with.

Gary James Bergera [01:07:41] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:07:42] Do you know what I'm saying? Do you want to fill in the blanks there?

Gary James Bergera [01:07:44] Let Brian. Because this is his.

John Dehlin [01:07:47] What was he terrified? What were they terrified?

Brian Buchanan [01:07:48] Yes. Yeah. Carolyn Pearson's book, Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, this is just a case study of this. Because when polygamy is just sort of left hanging that we don't do anymore, largely for legal reasons, because the government had come down on it, not that we no longer believe in it, then that is always part of the equation. And by the 1940s, again, like I said, I really do think Lyman comes to light out of this polygamous surveillance effort. They're, of course, worried that he will go to become this sort of. Kind of like his grandfather a.m. sulaiman became the figurehead for the new movement that he comes and he's.

John Dehlin [01:08:33] Which movement?

Brian Buchanan [01:08:35] The Godbeites. And so he is kind of the star catch of the movement. You know, this former apostle, they're worried that the grandson, Richard Lyman, same thing. He becomes now a prominent fundamentalist and former apostle. This is evidence that polygamy still is correct.

John Dehlin [01:08:52] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [01:08:52] And so that is. That is. And. And justifiably, I think, was a fear.

John Dehlin [01:08:58] So did. Didn't the book say that some fundamental. So what we're talking about is what we've covered in previous episodes about the fundamentalist movement that happens in the early 20th century that by the mid 20th century is kind of really starting to form in. In the Short Creek kind of Utah, Arizona, Colorado kind of area. Is that right? And as I understand it, doesn't someone come meet with Lyman? Don't some fundamentalists actually come meet with him?

Brian Buchanan [01:09:26] They really wanted him to join with them, and then that would have been just an amazing coup for them had that happened. But it does seem very clear that he had no interest in that at all.

John Dehlin [01:09:37] Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [01:09:38] And did they try to meet?

Gary James Bergera [01:09:40] Did. Did they actually meet?

John Dehlin [01:09:41] I thought I read that.

Gary James Bergera [01:09:42] I thought there was a rumor that they.

Brian Buchanan [01:09:43] Yeah, I think they wanted to, but

Gary James Bergera [01:09:45] I don't think that they were actually.

Brian Buchanan [01:09:47] Ultimately. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:49] Okay. Well, that. That. That was a fascinating twist that I want to find the reference, because I marked it up, but that was a fascinating reference. How terrified the church must have been that he would become a figurehead for the. For the polygamist movement. But he still believed in it.

Gary James Bergera [01:10:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:06] You know, as they all probably did.

Gary James Bergera [01:10:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:08] Yeah. Okay. So they decide to excommunicate him. Do you Want to talk about the deliberations or the decision excommunicate him. And the. I mean, part of this book is it goes into detail in the disciplinary councils and through journal entries, talks about Spencer W. Kimmel's reaction to Lyman, Harold B. Lee's reaction. Joseph, you know.

Gary James Bergera [01:10:29] Well, they're all.

John Dehlin [01:10:30] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:10:31] Surprised and they're devastated by this. Again, they thought that this was. They felt betrayed by, like, by. By. By Lyman.

John Dehlin [01:10:41] It implies that Heber J. Grant died of heartbreak because of what happened to Richard Lyman over the grief.

Gary James Bergera [01:10:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:48] That, like, Richard Lyman goes to see Heber J. Grant and Heber J. Grant. I mean, I want to say he's like, lying on the floor.

Gary James Bergera [01:10:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:57] And. And Hebrew J. Grant's just like, go away, I can't even stand to see you kind of thing. Like, like the griefs.

Gary James Bergera [01:11:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:04] Someone else, one of the apostles, Christ, for, like, three days, it says. Like, that's. Why were they so torn up over Lyman? They weren't shedding tears over Carrington. It doesn't seem. Why. Why. What about Lyman made.

Gary James Bergera [01:11:15] I think that they were genuinely shocked. So. So, so there was that. That initial disclosure of what had been going on under their noses, that he had been so disloyal to. To the. To the feeling among the 12 of this. This, you know, the unanimity that they would have felt for each other.

John Dehlin [01:11:39] Yeah. Benson is my cousin and it writes. I. I don't think of him as a particularly emotional man. Ezra Tab Benson writes, I could not hold back tears of sorrow for my brother who had committed this grievous sin. That's Benson.

Brian Buchanan [01:11:52] And he's in Europe and is hearing this by letter. Cablegram or something.

Gary James Bergera [01:11:56] Is in Europe or is he in Washington, D.C. he's in.

Brian Buchanan [01:11:59] He might be in D.C. i think he's in Europe. Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:12:01] He's.

Brian Buchanan [01:12:02] Can't believe it.

John Dehlin [01:12:03] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:12:04] Yeah, I think there was that. There was that initial shock.

John Dehlin [01:12:06] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:12:09] Then, you know, Lyman tries to.

John Dehlin [01:12:13] And by the way, it's in the. It's in the front page of the Deseret News. Right. Notice of Excommunication by George Albert Smith notices hereby given that after due hearing before the Council of the twelve Apostles and upon his own confession, Richard R. Lyman has been excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints for violation of the Christian law of chastity by the order of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, signed George Albert Smith.

Brian Buchanan [01:12:37] Well, and I think this also goes to the emphasis on sexual transgression that is so shocking to people. You know, it had been 30 odd years since John W. Taylor had been excommunicated. The last person to be excommunicated. But that was, you know, a protracted thing and that wasn't quite so shocking. But this Mormons sexual transgression is just, is always so shocking. And to them to think that he had been sitting next to them in quorum meetings for 25 years and while this had been going on for a good portion of that time. Yeah. It was just. It shocked their sensibilities greatly.

Gary James Bergera [01:13:13] Now Lyman was bothered by the fact they publicized it. He didn't think that it was. He thought they had mishandled it. And the. He kind of resented that. He felt personally attacked and that informed his approach over the next almost 20 years. Right. For when he trying to get rebaptized and before we did not like that they felt that he was. So I think that they learned something. They all learned things about each other during that process. And, and so they, they, they. His response, you know, hurt as much his chances of re baptism as, as anything.

John Dehlin [01:13:59] Well, it just seemed like that you have some amazing accounts in here of him appearing before the 12 and just like almost yelling at them for having excommunicated him.

Gary James Bergera [01:14:10] Blaming them and.

John Dehlin [01:14:11] Yeah. And admitting that he was still having an ongoing affair.

Gary James Bergera [01:14:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:15] With Anna Jacobson. Like what a spectacle.

Gary James Bergera [01:14:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:18] An excommunicated apostle getting audience with the quorum of the 12 and then yelling at them and lecturing them for having excommunicated him. I can't even imagine that happening. Yeah, right.

Brian Buchanan [01:14:28] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:14:29] It's interesting, isn't it? I mean it does tell you a lot about. About Lyman and about how he viewed himself.

John Dehlin [01:14:34] How did he get audience with them? I would just assume they'd cut him off forever after that.

Gary James Bergera [01:14:38] You know, I think that they kept trying. They kept hoping and they kept doing it. I mean they kept entertaining the idea both from him as well as from other family members that he should be readmitted. And finally Lyman does express enough remorse and enough repentance that they do agree to re baptize him. But again the restoration of his priesthood and temple blessings, that's another level of forgiveness that he never gets that while he's alive.

John Dehlin [01:15:12] But he does get it afterwards.

Gary James Bergera [01:15:14] Apparently. He does. And that's the irony. Right. Is that who is it who restores his blessings? It's Joseph Fielding Smith who is now the church president.

John Dehlin [01:15:23] It's like one of the first things he did when he became prophet.

Brian Buchanan [01:15:26] Right. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:26] I wonder why.

Gary James Bergera [01:15:27] According to the story.

John Dehlin [01:15:28] Yeah, I wonder why.

Gary James Bergera [01:15:28] Yeah. Well, I think that there was a lot of. I think his family kept up the pressure to have that happen. And. And maybe they did. Maybe Joseph Hilling Smith and Harold B. Lee decided it was time.

Brian Buchanan [01:15:41] Well, there does seem to be a very clear distinction between that restoration while living and posthumous.

Gary James Bergera [01:15:48] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [01:15:48] Because there are numerous occasions where that doesn't happen, but once they're dead, they kind of figure, well, we'll just do it. And this is the whole we'll let the Lord sort it out. Right. Approach.

Women Affected by the Lyman Scandal

John Dehlin [01:16:01] Let's talk about two women that are casualties of the story. The first is Amy Lyman.

Gary James Bergera [01:16:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:09] So she's still. Imagine not only front page. I mean, dear listeners and viewers, imagine not only front page news of the Deseret News. Mormon Apostle excommunicated for adulterous affair, but imagine if his wife were also general Relief Society president. And there's a really sad moment in the book where a church leader shows up to Amy Lyman and kind of has a talk with her. Who wants to.

Gary James Bergera [01:16:35] Well, she. I think a couple of things is that first, David O. McKay walks with her back into the Relief Society offices, accompanying her, which is supposed to send the message that she did not. This is not her fault that we are backing her. But it becomes clear that she can't continue. And I think it's. Isn't it J. Reuben Clark, who has the talk with her. Brian's nodding and suggests that maybe it's time for a change in leadership.

John Dehlin [01:17:05] And I'm just like, why should she be punished for what her husband did?

Gary James Bergera [01:17:09] I don't think they saw it as punishment.

John Dehlin [01:17:10] No.

Gary James Bergera [01:17:11] I think she was having a really hard time being the president, not feeling responsible. Now she feels like she's not an example. And I think that she thought that it would be in. Maybe she thought it would be in her best interest to take some time away, but also in the churches and in the Relief Society's best interest, too.

John Dehlin [01:17:32] Yeah. But that's sad, right? Do you have any. Any comments about Amy, Brian?

Brian Buchanan [01:17:36] Well, she's such a fascinating figure.

Gary James Bergera [01:17:38] She.

Brian Buchanan [01:17:38] Her biography, Faded Legacy by Dave hall is fantastic and adds. Adds some color to their, Their marriage that I think you drew on. That was very helpful. And she. She's just so interesting because she is very much a progressive woman. You know, she goes to Hull House while he's in college, and she's around Jane Addams. And so the social programs of the Relief Society were very near and dear to her heart. She was very well liked by the church membership. And so that was. Yeah, that just added to not only was she released society present but very well loved. And to have that shock she had no idea that this was coming from everything that we can tell. And and so to be confronted with that just. Yeah. Devastating and yes, a very, very sad ending to her her time as general president.

John Dehlin [01:18:30] And you've got something in the footnotes about one of the brethren kind of almost using Amy Lyman as as an example of what happens when the woman works outside the home. It's like look, see, women should stay home barefoot and pregnant because if they work outside the home, you're going to end up like Amy Lyman.

Gary James Bergera [01:18:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:18:50] What a tragic.

Gary James Bergera [01:18:50] And she must have heard that kind

John Dehlin [01:18:51] of moral tale, cautionary tale, right? Yeah. Well I was just sad that she became a casualty. She does end up supporting him and sticks with him.

Gary James Bergera [01:19:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:01] Even though he continues with in his affair with Anna, Amy Lyman still supports him.

Gary James Bergera [01:19:07] Well, they can't really divorce.

Brian Buchanan [01:19:09] So this wasn't stand by your man, John.

Gary James Bergera [01:19:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:14] Well I mean that that can be okay and that that can be fine and that can be inspiring or sad. But it's clear she had a rough. Yeah, she had a rough go.

Gary James Bergera [01:19:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:19:25] And in some ways was a casualty. The other casualty is Adam Jacobson who is excommunicated for a second time. That sucks. Let's talk about that.

Gary James Bergera [01:19:34] I don't see that's interesting. I don't know very much about that. She's, she's, she's a really hard person to track down. She, she doesn't marry and I think that she just continues to live in that Centre street apartment until she dies. But she was excommunicated. Lyman was excommunicated I think in November of 43 and she was excommunicated in January or February of 44 and again and she was excommunicated by the 12. So that's an interesting.

John Dehlin [01:20:06] That was weird.

Gary James Bergera [01:20:06] That was interesting.

John Dehlin [01:20:07] Like why isn't it her own local bishop?

Gary James Bergera [01:20:09] I don't know. Maybe they wanted to keep it under wraps and try to control the information.

Brian Buchanan [01:20:15] I think again this is, this is fallout from post second manifesto stuff. Same thing would happen there they frequently especially if it were better known cases would be would be handled by the 12 as opposed to local leadership. So that I think that's just a continuation of that

John Dehlin [01:20:32] and I just have to call it. I think it was J. Reuben Clark who was shaming Amy Amy Lyman for working outside the home. Do we like that guy? Do we like J. Reuben Clark? What's the consensus?

Gary James Bergera [01:20:44] They're all complicated people aren't They, I mean, it's like, for me, it's like each of these four men, you know, do I. What. What's my. How do I feel about them? And there are things I like and things I don't like and.

John Dehlin [01:20:57] Yeah, I wish.

Gary James Bergera [01:20:59] Yeah, we're all fraud.

John Dehlin [01:21:00] What about you, Brian? Are you a J Room Clark fan?

Brian Buchanan [01:21:03] Clark is tough attorney. Right. Such a fascinating book. Very, very well done. Very complicated man. Yeah. This very accomplished government official attorney, but also very much a racist and a bigot at times. And yeah, he's a very. He's a very difficult person to really feel warm and fuzzy about, I think.

Gary James Bergera [01:21:32] John, with these men that you just read about in, in this book, are

John Dehlin [01:21:37] you about to ask me a question?

Gary James Bergera [01:21:37] Is that okay?

John Dehlin [01:21:38] Are you allowed to ask me a question?

Gary James Bergera [01:21:39] I don't know. Am I never happy before? What was your feeling about them? Are there, Are there? Did you, like, dislike? What was. How did you respond to these, to

John Dehlin [01:21:49] these men's experiences, to the three that we've talked about?

Gary James Bergera [01:21:51] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:21:53] That's weird. Why are you asking me? This is Mormon stories. I ask you questions. Well, Carrington, he felt like a predator.

Gary James Bergera [01:22:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:08] Kind of shameless.

Gary James Bergera [01:22:09] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:11] So I'm not crazy about that.

Gary James Bergera [01:22:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:13] And Thomas Taylor felt like a pedophile.

Gary James Bergera [01:22:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:16] So that's disgusting to me.

Gary James Bergera [01:22:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:20] With Richard Lyman. Yeah. I, you know, I think I could, I could. I can't emotionally. I've never been able to understand pedophilia or child abuse. It's just. It's something that my brain can't wrap itself around. And, And Carrington's flagrant justification and grooming of. Of multiple people as a high level leader of the church, part of it is just the differential of power.

Brian Buchanan [01:22:50] Right.

John Dehlin [01:22:50] The. When you're at that level of significance and you're predatory on multiple women and justifying it and then lying about it. That's why, for me, Albert Carrington, it's hard to have sympathy for Albert Carrington or Thomas Taylor.

Gary James Bergera [01:23:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:05] With Richard Lyman, there's never an excuse for, for, you know, cheating on a spouse. It's never good. You should never do it. It should never be done, and there's no justification for it. So I'm never going to justify that and I'm not going to justify Richard Lyman. But I could. But, but I could. At least in my mind, I can go, okay, his wife's busy all the time. He's busy all the time. He's put in this. He's in this position of power, and then he's in this position that he should have never been put in, where he's asking, asked to fellowship a woman who's single over multiple years, and he has no sexual relationship with his wife, and the church has these high moral standards. That just seems like. And then there's the polygamy justification that's in the back of his mind. I see how that happens.

Gary James Bergera [01:24:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:03] Right. Yeah, I can see that.

Gary James Bergera [01:24:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:24:06] And so. And then his denial afterwards and still doing it and yelling at the brethren that. All that self justification. I can see in my old brain how that sort of thing could happen. So I think of the three, for me, Lyman approaches sympathetic not to ever excuse his behavior.

Gary James Bergera [01:24:27] Right.

John Dehlin [01:24:28] Brian, what do you think?

Brian Buchanan [01:24:29] Same thing.

John Dehlin [01:24:30] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [01:24:30] And Lyman is an interesting case because he was. He was. Seemed to be very well loved by church members. He had kind of this gregarious personality, and he seemed to strike a more moderate tone in his sermons. You know, there's examples that he was a little more understanding of human nature maybe than some of his colleagues were. You know, if you compare it like a Joseph Fielding Smith personality and Richard Lyman, people gravitated more toward him.

John Dehlin [01:24:56] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [01:24:57] And I think that probably played into his colleagues shock and sense of betrayal also, because they did love him. He was kind of this big bear of a man that they all liked.

John Dehlin [01:25:04] He was probably charismatic.

Brian Buchanan [01:25:06] Yeah. I think he definitely had more personal charisma than some of the others. And so when that happened, it was more of a betrayal and shock because they just. They genuinely liked him.

Gary James Bergera [01:25:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:25:15] Yeah. Well, I just think. I just think this tradition of, well, power. Power differentials are important. And, you know, bosses shouldn't. Shouldn't get involved with coworkers. I think that's wrong. And I'm. You know, I just think that is wrong, especially if there's a power differential. So. But. But this idea of, like, it. It goes to 11, as they say in the Spinal Tap movie. If these men are supposed to be special witnesses of Christ, they're supposed to have special power. And that's why I'm particularly sad about Anna Jacobson. Like, if ever there was a. A reason to not excommunicate an adulteress, let's call her that, even though it's a crappy word. When you've got an apostle who, from her perspective is grooming you and has all this power differential, and then if the. He's in touch with Christ and God and he. And the polygamy thing is still in DNC132, and if he's talking in any way, I Feel the spirit that we're meant to be together, then she's a flat out victim.

Gary James Bergera [01:26:22] Right.

John Dehlin [01:26:23] As far as I'm concerned, he deserved to be excommunicated. She deserved to be loved and supported. So I think she's. And then how can she. If she stays in Salt Lake for the rest of her life.

Gary James Bergera [01:26:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:35] How's she supposed to go out.

Gary James Bergera [01:26:36] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:37] Ever.

Gary James Bergera [01:26:37] The 12 was not united on excommunicating her. That, that was an interesting thing to. To find out. And I think that George Albert Smith goes on the record and. And says, I was not in favor of this action.

John Dehlin [01:26:49] Yeah, that. That just doesn't seem right.

Brian Buchanan [01:26:51] The dynamics of the, of the quorum, I think in all these cases is fascinating to see how they individually think about it. And you can see the hardliner personalities stand out and those that are more willing and those that are just kind of more willing to go along with whatever is the decision too.

Gary James Bergera [01:27:07] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [01:27:07] And that's, I think, will be interesting to readers is to see how those dynamics work at these very high pressure, high stakes kind of cases.

John Dehlin [01:27:16] Yeah. Yeah. Well, that brings us to Joseph F. Smith, The. The gay church patriarch.

The Presiding Patriarch and Same-Sex Relationships

Gary James Bergera [01:27:24] He was the. He was the. Yeah, he was the presiding patriarch. He was. So this is Joseph F. Smith, either the second or the third, depending on what you're talking about. His grandfather was Joseph F. Smith, the LDS Church president. His father was Hyrum Smith. Is that right? Joseph F. Smith's oldest son who died as a young man. He was an apostle and he died, I think, from the flu, the influenza. And so Joseph F. The second or third, because his uncle was Joseph Fielding Smith. So there's a lot of Joseph F. Smith's. There's a lot of Joseph Fielding Smiths in that family. Anyway, he was a professor of speech who at a certain point was named to be the presiding patriarch. And he was named to be the presiding patriarch after like a 10 year period when there wasn't a presiding patriarch because Heber J. Grant didn't want to name Elder G. Smith as the presiding patriarch. And so they had acting patriarchs until finally Huber J. Grant was able to convince the 12 that, no, we need to get one, it should not be this Smith, it should be this other Smith. And so Joseph F. Smith was named the presiding patriarch to the church.

John Dehlin [01:28:40] It's interesting that he seems a little bit progressive. Like on page 86, he's quoted as saying, honest doubt was never shameful. Honest doubt is a Sally Salutary thing. Dynamic doubt is a good thing. A lazy doubt. Is a bad thing as a lazy. Anything is bad.

Gary James Bergera [01:29:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:00] So like a pro. Doubt.

Gary James Bergera [01:29:02] He, he had been a teacher.

John Dehlin [01:29:03] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:29:04] A professor of speech at the University of Utah. So he would have interacted with. With a lot of, you know, young adults.

John Dehlin [01:29:11] And, and he was a master thespian.

Gary James Bergera [01:29:14] He, he, he, he was. Yeah. Yeah. So he was a patriarch for about four years. Three or four years. Gave about 1700 patriarchal blessings. Then something happened.

John Dehlin [01:29:28] And, and just really quickly, that position. I, I didn't realize this till reading the chapter. He was supposed to give patriarchal blessings to all the people who didn't. Didn't have a patriarch. Is that right? And then maybe special ones.

Gary James Bergera [01:29:43] Yeah, you could, you could, you could request sometimes a specific blessing from, from the presiding patriarch.

John Dehlin [01:29:49] Yeah, yeah. Like as soon as he got called in, he wanted to give one of the apostles a blessing. Is that right?

Brian Buchanan [01:29:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:54] So that's interesting.

Gary James Bergera [01:29:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:55] Okay. All right.

Gary James Bergera [01:29:56] So he says, of all of the four cases, for me, his was the hardest, just because the sources were incomplete. And so I don't know exactly what happened. I don't what. Something happened in 44, 45.

Brian Buchanan [01:30:16] Then it comes to light in 46,

Gary James Bergera [01:30:21] there's a man goes to meet with one or more of the general authorities and complains that something had happened between Joseph F. Smith and his son.

Brian Buchanan [01:30:36] It's possible it may have come out as he was preparing for a mission. Quinn hypothesizes. We just don't quite.

Gary James Bergera [01:30:42] And we don't know exactly what happened either. Something happened between Joseph F. Smith and this man's son, and it was serious enough that they decided they needed to. The general authorities needed to look into this. I think that it's George Albert Smith, right. Who asks to meet with.

Brian Buchanan [01:31:01] Meets with his father one time and then.

Gary James Bergera [01:31:04] And it might be more, though. Who's the church president?

Brian Buchanan [01:31:07] George Albert.

Gary James Bergera [01:31:08] George Albert Smith is. So his counselors are David O. McKay and J. Reuben Clark. Whatever happened, Joseph F. Smith downplays it or denies it, but that's not enough. This continues to. The boy's father continues to complain about this. Finally, there's a meeting and Joseph F. Smith. Something happens. Joseph F. Smith admits or confesses to something. And at that point, then he is told not to come back to the church office building. His secretary is told that there won't be any more patriarchal blessings. And Joseph F. Smith goes into seclusion into his home. I think he lived in North Salt Lake or Bountiful, up around there, Centerville. But something is going on and they just don't know what's happening then? This happens during a summer, the early part of a summer. Later in that summer there is a meeting. He is brought in to the 12. He says something, he confesses something.

Brian Buchanan [01:32:16] Is that the meeting where his father I think are both.

Gary James Bergera [01:32:22] And he admits that something happened between himself and the young man. But exactly what it is I don't know. But it's serious enough. Joseph Hilling Smith in his diary writes that it was disgusting. He doesn't want to talk about it. It's too disgusting to talk about something like that. Joseph F. Smith is. He goes into a deep depression during this time and there are other kinds of symptoms that show up and he's willing to continue as the presiding patriarch. But it's clear that George Albert Smith And David O. McKay and others feel like he just can't do it. This is not appropriate. And so they. He submits a letter that says that you can do what you want to with me. He is then at the October's conference he is released for what they say is an unspecified condition. And after that I guess there are enough rumors circulating that it was some kind of. Of homosexual encounter that happened between him and this young man. The family's devastated. I don't know how much his wife knows. She must know the general particulars of what happened or at least guessed. They relocate to Hawaii. The church there in Hawaii is told not to extend any offers to him, not to call him to anything, nothing like that. He gets a job teaching at the University of Hawaii. His wife later teaches elementary school, I think. And so Elder G. Smith is. Is then called to replace him as the presiding patriarch. Heber J. Grant has died by this time. So it's George Albert Smith who calls him. Who calls Elder G. Smith to be the presiding patriarch.

John Dehlin [01:34:46] I did make a note in the chapter that this idea of any blood lineage. Oh yeah, sort of like associations.

Gary James Bergera [01:34:52] They didn't like it either. Nobody else in the. In the hierarchy really liked it.

John Dehlin [01:34:57] Why don't you explain what. What the blood lineage thing was?

Gary James Bergera [01:35:00] Well, the idea, right Brian, was that the presiding patriarch had to descend from Hyrum Smith, Joseph Smith's brother, is that right?

John Dehlin [01:35:08] Or any of the Smiths. Right.

Gary James Bergera [01:35:10] Well it got interpreted that way that it could maybe extend out beyond. And that was. I think that wasn't that Heber J. Grant's complaint?

Brian Buchanan [01:35:17] Well he really wanted his son in law to be the presiding patriarch and they had that this whole standoff. They're interpreting this idea various ways. That's on its own is a fascinating story.

Gary James Bergera [01:35:29] Yeah but they don't like it. They see that it's problematic. It ties their hands as to who they can call into the hierarchy. And Joseph F. Smith especially, he kind of elevated the presiding patriarch to a position between basically the first presidency and the 12, and the 12 didn't like that either. So later on in. When is it 78, 80, something like that?

Brian Buchanan [01:35:50] 78.

Gary James Bergera [01:35:51] 78. Basically, they retired the office. They release Elder G. Smith without ever appointing a successor to him.

John Dehlin [01:35:59] Can you just do that? Can you, Joseph? Set something up and it becomes inconvenient. It's. It's awkward. You got a gay patriarch, you got this bloodline thing that's super weird. And you don't like, announce it. You don't like, say, hey, everyone, we're canceling this. Sorry, it was revelation then. But it's. We're just going to quietly mothball this. Like, that's. Isn't that a weird. It's kind of like calling Leonard Arrington as church historian and at general conference, and then when you release him and shut down the department, you don't mention it. It's. Yeah, it is interesting.

Gary James Bergera [01:36:29] It is interesting, isn't it?

John Dehlin [01:36:30] How it's normal corporate pr, but it's not the type of accountability I would expect from the way the church taught me. Honesty works. What do you guys think?

Gary James Bergera [01:36:38] Yeah, I think that's an interesting. So I don't know if they actually thought that they were going to never again call a presiding patriarch, but I do think they had. They saw that in practice it was a difficult calling to maintain, especially when your hands are tied as to whom you could call to this particular position.

John Dehlin [01:36:59] What do you think, Brian?

Brian Buchanan [01:37:01] Yeah, Once you designate Eldrid as emeritus status, that inertia of that emeritus status just stays. And at that point, any subsequent leader, I think would be too. It would require too much to reactivate it. So by just simply designating him as emeritus, you had effectively done away with it. And it was such a long, fraught, complicated history that I think pretty much all of them were agreed. It's just easier to not have this position. It was never clear what it meant. You have periods like Joseph F. Smith where it's a little higher status, and then other times it's lower and it was just too complicated. It was easier to just not have it.

John Dehlin [01:37:48] Yeah. Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:37:51] So Joseph F. Smith, his family are in Hawaii. Gradually, Joseph F. Smith and family members start making. And also his local leaders, too, start inquiring at church headquarters. Can't we call this person. I don't even know if the local leaders know fully exactly what happened, but they're just told, don't extend any callings to him. After a period of time, maybe 15 years, 20 years, they do. They call him to Joseph F. Smith to serve in the High Council in Hawaii. And it's there. So there was never any official action taken against him. He was never excommunicated. He was never formally disfellowshipped. He was, his priesthood was never taken. His temple blessings were stayed intact. So there wasn't anything to restore. They, they, all, they did, all the church headquarters did was to finally say, okay, you can go ahead and call him if you want to, if you feel like you can serve.

John Dehlin [01:38:57] So there's, there's kind of, it's a, there's consensus that he had a homosexual relationship, but maybe because it wasn't well known enough and the church wanted to avoid scandal. Plus he had high connections. He's given a pass.

Gary James Bergera [01:39:10] Well, I also think that they, I don't know if they viewed it as a homosexual relationship or if they viewed it as some kind of inappropriate physical, same sex, physical activity that was not consensual. See, and that's the other thing too. I don't know exactly what happened between Joseph F. Smith and this young man. There are stories. Conal o', Donovan, who is the expert on lgbtq, Mormon and Utah history, has talked about possible earlier relationships that Joseph F. Smith may have been involved in before he was called as the presiding patriarch. So there may be a history of Joseph F. Smith. He stayed married.

John Dehlin [01:39:59] Do we get the sense that he may have had other relationship, gay relationships in Hawaii while he was living there? Do we even have any?

Gary James Bergera [01:40:06] I think that Connell talked to somebody who, who alluded to something.

John Dehlin [01:40:11] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:40:12] But again, I just. Yeah, I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:40:15] Yeah, I don't know. He was kind of exiled. Right. Is that fair?

Gary James Bergera [01:40:17] Well, it was kind of a self exile. Yeah. Yeah. He, he, you know, he didn't want to hang around here and be the subject of gossip and stuff, so. And he had served. His mission initially was in Hawaii. So he did have a connection to Hawaii.

John Dehlin [01:40:30] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:40:31] Yeah. And then he died, I guess, in 64, something like that. He passed away. His son was on a mission at that point and Mark Peterson counseled him not to come home for the mission, which was, I guess, pretty standard policy for missionaries not to come back home because I think they worried they wouldn't go back.

John Dehlin [01:40:52] Yeah. Brilliant.

Gary James Bergera [01:40:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:55] Well, that's Joseph F. Smith.

Gary James Bergera [01:40:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:40:57] And just to, to kind of, you know, to kind of round out. I. I've had church discipline. Things happen in my. Let's just say, extended family and. Yeah. And, and I've. I've made mistakes in my life. So, you know, I feel mixed about all this kind of stuff. I. I've been excommunicated, by the way, and there are things I've had to repent to my bishop to about. So this, this brings up a lot of feelings for me. But, you know, disciplinary councils are in many cases barbaric. The church and its publicity of things is, you know, but, but, but for me, the biggest thing is just the power differential. No, no. No person should ever claim special access to the divine. That's too much power. So when you add that to these church leaders in positions of influence, you know, this is heartbreaking, tragic, uncomfortable stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but, but then, yeah, seeing the back behind the scenes machinations is fascinating, which is why I think this book, everyone's gonna love this book.

Patterns of Church Discipline Across Cases

Gary James Bergera [01:42:06] So we talked about the. The four main chapters.

John Dehlin [01:42:08] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:42:09] Brian, do you want to just talk about what comes after the rest of the book?

John Dehlin [01:42:12] Because that's just half the book.

Gary James Bergera [01:42:13] That's just half the.

John Dehlin [01:42:14] These four stories is just half the book. So what else is in the book, Brian?

Brian Buchanan [01:42:16] Y. It's like a good Mike Quinn book. If you're skipping the. If you're just reading the text, you're not reading the rest of it. You're missing some of it. So we have some statistical things that Gary put together looking at specific periods of excommunication and some data analysis there. That's very interesting. Lavina's contribution. Absolutely fantastic. It started as a Sunstone presentation. She had some more current data on excommunication from the mid-1960s through 1970s. And so it's part data analysis, but it's also traditional Lavina musings. She's one of our many consciences of. What does this mean? What is excommunication? Do we need excommunication? What's the effects of it? Another important part of her essay is she looks at how the criteria for dealing with excommunication evolved over that period that she looked at in the handbooks, which is also very interesting. We have some very fascinating excerpts from the Salt Lake stake in the 1880s up through the 1890s, as the manifesto happens, and looking at these very interesting cases of plural marriage and how those were handled. And then Gary had compiled all these public notices of excommunication, like you mentioned. They would be announced in awards, but they would also be Published. So the Deseret News, the Church News section was. Would publish sometimes with the reasons for it. And then in footnotes, we look at more of the story. And they range anywhere from one guy didn't want his home teachers to come in, which was probably more to the story. But that was the specific reason given to. Like you mentioned, as the fundamentalist groups start to Coalesce through the 30s and 40s, we see all sorts of recognizable names there. We see Rulin Jeff show up. We see Rulon Allred show up. And so the Lebarons. And so these recognizable names from fundamentalist history that become part of the story. So lots of good stuff. I think readers will love the book.

John Dehlin [01:44:16] Yeah. So just reading kind of Appendix 4 is excommunications and Disfellowshipments, an alphabetical register of names and related data, 1930-1953. Fawn Brody's name shows up there as well.

Brian Buchanan [01:44:28] Brody's in there?

John Dehlin [01:44:29] Yep. And then appendix five is a decade of excommunications, a 1965-1975 profile. Because I'm like, where's my name? And then I'm like, oh, I didn't make the. I didn't make the window. What?

Gary James Bergera [01:44:41] What?

John Dehlin [01:44:41] I haven't read the Hunsaker vs Hunsaker appendix. What's that about?

Brian Buchanan [01:44:45] That.

John Dehlin [01:44:45] What is that?

Brian Buchanan [01:44:46] Oh, that is a. That is a fascinating story. So this is the extended Hunsaker family up in Honeyville. And the. The father Abraham Hunsaker had been sort of one of the pillars of the community. He passes away, leaving, I think, five wives and all these half siblings from the different wives that are all sort of related in business things. And some are guardians. And that thing at the time. Rutger Clausen, who will later become an apostle and president of the quorum of the 12, is the stake president. And he writes an incredibly detailed account of this in his journal, the whole thing. So rumors start to get out that one of these brothers is accused of some homosexual behavior with some of the other brothers. And it comes to the bishop's court and they talk about it there, and decisions are made, but then they get appealed to the stake president, and the stake president reverses it. And the bishop isn't necessarily willing to go along with him. And the word is divided on it. And so in two separate occasions, the sacrament is removed from the ward for a period of several months. Just a fascinating thing that I don't.

Gary James Bergera [01:45:54] Because it's family against family, basically.

Brian Buchanan [01:45:57] And it's playing out in very public ways. And Again, thanks to these fantastic primary sources that Gary came up with, we have this very detailed picture of how this very complicated, very controversial case played out in church in the city. It eventually is appealed to the first presidency and the bishop who is not willing to play ball gets removed. And there's an acting bishop for a time. And then apostles are sent to the ward to try to settle things and they take a vote. And apparently most people vote for the old bishop, but you can't do that. That's not how it's supposed to play out. And so it's just this very interesting, complicated case.

John Dehlin [01:46:42] Yeah.

Brian Buchanan [01:46:42] Of family versus family.

John Dehlin [01:46:44] Yeah. Well, what a brilliant book. Gary Bergera, Lavina Feeling Anderson and Brian Buchanan. But before we go again, it's justice and Mercy studies of transgression in the Latter Day Saint community. Please buy it now. Please reward good scholarship. I have to ask you this. Why didn't you publish this with Signature Books? Is that a sensitive question?

Publishing the Book and Closing Reflections

Gary James Bergera [01:47:05] It's not a sensitive question because this was Brian's idea. He's the one who came to me and said, what if I. Or we do we gather these essays together and then maybe supplement with any other material that might be available? And I said, okay, that's great. The less work I have to do on this, the better. So it was Brian's idea.

John Dehlin [01:47:27] What does that have to do with it being published as Signature or not?

Gary James Bergera [01:47:31] So not. Well, because it was. It didn't. Now if Brian had said, why don't I do that? Why don't I, Brian, do this for Signature, then it would go through the regular process. And to be honest, because of my connection to Signature, I worry about stuff that I do,

John Dehlin [01:47:48] conflict of interest stuff.

Gary James Bergera [01:47:49] Conflict of interest, but also, you know, the whole idea of a vanity press, you know, that just exists to publish stuff that, you know, that we employees might be involved with. So I'm not eager to try to encourage that kind of a view. But it really was Brian's and Brian had Brian. So Brian has published other books.

John Dehlin [01:48:13] Really?

Gary James Bergera [01:48:13] Yeah, they've all been, up to this point, write reprints.

Brian Buchanan [01:48:17] Reprints of stuff.

Gary James Bergera [01:48:18] Public domain kinds of materials that. Mostly 19th century LDS kinds of things. So this is the first I non reprint. Well, it still is a half reaper, a hybrid that. That Brian's done. And so I'm hoping that Brian continues to, you know, publish stuff.

John Dehlin [01:48:36] Me too, Brian.

Brian Buchanan [01:48:37] Me too.

John Dehlin [01:48:38] You're a. You're not a hidden gem, but you're a gem in I. You're super smart, knowledgeable. So yeah, I'm so Glad you're able to join us today. Do Gary.

Gary James Bergera [01:48:48] Me too.

John Dehlin [01:48:49] You're no slouch, Gary.

Gary James Bergera [01:48:50] This was just. Wait, I'll see if I can change that in the future.

John Dehlin [01:48:55] Have you remind me if you've published any other books.

Gary James Bergera [01:48:58] So the first one was. And again, it was kind of a hybrid, was Conflict in the Quorum. Oh, yeah, it was that book.

John Dehlin [01:49:05] Yeah.

Gary James Bergera [01:49:06] That's the book Ron and I did on byu.

John Dehlin [01:49:08] Conflict in the Quorums. About what?

Gary James Bergera [01:49:10] So Conflict in the Quorum is about the sometimes contentious relationship between Orson Pratt, Joseph Smith, and especially Brigham Young.

John Dehlin [01:49:19] Okay.

Gary James Bergera [01:49:20] Over polygamy with Joseph Smith and over doctrine with Brigham Young.

John Dehlin [01:49:23] That's an important book.

Gary James Bergera [01:49:25] It was fun to work on. So.

John Dehlin [01:49:27] Okay. Other books of note.

Gary James Bergera [01:49:30] The last. The big thing was the edited diaries of Leonard Arrington.

John Dehlin [01:49:35] Ooh.

Gary James Bergera [01:49:36] So there was that. The three volumes of the Leonard Arrington Diaries. That's. That's. That's. This is the. Brian's is the most recent, but the one before that was. Was that the Leonard Arrington Diaries that

John Dehlin [01:49:45] come after Greg's Leonard Arrington book?

Gary James Bergera [01:49:47] It did come out after. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:49] Yeah. I would love to have your. I think we talked about maybe doing an episode about that. Yeah. All right. Well, Gary, thank you for this book, but also thank you for all your contribution. Contributions over the past several decades. And I. I'm just gonna say my secular prayers every night until you and. Or Ron Prius and. Or George Smith agree to come on Mormon stories and tell your stories.

Gary James Bergera [01:50:18] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:50:19] You're gonna think about it.

Gary James Bergera [01:50:20] I promise you I will think about it.

John Dehlin [01:50:21] Can we get a commitment that I

Gary James Bergera [01:50:23] will think about it.

Brian Buchanan [01:50:23] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:50:23] That you'll do it?

Gary James Bergera [01:50:25] How about if I just think about it?

John Dehlin [01:50:26] Okay.

Gary James Bergera [01:50:27] So. But yeah. Yeah, this is. This has been really enjoyable, John. So thank you again for the. For the invitation.

John Dehlin [01:50:33] Okay. All right. And you'll be stepping down from the Smith Pettit foundation at the end of the year. Okay.

Gary James Bergera [01:50:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:50:39] All right.

Gary James Bergera [01:50:40] Yeah. Then that's it.

John Dehlin [01:50:41] That's it.

Gary James Bergera [01:50:41] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:50:42] You're done.

Gary James Bergera [01:50:42] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:50:43] All right, well, thanks for coming on, and thanks for everything you've done for us.

Gary James Bergera [01:50:47] Sure. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:50:48] And, Brian, keep on going with Mormon History Podcast. Also, check out Benchmark books. You want to tell them what Benchmark Books is?

Brian Buchanan [01:50:57] Sure.

John Dehlin [01:50:57] And how they can. How they can get cool books and also support a worthy institution.

Brian Buchanan [01:51:03] Sure. So we're in South Salt Lake, not too far from here. We do new books. We do more kind of the academic end of the spectrum. So a lot of stuff. The Signature publishes university presses, but then we Also do used and rare books, and that can range from anything from your favorite Anita Stansfield novel to a first edition of the Book of Mormon. So we've seen some absolutely amazing things come through our door.

Gary James Bergera [01:51:28] You do have a first edition?

Brian Buchanan [01:51:30] We don't right now, but we recently had three at the same time, so that was fun.

John Dehlin [01:51:34] So you sell rare books at Benchmark Books?

Brian Buchanan [01:51:37] We do.

John Dehlin [01:51:38] In addition to new books, we've got some treasures.

Brian Buchanan [01:51:40] We get some fun artifacts. We've had pieces of the original Nauvoo Temple. Right now we have a vintage sacrament service set. And it was, we think, not too long after the individual sacrament cups were introduced, and then probably a 19th century bread tray. So we can play some pretty good show and tell down there.

Gary James Bergera [01:52:00] What. What did those. What are they listed for?

Brian Buchanan [01:52:03] We've got that set right now at 5,000. Okay, so.

John Dehlin [01:52:06] And what does the first edition Book of Mormon run for these?

Brian Buchanan [01:52:08] First edition Book of Mormon is probably in the $100,000 range. It depends if it's a notable copy, if it belonged to someone interesting, if it's in really nice shape, it might be a little more than that. If it's got problems, it might be less than that. But so, yeah, we serve everyone from the casual reader to the very interested reader to the collector. And we have fun stuff. We also do author events. Todd Compton was at the store last night to talk about his new book. So we get to play a very fun role in seeing Mormon history and Mormon studies develop.

John Dehlin [01:52:43] What is the most valuable book in existence related to Mormon studies that one could buy?

Brian Buchanan [01:52:49] Book of Commandments, hands down, the original 18.

John Dehlin [01:52:53] 1833.

Brian Buchanan [01:52:53] Is that also the rarest by far? Yeah, there's about 30 copies known, and only maybe half a dozen of those are in private hands. And so anytime one of those changes hands, that's. That's a big deal.

John Dehlin [01:53:05] That's 1833.

Brian Buchanan [01:53:06] 1833, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:07] And what is one of those run for these days?

Brian Buchanan [01:53:09] Probably at least a million dollars.

John Dehlin [01:53:11] Okay, that's. All right. Who's got. Who's got one?

Brian Buchanan [01:53:14] Got some value?

John Dehlin [01:53:14] The church.

Brian Buchanan [01:53:15] Gary actually has three of them. I don't know.

Gary James Bergera [01:53:19] Sure, I've got three of them.

Brian Buchanan [01:53:21] Yeah, that's. That's.

Gary James Bergera [01:53:22] That's exactly right.

Brian Buchanan [01:53:24] That level of collecting is a little different atmosphere.

Gary James Bergera [01:53:28] Okay, who has the most? Does the LDS Church have the most?

John Dehlin [01:53:31] You would think.

Brian Buchanan [01:53:32] I think so, yeah. In fact, there is. Rick Turley and Bill Slaughter did a book about the development of the Doctrine and Covenants, and they have this fascinating photo of about five or six different copies that they own because if you remember the story, they were never formally published because they were interrupted. And so each copy is in many ways unique. They would just take them and have them bound. So there's one that's, you know, just kind of a plain leather binding, one that's kind of stitched leather binding. And there's fascinating artifacts.

Gary James Bergera [01:53:59] Very cool.

Brian Buchanan [01:54:00] Or history. Very cool.

John Dehlin [01:54:02] All right, well, the book is justice and Mercy. Buy it. Studies of transgression in the Latter Day Saint community. The. The man is Gary Bergera. Thank you, Gary.

Gary James Bergera [01:54:12] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:54:14] And also thank you, Brian. Keep up the good work.

Brian Buchanan [01:54:18] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:54:18] All right. And thanks for your support of Mormon Stories podcast. Hope you enjoyed today. And please help me harass Gary until he comes back on and help me harass Brian to come back on Mormon Stories again by your compliments. So please shower them with praise for their appearances today so that they'll be incentivized to come back another time. Thanks, guys.

Gary James Bergera [01:54:38] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:54:38] Thanks so much.

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