Welcome and Introductions

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 July 24th, Pioneer Day 2023, and we are excited for another episode in our monthly series with the John Larsen, formerly of Mormon Expression podcast, and of course, Carah Burrell, also known as Nuance Ho, your favorite female woman podcaster within the ex Mormon space. John Larsen, Welcome. Thanks.

John Larsen [00:00:29] It's great to be here. I look forward to the sort of. I don't look forward to the homework I have to do, but other than that, it's kind of fun.

John Dehlin [00:00:37] Well, thanks for joining us on Pioneer Day. I guess. I wonder if Oregon claims pioneering more than Utah.

John Larsen [00:00:44] There's a Founders Day, it's later, and people are just kind of like, yeah, the kind of panache. When I was a kid, Pioneer Day was bigger than the fourth of July. It was enormous.

John Dehlin [00:00:55] It was a big deal. Well, thanks for joining us, John. You can check out John Larsen's own personal YouTube channel, plus a lot of cool stuff@john larson.org and of course, this is part of what we call the Mormon Expression series on Mormon stories. People donate to mormonstories.org mormonexpression they pay monthly, and that pays for John and Carah. And then we get amazing monthly episodes from John. But also we've got a back catalog of over 300amazing episodes of John Larsen on Mormon Expression podcast that he recorded a long, long time. So you can check it out on Spotify on itunes, but you just, you want to go back into that Mormon Expression archive. And we're proud to help sponsor that. And we're grateful for all the donors that make John Larsen and Carah's appearance possible. Go to mormonstories.org John Larsen to become a monthly donor to that. John, before we give Carah a second, anything else you want to add?

John Larsen [00:01:49] No, I really appreciate the opportunity. And thanks again for hosting the backlog. Yeah, there's still some good gems out there, so go check it out.

John Dehlin [00:01:59] Absolutely. Care, Burrell. Welcome back to the podcast. You look like you've got a new haircut and you're in a new studio. What's going on?

Carah Burrell [00:02:06] Yep, I feathered my bangs and I had a nice donor donate some new equipment and stuff. So my YouTube channel.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] Wait, did you say a stoner or a donor? I didn't hear that properly.

Carah Burrell [00:02:19] A donor donated to a stoner. We have crossed the divide. People who make money and the people who spend it on Taco Bell are one and the same. One in one in heart and mind and they dwell in zion so, yeah, I got a new studio. I've been doing lots more stuff on my YouTube channel. Have some fun projects coming out. And I'm just so grateful to be here with you guys. I missed last month and I was grumpy about it. And this is one of my very favorite subjects to talk about too. So I can't wait to do this with you guys.

John Dehlin [00:02:45] Yeah, well, we're glad to have you Check. Please donate to Nuance Ho and Patreon. Check out our YouTube channel. Subscribe to her YouTube channel. It's important stuff.

Carah Burrell [00:02:55] Thank you.

Guest Announcements and Updates

John Dehlin [00:02:55] All right, John, before we jump into today's episode, you've got an announcement or two. Do you want to jump in?

John Larsen [00:03:01] Yeah, I got a couple things to go through. First of all, I want to thank everybody who's been donating to the farm. If you remember the last couple podcasts in lieu of having a Patreon account or whatever. Of course, if you want to support this, the best place is to go to Mormon stories. But if you want to support me more directly and what I'm doing, I set up a Amazon store where people can buy things for the that we use on the farm. And people have been buying things. We've been able to put in a lot of drip line irrigation. One of the main things we want to do is we don't do any open air water. We're trying to be really water conservative. And you'll see in that store, if you want to go, there are some things that are under $10 that we use a lot of like clips for climbing plants and things like that. And I just thought I'd let people know kind of the things that I have in there. Right now I have some things in there. We're trying to do an electrical array for the chickens. It's off the grid and I'm trying to put a F into the greenhouse. So those are the kind of things that are there. But if you want to give, give. If not, that's cool too. So I have said many times on here that what we are searching for is the truth and we are open to any correction and people who want to tell us or we said the wrong thing or got it wrong. And I'm happy to read those here on air. The only stipulation I have is that if you come at me anonymously, I won't necessarily read it because I don't know who you are. I don't with which things valid. But I did get a letter this last time that was not anonymous from none other than Carolyn Pearson, who wrote me a letter, and we did a podcast. I came over last time or two times ago on superiority. The idea of the Mormons are superior by birthright and that kind of have problems in terms of racism. I was going through kind of. I was jagging on cultural elements, and I mentioned Carolyn Pearson's work, My Turn on Earth. I actually have a copy of the children's book that they wrote. They wrote it as a play, first of all, and then they published this book. And I have an original copy here from 1977. With no further ado, I want to read you the letter that Carolyn sent me for various reasons that we'll talk about in a minute. So this is unedited. This is what. What Carolyn said. Hey. Dear John Larsen, I love your work. It's a pleasure to hear your voice and see your exceptional brain at work. Just now, while doing some Saturday ironing, I was listening to you and the other John guy on Mormon Superiority. Really excellent stuff. Until you threw My Turn on Earth into the pot with Saturday's warrior and stirred them into the same brew. Yes, My Turn on Earth was written in a Mormon context and does feature a tug of war that represents the war in heaven. However, the theme you were developing in this podcast, that as we come to Earth, we are positioned according to our prior righteousness. That is nowhere to be found in this little play, which actually has some rather progressive features. One is that the leading character in the story is a girl, Barbara. And about our position here on Earth. I have the storybook version of the play in front of me. After Barbara makes the decision Come to Earth. And then she starts packing to go. This is a quote from the book. And then she starts packing to go packing. Very lightly, that is, for Barbara couldn't take much with her on this journey. Just a few special talents or traits that she had been working on. She learned more about why she was going. In one way, it was like going to school to learn some very important things. In another way, it was like going to a costume party. Some people would go as queens, some as slave boys, some as rich people, some as poor people. What you wore really didn't matter a lot. And then she has some illustrations. I'll show you in a second. Then, in another way, going to Earth was like going on a treasure hunt. Barbara was told that she had come back with something very, very valuable. She had to come back with something very, very valuable. The same thing that made heavenly father and mother what they are now. And as in all treasure hunts, she was told she'd be given very helpful clues. The first one said, follow thou me. It was signed by Jesus. All the treasure notes are signed by Jesus, such as, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. When Barbara is confused, she is told, remember, the spirit giveth light to every one that cometh into the world. And sure enough, there was always one little point of light that Barbara could follow, not outside, anywhere, but inside, right inside of Barbara herself. And when she let it guide her, she never went wrong. No outside authority, just her inner light says, says Caroline in parentheses. Barbara is never told to follow the prophet, just the simple words of Jesus. And the final discovery is that the treasure is revealed to be love. Learning how to love is the only reason Barbara came to Earth. And she learns that finding love, she did indeed find the treasure. Besides featuring a girl, the main character, I describe God as both father and mother. And at the end of the story, when Barbara's time on Earth is done in the play, I insist that we hear a female voice sing out, barbara, time to come home. Sorry. So that's all John. Now I go back to my ironing. I just felt like one of my children had been accused by the teacher of doing something she did not do, and I had to step in. I still love you. Sending many blessings. Carolyn Pearson. First of all, sorry I'm a little blubbery on this. I knew I would be. I've got my redneck tissue box here. So, first of all, this is a. Is a masterclass in. In correction, in. Yeah. In communication, in. In. In emotional intelligence, is what I was saying. And. And frankly, Carolyn Pearson, you can scold me anytime you want. What a lovely letter. This is how it's done. And so.

John Dehlin [00:09:04] So let

John Larsen [00:09:06] I apologize to her once already, but I will apologize again. I did not read the book again when I got ready for the podcast, so I mischaracterized her work, and for that, I'm truly sorry. It was my fault. I should have done it. I did have the great opportunity to read the book again. Afterwards, I went and found it, and I want to show you the picture. This is 1977. I want to show you all the picture that she has on the last page. This is the reuniting in heaven after we're done with Earth. And I want you to notice that her, Carolyn, and the artist Cam Clark, depicted not just one token brown person, but a whole array of different races and costumes and clothing. And this book, me being an atheist, is one that I would give to anybody to read. The message is Beautiful. The message is pure. Carolyn is a true treasure and the grace with which she handled this. So I want you all to know that I was wrong and that I was unjust in lumping her in with other works.

John Dehlin [00:10:14] Beautiful. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you, John. Love you, Carolyn Pearson. And because it's Pioneer Day, first of all, that was a beautiful tribute, John. Second of all, one of the most important Mormon stories podcast interviews of all time is my series with Carolyn Pearson. We've had her on a few times. She's also the publisher of a book called the Ghost of Eternal Polygamy. We've had her on to talk about that how polygamy still haunts Mormon women today. But you can check out and buy all of her books@carolyn pearson.com. one of my favorite pieces of her work comes from an interview that I did way, way, way back in the day where she a poem called Pioneers. Where she talks, she kind of reclaims the term pioneers, but for modern day Mormons, and I would even say post Mormons. It's one of the most powerful, beautiful poems I've ever heard and read. And because it's Pioneer Day, I think it would be appropriate to play that poem really quick. Is that all right, John?

John Larsen [00:11:23] Please, Please.

Pioneer Day Poem Reading

John Dehlin [00:11:24] All right, let's do it. This is Carolyn Pearson. The poem Pioneers.

Speaker D [00:11:29] Pioneers. My people were Mormon pioneers. Is the blood still good? Truth flew by like a dove and dropped a feather in the west where truth flies, you follow if you are a pioneer. I have searched the skies and now and then another feather has fallen. I have packed the hand card again, Packed it with the precious things and thrown away the rest. I will sing by the fires out there on that uncharted ground Where I am my own captain of tens, Where I blow the bugle, bring myself to morning prayer, Map out the miles and never know where or when or if at all. I will finally say this is the place I face the plains on a good day for walking. The sun rises and the mist clears. I will be all right. My people were Mormon pioneers.

John Dehlin [00:12:58] That's Carolyn Pearson, everybody. Do you guys like that? Have you heard that before?

Carah Burrell [00:13:03] No, I hadn't heard that one, but I did a video on my YouTube channel with Chelsea Homer where we both read Ghost of Eternal Polygamy. And everything about that book is so well written. The points she makes are so beautiful. I recommend everybody pick up a copy of that book and just see what a absolute boss babe Carolyn Portion is.

John Larsen [00:13:22] She's written several books of poetry and I'll say in my life there's probably only ever been two books of poetry that I ever read all the way through. One was hers and the other was E.E. cummings. So take that as a comment.

John Dehlin [00:13:35] She's great.

John Larsen [00:13:36] I would recommend Goodbye I love you to everybody. It should be part of the Mormon canon. Of course. Carolyn was married to a gay man. They separated. He lived for a few years in San Francisco and then he was a victim of the AIDS epidemic and she cared for him in his last few years. So it's a beautiful book and a beautiful meditation on faith.

John Dehlin [00:14:03] Yeah. She was the kind of original LGBTQ advocate within Mormonism back in the 80s and 90s. She was a feminist before it was cool to be feminist within Mormon circles. She did a one act play about Mother in Heaven called Mother Wove the Morning. She's been an advocate for honest and accurate in history. And interestingly, she remains an attending faithful Mormon, but with a very progressive, nuanced, liberal view. And anyway, we love you, Carolyn. Hope you're doing well.

Carah Burrell [00:14:35] Love you.

John Dehlin [00:14:36] Thanks for the beautiful shout out, John and Carah.

John Larsen [00:14:41] Yeah, again, it was my. My honor. I will. I will forever cherish the day I got reprimanded by Carol and Jason.

Introducing Ezra Taft Benson's Teachings

John Dehlin [00:14:49] All right, well, John, what's the. Any. Any other announcements? Are we going to jump into our topic?

John Larsen [00:14:54] I think we're. We're ready to jump in just because of the nature of this. We have to talk about things like communism. And I know that there are some listeners who bristle a little bit. So I want to address that criticism right up front. I consider myself to not be any kind of ist at all. I believe that we should take all the political and economic systems of the last few centuries and that we should look at them and analyze them and see what was good and what was bad. And I don't really divide up into sides based on economic or political theory. So if you're taking this as any kind of endorsement or side, you know, taking some kind of side in the Cold War debates, then that's a misreading. We'll do our best to represent the history and the context where the people had it, but really, I'm not trying to advocate for one thing or the other here.

John Dehlin [00:15:51] And so you're clearly talking about the fact that we're about to talk about Ezra Taft Benson, former prophet of the Mormon Church. Right?

John Larsen [00:15:59] Yeah. I titled this Teachings of the Prophet Ezra Taft Benson because I thought it was fun, because that's what the Hinckley Book was called. But this really should be Teachings of the Prophet Ezra Taft Benson After Dark because we're going to tell you what he really said.

Speaker D [00:16:15] So.

John Larsen [00:16:15] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:16:17] And as a quick disclaimer, we have an amazing series with historian Matthew Harris on Ezra TAF Benson. So after you check this out and after you check out Carolyn Pearson, check out Matt Harris's book and our interviews with him. I'll also say that Ezra TAF Benson is a cousin of mine. He was a cousin of my grandma. He's a blood relative. And you could never talk too much about Ezra Taft Benson.

John Larsen [00:16:42] No, no, he's a fascinating guy. I really, you know, when I read through a lot of works now, it was interesting to process it. I was born in 1973, so I was 12 years old in 1985 when Kimball died and Ezra Taft Benson assumed the throne, as it were, ascended the throne. And I think he died in 1994. So he had nine years there. And so because it was when I was 12, a lot of his talks and the things he said really kind of shaped the formation of Mormon, Mormonism in my head. So it was really a fascinating thing to go back and re encounter some of these things that I haven't encountered for years. And it really shed a lot of light on what was going on in the time and what was going on in my head. So Benson was. We've had a lot of presidents of the church, especially the last bit of the 20th century and into the 21st century that really have little impact and they're just almost like footnotes. But Benson, Benson shook things up a little bit and he was the last of the. Well, I think Hinckley was probably the last of the superstar profits, at least until now.

John Dehlin [00:17:58] All right, well, so today Edge Benson's on the menu. Carrie, were you going to say something?

Carah Burrell [00:18:04] I was going to say that those Matthew Harris interviews are on Mormon stories. There's a five hour one, like a three hour one, maybe another one. Everyone please go watch that after this too. It's one of my very favorite subjects. And you know that Ezra Taft Benjamin Benson is a very influential figure. If there were actually Mormons at the time who knew he was about to become prophet, who were writing in letters saying that you guys need to get control of this guy. So even Mormons were very concerned about how controversial he was at the time.

John Larsen [00:18:34] I would encourage to go listen to that other part because we're not gonna. He's got a really complicated, interesting history of getting sent out to Europe to try to tame his American idealism and different things like that. But we're really going to confront the kernel of what he was teaching throughout his various talks. He was very prolific. And you know, a lot of the stuff that I have quoted here, we'll go through the next hour or so, is just readily available on lds.org if you go to their library. They have all the conference. All the. Well, not all. They have censored a few, but most of the conference talks from 1971 when the improvement era went away and the Ensign started publishing talks. So that's the line they've drawn in the sand. So they have the. The conference talks and stuff from 1971. And so a lot of these talks, A Witness and a warning, the 14 fundamentals. There are a few others I can't keep up top that are still out there that had a lot of impact. They actually published them as pamphlets.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] Yeah, I would say there's no recent modern Mormon prophet that continues to have as much of an influence today, including Gordon B. Hinckley or Thomas S. Monson or any of the most recent ones. I'd say Istaff Benson has more of an influence on the mind of modern orthodox Mormons than any other modern prophet.

John Larsen [00:20:01] Yeah, I think I want to put a pin in that. I think you're right. And I want to return to that at the end and talk about his doctrinal influence and the shadows of him today. All right, so let's get started. Ezra Taft Benson was born in 1899 and he became a member of the 12, the Quorum of the 12 in 1943. So before D Day, but in the middle of World War II. By that time he was 44 years old. He had been serving in. He worked in agriculture in Idaho and then he took on this role nationally. Representing agricultural co ops was one of the big things he worked on. And then Interestingly enough, in 1952 he became the Secretary of Agriculture under Eisenhower, which was a whole big story in of itself. Like I said, this could be a 10 part series, but there's, you know, others have been written about it. So he has the unique distinction of serving as both a President of the Church and as the Secretary of Action Agriculture at the same time. Now I want to remind you that he is ordained in 1943 as a prophet, seer and Revelator. Prophet, seer and revelator. And they were all considered that. So the members of the Church by Benson's own command were required to give deference to these guys on anything they talk about. He mentions that multiple times, that they're basically our superiors and we need to listen to whatever they say. So all of this political writing, every quote that I'm gonna give you comes from after he was ordained as a prophet, seer and revelator. And I want you all to think about that, because we're gonna come back to that topic at the end and ask ourselves, what does it mean to be a prophet, seer, and revelator given Benson and what he engaged in during his life?

John Dehlin [00:22:11] The only thing I'd add, John, is that in Mormonism, an apostle is also a special W of Christ. And we're taught that once you become an apostle, you likely have a personal visitation with Christ or you have a personal relationship with Christ, just like John Kerry. You and I are all talking right now. So they're supposed to have the bat phone to Christ, correct?

John Larsen [00:22:37] Yeah. There's some people who believe that they're really cagey about it. And they're cagey about it, of course, because none of them have ever talked to Jesus Christ.

Speaker D [00:22:44] So.

John Larsen [00:22:45] But they like to use that as a possibility, kind of lording over. Of course, Joseph F. Smith admitted to Congress in the Reid Smoot hearings that he had not talked to Jesus Christ. Okay. And I thought it might be useful to give you a little kind of roadmap of who the enemies of the Church are. So for Boyd K. Packer, these guys were all kind of contemporaries. It was intellectuals, feminists, and hippies. For McKay and Benson, it was communists and atheists. For Oakes and Kimball, it was the homosexuals. For Hinckley, it was the press and the feminists. And then for Glenn Pace, who is the bishop of the church, it was the actual Satanists. So I just want to keep all the conspiracies straight of who the enemy of the church was. So we're really going to be focusing on the commies and the atheists tonight.

John Dehlin [00:23:38] Okay?

John Larsen [00:23:40] Okay. And according to Sherry Dew in her biography, three quarters of Benson's conference talks were political and nature. So he. He had no compunction getting up in conference. I think it was 1966 when he gave the famous talk of that civil rights movement was the tool of the devil. So. So this stuff that we're talking about, although it might sound like we're drifting out of church space and talking about politics, for Benson, there was no distinction. And in fact, he chided others who tried to make the distinction, saying they were one and the same. And he, being a prophet seer in revel later, was free to comment on anything he wanted to comment on. Because he had the keys, damn it.

John Dehlin [00:24:23] Yeah, absolutely.

Cold War Context and Political Background

John Larsen [00:24:25] All Right. So there's four things we kind of have to understand to get the context of this. I recognize that a lot of you are probably too young and didn't live through all this. Let's talk about the Cold War for a second. So between the 1600s and the 20th century, European countries in particular, but also, you know, Asian countries, Japan and China went on a huge streak of. Well, I shouldn't say in China because it was imperialized by the British, but so you have these imperialistic empires, I guess is the word. All of South America, of course, the American colonies, Africa, Asia, Southeast Asia, India, China, basically European weaponry and European might, especially in the seas, kind of forced this dominance all over. Well, the reason I bring this up is it kind of that whole thing was a big house of cards and came crashing down in two big wars in the 20th century, which is, of course, World War I and World War II. And it sort of left a power vacuum. As the imperialistic powers were crippled by war, they started retreating from some of their empire. So, for example, like the Vietnam War, which, I mean, went really hot for Americans in the 60s and early 70s, you know, that was an extension of the French Indochina's kingdom. And, you know, they were fighting wars there in the 50s, trying to maintain control after the Japanese had. Had gone through and colonized it. So you've got. You've got this world that had been just wracked and rattled over the last. Last two or three hundred years by all this imperialistic conquering and, you know, taking of resources. So the world kind of broke really quickly. The, The Allies in the, in the war were, of course, the U.S. the Soviet Union, China, and what would become the. The European Union, where the resistance to the. The access powers, which are really Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. And so they kind of formed an alliance. Sorry to review basic world history. So when we talk about the Third World, what that came from is the First World was the world that was influenced under the European Union and American control and dominance. And the Second World was that. That was under the Soviet push and control. So post World War II, the Allies sort of divided the world up and literally Germany was cut in a third and Berlin was cut in a third as the Soviets took control over their section and the west took control over their section. So this world was being divided and we quickly slipped into what is known as the Cold War, which is generally considered to have started right at the end of World War II. From 1945 until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the Cold War was a proxy war. So, you know, we were fighting each other all the time, meaning the Soviets and the Americans. The Korean War was basically a war between American soldiers and Chinese and Chinese soldiers who came, infiltrated through the north and on and on and on. You know, you have the Vietnam War and you have all sorts of. All sorts of conflicts that were erupting all over the place.

John Dehlin [00:28:16] But during Cuban Missile Crisis, right.

John Larsen [00:28:18] The Cuban Missile Crisis was a huge one. It really influenced Benson. Thank you for bringing that up. You know, Khrushchev, just as a quick reminder, was bringing missiles in to have nuclear missiles to, to be hosted on Cuban soil, which of course would give, you know, the ability to attack the United States in mere seconds rather than the 20 minutes or whatever it takes with an ICBM. And, and that almost erupted in war. Of course, they had all sorts of fiascos like the Bay of Pigs and whatever. This was a lot of stuff going on. And the Cold War was really real and it really influenced the way people thought and felt about things. And there was a lot of fear on both sides of this conflict from Russians and those in this, in the former Soviet states and those in the west fearing nuclear conflict or all out conflict or something big. I just want to make sure everyone is clear about how deep in our psyche the Cold War was and how much it influenced rhetoric. You can watch movies like, like, I don't know, Rocky III and where you can really see how the Cold War was just shaping every part of American society.

John Dehlin [00:29:34] If I can just add a tiny bit to this history lesson. John Larsen. Thank you. Yeah, I just watched the movie Oppenheimer. It was a Barbenheimer weekend, so we watched Barbie. Margi and I watched Barbie and Oppenheimer in the same weekend. And both were important movies, but Oppenheimer, I was just so surprised to learn that as soon as the bombs are dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and even before then, before Oppenheimer was even approved as the, you know, as the leader of the Manhattan Project, he was being grilled and scrutinized for, you know, having connections to the Communist Party. And if you look at just seven or eight years after those bombs are dropped, after, you know, he's on time or Life magazine, his security clearance is basically removed. And it's all under the guise of him having too many close ties to members of the Communist Party. So, you know, with Senator Joseph McCarthy in the late 50s, early 60s, yeah, this cold War was in full bloom. And this was right at the end of the Eisenhower administration. So Eisenhower ended his two terms in 1960. And that's when Ezra Taf Benson would have been set free. But even during his time at the Eisenhower administration, Ezra Tab Benson was like anti Semitic and anti communist, but he was kind of restrained until Eisenhower let him go. And then all of a sudd he was ready to speak out very vociferously in the 1960s.

John Larsen [00:31:06] Yeah. And there was a lot of constraint being put on him from Salt Lake too. David O. McKay, who I didn't mention he shared a lot of Benson's political views and he shared a big fear of communism. And in the 30s, Benson had persuaded these guys to kind of issue a statement that was really anti communist that he would parade out, meaning Benson would all the time. But yeah, again I would recommend other the podcast, but also The David O. McKay biographies that came out a few years ago. There's a lot about the push and pull over Benson there. Greg Prince, by Greg Prince. Yes, thank you. Okay, so the next thing that's the first thing you have to understand is the Cold War. The next thing you have to understand is the gaddy at and robbery. And when I was preparing for this, I thought, ah, we should have done a whole podcast on the Gadian robbers first to even understand this. But you have to understand that Benson takes this thing I'm about to share with you very, very seriously and very, very literally. So about in the Book of Mormon timeline, about 50 years before the birth of Christ, there is a man named Kishkumen and Kishkumin assassinates a man named Paharan or Pahoran in a political battle over the judgeships. Now if you want to understand the political framework of the Book of Mormon, it's basically Judge Dread. So the judges have full power and there's no checker balance on them in, in the Book of Mormon. And by the way, this is promoted as a positive system. So they select righteous dudes and then they basically have full weight of the law. So so these guys don't like him and they assassinate him. So Kishkuman and his buddies form a secret society with another guy named Gadian and they became known according to the Book of Mormon as Gadian's robbers and murderers. That's the name they gave themselves. And I'm going to read to you from 4th Nephi verse or chapter 42. And it came to pass that the wicked part of the people began again to build up a secret oaths and combinations of Gadian. And it came to pass the robbers of Gadian did spread over all the face of the land. And there were none that were righteous, save it were in the disciples of Jesus. And gold and silver did they lay up in store in abundance, into traffic, in all manner of traffic. And it came to pass that thus they did agree with a Kish. And a Kish did administer unto them the olds which were given by them of old, who also sought power which had been handed down even from Cain, who was a murderer from the beginning. And they were kept by this power of the devil to administer these oaths unto people, to keep them in darkness, darkness to help such as sought power, to gain power and a murder, and to plunder and a lie, and to commit all manner of wickedness and whoredoms. And now I, moron, I do not write the manner of their oaths and combinations, for it has been made known unto me. They are had among all people, and they are had among the Lamanites. And they have caused the destruction of this people of whom I am now speaking, and also destruction of the people of Nephi. And whatsoever nation shall uphold such secret combinations to get power engaged until they shall spread over the nation. Behold, they shall be destroyed. For the Lord will not suffer. The blood of his saints which shall be shed by them shall always cry unto him from the ground for vengeance upon them, and he avenge them not. And then he says, blah, blah, blah, because of the secret combinations which shall be among you, or woe be unto it, because the blood of them have been slain. So. So what they're basically saying here. Here is. And. And this might be a good time to reference our episode on Cain that we did to two. Two years ago. So in. In Mormon doctrine that. That Cain was given this secret combination and these passwords and handshakes and whatever from the devil. And they've been passed on this secret society. The Gadian robbers have been the secret society that is behind all of the evil in the world world and always has been. And they are here today. And we're going to read how Benson gets them here today. But Benson was always trying to get people to read the Book of Mormon. That was a major theme for his. And should I give you my Benson impersonation?

Benson's Anti-Communist Worldview

John Dehlin [00:35:41] Absolutely.

John Larsen [00:35:43] Dear brothers and sisters, I testify. He always turned page like he had like eight words that you should read the Book of Mormon. That's besetab Benson. If you weren't there. All right. So. So care.

John Dehlin [00:36:04] Any reactions you got the stats like

Carah Burrell [00:36:06] my childhood that I remember him.

John Larsen [00:36:09] I don't mean to inflict PTSD on any. Anybody. Oh, okay. So he for him, this is real. This secret combination is not metaphoric. It is a real, actual political criminal machine that is operating in the world today. And I want to quote Bruce R. Who says reliable modern reports describe their existence among gangsters as part of the government of communist countries, in some labor organizations, and in parts of the great church, which is not the Lord's church. Church, That's Bruce R. Speak for the Catholic Church. So Bruce R. In Mormon doctrine, at least the first edition, identifies the Gadian as being part of the government of communist countries, labor unions and Catholics and gangsters. So there's his first shot about who the Gadian robbers are. We're gonna get more into that.

Carah Burrell [00:37:01] You didn't say the Jews yet. Because he also believed that civil rights was a conspiracy by the Jews as well. They're always in there too.

John Larsen [00:37:09] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:10] Yes.

John Larsen [00:37:10] Y. There's all that. By the way, I was worried researching this a couple times I was gonna get an FBI watch list, but that's Benson, not me. Okay, we need to then talk about John Birch Society. John Birch Society really sprung up following the Korean War, and it was an anti communist right wing group. And basically they are the intellectual forebearers of the. The maga, the Make America Great movement. They really have the same sort of views. But one key element of the John Birch Society that's gonna come up that we don't want to go by is that they don't believe in democracy. They believe that this is a republic and always should be a republic. What's the difference? They believe that the democracy is only used to choose our betters, and then our betters should govern us, that we should be governed by the general will of the people. That's an important thing for the John Birch Society and it's an important thing for Benson. Then the last thing I want to mention before we get into Benson proper. Sorry. Of all the preambles, is fascism. We need to define our terms. So American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism this way. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalistic economy subject to stringent government controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. For those who lean towards fascism, there is a right way to do things. There is a morally superior way. And if people are not willing to adopt that morally superior way, they should be forced with violence to do it. That's a fundamentalism of fascism. And fascists also believe that a small segment of the population, usually others, Jews, brown people, Catholics, whoever it may be, account for all the antisocial behaviors and corruption of society, those people are enemies. And whatever they're doing needs to be stopped because it will poison society. So if you think about the way LGBT people are addressed and approached, that's a very fascist line of thinking that this minority is responsible for. For corrupting our youth. The fascists tend to give lip service to plurality, but they only like minorities when they submit to the will of the moral majority and ethos Majority in quotes. So they're perfectly fine with there being other people who live in a society as long as those people give deference to the cultural norm of that society, which, in the case of America, is Protestant white people. All right, that's the background we need to have to go in and start supping on this delicious doctrinal teaching. All right, any other comments before we get going, Carah?

Benson's Controversial Political Career

John Dehlin [00:40:11] Any. Any comments or questions on this history lesson?

Carah Burrell [00:40:14] Yeah, I was going back and reading Watchmen on the Tower by Matthew Harris. Those episodes that John did on Mormon stories are fantastic. And speaking of Mormon youth and things and kind of its own Hitler's Youth youth, that these talks and things that. That John Larsen was just bringing up, that the own leadership of the church was telling Benson to, like, you know, scale it back a little bit. He's mentioning the Birch Society. He's telling people to read their literature. He's saying these are not conspiracies. These are. These are conspiracy facts is what he calls them. And that it goes very down to the youth need to be taught these things because the. These secret combinations, those. Those scriptures that John Larsen just read, these are the things that he's saying from the pulpit and that they are so controversial, in fact, and are so authoritarian. You could say that even when it's printed in the ensign, all of these. These references to the Birch Society were actually taken out, and the church leadership was like, slow your roll, dude. I just wanted to add that. That at the time, it's just so interesting to me how controversial he was then. But that's what a polarizing figure kind of does when people are looking for that type of strict orthodoxy to, like, anti welfare states and all of those, like, anti this, anti this, all of those things that John Larsen just named, that's going to have a real strong hold on a lot of conservatives, a lot of Republicans, and a lot of people with obviously Mormonism and the. The believing that these people really are prophet seers and revelators, and that's the guy that's going to save America. Like, this is the farther Right. We go. The more that we hold up their authority as the guy. So I just wanted to add that it's just so interesting what an authoritative, strong role he took even before he became prophet.

John Larsen [00:41:59] Yeah, for sure. And the Birch Society wanted him to run as president, and in 1968, he didn't. The Brethren or David O. McKay didn't allow it.

John Dehlin [00:42:11] I think that was with Strom Thurman, of all people. If I've got that, if my memory is correct.

John Larsen [00:42:16] Yep, it was. Strom Thurman was going to be his vice presidential running mate.

John Dehlin [00:42:20] Yeah.

John Larsen [00:42:22] Okay. So I've narrowed down. After reading a bunch of his stuff, I, I again, me reading this stuff, so you don't have to. First of all, let me give Benson a compliment. He's a very good writer. He's very clear. A lot of times when you read this Mormon shit, it's really hard. It's a got a lot of flowery words that don't really mean anything and just floating adjectives that have no business being in the sentence and just, you know, it mostly reads by business guys trying to sound like literature people and failing. But Benson has spent so much time in political theory and political circles that he was very, he was a very clear writer. I was worried that I have to do a lot of, like, exposition explaining his position, but almost every time I'm able to find a paragraph or a sentence where he just says it right. Straight, outright. So kudos to you, Ezra Taf Benson, to be a very clear writer. All right. The first one, I kind of narrowed down 10 worldviews and doctrinal themes that I was picking up over and over again in his talks. The underpinnings of his talk. The first one is about the Book of Mormon. Now, we kind of read to you the Gadianton part. The part that Benson was adamant about was that the Book of Mormon was written for our time. This is something that he created, kept pounding over and over and over again. And those of you who were members of the church in the 80s, remember there was a time that there were, like, challenges that went out, that everybody was supposed to read the Book of Mormon and read it in a year. And it was just this emphasis on that, on that book over and over again.

John Dehlin [00:44:03] Wasn't just that, like, we, we were told to write our testimony in the Book of Mormon and then, like, give it to friends at high, in high school, give it to friends in college, like, bear your testimony, write your testimony in the Book of Mormon and give it to as many people as Possible flood the earth with the Book of Mormon. Was, was Ezra T. Benson's call?

John Larsen [00:44:23] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's hard to overestimate. I mean everybody at that time would have had like 40 copies the book of Mormon in their house because, you know, the home teachers would come, give you 10 more that you were supposed to hand out. You're like, I live in, I live in Nephi. Who am I supposed to give these do. But they really wanted it. And there was a real belief that the Book of Mormon was so apparently true that if you just looked at it and there's that video witness and warning that came out, I think about 89, 90, the story of some like Italian priest who finds a copy and missing the front page. And it's the most amazing book he's ever read. And so that was a reoccurring belief. But for Benson, he gave a very important and powerful talk in 1979, called a witness in a warrant warning that he published into a book. And it was very much emphasized. The point of this was written for our time. Now 1979 is really the height of the Cold War. So you have the Soviet Union, who was looking really strong at the time, just an economic powerhouse. And I am not a defender of the Soviet Union. I don't think it was a great movement. I, I think Stalin was an absolute monster. So before I say this, I want you to know I am not in any way advocating for the Soviets. But post war, during the 50s and 60s, they had amazing technological and economic growth. It was just staggering. And of course they were beating the United States over and over again in the space race and even in technology. So by 1979, the existential threat that Americans faced felt from the Soviet Union was real and very strong. So I'll give you this is a quote by Benson. He said this most correct book on Earth states that the downfall of two great American civilizations came as a result of secret conspiracies who desire was to overthrow the freedom of the people. So first of all, I love that he's saying it's the most correct book ever because you know he's wrong because my book is the most correct book ever. But. But also that it's a binary for him, two great American civilizations came out because the result of these secret conspiracies. And here's the next quote by him. Now, undoubtedly Moroni could have pointed out many factors that led to the destruction of the people. But notice how he singled out the secret combinations. Just as the church today could point out many threats to peace, prosperity, and the spread of God's work. But it has singled out the greatest threat as the godless conspiracy. There is no conspiracy theory in the Book of Mormon. It is conspiracy fact. That's the one that you had pulled, Carah. Good catch.

John Dehlin [00:47:08] Carah's a prophet.

John Larsen [00:47:12] What's important here is Benson uses the word conspiracy all the time right now it has kind of a pejorative element to it, like it's insulting. And it was back in the 70s too. But he fully embraced this idea that the gadiant robbers that are outlined in the Book of Mormon has infiltrated the world. And we'll get to some of this more in a second. But the communists, the Iron bloc, the Red bloc countries were the gadian robbers for Benson. And then they'd also infiltrated the US and we'll talk about that some. So that's his first thing. That is a consistent, consistent thread that we need to read the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is very important. People don't understand the Book of Mormon, but whenever you peel that back and whenever he, he expands on that a little bit more, it's always about the gaddy at and Albers. It's always about the secret conspiracy. That's what he was. He was concerned about. That's what he wanted us all to pick up on was that was the gaddy and robbers. All right, let's go on to number two. Atheism. I had to pull this out. Just like in that quote I, I said where the word godless as a. As an insult. He in his writing all the time, he uses both the word atheist and godless all the time. As an insult, as a de facto way to prove that somebody's opinion is not valid. So if Benson doesn't like what you're saying, he will call you either godless or he will call you an atheist. Benson speaks of atheists the way Nazis speak of Jews is the best. Is the best line I could come up with up with. They are a hiss and a byword to him. They have no redeeming value. They are. Anything that an atheist touches is by definition corrupt. For Benson, so much so that he never even bothers to address it. He never even bothers to take head on because for him it's so apparently an antithesis to good and any kind of goodness that it should be used as an insult. And he uses it insult freely. Okay, so that's my second big Benson talk speaking. Now we get to the meat of the matter. Communism. Now Benson sees No differentiation between socialism and communism. And sometimes he refers to it as a socialist dash, communist conspiracy. Now what does he mean by, by socialism or communist? Well, luckily he tells us. I'm going to give you three or four quotes where he defines communism. The first one. Communism is not a political party, nor a military organization, nor an ideological crusade, nor a rebirth of Russian imperialist ambition. Though it comprises and uses all of these. Communism in its unmistakable reality is wholly a conspiracy. A gigantic conspiracy to enslave mankind. An increasingly successful conspiracy controlled by determined, cunning and utterly ruthless gangsters willing to use any means to achieve its end. That's the first quote. Second quote, as it has been well said, this is a worldwide battle, the first of its kind in history, between light and darkness, between freedom and slavery, between the spirit of Christianity and the spirit of Antichrist for the souls and bodies of men. Men. And then communist leaders are jubilant with their success. They are driving freedom back on almost every front. It is time therefore that every American become alerted and informed about their aims, tactics and schemes of the worldwide conspiracy. The fight against the godless conspiracy is a very real part of every man's duty. It is a fight against slavery, immorality, atheism, terrorism, cruelty, barbarism, deceit and the destruction of human life through a kind of tyranny unsurpassed by anything in human history. Here is a struggle against the evil satanic priestcraft of Lucifer. Then one more communism introduced into the world, a substitute for true religion is a counterfeit of the gospel plan. The false prophets of communism predict a utopian society. This, they proclaim, will only be bought about as capitalism and free enterprise are overthrown private proper. The family is a social unit eliminated, all classes abolished, all governments overthrown, and a communal ownership of property in a classless stateless society established. And in Conference in 1961 he said no true latter day Satan, no true American can be a socialist or communist or support programs leading in that direction. So he's very clear on what he means by communism, I would say. And he says we must not tolerate, accommodate or with or appeasement towards the false system of communism. We must demand of our elected officials that we not only resist communism, that we will take every measure, prevent its intrusion into this hemisphere. It is vital that we invoke the Monroe Doctrine. All right, any comments on that before we talk about what the Monroe Doctrine is and what he means by this?

Carah Burrell [00:52:39] Not to like, you know, John Dylan, I know that you're related to the guy, but just feels like people who are Raised in Idaho as farmers that don't really have a lot of experience with what it's like to not be able to just, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps that after the Great Depression people literally did need these welfare programs and these checks. And he sees these, he sees welfare and he sees government aid in any way, shape and form, even down to like fluorinating the water. Everything is a conspiracy because everyone should just do what his family did. Just like we were in Idaho, like they had a tough time and we just started co ops. Cannot everybody else do that? And it just goes to show that somebody who comes from that type of situation in only, only being exposed to one way that you can overcome your struggles makes for a really, really poisoned government leader, I think, who doesn't understand the problems and plots of others where redistribution and actual aid on the ground is what's going to help people thrive. And to me that is just born out of this, this patriarchal thinking of one man in Idaho thinks he's got God's one telephone to his ear of what should be done and said on behalf of everybody and everything that he doesn't like communism, socialism, Gaddy and Roberts, down to Heavel, down, down to hell while he's in heaven. Did I say that right? Did that make sense? So it just sometimes there's this pinhole view and that just is strong evidence of that, of his background, his influences. That's all I have to say on that.

John Larsen [00:54:22] Yeah, I think you make a great point. And he, he himself only managed the family farm for like a couple years before he became, became the, the county extension officer for the state of Idaho. And then he took over Idaho. He managed all the county extension services. And then he went on and you know, to do other government jobs with that and then he became a church employee. This is a man who lived on the public dole his whole life and, and was very much an, an advocate for free enterprise capital. But for, for thee not, for not for him. For him. He was perfectly fine taking, you know, government wages, doing his job. He also, you know, you can see in there, he, he just paints with such a broad brush and, and this is very much his restorical style. He doesn't make any cases ever. He never connects the dots. He never explains why these things are bad. He just says they're bad and they're our enemy. And they're go deceptive and they're dark and they're, and they're, you know, they're false and all that kind of stuff. So he's kind of a rhetorical bully in that, in that sense. And you know, he just believes it to be self evident. Okay, so he talks about the Monroe Doctrine. I brought that quote in because he talks about it quite often in his writing. The Monroe Doctrine was a United States foreign policy that opposed English colonial activity. Basically they said, hey, the Europeans, you need to stay the hell out of the New World. It was however, reinterpreted by Americans to be kind of a blank check for American actions anywhere in the Americas. And that's kind of where he supports it. So if you're aware, even in the greatest outlines of the history of the late 20th century, you have countries that are struggling in South America that oftentimes cozy up to the communists or to socialist leaders. And then you'll have the CIA and other operatives going in to try to like fuck their shit up and keep them from, you know, assassinating leaders to keep them from getting anywhere. And for Benson, this is a just thing that the ends justify the means on this. And the United States can go in and do, you know, paramilitary action in South American countries because he believes that the Monroe Doctrine is essential to stopping communism. Communism, which is of course Lucifer, which is of course the devil. Right?

Carah Burrell [00:57:02] Yeah. Is there one other thing I can add?

John Larsen [00:57:04] Yeah, please.

Carah Burrell [00:57:05] When you're saying about like, you know, he has this kind of rhetorical bully from it. When I was reading Watchmen on the Tower, I do think it is John Dehlin mentions like this complex PTSD that could possibly be going on in his mind where he sees war torn Europe, Europe, and he is just completely associating what he's seeing there with totalitarian regimes. And he has nothing but disgust and disdain for what the Soviets and what the communists and blaming everything on one single type of totalitarian regime without being obviously self aware enough to know that he's doing it in his own way with the way that Mormonism is its own authoritarian type of dictatorship in its own realm. Um, and so for giving the best possible faith interpretation, again, I think it's like a farmer from Idaho with a worldview about this big, who gets told to go to war torn Europe and try to give aid. And the best that he can do is just say across the board this wide brush, like you were saying, painting everything with this extremely wide brush that we want to go as far away from that as humanly possible, but not having the actual answers and then not having the self reflection enough to even know, know. And look at the data, look at the input from Latter Day Saints and what they want and going as far as possible on the other end because of what he saw after the war. That's kind of was my instinct to just.

John Larsen [00:58:27] Yeah, he, he actually wrote quite a bit about Poland and some other places. When he went, he went into Europe after the war. Of course, he had a, he was in his 40s when the war hit and he had a clerical pass. So he did not serve in the war himself. So I, you know, the idea that he was torn apart by what he saw in Europe I think is kind of co opting other people's stories a little bit. But as to, yeah, where he got his, his absolute fear of communists, it's hard to say. But he was a product of his time. Like John mentioned, you know, he was in Eisenhower administration and you know, they were confederate with, with the McCarthy hearings and those individuals who were looking for communists. And we've got a quote here in a little bit where he promotes that he believes that the US government needs to smoke out all the communists everywhere. And he's not real happy that the courts are allowing people who might have been socialist or communist to hold jobs and stuff in the United States. Okay, so I have a kind of a sub one here which is, I gave you a quote that was hinting at it, which is communism as the false church. Now, Benson was a contemporary of Hugh Nibley. And Hugh Nibley's big doctrinal push was the idea that all of these other cultures, like the Egyptians or the Babylonians, the Jews for short, the Catholic Church, were all a corruption of the true church. So for Nibley, the temples, he must be spinning in his grave. But the fact that we had the temple ceremony, the pre1990 version was the true gospel and the true order of the way God had presented things on this planet. And you could see remnants of an Egyptian funerary, things and stuff that had been corrupted. Now let's be clear what the real answer is. The Freemasonry, especially like the Scottish rite and those had borrowed from things like Egyptian mythology and Greek knowledge and that sort of stuff. So of course there was continuity between the Mormon temple ceremony, it was stolen from the Freemasons and that had rift on Egyptian themes. But for Nibali, that was proof that it was a fallen church. Now, now I bring this up because. Because Benson has the idea that communism is actually, What I want to say, a false version of the church, a bad copy. And here's his quote. It has been erroneously concluded by some. The United Order is Both communal and communistic in theory and practice. Because the revelations speak of equality. Equality. Equality under the united order is not economic and social leveling as advocated by some today. Equality is described by the Lord. Is equality according to a man's family, according to his circumstance and his wants and needs. What. What I find hilarious about that, again, this is Benson. Equality according to a man's family, according to his circumstance and his wants and needs. Does that ring a bell with anybody? Anybody?

Benson on Communism and the Civil Rights Movement

Carah Burrell [01:01:54] According.

John Larsen [01:01:55] Karl Marx said, for each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. It's just. It's funny that he almost verbatim quotes Marx in. As a way to try to prove that they are not Marx. I. It's clear to me that Benson does not understand communism. Let's be clear on that point. Yeah, okay. So communism is the false church. So again, it's just another. Another thread of this, of this existential threat that we're feeling the United States being of an entire order higher and scarier. All right, so let's talk about the United States. So the next theme that Benson talks about is what I call the Gadian Kane conspiracy and infiltration. So this was. Benson said flat out, the first communist cell in the United States was in the Department of Agriculture. Culture. After I read that he said that, I went and I tried to search for any writings about the Department of Agriculture's communist cell, because Benson identifies it as the very first one. And I couldn't find anything. I couldn't find anything in the. In the. In the McCarthy hearings. I couldn't find anybody who suggested other than Benson. And it's funny, because when you read his writings, he just throws shit like this out these ones. The first communist cell was starting the Department of Agriculture. Of course, that was his department. So I can see him, you know, thinking that this is sort of early deep state. It's. That it's the deep state. There's communists down there in the Department of Agriculture, which would, of course, all been underneath his leadership. Right. He was the director of the Department of agriculture from 52 to 56. So he thinks that it's been infiltrated. And he says later that Communists had infiltrated public offices, school teachers, labor unions, and the merchant marines for some reason. So Benson believed that the merchant marines were now a tool of the Communists, as were all the schoolteachers, labor unions. Of course, you know, the conservatives took down the labor unions in the 70s and 80s in part because of this sort of thinking. But I want you to see that there's remnants of those Those beliefs today, that attack on school teachers as being socialists and communists and wanting to lead our children and grooming and on and on and on is still with us in 2023.

Speaker D [01:04:26] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:04:26] And just to add to that, if he's thinking that the Department of Agriculture is flooded with communists and pretty much anything that's just one step left of him as a communist, he was trying to get these farm subsidies that people were relying on. He was trying to tamp those back. And there were Mormons who were writing in say like to the presence of the church and stuff and saying, hey, we need these subsidies to survive. So I think it goes back and again to the subsidies for me, but not for the. That if you believe subsidies for farmers is socialism and communism and that's just kind of part and parcel of after the New Deal. That's how the government worked. And people are relying on, on him like he's going to think everything that is any type of handout whatsoever. If it's not to him. Yeah. It's going to be communist for suresies.

John Larsen [01:05:15] Yeah. And how hard it is to difficult deal with him rhetorically. If you have any opposing view, like you know the story of Hubie Brown, who was one of David O. McKay's counselors there at the end, who was much more moderate. He would, he would still be called a conservative today. But I think he actually voted Democratic, Democrat or was a part of the Democratic Party and he just got railroaded out of the office. The conservative position had such view. And I want to talk about this at the end, but the church has a problem, had a problem then that it still has today. You have the strident far right wing of the church saying things like this, like pointing fingers and saying farm subsidies, communists and it's a tool of the devil and part of the Gadian robbers. But you don't have any kind of counter programming. What you have is silence. So the right wing of the church always has grist because it can go to these old talks and find where some prophet, seer or revelator said some crazy ass thing. But there's hardly ever a position in return. And if it is, it's so nuanced in layers and layers, layers of lawyer speak, that there's. There's nothing to do but conclude that's the case. I use the example of birth control all the time for this. There are many clear statements by prophet seers and revelators saying birth control is wickedness, birth control is evil. If you do birth control, you're gonna go to Hell, for the record, Benson's position is birth control causes famine. I don't. I don't know how he gets that, but that's. That's his. What he says, so. But there's nobody saying, hey, guys, it's okay to do birth control. So you still have young men and women, married young men and women in the church who are refusing to practice birth control because they can find clear statements by the prophet seers and revelators saying birth control is wrong, it's wicked. And they can find nothing saying that it's okay. And that is how the church goes. And that's why the church has such a problem. Problem being infiltrated by polygamists, conspiracy theorists, millennialists, all just all sorts of weird conspiracies, because you can connect the dots with the weird things that the prophets have said, but you very seldom find a united front against something from the church.

Carah Burrell [01:07:40] Well said. Yeah, got it.

John Larsen [01:07:43] All right, then. Yeah, John, go ahead.

John Dehlin [01:07:44] No, that's it. Good.

John Larsen [01:07:46] And then my last quote by Benson on this, he says, today we are in a battle for the bodies and souls of men. It is a battle between two opposing systems, freedom and slavery, Christ and Antichrist. I just want to emphasize there is no gray for Benson. You are either John Bircher or you're with the devil you know. Okay, so since we're talking about the infiltration of the United States, we have to go on to talk about some of these. Specifically First Civilization, civil rights. When I joked about getting called out by the FBI, it's because of a book called the Black Hammer that Benson wrote the introduction to. He actually had a speech that he gave somewhere, a political speech as a prophesier and revelator that was taken and used with his permission to the introduction to this racist book. Benson himself called Dr. Martin Luther King a liar and a communist. And he believed that the civil rights movement was completely a communist ploy. And this was a common conspiracy theory held at the time. There are some who still hold it today, the idea that it's really a racist belief. And, um. Well, let's let. Let's let Benson say it for himself. Um, he says we must insist the duly authorized legislative investigating committees launch an even more exhaustive study and expose of the secret communists who are directing the civil rights movement. So that's where he's calling for an expansion of McCarthyism. And then he says, we must not place the blame upon the Negroes. They are merely the unfortunate group which has been selected by professional communist agitators to be used as the Primary source of cannon for fodder. Not one in a thousand Americans, black or white, really understand the full implications of today's civil rights agitation. So this is really insulting. What this is saying is that all of the black people and white people and whatever flavor that were involved in the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s were merely moronic stooges being puppeted around by the communist agitators. And only one in a thousand Americans is even smart enough to wreck recognize that this is happening, this is gross, this is racist, this is claptrap. And it's still around today in the church.

John Dehlin [01:10:20] Yeah, that's some of the most heinous stuff to say. Number one, that the civil rights movement was ultimately like this Jewish communist plot. And then to defame and, and demean people like Martin Luther King Jr. Who was not perfect, but few people of that stature are. John F. Kennedy, Eisenhower, Benson himself. Like, once you reach that level of power, nobody's got perfectly clean hands. But it's outrageous that these men that we call prophets, seers and revelators. And I'll say edstaff Benson was not alone in this. Several of the prophets, seers and revelators in the 60s considered the civil rights movement to be, be a communist plot and you know, work of the devil. But, but certainly Ezra Tab Benson led the church.

John Larsen [01:11:12] Yeah, indeed. Now we could do a whole thing on, on civil rights. He gave whole talks, just for 20, 30 minutes in conference on just how evil the civil rights movement was. He really hated it. But he had venom for other American institutions. One, surprisingly enough, was the Supreme Court Court. He believed the Supreme Court was completely and utterly infiltrated by the Gadian robbers. And he said, I believe the court is also leading us down the road to anarchy and atheistic communism. He had particular venom for Thurgood Marshall, who of course was black.

John Dehlin [01:11:47] Black, yeah.

John Larsen [01:11:48] So he did not like Thurgood Marshall at all. He had nothing kind to say. And the court at the time in the 70s and 80s did lean to the left and he stated over and over again that they had already been infiltrated by the Gadian robbers. So my question for any of the right wing or the fringe Mormons who still believe this theory and believe that Benson was there, is what happened. Does the Gadian robbers still have control over the courts? Did, did the justices of the court just get bored of being gaddy and robbers? Did is, is this just some 3D chess game to flip everything around and have the courts go ultra conservative like, like what's going on there? We may never know,

Carah Burrell [01:12:43] okay, our student loans. That would be really nice.

John Larsen [01:12:46] The next big American institution. He attacks his education. He has a lot to say about education, but luckily he had a good talk where he summed up all his beliefs about education to seven points. And I will share them with you here. Benson is against any government funding of any form, against mandatory attendance, against any kind of government oversight. But strangely, he is for prescribing exactly the curriculum the students are allowed to teach and for punishing teachers who veer away from that curriculum. Now, how you get rid of all the government oversight of education, have no mandatory anything at all, but also prescribe the curriculum. He never explains corporal punishment. He is for it. He states more than once that he says the big problem is the teachers are not allowed to beat kids. He says that education should not be directed. His word is not directed. It's intimidated, but by professional educators. He doesn't believe in that people have degrees in education, should have any say in education. He is absolutely 100% opposed to sex ed. He mentions that a lot, that we should not teach kids anything about the reproductive function of their bodies. He also says, surprisingly enough, there should be no moral instruction. But he does say many times that education should be Bible based. So I don't know exactly what that means, but he says in other places, religion, social values and politics should be taught in school. So. So for Benson, religion, yes. Social values, yes. Politics, yes. Moral instruction, no. And he is no to any social adjustment. Were his words world citizenship or sex education? Basically, he was against EDI before EDI was cool.

Carah Burrell [01:14:43] All right, don't forget the birth control one.

John Larsen [01:14:46] Yes. And then. And then on birth control, which causes famine.

Carah Burrell [01:14:49] And there's another story of where he refused to give a blessing to an infertile couple because he found out that they used birth control previously. So somebody wrapped their dong because they didn't want to have kids. And he said, well, you're infertile forever withholding blessings. No kids for you. So that's the kind of guy we're talking about.

John Larsen [01:15:08] Yeah, I did read one of his talks and it seemed to imply that he was okay with the rhythm method, but the Old Testament's not. So there you go. All right. The next theme for Benson is the definity, the divinity of the Constitution. The. I have some quotes for him. God created the United States and the Constitution as the outer wrapper for the restoration, which is Mormonism. They're both divine and should be honored. From the time I was a small boy, I was taught that the American Constitution is an inspired document. I was also taught the day will come when the Constitution will be endangered and hang, as it were, by a single thread. I included that because that is from what John Dehlin.

Benson on the Constitution and American Exceptionalism

John Dehlin [01:15:53] The White Horse Prophecy, maybe the White Horse Prophecy.

John Larsen [01:15:57] And here we have a prophet, seer and revelator endorsing the White Horse Prophecy. And then he talks about this quite often, that the elders, elders will somehow. That the. In the last days the Constitution will be endangered hanging by a single thread, and the elders of the church will save it. So that is something that came from the White Horse Prophecy and Benson himself bought into. I do believe there's an old Mormon expression episode on the White Horse prophecy if you want to look it up. And geez, I'm sure you've done one over the years, haven't you, John?

John Dehlin [01:16:30] No, I haven't. So I'll find the link and we'll make sure Julia puts that in the show notes.

John Larsen [01:16:36] If we haven't, it's time to do it.

John Dehlin [01:16:38] Yeah. Okay.

John Larsen [01:16:40] And then, and then, you know, he says over and over and over and over and over again that the Constitution was divinely inspired and he holds it to the same sacredness that he does hold the Scriptures. In fact, I found this quote really telling. This is Benson on Benson, and he says, and so four great civic standards for the faithful saint saints are first, the Constitution ordained by God through wise men. Check out that language. Ordained by God through wise men. Second, the Scriptures, particularly the Book of Mormon. Third, the inspired counsel of the prophets, especially the living prophets, and fourth, the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I thought this was a really telling Benson talk, because notice that he puts the Constitution first, first before the Scriptures, and both first and second, those two books that he uses to lay out his worldview before the inspired council of the prophets. Now keep in mind that when he's writing this, he has issue with what some of the other members of the quorum of the 12 are saying. And then, of course, when he becomes a prophet, he gives us the 14 fundamentals speech. He really locks down on that and basically says whatever a living prophet says goes. It's more important than what previous prophets have said. It's more important than what the Scriptures say. Even if they're talking about stuff that's not prophet stuff, you should listen to them. It really is a lesson in absolute totalitarian authority.

Carah Burrell [01:18:13] Yeah. And if I could just take a second to link all this together again. In Watchman to the Tower, there's this great quote where Benson is explaining how. How when he wants to be president, that his eight years in government service had shown him that it was up to him to save the Constitution and that it's not just a political act, but saving free enterprise had spiritual ramifications and that communism struck at the very core of Mormon theology by denying Latter Day Saints free agency, which made them slaves to their government. So these are threads that are all across, you know, evangelical right wing movements and things against any kind of government handout, subsidy. All of those conspiracies I think are all kind of linked back to like this idea that you're going to be enslaved to your government and that has a spiritual ramification that you are now not able to look clearly and have this free agency for how to choose. You're going to just do what the government, what the woke government has to say that you should do, that you're going to be falling line and step with that. So all of this making of the right wing of like Mormons and evangelicals and all of that, I think all, all has roots right here. Benson is a real, you know, leader for his time.

John Larsen [01:19:24] Well, and you know what? People should hear excellent points. Conservatism is the idea of, well, conserving that conservatism always stands in juxtaposition to progressives. And you know, one of the best ways I've heard it framed out is for conservatives, utopia is in the past. It's Eden. It's something that we've lost. We need to make America great again. We need to get back to our core values. We need to return to what the people were. And progressivism is the idea of this utopian future. If we just learn the right things, read the right books, listen to the right people, then we will have, we'll become woke and we will become and create ourselves divine. Of course those are two caricatures. But if there's anything that the right and left do is they caricature each other all the time. But what I think is telling is how utterly consistent most of the stuff that Benson is saying with today, like the ball on the far right has not moved very much. You could take most of these speeches and just go give them at a try rally today and they would still play with the audience the same way, the same talking points are being hit. So, you know, I say that not as an insult to the MAGA movement, quite the contrary. I think that the left sometimes forgets that many of these ideas have been deep inside American ideas of identity and American ideas of American exceptionalism. And they are not as plastic and just come and go as sometimes the left and the media portray betray them that these ideas have real strong staying power and they've been around for quite a long time. And you know, and here they were deep, deep in the, in the church as they had a prophet, seer and revelator who is basically giving these point by point. Okay, the next big theme for Benson is American exceptionalism. I mentioned it a couple times. We've done other podcasts on it. Really? That's the idea that America is, is, is special and God blessed. Well, let's just, let's just take his word for it. So here's some quotes by Benson. I testify that America is a choice land. God raised up the Founding Fathers, the United States of America and established the inspired Constitution. This was the required prologue for the restoration of the gospel. America will be blessed land unto the righteous forever. And it is a base from which God will continue to direct the worldwide latter day operations of his kingdom. Then next. America is a place of many great events. Here is where Adam dwelt, where the Garden of Eden was located. America was the place of former civilizations, including Adams, the Jaredites, the Nephites. America is also the place where God the Father and his son Jesus Christ appeared to Joseph Smith, inaugurating the last gospel dispensation on earth before the Savior's second coming. And then world consciousness and international understanding are fine, but they shall not blind us to the fact that in our own country we really do have something better than anywhere else. And we shouldn't be ashamed to say so, least of all to the youth. So for Benson, there's a key element. Not only is America God's favorite country and that it is a land that is blessed above all other lands. To quote the Book of Mormon, it always has been and always will be. Those who possess America are superior, our ideas are superior, our, our children are superior, our women are better looking, our men are more handsome, our children are smarter. Everything about us is better. And for Benson, he really equates the founding of the country. The Constitutional convention happened about 40 years before the restoration, he likes to point out, and he thinks that they are both one in the same. They are part and parcel that God restored or God put the US government in place only so that the church could be here. For Benson, the United States, United States political apparatus, United States military, everything is sort of the outer shell of the true church and they cannot be separated. Okay, and, and here I have him saying it. The Constitution, United States was ratified in 1789. The priesthood of God was restored in 1829. Between those two dates is an interval of 40 years. It is my conviction that God, who knows the end from the beginning, provided the period of time so the new nation could grow in strength put to protect, protect the land of Zion. All right. Benson's next big idea is basically politics. And the idea that politics is not only a righteous engagement, but should be engaged and is our moral duty to engage. He says the battle between good and evil is a real battle playing out in politics. He says no people can maintain freedom unless their political institutions are founded upon faith in God and belief in the existence of moral law. So I say with all the energy of my soul that unless we as citizens of this nation forsake our sins, political or otherwise, and return to the fundamental principles of Christianity and of constitutional government, we will lose our political liberties, our free institutions will stand in jeopardy before God. Now, he is the only Latter day prophet I know of that invokes the idea of political sin. He says forsakes our sins, political or otherwise, to suggest that having the right political view, and he's not just talking about Republican versus Democrat, he's talking about the right view inside the Republican Party, that is a sin in his mind, that is a violation or an affront to God. Okay? And then he says by court edict, godless conspirators can run for government office, teach in our schools, hold office and labor unions, work in our defense plants, serve in our merchant marines. As a nation, we are helping to underwrite many evil revolutionaries in this country. Of course, the context being he believes that if you are godless or you are a communist or you have other ideas about economics, you should not be able to run for office, you should not be able to teach in schools, you should not be able to hold office in labor unions, you should not be able to work in the defenses, you should not be able to serve in the merchant marines. Again with the merchant Marines. I don't know what that's all about. So, yeah, he is very authoritarian in his view and that these people who have contrary views to what he deems to be the will of God should not even be tolerated and should not be allowed to hold their jobs.

John Dehlin [01:26:31] It's hardcore.

John Larsen [01:26:33] Yeah, yeah, he's, he's, he's a hardcore.

Carah Burrell [01:26:35] I think there's a quote from him too where he says that no good Latter Day Saint could ever be a Democrat either. That old adage that if you ever hear Mormons today, I'll say that, you know, I think that quote kind of started with him that pretty much anyone who doesn't agree with me is a communist. There's no such thing as a good Latter Day Saint who's also a Democrat.

John Larsen [01:26:53] Right, right. Because. Because to them it's just you're part of the, the satanic conspiracy. You're under the power of America. Latin Lucifer. Okay, the next one moral, I couldn't think of it. Maybe somebody has named this. It shows up in Mormonism quite often. It's what I call moral Machiavellianism with God's will. And when people are giving these arguments, they usually always go back and quote the Bible about Jacob and Isaac, that Jacob was commanded to sacrifice Isaac and of course he didn't. Now there's another story later in the Bible Bible where the guy does actually sacrifice his kid, but she's a woman, so we don't ever talk about that. But Jacob and Isaac is used that you should do God's will no matter what it is. And of course comes to mind Joseph Smith taught this, as did Brigham Young, this moral relativism. And Joseph famously did it in the, in the Nancy Rigdon letter when he was trying to seduce Nancy, rigged in to be one of his wives and to sleep with her. And he said that which is wrong in some circumstances can be right in others. The idea that Benson comes to over and over again and is actually a theme throughout the Book of Mormon is that if you are serving God's will, you're doing God's what God wants, then you can violate any other moral law underneath that in the service of the greater good. Smaller morals don't matter. And this is why he talks about freedom in the same breath. He's talking about locking people up, he's talking about removing them from office. He's talking about taking away their jobs. Because freedom is something that the God fearing people enjoy. It's not something that the Gadian robbers enjoy. They just want to take it from you. So we can use whatever action is necessary, including violence, including the Monroe Doctrine where we go into into South American countries and try to destroy their government and their production in the name of the greater good. So this moral Machiavellianism shows up in Benson's talking all the time. And to me it's one of the scariest parts of what he teaches.

John Dehlin [01:29:06] Okay, that is scary.

Submission to Church Authority and Prophetic Obedience

John Larsen [01:29:11] All right. And the last one, Carah has been foreshadowing this one on straight, straight out saying it. So I appreciate that. This one I call the necessity of submission to authority and accepting of your lower status. He Talks a lot about submission to authority and that we need to listen to our betters, be they the founding fathers, be they the prophets, be they our current employers, lawyers. And, you know, I'll quote from the pride talk. Disobedience is essentially a pride power struggle against someone in authority over us. It can be a parent, a priesthood leader, a teacher, or ultimately God. A proud person hates the fact that somebody is above him. He thinks this lowers his position. And then he says later in the talk, some prideful people are not so concerned as to whether their wages move meet their needs. As yet their wages are more than someone else's. Their reward is being a cut above the rest. This is enmity of pride. So when he talks about pride, it's funny, in the pride talk, which really had a lot of impact in Mormon circles, he sort of dismisses, right at the beginning of the talk, the pride of riches. He dismisses the stuff that Jesus says, and instead he wants to turn it on the proletariat. He wants to turn it on the working class. And he does. Here's again, he said pride fades our feelings of sonship to God and brotherhood to man. It separates and divides us by rank according to our riches and our chances for learning. Those are all in quotes. Ranks, riches and our chances for learning. Learning. So again, he's attacking the learned institutions and he's attacking those who look at people who have status and riches and saying there's something wrong with that. He goes on and gives in several places, but he enumerates it really clearly when he talks about duties in their order. And he says, your first duty is to the church. Your second duty is to your home.

John Dehlin [01:31:21] Home.

John Larsen [01:31:22] Your third duty is to your country. It's funny because he gave another talk where he reversed those. Right. But then his fourth duty he gives is to your employer, that you have a duty to do whatever your employer says. So submission to him is not just submission to church authorities, it's submission to whoever is your file master in the capitalistic system. Carah, you had something.

Carah Burrell [01:31:48] Yeah, it all makes sense now. All the puzzle pieces are coming together. And again, I do think that's really interesting given the fact that he was. The guy was the 14 Fundamentals of Following the prophet, he gave that when he was just still an apostle. Right. But it was like a power grab that you knew he was going to be a prophet.

John Larsen [01:32:03] He was. Well, the apostles are all prophets, right? So.

Carah Burrell [01:32:06] Oh, yeah. In that way, yes.

John Larsen [01:32:09] But knowing that he was the 14 fundamentals. Let's see, what year was that? We should look it up and see.

Carah Burrell [01:32:14] I can look it up, but I, I'm almost positive that he gave it like months before the prophet died. And it was like this pre, preamble to his, his own power grab. But that is just. Yeah, that is interesting from like every different angle. He wants people to submit to an authority figure and then when he's on the main stage general conference, he's able to give this address of saying like and then me being the prophet, me being God's number one talker to you guy. Also I'm allowed to speak on any policies and civic matters. The doctrine is established by me and when I talk, you listen. Everything about those fundamentals is just such an authoritarian power grab and that it just really makes sense. But you add in all of his anti communism ideas that are so, so yeah, pro capitalism, that that is the after, after the Great Depression that the way to save America is not through the New Deal. Hell no. It's through co ops and church welfare. That's the thing that's going to save everyone. And just being so completely obtuse to the wants and needs of the American people. And actually the Mormon people who found him so unappealing that, to the point that when he's prophet he's like, you can't find me unappealing because I actually, what I say is actually from God. So it's just so interesting that I really feel like all of that authoritarianism of all of his different isms and his beliefs, his antis, everything kind of culminates when he becomes a prophet and is able to have a speech that is still given out today. Like you're saying those pamphlets. I read that speech in relief Society in 2010. I got a. I didn't know the context of it, but I had that. We went through that in Relief Society just recently. And you're just thinking like, yeah, follow the prophet. He knows the, the way. These are the fundamentals. This is how you follow him. Why no need brain listen to profit. So that is some wildly authoritarian bullcrap.

John Dehlin [01:34:10] Yeah, it looks like the date of his talk, 14 Fundamentals and Following the Prophet was February 26, 1980. And Spence W. Kimball died in November of 1985. But you also have to know that Spence W. Kimball had cancer and at some point like had his vocal cords removed and spoke with like a little machine. So it's almost now John Larsen, I may be going over the edge here. You can correct me. It's almost like he knew he was about to become prophet and so he basically put out a talk as the most senior apostle, saying, once I'm prophet, everything I say is what's going to be the most important thing you hear. It's almost like he was doing that.

John Larsen [01:34:56] Yeah, there's some who theorize. Yeah. Yeah. Kimball had throat cancer and he had at least part of his vocal cords removed. And then so in the late 70s and 80s, he spoke with this kind of froggy. Brothers and sisters, we are happy to have you here. It was, is actually, I don't, I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. He was a very inspiring guy, actually. He had some weird ideas about sex and homosexuals, but he truly was a caring person. And, you know, he would get up there and give those gravelly talks, but it just made him a little bit more endearing to the, to the Saints, I believe. But yeah, he came close more than once to kicking the bucket. And there are those who were waiting in the wings for Benson. There were people who thought, when Benson takes over, we are in for it.

John Dehlin [01:35:48] And yeah, I often say, I remember, you know, I had met him as a boy because he was a family member. He came to Houston for like an area conference and spoke. So, you know, he had a special place in my heart. I was really surprised when, when Kimball died and he became Ezra Benson became prophet, because I think it was the first time in my life I ever heard believing orthodox Mormons criticized the prophet because I guess there, you know, plenty of Mormons were Democrats in the early to mid 20th century, before the John Birch Society garbage and before all the Ezra TAF Benson anti communist New World Order garbage. And so there were a lot of liberal or Democrat or New Deal Mormons that really didn't like Ezra Taft be Benson and were praying that he wouldn't become prophet. And this is the first time my seminary teacher told me sort of behind the scenes, there's a lot of Mormons out there that aren't excited that he, you know, as Dot Benson is becoming the prophet. And, you know, so I wouldn't say that he did not broad Mormon support because if Mormons do anything, they rally behind their prophet. But he's probably the most controversial prophet we've had in my life, lifetime.

John Larsen [01:37:06] Oh, for sure. And I, I will say that when he, when he finally ascended the throne in 85, and I can't verify this directly, but I'm pretty, pretty certain it's, it's true, after he became the president of the church, the, the top guy, he really backed off the Political stuff. He didn't talk about civil rights and that stuff very much more. He did continue, continue banging that drum of the conspiracy theory and the Gadian robbers. But he really did temper his message very much. Now I should acknowledge I, I'm going to tell you that what I'm about to tell you I have no way of independently verifying. But Steve Benson, who is his grandson and is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, he was a cartoonist, says that through most of his administration he was mentally not there most of the time. And there was a controversy that came up that they, they meaning Hinckley, who is his first counselor and Monson was his second counselor, they had him assign an agreement secretly, meaning it wasn't done publicly, that gave the power of, of the president of the church to the first presidency should he be incapacitated. And there are those who say that that agreement was signed with the auto pen that we've mentioned before. So there's some controversy around his last years, but if you watch some of his later talks, it's pretty clear that cognitively he was an old man, he was declining and he just wasn't as sharp as he was in the 50s and 60s.

John Dehlin [01:38:56] Yeah, like I remember it even a little bit more sharply in that, you know, it was almost like Weekend at Bernie's, the movie where these guys carry a corpse around. Like all the Mormons believe that Ezra Tab Benson was a vibrant, active, cognizant, you know, prophet with his full capacities. But in reality he had full blown dementia like Thomas S. Monson. And it was his grandfather, grandson, I believe Steve, who got tired of seeing them like wheelchair him to a temple groundbreaking ceremony, literally like stand him up, put a shovel in his hand, put a helmet on his hat, take the photo up and then put him back in the wheelchair and wheel him back to the nursing home. And he just said, you're lying to the general membership by making it appear as though he's leading the church. And that caused a big controversy with Dallin H. Oaks and Boyd King Packer and others, I think, who were super mad that, you know, the grand grandson Benson, who is a gifted political cartoonist I think for, I think it's the Arizona Republic. They were just super mad that he was saying the quiet thing out loud, which is this prophet, Syrian revelater guy is completely non cognizant and incapable of leading this church, let alone, alone changing his own, you know, clothes.

Carah Burrell [01:40:20] Yeah, hey, maybe that's the, what's the saying? Roosters coming home to roost? Chickens. What's the Saying help me out here.

John Dehlin [01:40:25] Chickens, chickens coming, chickens coming home. Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:40:29] Somebody that is so anti welfare state, so against Social Security that is so pro elderly people working into their retirement years is forced to still work. Not question his employment you could say with the Mormon Church. That's kind of what he was looking to, to have most people do beyond their ability to even accomplish the job before them. Interesting irony I just put together and

John Larsen [01:40:50] thanks for bringing it back there because I have one more quote that you have to suffer through. I'm sorry, but this is the one that you've been referring to this sort of stuff throughout the evening. Carah and I, I feel I would be remiss if I didn't give this full service. Here is Benson at his prime. When you accept food stamps, you accept an unearned handout that other people are paying for. You do not earn food stamps or welfare payments. Every individual who accepts an unearned government gratuity is just as morally culpable as the individual takes a handout from taxpayers money to pay his heat, electricity or rent. There is no difference in principle between them. You did not come to this university to become a welfare recipient. You came here to be a light to the world, a light to society, to save society and help save this nation. The Lord's base of operation in these latter days to ameliorate man's social conditions. You are not here to be a parasite or freeloader. The price you pay for something for nothing may be more than you can afford. Do not rationalize your acceptance of government gratuities by saying I am a contributing taxpayer too. By doing this, you contribute to the problem which is leading this nation to financial insolvency. See,

Carah Burrell [01:42:06] and they're hard on those BYU students that he's telling to have kids without birth control. He's really hard on them.

John Larsen [01:42:11] Yes, yes. You know, in, in and I know I was there at the time, the, the jobs didn't pay quite enough. You know, if, if you took the, the wage that BYU paid, it wasn't enough to cover housing and, and now I'm, I don't want to say woe is me as, as a Gen X, I could work and take out a reasonable loan and get through school and that's not the case anymore. So I'm sorry about that. But even then we were still paying 10% on the stuff the church gave us. And then they would say you can't take welfare, you can't take food stamps, but we're not going to pay you enough or give You a way to actually make the ends meet. And then of course, they would come and tell you how to pay your tithing first before you do everything else and all that. There's a couple more quotes here that I just trimmed out for time and space where he goes on and on about like, like theft, you know, like not doing everything your, your employer talks about. And he, you know, he talks about loyalty and disloyalty, but he always talks about it from an employee perspective. He never really talks about from. From an employer perspective. You know, when we see the figures on how much employees steal from their employees, employers versus wage theft by employers, the wage theft by employers is way higher. I'm not arguing for anything other than why is it that these guys always point to the problem that individuals have who are trying to make ends meet in a society, and they never point to the problems of exploitation of workers? What is that? Why did the gospel where Jesus routinely was attacking the Romans and different things, why is it all people's fault now? What is this that would make you not want to take this? And of course, at the same time, the church is running a welfare program, but then it humiliates and shames and drags people through the mud for taking that too. So, I mean, what is it they want?

Carah Burrell [01:44:12] In my opinion, I think it has to do with going back to the civil rights movement, diversity and inclusion. And in the church, it's obviously got a lot of racist problems. But then just overall, in the workplace, if he's saying, just listen to your employers, who are the people? Who are the. Who are the employers? They're a bunch of white people. And if there are a set of employees who are saying, hey, I'm being discriminated against because I'm a woman, or, hey, I'm discriminated because I got pregnant, or I am discriminated because I'm black or gay or anything. I think he is of the persuasion that any kind of workplace place where people are able to unionize and come together to fight for not just better wages, wages, but like inclusion. All of that has to do with communism because all of those people are all part of that plot, if you follow, like having people who are the working class being able to rise up and say that we want fair representation against the white employers at the top, that also leads to the downfall that leads to that enslavement, leads to everything else that you talked about.

John Larsen [01:45:13] Yeah, absolutely. Now, I just have one more on my list. It's a brief one, and I'm just really mentioning It. Because he doesn't. And that's women. What's interesting is, you know, you have a feminist movement that was really active during his tenure as a prophet. You have the Equal Rights Amendment and the church's action against that. And you have a lot talking about labor relations, employment law, and all things that were really active issues for women. He just doesn't talk about women very much at all. It's almost like they don't exist for him or that they are, you know, something else that one might possess. I don't know. I. I just. I thought it was telling that somebody who is so involved in all the politics of the day really just has nothing to say about this. Really. What was. Was striking in its silence. Its silence was screaming out. Out to me.

Benson's Teachings on Women and the Home

John Dehlin [01:46:05] I'm pretty sure he's the one that gave a really scandalous talk about women shouldn't work outside the home. I may have that wrong. I should probably Google that. But that is one, one thing I remember as a BYU student that really sent shockwaves through, through BYU and just through the Mormon community because a lot of, you know, a lot of Mormon families couldn't afford to survive on one income. And yet all these Mormon mothers are being shamed for working outside the home.

John Larsen [01:46:37] Now that could be. I'll admit that I spent most of my time with his writings during his heydays in the 60s and 70s. I looked at his major talks from the 80s, but that could be. I remember the same sort of things being taught. I just don't remember if they came directly for him.

John Dehlin [01:46:54] Actually, John, if it's all right, I just to want to give people the reference. The talk is called to the Mothers in Zion and it was in 1987 and that. That's the year I first. I first attended BYU in the fall of 87. And yeah, it's a. It was by Azure Time Benson himself. And it basically just shamed all working moms. So, Carah, the ghost of Ezra Tov Benson is haunting you.

Carah Burrell [01:47:25] Yeah, well, it's not my problem. Aaron's at home with the screaming kids, not me. I'm here with you folks. Silence.

John Dehlin [01:47:32] Right now you're here sinning.

John Larsen [01:47:36] The last book that Benson wrote was about women in the Gospel. He wrote it in 92, so I'm not sure if he wrote it, but I don't have a copy of it. I looked and I could not find any reference to it online whatsoever. However, I have no idea what it said in there, and it seems like it's gone down the memory hole. So yeah, but I think it's clear. And you're right, I remember that talk. So I stand corrected. But it's clear through the writings that he expects this sort of patriarchal view of the man being in charge of the house, who submits to his church authority, who submits to his government authority, who does what they're told. And that's really important to him. Okay, Those are the major themes of Benson's talks that I pulled out. There's a lot of little stuff I left on the side. An earlier version of this talk had a speed round where I was just going to go through all these weird things that he said. For example, he was way against getting off the gold standard, which we did completely in 1971. And he gave all this prophetic, if we get off the gold standard, our economies will crash. He was always full of doom and gloom. If we don't do exactly what he's saying right now, the enemy is at the door. And you know, if we don't support our boys in Vietnam, then the dominoes are gonna fall and the communists are gonna take over all of Asia and all these things that never actually materialized. You know, he talks about all, all the time. The threat of communists are everywhere. They've infiltrated the schools, they've infiltrated the kids academy, they've infiltrated Hollywood, they've infiltrated the Department of Agriculture. And then the question is what? So that brings up the big philosophical questions that I have been asking over and over again through this. And dear listener, if you've stayed with me through all this, God bless you. But here is the question. What does it mean to be a prophet, seer and revelator? If a man can have that blessing, that mantle of authority by Benson's own standard, that conduit to God the Almighty? And Benson is never mince his words that he believes absolutely that he is giving God's will. And God is an American, capitalist, commie hating, vengeful guy who is going to take it out of their hides in due time. Time. So if, if he is a prophet, seer and revelator, he's either right. All of this stuff, all the stuff that is, still has juice with Qanon and with Maga and those people, that is the gospel, that is God's plan. Or he's wrong. And if he's wrong about this stuff, which there's a lot of things he was absolutely wrong about, things he predicted that didn't happen happen like the gold standard crash, then what does that say about being a prophet? Seer and revelator on a parallel question, if the Book of Mormon was written for our time, meaning 1979, meaning the height of the Cold War, the Cold War is over. The, the, the Soviet Union is gone. The Russians are no longer Communists. And the Communists, the Chinese Communists, they're also capitalists. Capitalists. And the Chinese economy and the American economy are so intermeshed that you can't even separate the two. So if the Book of Mormon was a warning about the Gadian robbers infiltrating the world through the Cold War, what happened? Where are they? So is Benson a prophet? Was he right in predicting all this stuff that didn't happen? Or is he just a guy? Wh, which is it? Mormons? I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm sincerely asking. Somebody who believes this shit needs to explain to me the Benson problem, because this stuff is still there in the church. You go down to. You go down to sacrament meeting in, I don't know, Pleasant Grove or in Orem, you're going to hear this stuff over the pulpit. So is he, Is he a prophet? Anybody? Anybody?

John Dehlin [01:51:59] I mean, no. The stuff that they were teaching in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s has just been so downplayed, you know, especially this teaching about women in the home, the civil rights movement. Now the church is denouncing the priesthood and the temple ban on black Mormons. The church is no longer giving grief to women in the home, women who work outside the home. They're basically acknowledging that it's an economic necessity. In 2023, the church is no longer speaking out against communism. And it's even going as far just this month, I believe, to state that there's not one party that you should be a member of in the United States that you can be a faithful member in any party. Like there's a whole lot that and this American exceptionalism. You know, we could all love many things about America, but not necessarily believe that it's God's one true country and that all other countries are inferior. And we can even be critical of the harm that America has done and see problems with the Constitution, namely that it counted black people as three fifths of a person. Black men, women, of course, weren't even counted in the census, but black men were counted as 3/5 of a white man. You have to be careful when you say that God inspired the US Constitution because slavery was still allowed when the Constitution was signed. So, yeah, so much of Ezra Tov Benson, he was just a product of his time and he doesn't stand the test of time in so many fundamental ways. And you know, like is often said, what's good about Mormonism isn't unique. And what's unique about Mormonism isn't good. What's good about Izar Taf Benson isn't unique. And what's unique about Izitf Benson is horrendous. That's what I'd say.

John Larsen [01:54:06] Yeah, I, I, I agree. And I, I, I would say he was putting the quorum in 43. And so there were all these prophets, seers and revelators in 43. Well, he, he and, and I think it's is it he and Hinckley went in on the exact same day is either he and Hinkler, he and Kimball, and it was just the order with which they were ordained. But so there were 10 prophets when he got ordained and then they kept dying and there were more prophets put in place and more prophets put in all the way up to 94. And then there's been all the prophets who've been put in place since 94. Not a single one of these people has publicly ever stated anything to contradict or suggest that Ezra Taft Benson wasn't inspired by the Church's own claims. There's millions of Mormons who sat and listened to him, and there are Mormons who disagreed with him who were excommunicated over that or left the church. So not only was it not just silence, it was people who actually said the truth were cut off. So there's two possibilities. This is, this whole big mind fuckery is somehow God's plan for us. And even though it doesn't make any sense whatsoever with the minds that God gave us, that you're just supposed to bend over and take it and say, thank you, sir, can I have another or this is all a load of horseshit. And there are no prophets, there are no seers, there are no revelators. And these are just guys who are product of their time saying whatever pops into their heads with the mistake that they think that their own internal dialogue is God. The way I see those are the only two possibilities and the one is horrific and the other sets you free.

Legacy, Criticism, and the Product of His Time

John Dehlin [01:56:04] Carah.

Carah Burrell [01:56:05] Yeah, and I was this is the perfect opportunity to add this. So you did not get into one of my very favorite subjects in all of Mormonism, which is this divergent path that a lot of the leadership of the church took against the more traditionalist views view of the restoration of the Church and the prophets. And then more of the progressive view that Leonard Arrington and the historians that he trained that kind of went on the divergent path. And I've done some videos about that, about Rod Meldrum and the firm foundation and how the very faith crises that so many people are confronted with today are because we were not given the information about what the true history facts of the church were. So on that note, it is so interesting because if a Mormon member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is watching this, I will say this so respectfully, they will want to try to say, well, let's nuance this. They were men of their time. Men make mistakes. But you're going to have to remember that Benson shot himself in the foot because he hated church historians. He tried to dismantle the Church historians office because they were being too humanizing of the prophets of. Of God. So he doesn't want to be humanized. He doesn't want to be sick at the time when he's saying that, he's like, don't you dare ever say that I'm just a product of my time because I'm speaking as God. So where do Mormons today, where do they get the license to say that he was just a product of his time? Because him speaking as a prophet, he said that he wasn't. All the other prophets say that. They're not speaking as men of their time. They're saying that they're prophesying. But it's only very convenient when you need to nuance and like, soften the edges for a modern 20233 audience to say that they were members of just this one racist, anti c. Anti communist, crazy, conspiratorial class of time. Isn't that convenient? Because that is not what they were preaching.

John Dehlin [01:58:02] Yeah, amen and rant. Amen. Care.

John Larsen [01:58:07] Yeah, I, I have some friends in Corvallis that were on the front lines in, in the civil rights movement. It was real, it was violent, it was bloody, it was the right thing, and it made us a better people for it, and we're still fighting those fights. To say that their product of their time is an insult to the times. Like the, the. The 60s were a time of. Of. Of. Of progress, of liberation, of. Of the. Of ideas that sep. That we saw in Mr. Rogers and in Sesame street, of, of acceptance of people who are different, of. Of tolerating other people's cultures, of giving people who might be marginalized a. A. A chance of allowing others a seat at the table. It's not like these guys were just products of their time. They were products of the, of, of, of the worst of their time. So it's not just that they were all saying what, what people? That time, there were plenty of people not doing and saying those things. When Brigham Young was all for the Civil War and kind of went in on the side of the south, there were plenty of people, matter of fact, the majority who disagreed with Brigham Young when, when, when they were extolling the virtues of Vietnam, the Vietnamese war in the 60s, there were lots of people who recognized that was a load of horseshit, like these guys. It's not just that being a prophet, seer and revelator is the equivalent of having, I don't know, a Chuck E. Cheese membership card. It's worse. It's like it makes you bad. It makes you pick the positions that are the worst positions in society.

Carah Burrell [01:59:50] Seriously.

John Larsen [01:59:50] So I would question this teaching, the saying. They're just the product of their time. They're not any more than the most strident, violent elements of the maga movement. Movement are a product of conservatism. Because there's plenty of conservatives in the United States today who don't follow the lunatic fringe. And we would do a mistake by painting everybody who identifies a conservative with the lunatics on that side just like we would do the same mistake on the left. But why is it that the prophet seers and revelators either are the lunatics themselves or they create big structures that support and give a big megaphone to the lunatics? Isn't this a problem? Isn't this a problem? That much of what I quoted to you here today, I pulled off the church's website today. This week, last week, like it. The church is saying one thing, but they're still publishing this bullshit. So they still have culpability for their anti civil rights. They still have culpability for the terrible racist things they said about black people. They still have culpability for the cultural imperialism that they continue to perpetrate across the world. They can't just say we're just trying to do Jesus's will. Because I've read the fucking New Testament. I know what Jesus said and it ain't you guys. This isn't it.

John Dehlin [02:01:19] Yeah, I'll share my biggest beef with Ezra TAF Benson today. It seems like the church has moved beyond the guilt trips around. Well, that's not true. The church has not moved around its guilt trips about women working outside the home. I still think Mormon culture shames and stigmatizes that care. You can tell me if I'm wrong there, but certainly mom told me to

Carah Burrell [02:01:48] quit my job many times this week.

John Dehlin [02:01:50] Who did?

Carah Burrell [02:01:51] My mom told me to quit my job many times this week.

John Dehlin [02:01:54] Yeah, and she would have been influenced for sure by Ezra Taf Benson. But I guess you don't hear church leaders getting up in General Conference saying things like, you know, Mormon women shouldn't work outside the home. So at least they backed off on that. You know, the church still loves the Book of Mormon. There's not quite the emphasis. The church has apologized, not apologized, for its banning of black people from the priesthood in the temples, but it's certainly dismissed those teachings now as folklore. So the church has moved on, I'd say, in several important ways from Ezra Time Benson. My biggest concern about Istar Tab Benson in 2023 is he really is the grandfather of Mormon conspiracy thinking, in my opinion. And whether it's the satanic ritual abuse garbage of the 80s and 90s, whether it's the QAnon garbage, or whether honestly it's kind of the new iteration of that which is exemplified by Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad, you know, a movie that swept the nation over the past few weeks. We're all against child sex trafficking. We all agree it's a horrible thing. We're all against the abuse of children. But this whole idea that immigrants, you know, immigrants are the reason why children are child sex trafficked, that children are being, you know, their organs are being harvested so that Oprah and Tom Hanks can use their excretions from their organs to look a little bit younger. The types of conspiracy thinking that continues to dominate conservative orthodox Mormon thought, not to mention Julie Rowe, not to mention the preppers, that's for me, the super harmful legacy of Ezra Taft Benson. Instead of a people that are evidence based, instead of a people that are science based, empirical based, instead of people that value real statistics and look for where real harm is being done and who look for real ways to solve the harm. Too much of orthodox Mormonism is wrapped up in QAnon on conspiratorial garbage and prepperism garbage that is an embarrassment, frankly to the Mormon people. And I really do think that Ezra Taft Benson's John Bircher garbage and New World Order garbage and none dare call it conspiracy garbage. Anti Semitic garbage and anti communist McCarthy garbage. Garbage is the predecessor that put our people on the train tracks to becoming a conspiracy minded people. And I think it's a pox on our state, it's a pox on our people and it's had a deep influence in the Republican party. And I'm a Registered Republican in Utah because I want to have influence in the primaries. I'm not nonpartisan, but I think it's harming the Republican Party for those who care about Republican principles. And John and Carrie, you, you can both feel free to criticize or disagree with me.

Carah Burrell [02:05:30] No ramifications are definitely long lasting. I agree.

John Larsen [02:05:34] I think you say, say it well. And I am perplexed how. Yeah, like you say, we're all opposed to, you know, a violent sex trade and any kind of sexuality inviting children, involving children. I've never met or heard of or even aware of any real organization that, that is for such a thing. But, and what's, what's interesting is there's, there's this conspiratorial look for it, but when we find it, we found it. Guys, like the Boy Scouts. How many people have come forward and saying they were, they were sexually abused in the Boy Scouts? And you know what? We all saw it. We all saw it in the 80s. We saw it was going on, on. And, and most of the sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts was older boy on younger boy, as opposed to leader on boy. But there was plenty of leader on boy sex crime. We know that the church has been caught over and over again covering it up. We know that the Catholic Church has it. So help me, guys, that you really care about sex trafficking. Because when we find it and it's existing in our beloved institutions, we don't cover it up, we expose it. And the only reason I bring that is because I want to be somebody who can take these guys at their word and have good faith, sort of. Hey, the Mormons, they're really trying hard. They're really just trying to be good people and good family people. And I believe that about Mormon people, but not about the church. And the church has an opportunity. The church has a requirement to repent from this stuff. Guys, I'm no bastion of human whatever. I'm no example. But take a book from my page. When somebody tells you you're wrong, look it up and see if they're right. And if they're right, you have a duty to come forward and say, I was wrong. They're right. The church needs to drink its own medicine. The church needs to report, repent. I would say that by the church's own standards, it's in a fallen state right now. It is corrupt. And if people want to redeem the church, the church itself has to repent from crimes such as aboriginal genocide, from the murder of multiple people, from. From deceit and from abuse and it just the, the heinous crimes perpetuated the name of the church. And by the time church is, is long and deep and tragic.

John Dehlin [02:08:08] Carah, you got, you got anything left?

Carah Burrell [02:08:12] I was a very conservative Mormon. I like to always make sure people know that I had a long journey out of the church but also a long journey away from the very far right into where I am now. And one thing that helped deconvert me was really connecting with, with this. Not quite believing in the actual divinity of Jesus Christ, but the best of what he has to offer through his scriptures. And there's so many things about putting off materialism that I connected with that I didn't see through the Mormon lens. So going back to what Benson said about his capitalism about like environmentalism, doing well by our planet, things that I would connect with on a spiritual level you could say that I didn't find in the leadership of the church that had such this pro capitalist divest as many resources and exploit as many things from the people and from the planet as possible. And I just didn't feel like Christ was there at the center of it. And going back to how is this person a prophet? I would have to compare what Jesus Christ says about in the, in the Bible. How do you know a false prophet? It you know it by your their fruits ye shall know them. And has anything from the fruits of Ezra Taf Benson and the things that he has put forward even down to a spiritual level of, of going against the, the very I think inclinations that people know know deep down that their worthiness is not based on their like work related accomplishments. That it should be just divine and given from God. This like very transcendentalist view view. And I just didn't find, I, I didn't find those things there then when I was deconstructing from the church. And I still don't find them now. And those are if you want to talk about the lasting ramifications and politics and maga movements and all of that, I think the, one of the hardest ramifications are twofold and it is that your inherent worth is superseded by what other people have to say about you. Just like Benson sang, your employer, your, your, you know, the husband and leadership over you, your ability to procreate needs to be tamped down by what the prophets have to say about birth control. Just all of this outsourcing of how you find, find yourself, how you self actualize, how you become the best version of yourself is all through these filters of men and all through your accomplishments. And I Don't think that that is a. A best teaching of what you could get out of the biblical Jesus or. Or any other good spiritual practice. I think it has lasting ramifications on people's views about themselves and how they show up. And just the depression, the anxiety of never being enough, sticks with people.

Closing Thoughts and Final Reflections

John Dehlin [02:10:56] Yep. And I'll just add a quote that I shared recently on The Mormon Stories YouTube channel. The quote is basically, those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocity, and that's Voltaire. And I really do think that when people can be whipped up into a frenzy with conspiratorial thinking, you get things like the January 6th seizure of the Capitol. It's very dangerous. And so I just think the less conspiratorial thinking we have in our society, the better. And that's why, in many ways, I'm embarrassed to be related to Steph Benson. So I'll just end it there.

John Larsen [02:11:43] Yeah, it's unfortunate this is all. Benson is, of course, a victim of this, just like we all are. This is something that lodges in our psyche, religion, and it leads to unsavory places. But the good news is there's a way out and that people love you. And the other good news is that most of the people in the church are just trying to do the best thing they can with what they've got. So, sorry to bring a downer topic. It's an important one, and he really casts a big shadow.

John Dehlin [02:12:18] All right, well, John Larsen, as always, super well prepared, super professional, thoughtful presentation. I'll just say again, the Open Stories Foundation. Mormon Stories are nonpartisan. We don't believe in partisanship. We don't take sides. We think polarization is harming our society. But we do think it's important to call out harm when it's been, you know, perpetrated or when it's being supported. So, anyway, John Larsen, you do great work. We really appreciate having you on the podcast.

John Larsen [02:12:55] Thanks. My folks are coming into town at the end of next month, so I don't know, don't have quite enough time. But I do want to show that I did find John de Lynn, my copy, all 700 pages of the Reed Smoot hearing. So I'm setting myself a goal that I may fail for September and then for. For August. For our next meeting, we're going to talk about the whistleblowers. The people, since the foundation of Mormonism, have written the Tell all expose, what their story was and what the impact of their work was throughout the century. So that's Next. Next time. And then, of course, the Reed Smoother Hearings.

John Dehlin [02:13:35] All right, well, I'm not in any way disappointed. I think whistleblowers are crucial, so I'm excited for that. John Larsen. That book is way too big. You need a reader's digest version of the Smooth Hearings. That's too ambitious.

John Larsen [02:13:47] I'll. I'll pick the ones that have the most. You want. You want my reading strap strategy? I'll. I'll go through and look up online to find the. The ones where the, the, the blood was on the floor. But I'll also pick the ones that have the most footnotes because that'll be the ones that they're probably trying to.

John Dehlin [02:14:03] Okay.

John Larsen [02:14:04] And I, I bet you the front of the book is the first pages are about what's important in here and what's not. So. Yep. That is.

John Dehlin [02:14:11] All right. Thanks, John Larsen. Thanks for all you do. If you want to support the Mormon Expression Project on Mormon Stories, both the archive of John Larsen's past work with Mormon Expression Podcast and the appearance of both John and Carah monthly on Mormon stories, go to mormonstories.org mormonexpression Become a monthly donor. And as long as y' all step up financially to support John and Carah coming on, we'll keep having them on.

John Larsen [02:14:39] Also, please let me add, keeping this stuff up takes money and time. Like, technologies are constantly changing. Changing. They're being upgraded. Hackers are constantly trying to find ways to infiltrate this stuff. So it's not just this money is all like Scrooge McDuck, John De Lin's pocketbook chainling full of the gold coins. It takes time and money and we have to pay professional people to just even keep the podcast up. So I just want to emphasize that, that although we give this stuff for free, it does cost money to have it out there.

John Dehlin [02:15:14] Absolutely. Yeah. And then we try and pay both you and Carah for appearing. We always pay you guys for appearing. Carah, please support nuance ho patreon. YouTube. Any final words, Carah?

Carah Burrell [02:15:28] No, I just have a bunch of fun projects coming out and I will comment when this video comes out at the bottom and John will pin it to the top. So you guys all know to go press it and follow me and subscribe to my YouTube channel if you haven't already. Right, John, you'll help us sister out like that, right?

John Dehlin [02:15:42] Absolutely.

Carah Burrell [02:15:43] Anyway, thanks. Thanks so much. I've. My YouTube channel has been growing a lot, and I have a lot of fun projects. And thank you so much for the support. And who knew that that girl who made dumb little tiktoks while she was literally breastfeeding her child and he was out of view. But I would still be here talking about Mormonism a couple years later, so I really enjoy it. Thanks for having me on.

John Dehlin [02:16:00] All right, thanks, Carah. All right, thanks, everyone. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Please be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another EP episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, guys.

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