Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. It is March 24, 2021, and we have a short Mormon Stories podcast episode. And when I say short, I mean an hour to hour and a half at the most might be shorter, but we have something important and interesting to talk about. Recently, a news story started splashing across all the Utah newspapers. And when I say all the Utah newspapers, I mean two Utah newspapers, the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribun. We'll go with the Salt Lake Tribune first. Fair Mormon adopts a New Name and urges a Kinder Approach in Defending the LDS Church.

John Dehlin [00:00:41] And of course, in the Deseret News, the headline is Fair Mormon Drops Mormon from Name and Bickering from Posts. And those of you who've been following Mormon Stories Podcast over the past six to eight months will be very familiar with the backstory, which is really interesting. And I'll just recount it really quickly.

John Dehlin [00:01:01] At some point a few years ago, Kwaku El, a convert to the Mormon Church, an actor and a BYU student and a hired apologist, along with Carden Ellis, also kind of a hired gun wannabe actor, podcaster, producer, and then a guy named Bradley Whitbeck. At some point a year or two ago, they approached Fair Mormon, the Mormon apologetic group, and said, hey, your videos stink. We think you need to create a new set of videos that are hip, that are cool, that are funny, that are even sarcastic, that are edgy, and that are kind of like Saturday Night Live where there's young hit people sitting at a desk reporting on news, telling jokes, but also doing apologetics.

John Dehlin [00:01:45] But apologetics with the twist, with an edge, with humor, et cetera. And they made this pitch to the Fair Mormon board. My sister Julianne Hatton was on the board at the time that that that pitch was made. And Fair Mormon deliberated, as I understand it, and they approved this project and they even got funding for it. Our understanding is that either through the Mormon Church or one of its subsidiaries or the More Good foundation, money was actually funneled from the Mormon Church and or through its rich donors, through the Moregood foundation, to FairMormon. So that brought Brad and Kwaku and Carden could purchase equipment and could be paid to launch these hip, cool, cutting edge videos.

John Dehlin [00:02:30] Let's just say a dozen or so of these videos were made and their primary target was, I guess, addressing Mormon Church truth claims. But Jeremy Runnels and the CES letter were very much in the targets because Jeremy Runnels and the CES letter have been so successful in Mormonism in waking up Mormons to problems with the church's historical and or truth claims. And I was sort of also a target with a lot of the efforts with Kwaku and Cardin and Bradley Whitbeck. And so when these videos were released, I'm gonna say last fall, winter, it caused this huge uproar. And the biggest uproar, I don't think they made it.

John Dehlin [00:03:10] They really registered much in Mormonism, orthodox Mormonism writ large, but they certainly registered seismically in the ex Mormon community. And we had this huge reaction basically with people saying that these were unchristlike, these were mean spirited, these were really shoddy bad apologetics. We had people saying that they were deceptive, that they looked bad, that they weren't that funny. We had all sorts of opinions being expressed. And we also had a lot of response videos made by Zelf on the shelf, by Nemo on YouTube, which is Douglas, we'll be having him on in just a second. And we just had a lot of reactions on Reddit and it was a real controversy.

John Dehlin [00:03:57] And it culminated with, I'm just going to say, a prediction on my part. I made a prediction that I said, I hereby predict three things regarding the new Kwaku Fair Mormon videos. Number one, that they will cause more people to leave the church than they will keep in the church, primarily because they're unchristlike and they're just mean spirited and ineffective. Secondly, I predicted that the videos would be taken down. And third, I predicted that they would cause more damage to Fair Mormon's already struggling reputation. And I beseeched all of my listeners to share these videos as much as possible. In addition to these Fair Mormon videos, with the equipment, with the donations, with the money that Kwaku Cardin and Bradley Whitbeck received, Kwaku and Cardin in parallel also simultaneously launched podcasts.

John Dehlin [00:04:50] So kwaku launched the Stone 16 podcast channel on YouTube and Cardinalis launched the Midnight Mormons YouTube channel as well, where it was like gloves off. We're coming after John Dehlin, we're coming after Jeremy Runnels. You know, this is where they made these claims that Jeremy and I were homewrecking for profit, that we were horrible human beings, that we were just intentionally trying to destroy families for money. It again caused this huge reaction to the point where I felt like I had to create an entire episode of Mormon Stories podcast, which is one of the most widely viewed Mormon Stories podcast episodes in years, where I exposed the Morgood foundation, the donors behind the Morgood Foundation, Fair Mormon, Book of Mormon Central, Daniel Peterson, just, just all of these sort of like arms length subsidiaries of the Mormon Church nonprofits, all receiving direct money from the church and all of them doing the Church's bidd, but in a way that would allow plausible deniability.

John Dehlin [00:05:47] And we even exposed the financials of Book of Mormon Central, the interpreter, Daniel Peterson's organization, and the Moregood foundation, showing their nonprofit financials along with naming their donors. And we knew that it was just gonna be a matter of time before a lot of this house of cards came crumbling down. And you know, to their credit, it took a few months. But just this week we had these, the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune report that not only was Fair Mormon changing its name from Fair Mormon to Fair Latter Day Saints, but also as we expected would happen, as we even yay, dare I say prophesied would happen, the Kwaku Cardinalis Bradley Whitbeck videos were taken down off of YouTube.

John Dehlin [00:06:34] And Fair has now promised a kindler, gentler, no more ad hominem, no more mean spirited attacks approach. And I just think this is good on every level. And I just want to start by saying, congratulations John Lynch. Congratulations Scott Gordon. Congratulations Mormon Church for doing the right thing. Ad hominem is always bad. It's bad if I do it, it's bad if Fair Mormon does it. It's bad if Daniel Peterson does it. We need more love and kindness, both in Mormon apologetics and in ex Mormonism. We need more love, we need more compassion, we need more kindness.

John Dehlin [00:07:13] So I want to begin this episode by saying, congratulations Fair Mormon. Congratulations Mormon Church. Good job. Taking these videos down was the right thing to do. You did the right thing. You should be congratulated. I commend you for it. And I am committing to look harder at what I do and to try and be less mean spirited, less critical, less negative, less personal attacks, more focus on the substance and on the positive kind of stuff that we all should be focusing on. Anyway, that's kind of the introduction to today's episode. And what I just wanted to do was to bring back two people that have kind of been involved in this situation.

John Dehlin [00:07:58] I'm bringing back Anthony Miller, bringing him back to Mormon Stories again. He was on some previous episodes talking about the future of Mormon apologetics and neo apologetics. And of course I also wanted to bring on as well someone who I've had on on Mormon Stories podcast before, Douglas Stilgoe, who goes by Nemo on his YouTube channel, which is a rising important voice within the Mormon YouTube world. He's also joining us from the UK and we love his voice as well. So Anthony, let's start with you. Welcome back to Mormon Stories Podcast and just tell us really quickly in a minute or less who you are and what it is that you kind of what your kind of your involvement is in the Mormon conversation.

Guests Introduce Themselves and Their Backgrounds

Anthony Miller [00:08:44] Thanks, John. Thanks for having me back. I'm Anthony Miller. I live in Billings, Montana. I'm almost five years away from a fateful weekend where I stumbled across the Gospel Topics essays when I was searching for resources to support our adult son when he came out to us as gay, which led to an acute existential faith crisis. Over these last about five years, I've interacted with you in Faith Transition Workshop. I participated in the Sunstone Symposium. I've participated in several podcast episodes, including Sharing My Own Story. Back In August of 2019, I created and co lead a local Mormon Spectrum support group. In any event, I strive to be thoughtful in what I do. I blog@unpackingambiguity.com I'm working on a book and it's been delayed until next year, but I'll be giving TedX talk in March of 2022 about thriving and building community after a Mormon faith crisis.

John Dehlin [00:09:56] All right, well, it's so great to have you, Anthony. Everyone loves your voice. And Douglas or Nemo, welcome back to Mormon Stories podcast and tell us a bit about you and what you've been doing lately.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:10:10] Yeah, so my name is Douglas. You can find my previous Mormon Stories episode where I talked to John about the faith crisis I went through. Around this time last year, around the time of the Kwaku videos, I started a YouTube channel, Nemo the Mormon, where I began by fact checking those videos. And my intent was to have a response that was the complete opposite of those videos in terms of its candor and its tone. To have a response that was measured and polite and equally not afraid to just confront the issues in the church. And I seek to do that now. I seek to do that with the active members around me.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:10:51] I seek to do it online through my YouTube channel. I'm speaking at the UK Sunstone Conference this coming weekend about a slightly different issue. But generally I just aim to be a measured voice in the conversation and I'm like I said for the uk, I'm very grateful to be here.

Reactions to FAIRMormon's Announcement

John Dehlin [00:11:10] All right, well, it's great to have you both and so let's begin by, by kind of each of your reactions to this announcement. I want to hear. And Douglas, I should probably give you credit. I. I have been having kind of problems sleeping over the past several years and so I'm almost always up by 4 or 5 in the morning. And it was just this weird coincidence that the morning that I actually slept until 8am which is a freak accident for me.

John Dehlin [00:11:44] This, this stuff kind of broke along with the James Huntsman story as well, which is notable, which is my, my friend James Huntsman, son of John Huntsman, senior brother of John Huntsman Jr. Just announced with the Washington Post that he has started a lawsuit to sue the Mormon Church for fraud in federal court. But anyway, Douglas, I want to. One of the reasons I brought you on, in addition to your brilliance and your eloquence, is that you, you were the first to break this story and you were the first to let me know about it. So why don't you start by just sharing with us your. Your reactions to when. How you found out about it, what your reactions were.

Anthony Miller [00:12:22] Sure.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:12:23] So like I said, I started my YouTube channel with these videos and my YouTube channel just recently hit 1000 subscribers, which is a kind of really exciting moment for me. And I thought what better way to celebrate that small milestone than to go back to my roots and fact check one of those videos that I didn't get a chance to at the time. So the video I picked was the CS letter and temples and I downloaded it as I normally do onto my computer and started loading it up, wrote my script, wrote my video, released it on Sunday morning, your time, Sunday evening, my time and the Monday morning.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:13:01] So late Sunday evening for yourselves. I was checking over my video and I always post the link to the video that I've looked at in the description. So I was checking over the links and lo and behold, the video has been set to private.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:13:15] So what's going on here? And then I go on the Fair Morbin page and those videos are no longer there. And so I messaged John. I was like, John, you won't believe it. The Fair Mormon videos with Quaker and Brad and Garden, they're gone. And it's three in the morning, John's time. And he's like, oh, okay. And we started chatting about it and I said, well, he needs to go to sleep.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:13:39] But we have this conversation about it. I was like, yeah, we need to sort this out. So I put a couple of posts up. John shared those posts around and it's kind of been in the zeitgeist since that point.

John Dehlin [00:13:50] I guess I should share that I did sleep until 8, but only after I had woken up at 3 and corresponded with you.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:13:57] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:13:58] Yeah.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:14:00] So we had this conversation and the initial knee jerk reaction when something like this happens is to go, oh, well, they're hiding stuff, you know. But our conversation was quite candid in saying, well, this can be viewed as a positive step. And that is reflected in the introduction that John gave earlier, is that actually we can look at this as a step forward beyond the knee jerk reaction of all. See, they're hiding stuff again. So that's kind of where I kind of came into this. That's how my involvement has been with these videos and with this story kind of breaking.

John Dehlin [00:14:30] Yeah, beautiful. Anthony, how did you hear about it and what were some of your initial reactions?

Anthony Miller [00:14:40] So when I woke up that morning and had my morning coffee, I opened up Facebook and there was your post. And then we started a joint shared message discussion about maybe having this discussion today is how I ran into it.

Anthony Miller [00:15:03] So my feelings about it are mixed. I absolutely agree that this is a positive step forward. I figured that they were not going to keep Fair Mormon forever because Mormon is an epithet, supposedly now, the name. You mean the name Mormon? Yeah. So I figured they were going to change the name.

Anthony Miller [00:15:27] And when we talked about the future of apologetics and so forth and. And the experience of creative destruction and trying to. Them trying, people being truly believers, trying to make sense of this exodus or loss of belief in the church, you know, that they would try a lot of different things and it would be messy.

Anthony Miller [00:15:52] And so I think it is absolutely a good step forward to publicly come out and say they're not going to do, you know, the personal ad hominem type of attacks and that they would take down these things. At the same time, there's something that I've experienced in some Facebook groups where they have rules that the rule is you're not allowed to delete your comments, or the rule is that you're not allowed to delete a thread that you started even if you figured out that it was a problem.

Anthony Miller [00:16:28] And the reason for that in some of these groups is that individuals put sometimes a tremendous amount of emotional investment into responding to difficult paradigms, patriarchy, other kinds of things. When those types of threads get deleted, they're not only deleting the problematic information, but they're also deleting all the work and the emotional and otherwise investment that people put into responding to that problem.

Anthony Miller [00:17:06] I understand that there's that too. So my view is what they did is a good thing. Their change of approach is a good thing. I Think they probably did some surveys and came to the realization that these videos were counterproductive, that a large percentage of the views were coming from the ex Mormon community, that a lot of people were being newly introduced to the CES letter who had never read it before. And because these videos make it sound like the CS letter is easily debunked, more people read the CS letter than did before. Jeremy's indicated there's been a huge boom of new downloads of the CS letter since those videos, and they came to the realization that it was just really counterproductive. So that's my range of thoughts on. On their choice to take it down and do the change.

John Dehlin [00:18:04] Okay, so there's a lot to unpack or at least to kind of dissect. You know, one of the things that was really surprising to me about this is. Well. Well, first of all, I mean, one thing I didn't mention is that, you know, as I mentioned previously and as we covered pretty extensively when all of this erupted, you know, Kwaku and Cardan created those violent videos or reshared those violent videos. We don't know who made them. On Twitter that had me being beaten over the head with a bat.

John Dehlin [00:18:42] Jeremy, you know, on the sidelines waiting to be beaten. Just very violent videos that caused me to call the FBI and Report Card and Jeremy too, to call the FBI, threats of violence, all the Desnat stuff. And obviously that was a kind of a match that lit or that started the explosion.

John Dehlin [00:19:08] That's something that I didn't mention. And those videos are still available as well. That obviously complicated things and really upped the ante in all this. But a couple things that were interesting as that kind of died down. One thing that was interesting to me was that we kind of.

John Dehlin [00:19:27] Okay, the immediate reaction was Scott Gordon and John lynch. And we've shared this before. But as this started erupting, people started, even faithful Mormons, friends of mine, who were very almost celebrities, global celebrities, people whose names you had mentioned, people whose names you would recognize, told me that they reached out to Scott Gordon and John lynch and complained.

John Dehlin [00:19:53] So. So. So John lynch and Scott Gordon start getting this. This flood of emails, complaining phone calls, and then their responses were doubling down. So all these people that communicated with John lynch and Scott Gordon started sharing with me, and I'm assuming you guys and Jeremy Runnels, Scott and John Lynch's responses, which were not, oh, my gosh, maybe we made a mistake, oh my gosh, you know, maybe we did a bad thing. It was Scott and John saying, no, Way, like, you know, we've got, we're losing the youth. We've got to keep the youth. The only way we're going to keep the youth is to do edgy, hip stuff.

John Dehlin [00:20:32] We made the right decision. These videos aren't going anywhere. And there was kind of this doubling down along with Scott and John lynch, also doubling down on the hate speech towards me and Jeremy, calling me an evil person, you know, saying that I'm destroying families for money, and same types of accusations against Jeremy. So, so when I saw those responses from Scott and John, I'm like, oh, my gosh, these guys are doubling down. This isn't going to change. You guys. You guys remember those responses, right? Let me have you start, Douglas. You know what I'm talking about, right?

Douglas Stilgoe [00:21:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I remember, I remember reading one of those responses saying, no, no, we're, we're getting good feedback from the, from the young people of the church. And I thought, no way. I am one of the young people of the church, and I know people in the teenage kind of age bracket and these videos, if they think these videos are good for the youth, that's kind of insulting to the youth in a lot of ways. So I remember reading that and just thinking, no, that's not going to work. If those are the people you're targeting, this, this doesn't appeal to them. It won't work.

John Dehlin [00:21:44] Yeah. And I, I remember looking at the view counts of these videos and knowing that they were being shared on ex Mormon Reddit. And like you said, Anthony, even though the view counts were higher than the regular fair Mormon video view counts, that if you factored out the, the ex Mormon Reddit exposure, I just was not buying that a lot of orthodox Mormons and even orthodox Mormon youth were watching these videos. Anthony, what's your thought on this question about the doubling down of Scott Gordon and John lynch and the success of the videos?

Anthony Miller [00:22:27] Well, I think they trusted what Kwaku and the others were telling them, that this was going to give us a high view count and that this was going to give the youth of the church some reasons to not go read the CES letter or explore it at all. And I think Gordon and the others were kind of sold on that.

Anthony Miller [00:22:58] I would say that there are so many good things that actually came out of this. Like these videos were a contributing factor to Jeremy reaching out to Jim Bennett and Brian Hoglid and going through the process so that Jim Bennett could confirm who the CES director was that the original letter was written to.

Anthony Miller [00:23:24] And Brian Hoglid could as well. I don't know if this is the only reason. I don't think it's the only reason, but it's certainly a contributing reason to Jim Bennett doing his interview that he did with you, John. That I think was a very important contribution to the Mormon Stories platform.

Anthony Miller [00:23:45] For people and for those who are interested, you should know that Jeremy has kind of awakened his work and he did a response to the debunking that John is sharing here. And there's a lot of really great content on this. So I would encourage you. Hopefully we'll leave the links in the show notes so that all of you can go and look through and see what Jeremy's response was to these videos, as well as different links and a video movie that Kwaku wrote the screenplay and starred in. There's a link to that there, too. So there's all sorts of really good things, I think, that came out of this. Anyway, that's my take.

John Dehlin [00:24:37] Yeah. Yeah, I'm sharing it right now. So, yes, that's part of the title of this interview. And you're introducing the topic now, Anthony, which is that Fair Mormon awoke a sleeping giant. Jeremy Runnels never wanted to do the CES letter for fame or celebrity or money.

How FAIRMormon Awakened the CES Letter

John Dehlin [00:25:01] He did it, delivered it, and then moved on. He retired and he moved on. And even though its success has been legendary, Jeremy was done. And, you know, we've always been in contact. And Jeremy's like, john, I don't know how you do it. I'm not interested in being in the limelight. I want to just raise my family and live a quiet life. And Jeremy was happily retired.

John Dehlin [00:25:25] And unfortunately, to Fair Mormons and the Mormon Church's chagrin, this KWAKU cardinalis, Bradley Whitbeck, fairmormon, John Lynch, Scott Gordon campaign awoke a sleeping giant. And if you guys go to cesletter.org debunkings FairMormon, Fair Tits, and please forgive the acronym, but that's the acronym that KWAKU and Cardan got Fair Mormon to buy into. This is the show acronym, Tits. Jeremy has spent the last several months doing what Jeremy does, which is digging into, you know, these attacks. And so you can see here on the screen that Jeremy's got a synopsis of what happened. He's got a synopsis of who the founders are, little bios on KWAKU and Cardin and Bradley describing in detail who they are and what their background is.

John Dehlin [00:26:24] And he then goes in to talk about Fairmormon's low standard of apologetics you know, the death threats that we received supported by and retweeted by and encouraged by Cardin and Kwaku that we had to report to the FBI. He goes into in detail debunk their debunkings, responding to their allegations that Jeremy never, you know, this is one of the things Cardinellis one of the claims Cardon Ellis made which was that Jeremy never actually met with the CES director at all. That Jeremy had made up this entire thing which Jeremy is going to and it has thoroughly debunked. They go into the LDS Church, how they fund fair Mormon and a conclusion.

John Dehlin [00:27:10] And Jeremy also now is finishing a book on what's next for progressive and post Mormons and he's writing a biography and he's willing to re engage in ex Mormonism. So the giant has, you know, the sleeping bear. The giant has been unleashed. And I just encourage all of you to go to cesleter debunking FairMormon fair tits and review this content and share it with the world. And donate to cesletter.org, donate to Jeremy because he has spent literally thousands of hours on this stuff getting paid almost nothing. If you. And he talks about this allegation that Jeremy's just in it for the money. And if you add up all the hours that Jeremy has donated to this project, he's been paid like less than 10 bucks an hour.

John Dehlin [00:28:01] I'm going to guess I don't have the exact number. But it's ridiculous, these allegations that Jeremy's in it for the money. Even I, who am, I think fairly compensated now after 13, 14 years of doing this, I'm not in it for the money because I just need the money to be able to do it. If I didn't have the money, it wouldn't be worth the death threats and the slander and all the allegations I'm receiving on a weekly basis. So yes, I'm paid, but I don't do it for the money. Jeremy is barely paid and he for sure isn't doing it for the money. And just I'm so thrilled that Jeremy is.

John Dehlin [00:28:34] You know, it's sort of like Hulk has rejoined the Avengers, you know what I'm saying? And I'm super glad to have Jeremy as a fellow compadre for at least as long as he can. Okay, so back. Back to kind of the story. So Scott Gordon and John lynch were doubling down. They were saying, we're not going anywhere.

John Dehlin [00:28:57] We back this campaign 100%. We're having all the success. Like you Said Douglas. That was kind of unbelievable and a little bit insulting to Gen Z Mormons. But that was their line and they were sticking to it. One thing I noticed is that, you know, even, even Rick, even Jim Bennett told me when he did his interviews, he's like Cardinalis is having me out to, you know, he's having me on his show Midnight Mormons Soon. And I had heard that Kate Kelly had done an interview with Midnight Mormons that they were going to try and do a slander job on me, calling me, you know, painting me as the next Harvey Weinstein.

John Dehlin [00:29:38] That's something Kate Kelly's been trying to do ever since the Harvey Weinstein thing broke, you know, because, you know, because one thing's for sure is if you, if you, if you speak truth to power of a high demand religion that's hurting people, the religion is going to pay people to, to smear you. And fellow ex religionists are also going to try and smear you. And if you talk to Leah Remini or you know, Jehovah's Witness, ex Jehovah's Witnesses, ex Scientologists, ex Orthodox Jews, you get smeared by either side when you speak truth to power. It's just what happens. Anyway, it seemed like Cardin and Kwaku were going to be using these fair Mormon videos to launch Stone 16 and Midnight Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:30:27] And what was interesting to me is the Jim Bennett interview didn't appear and the Kate Kelly interview didn't appear on Midnight Mormons. Now I've been told by a source that those videos still exist. And I don't know if Jim did the interview, but the Kate Kelly interview still ex. It may be released at some point, I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:30:48] But, but, but what. What's undeniable is that it's kind of like stone 16 and especially midnight Mormons and Kwaku and Cardan kind of went silent. So Douglas, what, what did you have? Did you notice that and did you have any thoughts about it then in. Andrew, I want to ask you the same question.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:31:06] Yeah, I am Anthony, not Andrew.

John Dehlin [00:31:08] Anthony. Sorry.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:31:09] I was carrying on kind of fact checking the videos. I did it over a series of weeks and I realized they started to kind of. There was less hubbub, less talk about them. No more videos were getting produced. It seemed like they'd reached the end of their run.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:31:23] And so I, it had started a fire in me to kind of continue commentating the way I did. And so I carried on looking at just the regular church's material and other apologists like Saints are scripted things like that.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:31:36] But nothing of that ilk had come about. Again, kind of coming into the new year. Not that I identified. And so in my mind it was very much an incident, an episode that was, was done and dusted. And so I, I had, I had archived a moment in time in which I had responded and in which this incident had happened. But that it was, you know, that maybe they were just going to quietly slink away and just let them fade. Because what I did see was an increase in the number of uploads on Fair Mormon's channel. Almost seemingly to bury these videos down.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:32:09] Just loads of old lectures from years back that were just being posted on Egyptology and Kerry Mustein and things like that. They're all being put up quite precipitously whereas before they weren't posting quite so regularly. You'd have kind of month long gaps at times and things. But then all of a sudden it was just bam, bam, bam, bam bam videos almost just to try and push these down their channels page.

John Dehlin [00:32:36] Yeah, absolutely. That, that was really interesting. And in my, my conspiratorial mind I'm like, let's see, you know, church, church leaders probably didn't like the, via the talks about violence. They didn't like the negative backlash. They didn't like being associated with mean spiritedness. And because we called out donors, because we showed the money trail from the church all the way to these Fair Mormon videos, it just had to be, it had to have been at a minimum that the church reached out to Fair Mormon and said, you guys gotta kill this thing. I know that a lot of, I know that donors like to be, don't like to be exposed.

John Dehlin [00:33:16] So I'm guessing donors got really upset that their names were being brought into this arena. And I'm guessing that a lot of Fair Mormon supporters or orthodox Mormons just complained and complained and complained and Scott Gordon and John lynch just were told, you guys gotta back, you guys gotta chill out and backtrack and bury this. Anthony, do you have any theories or speculation on what may have happened?

Anthony Miller [00:33:43] I mean my theory is that initially they were excited because they had high view counts, but at some point they either did some surveys, whether it's anecdotal surveys, or they had someone actually do some surveys to find out what the effects of the videos were and they found out that it wasn't having the effect that they thought it was having. I mean that's what I think is probably the most reasonable explanation for what happened is just through a scientific method of doing Surveys and asking people. They found out that it was wrong. But I would agree that. That donors, influential members of the church probably gave negative feedback to the videos as well. Certainly there were some concerns going on. I read that Kwaku's fine for his young and dumb Covid dance parties.

John Dehlin [00:34:52] Right.

Anthony Miller [00:34:52] Covid dance parties. I read somewhere that their fine is maybe somewhere in the $10,000 range for what they did. And I've interacted with Kwaku, and my understanding is that his dance parties and other stuff, projects that he's working on are so busy and consuming that if I'm believing what he's telling me, that that's a contributor to why he hasn't continued producing a lot of content similar to these. But.

John Dehlin [00:35:29] So Kwaku gave you the impression that he's. He's got such a burgeoning party business that he doesn't have as much time for apologetics as he used to.

Anthony Miller [00:35:36] Yeah, yeah. Party and other projects. He wasn't really that specific. You know, when these came out, I messaged him and asked him if he had done any sort of public statement about the videos going private. And he said that he hadn't and that he's just really busy with other things. You know, maybe they'll figure out how they could adjust these videos, you know, maybe in the fall or something so that they meet the new protocols for fare, but that he's so busy with other opportunities that it's not a priority to him at this point.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:36:18] Just go ahead. Just a quick point, John. Yeah, there was some immediate backlash and some immediate kind of shifting. I remember that because the thumbnails I use are essentially the thumbnail of the video that I'm fact checking with a bit of my own branding on in trying to find a thumbnail for the first video that I fact checked. Mo wives, mo problems that had seemingly disappeared very quickly. I've since found it archived in the Internet, and so it's back up. But what it was originally was a picture of, I believe, Jason Derulo or someone of that. Of that sort of celebrity surrounded by scantily clad women. And what they've done is they'd superimposed Brigham Young's face on it as kind of a joke about polygamy. And that did not last long at all. That was very quickly taken down and taken out, the picture.

John Dehlin [00:37:08] And what. What does that mean to you, Douglas?

Douglas Stilgoe [00:37:11] That means that straight away, someone had. Had said to them, that's not appropriate, guys. That's.

Anthony Miller [00:37:15] That's.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:37:16] That's not on. And I Think knowing that that happened that quickly, I think it was only then a matter of time that someone's gonna say, you know, the whole tone of this is just. Is not on. Because if. If straight away they've been given that free rein to do something and then they make a mistake like that, they're gonna be like, okay, I'm not sure we're comfortable with this. I think that will have started those conversations pretty early on.

John Dehlin [00:37:38] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, so they were silent for a couple months. Like the Church always does. They don't ever respond immediately to critics because then it would create the perception that revelation comes from the bottom up instead of from the top down. So the church waits a few months.

John Dehlin [00:37:57] We don't hear a lot from Fairmormon. Like you said, Douglas, FairMormon starts stuffing its YouTube channel with old videos, pushing down the KWAKU videos so that they're far, far, far down the feed. And then, of course, now we hear the announcement. And so here's a view of the announcement.

John Dehlin [00:38:19] The announcement. First. First of all, the website now instead of Fair Mormon, is fairlatterdaysaints.org and of course, we expected that because Russell M. Nelson has decreed that using the term Mormon is a victory for Satan. And so we were always wondering why the church's leading apologetic army is still using a word that is a victory for Satan. So we all anticipated this name change. We just wondered, frankly why it took so long and what name they were going to choose.

John Dehlin [00:38:52] And the article@the fairlatterdaysaints.org website, because now it's called Fair Latter Day Saints instead of Fair Mormon. And now FAIR stands for faithful Answers, informed response. There's no more use of the word apologetic. And they make their announcement about the name change, et cetera, that came. I think it came like a day before the Quaker videos were taken down.

Analyzing FAIRMormon's Partial Apology and Press Release

John Dehlin [00:39:20] Anthony, let's start with you on this one. What was your reaction to this press release by Fair Latter Day Saints? What did you think about it? What were the high points or the interesting points for you?

Anthony Miller [00:39:35] Yeah, I mean, so the organization that was at BYU when. When it got restructured to the Maxwell

John Dehlin [00:39:46] Institute from farms, right?

Anthony Miller [00:39:48] Yeah. When FARMS got restructured to the Maxwell Institute and they kind of got rid. Daniel Peterson was no longer in charge of that. And I think it was Gregory Smith. Isn't that who wrote the hit piece on you?

John Dehlin [00:40:06] Yep.

Anthony Miller [00:40:07] And others. They weren't necessarily involved with that organization anymore. And so for the board, for the Maxwell Institute, I understand that there's at Least one member of the quorum of the 12 on the board, certainly members of the quorum of the 12 are on the board of BYU, that I think that the leaders of the church weren't comfortable with that kind of personal attack, ad hominem, kind of really harsh approach. And we saw that happen at byu from FARMS to Maxwell Institute.

Anthony Miller [00:40:42] I'm wondering in this case if there's a similar dynamic, even though FAIR isn't part of byu, because the church does partially, at least directly or indirectly fund. And Jeremy shares a video from one of Fair Mormon's conferences where one of the general authority 70s expresses very specifically that the church supports Fair Mormon.

Anthony Miller [00:41:17] And so everybody should watch that little snip that he does. I would think that the higher up leaders of the church are uncomfortable. If they were uncomfortable with it at Maxwell Farms, which became Maxwell Institute, then eventually they would become uncomfortable with it at FairMormon.

Anthony Miller [00:41:36] And so I suspect that there's probably a similar dynamic. My question is if that eventually makes its way to, to the interpreter, you know, and other places where apologetics is, has a tone of personal attacks and aggressiveness and things like that too. I wonder if it'll go beyond Fair Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:42:01] I mean, this really is the legacy of Hugh nibley. You know, B.H. roberts was an apologist, but you never got the sense that he was attacking the critics. But Hugh Nibley kind of kicked off this multi decade era of ad hominem smearing and attacking the, the critics. And that's what Scientology does. They call it fair gaming. And I had Mike Rinder on recently and it's basically almost like for decades, Fair Mormon, you know, Daniel Peterson, Lou Midgley, Greg, Greg Smith and others have just been taking pages out of the Scientology playbook. And I've been fair gamed by the Mormon Church for years. Smeared lies about me, attempts at hurting and attacking me.

John Dehlin [00:42:46] Same with Jeremy, same with others. And you know, of course we've been covering over the past 10 years the Mormon Church's move from ad hominem old school apologetics a la Daniel Peterson and Hugh Nibley, to what we've called pastoral neo apologetics a la Patrick Mason, Spencer Fluman, Richard Bushman, Terrell Givens, which is this nicer, kinder pastoral apologetics that focuses on love, that doesn't attract, doesn't attack critics, that even ignores critics, and then attempts to just focus on healing and growing, which I think, you know, we've got concerns with, but we're also simultaneously applauding it as a step in the right direction. I Guess what I was wondering is if this rep.

John Dehlin [00:43:31] You know, we've been, we've been bashing on old school apologetics now for decades and now Fair Mormon has taken apologetics out of its name and it has also basically said we're not going to do that arguing, attack style stuff anymore. You know, does this represent the death of Hugh Nibley's old school Daniel Peterson, you know, brass knuckles apologetics? What do you think? Douglas?

Douglas Stilgoe [00:44:02] I, I hope so, but at the same time, kind of not for selfish reasons because what I do essentially is, is a lot of what I do is point that out to people, that this is what's going on. And you know, it's, it's, it's one of the things that's helped me really know where to put myself is that I don't want to be that. And so I think, yeah, ex Mormon,

John Dehlin [00:44:26] you mean as an expert as, as,

Douglas Stilgoe [00:44:27] yeah, as someone that's still trying to interact with the church from a, from a, a very difficult position, a position that's been painted with ad hominem attacks for years. But I think we're starting to see that shift. I think we're starting to see that, that go as people are becoming more compassionate, understanding towards just generally those that think differently in terms of faith.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:44:49] In Britain here we've had firesides where people are free just to bring their questions about the gospel topics, essays and come and talk about the difficult things. You know, we're getting a lot more open conversation at least over here.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:45:02] I know there was, there was a particularly charged, emotional kind of atmosphere in the States at the time of these videos coming out around the kind of presidential election. Everyone was fired up over there, it seems. But as that's kind of calmed down, I think hopefully we're stepping forward into a new place of kind of listening to one another a bit more, particularly in the church. And hopefully this is, this is hopefully fair Mormon not just listening to those leaders of the church that have told them they need to calm down, they need to step back, as we've heard Elder Oaks saying to the membership of the church generally when he said we should accept losses politically graciously and we should be kind and these sorts of things and there's no place for violence and such.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:45:46] But I think they're also hopefully listening to people like me and people that are commenting on what I do and people that are commenting on those of us on this side of the fence, as it were. They're listening to us and hearing that rational voices are having a good conversation and maybe they've decided they want to join in on that rather than just throwing epithets and being mean.

John Dehlin [00:46:09] Yeah, hopefully. Anthony, what do you think?

Anthony Miller [00:46:14] Yeah, I absolutely agree. I mean, you shared today on Facebook and maybe on Twitter too, that the most recent church magazine for the month of April, it's the Liahona it used to be. The Ensign has quite a few articles with regard to interacting with people who have lost belief. There's an article, an anonymous article about being in a mixed faith marriage. And I haven't read all of those articles, but I did read the one about, there's one about what if your brother left or something like that, and there's a mixed faith marriage one. And they were pretty good articles. They were very conciliatory, very supportive.

Anthony Miller [00:46:58] You know, I think it's the kind of material that we would see from a Jackson Washburn or a Jim Bennett or, you know, a Givens or one of the Givens or Patrick Mason and so forth. And so that's hopeful to see that kind of thing show up. Maybe not 100%, but it's becoming more prevalent, it seems, with those articles in the church's magazine and with this change with fair. So maybe it's helpful. I don't know what the details are if there's been very much research, but when you have a couple and one of the spouses goes through a faith transition, the likelihood that the other spouse will eventually go through some degree of faith transition if the marriage stays, if they stay married, is probably pretty high.

Anthony Miller [00:47:57] You know, I don't know if it's 80, 90% or higher. And when you have not, probably not very many families in the church that have gone untouched during these last. During this last decade where they have a close friend or a family member or a spouse or a kid having gone through some sort of faith transition, you know, this is becoming more prevalent. And. And so I think there's probably a greater recognition that the kind of personal attacks and ad hom hominum and really aggressiveness is not helpful to retaining relationships in families and in marriages. And I think if the church has done some studies where they've done broader based studies with emails, like the stuff that Peggy and Jana, I think both have recently written about with regard to asking members about how they feel about youth, about how they feel about the LGBTQ community and their experiences in the church, I think that they're recognizing that the healthier way is, is this direction. And I think that's a good thing. I think that will be helpful.

John Dehlin [00:49:16] It's a super good thing. One of the. So one of the part, part of my title today, other than sort of, you know, Jeremy Runnels unleashes, you know, awaking the sleeping giant, was that Fair Mormon Partially Repents. And I meant kind of two things by that.

John Dehlin [00:49:34] One is, you know, just like the Mormon Church, Dallin H. Oaks basically are on record as saying, we neither seek nor offer apologies. Fair Mormon offered no apology to me or to Jeremy, which again is just so head scratching because they're acknowledging that these were mean spirited and they're saying that they don't want to do critical ad hominem attacks anymore, but they're not actually apologizing to me and Jeremy and others who they smeared.

John Dehlin [00:50:05] So that's why I called it Partially Apologizes. I would appreciate that apology. I would appreciate them living up to the teachings of Christlike repentance that the Church teaches. And then secondly, we don't know whether the Church is just going to find some way to creatively hire or pay under the table or foster new types of smears and attacks, but just through at extra arm's length so that it can't be in any way traced back to the Church. And so this is a way to resurrect and resuscitate Fair Mormon's reputation and just to find some other way to do the smearing.

John Dehlin [00:50:49] You know, that's a question that I have because I would love to make sure I'm never smearing people and that I never get smeared because it does damage to me and my family and to the cause when the smearing type of stuff happens. And frankly, if the church funded Kwaku and Cardan, gave them money, paid for their equipment, paid them money to do this work, and then Kwaku and Cardan just continue their YouTube channels and podcasts doing the smearing. Well, now all the Church did was launch some smearing vehicles that they can now say they've washed their hands of, but in effect they still created the smearing monsters.

John Dehlin [00:51:34] So these are the types of things I'm just wondering if Kwaku and Cardin or some other iteration are gonna reemerge and just keep continue the smearing secretly supported by the church or its wealthy members, just without the fingerprints of the church. And that's why I named it Partially Fair Mormon, Partially Repents. Douglas, you're nodding your head.

Anthony Miller [00:51:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:51:59] What is it that resonates with you? Or what thoughts do you have around this idea of partial repenting?

Douglas Stilgoe [00:52:05] Well, yeah, for me, repenting means owning what you did and like kind of Anthony said at the beginning that for some it means leaving it as a public record. There's been a lot of debate around in the UK around statues and the meaning of statues. And I don't know if that's been going on the States as well. I think it has. About, do we leave statues up because of what they represent and because of who they seem to glorify? Do we tear them down and erase them from history? Or do we leave them up to remind us of what happened and how we shouldn't repeat it?

Douglas Stilgoe [00:52:38] And there can be the question asked of whether we should do that with these Fair Mormon videos. It seems that Fair Mormon are very, very keen to eradicate these entirely. I hope you don't mind me bringing this up, but I. I mentioned to you earlier that I woke up to an email this morning, my time of two copyright strikes that had been delivered to me from YouTube by Fair Mormon, where they had complained that my videos were in breach of copyright and tried to have my videos removed. Now YouTube stood up for me and said, no, no, we're, you know, these are fair use. My videos are approximately double the length of the original videos.

Copyright Claims, Apologetics, and Church Responsibility

Douglas Stilgoe [00:53:18] So there's at least as much content again, that is mine in commentary. So they're perfectly within the realms of the law. But twice Fair Mormon tried to use the law to silence my videos and get rid of them, because they are effectively now, along with a couple of other videos from some other users, all that remains on YouTube as evidence of what happened. And so we have to ask, is it repenting to try and hide your mistakes, or is it repenting to say, yeah, we did it, let's leave it there.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:53:48] Put a thing in the comments saying we no longer agree with this or we no longer condone this kind of action or whatever. But I feel like if you're going to really own it, if you're going to re repent and build and learn, you have to leave it there and say, yeah, this happened and we learned from it and we've moved on. But it did happen.

John Dehlin [00:54:06] Yeah. And I would just say that if Cardan and Kwaku and Kate Kelly or whatever start coming out with more smearing content, one thing the church can do is shut that down. They can tell Kwaku. They can tell. And some say that Kwaku is just waiting until he graduates from BYU to unleash stuff, that maybe his continuing status at BYU was being threatened and so he needed to graduate before he could start up doing this again. But all I can say is if Cardin and Kwaku are members of the church, if the violence and if the ad hominem and if the smears reemerge, certainly the Mormon Church can shut that down through the ways that it has power and influence. And I hope that the church would do that. Anthony, what are your thoughts on this idea of partial repentance?

Anthony Miller [00:54:56] Well, I certainly think that they would be reluctant to issue an apology for concern that you'd spike the football and so would Jeremy. But Jeremy's response and our discussion today was going to happen regardless of whether they acknowledged or apologized for those videos. I think that's probably the motivation for not specifically doing an apology. I think that.

John Dehlin [00:55:28] Don't you think that's general policy, regardless of me and Jeremy or anything we might or might not do?

Anthony Miller [00:55:34] Yeah, yeah. I mean, the church's policy is you never apologize. I don't know. Has. Has fair Mormon ever apologized for anything it's done. I don't. I don't think. I don't recall that they've ever apologized.

John Dehlin [00:55:51] I can't note the irony that apologists probably don't apologize.

Anthony Miller [00:55:54] Yeah, yeah. I mean, things just go down the memory hole. Right. So I see. I think that that's one part of it is they don't want you to spike the football and they don't want to set a precedent where they need to apologize for every other things. They're just going to let it go down the memory hole. I think. I think those are primarily the reasons.

John Dehlin [00:56:18] Yeah, yeah. Okay. So. So yeah, now they've made this change. And. And again, Douglas, I am sad when I learned that they're trying to shut you down, because what's ironic is, well, number one, the Kwaku videos have been taken down, but of course, ex Mormon Reddit is wise enough to download those and preserve them. So they're gonna be preserved and made available. However tech people make copyrighted material available these days. But also they're living on in the response videos. And I was sad to see, as you mentioned, Douglas, that, that they're trying to shut down and make copyright strikes against the response videos because it's a little bit probably frustrating for them that they're going to shut down their videos, but that the response videos, which are probably more embarrassing and damaging, are going to live on.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:57:22] So I, yeah, the tone of his complaint was very frustrated. He was very much, this is not legal. I'm not happy about this.

John Dehlin [00:57:29] This.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:57:29] And YouTube said, sorry, we're concerned that this doesn't meet the requirements to remove it so it's staying up.

John Dehlin [00:57:37] And I think that does beg the question of repentance. If. If you are truly sorry for what you've done, you don't try and hide. Hide the sin and bury the evidence. You just sort of say, yeah, I did that and I feel bad and I'm sorry. Yeah. And. And that's what we get. That's what we get for. For acting in that way.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:57:54] For doing it. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:56] Anything you want to add to that, Anthony?

Anthony Miller [00:57:58] Yeah. Having spoken with people a little bit on the inside or that are familiar with what happens on the inside, the Strengthening Church Members Committee includes there's a division where they hire mostly younger people to follow what you do. And probably now Nemo probably has a couple people following him to follow what? Alan and Katie Mount, Mike Norm, Mike Norton.

Douglas Stilgoe [00:58:39] So.

Anthony Miller [00:58:39] So they have people who they hire. Maybe they're college students, maybe the recent grads that follow what we do and then do reports because the church wants to try to anticipate what we're going to do next. I mean, probably the biggest example was they wanted to anticipate what Mike Norton was going to do next. Was he going to release a video of Mitt Romney in the temple? Was he going to get a recording of the second anointing? Was he going to, you know, he made a joke threatening to film sexually explicit things in a temple at one point, that some people actually believed that it was more than a joke.

Anthony Miller [00:59:23] So. So the. So the church has these people that follow us. I mean, there's sometimes, I don't know, maybe this is a conspiracy, but sometimes I'll share stuff on Facebook and I'll share a po. I'll. I'll write a post and it'll get shared in two or three places that I can't see where it was shared.

Anthony Miller [00:59:47] And I've asked people, you know, who I think might know where those things get shared, and nobody's been able to tell me where those things get shared. So I suspect that because I participate in episodes with Mormon stories because of the things that I do, maybe I got one of those people that follows me. But I know that there are people that follow you, John. I know that there are people that follow Bill Rill and Mike Norton and others. And so my take is, the reason I bring this up is my guess is that people at FairMormon certainly have watched all of Douglas's videos.

Anthony Miller [01:00:32] And maybe in the Strengthening Church Members Committee structure, there are now people there that are following your videos and that do reports on them as well. And and that is what precipitated Fair Mormon requesting a takedown. Copyright infringement with YouTube.

John Dehlin [01:00:55] Yeah, yeah.

Douglas Stilgoe [01:00:57] I have waved them in videos. I've given a cheeky wave to the strengthening church members committee in videos in past.

John Dehlin [01:01:06] I love it. Jackson Washburn is in the house. He says, Anthony, I routinely have the odd sharing phenomena as well. I never know where they are shared to. So, yeah, I mean, and this is just how Scientology works. It's how the Jehovah's Witnesses work. Any high demand religion, emerging religion, it's disparaging to call any organization a cult these days. But any of these types of organizations have the equivalent of a KGB or a CIA or a M2 or whatever they're called, that have intelligence organizations that are continually gathering information, even in private secret ways, and feeding that back.

Anthony Miller [01:01:57] So the interesting inside information is while Jackson and I and you and others might have people who for some period of time follow us to try to anticipate what we're going to do and what the impacts are going to be, the other part of the inside information is for those people that they hire to follow you, John, they have turnover because sometimes following your material ends up leading them into a faith crisis. And so that's some other inside information that's kind of interesting that they hire people to follow all of us. And some of the sacrificial lambs essentially are those people who they hire to follow us who end up in a faith transition because they follow us.

John Dehlin [01:02:53] Yeah, it's got to be tricky for the church to maintain people these days because so many people are leaving and so many problems are so well known. You got to pay people an awful lot of money to not defect. And how do you guarantee that they're going to want to do this type of intelligence gathering over a long period of time without their conscience starting to really peck at them and without, frankly, them just feeling like they've sold their soul to the devil, so to speak.

John Dehlin [01:03:21] It's gotta be really hard. So I. I just want to end where I began and say, congratulations Mormon Church. Congratulations Fair Mormon now Fair Latter Day Saints. Oh, you know, I want to end. I want to. I want to talk about this one last thing. You know, people have been really hard on Kwaku. They've been really hard on Cardinalis. They've been really hard on Bradley Whitbeck and in the past, they've been hard on John Gee and Daniel Peterson and others like them. And I want to just speak directly to Kwaku and Cardin and others and John Gee and everyone and just say, I feel sorry for the situation you have been put in.

John Dehlin [01:04:10] And I think it's the Church's responsibility. Here's what I mean by this. One of the things I learned from my interview with Sandra Tanner, when we talked about people like Steve Christensen who ultimately lost his life, but all the other people that the Mormon Church used in the Hoffman sort of scandal to be buyers for the church and their documents, and the way that the Church uses its members, its faithful members, as human shields so that the Church can have plausible deniability, so the Church doesn't have legal or financial responsibility, but so the church can have its dealings done. In other words, you know, having members buy the documents and then donate them to the church so the church can't be accused of buying and hiding the documents.

John Dehlin [01:05:00] This is something the types of things that the Church has been doing for decades, for over a century. Same thing with apologetics. What the church does is that it either hires, you know, Daniel Peterson or John Gee to do the apologetics, or the church asks wealthy donors to start nonprofits that then hire people or even volunteers emerge to do the dirty work for the church through these nonprofits, sometimes funded through shadow money. And ultimately what always happens is these human shields become the collateral damage or become the carnage.

John Dehlin [01:05:45] And you know, Daniel Peterson's academic reputation is pretty much worthless at this point. John Geese is pretty much worthless. You know, Hugh Nibles was pretty worthless. You know, Brian Howgled, Kerry Muhlstein. No, not Brian Hagler, Kerry Molstein and others. You know, all these apologetic apologists at some point become social carnage as they become laughing stocks and then they're kind of put off to pasture and then a new crop emerges. And I just want to express my sadness for people like Cardinalis, for people like Bradley Whitbeck, for people like Kwaku, because, you know, they had their, their 15 minutes of fame. Maybe it's not over yet, maybe they're still going to try and be a part of this conversation.

John Dehlin [01:06:38] But what almost always certainly happens is at some point they become mercilessly mocked, criticized, beaten down. They become a footnote in a laughingstock, footnote in the history of the Church. And, and just like sort of bombers in a jihad, they're simply just replaced with more human shields and with more bombers, and they're the collateral damage. And the church sort of always emerges, hands apparently clean, arm's length, relatively unscathed for all this dirty work that goes on. And so I actually don't like it when people are mean spirited to Kwaku or Cardin or Brad or others, because I see them as victims when it really should be the church and its first presidency, its quorum of the 12, its prophets, seers and revelators who are on the line doing the defending and not pushing off the dirty work through shadow funded nonprofits to human faithful human shields that become collateral damage and laughing stocks.

John Dehlin [01:07:55] And they really have their reputations smeared and ruined and they're kind of forgotten and put out to pasture. What do you think about what I'm saying, Douglas? And then Anthony, I'll have you speak as well.

Douglas Stilgoe [01:08:06] I think you can take that analogy further. I think that's a very common M.O. in the church. The members of the church are the collateral damage for the sustaining of the truth claims of the church. It doesn't matter how untenable or how or how seriously rickety the logic and the reasoning is.

Douglas Stilgoe [01:08:26] As long as it benefits most of the members and can continue with the narrative of keeping the church as true and the truth claims of the church upheld, then it doesn't matter that it's setting up most of the members for a fall. It doesn't matter that most of the members are building their faith on some weak foundations. When if they were just exposed to the ability to talk about these things earlier on and to less controlled information and they were just allowed to learn more and more earlier on, people would have less faith crises and therefore less trust crises. Because ultimately I think a lot of people lose their trust in the church as well as their faith.

Douglas Stilgoe [01:09:03] So I think the church does that even on a broader scale. The local leadership are put up as sacrificial lambs. When, you know, something goes on, someone like me appears in their ward and all of a sudden they're put in a really difficult position of being told by the top they've got to do something, or feeling like they need to protect their members and not really being supported and they're just volunteers trying to do their best. The members of the church are wonderful people and I feel like they're given a raw deal a lot of the time because they're put in situations by the leadership of the church who are trying to uphold a narrative and a tradition that means that you get that sort of turnover and, and people leaving and people getting hurt all because, you know, they're just being set up because they don't matter. As long as the truth claims carry forward, that's fine.

John Dehlin [01:09:50] Yeah. And the church has to be careful because rfm, who I think is one of the most formidable Critics of the church right now. Guess what? Former apologist Bill Real, one of the most formidable critics of the church right now. Guess what? Former member of Fair Mormon, former participant in Fair Mormon, you know, if Brian Hauglid ever, you know, becomes more vocal, you know, he, a former apologist, could, could not be great for the church. David Bacavoy, a once sort of semi apologist in a sense for the church, not in any way like the others we've talking, talked about, but he was with Cesar, you know, nothing.

John Dehlin [01:10:31] You know, we talk about one of the biggest risks to Mormonism being defectors. When apologists start defecting, the church is going to really be in trouble. And we've had some of those in the past. You could even say that I was kind of a semi neo apologist once upon a time. That's when things get really dangerous. Anthony, do you want to, do you want to comment on this topic at all before we wrap up?

Diverging Views on Church Leadership and the Way Forward

Anthony Miller [01:10:54] Yeah, I mean, I would push back on some of what you're saying. I don't think it's a monolith of what exists in the top leadership in terms of this idea of we're going to use pawns to do attacks and so forth, because they did switch from FARMS to Maxwell Institute and now Fair Mormon is switching to fair. And I think there's. My view then is that that's evidence that there's not a consensus of agreement of how to deal with difficult information, that there are probably some that they feel empowered by the Hugh Nibley, Daniel Peterson kind of approach.

Anthony Miller [01:11:41] And there are probably others that have recognized that that's not helpful and they've kind of gone the different direction. I do agree that for many years it seems very clear that the belief among the leadership was that a Hugh Nibley old FARMS approach was the preferred approach.

Anthony Miller [01:12:08] But I think there's probably disagreement in there. I would also say that when you talk of Guy or Peterson or some of the others, I mean, there's, there's still a lot of people that really put a lot of credence in their work. Even still, I mean, even after Guy did that book, that he had this horrific chapter or set of passages about, you know, what makes a person gay, it's because they were sexually abused or something like that.

Anthony Miller [01:12:43] And that book was taken out of publication because of that. In spite of those kinds of things, in spite of the other kinds of things that RFM has done with regard to Guy's work as well as the stuff that you covered in the series with Robert Rittner there are still a lot of people that put a lot of credence in him as well. So I. I think. I think as Peter Bleakley, if I'm saying Peter's name right, you know, has this podcast series that he's uploaded onto YouTube about the Mormon Civil war. Yeah. You know, he. He talks about some of these things that I think there.

Anthony Miller [01:13:24] There's quite. There's probably disagreement as to the tone and so forth. So in any event, that's a little bit of my pushback. I agree with what you're saying, but I think that there's probably an increasing number among the top leadership that recognize that. That that approach is not helpful.

John Dehlin [01:13:43] What about the question of collateral damage? Because that was my main point. My main point wasn't so much the conspiracy coordination. I'm talking about the collateral damage of the reputation and. And the. Just the public perception of so many of these people.

Anthony Miller [01:14:00] Yeah, I mean. I mean, my interactions with Kwaku and friends that have had interactions with. Not Cardan, but. Well, Brad, maybe, in any event, is. I really accept that Kwaku really believes what he was doing was the right thing. And I think that he really believes that if there's any blowback, that it was totally worth it, because he really believes that it was the right thing to do.

Anthony Miller [01:14:38] You know, when we had our episode and we talked about apologetics, I started out by explaining that I think the majority, if not almost all of apologists during the time that they're doing their apologetics, they generally hold a strong belief that they're doing what God would have them do. And I think that is absolutely the case for Kwaku. You know, I think it's absolutely the case when. When Brad and Cardan and Kwaku talked about, you know, really horrific things that are not true about you and Jeremy.

Anthony Miller [01:15:19] You know, maybe they were embellishing, but I think Kwaku really believes that you're evil. Like, that if you had the chance to do something evil, that you would do it. I think that he really believes that, and I think that's what motivates him. So, yes, I think they're collateral damage, but I don't think that they actually. If they're still believing, I don't think that they regret that at all because they really believe.

John Dehlin [01:15:48] You're saying it's kind of willing. They're willing collateral damage. They're. They're kind of jihadists that are okay. Dying on the sword, so to speak.

Anthony Miller [01:15:58] Yeah, I mean, they.

John Dehlin [01:15:59] True believers.

Anthony Miller [01:16:00] They're true believers. They're in the fight for what they believe that God would have them do. And it if they end up with blowback, they believe that that's a sacrifice that they needed to make for God. They don't, they don't see it as a political organization, institutional evolution kind of thing. They really believe it.

John Dehlin [01:16:23] Yeah. All right, well, I think it's time to wrap up. So I just want to, I just want to plug a couple things. I want to plug the CES letter debunkings Fairmorman Dash Fair Dash Tits. That's Jeremy Runnell's response to Fairmormon. Please check that out. Please support Jeremy. I also want to plug Nemo's channel. If you go to YouTube and you type in Nemo Mormon or whatever, you'll find Nemo's channel. This is Douglas's channel. And of course I want to plug unpacking ambiguity com.WordPress.com which is Anthony's blog. But let me just give each of you a chance to kind of give your, your closing statement. Why don't we start with you, Douglas?

Douglas Stilgoe [01:17:10] Sure. For me this has been, it's been a really interesting experience kind of, this is my first foray into, into this world. I'm still very new to this and my hope is still that I can do some good in my, in my journey and in my own faith crisis. I can do some good and help others. I can interact with the church in a positive way. And I'm really grateful that we've had a positive tone to this discussion in a lot of ways that we've, we've commended the good things that have happened and that we've, we've recognize the progress that can be had and will kind of still be had in the future.

Douglas Stilgoe [01:17:46] Other than that, I think my only other thing would be to admonish anyone that really cares about anything I have to say. To be kind in your online discussions, to not resort to ad hominem attacks, to really think about what the other person's saying, hear them, then respond and just be kind in your discussions with other people because you, if you are someone that's moved on from the church, you were in the position that someone else that's kind of maybe on the other side of it now was in, you know, you, you weren't that, you were that person not too long ago. And I think we all need to remember that sometimes and just keep level headed, stick to the facts and that will make things a lot more fruitful and hopefully this is the end of, of those sorts of Tactics out of fair Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:18:34] Amen. And out of other faithful Mormons. Not just fair Mormon. Because if, if we just do a shell game of who the new attackers are, we're not really accomplishing anything. I just don't think it's consistent with Christianity to be smearing people and attacking people. I just. I just don't think that's Christlike. Anthony, what's your final word?

Anthony Miller [01:18:58] Yeah, I think this whole last several months has been very interesting. I've been really pleased to see people like Jackson Washburn and Jim Bennett and others, you know, step up to the plate and be clear that they don't support that kind of apologetics. They didn't support the Kwaku videos, and Jackson and others went so far as to criticize, you know, the COVID parties that Kwaku did last summer. But I think it's really cool that there are people who I would say are inside the edge of Mormonism. Maybe they're further inside the edge than others, or maybe they're closer to the edge than others. But I think it's been really cool to see several of those people step up to the plate and call a spade a spade in terms of, of personal attacks, of threats, of violence, of glorification of the kinds of things that showed up in these mocking videos.

Anthony Miller [01:20:10] I just think it's really cool to see these people step up to the plate. And I think this whole experience will all be a little bit better for it and any event. That's what I wanted to share and I'm grateful for the opportunity to participate today.

Closing Thoughts and Listener Thanks

John Dehlin [01:20:27] All right, thanks everyone. Thanks to Douglas and Anthony. Thank you for joining us today. Thanks to all our listeners. We had over 600 viewers live. Super grateful for the support. I just want to say again, thank you, Mormon Church, for making a good decision. Thank you, fair Mormon, for making a good decision. Thank you, Scott Gordon. Thank you, John lynch for making good decisions. And I want to just say I wish Kwaku and Cardinalis and Bradley Whitbeck, I wish you well.

John Dehlin [01:20:55] I hope you guys are able to find healthy, constructive ways to engage in this conversation. And I am also going to say that I have been critical or even mean spirited of people in the past. And I want to take this opportunity to be introspective about what I do and about what I do going forward and try and be, you know, not. That doesn't mean we can't be thoughtful or even critical, but I want to do it in kind or respectful ways. And I'm going to mess up again. But I am publicly committing to do my best to try and be as kind and thoughtful and as loving as I can.

John Dehlin [01:21:35] So thanks, everyone. Thanks for joining us again. Thanks, Douglas and Anthony, thank you to all our listeners. And we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

Anthony Miller [01:21:45] Thanks.

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