Welcome and Episode Introduction

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 1511a

John Dehlin [00:00:18] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another special edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am one of your two hosts today. I'm John Dehlin. Hi, guys.

Carah Burrell [00:00:29] And I'm your other host, Carah Burrell. But you knew that already. Hey, John, it's good to have you here. Thanks. I don't usually get to go do these fun little slideshow presentations kind of at the table, so this is. I feel like I'm moving from that chair to this chair, so I'm happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:44] We have a live streamed in a hot minute. What's. What's up with that?

Carah Burrell [00:00:47] Yeah, I don't know, but this will be a good one. Hope you guys are ready to ask some questions, learn some things. So, John, tell us what we're talking about today.

Mormon Stories Foundation Transparency Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:55] All right. Well, for a long, long time, there's been a long and consistent tradition in the open source foundation of transparency. We have been transparent. You know, as all public 501C3s are. We have published our finances publicly annually through our 990s. And in most of the years of our existence, we actually published more financial information than we're even required to disclose. So I'm super proud that the Oba Stories Foundation, I think, has been the most transparent financially nonprofit that I'm aware of in Mormonism, in or out of the church. That's something that you maybe won't know about, Carah, because you're relatively new to the organization.

John Dehlin [00:01:45] And we also at least once a year release kind of update State of the Union Q A, kind of a transparency podcast, just to let kind of listeners know what's going on, to address questions, concerns, etc. And that's what today is going to be. That's what tonight is going to be. And you, Aaron was kind enough to kind of watch the kids.

John Dehlin [00:02:07] Margi was kind enough to hold down the fort so you and I could stay late today even though we already did an episode to record this. So thank you for being willing to be here.

Carah Burrell [00:02:16] Yeah, yeah, we can't do this without our other half. So shout out to my husband Aaron, who's home with three really amazing children who are very well behaved and not all giving him a hard time. Set.

John Dehlin [00:02:26] Hi, Aaron, I'm Margi. Yeah, so we are going to be giving kind of a transparency update. And it's a bit of a special case because recently a couple journalists have reached out to us telling us that they're planning on doing a story.

John Dehlin [00:02:43] And because we believe in transparency so much, instead of just responding to the journalists, we thought we would respond to the journalists publicly. We'll get to that in just a second. But the first thing we wanted to do is just very, very briefly, just kind of share, just a really quick preview of just some amazing things, kind of the amazing status of how this year has been.

2021 Year in Review and Donor Appreciation

John Dehlin [00:03:12] So the first thing that we want to do is just kind of say how amazing 2021 has been. We hope a lot of our listeners are tuning in. We. We live and die by the support of our donors and our listeners. And so I think the most important thing to start with is how amazing things are. So what were you gonna say?

Carah Burrell [00:03:36] I just wanted to add, when I had my cousins here over the. Over the summer, and I told them about the podcast and what we do, and they were like, how do you make money? Like, how do you. Like, do you have ads and stuff? And that was the first time it occurred to me after working for Mormon Stories for five months that we don't have to, like, have ads and ad breaks. I was like, wow, the donors are amazing. Like, that thought doesn't have even occurred to me that people are so supportive. So all of this is possible just by donations. Like, that's incredible. Not very many podcasts can do that, but we're really, really lucky that we're so well supported by our donors. So huge. Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:04:08] Thanks, donors. All right, so the first thing we want to share is just how amazing 2021 has been. For those of you who are just listening, you won't see the slide, but I'll go ahead and read what's on the slide. What I'm super excited to announce is that 2021 has been the best year ever. In spite of COVID in spite of all the reasons why, you know, things might be super hard or we might be on the ropes. This is absolutely. And all the competition, like, you know, 10 years ago, it was easy to be a, you know, a standout podcast. Now everyone in their grandchild seems to have a podcast. So there's a lot of competition, and we're happy about the competition, and we're happy about our partners, like Radio Free Mormon, you know, Bill Real Mormonism Live, all the other great podcasts out there. Jonathan Streeter, thoughts on things and stuff.

Carah Burrell [00:04:57] We love YouTube channels. Generally, a lot of people doing deconstruction YouTube channels for Mormonism and other faiths, I think are really helpful and whatever just boosts. John likes to say, what is it? Rising tide lifts all ships. So we definitely believe in that motto at Mormon Stories.

John Dehlin [00:05:13] Ex Molex Jordan McKay. Like, all the tiktokers off of the shelf. Just bring them all on. We love the ecosystem and in addition to the amazing ecosystem, this is going to be for sure in downloads and views. Our best year ever. We have over 10 million downloads and views for Mormon Stories podcast. That's between YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. We're. I don't know if you know this, we are consistently rated by Apple Podcasts as a top 20 religion themed podcast in the United States. So I mean, Joel Osteen, you know, Rick Warren, think about who doesn't want

Carah Burrell [00:05:54] to be in company with that?

John Dehlin [00:05:55] I mean, really think of the top religious themed podcasts out there. We are consistently in the top 20 in the United States. Yeah, I'm super proud of that. So we'll have over 10 million downloads and views this year. The stories. I think the quality of stories on Mormon Stories podcast have been stellar. I think your story even came out this year.

Carah Burrell [00:06:16] Yeah, my story came out April 5th and then it's just been ever since then.

John Dehlin [00:06:22] Whoa. And it's all.

Carah Burrell [00:06:23] Yeah, I just think, I think since the new studio and everything, the stories are always incredible, but I think just more eyeballs and more ears and more people have been listening and sharing and just, it's compounding just amazing growth in the last year. It's really, really cool.

John Dehlin [00:06:37] Love it. All right. Other other things we. Thanks to our partner Gerardo, who we have on as a contractor with the Open Stories Foundation. As you hopefully can see here, we've dramatically upped our game in terms of lighting and cinematography. That just helps our YouTube channel and all our streams just look more professional. We have hired the one, the only nuance Ho or Carah Burrell.

Carah Burrell [00:07:05] Yeah, that is me. Yeah. I was like, oh, you're talking about me. Yes, indeed. And I was just about to give you a compliment and Gerardo a compliment that isn't the lighting and everything so nice that you probably thought that John was not a 52 year old man. He was like a young schoolboy who just got out from college to come do this. It's not true. He's actually, it's just the lighting and the cameras. He's. He's, he's just as that the lighting and the cameras just do that good of a job. So I am also. I'm 32 years old and you were what? I thought she was a teenager. Nope. Lighting's in camera. It's all just that good. So how. How's my job security, John?

John Dehlin [00:07:40] I know. I mean, so change is always hard for people and there's a lot of listeners who just were, like, used to me alone in my studio interviewing people. But I can. I'm so, you know, and so for me, it's always like, risky. There's always a financial risk of like, ah, we have to pay to bring somebody on. And then there's also like the, you know, response risk, which. Which basically involves, you know, are the listeners going to like adding a co host? Are they going to like. And what I'm thrilled to announce is that people love you, Carah. Overall, you are overwhelmingly adored.

Carah Burrell [00:08:19] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:08:19] And people like that we have a female voice. They like that you're younger, they like that you're funny, they like that you're smart, that you're thoughtful, you're wise. All those things people love. You know, there's a couple haters out there. But overall, donations are up, views are up, and feedback is overwhelmingly positive. So thank you so much for being a part.

Carah Burrell [00:08:40] I'm getting used to hearing those things about myself. Um, so if that's the way you feel, thank you very much. If not, I will try to do my best. So it's been really fun and I really, really love this job and I love getting to talk to people, getting to answer dms, getting to be in this space. So if you're still not on the carrot train yet, let me give you some time.

John Dehlin [00:09:05] You'll get there, give us your feedback, and we're all working to improve. I get criticisms all the time, so

Carah Burrell [00:09:10] I joined the I couldn't be John de Lind for if my life depended on it criticism shots yet. So.

Growing the YouTube and TikTok Channels

John Dehlin [00:09:16] All right. One of the main reasons we hired Carah was to launch our Mormon Stories podcast, TikTok channel. And I'm thrilled to announce that our TikTok channel has almost doubled our YouTube channel in just a few months.

Carah Burrell [00:09:30] Speaking of this streaming to YouTube, let's just take a break and make sure that our people are telling us that our video is fuzzy. And that would be.

John Dehlin [00:09:38] Just one person said that.

Carah Burrell [00:09:39] Nope. Quite a few people have said that. And I just want to make sure that we're not uploading anything right now. Are we uploading anything to Dropbox?

John Dehlin [00:09:47] Oh, yeah. So like shutting down Dropbox.

Carah Burrell [00:09:51] So I think my job security is just fine because I remind shut down that Dropbox window. Nope.

John Dehlin [00:09:59] Go ahead and talk for just one second.

Carah Burrell [00:10:01] Anyway, all the joke that I'm trying to make right now is that when I interrupt John, it better be because I am making sure that this podcast is in tip top shape. So let's take an opportunity. Yep, we got fuzzy. Potato quality. Elsie is always in my corner. Go, Carah. She says, Oh, man, we gotta start over. Just kidding. We're just kidding. You guys are great. Keep it up. We will. All right.

John Dehlin [00:10:36] Okay. We think we troubleshot the. The fuzziness. Hopefully it's going to improve. Thanks for your patience. We'll edit that. We'll edit that part out, at least the. The interruption. Okay. So thank you for covering. Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

John Dehlin [00:10:53] Where we were is talking about how by bringing you on Carah, we were able to launch a tick tock channel and grow it to double the YouTube presence. So we have almost 80,000 followers on TikTok. And what's super important about that is that we're reaching a younger demographic.

John Dehlin [00:11:14] You and I have said often that young people, even teenagers, deserve informed consent. And a lot of the suicide epidemic and a lot of the problems within Mormonism are happening with teenagers and youth. So it's not like we're trying to be predatory to like, you know, destroy testimonies or take youth out of the church. But we do want, we do believe that the teenagers have the right of informed consent. What do you think?

Carah Burrell [00:11:37] For sure? I mean, I uploaded a TikTok yesterday talking about, from the Simon Southern episode about Russell Nelson talking about not believing in evolution. If I would have known that that fact alone, I might have made different choices, let alone other facts about the church.

Carah Burrell [00:11:52] So there's so many things that I think we need informed consent on, like there's a broad spectrum of truth claims and things. And TikTok is a great, great way to reach a lot of people really quickly. And so our TikTok has grown and so I would love to hear even more feedback about what kind of TikToks and what kind of short clips people like the most, what they like the least. And I haven't posted very many of them to Facebook. I post quite a few to Instagram, but as many as we can to get these, you know, five hour interviews sliced up and have good little, you know, good little cookie crumbs that we can throw out.

Carah Burrell [00:12:24] And maybe it's kind of like a commercial that helps people, inspires them to go watch or listen to the longer, you know, three, four or five hour episode and, and get some goodness from that. So, yeah, I love hearing feedback on that.

John Dehlin [00:12:36] So, yeah, so check out our. Check, check out Mormon stories, TikTok. It's making a huge difference. I just can say it's been weird for me because I'm getting stopped and asked, are you the TikTok guy? And I've been doing the podcast for 16 years and there are all sorts of new people saying, hey, are you that guy that does TikTok?

Carah Burrell [00:12:56] And I'm getting stopped and asked, are you the Mormon stories girl? And I'm like, I'm supposed to be the TikTok girl. Just kidding. That doesn't happen. I'm always your TikTok girl.

John Dehlin [00:13:05] Hashtag not so. Okay, so also Carrie, you've been doing Instagram. We now have been growing our Instagram Mormon stories to over 13,000 followers. And and then our YouTube channel is growing at over a thousand subscribers a month. We're now over 40,000 subscribers to our YouTube channel. And because we have brought you on and we are hiring some other contractors, we're now providing for the first time in YouTube show notes and time codes. Show notes are just, you know, wherever you have hear us mention a link or a book or a podcast or a YouTube video where now including them in the show notes so that you can easily reference what we talk about. And then time codes are just simply. YouTube allows you to include time codes in the description, kind of describing each little 10 or 15 minute segment. So if there is a three or four hour interview, which occasionally I do,

Carah Burrell [00:14:03] you long winded. Hey, brief. I think he is concise, succinct. When I think of John de Lin, the words that come to mind are like, JD Just like, he's just like, get it out. Just like, don't spend a lot of time. Dilly Dallin.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] Yes. And to chop up these long videos to make it easy for you to find the section you want and to jump to it either on your mobile device or in the tick in the YouTube description. You can search and click on the timecode and it'll jump the video right to the part you want to watch. And that's a. I think that's a valuable service.

Carah Burrell [00:14:39] So valuable. And you can kind of just, you know, scan of like, okay, what jumps out to you? And I promise that we'll try to have Those up between 24 and 48 hours after an episode airs. So if you ever see an episode live and you're like, where are these show notes they're talking about? Be patient, we'll get them. And we are just doing our best. We have a couple like volunteers and some other people that we've hired to help us with that. So it's like all hands on deck to try to get things out as quickly as possible because we do want to make sure that the information is useful.

Carah Burrell [00:15:07] Like if you listen to Something. And you can't like follow through with remembering a certain section or you can't follow through by like buying a book that you were really interested in because you forgot what section of the YouTube video the book was mentioned. And the show notes are really good for that.

Launching New Podcast Channels and Show Notes

John Dehlin [00:15:21] All right. And yet there's more. There's even more. So we, we have launched, successfully launched a separate channel for Mormon Stories podcast called Understanding Mormonism. And the idea behind the understanding. And most of our listeners don't even know about this, Carah, but the ide behind The Understanding Mormonism YouTube channel is just like kind of Joe Rogan. Why not chop up little five to ten minute excerpts from Mormon Stories podcast just to address specific points and to get those, you know, sort of shorter edited versions of the video. Not quite as short as one to three minutes on TikTok, but not quite as long as an hour.

Carah Burrell [00:16:01] Episode sections.

John Dehlin [00:16:02] Yeah, why not share sections? So if you go to the Understanding Mormonism YouTube channel, we have over 10,000 subscribers to that channel. And it's just shorts that are excerpts of Mormon Stories podcast. So that's going great. We brought John Larsen on and we resurrected the Mormon Expression Podcast. It's now available on all the platforms. We're super thrilled to have John Larsen appearing monthly on Mormon Stories podcast and to be supporting the Mormon Expression Project. Go check out Mormon Expression Podcast if you want an amazing podcast. It's. He's, he's a legend. John Larsen's a legend.

Carah Burrell [00:16:37] When we announced that, just the support was like, overwhelming. It was really, really cool.

John Dehlin [00:16:41] So, yeah, and we're paying John Larsen, so it's not like he's just doing this for free. We're paying him, I think, a fair, reasonable amount to, to do that. And then of course, we, we have partnered with the Thrive foundation, which we're going to be talking about today, to relaunch Thrive after Covid. Thrive had amazing momentum. Prior to Covid, we had that event at the Salt palace with Wayne Sermon of Imagine Dragons and Lacy Green and amber Skora. Over 1700 people came.

Carah Burrell [00:17:13] I think I was still Mormon then.

John Dehlin [00:17:15] Yeah, you were. That's how, that's how long ago pre Covid was. But, but Thrive took this huge dip when Covet happened. We weren't even sure if it was going to resuscitate, but it did and it did. And we just held Thrive Day 2021 in the Salt palace just a few weeks ago. Who was the host?

Carah Burrell [00:17:33] Oh, Carah Burrell, the one and only Nuance. Oh. And it was a riot. It was so Much fun. We had like this rock band and it was just, I gotta hang out backstage and it was like hanging out with the rock band with like the hair. It was, they were hilarious. The I gotta do stand up for like 15 minutes, which was super fun to a crowd of like 1500 people. All of those speakers that we brought in, it was just like we had rock stars singing, literally. But then also like Mormon, ex Mormon, podcaster, rock stars. So it was just this all star lineup.

Carah Burrell [00:18:02] I was so incredibly honored to be part of that and to kind of help host and facilitate and meet so many people. I wish I could have just met more people, but I was going on and off the stage. But Thrive to me was a huge success and I've heard nothing but good things. So it was super, super fun.

John Dehlin [00:18:17] Yeah, we had Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames of, of the Nexium Cult. They took down Keith Rene of the Nexium Cult. We had them. We had Lance Allred. It was just amazing event. Anyway, we're so thrilled about that. And Thrive, Thrive Communities are now popping up all around the world that are just these little face to face communities that are free and all they're there for is to help post Mormons, progressive Mormons, not feel alone, not feel crazy, find support, find community and. And we're super proud to be and

Carah Burrell [00:18:51] be their own boss and. No, just kidding. That was a joke. That was an MLM joke.

John Dehlin [00:18:55] Oh yeah, Thrive is not an mlm.

Carah Burrell [00:18:57] We have to always say Thrive is not an mlm. It is not associated with anything else that has the name Thrive. Thrive is kind of a popular name, but it's a Thrive Beyond Religion is kind of what it's short for. So I think Thrive is a great name. Just don't confuse it with anything else.

John Dehlin [00:19:12] Yeah, we're super proud about Thrive. We're going to talk more about that in a second. And then finally, I'm so proud to say we've got the best nonprofit accountant in, in the state of Utah. As far as I know. We have an amazing best in the state nonprofit attorney and we work super hard to keep everything within the Open Stories foundation financially and ethically on the up and up. And we've had some questions about that. And so that's kind of going to be what we're going to be talking about today.

Carah Burrell [00:19:44] If everyone was wondering, did Mormon Stories buy this very expensive Christmas sweater? No, I bought it myself 15 years ago. So. So this is not. Don't worry, there's no financial problem here, you guys. I know you're like, that's a very expensive, nice sweater. Just had to address the elephant in the room, everyone. We're transparent here.

John Dehlin [00:19:59] It is suspect. I'm a little concerned. I'm wondering.

Carah Burrell [00:20:02] Yeah, continue with your presentation. I just wanted to quell the fears.

John Dehlin [00:20:05] Okay. All right. So recent here. Here is kind of the main topic we're here to address tonight. So recently a member of the press reached out to me, and his name is Tony Semirod. And I've, I've never heard of Tony Cimarrot, although I did go back and look at, you know, articles that he's written. He seems to cover business and financial stuff in the state of Utah.

Salt Lake Tribune Reaches Out to Mormon Stories

John Dehlin [00:20:37] And he reached out to me and I'll just share with you his message. He said, hey, John, my name is Tony. I'm a reporter of the Salt Lake Tribune. I'm in touch with the hopes of that Peggy Fletcher Stack and I might connect with you on an interview with Thrive recently in the news and some related reporting. We're hoping to share questions that have come up around Open Stories and your endeavors in faith crisis coaching under Mormon Faith Crisis. Peggy and I are available. Blah, blah, blah. We want to meet with you. Here's how to reach us.

John Dehlin [00:21:05] So on the one hand, I was like, whoa, this is cool. Like, whoa, finally the Salt Lake Tribune is paying attention to Thrive. Like, as far as I know, they've never covered thrive, even though we've held, as far as I know, the two largest post Mormon events in the history of ever. Yeah, 1500 and 1700 people in the Salt Palace. I'm not aware of any larger events ever. Even in the peak of Sunstone, I don't know that they've ever had a single event where 1700 people were sitting in chairs, selling out a huge ballroom in the Salt Palace. Just an amazing movement is Thrive. And I've always wondered, why does the Salt Lake Tribune never cover it?

John Dehlin [00:21:44] So anyway, on the one hand, I was excited to hear the Salt Lake Tribune possibly giving attention to Thrive to the gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast to Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation. I'm like, wow, they've kind of ever since my excommunication just mysteriously disappeared from

Carah Burrell [00:22:00] what you're setting up right now. It sounds like a girl in high school who never gets asked out to a dance. And then like, they're like, I don't

John Dehlin [00:22:06] want to sound bitter. Am I sounding bitter?

Carah Burrell [00:22:08] No, no, you're sounding like a girl who never got asked out to a dance. I didn't finish, like a mov. Movie. And then it's like the movie carrier almost. And then the popular crowd invites her to the dance or never been Kissed. And she gets all dressed up and she's like, you want me to come with you guys? And it's. That's not what it was. It was a misdirection. Does that not what it sounds like?

John Dehlin [00:22:27] Well, we'll see. We'll see if that comes true. Maybe you're a prophet. I don't know. Maybe you're a prophet.

Carah Burrell [00:22:32] Just seems like a movie trope we're. We're leading ourselves into here.

History with Peggy Fletcher Stack and the Tribune

John Dehlin [00:22:36] Well, yeah, so maybe we are a little bit because. What? What? Unfortunately, I was worried when Tony mentioned the name Peggy Fletcher Stack. Now, to be clear, I want the world to know that I have huge respect for a lot of what Peggy Fletcher Stack has done for Mormonism and for the world over the past 20 or 30 years. Peggy is one of the co founders of Sunstone, Sunstone magazine and Sunstone Community has played a huge important role in Mormonism and post Mormonism decades. We all should respect Peggy for that. And then Peggy's been working as on the. On the religion beat for the Salt Lake Tribune forever. And she's done an amazing job. And we all just should worship and adore Peggy Fletcher Stack. So let me just go on the record that we all love and adore Peggy Fletcher Stack. Any. Do you agree?

Carah Burrell [00:23:32] Do you disagree? I have been an ex Mormon for about five minutes, so it wasn't until John told me who it was. So I would. I'm sure I would have tons of respect if I was in the space long enough to read her articles and know the things that she's done. So I'll just say yes, John.

John Dehlin [00:23:46] Okay, all right. And all that. And Peggy and I have not had a good relationship since my excommunication. And before my excommunication, Peggy and I were on good terms. I've been to her home. She invited me to, you know, at least one party and. And she would regularly consult me on newspaper articles that she wrote and stuff. It's totally cool. Wherever she finds her sources. No ill will there. However, I will say that my excommunication represented a real.

John Dehlin [00:24:22] It really hurt our relationship. And I'll just explain to you why. When Kate Kelly and I both received our excommunication notices in 2014, we. We received them within the same week. So it felt like it was kind of a coordinated effort by the church to start purging. And it turned out to be the beginning of a significant purge within the Mormon Church. So we thought it was newsworthy. And, you know, ordained women had been a big deal, and Mormon stories was a big deal, and Mitt Romney stuff was going on. So, long story short, we went to Greg Prince, kind of a godfather in progressive Mormonism, and we asked him what we should do, and he's like, john, you and Kate need to take this to the New York Times.

John Dehlin [00:25:03] So we thought about it and we said, yeah, Lori Goodstein of the New York Times is the person to take this story to. Which we did, and it became global news. Both Kate and my excommunication, it was covered over a year's period of time. It was literally live tweeted by the New York Times. It was covered in the uk. Like, I don't think anybody would say that going to Lori Goodstein and the New York Times was a bad idea. And Peggy Fletcher Stack was furious at us for.

Carah Burrell [00:25:32] In what way did she express this?

John Dehlin [00:25:34] She screamed at me. So I talked to her on the phone after we broke the news with the New York Times, and she screamed at me, literally yelled at me, and said, how dare you go to the New York Times and Lori Goodstein, I've been so good at covering you and Kate Kelly and all these issues. I've had you as a source for so long. And I'll just be honest. I'm not. I've forgiven Peggy for doing this, even though she's never asked for forgiveness. But it was a really traumatizing thing to be going through a very public and harmful excommunication and have a journalist screaming at you for not choosing them.

Carah Burrell [00:26:08] Like, all right, people will ask, though, is this corroborated anywhere? Is this just your word?

John Dehlin [00:26:14] No, it's just my.

Carah Burrell [00:26:16] It's just the phone call that you had. A private, private phone call.

John Dehlin [00:26:18] So Peggy may have her own version of the story. Listen to hers. Listen to mine. I'm just telling you what I remember and what I experienced. And I don't know that Peggy and I have had any fruitful dialogue since. I may have been in an article or two since then, but let's just say the relationship has been really chilly with Peggy. And there's one more reason why our relationship has been really damaged. That same year of my excommunication, Peggy Fletcher Stack came out with an article in the Salt Lake Tribune titled, and this was, I think, the same month of my excommunication. Mormon Facing Excommunication Makes His Living Off His Podcasts.

John Dehlin [00:26:59] Now, I just have to ask you, put yourself in your Mormon Mindset, Carah Burrell. It's three years ago. Maybe you had heard rumblings about John Dolin, maybe not. And, and then you see an article in the Salt Lake Tribune that is titled Mormon Facing Excommunication Makes his Living off Podcasts. And then it goes on to actually list my salary, which I think at the time was like 70,000 or $80,000. What would you have thought as an orthodox believing Mormon?

Carah Burrell [00:27:28] I, I did not like John when I was Mormon. I listened to a podcast of his in 2011 and I liked it. And then later I found out who he was and I ripped the journal page out of my journal so nobody would find my journal and find out that I was like listening to apostate podcasts over here. So I did not, did not like John very much. And then my sister went through a faith crisis and she told me how much help you gave her. And I was like, yeah, but he's like an apostate. Why are you listening to him? Look at us now.

Carah Burrell [00:27:55] But anyway, so if I put myself back in that mindset, even then I still knew how the market works and how people make their living doing what people want to hear and will pay for. And that just, it would not have bugged me. Unless it was some. Unless it was, unless it was. Because your podcast has never been the anti Mormon podcast that it's been accused of being. I think it's been quite fair and bringing in apologists and people from different sides to a very, very TBM Mormon like me. It was too far into the questioning that I wasn't able to do. But even still, in my most Mormon phase, I don't think that I would have been like aghast that you would have made a living, let alone $70,000 over something people will pay for.

John Dehlin [00:28:47] No, that's good. I appreciate that perspective, but I, but I wondered why, why she chose that headline and way to run that story. Because I don't know that I've ever, unless there's some scandal involved. I just, I can't imagine, like, CEO of the Red Cross makes X amount of money, makes a living off being the CEO of the Red Cross, or CEO of United Way makes a living off of being the CEO of a nonprofit. Like, I, I, I would just, I would have just assumed that any head of a nonprofit makes a salary and that that's normal. And then going on in the article to print the salary and actually list it, I didn't know how else to interpret it as anything other than just like this attempt to kind of Maybe smear me or create the impression that I'm trying to make money off of people's pain or somehow do damage to my reputation in the world of Mormonism because the Mormon Church does a really good job of making hundreds of billions of dollars and yet making all the members feel like it's evil to ever make money off of religion or as a service to religion.

John Dehlin [00:30:00] So, anyway, I'll just say that my impression at the time was that this article was kind of a vendetta by Peggy in an attempt to smear me, and maybe others will have a different interpretation. I encourage people to go read the article and make your own decision. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I've got Peggy wrong.

John Dehlin [00:30:19] Maybe. Peggy, you can clarify as to why you ever did that article in the first place. I. I certainly wrote a response to it. You can Google my response to her article. But I was just. I was confused and disappointed that she would do that the same month as my excommunication. It just felt weird.

Carah Burrell [00:30:34] Does it feel like the title she really wanted to have is Mormon Facing Excommunication? Makes his living off of, like, criticizing the Mormon Church that she just like his. That doesn't have a punch really to it in the headline, but I see the intent behind it of us kind of a smear, so.

John Dehlin [00:30:48] Okay, well, I. It may or may not. There may or may not be something here. Rev Nits says the reporters don't write the headlines. That's true. The article did make a major point to mention my salary, so that was on Peggy. You know, somebody else writes. I'm glad John makes a salary for doing Mormon Stories podcast.

Carah Burrell [00:31:11] He works like, I don't know, 80 hours a week. He works a lot.

John Dehlin [00:31:17] Yeah. And Logan writes. With all due respect, I think you're reading too. Reading too much into that. That may be Logan. So. But whether or not there's any merit to my concerns, what I can just tell you is, is that this experience with Peggy made me not trust her, made me feel like she was not a biased reporter and that her getting mad at me for choosing Lori Goodstein, the New York Times has created in her this desire. Plus the fact that she's a faithful, orthodox, believing Mormon, and I'm, you know, maybe viewed by the church as not its best friend, that maybe somehow that.

John Dehlin [00:31:55] That affected her ability to be an objective, professional journalist when it comes to me. Not when it comes to her broader work within religion, but when it comes to me. So when, you know, so when Tony Semirad came to me and said he wanted to do a story, and he wanted Peggy to be involved. I was a bit concerned. And so I told Tony this.

John Dehlin [00:32:18] I told him about my concerns with Peggy, and I said I would be more comfortable if you send me directly the questions ahead of time. Because I'm worried that this is going to be a gotcha piece that Peggy. I'm worried that Peggy has just cooked up more attempts to smear me, to malign me, more scandal.

John Dehlin [00:32:41] And maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you just want to hear about how awesome Thrive is and how awesome the post Mormon community is thriving. But send me the questions in advance, and I will let you know whether I'm comfortable doing an interview. So he was kind enough to send me those questions, and I've got a screenshot of them here. And. And sure enough, it's questions about, is Thrive a for profit or a nonprofit? John, you know, what's the OSF's relationship to thrive?

John Dehlin [00:33:09] You know, how many people attended? What were people charged at Thrive, you know, and they try to mention other allegations of financial scandal and my life coach practicing and, you know, the involvement of Natasha Helfer and Margi as life coaches, how can they be involved? Is that a conflict of interest, all that sort of thing? And so I thought, okay, I will cooperate with them because we have nothing to hide. I'm very eager for the visibility and the transparency and the opportunity to talk openly. But what I decided is I don't quite. Peggy needs to rebuild her trust in me if she wants me to be able to trust her.

John Dehlin [00:33:51] And so for this round, I'm going to answer them publicly so that everybody knows exactly what my answers are and why and my justifications. And then we can see whether they report fairly and honestly or whether they choose to do some type of hack job, like I feel like Peggy did last time.

Carah Burrell [00:34:10] Right.

John Dehlin [00:34:10] So that's what today is. We're just going to go through all the questions they asked one by one and answer them. And it'll probably answer questions that other listeners and viewers have had over the years. How does that sound?

Carah Burrell [00:34:23] Sounds good. And I just want to also address that being a person in the post Mormon podcasting space is not just like finding guests putting up podcasts. It's also dealing with all of the work of running a nonprofit. So John Dehlin over here just does a fantastic job, and I'm really proud of the work that he's done over the last decade and a half. So everything about the podcast that we enjoy and we listen to, there's so much of this Other like, emotional labor that goes into it. And I just want, as your co host and producer, Mormon Stories. I just want to give a shout out to how cool John is that he's able to be transparent and that I have had such a good time working here and he's been transparent with me since day one about all of these different things, different accusations here and there.

Carah Burrell [00:35:05] And so we have to deal with a lot of stuff outside of just the podcast that we give to people. So we hope that this information is useful to you as well as you also just enjoy the podcast as regular because there's, there's a lot of work also that goes on behind the scenes that John has to take home. Just emotional baggage he has to take home. So this is all just to kind of be as transparent as possible so our listeners know.

John Dehlin [00:35:27] Thank you. Yeah, appreciate that. Care. Okay, so to get to the questions, the first set of questions I want to address are the questions that weren't asked because they're talking about Thrive. As far as I know, they've never covered Thrive in any substantive way. We've had these two amazing events, plus other events and community building. And what I want to note is that neither Tony nor Peggy asked any questions about why was Thrive created. And I'm one of the co founders. I came up with the name Clint and I met in a sushi shop and formed Thrive. Like, no questions about why we created it, what was the need?

Questions About Thrive and Its Mission

John Dehlin [00:36:05] No questions about how successful Thrive has been. No questions about why the church would create a need for something like Thrive, why the Mormon Church would create a need for something like Thrive. No questions about how many people attended Thrive Day.

John Dehlin [00:36:20] No questions about whether people loved or enjoyed Thrive Day. None of that stuff. Not one positive oriented question. To me, the founder, co founder of

Carah Burrell [00:36:30] Thrive, that does make you suspect.

John Dehlin [00:36:32] I mean, I thought. I thought, you know, so my first question was, why don't they care? Why would not have they. If they were going to do a fair journalistic piece, why would they just only give negative questions and. And ask nothing positive?

Carah Burrell [00:36:45] Yeah, very suspect.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] Am I being. Am I being paranoid?

Carah Burrell [00:36:48] No, because I'm super proud of what Thrive has done. I know you're super proud. And everyone has worked really hard, is really incredibly proud. And if you're going to talk about it, it does feel a little bit insulting that they're not interested in the, you know, enormous need that so many people in the post Mormon space feel when they lose a lack of community. And just the fact that Thrive is. There is. And that they're not even asking the questions. That would hurt.

John Dehlin [00:37:11] Yeah, it was hurtful. And that, that was like one of my first, you know, one of my main clues. So here's the first question that they wanted to ask. They wanted to ask, what is the relationship between Mormon Stories and Slash, the Open Stories foundation and Thrive? So that's the first question they also asked. Is Thrive a for profit or a nonprofit?

John Dehlin [00:37:35] And if I had to restate what I really feel like they're trying to get at, and you can tell me, care if you think I'm being paranoid, is Thrive some secret scheme to profit off Post Mormon pain and suffering? Is it some get rich scheme by me or you or the Clinton, Jenny Martin, or Natasha or whoever? Is it a get rich scheme? And I will answer that now. Thrive is a 501c3 nonprofit. It is a complete and total money loser. And I'm going to add, by design, it's a money loser. And I'll explain that. So Clinton and Jenny Martin are the main underwriters of Thrive.

John Dehlin [00:38:17] They have had a successful used car business down in Utah county and throughout the Wasatch Front. They experienced a faith crisis and saw they have an LGBT family member. And they have just seen how painful and difficult it is to go through a faith crisis, to have your world collapse, to go through all the pain and suffering, to deal with children in a mixed faith family, to keep your marriage together, to deal with the anxiety and the depression and even the suicidality of a faith crisis. And they basically came to one of our retreats and they said, john, I love what you're doing. Cannot we help in any way?

John Dehlin [00:39:03] We don't want anything from you. We just want to help you, help more people. And so we held some events. They underwrote the events so that the events were free. And then eventually we said, what's more that we can do to help? And so, literally, at Tsunami Sushi restaurant in Sugar House, Clint Martin and I were sitting together and I said, why don't we have a conference for post Mormons? The Mormon Church has two semiannual general conferences for the entire world. Post Mormonism has no annual conference. And there's way too many post Mormons that are alone, that are sad, that feel like they're crazy, that have no support, they have no friends, that have lost family and friends that have been divorced.

John Dehlin [00:39:49] Whatever it is, they need support and they need to know they're not crazy and alone. So Clint and I, along with Jenny Martin, started Thrive. We started it as a nonprofit, and Clinton, Jenny Martin basically said the number one rule for Thrive, the way they started it was no one's going to ever pay anything. And quickly, over time, I convinced them that that wasn't financially sustainable. We didn't want to depend on them for all the financial, you know, support for Thrive because that's not sustainable. And by the way, what if they went away? Thrive would die as soon as they walked away. And people value honestly what they pay for.

John Dehlin [00:40:25] So we agreed with, you know, the Martins that Thrive would charge a minimal amount for its events or for its services and that 100% of the proceeds would go to pay for the events or the services. And that if there, that there would always be, if anything, there would be a deficit, not an overrun. And that if there was a deficit or an overrun, that the Martins would personally pay for it.

Carah Burrell [00:40:49] Is that incredible. So I have to just add that I've, I've known Clinton Jenny just over the last couple months. They are truly like some of the kindest people I know at this. Their heart is in the right place. I don't know how else to say it other than they, yeah, made Thrive designed to keep the ticket prices as low as possible and yeah, just kind of eat all of the cost on purpose. That's. They're just incredible humans who want to see people thriving after Mormonism and religion, so.

John Dehlin [00:41:17] And by the way, I agree with that huge shout out and love to Clint. Jenny Martin, we love you guys. You guys are literally the purest hearts and the best humans I, I think I know outside of my family and you, you know, and Aaron, you know, so love to the Martins. I can't believe anybody's questioning your motives or your altruism. And I just want to say, isn't it kind of weird, Carah, that the Mormon Church is literally a trillion dollar high demand religion? Hundreds of billions of dollars just in reserves.

Carah Burrell [00:41:51] Right.

John Dehlin [00:41:52] Let alone assets. They're, you know, officers, they're high level executives, you know, thousands and thousands of executives, general authorities, you know, corporate officers of all their affiliates make, make hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in income annually. Who knows what. Thomas S. Monson and Russell and Nelson. Russell, Nelson Dallin H. Oaks quorum of the 12, all the first quorum of the first 70. Who knows how much those dudes make because they're not financial,

Carah Burrell [00:42:21] financially transparent, their posterity and are always, you know, quite taken care of.

John Dehlin [00:42:25] Yeah, like book deals, all the, all the business contracts, you know, who knows how much money. All the leaders of the Mormon Church, the officers of the Mormon Church, the Employees of the Mormon Church make hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars. Like, and there's like a few podcasters out there, Lindsay Anson Park Bill Real Radio Free Mormon, you know, you, me, a few others trying to, you know, survive in this market. There's literally like less than 10, you know, dialogue Foundation, Mormon History Association. Like, the number of people in progressive or post Mormon that are drawing any type of salary at all. Like, you can probably count them on two hands and like, somehow it's wrong for anyone to make any money trying to support all the divorces and we

Carah Burrell [00:43:16] don't support the divorces necessarily. No, I'm just supporting people through their faith crisis when their whole shelf comes down, when their life is in shambles and they are just digesting all this information that might have been hidden from them their whole lives, trying to find, coping, trying to find friends and, you know, secular God forgive, you know.

John Dehlin [00:43:35] Yeah, shout out from Kyle Ashworth. He's one of those unsung heroes. He runs Latige Stories podcast. He says, amen. The Martins are incredibly valuable to the post Mormon community. Yeah. So many, so many people. So all I'm saying is is, is it wrong to dedicate your life to supporting the pain and the difficulty of leaving a high demand religion? Is it wrong? I don't know. It seems like that's implicit in a lot of the these types of investigations. And I, I think, I think it's worth questioning that, right? Do we, do we fault oncologists for treating cancer? Do we fault attorneys for maybe some fault attorneys? Do we fault accountants for, you know, doing accounting? Is it wrong to support Mormons in faith crisis and to make a living off of it? I don't know. Like, I don't know.

Carah Burrell [00:44:25] I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:44:25] So anyway, regardless, the point I want to make is that if they're looking into Thrive Day because they literally asked how much was charged per ticket for Thrive Day, as if they couldn't have looked that up on the website. They literally asked what was charged per ticket for Thrive Day. As if again, someone was making a profit off of Thrive Day. I'm here to tell you that Thrive Day 2021 lost 19,000 plus dollars and that was covered 100% by Clinton Jenny Martin.

John Dehlin [00:45:02] The registration fees did not cover the expenses of the Salt palace, all the avoid and all the expenses of renting the Salt palace, because it turns out that's very expensive. And you may not believe me. You might be saying, prove it. And I will say, okay, here is the financials of Thrive day. Check it out. 1,451 tickets sold, $25 a piece. That's 36,275 in revenue, plus 250 vendor booths, 350 for donations. There's another $5,000 in donations that I'll talk about in just one second. But that comes to $36,875 in total revenue for Thrive Day 2021. And then it costs $11,450 to rent the Salt Palace.

John Dehlin [00:45:48] $17,500 for the audio visual. We paid $20,900 to the presenters. Then we did ads and printing and design for total cost of $58,816.99. That's a total loss of $19,941.99. So I would just say if the Salt Lake Tribune is looking for an article, how about an article on comparing the transparency of the Thrive Foundation?

Carah Burrell [00:46:18] Hey, that's an idea.

John Dehlin [00:46:19] With the transparency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I think that's unheard of. Financial transparency. And you don't have to believe us. Just wait for the financials. When thrive files its first 990, it'll come out sometime next year. You'll be able to see all this information and know we're not lying. There is an asterisk. My friend Randy donated $5,000 to Thrive. I don't know. I hope he doesn't get mad at me for mentioning his name. Clint. That came after the books were closed on the Thrive Day event. So Clint got back to Randy and said, we're going to use that to pay for an upcoming event. But Even with that $5,000, it's still a $14,000 loss by Clint and Jenny Martin.

Carah Burrell [00:47:02] Amazing.

John Dehlin [00:47:03] So that is the transparency. Now I can already see another question coming. Hey John, did you lug home a hefty speaker fee from Thrive? It's a fair question. How much did John De Lind get paid for his involvement in Flyer? Because I did co host with you and I did speak and I helped plan it. So surely I brought home a ton of money.

Speaker Compensation and Financial Transparency

John Dehlin [00:47:27] The answer is I brought home $0 as a speaker fee. And where's my proof of that? Here it is. On November 15, 8:50am, Clint said, wow, John, we did it. What an epic event. This is an actual screenshot. You can go to Clint and my cell phone to see the screenshot. This event will literally change lives in ways we never fully understood. It's an honor to be involved in such an important work. I love and appreciate you, John. We totally rocked it this weekend.

John Dehlin [00:47:55] Also, John, I want to pay you the same $1,000 that we are paying other speakers. So Clint offers to pay me for my speaking fee. Here was my response to Clint. Love and thanks to you, brother Clint. And if it's okay, there's a typo there. I'd like to forego my fee since the event didn't break even. That okay. But dude, super generous. Thank you. It will be my modest contribution.

Carah Burrell [00:48:20] Good job.

John Dehlin [00:48:21] Well, no, I'm just saying.

Carah Burrell [00:48:22] I know you're not.

John Dehlin [00:48:23] By the way, that was before we ever heard from the selling tribute. That was. The dates are there. Yeah, we had no idea.

Carah Burrell [00:48:30] John does this kind of stuff all the time, so I'm not surprised either.

John Dehlin [00:48:32] Yeah, so that's how much I brought home as a speaker fee from Thrive. I was not paid for any other money for Thrive. Not one red cent. All right, any questions about Thrive?

Carah Burrell [00:48:44] They so far on that one? No. I mean, like I said, that's just the type of guy John is. He is in this for very altruistic purposes. And then he also just has to, I'm assuming, pay a mortgage unless your house is paid off. I don't know. No, I mean, but like, we still have to make an income. And John, I don't know if he could be able to do this much work, this job, if he didn't make a salary. So that's what we're so grateful for donors to do. But we don't twist anyone's arm. We don't put anything behind a paywall. We try to make the information as open as they possibly can, as transparent as we can. So I think that John's doing an amazing job.

John Dehlin [00:49:21] Thank you, Carah. Couple comments from listeners. June Tunes writes, it's not wrong to be compensated fairly for your time, effort, expertise in helping people. It only becomes wrong if you are compensated way beyond what is fair or if you falsely claim to help people. Salsis Magnus writes, do the writers from the Salt Tribune get paid to write for the newspaper? By the way, the Tribune is a 501c3 nonprofit, so maybe we'll see the financials of Peggy and the others. Richard writes, it really sucks. Richard Jones writes, it really sucks that this podcast is needed. Maybe. But I also think transparency is awesome. And honestly, I like to. I call the Mormon Church out on its lack of transparency. So it's kind of a sacred honor to be financially transparent, honestly, and we're happy to do it. Andrew writes, this makes me want to donate even harder.

Carah Burrell [00:50:17] Andrew's the best.

John Dehlin [00:50:18] We'll talk about that later, Andrew. All right, so. So let's keep going. The next question is from Peggy and the Salt Lake Tribune. What is the relationship between Mormon Stories and. Wait, no, sorry, wrong. Wrong one. Oh, okay. No, this is it. What is the relationship between Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation and Thrive? Here's the relationship. The Open Stories foundation and Thrive are two independent nonprofits that support each other. They do share board members. So Clint Martin is on the Open Stories foundation board along with me and my dear friend Kerry Whitbeck.

Carah Burrell [00:50:56] And then amazing people, by the way.

John Dehlin [00:50:58] Yeah, thank you. They are amazing. And I did join the board of Thrive along with Clinton and Jenny Martin, Lisa Hacking, our dear friend, and Natasha Helfer, thanks so much. There is overlap on our boards. I don't think that's illegal. We have asked our attorney if that's illegal. It's not. There are lots of people that serve on multiple nonprofit boards. It might be rare, but it totally happens. It's not in itself an ethical breach, especially because the two nonprofits share our missions perfectly overlap. So that's very appropriate. And then a couple questions. Then why was there even a need to separate Thrive out as a 501c?

John Dehlin [00:51:37] 3. Here are a few answers. First of all, we want to Thrive to be primarily woman led. We all are familiar within Mormonism of the harm of patriarchy. White, you know, men have been ruling way too long within Mormonism. So it's been our goal from the start to make sure that the Thrive board has more women than men and that it's overall women led. That's why we had you keynote. Sorry, host Thrive for Women and Thrive. I forgot to mention Thrive for Women. Lisa Hacking did an amazing job there. Shout out to Lisa for that.

Carah Burrell [00:52:10] Yeah, a bunch of ex Mormons basically showed up to Thrive and they had a woman presiding this meeting of 1500 people. So it was kind of cool.

John Dehlin [00:52:18] And you also hosted Thrive for Women. And by the way, 800 women showed up for Thrive for Women, an incredibly phenomenally successful event. Huge shout out to Lisa Hacking, Jenny Martin, and all the people that made Thrive for Women Amazing. And we hope to have a Thrive for Women come up soon.

Carah Burrell [00:52:33] Yeah, it was like my wedding day, Birth of My Children. Thrive events are like underneath that. That's how much fun. That's how incredible they were.

John Dehlin [00:52:42] Yeah. So we wanted Thrive to be women led. Also, I don't have time to manage Thrive. That's why a separate nonprofit was set up. Also, honestly, I get attacked so much, I get smeared so much in the press that we wanted Thrive to eventually establish an independent identity so that it wouldn't in any way be hampered by my involvement. And I am involved in Thrive to help promote it, to help grow it, and to provide strategic direction. I was the founder of it. You know, I keep telling Clint I should just resign from the Thrive board and just not be associated with it. And so far, Clint and Jenny have, and Natasha and hopefully, I think Lisa have all said, we want you, John. We need you, and please don't resign. So I'm not. But listen, if my resignation from Thrive is necessary for Thrive to Thrive, I'm gone. I'm out of there. All right?

Carah Burrell [00:53:37] There's no ego in this for John de Lane.

John Dehlin [00:53:39] I've got plenty to do with the Open Stories foundation of Mormon Stories in my family and I don't need this headache, frankly. So that's my word to everyone. I will immediately bail. Finally, I'm just going to say that the day to day duties of thrive are 99, Clinton, Jenny Martin and Lisa Hacking. Natasha and I are super busy doing other things. Again, Lisa Hacking helped organize Thrive for women. She helped out as well with Thrive Day, you know, and so the day to day duties are 99, Clint, Jenny and. And Lisa. So that's why we created a separate 501C3 for Thrive. We did want to commingle funds. Any questions about that, Carah?

Carah Burrell [00:54:20] If anyone else has any questions in the chat, I'll try to pull them up, but. Fair enough, John, fair enough.

John Dehlin [00:54:28] Okay. All right. Hopefully I'm not. I mean, you know, some people, I worry that some people are going to feel like I'm really trying to do a hit piece on Peggy or the Salt Lake Tribune. I'm honestly, I feel like I'm just defending myself because based on the questions they've given me, I feel like they're about to release a second smear job on me. Maybe I'm being over defensive. Maybe this is counterproductive. I mean, no ill will towards Salt, towards Peggy or the Salt Lake Tribune. I tried to start out by saying I honor and respect Peggy and the Trib for what they've done. I'm just honestly trying to be transparent and I'm basically afraid that a hit piece is coming.

John Dehlin [00:55:07] So I'm. I'm just trying to address the concerns transparently. All right, so next question that they asked, what is the relationship between Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation and the gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis website and podcast? So they're trying to see if there's some unethical association between the two. Here is my best answer. So what is the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast? The Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast is starting out with a problem. And Carah, I bet you could describe this problem as well as anybody. Do you want to go for it

Carah Burrell [00:55:44] without looking at the slide?

John Dehlin [00:55:45] Yeah. Or you can look at the slide.

Carah Burrell [00:55:47] The problem of just people needing support and what to do after they lose their faith and they need to find.

John Dehlin [00:55:55] What's it like to lose your faith?

Carah Burrell [00:55:56] Yeah, to lose your faith. It feels like a rug is slipped out from underneath you. I would cry on the phone to my sister and say, I don't wish this pain on anyone. It feels like a computer without a programming system to operate under.

Carah Burrell [00:56:08] And yeah, the retreats and the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast series are great for helping people turn inward instead of outward, for their own morals, values, internal authority versus external, finding new and better coping. And it's just an amazing resource for free, free therapy. When you are going through a faith crisis and you feel like the rug is pulled out from underneath you, it is an absolute lifesaver. We've heard, we get a lot of comments here on Mormon stories, how Mormon stories has helped and the stories people tell on the podcast have helped people. But the heartfelt, like, outpouring of love and support from people who've listened to this podcast that said that, that these.

Carah Burrell [00:56:50] The information shared on Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis has changed their life and given them like a new lease at life when they thought that their life was over, when they built their life on a. On the throne of lies or something. So people have really, really gotten an en. Benefit out of these podcast series and as am I.

Faith Crisis Support and the Gift Podcast

John Dehlin [00:57:08] And just to kind of put a fine point on it, Carah, do you see a faith crisis is super disruptive, leading to anxiety and depression and even suicidality. Yes or no?

Carah Burrell [00:57:20] Yep, yep, yep.

John Dehlin [00:57:21] Do you see faith crises lead to family, family division, divorce and the fracturing of families?

Carah Burrell [00:57:28] If I, even if I wasn't doing this for a living, I would still have done, said yes because of my own family and outside of even knowing a single other person in my own family, my own marriage, my own faith crisis, my faith crisis that my sister had, that I witnessed, it is an total upheaval of everything that you thought that you knew.

John Dehlin [00:57:48] So, okay, and do you see it like tear, parent, child relationships apart, sibling relationships apart? Do people lose their community? Do people feel isolated and alone and do they feel like they're going crazy without some type of support, 100%. And does the Mormon Church provide any of this support to its members that you're aware of?

Carah Burrell [00:58:09] Oh, when they realize the church is not what they thought it was, the

John Dehlin [00:58:13] church like, oh, let us help you heal your wounded relationships with your spouse and, and heal the relationship with your siblings, and let's help you find community and, and rebuild your life after you feel like you've built your life on a lie. Does the Mormon Church provide support to its members that experience the collateral damage of, you know, feeling like they had been misled?

Carah Burrell [00:58:34] No, I think they would probably say that that is just the outcome. If you leave the iron rod for the great and spacious building, that's what you should be feeling and you should be coming back into the light anytime now. So it's, it's a miserable existence to, to go through that. And so any support that any source, wherever you get it from, can give people, going through that, I think is a good thing. But now the Mormon Church, they, they tell you where to find happiness, where true joy is found, and if it doesn't work for you, it works for some people. But if it doesn't work for you, and it's not actually built on truth and evidence and empathy, it's going to be a hard road navigating yourself out of that.

John Dehlin [00:59:13] Okay, so given that we've established that, I went, I did a six year PhD after a separate master's degree to learn all they could about mental health, psychology, family relationships, marital relationships, et cetera. I graduated in 2015 and as soon as I was done, I came back to the Open Stories foundation, full time Mormon Stories podcast. And I started a small coaching practice in 2015 so that I could support people in faith crisis. So I kicked that off and so I would do open story stuff and then a few hours a week. I've never had more than three or four, four or five clients at a time.

John Dehlin [00:59:50] I would occasionally moonlight and have some coaching clients. Natasha Helfer has been doing this for 10 or 15 years. Go to Symmetry Solutions. She's amazing. And at some point, my wife Margi, she was helping so many people through their faith crises after working with me for so long that she started a coaching practice too. Now, having said all that, one thing that Natasha, one day, Margi, Natasha and I were lamenting number one, that we could, I mean, get. I want to really make this clear, Carah, Margi and Natasha and I had a conversation where we realized no matter how hard we worked, me, Natasha, Margi, if we spend 40 hours a week, coaching for the rest of our lives.

John Dehlin [01:00:31] We would not be able to meet the demand of all the people out there who needed support. That's how hemorrhaging. That's how bad the Mormon Church is hemorrhaging, and that's how bad this, this faith crisis epidemic is. So we realized that, and we were sad. We had to, you know, we had to charge, you know, coaching or therapy fees are expensive. It's anywhere between 100 bucks an hour to, like, I think Jennifer Finlayson, five charges like 350 or 400 bucks an hour. Tiffany Rowe, others charge, you know, Julie d' Azevedo Hanks, they charge a lot more. And it's worth it. I think they're worth every penny that they earn, just to be clear.

John Dehlin [01:01:09] But, but let's be clear. Faith crisis therapy or coaching, it's an expertise and, and it's super expensive. So literally, Margaret and I had a conversation and said, we said, what can we do to help more people since we can't help all the people that need help? And the answer was the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast. We put together a podcast that we decided to provide to the world for free.

John Dehlin [01:01:38] So free. So I just want to make this clear, Peggy, Tony, you asked what the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast was. It's over. I would say 90 hours of free coaching and therapy for anyone who is going through a faith crisis. So you can go on there and learn about what are the main reasons people lose their faith? What are the main mistakes that people make when they lose their faith? How do you communicate with your spouse when you lose your faith? How do you communicate with your believing family and friends? How do you keep from destroying your family relationships? How do you tell your kids?

John Dehlin [01:02:13] How do you grieve? How do you get over the hate? How do you get over the anger? How do you speak with bishops and leaders about your faith crisis? How do you build a healthy marriage? How do you save your marriage after a faith crisis?

John Dehlin [01:02:28] How do you build healthy traditions? Christmas holidays after a faith crisis? Just think about every possible question you might have that you would need therapy or coaching for. How to deal with depression and anxiety. It's all there at the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast. And guess what? It's not for. For fee. It's not behind a paywall. We've never charged a penny for this podcast. There's video and there's audio, and it's always been free. We even recorded and, you know, the retreats that we sometimes do with me and Margi. Natasha, you've been to one.

Carah Burrell [01:03:03] I went to one. A couple weeks ago.

John Dehlin [01:03:04] Clinton, Jenny Martin underwrote us to record to pay the video expenses to record an entire retreat that me, Margi and Natasha led. Two and a half days of an entire faith crisis retreat worth thousands and thousands of dollars. The Martins paid for us to record that whole weekend. And then we gave it away for free on both Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast and on Mormon Stories podcast.

John Dehlin [01:03:30] That's what Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast is. And I have no idea why Peggy and Tony think that there's something dishonest going on there. I would love to hear what their response is, but that's what the podcast is. You can find it@mormonfaithcrisis.com Again, it's all free. It always has been. And that's what it is. So this is a screenshot of what it looks like. There's a picture of Natasha, me and Margi. It explains the mission and there's some of the episodes coming out as a non believer, you know, communicating, believing, family and friends, et cetera. And I just have to say I have received hundreds, if not thousands of emails from people telling me that this podcast saved their marriage, saved their life, brought them out of depression and anxiety. And that's just a fact.

Carah Burrell [01:04:19] Yeah. Even in the short few months that I've that I've been a part of this Mormon Stories team, like I have, I am converted to the power of the Mormon. The Gift of Mormon Faith Crisis series. Just the almost like testimonials you could call it, of people who are in really dark places who are able to find hope and get some community after attending the retreats. It's incredible.

John Dehlin [01:04:44] Thank you. Here's a. Here's a comment from Heather. You know Heather Lang. Heather and Kelly Lang.

Carah Burrell [01:04:49] Heather, my love.

John Dehlin [01:04:51] They write John, Margi and Carah. Your work is one of the best gifts we have ever received. Every dollar we have donated was worth it and has done more for us than Tithing ever did. We love you guys and we'll be lifelong donors.

Carah Burrell [01:05:02] Thanks. Lang family.

John Dehlin [01:05:03] Love the Langs. Check out their Mormon Stories podcast episode. It's definitely one of the best ever.

Carah Burrell [01:05:07] I'm obsessed with them. They're the greatest. So.

John Dehlin [01:05:10] Yeah, and, and, and so the implication is is that somehow this is some dishonest, awful thing, that somehow Margi and Natasha and I are holding events or coaching or somehow this is all interrelated. And I would just say, why would we give away a full retreat for Free. If we just wanted money, why wouldn't we put it behind a paywall at least? Why would we give it away for free if all Margi, me and Natasha were about was money? Yeah, I think we're beating it.

Carah Burrell [01:05:41] I think so. And I just want to, again, put, as John would say, put a fine point on it. As somebody who was Mormon and I didn't like John De Lin just, you know, two or three years ago, I can see having a bad faith interpretation of anything that somebody who leaves the one and true church, anything that they do, it's not of God. So they're gonna have. They're gonna read things into it and they're gonna find bad faith interpretations of what they're doing. And if anyone does have that instinct to go there, I just would encourage them to honestly look at the ex Mormon, you know, Reddit boards, look at the Facebook groups, look at the people who are in so much pain.

Carah Burrell [01:06:15] How many times have you just been scrolling through, you know, your Facebook or whatever if you're in one of these groups? And I just. It's. It's emotionally draining. How many people every day come to us, come to these Facebook groups that are in a desperate spot who need somebody to pick them up after a faith crisis. It's an epidemic. So I would just encourage people to look at the epidemic of people waking up to the truth claims of the church. Their marriage might be in shambles. They don't know what to teach their kids, they don't know what to do with themselves anymore. And it's. It's.

Carah Burrell [01:06:42] John's been there, I've been there, my husband's been there, my sister's been there. I've talked with hundreds of people in the ex Mormon community who have been there. And it's just for this goal of encouraging healing and hope after going through something as dark, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, like just giving people the hope after a faith crisis. And so, yeah, I just encourage people to look at the best faith interpretation instead of the worst faith. And would you mind if I wrote. I read a. Yeah, please.

Carah Burrell [01:07:10] A super chat from Carson. They say here is to building. The great and spacious building. All jokes aside, thank you for modeling financial transparency and providing help to so many who are going through some super hard stuff. So thanks for the super chat.

John Dehlin [01:07:25] All right, thank you, Carah. Thanks for the super chats. Let us continue. So that's what the gift of the Mormon faith crisis is. Literally over 90 hours of free therapy and coaching done altruistically to help people in Faith Crisis because we couldn't help everybody. And I would just say, if we. Again, if we were all about the money, why would we give all of this away for free to everyone?

Carah Burrell [01:07:49] Do you want me to read Gerardo's question? Hey, Gerardo.

John Dehlin [01:07:51] Well, yeah, I read it. I don't think it really applies. We love Gerardo. He's asked. Go ahead and read it.

Carah Burrell [01:07:56] Yeah, I think their question regarding the gift of the modern faith crisis might be regarding the speakers on the episodes getting paid. So they're not. They're not getting paid whatsoever. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:08:06] Does he mean me, Margi, Natasha? Because I'm going to get to that.

Carah Burrell [01:08:08] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:08:09] But the point is. Yeah, it's given away for free now. Well, I'm going to talk about the finances in just one second, if actually right now. So originally, let me talk about the history of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast to. To resolve other potential concerns. So originally, Gifted Mormon Faith Crisis was started separate from the Open Stories foundation as kind of its own independent project.

John Dehlin [01:08:33] And easily, if you just count up the number of hours that Margi, Natasha, and I spent both preparing for it, talking about it, planning for it, and delivering it, and then responding to all the responses, easily it was over 600 combined hours. Me, Margi, and Natasha.

John Dehlin [01:08:53] And if you just. If you just take $200 an hour for each of us. And again, that for some, that's high. Natasha charges more for her therapy and coaching. I could charge three or 400 bucks an hour. I don't. Margi charges only 100 bucks an hour. I think she's. Or maybe 125. She's worth way more. Let's just say $200 an hour on average. Let's just say that's $40,000 of free work that was put into the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast with zero, you know, financial compensation upfront.

John Dehlin [01:09:25] We. To be honest, we. We didn't receive a lot of support for it. It was hard to get it going. It was hard to let people know about it. There's so many competitors out there. And honestly, it's something that people need during a very narrow point of time. And long story short, we did about 70 hours and stopped and needed a place for it to live. So we decided to take it to the board, the Open Storage foundation board, and. And just offer it to the Open Stories foundation and entering into a licensing agreement with the Open Stories Foundation. So we went to the board, I recused myself from the board, and I said, hey, Open Stories board, do you guys want to fundraise and promote off of Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast and offer it as one of the family of podcasts that you offer.

John Dehlin [01:10:16] So the board reviewed it, they talked to the attorneys. They because I recused myself from the decision, the board said, are you kidding? We would love to offer Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast to our listeners. That 100% fits with our mission. So they approved it. A licensing agreement was signed. We received no financial compensation for that exchange. We gave Open Stories foundation free permission to distribute and promote and fundraise off of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast.

Carah Burrell [01:10:47] And.

John Dehlin [01:10:47] And in return, what we received in the licensing agreement that was decided by an independent board, I recused myself, was that Margi and Natasha would receive a small percentage each month of the donations that went only to the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast, which they do that I would draw no compensation from the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast. There is a residual that goes into the general Open Stories foundation fund, which is just used to support the general operations. And it's a tiny amount of money, I'm going to say. And again, all of this was vetted with our accountant, our nonprofit accountant and our nonprofit attorney to make sure it was all on the up and up.

John Dehlin [01:11:30] And to show you even one step further, you can go to our 990 and see that we mentioned Margi Dehlin, spouse to the CEO and as receiving podcast payments. That's disclosed in our 990. That's a public document. You can check that out and see that we don't hide that information.

John Dehlin [01:11:49] I think that's the 202990 that we've given to the IRS, but I don't think the IRS has published it yet. I would be surprised if that also didn't appear on the 2019 990. If it's not there, it's not because we're trying to hide it. It's just because the accountant missed it. But I would be surprised if it wasn't there. And. And I'm going to even be a tiny bit more financially transparent in 2020. Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast brought in by my best summary or estimate. $6,000. $860. $6,860 total in 2020, which, if my math is correct, comes out to about $200 a month for Margi and Natasha for giving this podcast to the Open Stories foundation and allowing the Open Stories foundation to fundraise off of the podcast.

John Dehlin [01:12:41] Because a third of the revenue to gift to the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast benefits the Open Stories foundation, along with the fact that it's synchronized with the mission. At this rate, this is begin my math. It will take 200 months for Margi and Natasha to recoup the amount of time that they invested in. Gift of the Mormon Faith Christ Pilot Create faith crisis podcast. 200.

Carah Burrell [01:13:08] Incredible.

John Dehlin [01:13:09] Okay, how many years is that? Is that 15 years, 20 years? I don't know. Anyway, for anybody digging or fishing, if we've done something wrong, we'll change it. But we did everything we could to do this on the up and up. That's the relationship. And, and so, yeah, that's Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast. I hope Peggy and Tony that answers your questions. Do you have any questions on all of that, Carah?

Carah Burrell [01:13:40] No. Do you want me to read a couple comments?

John Dehlin [01:13:42] Sure, yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:13:44] My cousin Christian said. Can I just say that I'm stunned at the level of suspicion in John's finances when the church is ranking in billions with no concern from the same publication. Do you have anything to say to that, John?

John Dehlin [01:13:56] I mean, I actually looked and Tony has covered the Ensign Peak scandal. It done a pretty good job of that. So. And I'm sure Peggy has too. So in all fair, fairness to the Salt Lake Tribune and I, I'm. I'm proud to say this, there's a lot of really important financial reporting that the Salt Lake Tribune has done, including covering James. James Huntsman's lawsuit against the Mormon Church for fraud. So the Salt Lake Tribune has played an important role in helping to put the Mormon Church's feet to the fire in terms of financial transparency.

Carah Burrell [01:14:30] Yeah. So I was kind of wondering.

John Dehlin [01:14:31] So I, I want to just give Peggy and the Tribuna shout out for that. And they've done a million good things in the journalistic realm. So anyway, I did want to give them that shout out.

Carah Burrell [01:14:42] Yeah. Yeah. And speaking of transparency, Bryce Jones is awesome. Thanks for the super chat. Heck yeah. And another shout out to Ry Silver for the.

John Dehlin [01:14:55] Yeah, you guys, if you want, if you are, if you are upset with the way that we sometimes are treated or maligned and you want to donate as your way to maybe disincent people from. I mean, I, I'm actually happy the transparency, but if you don't like the unfair treatment that sometimes we get, one way you can show that is to donate and support us financially. Just an idea, but we appreciate every

Carah Burrell [01:15:22] super chat, every donation, every single one we know is somebody's hard earned pennies. So thank you.

John Dehlin [01:15:29] Yeah. All right, the next question from Tony and Peggy. Are you aware of complaints filed with the IRS and the Utah Attorney General regarding your pay and financial oversight at Open Stories. All right, let me first address my pay.

Host Pay, Oversight, and Personal Sacrifice

John Dehlin [01:15:48] I. I'll just say this one time. I don't know if I've said this before. I'll just address it. So when I started Mormon Stories Podcast, for the first five years, I received little to nothing. It wasn't a nonprofit. It was just a podcast I did in my spare time. So I went five years running Mormon Stories Podcast and received nothing for it. Starting in 2010, I made a call to my listeners and I said, if you will support the Open Stories Foundation, I'll start a nonprofit. I will dedicate the rest of my life to supporting Mormons in faith crisis.

John Dehlin [01:16:24] That year, the Open Stories foundation received, like, 40 grand. We were transparent with the finances. I drew a small salary from that. And then every year, we've published our finances and I've received raises for my work with the Open Stories Foundation. For many of those years, I received pennies, a pittance of a salary compared to what I made when I left Microsoft to do this work. So when I left Microsoft, I was making over $200,000 a year. I had stock options, full benefits, 401k. I gave all that up to take the risk to try and help this community.

John Dehlin [01:17:06] Did it for free. For five years. Margi and I went without health insurance for somewhere between five and 10 years. Our kids literally didn't get the therapy and the medical support that they needed to hear. And we weren't paying into a 401k. We weren't getting retirement. I was paying for my PhD just like it was a grueling financial 10 years. Our kids were, like, literally getting their clothes at di.

John Dehlin [01:17:32] Not fun. So I'm not trying to brag or cry or have you cry crocodile tears, but it was a huge financial cost and a huge risk. So that's like 10 or 12 years of the Open Stories foundation, where I'm paying.

John Dehlin [01:17:50] Where I'm paid nothing or a fraction of what I got working for Microsoft. I would be a multimillionaire now. Multi, multimillionaire. If I'd stayed at Microsoft. I didn't do this for the money. I don't care if you don't believe me.

John Dehlin [01:18:03] Starting a few years ago, the attacks, the smears, the stress got so high. And frankly, the medical bills, the therapy bills for my family, for me, for Margi, for our marriage, for our kids got so high because we all went untreated for, I don't know, 10, 1213 years of the treatment we should have gotten for just therapy alone. I told the board that I couldn't continue without getting paid. What I felt like was my market value. I just couldn't continue. I didn't want to continue.

Carah Burrell [01:18:34] I respect that.

John Dehlin [01:18:35] Getting paid almost nothing. So the board, over the past several years, the Open Stories foundation board has done three independent salary searches or reviews, including hiring experts, nonprofit attorneys to do the independent salary searches. And all I'm going to say is my current compensation package was determined to be fair market value for my education, which is a Ph.D. and two master's degrees, my time at MIT, at Microsoft, running, you know, working at high levels at Fortune 500, Fortune 50 companies, my years of expertise in this field, my PhD in clinical and counseling psychology, and, and frankly my track record of starting and running this nonprofit and building it and growing it.

John Dehlin [01:19:22] The board independently, three different times established or confirmed my compensation package. And I, I don't want to apologize for it anymore. I feel generously compensated. I know I could make two to three times or more if I were to go into the private sector. But I'm very grateful for what I make for my. I get, I get a salary, I get a bonus, a performance bonus, I get a 401k, I get health insurance. I'm grateful for all that. And I feel like it was fairly and independently determined by three different studies. My attorney has vetted it as well. And I don't know what else I could say about that.

Carah Burrell [01:20:07] Yeah. And all I have to say is it's unfortunate that in this type of non profit space of what John and I do, what Mormon stories, what the OSF does, that John is going to be a constant person at the center of attention that's going to have, you know, hit pieces or snare pieces or people trying to, what's the word? Like, you know, go through my family. Yeah. Just, you know, trying to find anything that is suspect in the financials of a nonprofit since that we are taking on an almost trillion dollar, you know, corporation and church. That, that's just unfortunate that that is the place that John's family has kind of nested and found himself in.

Carah Burrell [01:20:53] That that's. He's podcasting is what John is really good at. And as you know, the people who have been supported and felt like the Mormon Stories podcast has helped them through an enormously difficult transition can attest that we're glad that John is here. I'm glad John is here. I'm glad that John didn't give up and all of it Makes sense when John puts it in these kinds of. These kinds of terms. So.

John Dehlin [01:21:17] Yeah, and thank you, Carah. And you know, Ted's writes, don't apologize for it, John. I hope I'm not apologizing for it. I need to get paid my market value or at least something approaching my market value or it's not worth the smears and the slander and the, you know, the death threats. Like, it's just not. We get death threats, we get intimidation, we get, you know, we're constantly. What's it called when they release your private information? Doxed. We're constantly doxed. My family sometimes lives in fear. They've had to get therapy for that. Like, it's not worth it. I. I will not do this and not get at least somewhat fairly compensated for what I do. So.

Carah Burrell [01:21:58] Can I share something kind of personal? I had that Margi said at the, at the retreat. And John, that really hurts when I. When I realized that John did this for so long without a salary and that his kids went for so long without having health insurance. And that's, that's a huge problem. As somebody who I just barely got, you know, health insurance. Health insurance through. Working through, through the osf. It's really difficult as a parent to go without health insurance and to go without having the ability to pay for therapy if your kids need it. And since we're such big proponents of therapy and you know, how much that it can help, knowing that you can't afford that for your kids is heart wrenching.

Carah Burrell [01:22:34] And I've heard John say this, I've heard Margi say this, that the Delin kids will never know what it's like to go through the sacrifices that the Delin family has had to make, to be in this ex Mormon space to provide the healing that it's had. So I just, I love the Delin children. I've become friends with them. And so all of this that John's talking about, of the sacrifices that John's. John's making money still can't buy all the things that John had to give up and that his kids had to give up and Margi had to give up to put themselves in the limelight, to put themselves in the way of like, you know, this firing squad from the church, from different people who want to attack him.

Carah Burrell [01:23:12] So I love this guy over here. I love, I love the Dylan family. So it's incredible, incredible how much, how much work that they've done. So support them, give them your love.

John Dehlin [01:23:22] Thanks, Carah. Yeah, thank you. So I hope that answers the question about complaints regarding my pay. The IRS or the Utah Attorney General have never inquired about the ethics or the appropriateness of my pay. That's never been a question ethical that anyone credible has ever questioned that I'm aware of.

John Dehlin [01:23:44] So that's. Hopefully that answers your question about that. Peggy and Tony. If past is prologue, I'm guessing that whatever piece Tony and Peggy do, they're gonna publicly disclose my salary. It's no secret. We have published publicly my compensation every year since the founding of the Open Stories Foundation. But my, you know, one of the things I, I suspect is that Peggy and Tony are planning in this piece that they write to publicly put my salary out there again, just like Peggy did in 2015, as a way to try and like, create the impression that something unethical or bad is going on. Hopefully I'm wrong. If they do, it doesn't matter.

John Dehlin [01:24:27] It's public anyway. It always has been. But. But, you know, we'll see if that happens. Secondly, they asked about, you know, the IRS or the Utah Attorney General, you know, any complaints filed regarding financial oversight at the Open Stories Foundation. And I just, I just want to give a true story as an example. We are always, you know, any. If you ask Leah Remini and Mike Rinder of Scientology, if you ask Sarah Edmondson and you know, Nippy Ames of Nexium, the Joe's witnesses, any former members, slash whistleblowers of high demand religions or cults are fair gamed once they leave their religion and come out publicly against it.

John Dehlin [01:25:14] They're smeared, they're attacked. You go to the websites, go to Google, John de Lin, you'll find all sorts of horrible smears written about me by anonymous people, all with. With rumors and allegations that don't have much substance to them. I'm not perfect, but, you know, you leave a high demand religion, you get smeared and maligned constantly. If you are a effective public whistleblower, ask any ex cult member, Stephen Hassan, any of them. That's what happens. Here's a true story. I'm in the final years of my PhD. You know, that I paid for that. I dedicated five or, you know, six years in total for Carah Burrell.

John Dehlin [01:25:52] Check out, you know, one former friend starts whipping up hatred towards me and she starts telling everybody to report me to Doppel, which is the Utah licensing agency for psychologists. All these people that are friends of this former friend start calling the Utah Doppel Agency to try and get my license taken away as a psychologist. Get this before I ever had a license.

Carah Burrell [01:26:18] Horrifying.

John Dehlin [01:26:19] Can you imagine haters calling your place of work, trying to get you fired, trying to destroy your livelihood. That's the type of thing that I face on a weekly or monthly basis.

Carah Burrell [01:26:30] Just sending in you two in like a. The few times that that's happened to me and it just goes into like a full blown like panic attack. Like, and you have kids and you have a whole livelihood depending on it. And you. Somebody had a good comment where they said John took the leap so others could run from the church. Like, I mean, like, you take those hits just to be able to get out information that is useful to people. Like, people don't like it much sometimes that's super scary. I mean, what, what did you do?

John Dehlin [01:26:59] I mean, I. That nothing. Because Doppel can't do anything about a complaint when. When the license has not even been granted yet.

Carah Burrell [01:27:06] I mean, like, you personally, like, what did you do? Did you have like a panic attack?

John Dehlin [01:27:09] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:27:09] It was terrible what happened to your family that day.

John Dehlin [01:27:11] But this is like, this is every week in my household. Ask Margi. Every week there's some trauma that I come to her with that like makes it so I can't sleep. I get three to four hours of sleep at night, you know. You know, I'm up at like 3 or 4am texting everybo because I can't sleep. Why? Because when's the next smear job going to come? When's the next person going to come and try and destroy my marriage, destroy my family, destroy my livelihood, launch a death threat, get me fired? Like, and that's, you know, that's why, like, I think some people might say, John, you've been unfair to Peggy or Tony here.

John Dehlin [01:27:42] Well, it's like ptsd. Like at this point, I have ptsd. You know, Carah, just how afraid I've been at like bringing on additional help. It's like, is somebody else going to betray me? Is somebody else going to try and. Are you a spy? Is the church paying you to try and take my organization down? I literally live paranoid in fear every day that I'm going to be destroyed in some way.

Carah Burrell [01:28:04] Not since I joined, because now we're a powerhouse and nobody can take this down. No, but that is a genuine. Yeah, it's a concern that we know. You never know who you can trust. That's frightening. It's kind of a weird, fearful place to live in. Can I ask you a question, though?

John Dehlin [01:28:16] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:28:16] So to be fair to people who would say, like, all right, well, you, you went through this whole thing, you know, without insurance, without going through how many years? 16 years. Since you started podcasting stories?

John Dehlin [01:28:30] Yeah.

Carah Burrell [01:28:31] Knowing what you know now, would you have done it all again?

John Dehlin [01:28:34] Absolutely.

Carah Burrell [01:28:35] Like you would have done it again because why?

John Dehlin [01:28:37] It is not worth the money. I've got slides on this. It is not worth the money at all, but it's worth the stories that I continually get every day of lives that have been saved, families that have been saved, suicides that have been prevented. And I feel sad about this care because how can I not feel like I'm tooting my own horn here, trying to, like, make people think I'm great, trying to, like, get pats on the back. I am literally just like, defending myself from what I feel is just constant endless smears that somehow happen every December. Like Margi had made the notice. Like every December, November, December, the smears come out. And so I apologize if this sounds like, like snowflakes. I apologize. Funny, I apologize that this sounds like I'm just trying to, like, get your sympathy and affection. I literally am just trying to defend myself from constant smears and Melania.

Carah Burrell [01:29:34] Fair enough. Yeah.

Responding to Complaints and Ethics Inquiries

John Dehlin [01:29:36] So am I aware of a one complaint that was filed by a hater? Yes, I'm aware of the one complaint that was filed by a hater with the state of Utah. Yes, I'm aware. And with the irs? Yes, I'm aware of the complaint. And here's what I would say about that. Number one, when you publicly fight a high demand religion or a cult, you are investigated, attacked, and publicly smeared regularly. And frankly, I'm not surprised there. I'm surprised there haven't been more complaints filed over the years. Months, weeks, months and years.

John Dehlin [01:30:10] I wrote an article about this called on attempts to smear or being fair gamed. Maybe we can include that in the show notes because it's just basically me publicly addressing all the constant, you know, accusations. I'm accused of having multiple homes, of having multimillion dollar homes. I'm accused of, you know, sexually harassing and abusing men, women and children. I'm accused of being gay, which is not an accusation. I think I love. It's an honor to be any sexuality or gender identity. But, like, people think that's a smear. Like, really? I'm accused of being a polygamist, like, of swinging again. Not that we're condemning any of those things I'm being accused of. Sometimes those accusations say more about the accusers than anyone else, but just the living a double life are endless.

Carah Burrell [01:30:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:58] So anyway, that's just part and parcel of what this job is, is Getting smeared. But let me address Tony and Peggy, your question very directly. Here it goes. There have been exactly zero IRS ethics inquiries to date. We have been around since 2010. That's 11 years.

John Dehlin [01:31:19] Zero IRS ethics inquiries to date. Count it, zero. Never heard from the IRS about anything regarding ethics, ever. There was, you know, a couple years ago, there were some forms, like some payroll forms that my old accountant forgot to file. I literally emailed him today to say, hey, you didn't file these three forms because they got money that they didn't get forms for. So it wasn't that we didn't pay the irs. We've always been, you know, conservative in our finances. We've never had any debt. But anyway, zero IRS inquiries for Tony and Peggy. Yes. The Utah Attorney General reached out to us a few months ago and they decided to conduct an audit on the Open Stories Foundation.

John Dehlin [01:32:00] Drumroll. Drum roll, please. Drama. We eagerly and gleefully complied with the audit. We shared all of our finances, three years of finances, with the Utah Attorney General. We were excited to comply because we had nothing to hide. I mean, honestly, I was a little bit afraid because, you know, you never know. Especially because I've. I've been critical of Utah's Attorney General, Sean Reyes, on Mormon Stories podcast because of his connection with Operation Underground Railroad and some of this sketchy claims of saving. What's that?

Carah Burrell [01:32:39] I'm just. I have to put up the super chats while we're going. I don't want them to disappear. They'll just.

John Dehlin [01:32:43] Anyway, I was a tiny bit worried about the audit because the Mormon, let's face it, Utah's a theocracy. The Attorney General, Sean Reyes, is close friends with the Mormon Church. I worried about what the Utah government would do to the Obasurious foundation. It's a little bit scary to run a nonprofit in Vatican City, in the Mormon equivalent of Vatican City. And I'm happy to report that the findings of the one audit that was conducted was that there was no wrongdoing found and the case was closed. So, Peggy, Tony. Yes. A specious, ridiculous, fraudulent, just dumb complaint was filed by a hater, a well known hater. And Utah literally came back and said, we have found no wrongdoing.

Carah Burrell [01:33:36] Thanks for wasting.

John Dehlin [01:33:36] Thank you and continue as usual.

Carah Burrell [01:33:38] Okay. They didn't say thanks for wasting our time.

John Dehlin [01:33:41] No.

Carah Burrell [01:33:41] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:33:42] All right, so. So that's that.

Carah Burrell [01:33:48] Against. I can't go through every single super chat, but there are so many donations coming in. Thank you guys again. Full financial transparency. Every little cent matters. So thank you guys.

John Dehlin [01:34:00] All Right. Thank you listeners and viewers. And thanks, Carah. I promise we're almost done. So a final. I think this is the last question. No, it's, it's one of the last questions. Tony and Peggy Wright, what led you to start a live coaching practice before you close it down for the 2021 sabbatical? So they tried to. Originally they asked like, we want to know about your coaching practice and conflicts of interest between you and the Open Stories Foundation. What they didn't know was that I had closed down my coaching practice earlier this year. You can go to the Wayback machine. Go to johndelin.com coaching it literally says, I have taken a sabbatical for my coaching practice.

John Dehlin [01:34:40] That happened months before they ever reached out to me. And it's because I just for a long time, Carah, I haven't had time to do my coaching practice because the Open Stories Foundation, Mormon Stories Thrive is multiple full time jobs. And so I love coaching. I've had incredible, incredibly positive experiences with all my coaching clients, with the workshops, with the retreats, and I could do it all and it was sapping too much of my energy, so I stopped coaching. So then they had to rephrase the question and ask, you know, why did you start it before you closed it down, before you took a sabbatical?

John Dehlin [01:35:17] And I, you know, is, do I need to go into why I started my coaching practice or have I been pretty clear about that?

Carah Burrell [01:35:22] I think you've been pretty clear.

John Dehlin [01:35:23] Everything to do with people were dying, Peggy and Tony. People were, families were being destroyed. Lives were being ruined. That's why I started my CO. That's why I got my PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. Will you write that Tony and Peggy on your headline?

Carah Burrell [01:35:39] Ooh, getting sassy.

John Dehlin [01:35:40] Okay. People were dying. Families were being destroyed. That's why I started. That's why I got my PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. That's why I started my coaching practice. Please put that in your newspaper article. Quote me on that verbatim. What has been the response from my prospective clients? My past coaching clients have been, as far as I know, universally happy, very grateful for the coaching services I provided back when I was a coach and did coaching.

John Dehlin [01:36:11] And prospective clients are sad that I don't do coaching now. And I refer them to lots of different, different people. And I can talk about that in a second. So the next question that Tony and Peggy asked, will your partners in faith crisis coaching, Natasha Helfer, Margi Dehlin, be continuing in the meantime, what, if any, will your contribution be to their activities While on sabbatical. So obviously, Carah, can you read between the lines to know what they're asking here?

Carah Burrell [01:36:41] Are they trying to drum up where they're getting funds from?

John Dehlin [01:36:44] They're basically. I mean, I'm. I'm guessing they're trying. They're trying to build a story around that it's unethical that. That Natasha and Margi are in any way associated with the Open Stories foundation and that. That somehow we're promoting their coaching.

John Dehlin [01:37:02] That's what I'm assuming. Well, I don't know why else they would ask this question about, you know, how will my partnership. Will the Open Stories foundation partnership with Natasha and Margi be continuing? And here's my answer. Yes. Yes, the relationship between Natasha Helfer and Margi will be continuing between Mormon Stories, the Oba Stories foundation, the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis, and Natasha and Margi. Yes, it will be continuing. Why?

John Dehlin [01:37:27] Why? Because they are under contract with the Gifts of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast to receive a small pittance of compensation for that licensing agreement, since they gave that content of their free will and choice and they donated it to the Open Stories Foundation. And in return for that generous offering that they made to the Open Stories foundation, the board was willing to link to their coaching services to support them, because again, as it stands, they're owed 35. I don't know, 30. $35,000 in compensation for what they gave to the Open Stories foundation for free. So, yes, the Open Stories foundation board independently arrived at an agreement that as a courtesy, we will link to their coaching practices from the Mormon Stories website.

John Dehlin [01:38:23] And so we do. And also from the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast website, which I own, by the way. I own the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis website. It is not owned by the Open Stories Foundation. So frankly, I can link to whoever I want from that website and from Mormon Stories website. So, anyway, I hope that answers that question. Yes, the relationship will be continuing. If someone can show me in any way where that's unethical or wrong, we'll stop it. But I can guarantee you that from as far as Natasha Helfer or Margi goes, they will be filled with clients from here to eternity without any support from us.

John Dehlin [01:39:01] They both have endless wait lists because the Mormon Church is hemorrhaging and there's an endless need of coaching and therapy, literally. And I don't know. I don't know a Faith Crisis coach or therapist that doesn't have a waiting list.

John Dehlin [01:39:17] So the need will be endless for Margi. The demand for Margi and Natasha will be endless. Not just because they're amazing, but because the need is insatiable. And that's my best answer. So yes, you can go to our websites and you can see that we offer all sorts of resources and look at that. We offer links to not only Margi and Natasha, but also Liz Dalton, Marty Erickson, Janice Spangler, Leah Young, Jenny Morrow. And we are, we. We often refer people to Jennifer Finlayson, Fife, Julie Diazebedo Hanks.

John Dehlin [01:39:53] Tiffany Rowe is great. Like there are so many awesome coaches and therapists out there. We constantly are referring people to all sorts of therapists and coaches because frankly, Margi and Natasha aren't always the best at a specific need for referral and they, they often are so full they can't take more clients anyway. So we have to refer people to others because I think Natasha sometimes does a six month wait list.

Carah Burrell [01:40:17] Are you serious?

John Dehlin [01:40:18] Just for her coaching practice. Like it's crazy. So anyway, fish and expose whatever you feel like you need to Tony and Peggy. Yes, we do promote and we'll continue to promote Margi and Natasha. And we've been told by our attorneys and, and the independent board where I've recused myself that there's nothing wrong with doing that. So I'm going to just say it again. If we're doing anything unethical, this is my promise to you, to Peggy, to Tony, to the Open Stories foundation donors. If we're doing anything unethical, we will eagerly fix it. So let us know. Okay, I believe you. I'm ready. I'm. I'm ready for the home stretch. Are you ready for the. Have you bored yet? Is Aaron angry that you're not home yet? Is he texting you? Is Margi texting me saying, John, where are you? We're on the home stretch.

Carah Burrell [01:41:12] All I'm worried about is think. Yeah, this sweater I have, it's getting, it's getting snatched. It's getting snagged.

John Dehlin [01:41:17] Are you gonna file a claim with working this comp. Are you, Are you working on your hit piece, Carah?

Carah Burrell [01:41:20] I am. Did you guys know I'm making a hit piece piece against John? Don't let them know it's coming. I have.

John Dehlin [01:41:25] I know it's coming.

Carah Burrell [01:41:26] I have all the different things.

John Dehlin [01:41:27] I know it's coming. I. Who knows? These days you never know.

Carah Burrell [01:41:32] You can't see my eyebrows. People listening on audio. I'm. It's a, it's an on running joke

John Dehlin [01:41:37] that I have with John on its work, frankly, because she, she makes that joke because I was so paranoid to ever hire anyone again after all the smears and hit pieces that had been written.

Carah Burrell [01:41:46] So anyway, it's a trauma response.

John Dehlin [01:41:50] Yeah. So I want to state what my goals are, what Margi's goals are, what Natasha Helfer's goals are, what Kerry Witbeck's goals are, what Clinton and Jenny Martin's goals are. And Carah, I don't know if you've seen the slide. You can tell us if these are your goals as well. For Peggy, for Tony, will you please print this in your article? Okay. Our goals are not to get rich. That's not our goals. Okay. Our goals are not to be rich and famous. Our goals are, number one, to alleviate suffering, and number two, to promote healing, growth and community for people either questioning and. Or leaving Mormonism. Tony and Peggy, please print that as our explicit, professed statement of why we do the Open Stories Foundation. Mormon Stories. Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis and thrive. Carah. Yes. No, agree.

Carah Burrell [01:42:47] 100% agree.

John Dehlin [01:42:48] You're here. You're here for the money. You're here for the fan.

Carah Burrell [01:42:50] Definitely not. If I could just never get recognized in public again or anything, that would be fine, too. But it gives me a chance to be able to talk and connect with people like real life listeners. So it's always really beautiful and it's a beautiful source of connection to be able to, you know, be on a podcast. But would I do this if I was just a producer in the background and I never had any fame or money or anything? My heart is still for sure in this cause. So that's my piece on that.

John Dehlin [01:43:16] And it's. I mean, fist bump. It's been so great to have you as a partner. You've added so much. So those are our goals. Tony and Peggy, please write that we do not do this for the money, but we rely on financial support to do this again. I've already made this point. I wouldn't. The. The. The slandering, the death threats, the smears are not worth the money.

John Dehlin [01:43:37] And I need to save up for retirement for me and Margi. We need health insurance. We need to pay back all the loans and all the debt we got into to do all this stuff. And we need to save, you know, for retirement, so. And we need to pay our expenses. And we want to live a relatively happy, healthy life. Healthy life. And we can't do this forever.

John Dehlin [01:43:59] I will say this, haters keep going. The moment the financial support dries up, Margi and I will go do other things and Carah won't have a job at least here to do other things. So, you know, I'm sure the haters will keep going until all the money dries up. I think that's what haters are going for. And donors, if you want to see things not dry up and if you want to see us continue for another 5, 10, 20, 30 years, just keep donating.

John Dehlin [01:44:28] The worth the money we receive is not worth the slander. But the positive feedback we receive makes the slander tolerable. So far. Who knows, maybe the slander and the death threats and the intimidation will get so bad that Margi and I will want to quit. I know that our kids have sometimes asked us to consider whether we should quit. We. I'm not ready to quit yet. Margi's jumped in to do her part. Maybe someday we will quit.

Threats, Safety Concerns, and Community Events

Carah Burrell [01:44:53] Have you ever felt like you've been in physical danger though, that somebody was going to harm you or your family?

John Dehlin [01:44:57] Every day. Every day since 2005.

Carah Burrell [01:45:00] But have you ever had somebody where it was a, like a concrete threat? I know that somebody took a picture of the front of Mormon Stories door

John Dehlin [01:45:07] and then we posted it docs us on the Internet. No, there have been, you know, different things like that with, with Fair Mormon and, and Kwaku and Carden and Brad. You know, there were lots of death threats where people were like taking pictures of my home to dox me. They were showing pictures of me like knives and guns and like my head getting bashed in. That's something that the Mormon Church literally paid nonprofits to create about me and, and others. But I, I don't, I don't want to feed that.

John Dehlin [01:45:38] You know, I hope that nothing ever happens. But for now we're still in it. Maybe that's going to change again. I'm just going to say my salary is not worth foregoing 10 years of a very generous salary, retirement, health insurance, the expense of two master's degrees and a PhD. The stress to my family, the public slander and the death threats. My salary is not worth that.

John Dehlin [01:46:04] So that is to my best attempt, answering every question that Peggy and Tony asked me. Journalists from the Salt Lake Tribune. Other than a final question. So Peggy and Tony, I hope we've answered every question you've asked transparently with more detail than I think the Mormon Church will ever provide. But if you have more questions, if you have follow up questions, you know where to find us. We'll do another live stream and we'll share your questions and answer them live.

John Dehlin [01:46:37] The final question that they asked is any other points on this you'd like to add. Do you think I have any care or do you think I'm done?

Carah Burrell [01:46:45] I think you have exhausted everything. But you do normally do five hour podcasts and we're only one hour and 46 minutes in, so. What else do you got?

John Dehlin [01:46:54] I have a couple more slides, if it's okay.

Carah Burrell [01:46:56] All right.

John Dehlin [01:46:57] And we'll. We'll try and finish under two hours. All right. So, yes, a couple things. Number one is we have held workshops and retreats over the past several years. Sometimes they've been hosted by Mormon Stories in the Open Stories Foundation. Sometimes they've been held separately. We did a recent Thrive retreat that was supported by the Thrive Foundation. They don't plan on host supporting retreats directly anymore. For now, I have. I have a good friend, Jen Camp, who started up an amazing website that offers workshops and retreats.

John Dehlin [01:47:33] Gen Camp, if you're listening, please post in the link. I think it's Faith Transitions Events or something like that. I. Jen, you're gonna hate me. I'm forgetting the name of your website. Natasha and Symmetry Solutions do stuff. But Thrive is going to continue holding events and sharing a calendar of events.

John Dehlin [01:47:54] And I may or may not sometimes participate in workshops in retreats. I have done that in the past. Sometimes they've been with the Open Source foundation, sometimes they've been a part of it. My board has approved my involvement in OSF retreats and separate retreats. I need to get paid for those events. You know, Carah, you attended one of those retreats recently.

Carah Burrell [01:48:18] Yeah, with Jen Camp. I just. She put it up there.

John Dehlin [01:48:21] Faithtransitions events.com. thank you. Check that out for some amazing events that are coming up. We love you, Jen. Let's go ahead and show that on the link. Faith Transitions Events. But I imagine that maybe Peggy and Tony are going to try and come after us, me and Natasha and Margi, for occasionally holding retreats and workshops. All I'm going to say is I'm proud of those retreats and workshops. They've all been done with Open Stories foundation approval.

John Dehlin [01:48:51] We can't do those events. Natasha and I can't. I would argue. I don't know, maybe we shouldn't do those events without getting paid. I have a freaking PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. Natasha is a master's in marriage and family therapy. She's a licensed sex therapist. Margi is a reputable beloved Faith Crisis and Grief and Life Transitions coach.

John Dehlin [01:49:13] And I think we should get paid for those events. And yes, the Open Stories foundation has, with approval of the board promoted those events from time to time, they may continue to do that. You will find links from Mormon stories or from Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis, past, present or future promoting those events.

John Dehlin [01:49:37] And we'll do it as long as we feel like it's ethical to do so. If at any point the board or any legal entity or listeners tell us that it's super unethical for a nonprofit to promote events that fall in line with the mission of the nonprofit, and that it's in any way unethical for me to be involved in that, we'll stop it.

Carah Burrell [01:49:58] Fair enough.

John Dehlin [01:49:59] But but for now, if you want to learn more about upcoming amazing Thrive events like the Thrive New Year's Gala December 30th.

Carah Burrell [01:50:06] So excited for that one.

John Dehlin [01:50:07] Like the faith Transitions Retreat in Lehigh, like Thrive unite, where over 10 cities across the world, including the UK. You can look up those cities if you want. I'm pretty sure it's like Salt Lake. It's like Utah County, Arizona. There's Southern California. There's Sacramento. I think Idaho Falls wants to do it. There's. There's a city in the UK that wants to do it.

Carah Burrell [01:50:32] Bristol.

John Dehlin [01:50:33] Bristol.

Carah Burrell [01:50:34] Seattle. Costa Mesa, California. Houston, Texas. Sacramento, which I will be speaking at with Alan Mount and Katie Mount and Matt Easton. Las Vegas, Idaho Falls, Atlanta, Georgia, Portland, Oregon, and then the other ones that John already named.

John Dehlin [01:50:51] All you have to do is go to thrivebeyondreligion.com to register for those events. Again, Clint and Jenny literally front the money to pay for the venues for these events so that the, the, the organizers for the events don't even need to put money up front to host these events.

John Dehlin [01:51:10] A minimum fee is charged. That's only going to be used to pay for the food and the expenses of the event. If there's food. Maybe there isn't food. It doesn't matter. We run these events at a loss. If there's any money left over, it's going to go towards future events. That'll all be in the 501C3.990 public financial disclosures of the Thrive Foundation.

John Dehlin [01:51:32] And there's one coming up in St. George February 11, and many more to come. And if you want to host your own Thrive Unite event, Clint wants there to be 21. No, 22 Thrive Unite events in 22 cities on January 22, 2022. Do you get a theme there? 22 events on 22 January 2022.

Carah Burrell [01:51:58] That makes it easy.

John Dehlin [01:51:59] That's Clint's goal. He's a, he's a prophet, Seer and revelator. He has prophesied that there will be 22 Thrive United events. If you want to help make Clint Martin's prophecy become a self fulfilling prophecy, volunteer with Clint to host your own Thrive Unite event. Email him@thrivebeyondreligionmail.com and let him know and he will help you find speakers and find a venue and advertise for your Thrive Unite event.

Carah Burrell [01:52:27] Boom. And can I just add, putting on an event is like a full time job. It's like a 40 hour week job. And Clinton, Jenny already have jobs. And can you imagine doing something as difficult as putting on all these different Thrive events running Thrive. And you do it to not make money. You do it to the opposite of making money, which is losing money. Like that's just. Again, we've tooted the Martin's horn enough tonight, but it cannot be tooted enough because they're amazing.

John Dehlin [01:52:54] Excellent. Thank you, Carah. Right, Other sheep is saying. Yeah, absolutely. Other sheep is saying they're going to host a Portland event. So add Portland to the mix. Yeah. So lots of cool stuff going on with Thrive. I think I have to add this quick comment. Holly Chase writes and Holly's down in SoCal. She helps with the Thrive singles group and the.

Carah Burrell [01:53:19] I don't know, I met her at Sunstone. Hey Holly.

John Dehlin [01:53:21] Holly says care has become such a fantastic part of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm so glad she is part a key part of the team. Amen to that, Holly. Fist bump Carah. Nice work. All right, let's see. So yes, support Thrive in its events. Yeah, I hope. Peggy and Tony, I hope you will recruit and advertise for these events in the article you publish. Please tell the world about these events and where to register. I'm sure we can count on you for doing that because we know you are balanced and ethical interviewers. All right, Are you ready for the big finish? Gabarell. They asked. I mean they asked, right? They asked. Any other points on this you'd like to add?

Carah Burrell [01:54:07] What did you have to say?

John Dehlin [01:54:10] Here are a few points. Let me get this, let me get the headshot on this, Peggy. Tony Salt, LA Tribune. Yes, I do have a few final points I'd like to add. Am I making this dramatic enough? Here are the points I would like to add.

John Dehlin [01:54:32] Number one, where what are your sources of income? And will you please publicly disclose. So Tony and Peggy, are you willing to disclose all your sources of income? I don't imagine you get paid a lot working as journalists. I respect what you do. I'm just curious if you're willing to face the scrutiny of what you're. You're seeming to want to do to other people.

John Dehlin [01:54:54] So are you willing? Number two, why did you not show any interest in the wild successes of Thrive Day 2019 or Thrive Day 2021? Why was there not one positive question asked us as the co founders of Thrive? Can you let us know that? Can you let us know why the Salt Lake Tribune has not covered Thrive in any meaningful, positive way given that in the past two years it has held the two largest gatherings of post Mormons in history that we know of. Maybe there have been others, but I think it's a significant movement. Why Salt LA Tribune, Tony and Peggy, have you not covered that?

John Dehlin [01:55:27] Peggy, to what degree does your faithfulness in and devotion to the Mormon Church make you biased in your reporting? And I'm going to say this carefully, not about holding the church accountable because Peggy, you're a legend. I don't know that there's any other single person on earth who for multiple decades has worked hard as a journalist to hold the Mormon Church accountable for its problems and for starting Sunstone. So for that, Peggy Fletcher Stack, hats off. I'm going to take my Thrive hat, I'm going to put it on and then I'm going to say, Peggy Fletcher Stack, hats off to you and to Tony for your work.

John Dehlin [01:56:05] Kudos for your transparency in holding the Mormon Church's feet to the fire. And I'm going to ask Peggy Fletcher Stack, is it possible that your biases as a covenant Mormon covenanted temple recommend holding faithful believing Mormon makes it so? You are not a great reporter when it comes to critics of the church and ex Mormon. Ask John Larsen. Ask others how well you're doing. Maybe some are going to say you're doing great. That's fine. I just think it's a question I'm asking because I have not seen. I've seen people get excommunicated that you haven't covered. I've seen all sorts of things that you haven't covered that it seems like you should have.

Questions for Peggy Fletcher Stack and Tony Semerad

John Dehlin [01:56:47] And I'm going to list those now. So Peggy, given the massive hemorrhaging of the LDS Church in the membership, why have you not covered more stories of interest to ex Mormons? And let me even be a little bit more specific. Are you aware that 2/3 of the people in the world who have ever been baptized in the Mormon Church have

Carah Burrell [01:57:11] left the Mormon Church are ex Mormons? Basically.

John Dehlin [01:57:13] In other words, ex Mormons outweigh Mormons by a factor of two to one, Peggy. Do you realize that? And does your reporting take that into consideration? I just wonder, you know, are you giving the massive defection of Mormons into the unwashed world of the nuns? Are you giving that enough coverage?

John Dehlin [01:57:38] I think that's a fair question. Why don't you cover it more? Next question. Why are you not more interested, Peggy and Tony, in the compensation of the LDS Church leaders of the first presidency of the quorum, of the 12, of the general authorities, of CES, instructors of CES, administrators of high level church employees? What does Sherry Dew make, Peggy Fletcher Stack? What does Wendy Nelson make, Tony?

John Dehlin [01:58:06] Why are you not concerned about that? Why are you not concerned about contract deals, let's just say construction projects or software deals or any type of contracts between the Mormon Church and friends and family of faithful church members? Are you interested in corruption and graft coming out of this trillion dollar organization? And if not, why? Why don't we know what Russell M. Nelson is paid? What his benefits are? What? Tom? What? What? Dallin H. Oaks and. And Henry Eyring and Jeffrey Holland. Why don't we know what their salary, their insurance, their benefits, their retirement, their car privileges, their tuition, waivers for family and friends. Cozy stock deals, side deals. Where's the investigative reporting on the income and salaries of Mormon Church leaders?

Carah Burrell [01:58:59] They started a religion and we have a non profit. Maybe it's a little bit too under lock and key.

John Dehlin [01:59:05] Yeah. Ironically, the Mormon Church fights tooth and nail so it never has to disclose its finances. So your Peggy Fletcher Stack holding us to a standard that the Church you pay tithing to and promise to obey and sacrifice your very lives for. A standard they're not willing to live up to. So why Peggy Fletcher Stack? Why Tony, are you not doing more? Given the fact that the Church is a trillion dollar organization to hold, to do investigative reporting on the Church and to hold them accountable. Are you aware, Peggy Fletcher Stack and Tony Simarand, of the thousands of instances of child and teen sexual abuse in the Mormon Church, including dozens, dozens of recent cases all along the Wasatch front and outside that include Mormon bishops assaulting and raping children and teens?

John Dehlin [02:00:03] Where is your reporting on that? Peggy Fletcher Stack and Tony Simarand, are you aware and do you report on that? On the epidemic, not just the Boy Scouts, where the Mormon Church has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in compensatory damages or at least promised to pay. We actually haven't seen them actually pay. It promised to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to the tens of thousands of Mormon Boy Scouts that were sexually abused by Mormon Church leaders for decades. Are you covering that enough, Peggy and Tony? And why don't you cover every time another Mormon seminary teacher, another Mormon institute director, another Mormon bishop, another Mormon elders quorum president or high priest looter?

John Dehlin [02:00:49] Why aren't you covering every single sexual abuse case that Curtin McConkie is used and paid by the Mormon Church to pay silence money and hush money to shut these victims up to keep their stories out of the press?

John Dehlin [02:01:06] Why are you not covering that war, Peggy Fletcher Stack and Tony Semirad. I just think that's a valuable, valuable question. Should I pause here? I've got a little bit more. Anything you want to say so far, Carah?

Carah Burrell [02:01:19] Just call me Peggy.

John Dehlin [02:01:20] Sorry, I'm getting tired. This is exhausting.

Carah Burrell [02:01:23] I know. We're coming up at 9pm We've been going all day. Huh? No, keep going.

John Dehlin [02:01:30] Okay, okay.

Carah Burrell [02:01:30] Let the passion out, John.

John Dehlin [02:01:31] There you go, Peggy. Tony, are you aware of the tens of thousands of families that have been and continue to be torn apart by the Mormon Church and its culture? If so, is there a reason why you guys don't cover this? More Mormon Stories podcast has been around since 2005.

John Dehlin [02:01:48] The church has been put on notice about the divorces, the LGBTQ suicides, the way families have been torn apart, the way the Mormon Church has withheld information and misled its membership for over a century, and all the familial and individual damage that has been done by the Mormon Church. Why don't you cover that more, Peggy Fletcher Stack? Why don't you cover that more, Tony Simmerat? It seems like, oh, you did a story on that once or twice and you're done. I think the number of suicides, anxiety, depression, just the epidemic of, like, people seeking therapy and coaching alone for having a faith crisis that's newsworthy for a story every month.

John Dehlin [02:02:29] Why don't you cover it more? All right. Are you aware that there continues to be an LGBTQ suicide epidemic within the Mormon Church while the Mormon Church continues to try and deny that they're part of the problem? Did you see Elder Oaks recently say that electroshock therapy never happened at BYU during his administration and how offensive and harmful that was to the many BYU students that were victims of electroshock therapy, let alone the conversion therapy that the Mormon Church supported for decades and continues to support behind the scenes? By the way, we have an episode coming out Thursday.

Church Finances, Temples, and Membership Decline

Carah Burrell [02:03:04] Thursday is going to be epic. It's going to be heart wrenching, so tune in for that one. So if you thought the electroshock therapy,

John Dehlin [02:03:12] and they were ended in 2000 in like 1980. You're wrong. It happened as recently as five to six years ago ago. Yeah, so we'll get to that. We're releasing that tomorrow, but Thursday. But Peggy and Tony, why aren't you covering all the bungles that the church makes? Why aren't you holding Mormon church leaders accountable for the way that they continue to do so much damage? Did you know, Tony and Peggy, that the Mormons and gays website has been taken down? That it no longer exists? That if you actually go to that website, it redirects you to a website within LDS.org, whatever it's called called now that says same sex attraction, that the church went through years of promoting Mormons and gays only to completely take down that website.

John Dehlin [02:03:56] And they could have done a word search for Mormon and replaced it with what, Latter Day Saints and gays. They could have easily fixed that problem. The Mormon Church is harming the LGBTQ community in infinite ways. The LGBTQ suicide epidemic continues to rage on. Where's the stories on that? Peggy and Tony? I think that's worth covering a little bit. Along with all the faux pas Elder you know of. Yes, yes. You covered the musket thing with Elder Holland. Yes. You do LGBTQ coverage. I'm not saying that you don't, but are you doing enough, given the continual deaths and depression and anxiety and problems? All right, I am going to just finish this.

Carah Burrell [02:04:42] You want me to read anything?

John Dehlin [02:04:43] Yeah, go ahead.

Carah Burrell [02:04:44] Carah, are you aware of the degree to which the Mormon Church is hemorrhaging members, U.S. and abroad? If so, is there a reason you don't cover this more?

John Dehlin [02:04:54] Okay, that's a good one. Keep going.

Carah Burrell [02:04:56] I'm just reading what John's slides are. Do you have anything you want to extrapolate on?

John Dehlin [02:04:59] I mean, the. The church is in freefall in Western Europe, in developed Asia, even in Latin America. They're closing stakes, closing missions, hemorrhaging wards and stakes. The church is literally in decline. Why isn't there a monthly story about all the ways the church is literally shrinking and declining? I think that's newsworthy, that a global religion is literally in decline.

John Dehlin [02:05:23] And what are the implications of all these families, that multi generational Mormon families that have now been ripped apart, that no longer have the religion that they once gave their lives to, their income to 10 of their income to.

John Dehlin [02:05:38] That's newsworthy of just how these families are coping, how these wards and communities are coping. There's an amazing movement in the United Kingdom with Nemo, with. With. Why did you not cover, by the way, Peggy Fletcher Stack and. And Tony Simrad? Why did you not cover the excommunication of the amazing YouTuber who has a YouTube channel called Mormon Civil War? And of course my mind is blanking on this amazing, heroic, thoughtful human who I'm so embarrassed I'm spacing on his name. Viewers and listeners, please save me and type in my dear friend's name or.

John Dehlin [02:06:20] Oh my gosh, I am so embarrassed. Mormon Civil War. Mormon Civil War. YouTube. Peter Bleakley. I came up with it without seeing a hint. Peter Bleakley, Peggy Fletcher Stack and Tony Semrad. Why have you not covered the excommunication of Peter Bleakley in the uk? I think that's an interesting story.

John Dehlin [02:06:43] Why have you not covered the emergence of an entire United Kingdom social media movement where There are multiple YouTube channels, you know, tick tock channels where. Where ex Mormonism and post Mormonism is thriving in the United Kingdom with really creative, amazing things? Why is that not being covered? Peter Bleakley, I love you. I remembered your name before I saw it anywhere else. And I'm super sorry that I spaced on it. It's late and I'm tired. But I think that all of this stuff deserves lots of treatment. Peggy and Peter, why aren't you covering Peggy and Tony, why aren't you covering that? All right, Carah, what's the next bullet?

Carah Burrell [02:07:21] Oh, why is the Mormon Church needlessly building a high number of temples? Is it to cover the hemorrhaging? Yeah, I do want to know. I mean, even as an active member of the church, I did feel like I wanted to see a lot more humanitarian efforts and a lot less pretty temples that you have to have a temple recommend to go inside and utilize the blessings therein. So even as a Mormon, I still really felt uncomfortable. And it does make somebody wonder for, you know, things like the Rome temple. I think somebody did the math once that the number of active members that actually would be tithe paying members that could visit such temples, like the Rome temple were like 500 a year.

Carah Burrell [02:08:01] So it was basically a temple for people who want to do trips around the world, like very wealthy Mormons who just are like, let's have an excuse to go visit the Rome temple and go on a vacation to Italy and, you know, what's the word I'm looking for here? Like just giving just luxury, luxury, luxury

John Dehlin [02:08:19] elite, elite luxury country club visits. Country club temple visits to countries where it's like, you know, it's just the church has a trillion dollars in worth at this point. There's so many. There's hunger, there's starvation, there's poverty, there's immunizations, there's famine. There's so many. There's poor, naked, hungry, homeless just here in Utah. I can't drive around the streets without, you know, seeing homeless people. Do we really need hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of new temples when we know the church is shrinking? When we know the church is dying in all the places, many of the places where the church is building these temples, it is the church masking its death, its decline by building all these super expensive, ornate temples.

John Dehlin [02:09:06] Scientology's losing its membership and making billions of dollars. The Mormon Church is headed in that direction of literally shrinking in membership. Other than Africa, which we can talk about sometime. It's literally shrinking in membership and it's building tons of new buildings that are basically going to be sitting empty, much like Scientology's buildings are starting to sit empty. That's a story. Tony and Peggy, why didn't you cover that one? Is that fair?

Carah Burrell [02:09:32] Whoops. Ass.

John Dehlin [02:09:33] Oh, my gosh, I'm so sick. But we gotta. We gotta keep going. All right, what's the next one?

Carah Burrell [02:09:37] Carah, are you aware that. Oh, we already did that one about just most Mormons. I'm just saying most Mormons are ex Mormons, but I'll read the. Go to the next one. This one's more important to me. Are you aware of the many ways the Mormon Church continues to mislead its members regarding false truth claims and deceptive history via bad apologetics? Is there a reason you don't cover this topic more?

John Dehlin [02:10:01] You like this one?

Carah Burrell [02:10:02] I like this one. It's what Mormon stories does, is we want to. If. I mean, Tribune's not going to do it. I guess that's what Mormon stories will do, that a lot of people feel lied to and they're. John, would you agree that there is one narrative that older generations are keeping with? It's the traditional Mormon narrative, how the restoration happened. And then younger ones are being inoculated with a completely separate. That's fascinating.

Carah Burrell [02:10:23] You could have a congregation of people from the ages of 2 to 100 in a Mormon church, and they, in their heads, might be taught two completely different narratives about the restoration. And the church is just hoping that they don't talk to each other about stone in the hat versus, you know, the traditional fingers on the. On the golden plates kind of translation method. That and so much more polygamy. A million other things about why the church did this and this policy. There's so many different conflicting narratives within the church that are happening simultaneously. It's fascinating. That personally blows my mind that that's not talked about more.

John Dehlin [02:10:59] Yeah, yeah. Yes, the church wrote some gospel topics

Carah Burrell [02:11:03] essays which some of the links are now missing.

John Dehlin [02:11:06] Okay, I'm getting there. So, yes, they wrote the Gospel topics essays after being forced to by Mormon stories, CES letter, Hans Mattson, you know, etc. Yes, they came out with that awful history of the church called Saints, or what's it called?

Carah Burrell [02:11:19] Saints.

John Dehlin [02:11:20] Yes, they did that. And did you know that most members have never seen the essays by design? Like the church has intentionally done all they could to keep the essays from the general membership? Intentionally. Did you know that most people haven't read it? Most leaders haven't read it. Most Mormons still aren't aware of its basic history. The church could easily solve that problem if it wanted to. Did you know that it continues to support awful apologetics in Fair Mormon, in people like Kwaku and Cardin and Brad Whitbeck, in, you know, you know, carting out CS instructors and other scholars to go around the world. Terrell Givens, Fiona givens, Patrick Mason, etc.

John Dehlin [02:12:02] Good people, nice people, kind people, smart people. But there is consistent continual misinformation and avoidance of teaching the true history and misleading of people, or gaslighting people, or misleading people, or deceiving people into not learning the truths about the church or providing really lame and harmful gaslighting apologetics that keeps the general church membership from really understanding the full implications of our problematic church history. Why Mormon Church? Why Peggy Fletcher? Why Tony Simmerat? Do you not do more to cover how the deceptions and the lies continue within Mormonism? I think that's a fair question. Most Mormons still don't know their history, and the Church continues to gaslight and mislead people.

John Dehlin [02:12:53] And like you said, nowadays it's even harder to find the gospel topics essays than ever before. They're continually being taken down. And there's even rumors that some of the Quorum of the Twelve want the gospel topics essays taken down completely. Why don't you do an S. Why don't you do a story on that, Tony and Peggy?

Carah Burrell [02:13:11] I think it's a story on people who did not believe when somebody told them something about a truth claim about polygamy, erasing the priesthood or something, and then their family member sent them a link to the church's gospel topics essays, and then they thought that those must have been put up there by Somebody else that wasn't the church. We hear that all the time. That people do not believe even that the gospel topics essays were even written or approved by the church. And part of the reason that they're taking them down. That whole entire topic is fascinating. I assume people would want to read about. I'm fascinated by it. It's disturbing. It's all of the things.

John Dehlin [02:13:43] Here's a tip from a listener viewer. Rowan writes Mormon Stories podcast and Carah Nuance. So why not mention that the LDS Church is buying land and building temples, that that's a money laundering operation, giving contracts and connected companies like Zwick Construction. I don't know. Favorite deals. I don't know if that's true. That's just a tip. But is it worth investigating? Maybe sweetheart deals and kind of graft and corruption. Tony and Peggy. Tony, you do business stuff. Have you looked into that? Do you want to follow this lead? Do you want to do a story on Zwick construction in the Mormon Church and how much money? Wasn't there a presiding bishopric member named Zwick? You know, is. Is that a story? We're doing financial graft and corruption and sweetheart deals within Mormon Church. I mean, there's a tip. I'm not saying that's true. Maybe that's something worth pursuing. All right, let's finish this out.

Carah Burrell [02:14:39] Carah, are you aware of the many ways the Post Mormons are finding ways to heal, grow and find community after being betrayed by a religion they trusted? Is there a reason why you don't cover these types of stories more?

John Dehlin [02:14:53] Yeah, the whole. Yeah. Do you want to say anything about that? I mean, that'd be newsworthy. Going back to like, survive, survived a high demand religion. Like my marriage wasn't destroyed by Mormonism. That's a. That's actually a newsworthy story. Yeah. I didn't die. I didn't end my life. Even though I. The church betrayed me and I gave my life to an organization that misled me and took 10% of my income and my life and my reputation for decades. And I'm still alive and breathing and. And willing to continue in this life. I think there's months of newsworthy stories there, for sure.

Carah Burrell [02:15:28] For sure.

John Dehlin [02:15:29] And I'm being a little bit sarcastic and flippant, but it's late and I shouldn't have had a coffee.

Carah Burrell [02:15:35] Somebody was saying earlier they weren't sure if you drink or not. And what's the. What's the.

John Dehlin [02:15:40] Don't drink alcohol. I do drink coffee.

Carah Burrell [02:15:42] I saw him down a coffee at lunch today. I was like here's your coffee sir. So I have not had the coffee today but no, he, I did find out he drinks nyquil when he's sick.

John Dehlin [02:15:57] So I mean that's, that's pretty much like drinking alcohol.

Carah Burrell [02:16:01] Yeah. So he's, he's going to get hammered with me sometime. So now we know John Dylan does drink Nyquil when he's feeling under the weather. No. But to go back to the thrive thing like that's the whole point of this entire feels like transparency thing is that there are people hurting. And the story here of what Mormon stories does is help those people out. It's not some like nefarious mustache swirling quick scheme.

John Dehlin [02:16:27] Yeah. Make money profiteer off of people wrecking families and taking people's faith away. And we're trying to clean up the mess the church has made.

Carah Burrell [02:16:35] It would if there was a day that came where there was not a single person who needed. There's nobody to come on Mormon stories to talk about the harm that they face because there was a, you know, sex abuse cover up. If there was nobody else to talk to on Mormon stories and nobody needed to listen to this podcast because Mormonism was such a healthy place to belong to. I long for that day. I really do. If we, if that it's Mormonism got so healthy, oh my God, it put us out of a job.

John Dehlin [02:16:58] Do you know how much I would love to go do something else? Holy moly. Do you know how much Margi would love me to go to my kids? Do you know they would love me to go do something else? I mean it's just crazy. I'm gonna, you know there, there are a few listeners and viewers that are typing in a few more tips of stories. I'm just gonna share a couple. Carah, do you want to read this one?

Carah Burrell [02:17:19] Reader Rights LDS Church cares more about the dead than the living. Temples are for the dead, not the living.

John Dehlin [02:17:28] That's a great story. Tony and Peggy. How about a story about how much the church spends on the dead when there's like homeless infesting all of Utah and Salt Lake City. How about an investigation on why the Mormon Church doesn't use its trillion dollars, its hundreds of billions of dollars. They could solve the homeless problem in Utah just with its, just with a billion dollars of its $150 billion, you know, in Inside and Peak. How about a story on that? Tony and Peggy? A story about why the Mormon Church doesn't solve the homeless problem and. Or why the Mormon Church spends so much living on the dead. Like Jesus said, forget the dead. It's the living that you should be focused on. How about a story on why the Mormon Church ignores Jesus? You want to.

Carah Burrell [02:18:15] Yeah, but don't feed the starving children or take care of the poor super backwards. We know that the church has spent less than 1%. It's like a fraction of 1% over the last, what is it, 40 years of their finances on humanitarian aid. And as a Mormon, if I knew that, I also would have made different decisions in my life. There's so many things that are lacking in transparency with the church that I, you know, devoted 29, 30 years of my life to, like, where I thought that we were really, really cool and we did not do all of the things that we could do, living up to being Christ, one true church. So.

John Dehlin [02:18:51] Yeah. Well, a last thing. It's been sad for me to see several people get excommunicated. The Mormon Church has been really coming after people who just like, you know, whether it's, you know, the pinsons who were featured on Mormon stories or, you know, some of the tiktokers that we featured over the past several years, the Mormon Church continues to excommunicate people who literally just like post truth on the Internet. Mark Oslin recently was. Was excommunicated. I mean, he resigned right before they could excommunicate him. But, you know, why not a story, Peggy and Tony, about the Mormon Church continuing to excommunicate people for being honest for the crime, for the sin, for the, you know, death penalty sin of being honest on social media about their questions, about their doubts on TikTok, on Facebook, on Instagram.

Excommunication, LGBTQ Issues, and Coverage Gaps

John Dehlin [02:19:43] Lee and Cody Young. How many social media people have been excommunicated by the church just for being honest? Why not share stories about that, Peggy and Tony? Isn't that, you know, sort of like mass. Mass excommunications or the stupid renaming and rebranding of excommunication to withdraw membership. As if that makes any difference to anyone. Why not a story on how ridiculous and silly the church's rebranding of excommunication, you know, actually is. Not to mention all the LGBTQ couples that were excommunicated for the sin of getting legally and lawfully married that the Mormon Church continues to intimidate and excommunicate legally same sex married couples who only want to have monogamous love, committed love, that's legal.

John Dehlin [02:20:34] The Mormon Church still makes that a crime and is still excommunicating people, people. I hope, Peggy and Tony, that we've given you just a few ideas yeah.

Carah Burrell [02:20:42] And if anyone is like, leave the church, leave it alone. If anyone ever says that to you, I want you to send them a timestamp to John's rants over here because this is why there's an epidemic of problems. And we talked a lot about how we would not. John would not do this job if he didn't see all of the good benefits that's come from it of, you know, people's faith crisis being healed and hope. But it's also because we know that the church changes over time with another agitation. Enough. You can't excommunicate everybody. So enough agitation does get the church to sway and change over time on these things. And I think Mormon stories and us bringing light to these stories that the Tribune isn't going to is a big part of that, of making Mormonism healthier for the people who belong to it.

John Dehlin [02:21:24] Amen. I just had a final idea. Is it worth a story? Salt Lake Tribune on the conflict of interest between the Mormon Church and the Salt Lake Tribune. Because, you know, like, you know, is the owner of the Salt Tribune an active, faithful Mormon? Is Peggy Fletcher stack coverage of Mormonism? Is there a conflict of interest there? Yes, they've done a lot of great stories, but is there a bias or is there a conflict of interest? Is the Mormon Church slowly killing or deluding the Salt Lake Tribune? So the Deseret News can. It could be a one newspaper town. So I, I think that's a, that's a worthy story. Is, Is the Mormon Church slowly killing the Salt Lake Tribune? Is there a conflict of interest there intentionally or unintentionally such that Utah becomes a one newspaper town conspiracy?

Carah Burrell [02:22:22] I love it.

John Dehlin [02:22:22] I don't know. I mean, it's at least worth an investigation. All right, the final slide. Thank you everyone for your support. Thank you donors that make all this possible. Thanks for all you listeners who have donated through the super chat. Thanks to people who send encouraging emails and chats. Thanks to Margi, my wife. Thanks to my children. Go ahead, Carah.

Carah Burrell [02:22:45] And go ahead. Saying thanks to my husband Aaron, who has been with the kids the entire day today from sun up till sundown.

John Dehlin [02:22:53] And your kids who miss their mom

Carah Burrell [02:22:54] and my kids who miss their mom who go, mama, what's mama say? Bye. Bye. And then I regret everything. No, just kidding. I, I take my work, life balance and do good things. But anyway, it's difficult to do all of these things. And we support your. We very much appreciate your support. That's what I was trying to say. It is late.

John Dehlin [02:23:13] Anna, thanks To Gerardo for cinematography, thumbnails and podcast producing. Thanks to Brooklyn. Thanks to Clint and Jenny Martin. Thanks to Kerry Whitback. Thanks to Natasha Helfer. Symmetry Solutions. Use her coaching and therapy. She's got a great host of therapists and coaches under her. Use them.

John Dehlin [02:23:34] There are a lot of other therapists and coaches too. Amazing ones. Use them as well. But a Shout out to all the healers. Shout out to Radio Free Mormon and Bill Real and Mormonism Live. Shout out to Jonathan Streeter. Shout out to the amazing TikTok more ex Mormon and post Mormon TikTok community. All the Instagrammers, all the YouTubers that that help spread truth, that help alleviate pain and suffering and promote healing and growth. Shout out to all of them. We love you. Thanks for all your amazing work. If you don't like all the smears, all the attacks, if you want to see Mormon stories, the Open Stories Foundation, Carah, me.

John Dehlin [02:24:11] All this good stuff. Gerardo, continue. Please consider becoming a donor to the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories. You can click on the donate button at the top of MormonStories.org become a monthly donor. 10 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, 100 bucks a month. Whatever you can afford. We are financially transparent in the United States. We always have been. Your donations are tax deductible in the United States and 100% of the revenue we bring in. We are going to turn right back around and support ourselves and the work in ethical ways that an accountant and an independent board looks over.

John Dehlin [02:24:49] So please support us if you can if you want to see this continue. And of course, if you have any feedback for us, please email us at mormonstories gmail.com or DM us wherever you want to DM us.

Carah Burrell [02:25:02] Yeah. Thanks everyone for sticking through this whole live stream.

John Dehlin [02:25:05] Okay, we went over two hours. We did.

Carah Burrell [02:25:08] And yeah, I'm gonna take Kyle's suggestion where John's going to shout out each and every one of us individually. Thanks Aaron. Thanks, Kyle. Thanks, David. Thanks, Chris.

John Dehlin [02:25:18] Other sheep, Maggie B. Rachel, Bobby, Eagle. No, I'm kidding. We're not going to do that. Okay.

Carah Burrell [02:25:25] We have to fill up five hours.

John Dehlin [02:25:27] We're done. We're done. Any final words, Carah?

Carah Burrell [02:25:29] No, just thanks everyone for sticking with us. I hope this wasn't exhausting. I hope that it was just enlightening that you know that John over here is a super, super, super solid dude and I enjoy working for him very much and he's treated me very well and there is nothing nefarious going on over here. Nothing that I know about.

John Dehlin [02:25:48] So, and if we're doing anything wrong, we'll fix it because we only want to do good. And I'll just say as a peace offering kind of to close Tony and Peggy, I hope you listen to these two and a half hours with an open heart in mind. I know that probably this, this felt maybe a little bit rough or pointed or critical or maybe you loved it and thought it was amazing. Maybe you're proud of us. You know, maybe you were always planning on doing a really kind, objective, fair piece on us and the Open Stories Foundation.

Carah Burrell [02:26:23] Maybe you were really planning on taking guests to the prom.

John Dehlin [02:26:25] Yeah. And if that's true, I'm really sorry. It's my trauma. I hope by listening to this you can understand a little bit about the trauma. I wish you well. I'm grateful for your work, Peggy. I'm grateful for your work. Tony Solly Tribune. I'm grateful for your work. I just want to ask you to be. Try and be as fair as you can, try and be as considerate as you can, try and be as balanced as you can. And I do think it's fair to say the way you came at us was unprofessional and one sided.

John Dehlin [02:26:59] And I think you gave grounds for this. And, but if, if you have further questions, please reach out. If you want to offer a peace offering, please reach out. If you want to come on Mormon Stories podcast and have us interview you, we're willing to entertain that interview as well. And if you want to set the record straight, if you want to clear the air, we would much rather build than, than destroy bridges.

John Dehlin [02:27:24] But I didn't feel like a good faith inquiry was made and I felt scared. And so I did this meant no harm. You have a huge platform and, you know, let's make peace and let's just, why don't we all agree to spend the next hundred years helping the Mormon Church as it implodes and goes away? Because it is, it's gonna, it's not gonna disappear, but it's gonna shrink and eventually wither. It will.

John Dehlin [02:27:53] All churches, most churches are right now. And why don't we all agree that we're going to spend every effort we can helping the church become healthy, as healthy as it can, and helping the hemorrhaging of all the people leaving Mormonism who need healing and support and growth, helping them live the healthiest, happiest, happiest life afterwards, Find strength, find support, find role models, find community.

John Dehlin [02:28:16] What if you, the solitude being. What if you, Peggy and Tony spent the rest of your careers dedicated to the same cause that Carah and I and Clinton, Jenny and Thrive are all dedicating ourselves to. Wouldn't that be great? Kumbaya. Should we sing Kumbaya?

Carah Burrell [02:28:32] Sing? We didn't finish the other one of chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Just hold hands.

John Dehlin [02:28:39] The sweater is perfect.

Carah Burrell [02:28:41] Yeah, let's just have a good holiday season, everybody. No harm done. Love you guys so much. Happy holidays.

John Dehlin [02:28:48] All right, thanks, everybody. Love you guys. Please support us. Thanks for all the support. Please spread the word. Please share this everywhere. Anytime you see us being attacked or smeared, feel free to share this episode. And if anybody's honest and objective, hopefully this is helpful. Love you guys. Expect more goodness from us in the weeks, months, and years ahead. Carah, thank you. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Clinton, Jenny. Thanks, Natasha. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Bye, everybody.

Part Two Introduction and Year in Review

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 1511b

John Dehlin [00:00:26] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition. My name hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, Dr. John Dehlin. It is December 1, 2021 and I am super excited for today's Mormon Stories podcast episode. So thanks for joining us.

John Dehlin [00:00:47] The title of today's episode is Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation Transparency Question and Answer Decaffeinated Edition. Basically, to to explain what I mean by decaffeinated, I did this almost identical presentation yesterday, but I was a little bit more spirited and I'll even say angry than I wanted to be. And I don't that necessarily apologize for anger.

John Dehlin [00:01:22] And I actually have an explanation for why I was angry. I'm going to go ahead and save that explanation to the end. But suffice it to say, I want to practice and model mental health and positive emotion regulation, etc. So I'm happy to redo redo the episode.

John Dehlin [00:01:47] So, so that's what today is going to be. I just to kind of explain a little bit of what this episode is about. Recently a reporter from the Salt Lake Tribune reached out to me with some questions that felt really suspicious to me and problematic. And I'm going to go into later why I was suspicious and why I found the questions to be problematic.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] But most importantly, we at the Open Stories foundation and with Mormon Stories, I believe, have a long history, from the very beginning of really valuing financial transparency and just overall organizational transparency. So it's super normal over the past several years for me to occasionally do an episode that talks about how the Open Stories foundation is doing, how Mormon Stories Podcast is doing, and to address questions and answers and even sometimes criticisms that we receive. Because yes, we do criticize the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or the Mormon Church for its lack of transparency, for how it handles criticism and issues. And so we like to model the type of transparency, financial and otherwise, that we wish that the Mormon Church would adopt.

John Dehlin [00:03:05] And so that's what you're in store for today. I hope to keep this to under two hours, maybe an hour and a half if I do a really good job. But the place that I wanted to begin was with kind of giving you all an update of how amazing 2021 has been for Mormon Stories Podcast and for the Open Stories Foundation. So I put a little bit of a list together of all the amazing things that have happened so far this year. We are on track very easily to exceed over 10 million views and downloads. I'll have those final numbers at the beginning of of next year of 2022.

John Dehlin [00:03:51] I am, it may be well over that. I am super excited to report that Mormon Stories Podcast consistently has ranked in the top 20 to 25 religion themed podcasts on on Apple podcasts in the United States. So you think about like Rick Warren and Joel Osteen and a bunch of churches that you may or may not have happy or positive associations with.

John Dehlin [00:04:17] We're right up there in the top 20 to 25 and I'm really proud of that, especially given our niche audience. We have had so many incredible stories from, you know, believing and non believing Mormons over the past year. We literally at Mormon Stories Podcast could not do it without the amazing stories of the people we highlight. So just, just so many groundbreaking stories I'm proud to be associated with.

John Dehlin [00:04:45] If you haven't noticed, we have tried to dramatic. We've used your financial support, those of you who support us, we've used your financial support to increase and improve our cinematography. If you, if you haven't noticed, we've worked really hard over the past year or two with Mormon Stories Podcast and the Open Stories foundation to improve our cinematography. And so and so we've hired Gerardo Simano, a dear friend, to help us with our lighting and our cinematography. And we feel like that has definitely increased the quality of the Mormon Stories Podcast experience and led to increased growth on YouTube, which has become a really important distribution channel for us.

John Dehlin [00:05:40] We are super thrilled to have hired Carah Burrell, a tiktoker. She also goes by nuance ho on TikTok. She's young, she is funny, she is smart, she is wise, she has a good heart, she believes in our mission. She's been a great co presenter and co host on Mormon Stories Podcast. And I'm just super happy and honored that we've been able to bring her on and to provide, you know, representation for women on the podcast. I'm also super happy that Gerardo has been able to be a co host. He, in addition to being smart and wise and thoughtful and brilliant and a great cinematographer, he represents the Latino community and people, LGBT community as well.

John Dehlin [00:06:27] And I'm just really happy that we're working hard to diversify the voices within the Mormon Stories world. I'm super happy. One of the main reasons we brought Carah Burrell on to Mormon Stories Podcast was to launch a Mormon Stories podcast, TikTok Channel. And I'm super happy to report that in just a matter of a few months we, we have grown our TikTok audience from literally nothing to almost 80,000 followers.

John Dehlin [00:06:59] So I'm super happy about that. And. And it's weird. Even though I've been doing Mormon stories podcast for 16 years, it's kind of weird that sometimes when people stop me and recognize me in Utah, they recognize me as a TikToker, not as a podcaster. And that just goes to show how important TikTok is. And of course, I don't need to tell you that one of the important things about TikTok and Instagram is that they reach a younger audience. And I mentioned yesterday with Carah that we believe that Mormon teenagers deserve informed consent. And so, you know, we're not trying to take teens out of the church or destroy Mormon teenage faith, but we do know that that teenage years are years where you make very, very important decisions about mission, about marriage, about education.

John Dehlin [00:07:49] And we want to do our part to make sure Mormon teenagers know the truth about Mormonism and the Mormon Church. And so. Yeah, and so TikTok and Instagram, we think, have been important parts of reaching those audiences. Our Instagram Mormon Stories podcast Instagram account is now over 13,000 followers.

John Dehlin [00:08:12] And we're so happy that we've invested in YouTube as a distribution channel. Years ago, our YouTube audience is growing at over a thousand subscribers a month. We're well over 40,000 subscribers now, and we'll be at 50,000 subscribers by next year if those trends continue. We've also invested in the creation of time codes and show notes with YouTube. And basically what that is is we know that for some of you, are you to our Mormon Stories interviews are very long and that many of you would like to be able to jump to different sections of the.

John Dehlin [00:08:49] Of the interviews. And so if you watch or listen to our videos on YouTube, there are these time codes now where you can actually scroll an outline of the entire interview and jump to the sections that you want to follow or listen to. And I don't know if you guys know this, but you can actually, if you pay for YouTube Premium, it's like 10 bucks a month. You can actually have your iPhone or your Android Android device locked and turned off and you can still listen. So you can use it like a podcast app as well.

John Dehlin [00:09:22] So all. And you. And you lose the ads, which is. Which is a bonus. So we are super happy about our timecode effort on YouTube. We've had some amazing volunteers and some paid staff help with those time codes. And we're now releasing show notes. So if you think about all of the links and books and podcast episodes and websites that often get. Get mentioned in a regular Mormon stories Podcast interview. We are now including those as show notes on the Mormon Stories podcast blog, on our YouTube channel and elsewhere so that you can check out the references. And then finally, again, we know that for many people, you know, two, three, four, five, six or 15 hour interviews are too long.

John Dehlin [00:10:12] Many of you say, please, if you do anything, never make your interview shorter. I think the majority of our supporters love the long form interviews or they wouldn't be supporting us. But there are some who say either I need shorter episodes or, you know, you might be able to reach more people if you provide shorter form segments. And so we created, many of you don't know this, we created a YouTube channel called Understanding Mormonism where we just share excerpts of Mormon Stories podcast interviews, and we hope to do more with the Understanding Mormonism channel in 2022. That's part of our ongoing strategy.

John Dehlin [00:10:49] But we want to, you know, know, we're very proud that that channel, that Understanding Mormonism YouTube channel now has over 10,000 subscribers and it's only been around for about a year. So those are some of the amazing things that we've done. For those of you who donate and support us, we hope you feel good about the investments you've made to improve Mormon Stories Podcast to improve its reach. And I just get, I get literally 5 to 10 emails a day of people saying, you saved our lives, you saved our marriage.

John Dehlin [00:11:19] I, I, I thought I was dark, sad and lonely and crazy and alone. And your podcast helped me feel like I wasn't so alone. I wasn't crazy. You're, you know, you helped us through hard times. You know, those are the, those, those are the messages that keep me going. Those are the messages that, that make all the adversity worth it. And so I can just say, we believe it or not, Mormons Stories Podcast is making a bigger impact and reaching more, more people in 2022 than we ever have. I'm also super excited for several new initiatives that we have started in 2021, including bringing on the amazing John Larsen of Mormon Expression Podcast lore to do a monthly episode.

John Dehlin [00:12:03] We paid John to do that. We're proud your donations go to support and pay John Larsen, and many of you have enjoyed those monthly episodes with John Larsen. Shout out to John. We love you, John. And also we were really honored to work with John to resurrect the Mormon Expression Podcast from hackers that had taken it down. And so we got onto anchor and Spotify and Apple podcasts, and I personally submitted over half of the episodes. The title, the description, uploading the audio link so that Mormon Expression podcasts could be available to the world. And, and I can say that as of now, over 100,000 downloads have been made of the Mormon Expression podcast just since we resurrected it a few months ago.

John Dehlin [00:12:51] So I'm really proud to be associated with John Larsen and Mormon Expression efforts. If you want to donate and support that initiative, you can go to mormonstories.org mormonexpression and it will direct you to a link where you can donate to support John Larsen and that effort.

John Dehlin [00:13:11] Also, I'm really happy that we have launched a new series with Margi Dehlin and Natasha Helfer Parker called the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Series or the Thrive Series on Mormon Stories podcast. We're going to be talking in a bit about the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast that you can find@mormonfaithcrisis.com we'll be talking about that in a second. That's been around for years, but now what we've been doing is bringing on Margi, who, by the way, she receives no compensation for her appearance.

John Dehlin [00:13:47] She. Well, what I should say, yeah, we don't pay her for her appearances. And, and we'll talk a little bit more about the compensation of Margi and Natasha in a second. But we bring Margi on and Natasha on to provide Mormon Stories podcast episodes that are focused on healing and growth.

John Dehlin [00:14:07] And we're really proud to be doing that. And, you know, we like episodes focused on healing and growth to balance out the episodes on deconstruction, on, you know, spotlighting problems with the Mormon Church and its leadership and, you know, all the difficult stories that sometimes can be taxing. So we want to focus as much on light and truth and healing and growth and thriving as we do on some of the more difficult stuff. So I am, I'm super proud for that, for that effort. If you want to support that effort, you can go to mormonfaithcrisis.com and click on the donate button and I'll explain how those donations work.

John Dehlin [00:14:49] And I'm also super proud to have partnered with Clint and Jenny Martin and Lisa Hacking and Natasha Helfer and others to relaunch the Thrive initiative. So a couple years ago, we realized that that Post Mormons had no annual conference. The Mormon Church had two semiannual general conferences. Post Mormons had no conference. The Ex Mormon foundation shut its doors years ago. They used to have an annual Ex Mormon conference that got stopped. And my friend Clint Martin and I and his wife Jenny and others just said, hey, what if there was a positive conference called Thrive that was literally just dedicated to healing and growth of progressive and post Mormons where there was no profit motive, no one was trying to make any money.

John Dehlin [00:15:38] And all we were trying to do is just help, you know, progressive and post Mormons know they're not alone. Find community and heal and grow. That's what Thrive was. We launched that a couple years ago. It was wildly successful.

John Dehlin [00:15:50] We actually had a 2019 Thrive event in the Salt palace that had over 1,700 attendees. As far as I know, it's the largest single one day ex Mormon event in the history of the world ever. But when, when Covid happened, we thought, you know, we wondered if Thrive was going to be able to survive. But because of the amazing efforts of Clint, Jenny Martin and and Lisa Hacking and other, we did a Thrive Day for women a few months ago. I think it was in October and it had over 800 women in attendance. It was super successful. We learned a lot from that event. Lisa Hacking and Jenny, mostly Lisa Hacking led that event.

John Dehlin [00:16:31] Jenny Martin and others helped. It was a great event, super proud of it. And then just a few weeks ago, we held the second Thrive Day for 2021 at the Salt Palace. Again, we had over 1500 in attendance and it was a super successful event. So many people were happy, so many people found it valuable. And we've had so many Thrive communities popping up.

John Dehlin [00:16:55] Thrive communities in Arizona, in Idaho, in California, in Utah. And these are just communities that are free and they're available to help progressive and post Mormons find friends, find support, find community, figure out that they're not alone and get hope and get the support that they need to live their best lives.

John Dehlin [00:17:19] If you want to find a Thrive community near you or start one of your own, if there's not one in your local area, you can go to thrivebeyondreligion.com and you can create or join a community there. And then finally, the last thing I'm super proud of for Mormon Stories podcast and the Open Stories foundation is that we have a super solid board of directors. We work really well together. That's me, Clint Martin and Jenny.

John Dehlin [00:17:48] Sorry, Clint Martin and Kerry Whitbeck. And the financials are better than ever for the Oba Stories Foundation. We have no debt, we have cash reserves in the bank, and we're slowly figuring out smart ways to invest your donations in making our product better and helping it reach more people. So Gerardo Simono is a part of that. Carah Burrell's part of that. Brooklyn Alden does our Editing and we're finding more and more ways. We're going to be actually announcing a new position soon that we want to hire for.

John Dehlin [00:18:23] So stay tuned if you're interested in working for me in the Open Stories foundation and Mormon Stories, we'll be making announcement about that. Anyway, amazing, amazing year. And we couldn't do it without our donors. So thanks to everyone for that.

Background on the Tribune Inquiry and Thrive Finances

John Dehlin [00:18:40] All right, so why, you know, what was the impetus to this episode? Let me go and begin recently, right before Thanksgiving. And it's a little bit, Margi noticed recently, it's a little bit weird that, that these smears and these attacks often come right around Christmas time. And if you look over our lives in the past several years, there always are Mormon stories and John de Lynn smears come that emerge at Christmas time. So it's become part of the Christmas experience for me and Margi and for my family. But basically, a journalist named Tony Simmerad reached out to me right before Thanksgiving and said, hey, John, I'm a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune and I'm hoping to get in touch with you about a story.

John Dehlin [00:19:34] And basically, you know, he said it was about Thrive and the Oba Stories foundation and the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast. Originally, I was super excited about that coverage because I thought, wow, Thrive and Mormon Stories and the Over Stories foundation is absolutely newsworthy. So it's, it's, I'm happy to see the Salt Lake Tribune finally giving us some love and some coverage.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] But when Tony mentioned to me that Peggy Foetzer Stack was cooperating with him on the story, I was concerned. Not because I don't think Peggy is a great reporter. Peggy is in many ways a legendary reporter. And I'm just going to, I, I created a new slide dedicated to respect and honoring Peggy. So P. Peggy Fletcher Stack, if you don't know who that is, she is a legend in Mormonism and in Mormon journalism. She is one of the co founders of Sunstone. And Sunstone is an essential organ, was and is an essential organization for the progressive and post Mormon community. And Peggy is one of the co founders of it.

John Dehlin [00:20:41] She then moved on to become a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune. And I would, I would argue that Peggy Fetcher Stack possibly has done more than almost anyone on the planet to do solid Mormon journalism and to honestly, candidly hold the LDS Church of the Mormon Church accountable and to shine a spotlight on them when they do misdeeds.

John Dehlin [00:21:03] Peggy is often attacked by those in the fundamentalist Mormon crowd as an enemy of the church. So she does not have an easy job. And I would just. I want to say at the outset that Peggy deserves love and respect and support.

John Dehlin [00:21:21] So that's my, that's my stance on Peggy overall. Please love and respect Peggy. She's a legend and she is amazing. Now, I, I also have some personal opinions about Peggy as it relates specifically to ex Mormons and the ex Mormon community that I'm going to share. And part of this experience is from my time with her as a friend. I've been in her home. I've been invited to, you know, at least one gathering in her home. And, and she used to call. But when I was an active, faithful Mormon, she used to regularly consult me on stories.

John Dehlin [00:22:04] And so, you know, we used to talk a lot. So kind of what I learned from Peggy as a friend of hers and as someone who talked to her regularly is that Peggy tends to not like this. Some ex Mormons, I'll say.

John Dehlin [00:22:27] And I believe my experience in talking to her is because. Because she is a loyal, as I understand, a temple recommend holding liberal, faithful and tribal LDS Church member, much like Richard and Claudia Bushman, much like Patrick Mason, much like Terrell and Fiona Givens.

John Dehlin [00:22:45] She. She is faithful and loyal to the Mormon Church. I believe if you look at her journalism over the past several years, you will see that she has worked super hard to cover stories that cater to the progressive, liberal, but faithful Mormon crowd. And just go back and look at her stories and tell me if you think that's true or not. That's my impression.

John Dehlin [00:23:11] As I said in the previous slide, I believe that Peggy is a legend in terms of being willing to hold the Mormon Church accountable. But I believe that her. That there are limits, as there probably should be. There are limits to this. I also believe that Peggy is protective at times. I can think of one story in particular where I was speaking with Marlon Jensen, the former church historian, when he traveled to Oakland and apologized personally, as you know, as I understood it, a sitting general authority and a church historian, he apologized to the LGBTQ community in the Bay Area for the way the Mormon Church has hurt them.

John Dehlin [00:23:51] And. And when Peggy found out about that story, Marlon Jensen was going to. Peggy was going to report that story. What I remember Marlon telling me is he asked Peggy Fletcher Stack to sit on that story. And she did sit. She did grant his wishes, and she sat on that story for a long, long time, many months, at the request of a church leader, because I think Marlon Jensen was worried that he would get in trouble with Boyd K. Packer, which he eventually did. And some say that cost him an apostleship, you know, at church headquarters. Now, this is my memory. This is what I remember Marlon Jensen reporting to me.

John Dehlin [00:24:33] And I'm only telling the story as a way to communicate that sometimes I think Peggy has her limits and her loyalties sometimes are, are more with faithful church membership or with her allegiances to the church than sometimes being, being an objective, unbiased journalist.

John Dehlin [00:24:58] Also, in my private conversations with Becky, with, with, with Peggy, I personally remember her expressing sort of distaste for Mormons and ex Mormons that are, let's just say, overly concerned with Mormon church truth claims. My impression that I got from Peggy in my personal interactions with her was that she viewed a concern with Mormon church truth claims as somewhat pedestrian or unsophisticated.

John Dehlin [00:25:31] My sense from her is that she viewed progressive, liberal, tribal Mormons as sort of the highest form of Mormonism. Where you view the church, you know, the view the church stories as myth, you view the church scriptures as mythical, as, you know, having moral value, but it's sort of unsophisticated and pedestrian to expect, you know, Mormon church scripture to be historical or true. And in that light, she, in my view, has always and often disliked or grown, let's just say grown to dislike outspoken ex Mormon critics like me. I eventually became, you know, once the church excommunicated me, I became an outspoken ex Mormon critic.

John Dehlin [00:26:20] I was before to some extent, but somehow she was okay with me then when I was still in the tribe and faithful. But others like Simon Southerton or Tom Phillips or Grant Palmer, Bill real Radio Free Mormon. She tends to dislike and, or ignore ex Mormon critics who talk about truth claims, which is totally her prerogative. You know, she gets to choose what she covers as a journalist, you know, but, you know, know that's a bias that I, in my experience, I've seen Peggy have, and she has genuine, I would say Peggy to me, has shown very little genuine sympathy for the plight of disaffected Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:27:02] I think it's Peggy's bias that people shouldn't leave the Mormon Church, that they should stay in it, that they should view it in less literal, more mythical framings like Terrell and Fiona Givens and Patrick Mason and others, that they shouldn't focus on the problems with the church and that they can stay in the church and, and help it succeed. And honestly, I can't falter. I did that. I stayed in the Mormon Church 13 years, 14 years after I stopped believing. And I was an advocate for staying in the church and making it work and fighting for progressive causes in the church. It's a viable, tenable position.

John Dehlin [00:27:38] And on Mormon stories, we even cover people like that. We recently did an episode, a very, you know, popular episode with Jonathan Westover and others who take this approach. So I'm not criticizing it. It's a valid approach. But my impression is, is that Peggy has very little sympathy, genuine sympathy for the divorces, the, the depression, the anxiety, the family stress, and even the suicidality of people that, that have a faith crisis. I think Peggy's view is you should just stay in the church and, and improve it from. From within and, and not leave the church. So all of that, you know, is sort of my impression of Peggy.

John Dehlin [00:28:19] All of those things, you know, give me pause to collaborate with Peggy. But the probably the biggest thing that, you know, gives me pause to collaborate in, in good faith with Peggy was her treatment of me was when I found out that I was going to be excommunicated from the Mormon Church. So if we go back about seven years to 2014, Kate Kelly and I received letters from the Mormon Church within a week of each other that we were going to be excommunicated. And we put two and two together, reached out to each other and decided that we felt like it was likely that the Mormon Church was going to be initiating a purge, much like September, the September 1993 where it was purging intellectuals and scholars.

John Dehlin [00:29:18] Back in September 1993, we felt like a purge, another purge was on again. And so we talked about who should we, you know, we think it's pressworthy. Who should we come out to in the press? And we called a dear friend at the time, Greg Prince. He's kind of like a godfather of progressive Mormonism, a great historian and scholar and a dear friend. And we asked Greg Prince who he thought we should break the story with, and he said, do not break it with the Salt Lake Tribune.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] You know, it's a local paper, it's not really international. And you know, you'll get, you know, you'll get way more coverage through the New York Times. It's an international, super well respected paper. And sometimes papers like the Trib are less likely to cover a story if it's already been covered by another outlet. So we agreed. I was already friends with Lori Goodstein, the religion beat writer at the time for the New York Times. And we took our story to Lori Goodstein and the New York Times, and it, it turns out to have been an amazing decision.

John Dehlin [00:30:26] I think, I think the New York Times did two or Three stories on my excommunication alone. They published an entire transcript of, of one of my interviews with my stake president, Brian King. You can still Google that and, and read the transcript of, of the recording that I made of, of why I was being excommunicated and what, what it was like to work with my stake president at the time.

John Dehlin [00:30:49] And Kate Kelly got amazing coverage. Her excommunication for her work with ordained women was global news. And I think it was a super wise decision to choose Lori Goodstein, the New York Times. And Peggy was furious. And I remember a specific phone call I had with Peggy. I was in graduate schools in the final year of my PhD program, Super stressed. I had no support, very little support in trying to manage this excommunication and the PR and the, you know, all the dealings with the excommunication and my stake president and my family. It was just a dark and hard time. And I remember Peggy Fletcher stacked, literally yelling at me on the phone, being furious that we would go, that Kate and I would go to New York, the New York Times and, and Lori Goodstein and not her to break the story.

John Dehlin [00:31:43] And she invoked, you know, the fact that she had covered us in various stories before. And, you know, that's my memory of what happened. And I felt like, you know, that ruined our relationship and within, you know, you know, a short amount of time, Peggy Fletcher Stack comes out with this article. And I think it was the very same month of my excommunication entitled, and this is the headline of the Salt Lake Tribune article, Mormon Facing Excommunication makes his living off his podcast. Can you imagine? Like, you know, mormon journalist Peggy Fletcher Stack makes a living off of being a journalist. You know, Red Cross CEO makes a living off of being a nonprofit CEO.

John Dehlin [00:32:31] Like, you know, it just felt like an absurd article that was. And actually, if you go read the article, she. She lists my salary and compensation in the article. And, you know, there are some who think I'm making too much of that, or they felt like I made too much of that story at the time. That, that's fine. It may be true. But at the time, I felt like Peggy was trying to shame me and was trying to kind of like, use her position with the newspaper as a way to push a vendetta, you know, because I, I now had become a critic of the church.

John Dehlin [00:33:11] Now the church is excommunicating me. And I had broken the story with Lori Goodstein, the New York Times. Now, I may or may not, you know, have Peggy write about that, but that's how I felt at the time. And to be honest, Peggy and I have not had a positive working relationship since.

John Dehlin [00:33:30] She pretty much stopped ever using me as a source. Of course I wrote a response to that article and criticized her and all that may be a reason. But you know, Peggy tends to never, you know, to rarely if ever, you know, get ex Mormons or certainly ex Mormon critics as sources for her newspaper articles. She tends to favor, you know, faithful progressive Mormons and Mormon, faithful Mormon scholars. And that's her right, and that's a prerogative. But that's, I think it's a bias and I think it does not serve the broader Mormon and ex Mormon communities and the broader world. I do not think it serves them well.

John Dehlin [00:34:10] And I'll talk about that later. And I just want to also just note, you know what I think Peggy was playing into when she wrote that article and when she tried to shame me by publishing my, my salary publicly, I think she was playing into what I think is the brilliance of the, the Mormon Church and its conditioning around Priestcraft. And I, I'm just gonna admit that I, I borrowed this idea from John Larsen because I, I heard him mention it once in a Sunstone presentation he gave. But I just want to note the irony that the Mormon Church is literally a trillion dollar organization.

John Dehlin [00:34:48] They make, they bring in probably $10 billion a year in, in tithing alone. They have hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and in assets. They are either a trillion dollar organization or they will be soon. We all know about the Ensign Peak case. And you know the fact that forever the Church has been hiding the fact that it's has $150 billion in stocks and bonds and real estate and cash. That it does, you know, only has done two things with it that we know of to date. Bailed out a failed insurance company and subsidized a commercial luxury commercial shopping mall called City Creek. We know of no charitable efforts that that City Creek and I'm sorry that that Ensign Peak is invested in.

John Dehlin [00:35:45] But, but isn't it brilliant that the Mormon Church can be a multi billion, multi hundreds of billions or trillion dollar corporation that, that makes all this money and they have conditioned not only Mormons but, but post Mormons and liberal Mormons and ex Mormons to attack and shame other people who earn a living or try to earn a living cleaning up the messes that the Mormon Church makes? I think it's brilliant. I'm sad that Peggy plays into it. I'm sad that the Sully Tribune allows Peggy to play into it.

John Dehlin [00:36:21] But that, but that's where we are. And I just wanted to call that out, you know, I guess I'll say good job, Mormon Church, for pulling that one over all of our eyes. I think it's brilliant. So when Tony Semirad, who also I think is a. Is a fine journalist in his own right, he's covered, you know, the James Huntsman lawsuit against the church, the fraud lawsuit that my friend James Huntsman is engaging in with the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [00:36:51] He's covered, you know, the ensign peak stuff. I think Tony Simmerad is a fine, respectable journalist, as far as I know. But when Tony reached out to me and mentioned Peggy Fletcher Stack, her involvement, I was worried, given all this history and my perception of Peggy's biases against ex Mormons. And so, and so I, I asked Tony to share with me a list of questions in writing that he wanted us to cover.

John Dehlin [00:37:22] And sure enough, my instincts were spot on. There were zero, you know, zero questions about the amazing Thrive event, the Thrive community, all the people that it's helped, its growth, its success, the 1500 people that are at the Salt palace, all the people whose lives are changed, the relationships that were made, zero questions about that. And the questions, and if you, you know, I've got a screenshot here literally of his text. To me, you know, it was all about sort of like digging into or trying to create the impressions of financial impropriety.

John Dehlin [00:38:05] So it was questions about, like, what's the relationship between Open Stories foundation and Thrive, the gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast, and, you know, Thrive in the Open Stories Foundation. You know, is Thrive a for profit or a non profit? How many people attended the event, what was charged by the event? And then he mentioned a couple other, you know, he mentioned my life, my. My now retired Faith.

John Dehlin [00:38:33] Faith Crisis coaching business that he didn't know had been retired. I've gone on sabbatical with my coaching practice. He asked about that. He asked about my wife Margi's faith crisis coaching practice and Natasha Helfer's therapy and coaching practice. You know, I believe trying to snoop around allegations of or to create the perceptions of some sort of conflict of interest or impropriety, you know, and, you know, and those were the only questions that he asked. And so that is what made me, you know, feel like I didn't want to cooperate directly with his stories. And the fact that in my opinion, in my experience, Peggy Foots are stacked with ex Mormons, specific, particularly in ex Mormon critics, has the tendency to misquote or recontextualize statements in a way that put.

John Dehlin [00:39:32] Put ex Mormon critics in a bad light and that, you know, are more protective of the church and believing members. So I, that, you know, so what I decided to do again, you know, I was just disappointed at zero questions around, you know, positive questions around Thrive.

John Dehlin [00:39:52] And so what I decided to do was to use our long standing tradition of transparency here with Mormon Stories and the Yoba Stories foundation to answer Tony and Peggy's questions publicly because we have nothing to hide. You know, of all the reasons I was sad or disappointed about the Salt Lake Tribune, zero of them were because I felt like we had anything to hide or that we've done anything wrong. I love and welcome transparency. We ask church to be transparent, and we're thrilled and honored to be transparent. And I think you'll see in this presentation where we reach a level of transparency that I don't think the other nonprofits do.

John Dehlin [00:40:35] Yeah. And so that's what, that's what we're going to do now. I'm going to share with you their questions to me and I'm going to share with you the financial information that they were seeking. And then you and my listeners and my donors and the world and the Salt Lake Tribune can know the answers to these questions. So the first question was, what is the relationship between Mormon Stories, the Open Stories foundation, and Thrive?

John Dehlin [00:41:03] So they also asked, is Thrive a for profit or a nonprofit? And what I feel like they're snooping around at is they're trying to create some sort of perception around some secret scheme of, you know, for me or for Thrive to profit off of post Mormon pain and suffering or some type of un.

John Dehlin [00:41:26] Inappropriate conflict of interest. Interest between Mormon Stories, Podcast, the Open Stories foundation, and Thrive. So here's the answer. The Thrive foundation is a 501c3 nonprofit. It was, it was accepted as a 501c3 nonprofit this year. Actually, it is a complete and total money loser. And ironically, it's a complete and total money loser by design.

John Dehlin [00:41:53] It is underwritten by the generosity of my two dear friends, Clint and Jenny Martin. And if anything, Clint and Jenny have wanted every single Thrive event to be free. And they've wanted to pay for all the expenses for all the events and all the expenses that we've had so far.

John Dehlin [00:42:16] But what, what, what we've done for the Thrive events. But basically partly out of my arguing, because of my experience with non profits in the. And knowing the importance of sustainability with non profits, I basically said, look, Clinton, Jenny, if you guys just pay for Every Thrive event, if you guys go away, Thrive dies. So. And plus, people tend to value what they pay for. So I prevailed eventually over Clinton, Jenny, and they, they're willing to charge a small fee for Thrive events that literally don't cover the expense of the events. To give you an example, they held Thrive for Women in October and that event lost $10,000.

John Dehlin [00:42:58] So you subtract all the expenses from the revenue. Clint And Jenny paid $10,000 to underwrite that event out of their own pockets. And the same thing happened with Thrive Day 2021. They charged $25 per person, per ticket. We rented out the Salt palace and really expensive AV equipment and Thrive Day 2021 lost almost $20,000.

John Dehlin [00:43:26] So Thrive is a money loser. It's not a for profit. And I'm hearing some of you say, hey, prove it. Prove it. John, these are just words. Prove it. So, so here is the, here's the transparency I promised you. This is a reporting of Clint's most recent financial reporting for the Thrive Day 2021 event. These are the. The financials. And, and here it is. 1451 tickets were sold at $25 a piece, which is $36,275 in revenue.

John Dehlin [00:44:10] Clint accounted for $250 in vendor booths. That was raised donation of $350 at the time of this reporting. I think there have been a little bit of donations, maybe 5,000 in donations since the. That did not get included in this report.

John Dehlin [00:44:29] I saw that report get responded to that donation get made and responded to. And Clint promised my friend who made the donation that the $5,000 donated would go to the next set of events. So it's not included here because this was a snapshot of the donations at the time.

John Dehlin [00:44:51] $36,000, $36,875 in total revenue for Thrive Day 2021. And. And then the Salt palace cost 11,450 to rent the Encore. The company that does the audio visual. Our latest reporting, because I don't think there's a final bill. Our latest reporting for Encore for the audio visual was $17,518.93. $20,900 were paid to presenters because each presenter received, I believe $1,000.

John Dehlin [00:45:26] And also there was airfare and, and hotel and expenses for some of the presenters. You know, we flew in Amber School. Sorry. We flew in Sarah Edmondson and Nippy Ames, Ex Nexium cult survivors. They brought down, they helped bring down Keith Ranieri and the Nexium cult. We flew them here. We Put them up in a hotel. We paid Lance Allred, a professional speaker. We paid him a discounted professional speaker fee and then we paid a lot of the other Thrive speakers a thousand bucks. We, you know, we flew our afraid of free Mormon here, paid him. We brought bill real down. Anyway, that's what was paid for presenters, $20,900.

John Dehlin [00:46:11] There was almost $7,000 in ads, design and printing which came out to total cost of $56,816.99, showing a loss of $19,941.99 at the Thrive event. At the very opening, I actually announced that this event was operated at a loss. I think I told the event attendees at the time that the loss would be as high as $35,000.

John Dehlin [00:46:47] That was based on estimates before we knew how many final people register. It was based on, based on old data. But it was my best understanding at the time. So it wasn't $35,000. It was, you know, close to $20,000. And even if you take the $5,000 in donations that came after, if, even if you take that out, it's still about 14 or $15,000 loss that Clint and Jenny Martin paid.

John Dehlin [00:47:14] So that's how you know, that's our transparency. I hope you value that level of transparency and I hope that answers the questions from the Salt Lake Tribune. I do think it's fair to ask, is this level of transparency newsworthy? When you think about the 8, 9, $10 billion a year that the Mormon Church brings in, it literally lobbies the federal government and the Utah state legislature to prevent any financial disclosure at all so the Mormon Church does not have to report a dime to anyone ever.

John Dehlin [00:47:54] You know, is this level of transparency newsworthy? Should. Could you imagine a Salt Lake Tribune story that says, you know, post Mormon nonprofit shows unlev unheard of levels of transparency in its, in its non profit efforts. You know, I, I would love to see, you know, maybe there's an article like that that could be shared. All right, so the next question, I think that was, you know, that, that cynics or critics are going to ask is. All right, John. Well, there were speaker fees paid. Did you, John, lug home a hefty speaker fee or any compensation from your efforts at Thrive?

John Dehlin [00:48:32] And my answer is no. My total compensation for my planning and strategizing and organizing and participation in Thrive day is $0.00. I received nothing. No cash payments, no behind the scenes payments, no payments, nothing. Not even any donations to the Open Stories foundation that I'm aware of. Although, you know, if that were to happen, I could see it being reasonable that Thrive would pay a marketing fee to the Open Stories foundation to help market its events. I don't think that even happened this time around. But. But to just be very clear and explicit, I made $0 basically for my efforts in Thrive Day. And if you don't believe me, here is a screenshot of an actual text that I received From Clint.

John Dehlin [00:49:31] Monday, November 15th at 8:50am Long before I had any idea that the Salt Lake Tribune was going to potentially do a hit piece on me and on Thrive. And let me just read to you what the text says. Wow. We did it. This is from Clint. Wow, we did it. What an epic event. Thanks for your love and support and amazing marketing and powerful communication skills. This event will totally change lives in ways we will never fully understand. It's truly an honor to be involved in such important work. I love and appreciate you, John. We totally rocked it this weekend. Also, I want to pay you the same thousand dollars that we are paying to other speakers.

John Dehlin [00:50:11] And again, this is still on my iPhone. Clint still has these live texts on his iPhone. If any of you want to see the actual evidence, we were happy to provide it. My response was, love, and thanks to you too, brother Clint. And if it's okay, there's a typo there. If it's okay, I'd like to forego my fee since the event didn't break even that. Okay. But dude, super generous. Thank you. This will be my modest contribution to the $35,000 overage. Because I thought it was $35,000. Arg. And then Clint says, okay, sounds good. I will compile final numbers and see how it all came out.

John Dehlin [00:50:52] But whatever the cost, it was worth it. And that's the type of person people that Clinton, Jenny Martin are. They will pay tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, to provide progressive and post Mormons with healing and growth and support.

John Dehlin [00:51:08] So that's the answer to that question. So the next question from Peggy and the Salt Lake Tribune. What is the relationship between Mormon Stories, the Open Stories foundation and Thrive? The. The answer is this. And we actually consulted with our. You know, we. I've hired the best nonprofit attorney in the United in. In. In Utah that I'm aware of. Not because I'm trying to do any shenanigans, not because I'm trying to cover up any bad work or the board. Because. Because I want to make sure I know the level of scrutiny is super high on Mormon Stories and the Open Stories Foundation. I've known it for years, and I want to make sure we do our best to never cross any inappropriate lines.

Open Stories Foundation Structure and Legal Basis

John Dehlin [00:51:53] So I asked our nonprofit attorney if it's okay, and we have his confirmation that there's nothing wrong with two nonprofits that share the same mission supporting each other. So that's my answer. The Open Stories foundation and the Thrive foundation are two nonprofits who share the same mission, who are supporting each other. There is overlap in the board of directors. Clint Martin is on the Open Stories foundation board, along with me and my dear friend Kerry Whitbeck. And then the Thrive board has Jenny Martin, Clint Martin, Lisa Hacking, Natasha Helfer, and myself.

John Dehlin [00:52:35] You know, for how many years did the Mormon Church have apostles and general authorities sitting on commercial corporate boards, let alone nonprofit boards? I even think that general authorities or former Mormon general authorities sat on the board of Evergreen, which. Which was a. Which was an organization that encouraged LGBTQ Mormons to engage in reparative therapy and conversion therapy and even electroshock therapy. So, like, it's rich that, you know, nonprofit board involvement is being called into question in terms of its ethics when the Mormon Church has this long history of shady involvement with both corporate and nonprofit boards. But, you know, that's what the solid Tribune is wanting to cover, and so they're covering it.

John Dehlin [00:53:20] But that's the relationship between Mormon Stories Podcast, the Open Stories foundation, and Thrive. And so that might, you know, you know, ask some of you to wonder, you know, why create a separate 501C3 nonprofit for Thrive? Why not just do everything under Mormon Stories Podcast and the Open Stories Foundation? And so these are the reasons why we decided to create a 501C3 for thrive separate from Mormon Stories and the Overstories Foundation. Number one, we wanted Thrive to be primarily women led. And if you'll notice, in our board of directors, there are more women than men. How would it be if the Mormon Church or even the Salt Lake Tribune, maybe it does.

John Dehlin [00:54:08] I haven't checked their board of directors, but what if more corporate and nonprofit and religious entities had more women than men on the leadership team? That's what we. That's the first thing we wanted to do with Thrive and the. And, yeah, with the Thrive Foundation.

John Dehlin [00:54:28] Secondly, I don't have time to manage Thrive, so I didn't want to be responsible for it. I was happy to lend my marketing, you know, abilities, my communication abilities, and my strategy, but I didn't have time to manage it. Also, it's just no secret that I am constantly being fair gamed or smeared by the Mormon church and its critics and, and ex Mormons. And so we did not want Thrive to be bogged down in the, you know, smears that accompany me being the church's top critic. Because, you know, if you talk to Leah Remini or Mike Rinder of Scientology, you know, Lloyd Evans or Chris Shelton, you know, the Jehovah's Witness, ex Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, ex Mooney's, Steve Hassan of the ex, you know, Mooney movement, doesn't matter.

John Dehlin [00:55:22] If you are a critic of a, if you are, you know, critic of a cult or a high demand religion, you're going to get smeared and the church is going to find ways, either overtly or indirectly, to smear you. And I did not, we did not want Thrive to be taken down in all those smears. Having said that, they insisted that I be on the board and that I participate. Participate. I've offered my resignation several times before and after this newspaper event and so far they have. They continue to refuse my resignation.

John Dehlin [00:55:55] Ironically, if I. No, I'll forget it. So anyway, that's why, that's another reason why we want to Thrive to be independent. And then finally, the truth is that the day to day duties of thrive are 99% Clint and Jenny Martin, you know, with really significant assists from Lisa Hacking, who helped lead up Thrive for Women.

John Dehlin [00:56:17] But Natasha and I play very backup roles because we're so busy. So those are all the reasons why Thrive is its own nonprofit and is independent. So the next question is why is there a relationship between Mormon Stories or, sorry, what is the relationship between Mormon Stories, the Over Stories foundation, and the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast? I am so thrilled that they asked this question because the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast has deserves much more attention and support than it is than it is currently receiving. So thank you, Salt Lake Tribune, for giving me an opportunity to highlight this important podcast.

Origins of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast

John Dehlin [00:57:03] So. So once upon a time, you know, I started. So I, I'll give you a little background because the Sally Tribune wanted some background. When I started Mormon Stories podcast back in 2015, immediately I was inundated with inquiries of people, you know, who were worried about divorce, they were worried about the destruction of their families. They were experiencing anxiety and depression, eating disorders, quote, addictions, and even suicidality because of either the church's treatment of LGBT people or the church's treatment of intellectuals or people who doubted or questioned and, or lost their faith in the church.

John Dehlin [00:57:47] So I started trying to provide support to these people because there were no experts in navigating Mormon Faith Crisis the Church has done little to nothing to support people in this realm. And there was just such a huge need and no one was stepping up to fill it. After, let's just say, three years of trying to support all these people doing it for free.

John Dehlin [00:58:12] And as I was trying to figure out what my career would be after I left Microsoft and, you know, a job where I was making over $200,000 a year with stock options with full benefits, 401k. After I had left that to try and be a support to this problem, I realized that one one way that I could be a important solution and healer in this space was to pursue a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. So I started that in 2009, nine, finished that in 2015. And as soon as I was done, I said, hey, I will resume full time job running a Mormon Stories podcast in the Open Stories Foundation.

John Dehlin [00:58:53] But there's so many people reaching out to me to get help. I will maintain a small coaching practice on the side. I don't think I ever had more than five or six clients a week at the height of my coaching practice, but I did that because there was a demand and people were always trying to help me, get me to help them save their families, save their mental health, save their lives, et cetera. So I did that for years. I also did some workshops and retreats. Most of that was done through the Open Stories Foundation. Some of that was done separately.

John Dehlin [00:59:24] I did a lot of that with my dear friend and partner, Natasha Helfer and Margi. And of course, Natasha Helfer has been working in this space since the mid, you know, mid 2000s. She does a phenomenal job with Symmetry Solutions. She has many coaches and therapists working under her. And then eventually, just a couple of years ago, my dear wife Margi, you know, the kids were growing up, she was looking for some sort of profession. She is such a wise and gentle and thoughtful and brilliant and compassionate soul. She decided to go ahead and pursue a certificate as a Faith Transitions coach and as a, you know, grieving coach and just as a coach for women mostly, but some men who are struggling in their marriage, struggling in their life, needing support, struggling with grieving or transition.

John Dehlin [01:00:14] So, you know, just like Julie Diazevedo Hanks, just like Jennifer Finlayson Fife, just like Tiffany Rowe, just like Janice Spangler, there are just like Marty Erickson, Jenny Morrow, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of psychologists and mental health professionals and coaches stepping up to clean up the carnage that is left from the way the Mormon Church damages individuals and families. And I'm super glad for it.

John Dehlin [01:00:48] But what does this have to do with the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast? One day, literally, Margi, Natasha and I were sitting around, we had more clients than we could ever serve. Our waiting lists were weeks or months out, and we said two things. We said, isn't it sad that.

John Dehlin [01:01:10] Isn't it sad that there's so much need out there for coaches and therapists and there literally aren't enough coaches and therapists to meet all the need? And then secondly, we said, isn't it sad that it's so expensive to get therapy or coaching or support for a faith crisis? I think Natasha charges 250 or 300. $350 per hour? She should. She's worth every penny of it. She's also a licensed sex therapist. Excuse me, you know, I know Jennifer Finlayson, five charges somewhere between, I think three and $400 an hour for her services.

John Dehlin [01:01:48] I think Julie D' Azevado Hanks charges three, 350. I don't know. For her coaching services, therapists charge between 150 and $250. Like, it's super expensive to get the support. So Margi, Natasha and I said, why don't we create a podcast called the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast and share as much of our coaching expertise as we can for free on the Internet so that as many people as possible could get that help.

John Dehlin [01:02:19] So that's what we did. We created a podcast@mormonfaithcrisis.com and if you go there now, there's literally over 90 hours of content. Things like, how do I come out to believing family and friends? How do I understand a faith crisis? How do I avoid a lot of the pitfalls, the ways that post Mormons or questioning Mormons ruin their own lives or family relationships? How do I avoid those pitfalls? How do I come out to my spouse? How do we come out to our children?

John Dehlin [01:02:53] How do we navigate relationships with bishops and stake presidents? How do we get over the anger? How do we process the grief of a faith crisis? 70 hours of free coaching and content. If we were out for the money, if we were selfishly, greedily, financially motivated, we would have put all of this behind a paywall, like many of the therapists and coaches I just mentioned do. We would have put it all behind a paywall and tried to charge people for giving away this expertise. We chose to give it away for free. And that's what Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis was. Now we did accept donations for it, but we gave it away for free.

John Dehlin [01:03:32] And I'm proud that we did that. And so that's, you know, that's what Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis was. In addition to giving away our coaching, Clinton and Jenny Martin literally paid us to record an entire retreat, two and a half days, over 20 hours of content, of an entire Faith Crisis retreat. They underwrote us to record the entire event and give it away for free on the Internet. So if you Google Mormon Faith Crisis Retreat, we've made that available both on Mormon Stories Podcast and on Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast. And you can watch the whole thing for free and never have to pay anything.

John Dehlin [01:04:13] That's a 2, 3, $4,000 value that we gave away for free. Why, if we were greedy, selfish people, would we be giving away all of our best advice and content for free? And literally 80 to 90% of what we share in our coaching practices and our therapy practices comes out of this content that we give away for free. Just people want personal interaction. I can't always explain it anyway, you know, that is what the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast is. I hope that answers the questions of the Tribune and I will just give a little bit more transparency Gift to the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast started out as just a private, personal thing that Natasha and Margi I wanted to do to give back to the community.

John Dehlin [01:05:06] If you, you know, I estimated that each of us took at least 200 hours for our efforts with that podcast. If you just took a round number, $200 an hour for our time, and you added all that together, you know, that's over $40,000 of value of effort that Natasha, Margi and I contributed to that podcast.

John Dehlin [01:05:30] Once we, we gave it our best shot, we put it out there for free, and it was, it was not, frankly, not being used like we thought it would, like we thought it should. We thought, how can we get more exposure to this podcast and help more people with it?

John Dehlin [01:05:47] And we decided to take it to the board of the Open Stories foundation with myself recused and say, hey, Mormon Stories Podcast Board, can we offer the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast to the Open Stories Foundation? Audience will enter into a licensing agreement with you where we'll provide it to you for free. There is no payment for the rights to distribute this podcast.

John Dehlin [01:06:17] It was given to the Open Stories foundation for free. I recused myself from the board in that decision making process, as I always do with efforts involving conflict of interest or my own salary or compensation or that of people, you know, who are in my family, like Margi and. Yeah, and what we got in exchange for that licensing agreement is that Margi and Natasha would draw a modest percentage of the revenue that was donated to the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Podcast through the Open Stories Foundation. And that is how all of our podcasts work. Natasha gets a percentage of what's generated from Mormon Mental Health Podcast.

John Dehlin [01:07:02] Please donate to that. Gina Colvin gets a. I think 75% or 80% of the donations to a thoughtful faith podcast. And then I receive a percentage of the donations made to Mormon Stories Podcast, which is also capped by my board.

John Dehlin [01:07:19] And then the remainder of the donations to Mormon Stories Podcast Fund, the Open Stories foundation, and my salary to run it as a. As the CEO. So all of that's in our financial disclosures. We've published that on the Open Source foundation website. It's been published there for years. We publish it in our 990s. None of this is secret. And I should say that I draw no direct personal compensation for my participation in Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast. The 33% of that that goes to the Open Stories foundation funds the general operations.

John Dehlin [01:07:57] But it's small money, and I'm going to show you how small that money is. And again, our nonprofit attorney approved this, and the Open Stories foundation board approved this. Margi's compensation is reported annually. It's disclosed on our 990 tax form. As far as I know, this is the 2020, 990 that I took a screenshot of. I didn't go back to check to make sure that the 2019990 reports Marty's compensation. I assume it does. If it doesn't, it's not because I was hiding anything. It's literally would be an error on the part of our.

John Dehlin [01:08:32] Of our accountants or our finance committee or whatever. But there it is, the public disclosure of Margi's compensation. And I went ahead and calculated what Margi and Natasha are making off of this generous contribution to the world and. And its relationship with the Open Stories Foundation. In 2020. My best calculations were that the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis brought in $6,860 and Margi and Natasha brought in each 33%. 33% of that, averaging out to my best guess, around $200 a month for Margi and $200 a month for Natasha.

John Dehlin [01:09:12] If we were to figure out how many months it would take for all of this to be recouped, I calculated that it would take like 200 months. Maybe I miscalculated that you math experts might tell me that it's 20 months or 100 months, I don't know. But suffice it to say that it's my perception that the people who have benefited from this podcast have benefited way more than Margi and Natasha have been compensated for.

John Dehlin [01:09:43] And I'm not even sure that's a good thing. But what I can say is that, that hundreds, if not thousands of people have reached out to us and said that the gift of the Mormon faith crisis has saved their lives, saved their marriages, kept their family intact, helped them heal, help them grow, help them find support and community.

John Dehlin [01:09:59] And so. So I'm proud of it. All right, that's that question. I hope the Salt Lake Tribune got what they needed there. Next question that was asked. Am I, John, aware of complaints filed with the IRS and the Utah Attorney General regarding both my compensation and the financial oversight of the Open Stories Foundation?

Threats Against Critics and Foundation Operations

John Dehlin [01:10:27] And before I answer that question, I want to tell you a true story. Being being a outspoken critic of a high demand religion or a cult means that I am always constantly barraged with smears and attacks and unfounded claims.

John Dehlin [01:10:47] I. I've been accused of having multiple multi million dollar homes. Not true. I have one home. We paid what I think is a modest amount for the holiday area. We have one home and you know, that's it. I drive a 2003 Honda Odyssey. It's a 18 year old minivan. That's my main form of transportation. Margi drives a Outback, Subaru Outback. And we also have a $2,000 Toyota Camry. Sorry, 2,000 year Toyota Camry that has got a couple hundred thousand miles on it. So it's a 21 year old car. So anyway, I think it's been bad how it's been unsafe, how old and decrepit our cars are and the cars that we've given our children are.

John Dehlin [01:11:36] We bought, we bought such cheap cars for our children that when they got in accidents, the airbags didn't even deploy. I am now regretting how, how long I went with substandard compensation for the Oba Stories foundation, the way that it's harmed my families. Anyway, it's rumored that Margi and I have gotten super wealthy off of the Open Stories Foundation. You know, Mormon apologists that are literally funded by the More Good foundation that's funded by the Mormon Church have tried to smear me and others to say that we, you know, destroy families for profit.

John Dehlin [01:12:16] All sorts of, you know, sexual allegations that have no basis in truth. So I'm getting smeared all the time. So am I aware that of one person filing a claim with the IRS and with Utah that if there are financial improprieties, yes, I'm aware that this person has done this.

John Dehlin [01:12:39] Absolutely. So is the board. And I would just say that when you publicly fight a high demand religion or culture, this. This comes with the territory. Asli Remini, Mike Rinder, Chris Shelton, Lloyd Evans, you know, Steve Hassan, Sarah Edmondson, Nippy. You're gonna get smeared with false allegations when you fight occult or high demand religion. And I've actually written an article about this called on attempts to smear or being fair gamed. That's Scientology's term for the way cults and high demand religions smear its critics, both directly and indirectly through nonprofits and through shadow money.

John Dehlin [01:13:19] And all I can say is that this is the way smear campaigns and fair gaming work. If you can create enough negative associations in people's minds over time. Whisper campaigns. Oh, Bob. There are allegations of financial impropriety with Bob and his nonprofit. There are allegations of Bob getting wealthy off of, you know, his nonprofit. There are allegations of sexual impropriety with Bob and his nonprofit. If you can constantly, year after year, drudge up negative associations, even if there's no validity to the claims, what many, many people do is they say, well, whether smoke, there's fire, and they'll keep their distance or withdraw their support or remove their support just to keep it on the safe side or to, you know, to avoid any negative associations, if not outright join the attacks.

John Dehlin [01:14:19] Which is what many, unfortunately, what many ex Mormons have done for whatever reason. Sometimes not many, but a few ex Mormons have piled on and sort of joined with the Mormon Church and its apologists to smear and attack me in the Open Stories Foundation. I'm not saying we're perfect. Of course we make mistakes. I make mistakes.

John Dehlin [01:14:41] But I'm not aware of there ever being any question of financial impropriety ever with the Open Stories Foundation. I've been transparent about my compensation from the beginning. You can literally read documents that we've published listing my compensation every single year since the beginning.

John Dehlin [01:15:00] No financial impropriety that I'm ever aware of with the foundation. We once had one of our contractors deposit a donation, a large donation, into their own private bank account. But I discovered that immediately. We got it resolved. We got that money refunded. But I'm aware of any financial impropriety ever in the 11 years of the Open Stories foundation that was material in any way. They're always like, oh, where's that receipt and oh, did you forget to file that one? Tax reform, that tax form kind of thing. No financial impropriety that I'm aware of.

John Dehlin [01:15:37] And again, no credible, no credibility to the allegations of sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, Zero credibility. Again, I'm not perfect. I have had to learn how to deal in this space. And I have made mistakes in my life as I've tried to work through, you know, my own traumas with leaving the Mormon Church and the impact of that on my marriage. But I'll just say it now, zero truth to any of these allegations, financial, sexual or otherwise. But if, if the Salt Lake Tribune and the Mormon Church and Mormon apologists and, you know, Mormon critics and even ex Mormon critics repeat the accusations, enough people come to start associating there being problems and starting to believe that where there's smoke, there's fire.

John Dehlin [01:16:28] So, yes, several months ago, one of these few ex Mormon critics who's tried to launch other specious and fraudulent and false allegations, unfounded allegations against me, did file a report with the Utah Attorney Attorney General and apparently with the IRS claiming financial impropriety. And I will say that in all honesty, we were eager to comply. When the Utah Attorney General reached out to us and said, not the Attorney General, but someone in his office, when their office reached out and said, we want to conduct an audit of the Open Storage Foundation, I was actually thrilled. I'm like, hey, get our finances. You know, top notch accounting firm and attorney and board.

John Dehlin [01:17:18] Let's get them our finances. There's nothing wrong. I was thrilled because I believe in transparency. I love it. And we had nothing to hide or nothing to fear. The only sliver of fear that I had honestly in my mind, was the Mormon Church controls the Utah state legislature. The Mormon Church is a theocracy. Utah is a theocracy, let's face it. And the Attorney General for the Mormon Church, Sean Reyes, not only is a faithful, devout, believing Mormon, but I have been. Personally, I've been publicly critical of Sean Reyes for his support of the Operation Underground Railroad with Tim Ballard because of reports to me, credible reports to me, by Lynn Packer and others of fraudulent activities within Operation Underground Railroad, where they claim to be supporting victims of child trafficking.

John Dehlin [01:18:12] But in reality, the money isn't being used as people think. And there are whistleblowers now leaving that organization claiming that it's engaging in fraudulent or inappropriate activities. So, yes, I was afraid that maybe the Mormon Church's influence or Sean Reyes's, you know, concern about my criticism of him could taint the audit.

John Dehlin [01:18:36] But I was pleased and thrilled to get the letter from the Utah Attorney General's office that literally stated that no wrongdoing was found and that the case was closed. So yes, Salt Lake Tribune, I'm aware of that. One complaint filed and nothing came of it. And we were thrilled to have been exonerated. I would love an article in the Salt Lake Tribune that said, you know, Mormon Stories Open Stories foundation shown to have no financial impropriety by Utah State's Attorney General's office. Maybe, maybe that article will be shown or maybe it doesn't, maybe it won't be. But that's hopefully answering that question.

John Dehlin [01:19:23] Carah's saying it still seems like caffeinated. John yes, I'm, I'm caffeinated. I, I am excited. I'm hoping that I'm a little bit less angry and a little bit more temperate and kind of measured in my feedback. Maybe I'm not. Maybe it's the same thing as yesterday. But this is my good faith attempt at being fair and balanced in what I'm doing. So another question offered by Salt Lake Tribune Tony and Peggy is will your partners in Faith Crisis coaching Natasha Helfer, Margi Delin be continuing, you know, in the meantime, what if any, will their contributions be to the activities while I'm on sabbatical? And you know, basically all I can say is Margi and Natasha will continue to appear on Mormon Stories podcast.

Faith Crisis Coaching and Team Roles Going Forward

John Dehlin [01:20:26] Natasha will continue to lead Mormon mental health podcast for the Open Stories Foundation. She'll continue to appear on Mormon Stories podcast as part of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis Thrive initiative. She will continue to draw a couple hundred bucks a month donations from the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podcast. Margi, the same thing. And they will continue their coaching practices and I can promise you if we cut them off completely, they would have wait lists into eternity and into perpetuity. They're literally volunteering their time to the Open Stories foundation now just to as a public service.

John Dehlin [01:21:06] And so that relationship will continue. I imagine they'll continue to be a part of retreats and workshops and get paid for it and I think they should. So that will be the ongoing relationship. I'll also just ask you to look at Mormon Stories and Mormon Faith Crisis website. We not only refer to Margi and Natasha, we refer to other coaches and therapists we have for a long time. We get no monetary compensation from them. Our dear friend Liz Dalton, amazing therapist Marty Erickson, Janice Spangler, Leah Young, Jenny Morrow. We charged them $0 to refer people to them. We stand by those recommendations and we are continuing, we will continue to support them.

John Dehlin [01:21:56] Maybe one last thing I want to say is this. Maybe we've done something wrong. Maybe we've crossed some sort of ethical line. Maybe, maybe Margi and Natasha's involvement or even Thrive or the Martins involvement. Maybe we've done something that is gray or a conflict of interest. Maybe we have. I'm not even saying that we've never made a mistake. What I'm saying is we've done our best to not do that. We've done our best to do everything by the book. And if we're doing anything immoral or illegal, we are eager to fix it.

John Dehlin [01:22:31] And, and we'll, we'll please email us@mormonstoriesgmail.com if you have suggestions. I also want to explicitly state, if it's not obvious and clear, I want to explicitly state what our goals are. Our goals are to alleviate suffering and alleviate unnecessary divorces, alleviate the destruction of families, alleviate anxiety and depression. For people questioning or leaving the Mormon Church, it's to alleviate as much suffering as we can to clean up the damage that the Mormon Church is doing over hiding and deceiving people about its truth claims, about its treatment of women of people of color, of LGBTQ people. We are trying to alleviate the suffering and clean up the damage and the hemorrhaging caused by the Mormon Church and its deceptive practices and its harmful practices.

John Dehlin [01:23:31] In addition to all the good that the Mormon Church has done, the Mormon Church has done a lot of good for a lot of people. We're trying to clean up the harm and the damage to get the church to be better.

John Dehlin [01:23:39] And we are trying to give progressive and post Mormons hope. Hope. Tell them that they're not crazy, that they're not alone, that there is hope for healing and growth and that they can live a happy, healthy life. Be happy, healthy parents. Find happy, healthy marriages or relationships. Be happy, healthy lgbtq, whatever it is, find their true love. You can find that after leaving a high demand religion or the Mormon Church. And I should add, there are thousands and thousands of listeners now to Mormon Stories podcast that are ex orthodox Jew, ex Muslim, ex Catholic, ex evangelical Christian, ex Scientologist, ex Jehovah's Witness, you know, ex Christian.

John Dehlin [01:24:27] Like we're not just serving Mormons and ex Mormons, we're serving the world and we're proud of it. So that you know Peggy or you know Salt Lake Tribune reporters, Tony, will you please state that as our explicit goal, because that is what we're doing. And that's what we're trying to do. And I would love that to be included in whatever article you release.

John Dehlin [01:24:54] And I will also state that we do not do this for the money. Clint and Jenny definitely don't do this for the money because they've only lost tens of thousands of dollars. But even Margi and Natasha and I and others, we don't do this for the money. I could have made so much more money working for Microsoft. I had a great job there, great retirement, stock options, over $200,000 a year.

John Dehlin [01:25:21] I'd probably be worth five to $10 million right now if I had stayed at Microsoft, given what its stock has done and what my career trajectory would have been. We don't do this for the money. I didn't leave my job and go 10 years without a reasonable salary, benefits, retirement without health care for my children. We did not. A family. We did in many of those years. We did not do this for the money. Margi and I didn't make these sacrifices for the money. We did this to help people. But I knew that at some point I needed a salary and compensation that was comparable to my market value to be able to continue it.

John Dehlin [01:26:04] So we need money. We need financial support to do this. And honestly, the moment the financial support dries up, we will go on to do other things. But let me also state another thing. Very explicitly. Oftentimes, critics, ex Mormon critics, apologists in the Mormon Church, you know, they want to criticize me for the current salary, the current health insurance, the current, you know, compensation that I get.

John Dehlin [01:26:36] I want to say very, very explicitly that the money that I receive, even now, as generous as the don, my donors, and the Open Stories foundation board are, with my compensation, the money is not worth the stress and the slander. To be. To be called publicly greedy, to be called a sexual predator publicly, to be accused of financial improprieties, to have my wife and children dragged into those types of smears and allegations, to walk around and to be intimidated where people try and dox you, where they come to your workplace, take pictures of your office and post them publicly on the Internet, or to dox your home, to post pictures of your home, to intimidate and threat and dox you.

John Dehlin [01:27:37] The death threats that have been made, where Mormon apologists have, you know, shown pictures of me, my face with a knife or my face with the gun, or a video of people bashing my head in and sharing those publicly, and then having my kids and my spouse see it. Not to mention the years that my wife and me and my marriage and my kids went without health insurance, without therapy, without basic medical care, without retirement. It is not worth it. It is not worth the money.

John Dehlin [01:28:13] If I wanted to get rich, I would have stayed in high tech. I would have stayed with mit, I would have stayed with Microsoft, I would have started my own thing and I'd be retired and wealthy right now. It's not worth it. It's just not.

John Dehlin [01:28:27] The money makes it possible, doesn't make it worth it. I should also say that I do think that another thing about my compensation. Yes, I am getting. I am just now, over the past few years, starting to make the money that I made in 2004 when I was at the peak of my career at Microsoft at 31, 32 years old. I don't remember exactly how old I was.

John Dehlin [01:28:59] But what I'm going to say is this, that since making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year at Microsoft, I've obtained a master's, the equivalent of two master's degree and a PhD. I've worked for companies like Microsoft, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and most importantly, three different times the Open Stories foundation board, the compensation committee committee with me recused so independently went to professionals and experts and did what's called a salary search where they looked at my experience, looked at my background, looked at my qualifications, looked at my education, looked at my track record leading the Open Stories foundation, looked at the success of Mormon Stories Podcast, the podcasting, the other podcasts and my market value.

John Dehlin [01:29:57] They independently established my market value through three independent salary searches, which is what we understood to be is the best practice consulting our attorney is, is the best practice for establishing the compensation of, of a nonprofit executive director. And we've published my compensation publicly every year and either through our website or through our public 990s and I've talked about it publicly and oftentimes many years, most of the years in the existence of the Open Storage Foundation. We actually publish more financial information than was required. And you can just go to openstoragefoundation.org, click on Public Statements that we've made and you will be able to see our disclosure.

John Dehlin [01:30:44] And you can find me, find me any other nonprofit in the Mormon or ex Mormon world or in the nonprofit world that matches or exceeds our level of transparency. And there may be some out there, but I'm not aware and I'd love to see it.

John Dehlin [01:31:03] So that concludes my answers to Tony and Peggy and the Salt Lake Tribune, with the exception of answering one last question at the end of the text that they sent me, they asked, is there, are there any other points you would like to add? And I will just say, yes, there are a few other points I want to add.

John Dehlin [01:31:27] We are going to continue to do amazing events with Thrive and with me, Margi, Natasha and others through Mormon Stories, Open Stories Foundation, Thrive and even through an amazing, through an amazing organization. I think it's called Faith Transition Retreats.

John Dehlin [01:31:52] We will continue to provide workshops and retreats as long as there's demand for them. Even though we give away retreats and workshop content for free, there is this really large demand to get progressive and post Mormons together to support them in their faith crisis and transition. And we're going to continue to do those types of events. So you can go to thrivebeyondreligion.com There's a New Year's Gala, December 30th through the 31st. I'm not sure the exact date of that, but you can find out information@thrivebeyondreligion.com There is another Faith Transitions retreat in Lehigh that I will be helping out with. Maybe Margi will help out with that.

John Dehlin [01:32:35] If that event comes through, there's going to be this amazing event called Thrive Unite that I'm super proud of. At least 10 or 11 cities all throughout the country on January 22nd. So it's 2022, January 22nd, two 22s. And then we hope 22 cities are going to step up and host local Thrive events. And one of the things that I'm most proud of about the Thrive Unite experiences, I don't even have to speak at any of these events. You know, no more profits, you know, no more patriarchy. We're having people like Colette Larsen and Jesse Funk and Carah Burrell, Nuance Home, my dear colleague Alan and Katie Mount, Matt Easton, you know, others.

John Dehlin [01:33:22] I think Tiffany Rowe is speaking in Arizona. Like, we are promoting and elevating lots of different progressive and post Mormon voices. We're not down to create a new prophet, a new cult, a new patriarchy. We are trying to elevate all the healing and amazing voices. Anthony Miller, my friend Randy Bell. I love those guys. We're trying to promote lots of voices all throughout the community and we're trying to promote local community so that just progressive and post Mormons can find friends, find community and support each other.

John Dehlin [01:33:56] Sign up for a Thrive event near you. Go to thrivebeyondreligion.com there's even an event in St. George, February 11th through 13th that I'm super proud of. I should be attending that Sign up for a Thrive BeyondReligion event. Look for more events in the coming weeks, months and years.

John Dehlin [01:34:16] And I'm proud of these events and I think they're one of the most important things that we do. And sometimes these events are operated as non nonprofit and sometimes they're offer operated as for profit. Sometimes the Open Stories foundation promotes it. Sometimes I promote these events, sometimes I don't. But I believe, you know, these events are excruciating. And people like, you know, Natasha Alfred Parker, Tiffany Rhode, Julie Diazevato, Hanks, Jennifer Finlayson Fife holds these super luxurious, you know, expensive retreats. It's good, they're helping people. But if you have gotten a PhD or a sex therapy, you know, license or marriage and family license, if you've dedicated 5, 10, 20 years of your life to developing these expertises and if you're willing to spend 1, 2, 3 days at a private retreat giving personal care to people whose lives are in disarray, you deserve to get paid for it.

John Dehlin [01:35:23] And again, this is part of the twisted priestcraft culture that the Mormon Church has fostered while they rake in hundreds of billions of dollars in non transparent donations to their nonprofit. So anyway, these were not secret about these events. We're not embarrassed about them. We don't plan on stopping them and we hope you'll support them because they're among the most important things that we do. All right, so to close, I hope you guys have appreciated this presentation. We are 100% going to be under two hours, which is something I am super proud of. It's a land speed record for Mormon Stories podcast. I am going to share a few final oh and I'm going to share this lovely comment.

John Dehlin [01:36:10] Carah Burrell has been an amazing addition to our team. I absolutely agree. This blind chick talks. That's her. That's her YouTube channel. She writes. She, she donated through the super chat feature of YouTube. We're so grateful for all the people that donate to our super chats on YouTube and all the people who donate to the Open Stories foundation overall. But if you're on YouTube and you want to support us, if you don't like the Mormon Church and its surrogates smearing and attacking us and you want to see us continue and to be able to fight these smears and critiques, you can go right now to YouTube or to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button, become a monthly donor, click on the little dollar sign in the comments line of the YouTube channel and you could donate to help support me And Carah Gerardo, Brooklyn, you know, Margi, Natasha, and you know, support our nonprofit.

John Dehlin [01:37:07] We're, we're tax deductible in the US we're transparent in our finances and all of our efforts go to supporting you guys. Anyway, thanks to this blind chick and all of you who are making super chats to donate to us during this live stream.

Final Questions for the Salt Lake Tribune

John Dehlin [01:37:24] All right, so to close, I am going to, I am going to ask Peggy and Tony a few questions. And frankly, the Salt Lake Tribune, I believe that Paul Huntsman, a faithful believing Mormon, he owns and runs the Salt Lake Tribune. Now I want to see the Salt Lake Tribune continue. I don't want to see the Salt Lake Tribune become a one. I don't want to see Salt Lake become a one newspaper town owned and controlled by the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [01:37:56] And so I want to see the Salt tribute continue. And continue as an independent newspaper that isn't biased towards faithful believing Mormons. And that does represent, you know, a massive double the size audience of ex Mormons that are out there in the world and never Mormons that want to see the Salt Lake Tribune cover stories that hold the Mormon Church to increased accountability. So here are some final questions I have to Tony and Peggy. And by the way, I'll just thank the super chat that came in from Jimbo M. He writes, I think John's compensation is fair and he could be worth much more. But Carah needs to be offered a IRA with 3% match so she has retirement.

John Dehlin [01:38:47] I agree. Donate to Mormon Stories in the Oba Stories Foundation. Carah has been an amazing addition. We want to pay Carah more. I want to pay Carah more. I will be paying Carah more if she continues to do the great job that she does. And I want to bring on even more staff as well. So yes, let's pay Carah more. And your donations are going to make this possible. So I want to end by number one, if you have any questions or comments you want to make, go ahead and start posting them. I, I will do my best to answer some questions at the end, but I have some questions for the Salt Lake Tribune, for Peggy and Tony that I'm going to offer.

John Dehlin [01:39:27] So here goes. Number one, Tony and Peggy, with respect, with humility, with all of the employees of the Salt Lake Tribune, which by the way, is now a 501c3 nonprofit. What are all your sources of income personally and you know, through your nonprofit? And do you publicly disclose? Are you financially transparent at the level we are? Are you Peggy? Are you Tony? Are there others?

John Dehlin [01:39:56] It's really a rhetorical question. I'm not trying to shame them for what they make. I think they do a great job. But you know, I'm just trying to really rhetorically spotlight, you know, is there a double standard here? I think it's a fair question. Number two, you know, Peggy and Tony, why have you not shown interest in the success, the wild success of Thrive, Thrive Day 2019 with 1700 people, you know, Wayne Sermon, Amber Scora, Lacy Green, an amazing event with, you know, the largest post Mormon event in history as far as we know. And Again, Thrive Day 2021 in the Salt Palace.

John Dehlin [01:40:36] Why were you guys not interested in the positive coverage on that? In the lives that were changed, in the relationships that were forged, in the hope that was given at Thrive Day 2019, 2021? Why did you not ask us, the co founders, any positive questions about Thrive? Why did it appear as though you were so eager to find dirt and to smear both Thrive and Thrive's associations with me and to perpetuate what I know the Mormon Church loves and what I know Mormon Church apologists love? Which are these smears?

John Dehlin [01:41:12] To what degree? I think this is a fair question and some of you may not like this question, but I think it's fair. Peggy is right now and has been the main reporter for religion for the Salt Lake Tribune. And again I stated at the beginning, she's a legend. She does a fantastic, fantastic job. But as the primary reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune, to what does and as a faithful, devout, active, believing and I, I would wonder even temple recommend holding, you know, I know Peggy Fletcher Stack has made covenants to avoid evil. Speaking of, of, you know, Mormon Church leaders of what, what the Mormon Church called the Lord's Anointed, to what degree does Peggy Fletcher Stack's faithfulness and devotion to the Mormon Church and her distaste for and focus distaste for Mormon Church claims, Mormon Church truth claims and ex Mormon critics.

John Dehlin [01:42:12] To what extent does his distaste for all that, her distaste for all that, make her ineffective and unduly biased? Or when reporting on issues that concern disaffected Mormons, ex Mormons or you know, the non Mormon audience? Could Peggy and or the Tribune do a better job creating stories for the ex Mormon post Mormon community and for the non Mormon community around holding the Mormon Church more accountable? And again, does Peggy Fletcher Stack's oath to avoid criticism, you know, speaking ill of the Lord's anointed, is that affecting her ability to cover these types of stories? I think it's a fair question.

John Dehlin [01:42:56] Let's see Peggy Tony and the Salt Lake Tribune. Why are you not more interested in the compensation of Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks, Henry Eyring, Henry Eyring's son? How about all the Quorum of the twelve Apostles? How about Grant Palmer's reporting that each Mormon apostle receives a sweetheart deal of a million dollars as a signing bonus when they sign up to be an apostle to pay off all their debts, to make them church broke or committed, you know, indebted to the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [01:43:34] Why is there not more investigative journalism on that? What about all the high level executive directors at Mormon Church corporate headquarters? What about all the nonprofits that the church shadow funds like the more good foundation, like Fair Mormon? What about, you know, dark money given to many of the church's apologists to do these smear campaigns to hire women to send me pictures and videos, naked videos or pictures of themselves to try and like, catfish me into, you know, into kind of responding. I get once a week I have some fraudulent account made up, try and catfish me with a woman posing as a woman, sending me naked pictures of herself or videos.

John Dehlin [01:44:20] I share them with Margi. Every time I get them, we have a good laugh, inviting me into a, you know, a swinging group here, there, everywhere. I guarantee you that the Mormon Church, I believe they send dark money to people or organizations that try and smear me and take me down every single day.

John Dehlin [01:44:40] Why? Peggy Fletcher Stack in the Salt Lake Tribune. Are you not more interested in investigating financial impropriety on the part of the Mormon Church and, or sweetheart deals and, or the compensation packages of people associated with the Mormon Church? How much does Wendy Nielsen make, Wendy Nelson make Russell Nelson's wife? How much is Sherry Dew made over her time with Deseret Book? How much does Jeffrey R. Holland's son, Matthew Holland make as a, as a member of the first quorum of the 70? How much does Gordon B. Hinckley's son Richard get in retirement or benefits when, when the church made him a general authority right before Gordon B.

John Dehlin [01:45:20] Hinckley died so that he would have a lifetime pension and benefits if that's indeed what he received? Are these stories worth covering, worth doing more coverage of versus covering a small nonprofit that's already transparent in its finances? Why don't you do more stories like that?

John Dehlin [01:45:43] More questions for the Salt Lake Tribune. Are you aware of the thousands of instances of child and teen secular sexual abuse in the Mormon Church? We know that the Mormon Church has promised to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to settle sex abuse, you know, over 20,000 as I, as I've counted or estimated 20,000 cases of boy Scout sexual abuse in the Mormon Church by Mormon Church leaders. That does nothing to cover compensation that should be owed to all the young girls, young boys, youth, you know, teenage girls and boys and young adults that were sexually abused by Mormon bishops, by Mormon stake presidents, by Mormon mission presidents, by, you know, leaders in the Mormon church.

Tribune Coverage of Abuse and Post-Mormon Stories

John Dehlin [01:46:36] You know, almost every month we see a story come out locally where it's discovered that a Mormon bishop sexually abused a teen or a, a Mormon CES teacher, seminary teacher, institute teacher, director, sexually abused a youth, a teenager, a student.

John Dehlin [01:46:56] Peggy and Tony in the Salt Lake Tribune, could you do more stories? How many of those types of stories have you covered? Why don't you cover those types of stories more? Is that not a valuable use of your time? Could you do more?

John Dehlin [01:47:11] What about the fact that the Mormon Church's law firm, Curtin and McConkie, continues to discourage Mormon bishops from reporting sexual abuse of church members by church leaders to local police authorities? Why does the Mormon Church continue to make sure that the Utah state legislature gives an exemption so that Mormon Church bishops and legal counsel from Curtin McConkey, making sure, even counsel to sexual abuse victims that they should not report their sexual abuse to police? Why does the Mormon Church continue to do that? Why does Curtin McConkie, funded by the Mormon Church, continue to pay hush money to silence the victims of sexual abuse by church leaders, by bishops in the Mormon Church, giving them hush money so that they don't go public and encouraging them, not even tell local church members?

John Dehlin [01:48:11] Is that a story? Is that a series of. That the Salt Lake Tribune might engage in, not to take the church down just to help stop the epidemic of sexual abuse that continues to plague the Mormon Church and that has plagued the Mormon Church for decades?

John Dehlin [01:48:30] You know, and going to the faith crisis issue that I and Natasha and Carah and Margi and others have given our lives to, you know, Salt Lake Tribune, are you aware of the tens of thousands of families that have been torn apart, destroyed by the Mormon Church and its culture over issues around faith crisis, over LGBTQ issues and the like? Is there a reason you don't cover these stories more, make a monthly series until the church stops a culture that ostracizes and estranges people who lose their faith and that. That either indirectly or directly shames and, or, you know, destroys families over matters of faith crisis?

John Dehlin [01:49:16] And of course, Salt Lake Tribune. And Antonio and Peggy, are you aware that there remains an ongoing LGBTQ suicide epidemic within The Mormon Church. While people like Elder Hoax continue to call on. Sorry, elders, while apostles like Elder Holland call on apologists to pick up their muskets, while Elder Oaks continues to deny that he presided over electroshock therapy while he was president of byu, while the church, you know, gets rid of their Mormons and gays website without replacing it. And there's, you know, there's no. Has there been a story about that? There were certainly lots of stories about how progressive the Mormon Church was for launching a Mormon and gays website, even though it was decades late in doing that.

John Dehlin [01:50:03] Would it be worth it, Sally Tribune and Peggy and Tony to do a story about how the church is continuing to contribute in so many harmful ways to an ongoing LGBTQ youth suicide epidemic in Utah and in the Rocky Mountain area? Not to mention just the anxiety and the depression lately. The Mormon Church even is using its surrogates to deny that the Mormon Church is even a contributor to depression and suicidality amongst LGBTQ youth. And they're trying to say it's either the altitude or that, inexplicably, that the Mormon Church actually contributes to positive mental health for LGBTQ Mormon youth. It kind of blows my mind what the church is doing with its apologetics.

John Dehlin [01:50:59] Is this a story worth doing more? You know, is this a situation. Salt Lake Tribune, that. That deserves more coverage? I think it does. Huge thanks to Marcone29 for your super chat and to Jacob Berg for your super chat over.

John Dehlin [01:51:18] Over these stories. Okay, I'm almost done, I promise. You know, again, Salt Lake Tribune, are you aware that there are two times the number of post Mormons in the world than the number of active, faithful Mormons? In other words, there's a huge audience that looks to you to provide content and stories for questioning and doubting Mormons, for ex Mormons and for people that are looking for an independent voice, a strong, independent voice to hold the Mormon Church accountable. Are you aware of that? And is there a reason why you don't do more stories for that audience and do more stories to promote Patrick Mason? Like Taryn Givens, Fiona Givens, like Jana Reese, like, you know, Richard and Claudia Bushman.

John Dehlin [01:52:11] Like faithful, progressive, liberal Mormonism. Not default any of those people. I love the Bushmans. I love Patrick Mason. I love the Givens. I respect their work in many ways. Jana Reese does some amazing work in her. In her essays. I'm surprised they haven't excommunicated her, frankly. We know they silenced Fiona Givens recently. That's sad. Kicked her out of the Maxwell Institute. But why do you focus on privileging progressive and liberal Mormonism at the expense of stories that the ex Mormon and post Mormon and never Mormon communities would like to see in Utah?

John Dehlin [01:52:51] Yeah, and just, you know, why don't you do more stories around the hemorrhaging of the Mormon Church, how it's literally shrinking, it's dying in Europe, it's dying in, in, in developed Asia, it's hemorrhaging in Latin America in so many areas. Why don't you do more stories about the, the lives, you know, what happens to the lives of the members there when the churches collapse, when the wards are, are merged, when the stakes and the missions are closed?

John Dehlin [01:53:23] You know, why aren't you covering more the, the, the erosion and the death and, and the downfall of the Mormon Church? That seems like a really interesting and important story. Why is it that you fail to cover just the high number of excommunications of critics of the Mormon Church, not just Bill Real and radio, you know, people like Bill Real, people like Lee and Cody Young, you know, my friends, the Pinsons, you know, there's so many people. Mark Oslin, my dear friend Mark Oslin that was recently excommunicated by the Mormon Church. Why don't you cover excommunications that are ongoing? People nowadays are being excommunicated literally for telling the truth on Facebook or on Instagram simply saying what the church essays already are now saying to people.

John Dehlin [01:54:19] Post Mormon critics are just speaking the truth about Mormon Church history and are being excommunicated for it. You know, why aren't you doing more coverage of that? It seems excommunication in 2021 seems like, seems like a barbaric. In a medieval practice, the church has tried to rebrand excommunication to claim that it's just withdrawal of membership and that we love these people.

John Dehlin [01:54:47] Why don't you do stories on that? And how absurd. Oh, need I mentioned the church. Mormon Church is still excommunicating couples, Mormon faithful Mormon couples who are getting same sex married legally. Think about that for a second. The Mormon Church is still excommunicating faithful, legally married, same sex couples as apostates.

John Dehlin [01:55:11] Why don't you cover that Salt Lake Tribune and, and Peggy and Tony. There's this burgeoning, amazing British ex Mormon movement on social media with people like Nemo, my friend Douglas Stilgo and Peter Bleakley and lots of other lovely YouTube channels and, and, and podcasts coming out of the, the UK community. Why are you not covering that? Isn't that Worth a feature in a story. There are lots of, you know, the TikTok community. Why? Why Sally Tribune, have you not interviewed a bunch of ex Mormon tick tockers about why they do what they do? Or the Amazing ex Mormon YouTube channel, you know, Jonathan Streeter and Ex Molex and Jordan McKay and all the amazing YouTubers out there.

John Dehlin [01:55:58] You know, why don't you do regular features and stories with them? And again go my, my British ex Mormon avengers. We love you guys. Here's a great story idea. Why is the Mormon Church building tens of millions or hundreds of why is the church investing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in building these McTemples all around the world when the church is hemorrhaging?

John Dehlin [01:56:25] Why is it building luxury temples in places like Rome when the church is dying in Rome, literally dying? Is it so that wealthy, tithe paying, vacationing elite Mormons can have a temple to visit and take photos with for their posterity? Is it so that more second anointings can be secretly done for rich, wealthy, donating, you know, Mormons throughout the world?

John Dehlin [01:56:53] You know, is the Mormon Church trying to mask its hemorrhaging by building all these super luxurious expensive McTemples? I think it's a good story. I think it's a worthy story. You know, we know that Scientology is shrinking in in membership as its buildings go empty while it gets more and more fabulously wealthy. It seems like the Mormon Church is also shrinking in membership, hemorrhaging, building more buildings that are going to remain empty while it dies and while it, it adds hundreds of millions, billions of dollars to its, its budget.

John Dehlin [01:57:29] You know, it's a good story. And then also, you know, Saltley Tribune, you know, why don't you do more to cover the fact that the Gospel Topics essays are are a form of gaslighting or not honest, that they're being still hid, that most members and most bishops have not even read them yet, that Mormon seminary and institute teachers students are still being somewhat misled or gaslit and are not being taught credible, accurate, you know, understandings of problematic Mormon Church history, the awful book that Saints is in terms of gaslighting its members around problematic Mormon Church history and the fact that now the essays are even harder to find than they've ever been.

John Dehlin [01:58:21] And there's talk of Mormon church apostles angry that the Gospel Topics essays were ever released and possibly wanting to have them removed. That's a good story. I think that's possibly well worth covering. And then I guess to end, why aren't you interested in these heroic Beautiful stories of post Mormons who conquer their anxiety and depression, who conquer their addictions or their eating disorders, who save their marriages through healing and growth, who find support and who find friends in community and who do what is a really difficult thing to do, which is to rebuild your life and heal and grow after leaving a high demand religion or a cult.

John Dehlin [01:59:11] Why don't you do a monthly feature on heroic post Mormon stories? Maybe more people would sign up and subscribe to the Salt Lake Tribune and fund it so that you wouldn't die. Which, you know, some say you're on the path of dying and sort of along that light.

John Dehlin [01:59:31] Would it be worth studying the historical participation of the Mormon Church in the decline of the Solic Tribune? You know, the Salt Lake Tribune seems, you know, Salt Lake City seems to become coming dangerously close to becoming a one newspaper town that is, you know, the one newspaper is the Deseret News which is owned, you know, by the Mormon Church and that has, you know, faithful only and apologetic Mormon church reporting. You know, that's a problem and that's what we're facing. And I just would ask if 2/3 of the people in the world that have ever been baptized Mormon have left it and if the Salt Lake Tribune claims to be an independent, you know, newspaper, shouldn't it cater more as an independent voice?

John Dehlin [02:00:28] I think it should and it may even help it stave off its ultimate demise. But how much has the Mormon Church contributed to the demise of the Salt Tribune? And is it problematic that like, you know, if, if there are leaders of the, of the Salt Lake Tribune or reporters in the Salt Lake Tribune that are, that have made temple covenants to never criticize the Lord's anointed, does that compromise the objectivity and the professionalism of that and the long term viability of that media source? I think it's a fair question, you know, and, and do these conflicts of interest contribute to your. What I think is a blatant and obvious neglect of coverage, religion coverage that's relevant to ex Mormons and post Mormons.

Closing Reflections and Thanks to Supporters

John Dehlin [02:01:21] So to close, hopefully I was less angry. I acted less angry today. Hopefully I was more professional. Hopefully I was more calm and reasoned and centered. I'll rely on your feedback. I don't plan on like you know, hiding the, the caffeinated version that of it that I plan on keeping that version as still available. I'm. This is the one I'm going to be releasing on the podcast because I hope it's more respectable. I'm super sad. My partner, Carah Burrell Or Natasha Helfer or Clinton Jenny Martin couldn't be here with me. I think Carah always makes things more fun and better. But I'm glad we got this done.

John Dehlin [02:02:02] What I want to close with is even though I was angry yesterday, maybe I was still a little bit angry today. I want to address, as I said in the beginning, why I was angry. I have studied psychology and one of the things that I've learned as a psychologist is that anger is a secondary emotion. And what's meant by that is, is that usually when people are angry, they're angry because they are feeling other emotions underneath.

John Dehlin [02:02:36] So many people who are angry are actually afraid or sad. And if I'm being honest about why I responded so defensively and potentially angrily with Peggy Fletcher and Tony and the Salt Lake Tribune is because I was feeling sad and I was feeling a bit afraid. And I think a lot of, you know, the people that I work with, my wife Margi, my children, Clinton, Jenny Martin, Natasha, even Carah, you know, there are a lot of reasons why we are sad and afraid. And I'll just give you the main reason why. I mean, yes, it's hard to be smeared constantly, to be fair gamed, to be derided.

John Dehlin [02:03:23] That's all hard. But most importantly, it is very difficult to stand up against a trillion dollar corporate empire that has millions of devout and committed members amongst its ranks. And it's very, very hard to do that with precious little support. I have probably less than 2,000 donors to the Open Stories Foundation. We do so, you know, the Mormon Church has hundreds of billions of dollars in assets, millions of members. The Open Stories foundation has less than 2,000 donors. Less than 1 out of 100 of our listeners or donors actually donates or contributions, contributes.

John Dehlin [02:04:11] We have less than 2,000 donors, sometimes less than a thousand donors to the Oba Stories Foundation. And so yeah, this is hard and it makes me, and it makes us feel sad and sometimes a little bit afraid to feel like in addition to fighting the Mormon Church, its non profits, its surrogates, it's paid thugs and apologists. Not only do we have to fight them, but then we have to fight the one allegedly independent source of journalism in the state of Utah that we thought would, would at least be objective and fair and honest.

John Dehlin [02:04:55] And that's, that's hard. And it makes. I'm not afraid because of credible. I'm not afraid of anything that we've done wrong. I'm not afraid of any truth, any, any of the behavior that I've engaged in. I'm afraid of People believing the smears and the lies and the fair gaming and. And I'm. I'm. I'm afraid of the constant negative associations that people like you, Peggy, that, that apologists and, and even a few angry ex Mormons perpetuate. I'm afraid it's going to hurt. Mormon Stories Podcast, the Open Stories foundation, the work we do, it already has. Now we're stronger than ever, partly because we.

John Dehlin [02:05:39] Because, you know, so many people are leaving the Mormon Church, so there's always a new crop of donors, and we've worked hard to grow our influence and audience even outside of Mormonism. But, yeah, I'm afraid that at any year we're going to get so much criticism, so many smears, so many attacks, that it's just not going to be worth it to me or Margi or my kids or we're not going to be able to financially he. Support and grow.

John Dehlin [02:06:06] So, again, I believe that this is a literal, explicit effort on the Mormon Church to do what? Scientology, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Moonies, and Nexium with Keith Ranieri. They all do this. They pay money and they pay nonprofits. They. They secretly fund nonprofits and they use dark money to fund smear campaigns against their critics. And I believe that's what's going on. I'm sad that it appears like the Salt Lake Tribune is a part of that, either intentionally or unintentionally.

John Dehlin [02:06:40] And, and that's what makes me sad and happy. But the truth is, I'm not sad. Sorry. Unhappy. But the truth is I am not sad. I am happier than I've ever been. I'm more optimistic than I've ever been. And I'm more grateful than I've ever been because of. Sorry. Because of you. Because of the support of the people who donate to Mormon Stories and to the Open Stories Foundation. As I mentioned before, we had our best financial year ever. That allowed us to hire Carah. It allows us to pay Gerardo and Brooklyn. It allows us to upgrade our equipment to increase our services to places like TikTok and Instagram and YouTube and other places.

John Dehlin [02:07:28] I just. If I were a crier, I would cry at how grateful I am for all of our loyal donors and supporters. So thank you for your donations and your support. Support. Thanks for all you do to spread the word.

John Dehlin [02:07:42] And finally, if. If you are not a donor to Mormon Stories and the Open Stories foundation, please consider. And if you value our content and want to see it continue, please become a monthly donor to the podcast or to the foundation. We are 100%. We are transparent in our finances. We always have been. 100% of your donations go towards the work and are tax deductible in the United States. And we'll keep doing this for as long as we have your support. If you have feedback, if you have ideas for things we're doing wrong, things that we could do better, please email us@mormonstoriesmail.com and we would be thrilled to take your feedback and to do a better job.

John Dehlin [02:08:27] So again, please support us if you can. That is my presentation. I don't know if there are any questions. We are now over two hours. So I think I, I just want to go ahead and close now. Thank you all for your support. Thanks to everyone who has made all of this possible. Thanks to Margi and my kids. Thanks to Carah, to her husband Aaron, to their kids, to Clinton, Jenny Martin, to Natasha Helfer, to Gina Colvin, to Brooklyn, to.

John Dehlin [02:09:01] Am I forgetting anyone? Gerardo, Amazing Gerardo and his partner. Just all, all the donors, Kerry Whitbeck, all the people that make what we do possible. We couldn't do it without you. Love you. Thank you. Please stay in touch. Please support us. Please support Radio Free Mormon, please support Mormonism live. Please support Sunstone, please support marriage on a tightrope.

John Dehlin [02:09:27] Support Symmetry Solutions. If you need a good therapist or coach, go to Symmetry Solutions, go to Natasha helfer, go to johndalin.com coaching and find all the therapists that I'm coaches that I'm referring you out to. Leah Young, all you know, Janice Spangler, Jenny Morrow, you know Marty Erickson, just support all the good people out there doing good things. John Larsen with the Mormon Expression Project, all the ex Mormon TikTokers, all the YouTubers out there, support them all. And over time, support the Mormon History association, support dialogue.

John Dehlin [02:10:06] All these, all these institutions are helping the Mormon Church become healthier and helping people wake up to the undue influence that we all were subjected to, to the lack of informed consent that we all were subjected to. It's helping youth and young adults wake up to the ways the Mormon Church has misled and deceived its membership intentionally for over 100 years. And it's helping slow, hopefully the epidemic of LGBTQ depression, anxiety and sometimes death by suicide. And it's helping people not have divorce, have less divorce, less family destruction, more healing and growth and happiness. Thanks for your support. Please stay in touch and we love you guys and we hope to see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast.

John Dehlin [02:10:58] Take care everybody. Oh, and check out faithtransitions.com. it's an. It's an amazing source for upcoming events for people in faith crisis. Take care, everybody. We'll see you 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.