Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is October 6, 2020, and this is a special edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. Things have gotten really serious as of late. Some of you know that recently an organization called Fair Mormon, which is an apologist non profit, has hired a few actors to create some YouTube videos and some podcasts to try and defend and protect the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [00:00:37] And these videos and, and podcasts have been very controversial. They're more edgy, they're more fun, but they're also harsher. And, and the result has been a lot of frustration by some and in some cases anger, because in, in some senses, many people feel that these videos or podcasts are misleading. We're not going to be talking about that necessarily from a historical context today, but what's become more serious is these podcasts and YouTube channels have, have in some cases encouraged or use kind of demeaning language towards certain people, and in some cases have led to a lot of reactions that have been perceived as violent. And in my particular case, I've, I've recently had people posting some very violent videos on, on Twitter and elsewhere, and some very, very, uh, dangerous also statements on Twitter and elsewhere.

John Dehlin [00:01:51] And so, you know, I've filed police reports. After today, I'm also going to be talking to the FBI because these, these comments made on Twitter and these videos posted on Twitter that have been reposted by people affiliated with Fair Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:02:08] You know, because, because of sort of the way that things have escalated in a violent way, I'm going to be reporting this to the FBI as, as I've already reported it to local police departments. I know Jeremy Runnels has also filed, I believe, a report with the police. You'll have to forgive me, I'm feeling a little bit nervous and so I'm a little bit jumbled and rambly this morning.

John Dehlin [00:02:33] But so what I wanted to do was put together a presentation with my friend Gerardo, trying to make sense of what's going on. And so I appreciate everyone who's joining us today. Originally, I was so angry and so sad and so frustrated that I wanted to make a presentation that was filled with rage and anger, kind of lashing out and hitting back and, and sort of responding with, with violence, with more violence and, or with harsh rhetoric or with sharpness or with meanness. And I slept on it and woke up this morning just really committed to trying to be as respectful and as kind and as diplomatic and as constructive as possible.

John Dehlin [00:03:26] So that's My commitment to you today, I don't want to be attacking people personally. I don't want to be using harshness or meanness or criticism that's unhealthy or toxic. But I do want to educate and inform and explain as best as I can what's going on.

John Dehlin [00:03:43] And I appreciate everyone who's joined us today to check this out. So without any further ado, the presentation that I prepared today for you is called Nonprofits in the World of Mormonism. We're going to be talking about the Open Stories foundation, the More Good Foundation, Fair Mormon, the Interpreter foundation, and Book of Mormon Central.

Mormon Apologist Nonprofits Under the Microscope

John Dehlin [00:04:05] I'm sure there are other nonprofits that are worth discussing, but these are the ones that we're going to be talking about today. And I think you'll find this, this presentation useful. I wanted to begin just with my intentions. There have been a lot of people really attacking me, making really horrible claims about that I'm in this for the money, that I'm getting wealthy, that I'm. In fact, we'll be talking about claims where I'm destroying families for profit intentionally.

John Dehlin [00:04:36] And I just wanted to start by doing my best to honestly and sincerely explain to you my intentions on why I started Mormon Stories in the Open Stories Foundation. So it began in 2001 when I had my own faith crisis as a seminary teacher for the LDS Church.

John Dehlin [00:04:55] I went through a faith crisis while I was working at Microsoft in Seattle. And I realized just a few things. I realized that I wasn't taught the true history of the Mormon Church, that I had not been taught that for all the years that I had lived and served in the church. And then as I went through my faith crisis and found others who were going through a faith crisis, I realized that the LDS Church was hurting certain groups of people. LGBTQ people, sometimes women, people of color, sometimes children or youth, and people who are in faith crisis. And I want to be clear. Sometimes people like to say that I hate the LDS Church, that I can't say anything good about it.

John Dehlin [00:05:34] That's not true. I have so much love for Mormons, and I have so many happy and positive memories and experiences with the LDS Church. And I believe that today there is a lot of good that the LDS Church does for its members and sometimes even for people outside the church.

John Dehlin [00:05:55] So when people like to say that I can't say a good thing about the church, they're not being honest. I do love the church. I want to help the church be healthier for its members, and I want to help people who Leave the church be more healthy as well.

John Dehlin [00:06:14] So, and then finally I noticed that there were many, many people going through a Mormon faith crisis early in the 2000s who needed support and there were no resources available for those people. So for all these reasons, I decided to leave my high paying job at Microsoft where I was making over $200,000 a year. Towards the end, I went down to like $35,000 a year. Started nine years of graduate school over like a 12 year period.

John Dehlin [00:06:46] My family went into debt because of this. We didn't have health insurance for many, many of those years. We weren't able to get mental health support for my family for many of those years. My, my kids shopped at DI and my kids and wife shopped at DI for clothes for many of those years. We made huge sacrifices to leave Microsoft, go back to graduate school and to start Mormon Stories podcast. And the reasons why I started Mormon Stories Podcast were to provide more accurate information to Mormons and LDS Church investigators. And I like to call that informed consent. I think that people who join a high demand religion deserve to know the truth about the religion.

John Dehlin [00:07:23] So moral Mormon Stories has that intent. It's to help the LDS Church do less harm to its members and to provide resources and community for people leaving orthodox Mormonism or Mormonism altogether. So we wanted to help people in the church, help people out of the church and just help investigators. We just wanted to help and that's honestly why we did it.

John Dehlin [00:07:44] My ultimate goals then were basically less ignorance, distress, depression, less unnecessary divorce, less suicide in related to Mormonism and then more informed consent, more knowledge, more hope, more healing, more community, and more joy. Okay, so without any further ado, let's get into kind of the financials because there's a lot of people that claim that ex Mormons are getting rich off of ex Mormonism and I think that's dishonest. And so I'm going to just show you the numbers.

Open Stories Foundation: Mission and Finances

John Dehlin [00:08:18] So this is how. But before, sorry, but before I talk about the money, I want to talk about the success we were able to have and why I started the osf. So for those first five years, I pretty much did Mormon Stories for free. We got trickles of donations before we started a nonprofit, but the money was, was almost nothing. It was pennies per hour for, for my effort. But we had some decent success. So in 2005 we had about 12,000 downloads of Mormon Stories podcast that went up to 76,000 by 2006. And then by 2007 we had 222,000 downloads of Mormon Stories podcast. And then.

John Dehlin [00:08:59] And then it went down a little bit in 2008 and 2009 as I was preparing for my Psychology PhD. Now, I was super proud of those numbers at the time. I'm still super proud of it. And, you know, that was the first five years. I made pretty much no money. There was not a nonprofit, and we had modest success with the podcast. Okay. So what I realized is that after five years of doing this for free, or almost for free, certainly at a big loss to my family in terms of money I could have been making in other ways, I decided in 2010 that I could not continue to do Mormon Stories podcast on a purely voluntary basis.

John Dehlin [00:09:41] I just couldn't support my family anymore. We were going into debt. We. We weren't able to care for the basic needs of my family, and so we needed to do something different. So what I did is I. I formed the Open Stories foundation, which was a 501c3 nonprofit. And why did I form the the Open Stories Foundation? I started it for three reasons. To create an organization dedicated to helping Mormons and ex Mormons to allow me to work, work towards doing Mormon stories full time, and to allow listener donations to be tax deductible. And I basically went out to my podcast listeners, and I said, listen, if you'll support me financially, I'll keep doing Mormon Stories and try to have a bigger and a bigger impact than I did from 2005 to 2009.

John Dehlin [00:10:28] So that's what I did. I put out that call to my listeners. And so, you know, what was the results? What was the results of creating the Open Stories Foundation? And what I'm sharing for you now are the stats of what happened to downloads and views after I started the Mormons the Open Stories foundation in 2010. And what you'll see is starting in 2010, there was a huge jump from 169,000 a year to 650,000 in 2010 to 700,000 2011. And then it became downloads and views because I started doing YouTube and Facebook videos in addition to just downloads thanks to the donations. And then things really skyrocketed.

John Dehlin [00:11:11] 2.4 million in 2013, 4.5 million in 2014, jumped up to 6.2 million in 2017. By 2019, we had 7.6 million downloads and views. And so I think everybody can agree that creating the nonprofit helped me be much more successful, helping me focus on the podcast, get better guests, better content, to be able to get better materials, microphones, cameras, equipment, all that stuff that's why I created the Open Stories foundation, and that those are some of the results.

John Dehlin [00:11:50] Now, let's talk about the money. People like to say that I'm getting rich off of the Open Stories Foundation. So what are the donations like for the Open Stories Foundation? We have always. Some people like to say that we have not been financially transparent with our finances. That is not true. If you go to openstoragefoundation.org and you click in the menu, you can go to about and Finances. And you can see that every year we've published financial reports from the very beginning, including my compensation. So that's never been hidden in. It's always been public. And people who claim that we've been dishonest about that are themselves being dishonest.

John Dehlin [00:12:33] So that's important. Also, all nonprofits have to publish what's called a 990, which is a tax return with the IRS showing their basic financial situations. And so anyone at any time can go to a 501c3 nonprofit, download their 990s and look at how they've been spending their money on a basic level. And that includes the compensation for the directors. So that that information's always been available. We've always been transparent. And in fact, we've gone, I believe, with the Open Stories foundation. We've gone above and beyond by, by publishing additional statements in addition to the 990s for most of the years. And you just have to go to Open Stories foundation about in finances to see that that's true.

John Dehlin [00:13:15] Okay, so let's keep going. So what has been the revenue of the Open Stories Foundation? And I'm just going to share this with you now. We share this every year with our donors and general public. In 2010, let's just say we had about $50,000, jumped up to about $100,000 in 2011, $200,000 in 2012. Then, you know, I had to get really focused on my PhD. We had some, some bumps happen within the Open Stories Foundation.

John Dehlin [00:13:49] So we got down to about 150,000 in 2013. By 2015, we climbed up back to about 200,000. And then since then, I graduated with my PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. And so what we see is huge jumps. Once I was able to focus on the Open Stories foundation really full time. You see, in 2016, we're over 300,000. In 2017, we're over 400,000. And by 2018, we almost hit $500,000. Now, I'm sure a lot of you think that's a lot of Money. And I'm ecstatic with what we were able to accomplish. And I'm so incredibly grateful to everyone who's donated to the Open Stories Foundation.

John Dehlin [00:14:31] Your donations have meant the world to me, to us, to my family, to all the listeners. We could not have reached millions and millions of downloads and views and hundreds of thousands of listeners on the podcast without your donations. So thank you.

John Dehlin [00:14:47] Thank you. Now, how much in total has the Open Stories foundation raised over our entire life? Here are. Here are my best estimate of the numbers. $2.1 million. And that's how much if you add all of the donations together for the entire life of the nonprofit. And let me just be clear. That money has not gone to me. For most of the time, I have made half or less. For most of my time at the Open Stories Foundation, I've made half or less than I ever made as a professional.

John Dehlin [00:15:24] And again, the first five years of Mormon Stories, I made pretty much nothing. And then for many years, I made far, far below my market value. It's just been in the past couple years where my board approved a compensation for me that's comparable to what I was making in 2004 when I worked for Microsoft, and then what I made for MIT a little bit later on the side. And so, long story short, $2.1 million. It's been amazing. And that money has gone to things like staff. We've had various staff over the years. Editors, marketers, project managers, you know, operating officers, et cetera. We've. We've held a lot of events to support people in faith crisis.

John Dehlin [00:16:05] A lot of those we've made no money off of. I've certainly made no money off of for many, many of those years. Rent, equipment, hosting fees, graphic design, et cetera. And you can just go to our 990s, see the breakouts of how that money's been spent. So that's me being transparent now. And we've always published that information. It's always been available on our websites. People who say we haven't been financially transparent are not being honest. Okay, so here is where things get interesting and why we're having this presentation today. Something that I've noticed is that newer churches. So when I say newer churches, let's say older churches, or the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, you know, Islam, you know, Judaism, there's old churches and then there's new churches.

How Mormon Apologist Nonprofits Are Funded

John Dehlin [00:16:50] Some examples of some new churches might be the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints, you know, started in the 1800s, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Church of Scientology. I, I, those are newer churches, churches founded in the last 100 to 200 years. And what I found is that these newer churches sometimes feel a lot less comfortable with full information and being given to their membership and with open and honest dialogue. That's just my, that's just my impression. It could be right, it could be wrong. That's just my impression. And so what? I've also noticed that these newer churches are often uncomfortable with criticism and with critics.

John Dehlin [00:17:29] And let me be clear, none of us like, I mean, I like criticism. I don't like mean spirited, unproductive criticism. But criticism always hurts. And so criticism has hurt me. It hurts everyone. And churches are just like humans.

John Dehlin [00:17:45] They sometimes are hurt by criticisms and critics and they feel defensive about it. What's different about churches and maybe other and people is that churches create nonprofits for the purpose of sometimes suppressing information and challenging or smearing sometimes critics. And that's, you know, oftentimes what these newer churches do. And so, you know, that's what I'm trying to argue here. Now, there's a problem with a Christian church like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints creating, you know, trying to challenge or even attack or even smear their critics.

John Dehlin [00:18:27] How can a Christian church respond to critics if it's supposed to be following Christ? And many people interpret Christ as being about turning the other cheek, about being kind, compassionate, loving, humble. And so how can a Christian church respond to its critics? How can it do so keeping its leaders above the fray so that the leaders aren't drug into the muck, so that their reputations are these powerful wise men who are Christlike and good.

John Dehlin [00:19:04] They have to be sort of be kept above the fray. But also the church needs to be kept at arm's length so the church can't be accountable for these criticisms. So they need to use surrogates who can do the work for the church and help the church avoid any legal or public relations liability. It's a tricky thing. It's one of the tricky things that these newer churches have to do.

John Dehlin [00:19:26] And it's why they create non profits. So they create these non profits to help control the information and the conversation and frankly to respond to critics. And so for nonprofits that we're going to be talking about today, that the LDS Church has helped, has created, frankly, you could say they're indirectly created by the church. But I, but I think we're going to be on like a pretty case that there's a direct tie between the Mormon Church and these nonprofits and you can judge for yourself if you think that's true. You may disagree, and that's totally cool. But the four ones we're going to talk about today are the More Good Foundation, Fair Mormon, the Interpreter foundation, and Book of Mormon Central.

John Dehlin [00:20:12] So those are the four nonprofits we're going to be talking about today. All right, so let us begin by sharing with you what a bit of what we know about these Mormon apologetic nonprofits. The first thing that we know about these Mormon apologetic nonprofits, and I'm just going to say as a disclaimer, we've collected all of the 990s for all of these nonprofits. So again, these nonprofits have to file what's called a 990form each year with the IRS that shows their donations, their revenue, it shows their expenses at a high level, and it shows they have to report who their large donors are and who their boards of directors are.

John Dehlin [00:20:55] And all that information is public. And so what we've done is we've collected the 990s for Fair Mormon, the More Good foundation, the Interpreter foundation, and Book of Mormon Central. And we've analyzed them a little bit and we're going to make them available on the Mormon Stories podcast website as soon as this presentation is over so that you can analyze these 990s too. And, and they show us a lot of important and interesting things. So for example, they, they provide publicly. So I'm not doxing anyone. This is public information that anyone can access.

John Dehlin [00:21:30] Okay. They show that, that wealthy donors like Blake and Nancy Roney from New Skin, Steve Lund from Nu Skin, Alan and Karen Ashton from Word Perfect, David Neeleman from JetBlue, Spencer Kirk from Extra Space Storage, David and Bianca Lisbony from For Life Research, and many, many, many other super wealthy Mormon donors give their money to these nonprofits. And if you go to not all of these 990s that we've collected show who their large donors are, but the ones to the More Good foundation do show who their large donors are. And so you can go in and look and you can see this information that's publicly available.

John Dehlin [00:22:12] And so these super wealthy donors either give money directly to these four nonprofits, or what we've discovered is that in some cases the super wealthy donors give money to the More Good foundation in at least one year. Then the More Good foundation gave money to the Interpreter foundation, to Fair Mormon and to Book of Mormon Central. So more on that in just a second. But we know that that is, I'm pretty sure that that's all factual. If you want to verify this, I encourage you to do so. And again, we'll be publishing the 990s very, very soon. So I was transparent about how much money the Open Stories foundation has made.

John Dehlin [00:22:51] Now what I want to do is also share how much money these other nonprofits have made. So how much money are these Mormon apologist nonprofits receiving overall? You'll be able to download these 990s@mormonstories.org, but our analysis shows that over from about 2005, which ironically is the same year Mormon Stories Podcast launched. So, same year, based on my understanding, the same year that Mormon Stories launched, the More Good foundation launched as probably just coincidence, but from, from that point further, we see the money steadily growing. So for, for, let's just say six or seven or eight years, it's about a million bucks to these nonprofits. But then starting around 2012, 2013, 2014, I think is around the time I gave my ted talk, around 2013, you know, Marlon Jensen announced that we're having the greatest apostasy since Kirtland.

John Dehlin [00:23:49] The Swedish rescue, you know, started building up from 2010 to 2013, Hans Mattson comes out with his story in the New York Times. You know me and, you know me and Travis Stratford and Hans Mattson, you know, and Greg Prince and others work together to present issues to the church about people leaving the church. And again, eventually, my TED Talk for LGBT Mormons, I think, was an issue. Kelly and I getting summons that we were going to be excommunicated by the church by 2014, I think was a big deal.

John Dehlin [00:24:26] Lots of other things. CES letter coming online, Mormon Expression Podcast, you know, lots of things culminated Such that by 2012, 2013 or 14, we get the sense that things, people started getting really worried. So by 2015, we've got $2 million a year flowing into these four nonprofits. Then it jumps to about, let's say, two and a half to three million by 2016, by 2017, these four nonprofits together in aggregate received well over almost $7 million. And then in 2018, it's jumped back down to, let's just say three, three and a half million.

John Dehlin [00:25:05] So while the Open Stories foundation was, you know, receiving 50,000, 60,000, 80,000, 100,000, you know, eventually maxing out at, you know, 4000-004500-00480,000, we've got these nonprofits sometimes getting over $6 million a year in annual contributions. And what we've done as a courtesy to you is, is Aggregate all the money given to these nonprofits over the past several years, and that's the number. $22.8 million has been donated to the More Good Foundation, Fair Mormon, the Interpreter foundation, and Book of Mormon Central over these past years. And actually that is a typo on that slide. And so I'm going to, I'm going to fix that typo really quick because it had the Open Stories foundation on that slide and it didn't belong there.

John Dehlin [00:26:02] So that's it. That's a number. That's a pretty big number. Look at that number. Okay? $23 million has been given from wealthy donors and the Mormon Church to these four nonprofits. Now don't take my word for it, maybe we got the math wrong. Okay, so please go to these 990s yourself, pull them out, add up the numbers and check our math.

John Dehlin [00:26:30] It could be wrong, but this is our best guess at how much money these nonprofits have received so far. So the next question is, everybody wants to know. This is the LDS Church directly contributing to these nonprofits? And the answer, I believe is yes.

John Dehlin [00:26:51] In fact, I think the evidence is undeniable that the answer is yes. But don't take my word for it. Let's look at the data. Okay, so what we've observed is that it kind of works this way. Good, honest, hard working Latter Day Saints from all over the world give money to the Mormon Church. So they pay their tithes and offerings to the Mormon Church. So the Mormon Church gets a bunch of money, right? And it needs to spend this money, but it can't spend it on, it doesn't want to spend it too much on apologetics. Now it does do the Maxwell Institute, you know, it does, you know, fund Daniel Peterson and John Gee and you know, the Church history department and the Joseph Smith Papers, which project, which isn't mentioned here, we probably should have mentioned whatever foundation funds the Joseph Smith Papers project.

John Dehlin [00:27:45] That's actually an oversight on our part, probably. But anyway, the church has a lot of money into apologetics within its organization. But these, you know, more critical or more strident apologists the church is funding through the nonprofit. So the church takes the money from people who donate directly to the church. And then what they do is they give money to organizations like Deseret Trust Company and the LDS Foundation. These organizations are owned and controlled by the Mormon Church. So the Church gives money to the tithe payers, money to the Deseret Trust Company and to the LDS Foundation. As far as I know, if I've got this wrong, Somebody please correct me.

John Dehlin [00:28:34] I don't want to spread misinformation. And then what we found is that in at least one very important case, and actually in many cases, the Deseret Trust Company and the LDS foundation contribute to at least one nonprofit. So in this case, we know that they have given a lot of money to the More Good foundation. And we don't know if they've given money to the Interpreter Foundation, Fairmormon or Book of Mormon Central directly, because I don't believe the 990s actually tell us. They hide who the donors are to those.

John Dehlin [00:29:12] I'm not saying with, with ill will. We don't disclose the name, the names of our largest donors publicly because they're afraid they're going to get hurt by the church or other church members. And so we protect their confidentiality so that they don't get hurt anyway. So that's kind of how it works. And just to be clear, this is a screenshot that shows that the Deseret Trust Company is in fact owned and controlled by the LDS Church along with the LDS Foundation.

John Dehlin [00:29:49] And so there should be no question about that. Now, the very next slide shows excerpts from the Moregood Foundations. 990. Okay? The 2017990 for the Moregood foundation and the 2018990 for the More Good Foundation. And what you'll see is that the Deseret Trust Company donated $1 million to the More Good foundation in 2017.

John Dehlin [00:30:22] So if I'm understanding that right, the Mormon Church took tithe payer money, gave it to. Gave it to the Deseret Trust Company. And then the Deseret Trust company gave $1 million to the More Good Foundation. Okay? In 2018, the LDS foundation gave $430,000 to the More Good Foundation. And then the other chart that we have on here are funds donated to the More Good foundation over time. And what this shows is that from 2009 all the way to through 2018, either the, the Deseret Trust Company or the LDS foundation gave around a million dollars plus a million. Around a million dollars. A million to two million dollars a year.

John Dehlin [00:31:13] Sorry, sorry. Almost $200,000 a year. So between I'm gonna. Sorry, let me start over. I'm a little nervous. Again, please forgive me. I don't want to say this wrong. I want to get this right. So from 2009 to 2015, the LDS foundation gave almost $200,000 a year to the More Good Foundation. And then what we see is in 2017, we have that huge million dollar Jump where The Desert Trust company gave a million dollars in addition to the $200,000 that the LDS foundation gave. So that's one point. If I've got my calculations right, that's $1.2 million to the More Good foundation in 2017. And then in 2018, the donations from the LDS foundation increased to $400,000.

John Dehlin [00:32:04] So in total, what that our best calculations show that 2.9 about more than $2.8 million have been given from the LDS Church and its tithe payers to the Deseret Trust Company and the LDS foundation, which was then given directly to the More Good Foundation. So I hope I've been able to demonstrate to you that the LDS Church directly funds these apologetic organizations.

John Dehlin [00:32:36] Then I want to show one level deeper. What we also discovered from the more good foundations990, at least in 2018, is that the More Good foundation directly gives money to the Interpreter Foundation, Book of Mormon Central and Fair Mormon. So if you look at that 990, it shows the more good foundation gave 90 grand to the Interpreter Foundation, 90 grand to Book of Mormon Central, and 120 grand to Fair Mormon. So I hope I made that case. I hope that's clear. I hope I'm not belaboring the point, but that's $300,000 in total in 2018 from the LDS Church to the Moregood foundation to Fair Mormon, Interpreter and Book of Mormon Central.

John Dehlin [00:33:19] All right, so the next question is the More Good foundation, has it been honest about receiving direct donations from the LDS Church? And as sad as it is to say this, I think the answer is yes, they've been dishonest. Let me show you the evidence and you can decide for yourself if that's true. But what we have here is a screenshot of the More Good Foundation, I believe around 2016.

John Dehlin [00:33:48] So this is kind of what I think the Moregood Foundation's website said from 2009 to 2016 under the question, does the LDS Church control or operate the More Good Foundation? It says the More Good foundation operates independently from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It is not managed or funded by the Church.

John Dehlin [00:34:09] Now that looks like an untrue statement from the Morgan foundation, but I could be wrong. So if I'm wrong, I would invite the Morgan foundation or Curtin McConkey or the LDS Church or whoever wants to, to correct me, because I would never want to be dishonest intentionally or mischaracterize anything that I'm saying here. But it looks like the Moregood foundation was not honest about the money that it directly received from the LDS Church. And I would argue you could say that maybe that means the LDS Church wasn't honest either, because I'm guessing it knew that the More Good foundation was claiming that it did not receive money from the LDS Church.

John Dehlin [00:34:54] Now, please correct me if I'm wrong. Okay, so in total, what we have is about $2.9 million going from the Mormon Church, Tide payer money going from the Mormon Church to the Deseret Trust Company and the LDS foundation and then being channeled to the More Good Foundation. I think we've made that point clear.

John Dehlin [00:35:15] And some people find this stat very interesting that in 2017 alone, the LDS Church donated 80 plus percent of the total budget for the More Good foundation with that $1 million from the Deseret Trust company. So some people think that's really significant, that 80% of the budget of the More Good foundation in 2017 was provided directly from the Mormon Church through the Deseret Trust Company.

John Dehlin [00:35:43] So for whatever that's worth. Okay, next question. What are Mormon apologists, nonprofits doing with all this money now? I don't know all that they're doing. I know that they hire a lot of writers. I know that they, I, I'm pretty sure they pay people to write, you know, responses to critics. I'm sure they, I'm sure they do search engine optimization. I'm sure they do all they can to make it so the LDS Church's websites go higher in the Google search ranks and that the critics of the church so that their websites go much lower. I know they purchased many, many, many Internet domains.

What Apologist Nonprofits Do With Their Money

John Dehlin [00:36:25] Thousands and thousands of dollars of purchases of Internet domains so that no one else can use the names like Mormon stories or Mormon expression or whatever. They went out and bought as many domains as they could and sat on them so that ex Mormons or critics of the church couldn't use those domains.

John Dehlin [00:36:41] Who knows all the ways they've spent their money? I wouldn't presume to know, but my sense is, is that a lot of this money these days are in these nonprofits are going towards YouTube. And so what we have a few years ago, well, fair Mormons had a YouTube channel for I don't know how long. We saw recently, a few, a few years back, a new YouTube channel, kind of a young hip version of YouTube called Saints Unscripted. I'm pretty sure that's funded by the More Good foundation, the Saints Unscripted. That's the first channel that I believe Kwaku, who we're going to talk about later. He started out there.

John Dehlin [00:37:18] And then recently, two new YouTube channels have been released. One's called Stone16 and another is called Midnight Mormons. And the truth is, it is hard to know to what extent all these YouTube channels are funded by the Morgood foundation, by Fair, by the LDS Church, by rich Mormon donors. We don't know.

John Dehlin [00:37:38] But I'm pretty sure they're all connected in some very concrete ways. I'll make that case. You can tell me whether you think that's significant or not. So what this slide shows is just Kwako L. He's received a lot of positive and negative feedback as of late. Again, he was with Saints Unscripted for a while. I don't think he's with them anymore, although I'm not sure.

John Dehlin [00:38:02] And recently Fair Mormon has hired, as I understand it, Kwaku to help with their YouTube channel. And so what we'll see in the next slide is kind of John lynch and Scott Gordon, who are two of the leaders of the, of the Fair Mormon organization. There are several other people who are on the board of directors. Daniel Peterson, who we'll mention later, is also has also traditionally, I believe, been on the board of Fair Mormon. And then a lot of these donors, again, donate to Fair Mormon through the More Good Foundation. And elsewise, and it seems like what the, what the, what Fair Mormon has done recently is they hired Kwaku in addition to whatever he did with the More Good foundation, and, and Saints Unscripted, he hired Kwaku, who's an actor, and then he hired two other actors, a guy named Brad Widbeck and a guy named Carden Ellis.

John Dehlin [00:38:54] So they've hired these three actors. Cardin's also a podcaster, and I'm pretty sure they've hired them for money, that these guys are making money from their work both with Saints Unscripted, whoever helped out with that, and with Fair Mormon. I think we've been able to track the money that went from More Good foundation into Fair Mormon that then was used to pay for these actors to help out with these videos. And then what they're doing is these three guys, Brad Carden and Kwaku, are trying to create more edgy and controversial content, content that's hip, but content that's a little bit more fierce, a little more savage, as, as they like to say.

John Dehlin [00:39:41] And, and that basically goes after critics more directly. They're going after me. They're going after Jeremy Runnels. They're going after, you know, lots of people that are no longer members of the church. They call them anti Mormons. That's, that's an offensive term to people like me.

John Dehlin [00:39:59] But, but, you know, we like to call ourselves post Mormons or ex Mormons or Mormons. But anyway, they're going after us more directly, more harshly, more intensely. And so you can see just a couple screenshots. One of their screenshots for one of their videos says the CES letter is cringe, let's destroy it. This is war. And that's a picture of Cardin and Brad and Kwaku. There's another one that says mo wives, mo problems. It's basically a review of the CES letter. And in these videos, I guess they're hip and cool and they're fun for those who like that kind of stuff. But also many people are concerned that they're not giving accurate information, that they're being disingenuous or dishonest in how they relate the facts of these issues.

John Dehlin [00:40:49] And sometimes they're being really harsh and critical and even mean spirited, sometimes in mocking critics of the church, and sometimes they're being very dishonest about how they talk about all these issues and about the critics and they're trying to be super funny as well. So this is a picture of Brigham Young with his head cropped over, someone with, with his arms around a bunch of women, you know, kind of as a polygamist. And so I think it's cool or interesting that they're trying to be funny.

John Dehlin [00:41:20] And so that's what they're trying to do now, what they're also trying to do. And this is where things for me get really serious. And we're asking the question, are these apologetic nonprofits in the LDS Church, by supporting them, spreading misinformation to smear critics?

Allegations of Harassment and Incitement

John Dehlin [00:41:38] And, you know, I just want to prevent this evidence and ask you guys to decide for yourself if you think that's going on. And so I'm going to just really quickly, I'm going to be sharing some audio in just a second.

John Dehlin [00:41:57] And the purpose is to share with you, to let you listen to, you know, what's being said and to let you decide for yourself in just one second. I have to, I have to enable the audio on this.

John Dehlin [00:42:16] So I will enable the audio. Okay. I want to make sure that you can hear what I'm about to, about to present. So what we're asking for you in this presentation is are these apologists, and thus these non profits, and thus the LDS Church, because they're all connected, are they spreading misinformation and are they smearing critics in a unhealthy or damaging or unchristlike way? And, and in some cases, are they inciting violence that could lead to the harm of people like me, people in my family, people like Jeremy Runnels and others? Are they inciting violence? And we're just going to let you decide because maybe they are and maybe they're not.

John Dehlin [00:42:57] So the first thing I want to share is a video from Kwaku and Carden and Brad. Okay. And this is a video where it's about a two minute video and it's a, it's their, it's their sort of claim that ex Mormons are getting rich and making tons of money, gobs of money, by lying and by intentionally trying to destroy families. So I'm just going to roll the clip and I'm gonna let you listen to it and I'll talk about it in just a second. But you know, tell me what you think.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:43:37] Having seen what I've seen, it makes it very difficult for me to believe that Jeremy Runnels is actually honest at all in all this. I think now he's caught up in the money of his CES foundation.

Video Clip 1 [00:43:48] That's the other thing.

Video Clip 1 [00:43:49] And he can't leave it.

Video Clip 1 [00:43:50] There's so much money in anti Mormonism.

Video Clip 1 [00:43:53] I can't take these people seriously.

Video Clip 1 [00:43:55] These cats are making da bank off of this anti Mormons. I mean the freaking faith crisis cruises John Dehlin puts on. Yeah, like, like at what point is it not just like that's literally what the MLMs do, offering a cruise at

Video Clip 1 [00:44:14] the end of the life coach MLM called Thrive. I think he is Utah to the brim. I like, I talk about like who like, you know, are pulling some of the culture and everything here and they, I show them pictures of guys like Jeremy Runnels and, and they're like, it's

Video Clip 1 [00:44:31] the banality of evil. It's literally the reality of evil.

Video Clip 1 [00:44:34] It's like a cool guy where you're from. I was like, yeah, like that boring. We're like, this is like, you know what I mean?

Video Clip 1 [00:44:41] I wouldn't say cool. The banality of evil, the boringness of evil. And it reminds me, and I do say evil because when you intellectually dishonestly for self aggrandizement or self enrichment create materials meant to basically break up families. When you go home wrecking for profit, I call that evil. All right. And that's what John Deland and Jeremy do, is they home wreck for profit. There's no other way of putting it. In my mind. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:45:12] Okay. So those are the claims. And I. I feel like there were many, many dishonest things said, many things that were just that. That to me, were. Were blatantly untrue in what was just said. And I. I just want to, you know, pose the question, is the LDS Church, through these nonprofits, promoting dishonesty, blatant dishonesty, through Fair Mormon More Good foundation, and. And supporting these actors like, like, you know, Kwaku and. And these other guys. So let me just.

John Dehlin [00:45:50] Let me just remind you that, you know, they just made the claim that ex Mormons are getting rich off of ex Mormonism. And I just want to ask you. We showed you this number before. $22.8 million put into these nonprofits over the past 15 or so years. And so I ask you, is it honest for them to claim that we're getting rich when. When that type of money is going from the church to these nonprofits, to whoever the nonprofits pay, you guys decide? That doesn't seem honest to me. In fact, what we have here is a chart that shows what's been donated to the Open Stories foundation versus what's been donated to these other nonprofits between, you know, 2005 and 2018.

John Dehlin [00:46:43] And I just ask you, where. Who's making debank? Who's making debank here? Is it. Is it us, or is it. Is it the. The Mormon apologetic nonprofit industry? You guys make the judge. But if, by my estimation, that's 10 times larger. 10 times larger, you know, 1,000. Is that 1,000% larger than what I've been making?

John Dehlin [00:47:12] So, anyway, next slide. What this shows is how much some of the people are making. And what it shows is that just for the More Good foundation alone, over $1 million in annual compensation for its employees, $1 million. Again, the CEO, Jonathan Johnson, makes at least 175,000. David Grant makes 130,000.

John Dehlin [00:47:39] Other employees make 100,000, 90,000. So multiple employees for the Moregood foundation are making six figures, okay? And a million dollars just in compensation of directors and staff in one year for the More Good Foundation. So I ask you, is it honest for Kwaku and for these other guys to claim that we're getting rich with these. With. With these types of numbers? I just.

John Dehlin [00:48:09] It's. That's up to you to decide. Now, there was a claim made that I have been. Been holding multiple luxury cruises. I want to say that that is not true at all. It's dishonest. It's a lie. I, John de Lynn, have been on one cruise in my entire life. One cruise.

John Dehlin [00:48:30] A couple years ago, a bunch of my listeners said, john, will you please host a cruise? We would love to do one of your faith crisis retreats on a cruise. They're intense. It would be a way for us to do the intense work of a retreat and then relax. So I planned one. I played one cruise. It was in October of two years ago.

John Dehlin [00:48:51] It was not, it was not worth it at all. If I had it over to do again, I'd meet all the people I met, but I would not have gone on the cruise. It was not fun. I did not have staff there to help me in any meaningful way. I ran it all by myself. And it was grueling. And I made almost. I made relatively nothing for the time and effort that I put into it. That's one cruise. Okay? They said cruises in that video. Cruises, multiple cruises.

John Dehlin [00:49:19] That's a lie. That's dishonest. What's actually honest, as I understand it, is that Daniel Peterson, who is actually the director of the nonprofit of. He's. He's with the Fair Mormon. He's on the board of fairmormon, and he's the director of the, of, of the Interpreter Foundation. He has gone on many, many, many, many cruises over the year making a lot of money. But, but Kwaku and, and, and those other guys, they don't, they don't mention that. And that's dishonest because their own, their own guys are going on luxury cruises. I've been on one cruise, made very little money, and they're representing as if I've been on many.

John Dehlin [00:50:00] That's dishonest. So that's the LDS Church, through more Good foundation and Fair Mormon, being dishonest and misrepresenting the truth to smear me to make it look like I'm trying to get rich off of hurting people, and that's dishonest.

John Dehlin [00:50:17] I also want to call attention to one of the 990s for the interpreter foundation and what you'll see if you read the 990 in 2019 for Daniel Peterson, the guy I just mentioned, it lists $1 million in a single year for other expenses.

John Dehlin [00:50:34] And I don't know. I don't know what Daniel Peterson did with that million dollars of other expenses in 2019. I don't know. It could be super legit. It could be not legit. But when we're talking about money, these guys who are friends with Daniel Peterson and all these other millionaires channeling tens of millions of dollars in these organizations. They're friends with Daniel Peterson, who gets a million dollars in a single year, and they're claiming that Jeremy and I are doing this for money.

John Dehlin [00:51:12] Why aren't they turning their scrutiny back on their own people? Why are they avoiding and not sharing this information? It seems dishonest of the LDS Church of Fair Mormon, of More Good foundation, and of these podcasters to be sharing information in such a dishonest way.

John Dehlin [00:51:30] Again, Book of Mormon Central, if you go to their 2018 990, you'll see a million dollars in salaries for staff of the Book of Mormon Central foundation in a single year. And then in 2017, $1.3 million again in other expenses. Now, it's normal for there to be an other expenses category in a nonprofit because you can't itemize everything out, but to have a million dollars categorized as other.

John Dehlin [00:52:01] I think it's fair for you all to go to the Interpreter Foundation, Book of Mormon Central, fairmormon, and, and the More Good foundation and ask them, when you guys have millions of dollars in your other expenses category, where's that money going? Can you give us an accounting? Is it going into the pockets of the leaders and the directors? Is it going to friends and family? Is it going to legitimate purposes? Why isn't it categorized in a way to where people can actually see how the money's being spent? So if anybody's going to attack the Open Stories foundation for its integrity, for its transparency, I think it would be most honest to first look at these other nonprofits and look at them with a critical eye about their honesty and their transparency.

John Dehlin [00:52:48] Now, that's just how I see it. You guys may see it differently, but check out the 990s and see for yourself. So in less than two minutes, these guys, Kwaku and Brad and the other friends, with the support of FairMormon and the Moregood foundation, which. Which is the support of the LDS Church, they. They mischaracterized the money being brought into the Open Stories foundation and others like me, they hid and deceived about. About.

John Dehlin [00:53:19] And I unintentionally misspelled Kwaku there. I want you to know that was not intentional. I am. I'm going to fix that because I know that at some point someone got in trouble for doing that. So. So, yeah, they've mischaracterized the money going into the Open Stories Foundation. They've missed. They have completely neglected to be honest and open and transparent about the money going into their organizations. They. They lied about me having multiple faith crisis Cruises for money. They. They hid and ignored Daniel Peterson and other apologists participation in luxury cruises.

John Dehlin [00:54:00] They said that I. That Thrive is an mlm. Thrive has never made any money ever. We've held a couple of events intentionally at a loss so that we could have as many people these events as possible. Ask any of the people that led these events. The events were intentionally held at a financial loss so that we could help as many people as possible. So Thrive. No one made any money off of Thrive, okay? And it's not an mlm. They lied. Kwaku lied and said that Thrive is a multi level marketing organization. I've never been involved in an MLM in my life. Never. Not one time ever.

John Dehlin [00:54:42] In fact, I have. I have deep issues sometimes with the way certain MLMs can be unethical at times. And then finally they make this really egregious smearing claim that, that, that Jeremy and I are involved in home wrecking for profit.

John Dehlin [00:55:00] That's a destructive smear that incites people to be angry at us, to hate us, and to want to hurt us. Frankly and honestly, you could just as easily Levy. If you wanted to be mean, you could just as easy. And I've heard ex Mormons do this, Levy the same types of arguments back at fairmormon and other nonprofits, you know, apologetic nonprofits, saying that the content that they create creates so much confusion and doubt and anger in amongst believing Mormons that it causes tension between non believing Mormons and believing Mormons and can be harmful to marriages and families. But, but, but I want you to know I'm not making that claim right now.

John Dehlin [00:55:45] And I don't want to make that claim today. I just want to say that that same claim could just as easily be made back to them. And I just, I just don't think they're being honest. So Scott Gordon, John lynch, you know, podcaster guys, more Good foundation, fair Mormon, all of you guys, LDS Church. This is dishonest stuff and it's harmful in my opinion.

John Dehlin [00:56:13] You guys decide for yourself. And again, who's making the bank $26 million to these organizations over the past years. Okay? The next thing you know, some people, I had some friends look over this. A few friends told me to leave out this clip, but I need to put this clip in. It has to. It doesn't have to do directly with a lot of the stuff we've been talking about, but it's a smear that they levied at Jeremy Runnels. Jeremy Runnels is my dear friend who had a sincere Faith crisis several years ago, returned missionary, married in the temple, loved the church, had a faith crisis, wrote up into a document his concerns about the church, and sent it to a director of the church education system within the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [00:57:01] Okay. Jeremy's one of the most honest people I've ever met. He's one of the good heart, most good hearted people I've ever met. He has incredible integrity as far as I've experienced. And now I want you to hear what, what Kwaku and these other guys, along with, you know, fair and, and the More Good foundation and the LDS Church by subsidizing all this activity, I want to. I want you to hear what they say about Jeremy Runnels, and I want you to listen just very closely to this and how they, how they seem to smear him.

Gerardo Sumano [00:57:33] You know, you got doubts, there's weird stuff in church history, fine, write a PDF about it and then figure out the problems. But when I find out, when I found out he never actually sent his, quote, letter to a CES director, to the actual CES director and there was proof that he did not. And then when I saw that he recorded the disciplinary council in order to, like, show the world, it became obvious that he was a really poor showman raising awareness, AKA getting attention, instead of somebody who had legitimate doubts. Doubts can be dealt with. Doubts can be addressed. A desire to be cool comes from an emptiness within that needs to be filled from within and cannot be dealt with externally. And when you misrepresent yourself like that, you really. You just.

John Dehlin [00:58:27] You lose me. You're lying. Yeah. And so what they claim, what they claim is that Jeremy Runnels did not actually ever send the CES letter to a director. And I just want you to know that that is an incredibly dishonest claim.

John Dehlin [00:58:53] And what I want you to know, and I want to just say this publicly because these guys say that Jeremy never sent the letter. And I want you to know that I texted Jeremy Runnels about this and I said, jeremy, these guys are saying you never sent the CES letter. Did you send it? I just want you to know that Jeremy Runnels emailed me the actual letter that he sent to the CES director. The entire email chain, the dates, the times, the responses, the correspondence, and the CES letter attacked attached. I have that letter in my possession.

John Dehlin [00:59:31] And, and I have, I've seen it, and I have it in my possession. These guys claim in their video that. That Jeremy Runnels lied and never sent the CES letter to anyone. And I just Want you to know that's a deeply dish, just and harmful lie. And again, fair Mormon, more good foundation LDS church. You are subsidizing these, these people to smear people so that they hate Jeremy, potentially so that they want to do violence to Jeremy by telling lies. And, and it's outrageous.

John Dehlin [01:00:07] In addition to claiming that he just wants to be cool, I think that that's what the whole approach of these guys is, is to come out with a new, hip, cool Mormon, apologetic. So to talk about Jeremy just wanting to be cool and how that comes from an empty place, but then to, you know, being kind of maybe potentially hypocritical about that, it just, it feels dishonest and harmful. And, and I think it deserves to be called out. Now we get to the part that I think is. Is most disturbing of all.

John Dehlin [01:00:39] And, and it's the following. Now that these videos have been, you know, shared, these guys, you know, like Kwaku, you know, like Cardinalis, they're tweeting through social media, through all their followers. They're tweeting to these people, all these videos that are. That are spreading lies to disparage me, to disparage Jeremy Runnels and others. And what emerged a couple days ago, maybe just two days ago, was something that was deeply, deeply disturbing. It's a video that was released on Twitter, and it's basically a clip from a Quentin Tarantino movie called Inglourious Basterds. I've not seen it.

John Dehlin [01:01:24] And it basically shows. And I was going to show the video, but we decided not to because it's too graphic and because we're worried that YouTube's gonna flag it so that you guys won't be able to share this presentation. But what this video shows is a man walking out of an underpass with a bat in his hands.

John Dehlin [01:01:44] And, and it shows. It shows pictures of people like me standing in front of the guy with the baseball bat. And then what it shows is the guy with the baseball bat. And, and, and the. The label over the guy with the baseball bat is tits, which stands for oh, crap. What does it stand for?

John Dehlin [01:02:12] This is the show. That's one of the names of this YouTube channel that FAIR is subsidizing. This is the show so basically shows, you know, Kwaku and his buddies, Fair Mormon in their podcast, with a bat in their hands, beating me over the head, pummeling me to the ground, and then pounding with the baseball bat, bludgeoning me by name with my name on the character's chest, bludgeoning me with A baseball bat, and then everybody laughing about it. It also shows a picture of Jeremy Runnels as well. And this is.

John Dehlin [01:02:49] You know, everyone that I've talked to has seen this, or at least most people. Some people think it's just funny. Maybe. Maybe you think that's funny. That's one. One interpretation. Other people feel like what this is doing is it's inciting violence. That it's basically saying to.

John Dehlin [01:03:08] To many, many people in Utah and who love the Mormon Church and care about it, it's basically saying, you ought to consider doing violence to Jeremy Runnels and John de Lynn. And so this video gets shared on Twitter by an anonymous account. I don't know who this person was. Braden Herman. I don't know if that's a real person or if it's just an anonymous account. This video was shared on Twitter encouraging violence against me and Jeremy. And then it was retweeted. Retweeted by Cardin and Kwaku. So Cardin and Kwaku retweet this.

John Dehlin [01:03:49] Kwaku calls it. He says, now this is something in his retweet. And then Cardin writes, hey, Braden Cardinalis here. I'm the director of this is the Show. That's what they mean by tits. Love the video. Hook me. You know, hoy me up. I'd like to talk. And so this is the part that's been deeply disturbing, and it's been so deeply disturbing that I talked to my wife, I talked to my kids, and we decided to file a report with the police department, and Jeremy Runnels decided to do the same. Because we are literally fearing for our own safety. My children are fearing for my safety.

John Dehlin [01:04:31] My children are fearing for my family's safety. Jeremy Runnels is fearing for his safety, and his family are fearing for their safety. And if you don't believe that these types of videos are capable of inciting violence, let me read to you one of the comments made on the Twitter feeds. It reads from someone named Elder Hyde. It's got a picture of a knife with someone's hand holding the knife with red, white, and blue. Blue colors in the collar. And it says physically so badly that the people who come to clean her up, they're going to be puking when they see what I did to him, all right?

John Dehlin [01:05:13] I want them to know how I feel about him. So I'm going to flip him up so bad that he makes them puke when they see his bruised, mangled body. And that is a comment made in response to this video. This video that was shared. Now, I'm going to just also say one thing. I did. I did post this video in multiple places and share it. I did that at the advice of a legal counsel who said that I needed to make a copy of this and make sure it was public for my own safety, for the safety of my family, and as a legal record to show that Kwaku and Cardin and thus FairMormon and the More Good foundation, and thus the LDS Church, were potentially inciting physical violence against me and Jeremy Runnels and my family.

John Dehlin [01:06:07] And so that's why I shared it. But it was already out there. And I waited to share it until my kids discovered it. Because they follow Quakers. Some of my kids follow Kwaku. I didn't share it. My kids reached out to me. They said, dad, I'm terrified.

John Dehlin [01:06:23] Did you see this? What are we going to do? That's when I consulted with legal people, and that's when I decided to go ahead and share this publicly so that everyone would know what was going on, so that the media could get involved. I don't know if the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News follow stories like this anymore. They both seem to be heavily influenced and or controlled by the Mormon Church. So I don't know if the Salt Lake Tribune or the Deseret News are going to be doing any journalism on this. I don't know if KSL cares about stuff like this.

John Dehlin [01:06:55] I don't know. I don't know if anyone cares about this kind of stuff anymore. It seems like there's so much stuff going on in the world. I. I frankly wouldn't blame people for not caring. But I wanted to at least let people know that Jeremy and I are receiving death threats, that our families are being threatened, and that this is in response to people like Cardan, Ellis and Kwaku, supported and funded by the More Good foundation and Fair Mormon and the LDS Church, as far as I know.

John Dehlin [01:07:30] You guys tell me if I've gotten this wrong, but it seems like they're all connected. They're inciting violence against me and my family, Jeremy and his family. And I just want to say we're scared. We want to ask that Cardin and Kwaku stop doing this sort of thing, that FairMormon stop supporting the types of people who incite violence. And the More Good foundation, the LDS Church, stop endorsing organizations and nonprofits that incite violence against earnest critics that are literally not trying to destroy families. We're trying to save families. We're trying to alleviate anxiety and depression. We're trying to minimize divorce and we're trying to help people, help the Mormon church get more healthy and help people who leave the church get more healthy.

Calls to Stop the Hostility and Final Remarks

John Dehlin [01:08:19] Please stop inciting violence against us. Please stop terrorizing us and our families. That's my request. So I, I want to end with a couple questions. The first, is fair Mormon, more good foundation LDS Church? Is this approach Christlike? And some people think that, that people who lose their faith in Mormonism aren't allowed to talk about Jesus or Christ or even God. I just want to tell you another lie that I believe Kwaku and Cardin have told is that I'm an atheist. I've never once identified as an atheist that I remember or as an agnostic. I feel like I have always eschewed those terms. Now I've talked about those things and sometimes I've described those.

John Dehlin [01:09:12] I've considered those identities. But I've never identified as an atheist or agnostic. But they like to say that we're atheists and agnostic, which for me is a lie. I'm not. I do not identify as atheist or agnostic. But what they also like to say is you're not allowed to talk about God or Jesus, you know, if you're an atheist, which is, I think, is silly. But I can still talk about the teachings of Jesus Christ that I value and love, even if I'm no longer a Mormon, even if I'm no longer in the church, regardless of what my beliefs are.

John Dehlin [01:09:47] One of the things I love about, think fondly about the Mormon Church. One of the things I value about my heritage in the Mormon Church is that they taught me to be kind. They taught me to serve others, they taught me to forgive. They taught me to turn the other cheek. It's what I've tried to do in this video. I, I'm sure imperfectly, but it's what I've tried to do in this video. It's what I've tried to do in Mormon stories. I'm not always successful, but is I want to. I, I still believe that those teachings that I learned from my parents and from the church that are associated with Christ, but that are also associated with lots of other people, secular and not love, kindness, humility, forgiveness, charity, honesty.

John Dehlin [01:10:31] Those teachings are important. I still value them. And my question to the Mormon Church, to fair Mormon, to the more good foundation, to Kwaku, to Cardin and all these other people is, are you emulating the teachings of Jesus Christ in a way that reflects well on Mormons and on the Mormon Church.

John Dehlin [01:10:52] That's a question I just want to ask. Everyone's got to decide that for themselves. Everyone's got to dig deep. I've got to dig deep as well. And then finally, I just want to say, because really, we can talk about Kwaku, we can talk about Cardin, we can talk about Daniel Peterson, we can talk about Scott Gordon and John lynch, we can talk about Cardin and Kwaku and others. The truth is the buck of all of this, all of this starts and stops right here.

John Dehlin [01:11:25] All of this we have shown stems from the Mormon Church. It stems from the Mormon Church, the money that it gets from its tithe payers, the wealthy Mormons who follow the Mormon Church, and then all the non profits that have been set up by the Mormon Church through its members to make these attacks, these smears that are dishonest and now violent. And I just want to ask, I want to ask Russell M. Nelson, I want to ask Dallin H. Oaks, Henry Eyring, Jeffrey Holland Uchtdorf, all you know, Christopherson, I want to ask all of these Mormon apostles, prophets, seers and revelators, is this really what you want?

John Dehlin [01:12:08] Do you really want non profits lying about and smearing your earnest critics? And do you want your non profits associating with people who incite physical violence against people who ask questions or criticize the church, terrorizing them and their family members?

John Dehlin [01:12:30] Is that what you want, LDS Church? Is that what you're doing? And if it's not what you intend to do, I assume, I think I'm right. I don't think there's any chance that these humans want the level of dishonesty and, and violence and, and mean spiritedness that seems to be coming lately out of Fair Mormon, out of these different podcasts. I assume that that's not what, what these prophet seers and revelators want. And so what I know for sure is that these men have the power to stop this. And so I'm asking you, Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks, Henry Eyrington, Jeffrey Holland, Dieter Uchtdorf, please use your power and influence to stop this mean spiritedness, to stop the lies and the dishonesty, to stop the ad hominem attacks and most importantly, for the sake of my physical health, for my family's physical health and safety, for our peace of mind, for Jeremy Runnels, for his family, please stop these non profits and, and these podcasters who are members of your church, please stop them from inciting further violence on me and my family.

John Dehlin [01:13:47] That's my presentation for today. We have had over 1, 200 people joining us live. I have to say this is the largest live audience I've ever had on Mormon Stories podcast. I really, really appreciate everyone who is tuned in. We don't really have time so much to to take comments and questions. I wanted to keep this thing to an hour or less. We're already at an hour and 15 minutes, so please give us feedback@mormonstoriesmail.com if you want to support organizations that are trying to do good in this space. I'm going to give you a list.

John Dehlin [01:14:29] You can right now donate to Mormon Stories in the Open Stories Foundation. Support Mormon Mental Health Podcast with Natasha for Parker. Please support Year of Polygamy podcast with Lindsay Hansen Park. Please support Sunstone Educational Foundation. They're doing good in the world. Please support the the podcast RFM RFM Podcast.

John Dehlin [01:14:54] Oh my God, I can't believe Radio Free Mormon Podcast Bill Real Please support Marriage on a Tightrope podcast with Allan and Katie Mount. Thoughts on Things Itself with Jonathan Streeter. There's so many amazing Please support Dialogue foundation, an amazing organization spreading truth. Please support the Mormon I don't know about the Mormon History Association. That's up to you. Support Dialogue Foundation. Please support the John Whitmer Historical Association. There are so many good nonprofits. Please support the Smith Pettit foundation that supports Signature books as well. These are amazing organizations doing so much good. Please support these organizations. Please donate money because you can see they're outspending us 1,000 to 1 in terms of dollars.

John Dehlin [01:15:43] If I got my calculations right, 100 to 1. Whatever it is, they're way out spending us. We need your support. Email us you can donate@mormonstories.org we'll create a list of all the different other nonprofits you can donate to.

John Dehlin [01:15:58] Support Carolyn Pearson. She's a dear friend of mine. She has an amazing book out right now. We need your support to keep doing these sorts of things, so please do that. Please give us your feedback. If we got anything wrong in this presentation, I want to know about it. Email me@mormonstoriesgmail.com I would love to correct the record. If you've got other further information that you think could help people, please email me at mormonstories gmail.com and let us know. Huge thanks to Gerardo for helping with this presentation along with several close family and friends that gave me feedback. I love you guys and I want to just make a final commitment to you.

John Dehlin [01:16:36] I don't care who attacks me. I don't care what mean spirited things people say about me anymore. People have said so many lies about me that I'm trying to get rich, that I hurt women, that I hurt children, that I have several mansions all over the place, that I'm embezzling money.

John Dehlin [01:16:54] As far as I know, all of that's false. I want you to know that I, I have always done Mormon stories in the Open Stories foundation to help people. I am going to keep doing this. I don't care what critics say about me. I don't care how mean or vicious they get. My goal and my commitment to you is to respond with facts, to. To engage in discourses that are evidence based.

John Dehlin [01:17:20] Not to debate or argue, but to shine light on the world, to promote healing and growth, to promote hope, growth and healing within the Mormon Church and to promote growth, healing and community outside of the Mormon Church. I will not get in debates and flame wars with critics. I will not respond to mean spirited character assassinations or at least I'll do my best never to.

John Dehlin [01:17:46] And what I promise is I will do my best. Sometimes I get too angry, sometimes I get too animated. Sometimes I've contributed to the inflammation and sometimes I've even said mean things about people. So I'm going to own that I have not always been perfect in how I've characterized friends of mine like Patrick Mason and other people, people that I generally respect like Richard Bushman, Terrell Givens, Fiona Givens, Spencer Fluman. Sometimes I've lost my temper and have been angry or I've been mean to John Gee and Daniel Peterson and others. And I just want to say I want to recommit to kindness. I want to commit myself to doing the best that I can to use whatever resources you invest in me in spreading truth, in spreading awareness, in encouraging healthy discourse and dialogue, and in promoting light and healing and growth within the Mormon Church and for people who leave the church.

John Dehlin [01:18:48] That is my commitment to you. I've been imperfect in the past. I will do my best going forward to do that. If you want to assassinate me physically or in your words, just know that that's not going to stop me. I'm not going to engage in that type of behavior. I'm going to recommit to honesty, light and truth and healing and growth. And I'm going to do my best to ignore this sort of stuff in the future other than to report it to the police or the FBI if and when it reaches or passes a certain point. And I want to call on everyone to consider Joining me, I want to call on Ex Mormon Reddit, all the followers of the Mormon Stories podcast community, if you're willing, if you'll consider this.

John Dehlin [01:19:35] I know you don't like to be told what to do. Let's stop. Let's not character assassinate Kwaku. Let's not character assassinate Cardin. I don't want to see people attacking them. Let's stop character assassinating Daniel Peterson or John Gee or any of these people. Let's stop that. I don't want to see it on the things I'm associated with and I want to ask you to. Let's move to a conversation about evidence, a conversation about logic, a conversation about healing and kindness and growth. And let's do that if you're willing in Ex Mormon Reddit. Let's do that on the Mormon Stories podcast community. Let's do it on Twitter.

John Dehlin [01:20:16] It's not going to fully happen ever. But I want to do my part and I want to call on everyone within my voice to consider doing your part as well to encourage dialogues of healing and growth. I'm sorry for where I've messed up. I'm going to do that in the future. Thanks so much for all you who tune in today. I love and appreciate all your support. Thanks for all the heartfelt warm wishes to everyone who's been concerned about my health and safety and Jeremy Runnels.

John Dehlin [01:20:44] Thanks to my wife and kids that have borne far too much stress and sadness and fear. Fear. If there were a time to get emotional, it would be right now as I'm talking about Margi and my kids that have borne the brunt of, of all of this stress and mean spiritedness and, and now violence. I want Margi and the kids, I want you to know I love you guys. I care about you. I'm so grateful that you're willing to let me do this and I'm so sorry, Margi and the kids for all the pain that all of this has caused you and for the stress that it has put on you.

John Dehlin [01:21:24] And I thank you so much for your encouragement and love and support over the years in helping me do what I do. And I'll be talking with you guys, you know, Margi and kids in the next few days about what we're going to do in the future because things have gotten really intense. So I love you, Margi and kids. I love you, my family. I love all of you who have listened today. Please stay in touch. Please take care and we'll see you guys all again soon. On another episode of Mormon Story podcast. Take care, everybody.

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